Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials (17 page)

“Mabel thought he was going to recover.”

“That’s only because she was his mother.” Aunty Lee looked at Cherril speculatively.
“Would you kill yourself for a child?”

“Why are you asking me that?” Cherril looked so startled that for a moment Aunty Lee
wondered whether her thoughts had been running along the same lines.

“Just wondering.”

“If it is guaranteed the child survives, then of course,” Nina said. “But if cannot
guarantee, what’s the point?”

“But nothing like that can be guaranteed,” Cherril said. “Especially if you kill yourself
and you’re not around to watch out for the kid. I might kill for my child, though.
If that’s what was at stake.”

“Leonard’s drug use probably caused the damage to his heart but we can’t rule out
there may have been a congenital defect to begin with. That may have been what Mabel
wanted to believe. He would have been experiencing chest pains and nonfatal arrhythmias
for some time, going by the state his heart was in.” That’s why she was praying for
a new heart for him.

“It’s not a simple operation.” Cherril had read up on the subject after Aunty Lee
told her what they had learned at Benjamin Ng’s flat.

“For one thing, obtaining a donor heart is very difficult because it must be a heart
in good condition, matching his tissue type as closely as possible to reduce the chances
of rejection and belonging to someone who is brain-dead and stable on life support.

“His blood would be channeled through a heart-lung bypass machine while the surgeon
works on his heart. This machine supplies his body with oxygenated blood during the
procedure. To save time the donor heart may be stitched in place on top of his own
heart. It’s a very complicated procedure. Not something you would risk doing in a
fly-by-night clinic. You would need a full operating team and anesthesiologist. You
would need equipment and monitors . . .”

Aunty Lee thought of the receipts they had found. “How would you put together a surgical
team?” she wondered.

“Nobody would put together a team to operate on Leonard Sung,” Nina said. “The boy
was already in such bad shape, all the drugs poisoning his body.”

That reminded Aunty Lee of another thought chain she had been following. The poison
in
buah keluak
was cyanide. If murder in this case was meant to be blamed on the
buah keluak,
then likely that was what had been found in the dish. But though cyanide was also
found in almonds, apple seeds, and tobacco products, there was likely to be too small
an amount to do any harm. Where else? Insecticides and pesticides, most likely.

Thanks to Nina’s online skills, Aunty Lee had been able to find out everything she
wanted to know about cyanide except where to get it.

“Did the pool at the Sungs’ house look green to you when we were there?” Aunty Lee
asked Cherril.

“Wasn’t it blue? Water is always blue, right?”

It irritated Aunty Lee when Cherril let what she thought she knew override what she
actually saw.

“If it was green that means they had algae bloom.” Then again Cherril occasionally
came up with gems like this that put everything else into context. Aunty Lee was a
rabid autodidact with a bad memory but Cherril went through life picking up nuggets
of information without stopping to process them.

“The pond at Mycroft’s parents’ house got algae bloom last year. The water turned
completely green. They kept asking the gardener to change the water but it kept turning
back green until they got somebody to come and do an Algae Bomb. I didn’t believe
it would work. It sounded like one of those lose-weight-without-dieting or whiten-your-skin-without-peeling
advertisements, but then it really worked! Just one night and the next day the water
was not green anymore. But then of course all the fish died.”

“Really, in just one night . . .” But Aunty Lee was not thinking about the fish. “What
did they do?”

“They just added the Algae Bomb. I think it came in a tub of powder. They came and
added it to the water and warned us not to drink out of the pond . . . not that we
would have anyway. It was very effective but they said the algae would come back,
it’s just how nature works if you have sun and you have oxygen in your water. Actually
it means that you have a healthy environment, it just doesn’t look very good. I tried
to ask what chemicals they used. I’m sure there’s a cheaper way to do it on our own.
You just need some kind of poison, right? I asked them, can’t I just pour in a bottle
of Dettol or dump in some cockroach pellets? They said it’s more complicated than
that. I can understand it’s more complicated if you want to kill the algae without
killing the fish, but since the fish died anyway I don’t see what’s the big deal.”

Aunty Lee’s mind was working furiously. She knew there was something significant here.
She couldn’t say what it was yet but she knew this was a trail worth following. “Nina?”

“Yes, madam?”

“Nina, can you find out for me who treated the water in the Sungs’ pool? And when
it was done?”

Nina knew better than to ask Aunty Lee why. But doing anything was better than doing
nothing. Since the café kitchen had been closed she had already cleaned the café and
the bungalow as thoroughly as she did before Chinese New Year and even waxed all the
teak cupboards.

“It’s illegal to sell rat poison containing cyanide in Singapore. But people always
say it’s the only kind that works. They usually get friends to bring it down for them
from Malaysia.”

“But you can’t even buy rat poison in Singapore,” Cherril pointed out. “Mycroft’s
parents had an awful problem with rats one time. None of the traps they bought worked
and it’s illegal to use rat poison unless you are a licensed exterminator.”

It was very unusual to find someone so law-abiding, Aunty Lee thought. She wondered
whether it came from being married to an NMP.

“My friend’s boss also got rats,” Nina said. “She asked her sister to get her rat
poison from Malaysia. Just put inside a plastic bag with other shopping things, no
problem. They didn’t know how many rats they got because they only see them at night.
Then sometimes see one or two running past. But then the rats ate the poison in the
night, then the next day they went out into the garden to die. Almost twenty of them!
Anyway, it was cyanide, probably from rat poison. It would be colorless but come with
a bitter taste.”

“Can you find out whether the Sungs were using Algae Bombs or rat poison or anything
else with cyanide?”

“No need to ask, ma’am. That day underneath the table with the plates and cutlery
got the bottles for the pool cleaner. I asked Madam Sung where can I put them and
she told me, just leave them there.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Anyone could have killed them!”

“How do I know that their pool cleaner got cyanide?”

Aunty Lee amended her thought: Anyone who had known there was cyanide-based powder
under the buffet table could have killed them.

And Mabel herself had known the bottle was there—asked Nina to leave it there . . .

The women who thrive in life and business are the ones who know how to make the best
of circumstances. More important, they know when a battle is no longer worth fighting.
Was that why Mabel Sung had decided to kill herself and her son? Because she did not
want him to suffer anymore?

That might work in theory but it did not fit with the impression Aunty Lee had got
of Mabel Sung that day and Aunty Lee trusted her own impressions more than other people’s
clichés. That was the problem.

There was also the question of why Mabel Sung, with all her connections, had not been
able to push through a legal transplant for her precious son.

Cherril said Mycroft had already gone through this with her.

In Singapore, the Transplant Ethics Committee must approve living-donor kidney transplants
and approval was only given after thorough investigation showed the donor understood
and was not being forced into the operation. Otherwise, organ trading was banned in
Singapore and in many other countries to prevent the exploitation of “poor and socially
disadvantaged” donors who might be forced into selling body parts.

“He said poor people are forced to sell their time and health and self-respect, but
they have a chance to earn back these things, but they can never earn back a kidney.”

Aunty Lee knew the laws. Middle-class Singaporeans prided themselves on knowing that
even the wealthiest and most powerful were subject to laws that protected the poorest
and most overlooked. Only a year ago there had been a scandal when the executive chair
and head of one of Singapore’s top family businesses was fined and publicly shamed
in the newspapers and social media for arranging to pay over twenty-two thousand Singapore
dollars for a kidney flown into Singapore by its Indonesian donor. Aunty Lee knew
the gentle and generous man had been as desperate for a kidney as its would-be donor
was for money, and was not sure justice had been served in this case. Though both
parties had entered knowingly and willingly into the agreement, they were both fined.
And as the poor (in every sense) donor obviously did not have ten thousand Singapore
dollars, he spent twelve months in jail, which did not help his own health or family
finances. Aunty Lee reflected that laws designed with the best intentions to protect
people could hurt them badly if applied inflexibly. It was like someone trying to
make
kaya
and blindly stirring coconut cream into their eggs because the recipe said so without
noticing one of the eggs was bad.

“To do it properly you must examine every egg,” Aunty Lee said out loud. “Egg by egg.
That’s the only way to do it.”

“What’s that?”

“They should examine case by case,” Aunty Lee said. “Not anyhow say one law fits all.”

“Mycroft says one law should apply to everybody.”

“But even if you have the organs, how does the law decide who gets them? It’s like
playing God. Throw a dice, pick at random,” Aunty Lee said. “As long as the people
can pay.”

Cherril started to protest but simultaneously defending the laws of God and Singapore
confused her, and Aunty Lee continued: “There’s no right way to make some decisions.
But if nobody decides, then we are all stuck and everybody suffers. So somebody makes
a choice, any choice. And then we all follow. If it was the wrong choice, then somebody
else makes another choice. Otherwise we are like people sitting in a restaurant without
ordering. Or every time ordering the same white porridge because when you were a baby
you were fed white porridge and you know it is safe.”

Aunty Lee got up to stir the
tau suan
in the slow cooker. Some people took long, slow walks when trying to work out problems.
Aunty Lee preferred to put her problems in the slow cooker. She stirred in a slurry
of sweet-potato flour to thicken the sweet soup before ladling out three bowls and
topping them with crispy dough balls. Most people used cut-up dough fritters but Aunty
Lee preferred to fry up tiny dough puffs that stayed light and crispy longer.

“Eat. Machines and people cannot work without fuel.” And money was fuel that someone
might kill for. “Maybe I should go and visit Doreen Choo,” Aunty Lee said thoughtfully.
“We didn’t really get to catch up that day and after all I haven’t seen her for so
long.”

Doreen Choo’s Flat

“Quick, Nina! Go and see what do we have ready that we can bring to give to my friend
Doreen. I think her teeth are not very good, so nothing too hard that might make her
teeth come out. She is the kind that will make me pay her dentist bill and then go
and get extra whitening and straightening and what-not-ing done!”

Aunty Lee had decided to pay a visit to Doreen Choo. But paying uninvited, unannounced
visits made her nervous. Nina calmly prepared a
tingkat
of hot herbal chicken soup (defrosted in the microwave but no one would be able to
tell).

“You don’t have to go, madam.”

“Of course I do. Besides, with all these people canceling their bookings, what am
I going to do if I just hang around?”

Nina knew very well what Aunty Lee would do. She would fuss and fret and get in the
way of Nina, who was doing her best to prepare and flash-freeze as much of their freshly
purchased produce as possible. They had large enough storage freezers and not too
much had been wasted yet. But even so, what was the point? Who knew how long people
would continue to be afraid of nothing? However things turned out, Nina would get
more done without Aunty Lee playing detective in the kitchen.

“But how can I just go and drop in on her and say what—‘Hello, I just came to see
whether you are having an affair with Henry Sung and can I come to your prayer and
healing meeting because I want to find out who took over after Mabel died?’”

“You should go,” Nina said decisively. “Give her the soup. Tell her you got nothing
to do here because nobody is coming to your shop anymore. Say you miss your husband
and pretend to cry a bit. Ask her to pray for you. She will ask you to go to the meeting
with her.”

“Nina, you are devious.”

“You should be happy I am looking out for you, madam. I will go and put the soup in
the car. I got the address already, I will drive you there.”

Mrs. Doreen Choo lived in an apartment in Taman Serasi, opposite the Singapore Botanic
Gardens. If only the Botanic Gardens were air-conditioned, it would have been lovely
to walk through them and up to Garden Vista. Instead Aunty Lee enjoyed being driven
past the huge old trees and luxuriant greenery and got Nina to drop her, the nourishing
herbal chicken soup, and two of Aunty Lee’s Tasty Tarts (Pineapple) at the lobby of
Doreen Choo’s building. Few could resist the buttery pastry encasing Aunty Lee’s homemade
pineapple-and-coconut jam. Indeed it was the overwhelming number of Chinese New Year
orders for her pineapple tarts that had prompted the conversion of Aunty Lee’s baking
hobby into a business. The tarts still served a very important purpose. Nobody turned
away a visitor bearing pineapple tarts.