Aunty Lee's Delights

by Ovidia Yu

  How Commissioner Raja had wished he was out of the game the day before. He and his wife had been friends with Professor Reginald and Mrs. Anne Peters for years. His children had been in school with theirs and he had known Marianne as a determined toddler, a Rollerblading tomboy, and the slightly chubby and sullen but still attractive young woman she had grown up into. Privately he had still thought her a child . . . and figured that once she found something or someone she was passionate about, she would surely shake off her malaise. But as it turned out, she had not lived long enough for that to happen.

  Commissioner Raja knew there was nothing he could say to help her bereaved parents at this time. Even if they managed to find out who had brutally murdered their daughter, neither justice nor vengeance would bring Marianne back. But still, he had personally driven out to their house to deliver the news of her death. He felt it was the least he could do.

  After the death of his wife, he and the Peters family had drifted apart somewhat, and seeing them again, he had been shocked by how much they had aged. When Professor Reginald Peters, chief and senior consultant of the department of cardiac, thoracic, and vascular surgery at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, greeted him at the door, he looked at least twenty years older than when they last met two months back. He was gaunt, and tension from the self-control that kept him functioning had taken its toll. Suddenly he looked like an old man, slumped over and weak-looking, as though life had dealt him physical blows that left him barely able to stand. And his wife? Commissioner Raja had meant to build up to his news, but one look at his old friend told him he was wasting his time; the man already knew.

  “No—” whispered Professor Peters.

  “I’m sorry,” said Commissioner Raja.

  Professor Peters wept like a child, standing frozen and wailing, “No . . . no . . . no,” out of a slack mouth without trying to wipe away his tears.

  “Can you tell us anything more?” Anne Peters asked.

  Commissioner Raja did not understand immediately what Mrs. Peters meant. Was she asking for an update on their investigation?

  Anne Peters had been a beauty in her youth and had grown even more classically beautiful in her mature years. The shock and strain of Marianne’s disappearance had left her looking brittle and frail, but she was still clearly in charge of herself and her home. Usually Commissioner Raja saw more beauty in large women. His late wife had been such a woman: large body, large heart, full lips, and generous with love and laughter. Even so many years after her death, Commissioner Raja compared all the women he met to her, and found each and every one of them lacking. But here, in Anne Peters, was pure Indian beauty of a different kind—high cheekbones, big sorrowful eyes, and slender, willowy strength. She smelled of fresh flowers he could not identify. Cologne? Soap? If she wore makeup, it was too discreetly applied to be noticed. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. And at the moment she was watching Commissioner Raja as though his words were her only lifeline.

  “Did my daughter suffer much?” she asked in a steady voice.

  At this point in the investigation, Commissioner Raja had no idea. But he knew that however terrible Marianne Peters’s earthly sufferings might have been, they were over now. Those of her family were only just beginning.

  “No,” he lied, trying to convince himself as much as her.

  Anne Peters nodded. He saw she did not believe him. He also knew that he had given her the answer she wanted her husband to hear. It was for him that she had asked the question.

  When Commissioner Raja phoned earlier to prepare them for his visit, his old friend had asked, “Is it Marianne?” Commissioner Raja said only that he would be there within half an hour. He was not trying to drag out the anguish, but in addition to the news of Marianne’s death, he had questions he wanted to ask. Chief among them: Why hadn’t they reported their daughter missing during the two weeks between her disappearance and the discovery of her body? Hadn’t they suspected something was wrong when they hadn’t heard from her for so long?

  “Obviously somebody attacked her on the way to join her friends,” Professor Peters said. “That’s clearly what happened—she never managed to join them. I don’t know why you are here asking us questions. You should go and question her friends, find out where they were supposed to meet up, why they never called when she didn’t show up!”

  “We had a bit of a disagreement just before Marianne left,” Anne Peters interjected in a voice that sounded gentle and cultivated even in despair. “We thought she was punishing us by not getting in touch. We thought the best thing to do was leave her alone to get over the fight.”

  Commissioner Raja recognized Aunty Lee’s maid when she came in wheeling a wire shopping cart packed full of supplies. Of course, even if he didn’t recognize her, he might have identified her by the Aunty Lee’s Delights T-shirt she was wearing. The bulging tingkats and plastic bags she was toting obviously contained enough to keep the Peters family going for some time. He had not thought he could be hungry at such a time, but the smell of hot oily cumin and chicken suddenly reminded him that he had missed lunch.

  “You know Rosie?” Anne Peters asked. “M.L.’s wife. She lives just up the road. She’s been such a great help to us.”

  “Of course I know Aunty Lee—” Referring to her as “Aunty” was to show that he was familiar with her business rather than out of respect for her age. He and Aunty Lee were actually contemporaries; Commissioner Raja’s father had been a friend of the late M. L. Lee and had been one of those who’d initially been wary of him marrying this much younger woman. A fair man, he had later changed his mind. “She’s helped me a couple of times too. I must tell my father she’s still cooking.”

  Commissioner Raja recalled the case of the Nigerian gang that had tried to pull a scam using Mainland Chinese girls for cover in the early days of the Integrated Resorts Casino. Aunty Lee had picked them out as con artists immediately—she said it was because of their eating habits. Their greed at the buffet, taking far more than anyone could possibly eat just because they could, marked the women as unfamiliar with the lifestyle they were assuming. She had mentioned it to her husband, who had mentioned it to Raja, who had then been head of the Casino Regulatory Authority.

  “She saved my image and saved the casino a lot of money once,” he added.

  Anne Peters smiled. “Funny, isn’t it? You can be friends with people for years and not realize they know each other. Won’t you join us for something to eat?” She lowered her voice. “Please do. Reginald hasn’t eaten anything since last night. If you sit down with us, he may decide to sit down too, long enough to eat.”

  Commissioner Raja looked cautiously at his friend. He was well aware that in such circumstances the best-intentioned friends could be more a burden than a source of solace. But Anne Peters seemed serious and at the moment her husband did not look as though he were aware of much of anything going on around him at all.

  “Nina says Rosie told her to stay as long as we need her,” Anne Peters continued. “I told her we will be fine since they’ll be here to help with things when . . . well, you haven’t been able to tell us when we can make arrangements for Marianne.”

  “Well, we had a bit of maid trouble,” Professor Peters cut in as though in response to a question. As long as his daughter’s body was not in the house, he did not have to face what had happened. “The girl just disappeared. Right after news about . . . Marianne . . . came out. Didn’t give any reason. We had no reason to think she was unhappy, she just upped and left.”

  Commissioner Raja frowned. “You mean she’s also missing?”

  “She ran off,” Anne Peters said dully. “She’s not missing.”

  “So you do know where she is?”

  Commissioner Raja looked at their blank faces. He did not mean to hound them. He had just told his good friends that their beloved daughter was dead. But he was also a policeman. He looked to Aunty Lee’s maid, who had finished setting up a buffet-style arrangement
on the counter: chicken and potato curry, braised vegetables and steamed rice, with bottles of achar, ikan bilis with peanuts, and sambal. Nina had placed serving spoons and a stack of clean plates and cutlery at the end of the row.

  “Do you know where their servant could have gone?” Commissioner Raja asked Nina. He was not sure why he asked. But she worked for a friend in the same estate and was clearly familiar with the Peterses’ household.

  “No, sir. My boss ask me already. She also want to know.”

  “I see.” Cowardly or tactfully, Raja decided to leave the question to her. “Tell your boss if she finds out anything, come and tell me. Tell her don’t go and do her crazy things, okay? This is serious, not play play.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Could Komal have seen who took Marianne?” Anne Peters asked. “She did disappear almost immediately after Marianne—”

  “Komal wouldn’t have seen anything,” Professor Peters said. “Even if she saw something, she wouldn’t have known it. Anyway she didn’t disappear immediately after Marianne. If this crazy story is true, Marianne disappeared over two weeks ago. Those girls she was supposed to be traveling with say they never saw her!” Almost casually he picked up a small crystal vase and smashed it against the wall. His wife did not flinch. She looked as though she was beyond flinching. Discreetly, Nina got a pan and brush and started clearing up the shards.

  “She was a good girl,” Anne Peters said. There was a quiver in her voice, but she spoke with quiet determination. “Komal spoke Hindi and Sindhi but not much English. She and Marianne hardly had anything to do with each other. She didn’t have anything to do with this.” She set her lips grimly. “Komal must have been seeing somebody. I didn’t want to believe it of her. I ignored all the people who warned me to keep strict controls. I wanted to respect her, but look at what she did, right when we needed her most.” There was a hurt betrayal in her voice that came from more than her feelings about their maid’s abandonment of them.

  Nina, who had returned to the room after emptying the dustpan, had remained by the kitchen door while Anne Peters was speaking. Now she went over to where Mrs. Peters was sitting with Commissioner Raja. Professor Peters was still pacing around the room.

  “I have cleaned up the kitchen. If it is all right, I will go and clean upstairs and do the laundry, then tomorrow I will cook things and bring over.”

  Anne Peters glanced at her husband, but he was beyond caring about household arrangements. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much. That would help us very much. But don’t worry about cooking. We can phone for something. And Mycroft and Cherril will be back soon.”

  “Let her prepare something simple for you,” Commissioner Raja advised. “At a time like this, you don’t want to be eating pizza and fried chicken.” And from experience he knew that at a time of bereavement, clean bedsheets and clear soups did more good than condolence notices and floral wreaths.

  Finally leaving the Peterses’, Commissioner Raja told his driver to pull up alongside a property fronted by a long, low white picket fence before they reached the main road.

  Aunty Lee was out her front door and coming down the drive before Commissioner Raja’s driver turned off the engine.

  “Then why did Komal run away?” Aunty Lee demanded of Commissioner Raja before the commissioner had fully gotten himself out of the car. “She must have had something to do with it even if they didn’t leave together. The girl didn’t know anybody in Singapore. When they tried to give her Sundays off, she didn’t want them because she had nowhere to go. Don’t worry, they were not taking advantage of her. They were giving her thirty dollars for every Sunday she stayed in the house, even when there was no work for her to do. But if she didn’t know anybody here and didn’t want to go out on Sundays, why did she suddenly pack up and run away? How could she pack up and run away without a trace?”

  “They knew her better than anyone else. If they say she ran away . . .” Commissioner Raja shrugged. He knew some maids had very good reasons for running away from their employers. Right now he didn’t want to go into why the Peterses were so certain Komal had run away from them. They were friends and they were good people, but they were also under extreme stress. Without admitting what he thought, even to himself, he hoped they would make it up to the girl when she came back safely.

  “How are they taking it up there? What do they think happened?”

  “They think someone attacked Marianne en route to join her friends. They blame her friends for not raising the alarm sooner.”

  “Is that the official view?”

  Commissioner Raja shrugged again. It was not that he did not trust Aunty Lee, just that there was no such thing as an official view, only the official report. And the official report had not been issued yet.

  “If that was the case, why did Komal disappear? And did she take her things? Did she take any other things with her?”

  “I don’t think the Peterses are in any state to notice what the girl took. They didn’t mention anything missing.”

  “Sometimes these little girls are afraid of talking to the police,” Aunty Lee said absentmindedly. “Nothing at all to do with your people here, of course, but you don’t know what it might be like where they come from. I’ve asked Nina to see what she can find out for me.”

  “I thought you might,” Commissioner Raja said. “But you realize, of course, that anything she says . . .”

  Aunty Lee managed to smile and look grim at the same time. “She is also a poor young girl. I just want to make sure she is not also dead somewhere in the sea because that is where girls seem to be showing up these days. Anyway, I have to get to my shop. You can give me a lift out. Your suspects are all coming to eat at my place. Do you want to come in for a drink?”

  “Be careful,” Commissioner Raja said. “Something funny is going on.”

  “Exactly,” Aunty Lee said. “That’s why I need help from you and that nice man Salim.”

  “You need our help?”

  “Sometimes a bit of uniform and authority is enough to make people behave. If not, it is always good to have a strong man around.”

  12

  At the Café

  Aunty Lee was not just kaypoh. She was driven by a compulsion to know that was as strong or stronger than hunger.

  “So I thought, since you have to stay in Singapore longer than you expected, why not come and eat at my place?” Aunty Lee had suggested as though it had just occurred to her, and she had picked up the phone to call her prospective guests immediately. “At my café, I mean. I’m closing it to customers temporarily, so it will be my treat, of course. If you miss your food from back home, I am sure I can come up with something.”

  Frank Cunningham, who had taken the call, relayed Aunty Lee’s invitation to his wife. The Cunninghams looked at each other. Though they were not hard up by any stretch of the imagination, this extended stay in the island city had thrown their travel budget off balance. New travel and hotel arrangements could be made, of course, but though the Raffles was a most understanding and accommodating hotel, it was not cheap. And their current frame of mind was far from adventurous. When Aunty Lee’s invitation came, they had been living almost completely on familiar and easily available fast foods.

  Lucy gestured to her husband to cover the mouthpiece of the phone before saying, “Why not?”

  “What does she want from us? There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

  “What does it matter? We have nothing to hide. Besides, it’s like the birds of the field, neither sowing nor reaping, but the Lord provides.”

  “Nothing like free food, eh?” Harry Sullivan said to no one in particular as he watched the Cunninghams come into Aunty Lee’s Delights. The couple did not laugh.

  “We’ll pay you what it’s worth,” Frank said to Aunty Lee. “Though seeing you’ve closed your shop, you wouldn’t be wanting to charge us your regular rates.”

  “The police got you to close down, did they?” Harr
y asked. “We can’t leave the country and you can’t run your business.” He seemed genuinely concerned. “That’s not very fair to you, is it? It’s not just a matter of what you would be taking in today, this week, and so on. It’s what your customers are going to think. And the chaps who turn up and think you’re closed for good.”

  “We just don’t really know where else to go. There are stalls, of course, but we don’t know how clean everything is—it’s Asia after all. And we were supposed to get our yellow fever vaccinations before coming out, but we never did,” Lucy worried. “Of course, we would like to pay you—please let us.”

  They were looking less and less like a well-traveled tourist couple out to see the world.

  “Don’t be silly,” Aunty Lee said in the manner of a motherly old lady. “I like having you people around. No, the police didn’t tell us to shut down. With everything that’s been going on, I didn’t want people coming in here out of curiosity, if you know what I mean—”

  It was clear that the others—Lucy Cunningham at least—knew what she meant. “It’s so dreadful, isn’t it? We’ve never been mixed up in anything like this before. Now every time I leave our room, I can feel people looking at us, wondering whether we had anything to do with the murders.”

  “I told you that’s ridiculous,” Frank said with a trace of impatience. “You’re imagining things. Nobody even knows who we are.”

  “Our names were in the papers—they’ll recognize them from the register. And even if the hotel people don’t, he will . . . We should have left as soon as we found out that Laura Kwee wasn’t here!”

  Genteelly helping the distraught Lucy to some slices of fried cold cuts (luncheon meat barely qualified as food in Aunty Lee’s book, but she had guessed correctly that cold cuts and bottled ketchup represented comfort food to her guests), Aunty Lee pounced. She had been waiting for this.