by Ovidia Yu
Mike stepped forward, eyes on Vallerie. “Hey, I’m sorry about what happened to Allison. But I had nothing to do with that, honest.”
“Please sit down,” Commissioner Raja said, managing to direct his words at everyone standing.
“Why, are you going to give a speech?” Vallerie remained standing. “Save it for my sister’s funeral!”
“But not for Allison Love’s funeral,” said Aunty Lee. Vallerie had looked really terrified, afraid for her life, on first seeing Mike Fitzgerald, but now she looked both smug and puzzled. “Vallerie Love is dead in a freezer in the morgue of the Singapore General Hospital.”
“What?” Josephine was startled out of the mask she had been wearing since coming in. She stared at the large woman. “But if Vallerie is dead, then who—”
“This is Allison Love, formerly Allison Fitzgerald. Allison has been pretending to be her sister, Vallerie,” Salim interjected, carefully not looking at Commissioner Raja. “The fingerprints of the corpse did not match the fingerprints of Allison Fitzgerald processed five years ago when she was taken in for biting and scratching a police officer. No charges were pressed but her prints remain on file. Aunty Lee suggested we compare the fingerprints of her houseguest on a water glass she supplied, and it was a match.”
“Allie?” Mike looked uncertain. “I thought—I told the children that you—” He started toward her but Josephine’s grip on his arm yanked him back to her side.
“Mike, you coward, you never backed me up.”
Mike stared, openmouthed.
“You idiot, you fool. I never wanted a divorce.”
“You did. You left—”
“I wanted to teach you a lesson. I wanted you to see how much you needed me. Instead, you stupid idiot, you ungrateful bastard, you went running to that skinny bitch. I knew she was after you!”
“You knew?”
The woman’s snort of disdain prompted Aunty Lee to fill in what she had learned. “Thanks to Skyping with your son, you knew that your husband was seeing Josephine. You knew Josephine had been to visit them in England. And you wanted to catch them together in Singapore and confront them.”
“You killed your own sister?” Mike asked.
“You think you’re so clever.” Allison Love turned to stare at Aunty Lee with loathing. “Well, you’re not. Of course I didn’t kill my stupid sister.”
Hatred could make people forget their own pain just as love could, Aunty Lee thought.
“I hated my stupid sister but I never killed her. Why would I? And whoever killed her thinking she was me is going to be after me now, thanks to you. If I get killed now it’s going to be all your fault!” Hearing her own words she looked wildly around the room and wailed. “He’s going to kill me now! Him and his bitch slut! What difference does it make whether he killed me or killed my sister? I was only protecting myself. I thought that if he thought he already killed me he wouldn’t come after me again and I would be safe! I only pretended to be my sister because I was scared of him. I was always scared of him. You can ask anyone. Ask my kids, my son will tell you.”
Josephine stared, stone-faced. Mike looked baffled.
“We had a lovely time but we really have to be going,” Constance DelaVega murmured icily. She half-rose from her seat and tapped at her husband’s shoulder, but Joseph DelaVega, looking between Aunty Lee, his daughter, and his daughter’s boyfriend’s ex-wife, ignored or possibly didn’t notice her. Constance sat back down, her mouth in a tight line. Observing her, Aunty Lee thought how much Josephine took after her mother.
“I didn’t want that poor animal to live the rest of its life in a cage, that’s all. I was thinking of it. And you viciously destroyed my life and killed my sister because of it,” Allison said to Josephine.
“We should go.” Josephine echoed her mother’s words. Like her father, Mike Fitzgerald did not move. “Look, you’ve got her. You know she’s Allison Love. Why don’t you just arrest her and take her away?”
“Vallerie was the fat sister while you were growing up, but she blossomed after she made a new life for herself in California. She was teaching yoga and working with herbal cures and she had made new friends. When you went to see her in Long Beach she wasn’t the ‘fat sister’ anymore. You were.” Aunty Lee spoke to Allison’s back, but the woman nodded. “Maybe it was being mistaken for Vallerie that gave you the idea. Everyone knew Allison was the slim, smart sister. Vallerie was the fat, stupid younger sister.”
“It started as a joke,” Allison said. “People kept getting us mixed up. People who used to know us, who knew Vall was the fat sister. They automatically assumed I was Vall. So I said let’s turn the joke back on them. Vall thought it was a huge joke. She could be so stupid but she was a good sport.” Her voice cracked as her face crumpled. “Oh, Vallie!” It was the first honest statement about her sister this woman had made, Aunty Lee thought. But she had other points to make.
“You wanted revenge on the veterinary clinic so you threw a glass bottle of kerosene with a lighted candle into it. And you invented the threats against yourself to make it look as though the Animal ReHomers were targeting you. I’m guessing you drugged your sister when she objected. Did she wonder what you were doing with kerosene? Where did you buy it—the provision shop behind the hotel?” Salim gave a small nod, confirming this was so.
“Did you see the vet who put your dog down at the clinic on the day of the fire? Was that what made you think of her as soon as you heard a vet had been killed?”
Allison looked surprised, then confused. “I might have. Someone called out my name, but more like a question than knowing it was me. I ignored her. After all, what could she do about it? There was smoke and noise and animals all over the place, and the fire engine was blocked from the car park by the construction lorry. She can’t have been sure it was me. Even if she was, what could she say—that she had seen me there? She couldn’t prove that I had done anything! So I just left.”
“After Allison went back to England she killed animals by feeding them rat poison when she got angry with them or their owners. She boasted to her husband about it, didn’t she, Mike?” Josephine said. “She killed the vet just like she killed her sister.”
“Tammy?” Anne Peters whispered. “Did she poison my Tammy?” Cherril put an arm around her mother-in-law’s thin shoulders.
Allison didn’t bother to contradict her, not turning as Aunty Lee rose to her feet behind her, leaning both hands on the table for support.
“After drugging Vallerie, Allison went down to the reception to call a taxi to bring her to Aunty Lee’s Delights for the meeting. She had to go down because she couldn’t communicate with the Mandarin-speaking receptionists over the phone. Downstairs she learned that someone had dropped off a box of moon cakes for them, which had been brought up to the room. Her sister was in a drugged sleep and Allison had disconnected the phone, so just to check she returned to her room and found her sister dead, strangled by the cable ties. She knew at once whoever it was had meant to kill her. She had to think fast.”
Allison took over the narrative. “I dashed back up because I was furious at Vall. I had made her promise not to tell anyone we were coming to Singapore, but if someone was sending her moon cakes, I knew that she must have broken her promise. I found Vallerie dead, her face all black and her lips swollen with bubbles and something tight around her neck. I knew at once I was the real target. I took the fire extinguisher from outside the room and smashed it in her face—if the killer wanted to kill ‘Allison’ then I would become ‘Vallerie’ and let ‘Allison’ be dead. I thought that was the safest thing for me to do. But I didn’t kill her. You have to believe me. She was already dead or I wouldn’t have hit her. That was just to make sure people thought she was me.”
“I believe you,” Aunty Lee said. “There were too many clues pointing to you. That’s why I had to find out where the moon cakes came from. That’s why I knew you didn’t kill your sister, Vallerie.” Even Allison turned t
o stare at her.
“But someone tried to poison Josie,” Constance DelaVega said. “That poisoned moon cake that Brian sent to her shop. She almost died! They tested the cake and found the same poison that Brian used to kill himself!”
“That’s what made me suspicious,” Aunty Lee said. “Josie, why did you eat so little of the moon cake? I thought you like moon cake.”
“It tasted funny.” Josephine did not look at her parents or Mike. She could have been alone with Aunty Lee the way she smiled with persuasive, girlish charm at the older woman. “I do like moon cake, but when I took a mouthful it tasted funny so of course I stopped. Luckily for me.”
“The poison in the moon cake is tasteless.” Aunty Lee did not smile back. “You wouldn’t know it was poisoned by tasting. You wouldn’t know unless you injected the poison in the moon cake yourself after you cut out that piece. You must have used one of the syringes you use to inject preservatives into your flowers. Of course there was nothing wrong with the mouthful you ate. You were pretending, to frighten Mike into raising the alarm and rushing you to hospital.
“Brian wanted everything sorted out to make everybody happy. He did all he could to help Josephine end up with Mike,” Aunty Lee said softly. “That’s why he went to Allison’s hotel with you. Did he think you were going to apologize to Allison and defuse the situation and thereby the lawsuit? Then when the hotel receptionist refused to tell you which room Allison was in, you asked him for one of the boxes of moon cakes in his car so that you could watch which room they were brought to. He had just picked up the special moon cakes he ordered for clients. That’s why he had to go back to Belinda Bao’s shop to get a replacement box the next day.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Josephine said. “I wasn’t at the hotel.”
“You strangled Vallerie thinking she was Allison. You were convinced that as long as the woman was alive she would never leave you and Mike in peace.
“Brian waited for you downstairs—one of the hotel staff remembers him. Did you tell him Allison refused to see you, or that she had already left? In any case you told him not to mention you two had gone to the hotel in case it made Allison think you were worried.
“But news of Allison’s death probably made Brian uncomfortable. And when you learned we were looking for the source of the moon cakes found in the room, which would lead us to Brian, you decided to silence him. He didn’t suspect you, did he? But you didn’t want to leave any trails that would lead to you. And all the facts in Brian’s suicide note were true. Because you were the one who wrote that suicide note after poisoning Brian.”
“If only Vallie had woken up, she would have told you she wasn’t me,” Allison said. There was real pain in her voice, but she was more calm and focused since the first time she set foot in the café.
“She did. She woke up and said she wasn’t Allison, but I knew she was lying,” Josephine said. “It was years ago but I recognized her at once. You’re all lying and trying to trick me! She was the only bloody woman in the room, of course it was her!”
Cherril rose, almost unaware she was moving, to stand at Aunty Lee’s side. “I thought you were worried about the lawsuit. I thought that’s why you didn’t fuss about her being late. You’re usually so impatient. You said you had a ‘nervous stomach’ because of meeting Allison. Brian accepted that because he always accepted everything you said. That’s what you told him when he waited for you in the hotel, isn’t it? Then you probably told him you felt silly or embarrassed or something like that and asked him not to say anything to me, which would be just like you, and he would have swallowed it. You just wanted him on the premises to be another suspect, but he turned out more useful as an alibi. Until he started telling you that you should both come clean about what had happened at the hotel. He told me he had something to tell me, but he had to sort it out with you first.”
Josephine snorted, perhaps at Brian’s perfidy in talking to Cherril, but Cherril was not finished yet. “You poisoned Brian and pretended to be poisoned yourself. But why did you kill Samantha Kang? She would never have tried to blackmail you like you wrote in that e-mail. Sam Kang would have given you money if she thought you needed it!”
Josephine did not answer.
Aunty Lee thumped the table in her excitement. “That day of the fire at the clinic. I think the vet, Samantha Kang, saw Allison there. She may not have recognized her and only remembered who she was later. I suspect Dr. Kang texted you saying she had seen someone suspicious and needed to talk to you . . . She was talking about Allison, but your guilty conscience made you think Dr. Kang saw you at the hotel and wanted to blackmail you. You told her to meet you at Holland Village—near your shop and near her clinic. You went to the toilet together, and you had the cable ties and gloves you use for your floral arrangements—the same cable ties and gloves you used to kill the woman you thought was Allison Love. You pulled the cable ties tight around Samantha Kang’s throat and pushed her back into the stall to die.”
Josephine rolled her eyes. “You’re making up crazy stories. At your age it’s probably dementia. Anyway, you can’t prove anything. Or do you have a medium that can talk to ghosts?”
“Technology is better than mediums,” Aunty Lee said firmly. “Holland Village shops all got surveillance cameras inside and outside. Now they know who they are looking for—should not be too hard for the police to prove you were there at that time!”
Commissioner Raja’s eyes moved to Salim, who nodded. “We’ve already got the film. Thank goodness for shoplifters.” He left the room, texting on his phone.
“The poor woman was no real threat to you. Even if she had seen you, you could have given her some excuse—you’re good at lying—and she would have believed you. But you also killed her to draw suspicion away from Mike. That’s why you killed her the same way you killed Vallerie, at a time when you knew Mike had an alibi. Because there was always the risk that the police might look into the people who had the most reason to want Allison Love dead—her ex-husband and his pregnant girlfriend.”
“Pregnant?” Mike Fitzgerald looked between his ex-wife and pregnant lover with an expression that was a blend of horror and incredulity.
“Look, Mikey, I did it for you, for us. Because I wanted our life together to be free from all Allison’s craziness.”
“You’re just like Allison—you’re worse! Allison killed animals but not people.”
“I wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t kept dragging your feet about getting married! This is all your fault!”
“I think Mike was changing his mind about marrying you, Josephine,” Aunty Lee said quietly. She turned to Mike Fitzgerald. “As you got to know her better she started to remind you of Allison, didn’t she?”
Mike hesitated, and then nodded. “I thought it was me. Imagining things. But yes. I’m sorry.”
“Of course he’s going to marry her!” Constance DelaVega’s thin voice shrilled. “Our Josie is not the kind of girl you can pick up and throw away! He must join the church and marry her.”
Distracted eyes turned to her till Commissioner Raja suddenly shouted, “Watch out!”
Josephine had grabbed the carving knife off the sideboard, and now she lunged at Mike, leaving a bloody streak on the arm he threw up to protect his face. The table wedged Commissioner Raja in, and Mycroft was entangled by Selina clinging to both him and Mark, screaming. SS Panchal appeared at the kitchen door on Commissioner Raja’s shout, but was on the other side of the room, with Salim even farther away outside as Josephine raised the bloody knife again.
“The samples! The samples!” Aunty Lee shouted, flailing at Josephine with her walking stick, giving Mike a chance to retreat against the wall. Nina rolled the open containers across the floor toward Aunty Lee, who whacked and spun them around with her stick as Josephine, knife raised, moved in on Mike for the kill—but skidded and fell. She got back on her feet, charged at him again, but her feet twisted and shot out from under her and she fell again. This
time she stayed down.
“Be careful, ah,” Aunty Lee warned. “There’s oil on the floor.”
“Oil?” Salim stopped SS Panchal abruptly, thinking of biological attack. “What kind of oil?”
“Soybean oil, canola oil, sustainable palm oil,” SS Panchal said, sniffing, “And some sesame oil.”
Aunty Lee looked at the policewoman with new respect, “There’s some more around the back door. I thought she would try to run away. I didn’t think she would attack, I’m sorry, she’s going to make your police car all oily. I give you some newspapers for her to sit on. The Straits Times is very good for covering up messy business.”
Josephine’s eyes were fixed on Mike. “You bastard. I’m going to kill your baby.”
Mike stared. He looked as though he was having trouble following all that had just happened, Aunty Lee thought. The greatest victim here was the unborn child who seemed no more than a bargaining chip to its mother.
28
Wrap-Up
Allison Love was charged with cruelty to animals for poisoning Tammy and would be subject to a fine of up to S$10,000, a jail term of up to a year, or both. She should also have been charged for firebombing the vet clinic but the case was dropped for lack of evidence.
Josephine DelaVega was arrested in connection with the murders of Vallerie Love, Samantha Kang, and Brian Wong. Her parents claimed first that she was being framed, then that she had been manipulated into it by Mike Fitzgerald and Allison Love as part of a complex revenge for the online bullying and harassment they held her responsible for. They had already applied to be made legal guardians of their unborn grandchild.
Mike Fitzgerald went home to be with his children in London, but would return to Singapore for the trials of his ex-wife and ex-lover.
Nina posted a “Closed for Private Party” announcement on the website and put a sign on the front door, and Aunty Lee threw a pohpiah party to celebrate everything getting sorted out and getting her ankle out of its cast.