Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials (33 page)

Cherril was only teasing Aunty Lee, who generally left digital research to younger
eyes. But Aunty Lee’s absorption in her phone while business was being discussed was
unusual. “Something wrong?” Cherril added when Aunty Lee did not answer immediately.

It took Aunty Lee some effort to pull her thoughts back into the room. “No. I just
got a message from somebody. Nothing urgent.”

No, what Aunty Lee had just learned from Commissioner Raja’s text had no place in
the middle of a petty business discussion. And all discussions of business profits
suddenly felt petty to her.

Benjamin Ng’s body had been found, caught up by bottom-fishing trawl nets in Indonesian
waters just south of Singapore’s maritime border, still locked inside the trunk in
which it had been thrown into the sea.

Party Revelations at Aun

Aunty Lee’s Delights had been closed for less than a week but it was announcing its
reopening with a party. This event had been spearheaded by Cherril because Aunty Lee,
who loved parties and had never needed an excuse for throwing one, had been surprisingly
subdued until it struck her that Henry and Sharon Sung must be invited.

“Just to show no hard feelings, you know? And they will have to come, to show us there
are no hard feelings on their side. Otherwise I can sue them for slander, all the
terrible things they went and said about me and my cooking!”

Though not fond of the Sungs, Cherril could see the PR sense in this. “‘The Grand
Reopening,’ do you think? ‘Deadly Special Declared Not Deadly’ night.”

Nina did not think it a good idea. “Why throw a party? One week we don’t earn money,
now want to waste more money. And then you invite these no good people that try to
sabo us!”

“It’s like doing a warm-up,” Cherril said. “After being closed, this will give us
a chance to start up again. And if anything doesn’t work we’ll find out now and they
can’t complain because they’re not paying. Think of them as our guinea pigs.”

“What for feed pigs,” Nina said.

Cherril was right, of course. And Aunty Lee knew it was always easier to put things
in order (whether in your kitchen or in yourself) when you had a party to look forward
to. She had another more important reason for wanting to have the party, which she
kept to herself.

That other reason was why Aunty Lee was so preoccupied the evening of her reopening
party. She had returned home to shower after cooking all morning and afternoon and
was dressing with more care than usual. And it was good that she had her scheme to
occupy her mind, because she could feel the malaise of uncertainty that had descended
on her during the shop’s closure threatening to return.

Nina was still busy with preparations in the shop kitchen, so Aunty Lee talked to
the tiny photo portrait of ML (smartly casual in a green polo T-shirt) on her dressing
table: “Even I don’t think it’s a good idea, so I don’t need you to tell me so. But
I cannot just sit back and do nothing. I know what you will say: if everybody else
is happy with how things turned out, why can’t I be happy? But I know inside me—inside
here—” Aunty Lee thumped her chest. She was wearing one of her cooking outfits but
she had added a few gold chains, which jangled most satisfyingly.

ML’s portrait remained benign. Why wasn’t he around to tell her what to do or what
not to do like he used to do? Even though she had never listened to him, hearing his
thoughts always helped.

“And that poor boy. I mean Timmy Pang’s brother. So handsome, so unhappy. Is not fair,
right? I wanted Raja to bring him over to see me after they told him about finding
his friend’s body. But he said nobody bothered to inform him. The police just sent
an e-mail to their contacts in Malaysia to inform his family there and ask them to
make arrangements. Can you imagine? If you died and nobody bothered to inform me?”

Aunty Lee’s only comfort was that Timothy Pang might have broken the news to his brother
before he heard on the news or read in the papers that his partner’s body had been
found. And she knew Patrick Pang had expected the worst even as he could not help
hoping for a miracle.

Aunty Lee had invited Commissioner Raja and Inspector Salim to drop in. And she had
asked Doreen Choo to bring Henry and Sharon Sung along, “Just to show there’s no hard
feelings. Please tell them I particularly want them to come because I have something
to say in Mabel’s memory that I know they will want to hear.

“I just want to ask them a few questions, find out what really happened,” Aunty Lee
said to the portrait on the wall. “No harm asking questions, right? And no harm finding
out what really happened even if Raja Kumar can’t do anything about it. I just want
to know.” ML looked genially noncommittal. What would he have said if he were alive?
Aunty Lee knew he would have told her not to get involved.

For a moment Aunty Lee felt totally alone in a totally pointless universe. Why bother
cooking chicken curry and catching murderers and exercising to lose weight when at
the end of it all you wound up dead and not caring about anything? If ML had been
alive he would have said “low blood sugar” and made her fix a snack for herself (and
for him too, since she was doing it anyway). A toasted-banana-and-peanut-butter sandwich
had been one of ML’s favorite treatments for existential angst when they first met.
And it had worked.

“Eating doesn’t solve anything,” Aunty Lee had protested. But over the years she had
come to see the wisdom in ML’s point of view. Eating might not solve anything except
hunger and low blood sugar. But eating well put you in better shape to handle all
the problems you encountered. Except loneliness, perhaps. Though she knew it didn’t
make sense for her to be lonely with a party to host.

“I’ll let you know how it goes later,” she said to the portrait. “I have to do this.
Not for Mabel Sung and her son, not even for my reputation, but for that poor boy
Benjamin Ng and all the others who got used and hurt.” The portrait was unresponsive
but the certainty that it would be there when she returned was a small anchor in the
uncertain evening ahead and Aunty Lee clung to it.

Back at Aunty Lee’s Delights, Cherril was singing as she rimmed glasses in lemon juice
and salt and Nina—

“Eat this, madam,” Nina said, handing her a banana. “Today you did not eat proper
lunch and when people come you will not eat proper dinner. Afterward you go fainting,
Boss sure say my fault.”

Aunty Lee ate the banana. “Thanks, boss,” she said to ML’s portrait.

“Okay, I brought them,” Doreen Choo whispered to Aunty Lee as soon as she arrived.
“What’s the big occasion? What are you planning?”

Doreen Choo’s sleeveless gray silk blouse with gold embroidery worn over dark maroon
pants and bejeweled sandals showed off her slimness. As always, her hair was carefully
arranged (and spray-fixed) into artful curls, her eyes mascaraed and drawn up at the
corners with china-doll ticks, and the glossy sheen on her lips matched her shimmering
pants. As always, she made Aunty Lee wish she had dressed up more. But then her T-shirt,
yoga pants, and Hello Kitty apron with all its pockets was the perfect outfit for
cooking in. Nina, in an identical apron, hurried past with a bag of ice and a carton
of orange juice.

“I’m not planning anything other than dinner,” Aunty Lee said vaguely. “What would
you like to drink? Cherril has come up with some new health drinks. You said you brought
Henry and Sharon? Where are they?”

“Right behind me—” Doreen turned and looked vaguely around. “Oh, no, thank you, dear.
Could you make me a martini?”

“Of course,” Cherril said, and disappeared into the wine room.

“It’s probably that girl that’s slowing them down,” Doreen said crossly. “She’s always
standing around doing things on her phone. Even when we sit down to eat a nice dinner,
she’s staring into that phone of hers. ‘Playing games?’ I asked her nicely once. I
was just trying to make conversation. She almost bit my head off. ‘This is work!’
she said. I don’t know what work she can be doing. I thought Sung Law is supposed
to be on shutdown now. Like the American government.

“You see it more and more these days,” Doreen continued after getting her drink. “These
young girls. Study so hard to become doctors and lawyers and become so intense and
high-strung that they cannot live a normal life, cannot get married. What kind of
life is that?”

“What does Henry think?”

“Oh, Henry is a typical man. He doesn’t think anything—ah, here they are now. Our
guests of honor are here!” Doreen called, and waved like a schoolgirl. Henry Sung
looked embarrassed but pleased. Doreen knew her men, Aunty Lee thought. Henry would
probably have resisted if he had been ordered to come or begged to come to a party.
But as a “guest of honor,” he turned up like royalty visiting his subjects. And he
had brought Sharon with him. Sharon was clearly unhappy to be there. Cherril offered
her cocktails, moctails, doctails, fresh-squeezed juice, and was turned down. Her
father did not seem to notice. Sharon had probably sulked her way through adolescence
and beyond till her family took sulking for her natural state. Doreen had commandeered
a whiskey sour for Henry and they had sat down with Commissioner Raja, who had been
sitting with an untouched glass of orange juice since arriving.

“You must be glad you finally got hold of the PRC gang—read about it in the papers,
good job!” Aunty Lee said to him as she came by to check the new arrivals were all
provided with drinks.

“Thanks.”

Commissioner Raja had a feeling Aunty Lee was up to something. He also knew it was
no use telling her to stop it when he did not know exactly what she was up to. “Stop
cooking? Stop eating? Stop what?” he could imagine her saying. He had been invited
to dinner as an old friend to celebrate the reopening of Aunty Lee’s Delights and
the closing of the illegal organ trading, but he had turned up to keep an eye on things.
He suspected Inspector Salim was there for the same reason. Neither of them was in
uniform and the younger man had greeted him with a bland casual friendliness, which
gave him away. Salim always had a touch of earnest formality about him. His casual
manner indicated he considered himself undercover rather than off duty.

Salim was torn between watching and worrying. Sitting at the table, he looked a little
bored and as if he were thinking of nothing at all. The only thing that gave away
his actual state of mind was that he was not eating. He accepted everything he was
offered with thanks and pushed it around on his plate. He drank only water, straight
out of the plastic bottle. If Aunty Lee hadn’t been feeling much the same way as he
was, she would have felt offended.

Mark and Selina arrived late, as usual, Selina explaining to the room at large how
busy they were.

“We should go,” Sharon Sung stood up and said. “Thanks for inviting us. Now we’ve
all sat down together and agreed no hard feelings, we can all get on with our lives,
right?”

Doreen and Henry were still eating. Henry shoved another heaping spoonful into his
mouth and started to stand up but Doreen put a hand on his arm. “We’re still eating,
Sharon. You can let your father finish his dinner, can’t you?”

“We can get something somewhere else. We’ve put in our appearance. Everybody’s said
what they have to say, so let’s go.”

“So rude, some people,” Selina remarked to the ceiling.

“Actually I haven’t said what I invited you all here to say,” Aunty Lee said. Commissioner
Raja caught her eye but said nothing. Stopping Aunty Lee was like trying to stop ice
melting, he thought. It’s going to happen anyway, you just try to put the bucket in
the right place.

“I found out that Henry Sung and Sung Law are both on the verge of bankruptcy because
Mabel mortgaged everything to get money for Leonard’s illegal organ transplant.”

Henry issued a weak denial that was ignored. Sharon, still on her feet, listened in
silence. Her expression said she was going to sue the pants off this meddling old
woman once she got the chance.

“Sharon tried to save the law firm by selling off parts of the living heart donor
Mabel brought in but had not yet paid for. The man was being kept alive on the life-support
system created for Edmond Yong by Benjamin Ng. Ben Ng thought he was creating a future
life-support system for Leonard Sung. When he learned the truth, that one man was
being murdered to save another’s life, he was upset. Edmond Yong told the PRC gang
this and Ben disappeared.

“Meanwhile,” Aunty Lee went on, “Sharon thought Mabel was finally giving her all the
recognition she deserved when she was made partner. As a full partner in Sung Law,
she believed she would effectively be running everything because Mabel was increasingly
devoting all her energy and attention to her son and the prayer and healing group.

“But Sharon found out that not only was Mabel not interested in the company anymore,
she had destroyed it. Sharon, you found this out the night before your celebration
party when you went through the company accounts and found out about the enormous
amounts Mabel had been drawing out, didn’t you? That’s why you spent the night there
going over the facts again and again.

“You confronted your mother when you finally got home. What did she say? Did you tell
your father what you found out? What did he say? If we can just clear up what really
happened to your mother, then we can all move on.”

If this had been part of an episode on a television murder series, this was the point
at which Henry Sung or his daughter would break down and confess, right in time for
the closing credits.

Instead Henry sat staring at Aunty Lee with his mouth open, seemingly incapable of
speech.

“What are you taking about!” Doreen cried out. “Mabel was not that kind of woman at
all. She was responsible. She knew how to make money and run companies and heal people!
Mabel would never go bankrupt. Tell her, Henry!” In her excitement she thumped Henry
on the arm.