Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials (32 page)

“Nina told me you were back here, so I thought I would come round this way and join
you.”

Raja Kumar had taken off his tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves in an attempt to look
casual.

“Please come in,” Aunty Lee said, all thoughts of tai chi immediately forgotten. “I
thought you were out of the country. I called your office a few times but every time
they said you were busy or in meetings, so I thought for sure you went off to Indonesia
or Vietnam on some hush-hush business.”

“This is an unofficial meeting,” Commissioner Raja said. “I just happened to stop
by on my way home and ran into you when you just happened to be here.”

“That’s an easier story to believe if you set it in my shop than in my house!”

“You can open your shop again anytime. Your paperwork is cleared. Salim will bring
it over to you tomorrow once it is stamped and recorded. You won’t be inconvenienced
again by this whole kitchen investigation nonsense. You’ll have seen from all newspapers
that you were right. There were more than minor discrepancies in the accounts at Sung
Law. From the look of things they are in serious trouble. And Mabel Sung’s personal
accounts are just as overextended,” Commissioner Raja said. “Everything was going
to collapse sooner or later no matter what happened. That might make the suicide theory
easier to believe. Mabel had bankrupted her company and her husband trying to find
a cure for her son, but Mabel’s son was not going to recover. It was only a matter
of time before he died and Mabel lost everything.”

“Mabel and Edmond Yong must have arranged with the Chinese employment agencies for
a donor who thought he was coming to donate a kidney. The Chinese agency who brought
him in was not paid in full till after the operation—”

“They must charge a lot. Did you see how much Mabel Sung took out of her accounts?”

“Edmond Yong must have persuaded her they could more than make up for it by selling
off the poor bugger’s other body parts. He was never going to make it to the wedding
he was selling a kidney to pay for. Dr. Yong was quite happy to make money on the
side with a kidney or cornea transplant, but it must have been a jump for him to agree
to do a transplant that would kill the donor.”

“So you’ve arrested him?” Aunty Lee asked eagerly. “Make him tell you who his China
contacts are and who else is involved. The transplant scheme was still going on after
Mabel died. Henry and Sharon Sung must be involved somehow.”

“We don’t have proof of that yet. We have to wait and see what Edmond Yong gives us.”

“I wish I could talk to him,” Aunty Lee said. Commissioner Raja made a point of not
hearing her.

“And I thought you would like to know that given Leonard Sung’s state of health and
Mabel Sung’s probable state of mind at the time of her demise, they are writing it
up with weight on the mercy killing/suicide angle.”

Aunty Lee could see Commissioner Raja thought this was good news for her. If the unofficial
official view was that Mabel Sung had indeed killed herself and her son, that meant
Aunty Lee and her catering business were off the hook.

But convenient as it was, Aunty Lee could not believe it. If Mabel had killed herself
and her sick son after her live donor transplant scheme crashed, then it would have
made sense. But before, with all the plans for her son’s operation in place, why would
Mabel have killed her son and herself? And there was as little reason for the illegal
organ traders to kill them.

“What about the woman who was organizing things from the China side? Wen Ling?”

“Wen Ling has probably moved all her operations out of Singapore, at least temporarily.
It’s too profitable a business to give up. And as they get richer they can buy into
legitimate businesses, probably in the West.”

“Actually that’s not so different from what our ancestors did,” Aunty Lee said.

As soon as Timothy Pang opened the door, the senior officer—Sergeant Yap? Sergeant
Yeo?—rose to his feet to acknowledge him. “Sergeant Pang. Good of you to come. Your
brother came to offer us a statement.”

“I want to clear Benjamin’s name,” said Patrick. “I want the papers to print that
they were wrong. They were saying all kinds of things about him. That he was part
of some illegal business and set the fire to cover his tracks and then disappeared.”

“Come with me first,” Timothy said firmly. “I’ll take care of it.”

A small ungenerous part of him wondered whether he was going to be spending the rest
of his life taking care of his younger brother. Maybe the years that Patrick had spent
not talking to him had not been so bad after all.

Patrick protested—he wanted to see the statement he had given the police, he said.
He wanted them to remove Benjamin Ng’s name from whatever suspects list they had put
it on. He went on talking even as his brother tried to genially erase any record of
his visit without making it look like any kind of a cover-up.

“I have to be sure you don’t say anything to incriminate yourself,” Timothy Pang said.

“Maybe you should both hear our current report on Benjamin Ng,” Sergeant Yeo Seng
Meng suggested respectfully. Timothy hesitated but the sergeant gave a small nod.

“Benjamin Ng was commissioned to design a home ICU and operating theater for the Sungs.
He put it down to the eccentricities of rich people wanting to prolong their lives
beyond death. This was completed before the fire at the Beautiful Dreamers clinic
and Benjamin Ng did not make the connection then. Notes subsequently found in his
apartment and handed over to us reveal that Ng became suspicious after the fire when
the intensive-care-unit equipment, like the bedside monitor and dialysis pumps he
had been sourcing for the home ICU setup, were offered to him cheap without purchase
history or guarantees. His notes include records of serial numbers verifying this.
His research linked these items to those supposedly destroyed in the fire at the Beautiful
Dreamers clinic. Ng asked Edmond Yong about this but did not get a satisfactory answer.
This was before the suicide death of the PRC girl. He suspected only that Dr. Yong
was involved with arson for insurance and was trying to make extra money by forcing
him, Pang, to buy back the same equipment that had supposedly been lost in the fire.”

“What happened to him after that is anybody’s guess,” said the other officer.

Patrick listened quietly to these words. “So you don’t have him down as a criminal.”

“No. Quite the opposite. He was one of the first to suspect there was something funny
going on. I just need you to sign a receipt for the notebooks you brought in.”

Edmond Yong was released on bail.

His body was found the next morning dumped at a Downtown Line station construction
site.

“It will cause work holdups and delay the station opening,” Nina said when the news
came over the radio. “That man was always a troublemaker. You want to read the online
reports?”

“Such a waste.” Aunty Lee sighed, moving to where Nina was priming her iPad to STOMP,
Singapore’s “citizen journalism” web portal.

“You think it is a waste? That man who is supposed to be a doctor saving lives goes
around killing people and you think it is a waste?”

“It is a waste I didn’t get to talk to him,” Aunty Lee said with dignity. “Now he
is dead and I still don’t know what happened.”

But it was a waste, Aunty Lee thought. She had not liked Edmond Yong and she felt
sorry for him because not only his death but his life had been a waste.

What Next?

Aunty Lee got her kitchen license back. Everything had returned to normal, but as
Aunty Lee told the portrait of ML by the wine room door, she was not yet satisfied,

“The China gang had every reason to keep Mabel Sung and her son alive as they had
not yet got all their money. And Mabel had every reason to stay alive because her
son had not yet got the transplant!”

However, everyone else was satisfied, including Mark, who came by to congratulate
her on the reopening, then disappeared into his precious wine room.

“You can still come back to visit, you know. Even after you sign the business over
to Cherril,” Aunty Lee said when he finally emerged to join her and Selina for tea.

“Not if she returns all the stock to the distributors. Wine doesn’t travel well, you
know. It was not easy getting all the bottles here in good condition. And I don’t
know whether Cherril knows enough to take care of them even if she keeps them here.”

Mark looked like a disappointed small boy, Aunty Lee thought.

Selina said nothing. Aunty Lee could tell she was also trying to get Mark to sign
the forms that would complete the handover. For once, Selina and Aunty Lee were on
the same side. And vague, gentle Mark, whom each of the women suspected the other
of bullying, was defying them both.

“It’s most important to decide what kind of dish you are preparing, and for who,”
Aunty Lee said as Mark sat down beside his wife. “That doesn’t depend on the ingredients
because your ingredients can always be adjusted.”

“Like chili-pepper ice cream. And we saw squid-ink-and-octopus ice cream in Japan.”
Mark snorted with laughter. “Sel said she wouldn’t eat it if they paid her.”

“
Sambal
ice cream would be interesting, especially in hot weather. Maybe
sambal ikan bilis
ice cream . . . Nina, remind me to follow up on this ice cream business when all
this fuss is over, okay? But what was I saying . . . oh yes. What kind of dish. What
motive. Someone must have had a reason for killing Mabel Sung. If we can find out
who had reasons, then it will be easier to find out who did it.”

“Money,” Mark said. “It’s always about money, isn’t it? The root of all evil and all
that?”

“Love,” suggested Selina. “Jealousy, infidelity . . .” Aunty Lee hoped that Mark was
paying attention.

“Damage control,” said Cherril from the sink, her hands in a tub of pineapple chunks,
“so a situation doesn’t get worse. Or revenge. Maybe Mabel Sung did something to somebody
years back and they waited until now to get back at her. Or maybe Mabel knew some
secrets about somebody and they had to shut her up because they are running for MP
or something.”

Aunty Lee hoped Cherril wasn’t speaking from experience. The very proper, ultrarespectable
Mycroft Peters did not seem the sort to have secrets about anybody. But then neither
did he seem the sort of man to marry a former air stewardess, so there were obviously
depths to him.

“Salim says sometimes people kill to protect other people,” Nina said. “Like to protect
their children or their parents.”

“Mabel Sung probably killed her son to protect him,” Selina said. “Better to get it
over quickly than a long drawn-out death costing a lot of money. And then she killed
herself because she couldn’t live with the thought that she killed her son. Anyway
I have to go. I have a hot-yoga class,” she said. “I know, some people say that it’s
satanic and all that, but for me it’s just exercise. Mark, have you discussed everything
you want to? You want to just sign the papers now then you won’t have to come back?”

“Sel likes hot yoga because she can sweat without exercising too hard,” Mark said
with a snort of laughter that no one joined in. “I should just help Aunty Lee sort
out this mess she got herself into first. Wouldn’t be fair to desert a sinking ship.”

That was most unjust, Aunty Lee thought. She never created messes. Indeed, a goodly
amount of her time was spent clearing up the messes made by other people. Very few
people understood that if you wanted to do a good, thorough cleanup of something,
you had to dig right down deep, turn it inside out if possible, and shake out all
the debris that had accumulated. It was the same whether you were tackling a store
cupboard, an old handbag, or somebody’s life. And then you untangled and cleaned up
the contents and replaced them in an orderly fashion.

Aunty Lee’s kitchen sometimes looked as though she cooked in a state of chaos. But
the chaos was only on the surface and always temporary. Everything in her kitchen
had a place and reason for being there.

“I’m sure the police are looking into that,” Selina said. “You should all just leave
it to them and Aunty Lee. After all, you don’t want to get into any more trouble,
right?”

Aunty Lee reminded herself that Selina probably meant to be helpful and supportive.
It was not the woman’s fault that her voice made her sound bossy and condescending.
Besides, it was a good suggestion. Aunty Lee was never surprised by good suggestions,
taking them as part of the natural flow of life. What surprised her was that the suggestion
came from Selina.

“You’re getting a real investment,” Mark said. “There’s a bottle of Mouton Rothschild
1945 in there. When my ship comes in I’m going to buy it back from you. It is an amazing
Bordeaux—you just look at its color.”

“I know,” Cherril said quietly. “Why don’t you buy it now? Then we’ll have a bit more
space here and you’ll have your wine.”

“It’s only here on consignment, you know,” Mark said. “It’s not yours until it’s paid
for. Until then it’s better not to move it more than we have to. When I’ve set up
a space at home to store it properly, I’ll buy it directly from Grand Heds and take
care of all the paperwork for you.”

“You mean you’ll cut us out of the deal. You just want us to store it for you until
you’re ready to bring it home,” Cherril said.

“Of course you’re welcome to sell it if you can find anybody willing to pay fifteen
thousand dollars for a bottle of wine.”

“I’m thinking of selling it online,” Cherril said. “I’ve been following Wine Bots
and Bids online and I think it won’t be a problem. In fact, if I run some kind of
competition to generate interest, I’ll probably get even more for it.”

“You can’t do that. That’s so . . . low.”

“That’s why I can,” Cherril said. “I’ll need some way to authenticate it first, though.
They say online that this is one of the most faked wines on the market. Are you checking
the online market for it, Aunty Lee?”