Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials (20 page)

“You should know there’s nothing wrong with the kitchen here!” Cherril said. “You’ve
been here before. I know, I’ve seen you here. You’ve even eaten here. Have you ever
seen cockroaches or rats or raw meat on pastry plates or any of the things that people
close kitchens for? I’ve worked in kitchens in far worse conditions and nobody ever
bothered to complain. If you don’t like it, then don’t eat here, lah! As long as nobody
dies, what’s the problem?”

“But somebody did die,” Mycroft Peters said. “This is about Mabel Sung and her son,
isn’t it?”

“No, sir. This is a separate complaint that was filed,” Salim said. “Several complaints.”

“If you can’t tell us who complained, can you tell us how many people complained?”
Mycroft knew that a single complaint would not have been taken seriously. Too often
a customer who felt herself slighted by a waitress would call in and complain.

“Some other people who were there that day have reported feeling unwell after eating
food you provided,” Salim said.

“So it’s all people from that party. That’s not true. They’re lying. I was there and
nobody said anything. Mycroft, do something!”

But Mycroft Peters just put an arm around his wife. “Aunty Lee, if there is anything
I can do—”

“Sorry,” Inspector Salim said quietly to Nina. “I must follow procedure. If members
of the public make a report we must follow up. This is only temporary.”

Aunty Lee feared the people in power were not trying to find out what happened. They
just wanted to contain the damage and have the incident forgotten as soon as possible.
Aunty Lee agreed it was necessary to move on. But you had to find out what the real
damage was before you could find the best way to deal with it.

Nina glared at Salim’s back but said nothing. This was actually a good sign for Salim.
If Nina had written off the police officer she would have put on her perfectly blank
foreign-worker image for him—there would have been no anger, no familiarity, no recognition
even. But Aunty Lee had other things to worry about than Salim’s feelings. She was
not even worrying about the café being closed, even temporarily. Aunty Lee could sense
a deeper wrong. It was like the smell of decay at the bottom of the fridge that made
everything else stink. The problem was she could not tell who it was coming from.

“Madam, I phone the people who made reservations, yes? And next week the catering
also must cancel?”

“Yes please, Nina. Save everything you can in the fridge—”

“Freezer better, ma’am. And the fresh vegetables and meat also I will prepare first
and then pack into the freezer.”

Aunty Lee remembered something else in her freezer.

“I have a sample of the
buah keluak
that I cooked that day. I want you to check that because no one else seemed affected
by it.”

Aunty Lee always said that the most important thing when it came to cooking for large
numbers of people fast was having a big fridge and freezer. Even though she liked
to be out shopping early at the wholesale center for the freshest of new produce,
she depended on her gigantic freezer to store meal portions of washed and chopped
vegetables and meats with basic marinades. These machines had not existed in the days
of cooking for households of up to thirty people. The main difference was it had been
up to the cook to decide what all those people were going to eat, and they all ate
the same thing. Also, there had been the back lot for vegetables and chickens, and
amahs and servant girls to help with the multitude of small but necessary tasks involved.

“I am going to the prayer and healing meeting tomorrow night. Why not help me prepare
some snacks to bring with me? If I don’t charge them it’s not counted as business,
right?”

“As long as they don’t pray until they get sick and blame you!” Nina snapped.

Efficiently operating a host of gadgets, Nina did the work of five kitchen helpers,
and the freezer would cut down on wastage during the closure. As long as the closure
was really temporary.

That night Aunty Lee was grateful for her own quiet house in a peaceful housing estate.
There had been no question of her having to leave the place when ML died. It was just
one more thing that she could take for granted, but she was still grateful and said
so to ML’s living room portrait: “The greatest gift is to realize how lucky you are
to have something before you lose it.” They had been lucky there and had made the
most of their years together. She could have no regrets. But now, almost alone in
the silent house (Nina was in her room at the back), in front of the silent, smiling
portrait, Aunty Lee was tired enough to be lonely, and at that moment she missed her
late husband so much that she felt angry with him for dying and leaving her behind.
Maybe it was time for her to take down the pictures and move on. Maybe it was time
for her to find a smaller house and move out. What was the point in staying here,
close to the shop, if the shop never opened again? She ought to be moving on with
her life.

Of course she could still talk to ML. That was why she had photo portraits of him
all over the house and café. But he didn’t ever talk back. She wished she had some
recordings of her late husband’s voice. It would be such a comfort now, just to hear
his beloved low gravelly tones. It was one of the things she had not known to value
till it was lost to her forever.

“I wish—” Aunty Lee said, laying a hand lightly on the phone beside her, then jumped,
startled when it rang.

“Yes?” Her voice came out in a strangled squeak.

“I hope I’m not calling too late?” It was Aunty Lee’s stepdaughter, Mathilda. “Are
you sick?”

“No, of course not. Always good to hear from you. Have you had your lunch yet?”

Aunty Lee always enjoyed Mathilda’s phone calls. She had been warned that stepdaughters
were much more difficult to handle than stepsons. But she had always gotten along
well with Mathilda, who had inherited her late father’s good nature and wry equanimity.

“I heard they closed down your café. Are you okay? What’s happening?”

Mathilda had already been working in England when her father married Aunty Lee. She
had told Aunty Lee how much she appreciated the energy Aunty Lee brought to her father’s
home and life after Mathilda’s mother had been dead for over fifteen years. Mathilda
had married an Englishman not long after and settled down in London. Neither Mathilda
nor Mark, who had married soon after his younger sister, showed any antagonism toward
the plump, fair “aunty” when she began appearing by their father’s side at family
and social functions. Indeed, they were glad she was there to keep their father company
and feed him.

“Who told you?” Aunty Lee asked, wondering for a moment whether the closure had already
been on the news.

“Selina sent me an e-mail telling me to call Mark. That woman is one solid lump of
stinginess. I found out about Sharon’s mum dying online. Can you talk now?”

It was past 11
P.M.
in Singapore but Mathilda knew Aunty Lee’s habits well. In the old days that hour
would have found her father and his second wife side by side in their matching Barcaloungers
in front of the television with their drinks (Black Label for ML, sour plum juice
for Aunty Lee) and crunchy, dry, fried anchovies on the table between them. With their
eyes fixed on the television they would talk about what they had done that day; what
they had seen, said, and eaten, what they found funny, sad, or provoking. And this
would lead to talk of the past—going over their early days together and filling in
gaps in their years apart. And most of all they talked about all the people in their
lives, the friends they had in common as well as the many now gone.

Now that ML Lee was gone too, it was the talking that Aunty Lee missed the most. Of
course she could (and did) talk to Nina, to all the many people she met over the course
of the day, but nothing could match the cozy and intimate camaraderie of those lost
conversations.

“Anyway, Mark wants me to tell you to sell the business for whatever you can get.
Or rather he started to talk to me and then that Silly-Nah took over because he wasn’t
saying what she was telling him to say properly. She said your reputation is gone,
so you might as well quit now. According to her, since your money is coming to us
one day you are cheating us if you lose it all. I said I would talk to you myself.
Is the café really closed? Are you all right?”

Aunty Lee did not know what to say. She was “all right” compared to a great many other
people. Her health was good, and even if the café never opened again and she lost
everything she had invested in it she was not likely to end up selling tissue packets
outside MRT stations. But things were definitely not as they should be.

“Aunty Lee? Are you there?” Mathilda sounded worried.

“I’m still here. Yes, I’m all right. Yes, the café is closed. They got some complaints,
so they have to investigate but they haven’t arrested me or anything, don’t worry.
I heard they even went around collecting
buah keluak
from the Indonesian women who come to sell them here; they want to test for poison.
Didn’t even pay for them, the women said. Now nobody will dare to eat
buah keluak
anymore. I wanted to promote our traditional dishes here; instead I end up destroying
them!” Aunty Lee laughed wryly.

“It’s that Sharon Sung. I’m sure of it. It’s the kind of thing she would do. She was
also very competitive. I remember she didn’t do so well in her PSLE and had to spend
two years in the second-best class, and I think she never got over that.” The Primary
School Leaving Exams were the national exams that sorted twelve-year-olds into science,
arts, or technical streams, thus shaping their careers and destinies forever. “The
last time we got together she was telling us how much more she earned and wanting
to compare with people who had been in the top class. By that time the rest of us
had already forgotten what class we were in way back then.”

“But it can’t have been easy for her. I heard that her brother was in bad shape. Sharon
said her mother’s feminist talk was all a big lie. Her parents were leaving their
house and everything to her brother because he was the boy. But she said it was fair
in the end because her brother would never be able to earn his own living, and when
he got sick I think she was actually glad.”

“Tell me about Sharon’s brother. All I know is that he was sick and he died. Did you
know him?”

“Everybody knew of Leonard Sung. He got sent off to the U.S. and got into partying
and drugs, but even before that he was always in trouble. You know why he had to leave
Singapore before his O levels, right? He got in trouble in school for trying to intimidate
and blackmail school staff. Crazy, isn’t it? The holy Mabel Sung’s son! Leonard dropped
out of school and became a drug addict and Sharon became a lawyer and joined her mum’s
law firm. She couldn’t stand it that even after all that her brother was still her
parents’ favorite.

“We were in the same class for several years but I didn’t really know Sharon Sung
that well in school. I always thought her mother made her invite me to her birthday
parties and things like that because of who Dad was rather than because we were friends.”

“Poor Sharon,” Aunty Lee said.

The problem with favoritism was the rules of the competition were not clear or fixed.
They changed to maintain and justify the state of the favorite. But that was not so
different from how most things operated.

“She’s too good for everybody else but not good enough for her parents.”

Aunty Lee could see why Sharon felt unfairly treated. Ordinarily she would have wanted
to explore this a little, point out to Sharon that the universe and karma had a way
of evening things out (look at how her poor brother had ended up), but right now she
had something else on her mind. That two people had died was not as vital as the fact
that someone had put poison in her food. This was personal.

“Would you like me to talk to Mark and nag him about making his own money instead
of spending more of yours?”

“No! Please don’t.” Aunty Lee was startled. Such a thing had never occurred to her.

“I’ll make sure he knows it didn’t come from you. I mean, look, I don’t know how you’re
going to leave your money and everything, but if you decide to split whatever is left
between the two of us, then Mark is spending my money too, right? Sometimes I think
he’s deliberately squandering everything he can, just because he can. Nobody could
do so hopelessly at so many businesses unless it was on purpose! And Selina—I think
she just wants him to get as much out of you as she can. She got so worked up when
you started the café, how you were going to lose all of Mark’s and my inheritance
and how we would have to come up with the money to support you in your old age. Then
you started making a profit and she had to shut up, but now she’s started again. And
look at how much money Mark’s lost so far already! Honestly, I don’t know what he
sees in her. But then I don’t know what she sees in him either.”

“Your brother has a very valuable ability.”

“You mean how he gets other people to look after him? That may be valuable to him
but doesn’t add value to anyone else, does it?”

“Mark knows how to enjoy himself. He’s enjoying being alive, trying things that catch
his fancy, dropping them when he gets bored. He reminds me a bit of a little dog I
had when I was a girl. It kept finding things and hiding them away in corners to chew.
When it was engrossed in a new toy it didn’t even want to come to eat! But once it
got tired of it, that was it. No more interest, no more attention. It was looking
around for the next thing. I think Mark is still looking out for whatever it is that
will hold his attention. I’m sure if he had to he would settle down and find a way
to earn enough money to support himself and his family. He’s a good boy. But right
now, since he doesn’t have to, he lives it up and enjoys himself.”