by Ovidia Yu
“Tell her we’re here for her. There’ll always be a bed for her over at our place, okay?” Yen Woon said. “Just remind her she’s not alone.”
“Tell Aunty Vallie if she comes back to babysit I will brush my own teeth,” the hitherto silent toddler announced from his mother’s lap.
“And we’ll get back to yoga” from Yen.
Yoga? Vallerie Love? Aunty Lee sniffed around the idea as though it was a possibly ripe durian.
“Vallerie did yoga?”
“Oh yes. And she loved it. We took yoga classes together. It was great! She used it to de-stress from her crazy sister—oh sorry. I forgot.”
None of this fit with the image of Vallerie Aunty Lee had seen so far. Of course she must have been shocked by her sister’s murder and shock did strange things to people. But scrambling a chicken egg did not turn it into a duck egg. The essential nature of eggs—and people—did not change.
“Vallerie is fat,” Aunty Lee said plainly. “If fat people like her can do yoga, then I also can do yoga, right?”
“Oh, I’m so glad you asked!” Exaggerated groans from Mr. Ian Woon and the little Woons worried Aunty Lee a little. As far as she was concerned, fanaticism was a form of madness, whether it took the form of devotion to God or to exercise.
“First of all, everybody can do yoga. Real yoga, I mean. I’m not talking about the jumping around in hot rooms sweating to get skinny sort. But if you do real yoga and you get balanced, you’ll find you lose weight without even trying. You may not get skinny, but your body will get balanced, toned, and healthy. Yes, dear Vallie was overweight when she first got here. She had all kinds of eating issues from her childhood and then both her parents dying. But once she settled here things just fell into place. When the student is ready the teacher appears and all that, you know? And Vallie was ready.”
“And you haven’t heard from her at all?”
“No. I left several messages on her phone and I know she’ll get back to me when she can. If not, I’ll see her back stateside.”
It was almost impossible to offend someone who did not take offense, Aunty Lee thought. “Just one more thing. It may sound crazy but can you get something for me and send it over? Salim will give you the address.”
Salim said what Aunty Lee was thinking: “They don’t talk about her like she’s a fat person.”
“Maybe that’s because they’re Americans,” Aunty Lee mused.
There were still times Aunty Lee forgot ML was dead. The next morning, in the drowsy swamp between dream sleep and waking, she found herself earnestly telling ML that talking on Skype was not much better than talking on the phone, just better than nothing . . . and feeling irritated because instead of listening he said, “Remember, there’s always a bill, Rosie. Always check the bill.” As awareness dawned, she tried to cling to her husband and his sweet presence in her dream. But as always happened, she surfaced into the new day. ML Lee was dead and had been for some time. And Brian Wong was newly dead.
“Nina, can you find out for me how much the Skype calls cost?”
“Madame, the bill will come end of the month like usual.”
“But can you find out earlier? And can you find out from the bill the numbers that were called from here?”
“Madame, you want the number for Mr. Ian Woon I have got it, I can give it to you.”
“I just want a printout of all the numbers, not just last night. Please?”
Nina shrugged as she put Aunty Lee’s two soft-cooked eggs and kaya toast in front of her. It was a breakfast familiar from her childhood, and Aunty Lee was not sorry to be on her own to enjoy it while looking out on the dwarf coconut trees, the mango tree, and the rambutan tree in the garden. All these had been here since before ML died, indeed before the first Mrs. Lee died. She was the only one around to enjoy them now. And she enjoyed the lingering scent of night jasmine from the bushes, the soft warm eggs with their burst of rich yolk, the crisp toast, and the gently nourishing rays of morning sun. No matter how much you lost, feeling the loss reminded you that you were still alive.
“Someone else has been using the connection from here to make Skype calls.” Nina returned faster than she had left. “Must be Miss Vallerie. But she is always saying she has got no family to contact, right?” She looked up at the second-floor window but there was no sign of Vallerie, who seldom appeared till ten at the earliest.
“Can you tell—was she making overseas or local calls?”
“Better than that, I can call back.”
Feeling guilty (though it was her house and her computer after all), Aunty Lee moved herself into ML’s study and seated herself in front of the computer that Nina had set up for her. Without asking, Nina locked the study door before joining her.
“I have a right to use my own computer, you know.”
“Yes, madame. But Miss Vallerie likes to shout and cry, very difficult to listen if she wakes up. You press there—call. No, you must use the mouse. This is not touchscreen like your iPad.”
It took some time for the connection to be linked. Then the camera came on and there was a lot of fumbling.
Then a woman’s voice said, “Christ, do you bloody know what time it is?” to the accompaniment of a child screaming protest. “It’s Mummy! I want to talk to Mummy!”
“No, dear. Your mum’s not there.”
A boy’s face loomed large on the screen. “I want to talk to Mummy!” it shrieked. “Mummy’s calling to talk to me!”
“Mike, is that you? I wish you’d warn me before calling.” A woman’s face appeared on the screen. “Mike?” She did not seem able to see them.
Mike’s sister? Aunty Lee wondered. She heard another child’s voice in the background: “You’re not supposed to tell anybody Mum called. Especially not Dad!”
“I don’t care. I want to talk to Mum. I don’t want to go to the dentist tomorrow! I want to run away like Mum!”
And the connection was broken.
“They couldn’t see us?”
“No. I switch off camera,” Nina said. “Enough? Satisfied?”
Aunty Lee was relieved. “I need to think.”
Nina switched off the computer and left her there, returning silently to place a bowl of pu-erh tea on the desk. Fermented pu-erh was Aunty Lee’s favorite thinking tea.
“I will go to the shop first. I put Miss Vallerie’s breakfast in the dining room.” Her boss nodded, barely hearing her. Nina felt hopeful. Whether Aunty Lee thought their guest a murderer or merely a liar about using her computer, her preoccupation with Vallerie’s secret calls suggested the woman’s stay would be drawing to an end.
For Aunty Lee the process of reverse engineering a dish or perfecting a recipe was often more important than the final dish.
The same ingredients went into a rich, hot, savory soup and a delicately chilled meat jelly. Pigs’ head or calves’ foot jelly, for example. But there was such a difference in texture depending on whether the dish was heated or chilled. And people felt so differently when you offered them a cow’s feet or head instead of a steak cut out of its side. Was that because they preferred not to be reminded their crown roast or tenderloin had come from an animal?
The theme that was running through Aunty Lee’s head just then was how people saw themselves and their situation. It was all a matter of perspective. And what seemed the same situation could have very different effects on the people affected. Like the story told of two boys born poor; one stayed poor and turned to crime because he never had a chance, while the other worked up to become a rich philanthropist helping the poor because he knew what it was to be poor.
But Aunty Lee took the story further. If the poor boys had been brothers, they would also have influenced each other. The one who stayed poor might have done badly because in addition to all the other factors, he was full of resentment that his brother who was doing well was not helping him more. And the more he was eaten up with resentment at his brother, the poorer he got, to emphasize the unfairness of his brother not h
elping him. And what if they had been sisters instead of brothers?
“From what those Woons in America said about Vallerie, I can understand her coming to Singapore with her sister. But I still can’t understand why Vallerie changed so much after getting here.”
26
Belinda Bao: Chill to Set
Belinda Bao’s autumn special moon cake boxes matched the one that had been sent to Josephine. The one containing the moon cake that had poisoned her. They also matched the box that had been found in the Love sisters’ hotel room.
“Yes, these are the ones that Brian Wong ordered this year,” Belinda Bao said. She was a fair, plump young woman with pink cheeks and a pink streak in her dyed blond hair.
“Brian bought a box of moon cakes from you? Are you sure?” This particular ingredient did not fit into the recipe Aunty Lee was concocting for this murder.
“Oh yes. Brian orders at least ten boxes every year. This year it was fifteen boxes. We have a delivery service, but Brian liked to deliver them himself. He says—said—everybody else gives clients and family members hampers at Chinese New Year, so to stand out, he did it at the Moon Cake Festival.” Belinda smiled. Then as the sides of her mouth pulled downward the rest of her face crumpled and she started to cry. “He was such a sweet guy. I think I was a little in love with him. In a fairy-tale prince kind of way, you know?”
“Sorry, sorry,” Aunty Lee said soothingly. “Good people like Brian, they go to their reward.”
“People are saying Brian killed himself. They’re saying that he confessed to killing a whole lot of people and then killed himself, but I don’t believe it! I mean, when I saw him he was so funny and sweet and normal.
“Oh, I forgot—” Belinda wiped her face on a white towel she pulled out of her apron. “Brian took sixteen boxes this year. He ordered fifteen and picked them up, no problem. Then the next morning he called me, said he very urgently needed one more box and he would come round and pick it up. So it was sixteen in the end.”
“What day?”
“Saturday.”
“Ah.” The recipe was coming together at last, Aunty Lee thought. She still did not know how it would turn out, but she had just managed to pick up a vital ingredient.
“Toxicology tests were not performed previously as the cause of death was obvious. But samples had been taken during the autopsy, so when a request was made for further tests . . .” Here Commissioner Raja gave Aunty Lee a small, wry smile.
Aunty Lee was almost bouncing on her seat in her anxiety to hear the results. “What? What? What?”
“Results show Allison Love was drugged before she was strangled with the cables and hit in the face.”
“Ah . . .” Aunty Lee nodded. Finally things were beginning to fall into place. And perhaps it wasn’t too late.
“Allison Fitzgerald was taking off-label antipsychotics as sedatives, for her insomnia and to calm herself. She was also taking sleeping pills. It seems most likely that she took a dose, felt it wasn’t working fast enough or simply forgot, took another dose, and another, until she passed out.” He stopped, but Aunty Lee sensed he had more to say. Indeed, she would have been disappointed if he did not.
“It’s also possible that her sister gave her the medicine. Maybe just to calm her down. We know that Allison Love could be difficult, and Vallerie might have given her too much by accident.”
Or not even by accident. Given what Aunty Lee had heard about Allison Love, the need to calm her down or put her to sleep for a while must have been very strong, even if the people at the hotel had seen a different side of her. But the way Vallerie handled difficult situations troubled Aunty Lee. She was someone who flared up in a burst of anger and almost went crazy. People like her attacked other drivers in road rage or threw noodles on stewardesses in sky rage or killed their partners in crimes of passion. Such a person would have shouted at her sister rather than feeding her calming pills. And the way Vallerie talked about her sister and kept score of all the wrongs done to the dead Allison was almost worshipful.
“What if Vallerie killed Allison?” Aunty Lee asked. “And Josephine and Brian found out so she tried to kill them and frame them.”
Aunty Lee had no reason to dislike Vallerie, who was her guest, a victim, a helpless stranger in a strange land. But even less did she want to believe Brian Wong had been responsible.
Commissioner Raja did not answer immediately. This may have been because he was engrossed in his menu. After her excursion to Holland Village to see Belinda Bao, Aunty Lee had asked him to meet her at a restaurant there, which she had wanted to visit for some time because of its name. “Original Sin” sounded more like a den of iniquity than the classy vegetarian restaurant it turned out to be, and its name blended nicely with the theme of sibling murder running through Aunty Lee’s mind. If Cain could kill Abel, why could Vallerie not have killed Allison?
Commissioner Raja might have been reflecting. Or it might have been because he thought it safer not to answer.
“You’re thinking I just don’t want to believe Brian Wong killed those women even if he confessed. That’s not true. I just can’t believe he could have tried to poison Josephine.”
“All I was thinking is that the spanakopita looks interesting. Look here, Rosie. There was a time when Allison Fitzgerald had thousands of Singaporeans, not to mention people from Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and as far away as Finland and Norway sending her hate mail. It was cyberbullying. And Josephine, Cherril, and your Saint Brian were responsible for that. It’s not acceptable.” He held up a hand to forestall the protest that was bubbling out of Aunty Lee. “This started with them. They were responsible.” He turned both hands palms down on the table as though to signal the matter closed.
“It must be tough for you, having the sister staying with you for so long.” Commissioner Raja threw this out as an unspoken offer: Do you need help getting her out of your house? In a choice between loneliness and strangers, Raja Kumar would pick loneliness every time.
“It’s not too bad,” Aunty Lee said. Aunty Lee herself would have picked strangers. Being Aunty Lee, they would not remain strangers for long. “She’s eating better and feeling better. I don’t know what she was eating before coming here, but now she is eating less processed local foods and her headaches and allergies don’t seem so bad. But she still has difficulty sleeping.” Aunty Lee had not been sure whether the insomnia that sometimes drove Vallerie to walk around the house at night was caused by guilt, fear, or some underlying medical condition. But then she had seemed much more relaxed after news of Brian’s confession and suicide, so it seemed fear had been the cause . . . though she had become surprisingly agitated when Aunty Lee pointed out that the dead vet could not have been at the hotel to see Brian because of the fire . . .
It was well after lunchtime when Commissioner Raja dropped Aunty Lee back at the café and there were no customers in. If Aunty Lee had not been her own landlord (as well as landlord of several other shops along the row), the absence of customers might have bothered her. As it was, she happily went to sit by the café’s front corner window. This was the table Cherril, Josephine, and Brian had been sitting at the Saturday it had all started. Aunty Lee did not want to believe any of them had killed a woman in cold blood. But someone had—two women, in fact.
The reason cold dishes were complicated was the multiple cooking methods involved. All the individual ingredients had to be prepared in all their individual ways and carved from bones or excised from shells. Then professional cutting skills were needed as the morsels were trimmed into shapes that looked appealing when suspended in the gel. And at the very end, serving skills made all the difference. Any flaws around the rim could be disguised with decorative bits and the gravy—tested for seasoning—poured over. Unlike a stew or a stir-fry, which were open to receiving whatever was in your fridge, a cold, savory mold called for design, execution, and presentation.
It was the same thing with creating the perfect rev
enge.
27
Dinner Climax
The next evening Aunty Lee arranged a special dinner at her house. It was to celebrate the end of the suspicions against Mike and introduce him to Josephine’s family and friends on neutral territory, she said when she invited the young woman to bring Mike, warning her that not only would her parents be coming—along with Cherril, Mycroft, and Anne Peters—but that Vallerie was not expecting them. Otherwise her guest would probably leave the house in order to avoid them.
“But I think it’s a good idea for her and Mike to be in the same room at least once before Vallerie leaves.” Mike seemed keen, so Josephine agreed. She didn’t see any point to it, but it would be just one evening.
Commissioner Raja and Inspector Salim were also present, but not in uniform, which left it unclear whether they were there officially. Salim had disappeared into the kitchen, possibly to help Nina, but it was also possible he was keeping an eye on the back door.
Mike Fitzgerald and Josephine were the last to arrive. As soon as Nina showed them into the dining room, Vallerie immediately got up to leave.
“Oh no, wait—don’t go,” Aunty Lee said.
“You can’t bully me into staying. Tell the servant to bring my dinner upstairs.”
The “servant” stood quietly in front of the dining room door, effectively barring Vallerie’s exit. She sent a little smile in the direction of Salim, who had moved casually to the sliding glass doors leading to the patio, now closed because of the air-conditioning, once Josephine and Mike were inside, effectively blocking it as well. This had not been planned; they had instinctively moved into the best positions to survey the people already around the table.
The long, polished table was set for dinner and Commissioner Raja was seated at one end with Aunty Lee on the other. Anne Peters was next to Commissioner Raja, with Mycroft and Cherril beside her, followed by Joseph and Constance DelaVega, who were seated by Aunty Lee. Mark was by the sideboard with his bottles of wine, and Selina, who had been sitting by Vallerie, also rose to her feet. She had not known Josephine was coming either.