Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials (29 page)

“And you’ll perform the operation yourself?”

“I’ll take very good care of you. You’ll be better taken care of than you would be
in any hospital, believe me. It will be personalized care specially tailored to your
needs.”

“What guarantees do I have that it will work? What if I pay through the nose for this
procedure and my knees end up worse than ever?”

“Oh, don’t worry. Once we take you on as a patient, we guarantee that you will be
happy with the results. Of course you will have to be reasonable. There is a possibility,
I will admit that—no operation can be one hundred percent guaranteed—that is, there
is a possibility you may not be satisfied with the results immediately. But if you
are patient we will keep going until you are happy with how it feels. That is what
I can guarantee you. And for sure you will be better off in many ways than if you
decide against doing the procedure. Are we agreed?”

“Just one more thing—but this is important. I want to know where you get the body
parts from. I heard Indian prisons sell dead bodies of rapists and drug addicts to
medical schools to teach anatomy. I don’t want you to put some Indian drug addict’s
cartilage in my knees. Are you sure you are using Chinese people’s body parts?” Aunty
Lee tried to look prejudiced and racist.

Another smirk from Dr. Yong. Apparently he anticipated such racism.

“Remember that China woman you asked about at the party that day? She’s not my girlfriend.
She’s a business contact. She is the one who can guarantee the body parts are hundred
percent Chinese.”

By now Aunty Lee was walking her guest/blackmailer out of the front door. She hoped
he would not notice there were no trees, rambutan or otherwise, near the porch of
her house and wonder at Nina’s message. Fortunately his phone rang, even as he said:
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Lee. You can leave everything to me.”

He glanced at the ID and ignored it. There was a bleep as a text message followed.
What it said made Edmond autodial someone and shout: “What shit are you talking! How
can the power be off?”

Aunty Lee could hear a woman’s voice on the line, also shouting, but could not make
out her words. She heard enough to tell it was English—not Wen Ling, then.

“What’s happening?” Aunty Lee asked eagerly, but she had been forgotten.

Edmond stumble-ran across the driveway with the phone still clamped to his ear. He
dropped his keys before he could unlock his car. His hands were shaking too hard to
drive and he sat for a moment, ignoring the man in a long-sleeved T-shirt and broad-brimmed
sun hat trimming the hedge beyond. He dialed again.

“What the hell did you do?”

Aunty Lee walked to her “gardener” in time for them both to hear Edmond shout, “They
turned off the power supply at the house. Everything. You’re supposed to keep everything
running!”

Though Edmond Yong was not paying any attention to them, Aunty Lee and Salim remained
apparently engrossed in the bougainvillea hedge till he had backed out of the driveway
and the car disappeared in the direction of the main road.

“The police force not paying you enough, is it?”

“Nina was worried. She doesn’t trust that man. She said you were alone in the house,
thought he might try to drug you or kidnap you or something.”

Aunty Lee was touched. She was touched too that the officer had taken Nina—or Edmond
Yong—seriously enough.

Back in the library, they found Nina had already thrown out the remaining puffs (a
sign of clear displeasure). She said to Aunty Lee, “You are not seriously going to
let that man go anywhere near your legs!”

Aunty Lee did not answer. She had returned to her favorite seat facing the portrait
of ML Lee above the serving hatch through which Nina had listened to the interview
with Dr. Yong. What would ML have thought if he, instead of Nina, had been listening?

“Did you hear that young fart call me ‘old people’?” Aunty Lee demanded of the portrait.
“And imply people think I poisoned you?”

ML Lee smiled out of his portrait, saying nothing. He might have found a replacement
for his deceased first wife in Aunty Lee but she had no intention of replacing him.

She had been sitting there for almost an hour by the time Salim and Nina returned.

“How are your legs feeling?” Nina asked Aunty with exaggerated sweetness.

“I am feeling much better,” Aunty Lee replied. “I think maybe I will go out tomorrow
and join that gym your friend works at.”

“I don’t like that man. I don’t like him coming here.”

“Because he threatened me? I don’t think he’s going to do anything. He just wants
to scare me because he wants to work with me. Some people think fear is only way to
make people behave.”

“And he says our food no good but he keeps on taking and eating. All the time he is
talking he is eating. But, madam, if you suspect Dr. Yong, how can you even think
about going for operation under him?” Nina wailed. Her Filipina accent was always
exaggerated when she was upset.

“Of course I’m not going to go for the operation. I just want to find out more about
how they operate. I suspect Edmond Yong has been working with illegal organ transplants.
Maybe Mabel Sung found out about it. She may have been tempted to get them to heal
her son if the prayer and faith healing didn’t work—or maybe she did ask them and
it didn’t work and she was going to tell on them, so they had to silence her and get
rid or her son because he was evidence of the illegal surgery!”

“Ma’am, nowadays with postmortems and everything, you still got evidence, what.”

“Yes, but this is Singapore. They give you a quick look-over, find out what you died
of, then poof, you’re cremated. Next thing you know you are a pile of ashes inside
a nice pot in the columbarium. No way anybody can open up the pot and find out what
kind of previous operations you had!”

Nina, with her nursing training, had more faith in hospital records than Aunty Lee
did, but it was no use talking to her boss in one of her superspeed moods.

Salim, who had changed back into his uniform, held up his phone now.

“Power company says power supply to the Sung house was terminated till further notice
by the owner’s request. Same thing with the water supply. So it can’t have been Sharon
Sung that called Edmond Yong just now if she asked for the power to be cut off.”

Aunty Lee thought about it. She couldn’t prove it but she felt the first call had
been from Sharon. It had probably been GraceFaith who had instructed that power and
water to the house be cut off. This was not entirely surprising given that no money
was coming in and Sharon and Henry Sung had moved out. And GraceFaith would not have
minded making Edmond Yong a little uncomfortable.

But why had Edmond’s caller been so upset? Had he someone in the house with him? Someone
caught in the middle of a hot shower perhaps? No. It was more than that. She had seen
shock, fear, rage, and loss in Edmond Yong’s reaction to news of the power cut to
the empty house.

“He had something in the house,” Aunty Lee said to Salim.

“We checked through the whole house that day,” Salim said. “There’s nothing there.”

Anne Peters

It was not the gym that Aunty Lee headed to the next morning. She had woken up with
the sense that she was missing something.

“Where are you going so early?”

“For a morning walk. Walking is good for the health. That’s why they build so many
parks for us. You even see ministers walking around when there is no election coming.
It must be good.”

“What are you up to now?” Nina asked suspiciously. She sounded like one of those harried
domestic helpers trying to keep hyperactive children out of trouble. “You want me
to make egg for your breakfast?”

“I have to deliberately meet someone and make it seem like a total coincidence. Not
very easy these days,” Aunty Lee said. For a moment she thought wistfully of the fresh
food markets of the past. In those days you knew where you were likely to find people,
whether they preferred freshly caught fish, freshly cropped vegetables, or chickens
slaughtered on demand. Walking around the market, you could get your day’s food, news,
and exercise at your own pace.

“I’m taking my phone with me. If that GraceFaith sends me anything, you phone me right
away, ah!”

Anne Peters was out walking Tammy, her sweet-natured “Singapore special.” Mycroft
had brought the mongrel puppy home for his mother after she had not left the house
for three months following his sister’s death. Now she walked with Tammy two, three
times a day. And when she was home, the dog stayed devotedly by her side. There were
definitely different ways of healing, Aunty Lee thought.

Tammy greeted Aunty Lee with her customary delight. Tammy was always overjoyed to
see everyone. After Tammy had licked and nuzzled Aunty Lee and had her head scratched,
Aunty Lee continued walking with Anne Peters as Tammy returned to the joys of sniffing
the trails of dogs gone by.

“Something on your mind, Rosie?” Anne Peters looked mild and gracious. But people
who knew the family believed Mycroft’s Queen’s Counsel brains had come from her.

“Mabel Sung. Mycroft mentioned that you used to know her quite well.”

“He told you Mabel tried to match her Sharon to him, I suppose. Poor boy. He never
recovered from that. But I told him he should be flattered. Obviously his qualifications
overcame any qualms she had about his being Indian.”

“You think Mabel was racist?”

“Actually no. Not more than any average member of a majority race. I think Mabel tended
to classify people by how useful they could be to her.”

“You knew Mabel Sung before she became a big-time lawyer. You probably knew her better
than most people. Do you think Mabel could have killed herself and her son?”

They walked on for a while in silence after this, led by Tammy’s nose and curiosity.

“I think Mabel would be willing to kill someone else to save her son. But I don’t
believe she would kill herself.”

“Leonard was always her favorite, wasn’t he?”

“Oh yes. The boy was a holy terror but he could do no wrong in her eyes. Sharon was
too like Mabel herself. She was just an extension of Mabel. I always felt that Leonard
was the other side of Mabel, the wild side that she never got the chance to explore.
But I always got the feeling that there was some of that wild side in Sharon too,
only it never got the chance to come out.”

“Sharon seems very focused on taking care of her mother’s legacy,” Aunty Lee said.
“I would say she’s trying to prove herself except I don’t know who she is trying to
prove herself for.”

Anne Peters laughed ruefully. “Daughters can be difficult. For years my Marianne thought
Mycroft was my favorite because I kept pushing her to do better, to try harder. All
along she was the one I was thinking of. I knew Mykie would be all right somehow.
No parent will admit it, but good children can be a bit dull.

“But compared with Leonard Sung,” she continued, “I would take a dull child anytime.
For years Sharon must have seen her brother as Mabel’s favorite. Their parents spent
a lot of money sending Leonard away to college in America. They gave him an allowance,
paid for his expenses, his apartment, his car. Sharon got her law degree at the National
University of Singapore on a scholarship. Yes, of course they would have paid for
her fees and her books, but that was nothing compared to what they spent on her brother
and Sharon would have taken that for granted. She didn’t even move into the college
dormitory because her mother said she would be more comfortable at home.

“When Leonard dropped out of school and got mixed up with bad company, his parents
didn’t know what to do. They got him into another college, he dropped out again. They
went over to talk to him, they sent friends to talk to him, but as Henry said, it
was only after Sharon made them stop sending money to him that he finally came back
to Singapore. And by that time he was already sick.”

“Sharon must have thought it was very unfair that her parents took her doing well
for granted but made such a fuss over Leonard,” Aunty Lee said. “I heard her telling
people at the prayer and healing meeting that since what happened to Leonard was his
own fault, it was ridiculous that people were putting so much effort into praying
him better.”

“You went to prayer and healing meeting?” Anne Peters asked.

Aunty Lee nodded. “Mabel called when ML first got diagnosed.” She was only prevaricating
a little.

Anne Peters nodded. “I’ve had a heart problem for some years. IE, infective endocarditis.
I was told that since I have a damaged valve, the infection could have come from something
as basic as bacteria introduced through a scratch on my gums when chewing or flossing.
Anyway it didn’t kill me, I carried on with my life. Then this absurd, odious little
man came and tried to convince me to pay the earth to get a transplant. He implied
my poor dead daughter’s memory would be destroyed if I didn’t pay up. Plus I would
get a brand-new healthy heart valve. Can you believe it? I told him to get lost and
if I ever heard from him again I would call the police.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“I thought he might have got his information from Mabel Sung. I didn’t want to get
her into trouble with the police. And to be frank I didn’t want to drag up poor Marianne
again. You know what the papers can be like. I know what it’s like to worry over a
child. I didn’t want to cause Mabel more trouble. Rosie, you’re not being blackmailed
into doing something, are you?”

“Oh no,” Aunty Lee said with perfect honesty.

“Don’t you agree it’s easier to forgive people who wrong you on impulse than people
like that man who plan it? I don’t understand people like that. Is it worth it?”

“My helper Nina always says, if we are all parts of the same body, some people are
ingrown toenails and should be cut off.”