Aunty Lee's Chilled Revenge

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Aunty Lee's Chilled Revenge Page 22

by Ovidia Yu


  “Once people buy local SIM cards no need to use expensive hotel phones,” Nina said. “But Miss Vallerie used the phone in the house, right? Can check on Madame Silly’s machine. The one that records who is using your phone line.”

  Nina had learned over the years that the strangest of Aunty Lee’s hypotheses sometimes came true. But more importantly where she was concerned, if Aunty Lee was trying to do long-distance detecting, she was less likely to be trying to climb up ladders with a damaged ankle.

  “Selina is monitoring your calls?” Salim wondered why Aunty Lee did not seem more horrified.

  “That Silly-Nah means well,” Aunty Lee said generously. “She set up the machine to monitor calls because she said I don’t know who is Nina talking to when I am not there. But she doesn’t know how to get the information out of the machine, only Nina knows how to, so it’s okay. Nina, later you try to get any numbers that weren’t called by you or by me, okay?”

  Some of Aunty Lee’s wilder suppositions were not worth contradicting. Besides, Nina was curious about what the friends in L.A. had to say about Vallerie too.

  “Now is not busy, I can go back and look—” But before Nina had finished and before Salim had managed to find an excuse to walk Nina back to the house (one drawback of living in one of the safest estates in one of the safest cities in the world), Anne Peters pushed open the door and half stepped, half fell through it.

  The look on her friend’s face brought Aunty Lee back two years to when Marianne Peters had died, and for a moment she froze, unable to go to her.

  “My dog is very sick. Tammy is very sick. They say she may not make it!”

  Tracing calls was forgotten as Aunty Lee sat with a sobbing Anne Peters. Tammy was still alive, but barely, and staying over at a Mount Pleasant vet clinic with a drip in her. Anne had brought her to the twenty-four-hour emergency clinic the previous night and come straight to the café when they told her to go home and leave Tammy to them. Even Josephine’s poisoning (which Aunty Lee was not convinced hadn’t been accidental or imagined) was dwarfed by this state of emergency.

  “I don’t know what happened. Tammy was fine all day. Then after dinner she started vomiting and there was blood oozing out of her hind end. The vet said she may have eaten rat poison or something. All they can do is try to rehydrate her and keep her going until she gets stronger. I should have watched her better! Rosie, I can’t bear to lose her too!”

  Neither of them noticed as Salim answered a call, stepped outside for better reception or privacy, and came back in. Nina hurried over when she saw him go over to where the two older women still sat.

  “Not now, Salim,” Nina said. Then she saw something in his face. “What is it?”

  “Brian Wong is dead.”

  “What? How?”

  “He killed himself.”

  “No!” Aunty Lee shook her head.

  Even Anne looked up, shocked. “Are you sure?”

  “He left a message on his computer before doing it. Confessing that he killed Allison Love and Samantha Kang.”

  “Why would Brian commit suicide?” Aunty Lee asked even as her mind darted around various possibilities. Had Brian killed Allison in an attempt to frame Mike? Had the two dead women known something about him that he had killed them to conceal? Had he been so hopelessly in love with Josephine all these years he would rather die than see her married to Mike Fitzgerald? Even if any of those reasons was true . . .

  “Why would he kill himself now?”

  “Mike Fitzgerald is not a suspect in Brian Wong’s death,” Salim continued without answering the question. “He has been released without charge.”

  Brian’s suicide note, written on his computer and sent to Inspector Salim, filled in details that Josephine’s account had left out. The vet, Samantha Kang, had sent him a note the day after Allison’s murder. She said she had to talk to him, urgently, about someone suspicious she had seen. He guessed Dr. Kang had seen him in the hotel and was intending to blackmail him. He killed her to prevent her from talking.

  “The fire at the vet clinic happened the morning that Allison was killed,” Aunty Lee said. “Samantha Kang couldn’t have been at the hotel that day. She was at the clinic, rescuing animals from the fire, and then they would have taken her to the hospital, right?”

  “Guilty conscience,” Nina said.

  The dead vet must have been talking about somebody she saw at the clinic during or before the fire, Aunty Lee thought. That would have been uppermost in her mind. But if Brian had been at Allison’s hotel, then whom had Dr. Samantha Kang seen?

  “The left side a bit down. No, that’s too much. Yes—yes, that’s right. Now come down carefully.”

  Nina descended and folded the stepladder as Aunty Lee studied the casual photograph of ML in a light blue polo shirt. Here he had been caught off guard, squinting against the sun as he turned from opening the car door. It brought her back to a time when cars were already air-conditioned but car doors still had to be opened with keys. Mark’s wife would have something to say when she saw it; she always dropped snide comments when Aunty Lee changed pictures around in her house or café. This time it would probably be something like “The frame probably cost more than the picture!” or “I’m sure Pa would prefer a more dignified picture.”

  They thought she rotated ML’s photos because there were too many of them to put up all at once. Several times Mark, prompted by Selina, had suggested Aunty Lee just pick and stick to her favorite portrait shots of his father rather than keep switching them around. “Selina says it makes her dizzy. Why not just put up the studio portraits with all of us in them?”

  But though all photos of the late ML Lee were favorites of Aunty Lee’s, she particularly liked those that captured him in unposed moments—those moments she would have taken for granted if he had been in front of her, because we seldom notice or appreciate what we see every day. And that was the reason Aunty Lee switched ML’s pictures around. When she missed her late husband most, looking at his photographs helped her see him anew. And after the shocking news of Brian’s suicide she needed him more than ever.

  “You should really think about moving somewhere more convenient,” Nina said, picking up the ladder. She had returned from the café to find the folding ladder out and her already limping boss looking guilty. If Aunty Lee had managed to get the ladder out of the storeroom more quickly, she might have finished before Nina got back. “Somewhere smaller. Where can hang pictures lower. And got railings for old people!”

  “Maybe.”

  They both knew Aunty Lee was never likely to move.

  Rosie Lee had lived in other houses before this one. Before single-family high-rise apartments became more common than extended family dwellings, most had taken for granted the presence of multiple relatives who came to Singapore to work or study or simply because they had nowhere else to go. And she had not felt reluctant to leave the houses run by her grandmother or mother. Indeed, each previous departure had signaled a new stage in her life and been eagerly looked forward to. She had outgrown all her previous homes before she left them. Until now the move had always been toward, rather than away from, something. Perhaps you had to lose somebody in a house before you felt truly attached to it.

  Aunty Lee looked at the photo she had just taken down. Much as she liked it, she did not feel as close to ML when he was standing in formal wear next to Inche Yusof bin Ishak, the first president of the Republic of Singapore, and surrounded by foreign dignitaries. Now, as she caught her reflection in the glass front of the portrait, she was the one who looked like a shadowy ghost. As a ghost, she thought she could still pass for a wife of about the same age as the late ML Lee had been in this photo. Would the day come when she looked into this dear face, more familiar to her than her own, and see a much younger stranger? The thought upset her.

  “Let me just sort out this mess with Jojo and Connie’s girl,” Aunty Lee whispered. “Then I’ll be ready to join you.” But now as she stared into
the reflection of her eyes she already looked old—old, useless, helpless, and unwanted. Even Nina, who had not returned from putting away the stepladder and was probably trying to get the latest news from Salim on the phone, would be better off without having to look after her. And if she died now, if there was some unimaginable existence beyond, would her ML recognize her in the old woman she had become? And anyway, wouldn’t he prefer to be with his first wife who had died young? Her reflection was looking too upset. The rational part of Aunty Lee’s mind warned, Snap out of this before you make yourself miserable for nothing! But then a strong, calm thought came into her head in ML’s voice: Here we neither marry nor are given in marriage. Here we are like angels in heaven. It was so clear that for a moment she thought someone had spoken.

  “But I don’t know what angels are like,” Aunty Lee said softly.

  25

  Mr. Ian Woon

  “Mr. Ian Woon speaking.”

  The name sounded Chinese but the voice was West Coast American. Aunty Lee wondered whether the speaker was very young or very insecure, to introduce himself with a “Mister” when answering the phone. Then again, it might just be an American custom she was not familiar with.

  “My name is Mrs. Rosie Lee. I am phoning from Singapore so no small talk please, this is costing me a lot of money. Are you the lawyer that Allison Love talked to in Long Beach, California?”

  “I cannot discuss my clients—”

  “Allison Love is dead,” Aunty Lee said bluntly. “So we want to find everybody who might have known her and tell them.”

  There was a pause. Then, tentatively, “Is this some kind of joke? Because it’s not funny. You can get into serious trouble for making jokes like that.”

  “What’s your fax number?”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Do you have a fax? Or an e-mail address? Yes, then give me your fax number, Mr. Ian Woon!”

  Nina faxed over the newspaper report of the murder. Aunty Lee fixed herself a drink of sour plum tea and dialed the number again. This time Mr. Ian Woon answered on the first ring. “Mrs. Lee? This is terrible. You have my condolences. I believe Allison went to Singapore with her sister, Vallerie. Is Vallerie Love still in Singapore? Is she all right?”

  “You know Vallerie Love?”

  “It was Vallerie Love who brought her sister, Allison, to us. She said Allison was visiting and needed a lawyer. At the time I thought she was just humoring her, but now it’s almost as though she had a premonition of some sort.”

  “So you knew that Allison was coming to Singapore to file a lawsuit?” Aunty Lee was not sure how premonition came into this.

  “Allison Love mentioned she was going to Singapore to sort things out with her ex-husband. But she didn’t elaborate on that. At least not with me. I remember she was very eager to get her will done in a hurry,” the lawyer said. “Do you have Skype, Mrs. Lee? There’s someone else you should talk to but I’ll have to call you back in about an hour.” He paused. “Should we be sending this information to the police?”

  Aunty Lee decided to make things easy for Mr. Ian Woon by having Salim come by the café at the time of the call. Salim assumed it was Vallerie who had called her late sister’s lawyer and seemed pleased. It was only Aunty Lee’s efforts to help that he labeled “interference,” Aunty Lee thought. She would bring it up when there weren’t so many other interesting things going on.

  “Thank you for speaking to me, Mr. Woon,” Salim said after identifying himself. Fortunately Selina had taken Vallerie out for a pedicure and foot rub, so Nina had linked the MacBook to the television mounted on the wall beside the cold room door. This way Aunty Lee and Salim could sit side by side at the counter and Nina was on hand to fix any computer connection issues.

  Aunty Lee had warned Salim of the importance of using the “Mister” when addressing the American lawyer without understanding why. But the two people who showed up on-screen soon explained it.

  Aunty Lee had imagined Mr. Ian Woon as a small Chinese man, compensating for goodness knew what imagined inadequacy of height, race, or prowess by lording it over his clients. Instead Ian Woon as seen on-screen was a broad-faced, broad-shouldered man whose fair skin and light brown hair suggested mixed rather than pure Asian ancestry. And the woman beside him—

  “I’m Mrs. Yen Woon,” said the woman on the screen. Smaller than her husband, she looked pure Chinese but also spoke like a West Coast American. “My parents named me Yen Ling but everybody calls me Yen. If you think this is confusing you should see our family reunions. My sisters are Yen Mei and Yen Seng, and all their partners, friends, and in-laws call them Yen too!” She laughed. “Of course my marrying an ‘Ian’ didn’t help matters!”

  Beside her Mr. Ian Woon grinned, content to let his wife talk.

  “We’re both lawyers and we work together when I’m not on maternity leave.”

  “You got new baby?” Aunty Lee interrupted here. As far as she was concerned, babies were always worth talking about. The dead would stay dead, but babies changed so quickly. “Boy or girl?”

  “Girl, thank goodness. After three boys I was getting seriously outnumbered here!”

  “Wah! You got three boys already, ah? I thought young people these days all don’t want to have so many children?”

  But even as Salim was wondering how he could steer the conversation back to his murder inquiry, Mrs. Yen Woon said, “Vallerie Love brought her sister in to consult my husband. But after one meeting with her he asked me to take over.”

  “Why was that?” Inspector Salim asked.

  “My wife is an expert on wills and successions,” Ian Woon said.

  “So is my husband, actually,” his wife said. “But I’m less intimidated by loud women.”

  Aunty Lee thought of Vallerie. The sisters must have been quite alike.

  “I got that Allison was having some problems with her marriage. The first thing she said was that she’d left her husband, Mike, with the kids to give him a taste of what it was like looking after them all day and night. She wanted to set us right too, expecting everybody to have heard about the ruckus in Singapore. She said she had had to put down a vicious dog that had been sent to her for fostering. No one had warned her that the dog was dangerous, and she had two children and a maid in the house to worry about. If she had sent the dog back it would have spent the rest of its life in a cage, and she couldn’t stand the thought of that so she had it put down. All that was no different from what she would have done in the UK and she had no regrets. She would have done the same thing over again, she kept saying. But there was a vicious woman in Singapore who was after her husband and stirred up trouble, just to be vindictive. According to her this woman started up a whole online bullying thing, and she was talking about Chinese triads and the Yakuza and how they had barely managed to get out with their lives . . . I’d always thought Singapore was a pretty safe place to live. So safe it sounds boring, no offense. I didn’t know whether to believe her or not, but that wasn’t the point, was it? So we just listened and let her talk.” Yen Woon lowered her voice. “I got the feeling Vallie thought Allison had demonized Singapore in her mind and seeing it for real might snap her out of it. Plus her sister had turned up without warning and she was afraid she might stay for good. Every time Vallie asked when she was leaving Allison would cry and say people were hateful to her . . . I think Vallie just needed to find a way to get her out of her place!”

  It was much how Vallerie seemed to have settled at her house, Aunty Lee thought.

  “Vallerie Love is here in Singapore now.” Inspector Salim concealed his dislike of the woman. Very often you understood people better once you saw their friends, and these friends of Vallerie’s seemed like pleasant people. “She came over with her sister. It was a great shock for her, of course. She hasn’t been able to tell us much about Allison.”

  “Aunty Vallie is still in Singapore?” A young boy came on-screen, standing behind his mother and leaning against her shoulder
so their faces were side by side. “How is she? Can she talk to us? Can you given her a message from us?”

  There were advantages to having so many crime shows on television, Salim thought. People assumed that giving the police information to help them with investigations was just part of the routine.

  The child was hushed by his father as his mother explained they had thought something was wrong with Vallerie when she stopped Skyping them. They had tried calling the hotel but she had not been in, and Allison told them Vallerie was all right, only the phone and Internet connections in Singapore were very unreliable (Aunty Lee was very offended on behalf of Singapore’s Internet providers but held her tongue).

  “Aunty Vallie said she would buy me manga!” the boy protested. “But I just wanted to tell her thanks for the pineapple tarts!” He shot a reproachful look at his parents, who had forgotten their manners.

  Aunty Lee pounced on this. “Pineapple tarts? Bengawan Solo?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Mrs. Yen Woon said. “Anyway they were delicious—and all gone now.”

  “Tell Aunty Vallie to send some more!” another child piped up.

  “He’s a cop, Marko, not a message service, yadada?” But Ian’s tone was affectionate. Two younger children joined their brother in front of the camera now, one climbing into his mother’s lap. “Are you recording our mum?” the eldest asked. “Do you need to use her testimony in court? You can fly her over to Singapore if you need her, you know. We can all testify if you like.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, thanks,” Salim said agreeably. The affection this family clearly had for Vallerie Love made him think he had misjudged her as being racist. “Any other messages?”

  “Just tell her we said hello.”

  There was a chorus of groans to this and “You can do better than that!” and “Tell her to climb the Merlion!”

 

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