by Ovidia Yu
“Would you care to explain that, Mrs. Lee?”
“I knew who she was, of course. Her husband, Henry, was a friend of my late husband’s and we used to run into each other at social events and other people’s houses. Their daughter was in school with my stepdaughter and I think they still keep in touch. But I wouldn’t say we were friends. We move in totally different circles. She was a high-powered lawyer and I am a cook. When my husband was still alive she invited us to join her prayer group, but my husband said better not because he knew she was praying to find somebody’s daughter to marry her useless son and somebody’s son to marry her scary daughter and he didn’t want to put his children at risk.”
To her credit, Staff Sergeant Panchal recorded all this without any sign of confusion. But she lowered her voice as she continued, “Why did Mabel Sung choose you to cater the party at her house?”
“Actually it was her assistant who came to place the order. She said Mabel Sung wanted a nasi lemak buffet at her house and made all the arrangements. You should talk to her. She was upstairs today too. Her name is GraceFaith Ang, I have her card somewhere . . .”
“I can get Miss Ang’s contact myself. Can you recall if anything else significant happened earlier? And you, Mrs. Lim-Peters? Can I have your identity card as well?”
“It’s in my purse, locked in the car. I’ll get it for you,” Cherril said. “I don’t remember anything unusual. I set up the drinks table. I put out all the glasses and the napkins and I served drinks—orange juice, mango juice, aloe vera juice, and green tea. They asked for two bottles of champagne but we never got round to opening them. I didn’t know most of the people there.”
Staff Sergeant Panchal noted this.
“What specifically do you want to know?” Aunty Lee asked.
“Everything you can remember. We will put together all your individual statements to get a complete picture of what happened.”
“There is a very interesting building next to the swimming pool,” Aunty Lee said. “Or rather it had a very interesting mural painted on it. I remember wondering who did it. It’s where Mabel’s son was staying and I wondered whether he had painted it himself. Sometimes these young people who go overseas to study become all artistic when they come back—if they come back. At least Mabel’s son came back. So many of them don’t, you know. Like my stepdaughter, for example. But of course even though he came back he’s gone for good now, so maybe that was not such a good thing . . .”
Nina glanced curiously at the policewoman to see how she was taking all this. To her credit, SS Panchal was writing steadily, occasionally nodding to encourage Aunty Lee’s narrative. Nina was impressed.
“And what time did you arrive here this morning?” SS Panchal continued the interview.
“I think it was around eleven something . . . or just before eleven. Or ten something. They said their guests were arriving at eleven A.M., so I was going to set up the food before that. It was supposed to be a morning brunch but substantial enough to carry everyone through to lunch as well—”
“After eleven A.M.?”
“We arrived here at nine forty-eight A.M.,” Cherril interrupted. “I texted my husband when we got here, to say I was turning off my phone volume. That’s the time on the message.”
Panchal noted this and turned her attention to Cherril.
“And you are working for Mrs. Lee? “Can you spell out your full name for me, please? And your IC number?”
Cherril spelled out her name and recited her number, looking intimidated. Like most second- and third-generation Singaporeans, she had never questioned the need to carry personal identification. But being asked to verify her number made her feel as though she was checking into a hospital or being stopped for a traffic violation.
“You do not have your identity card with you. Are you aware that if you fail to produce identification we can detain you until such identification is produced in person or by proxy?”
“Cherril is my new business partner,” Aunty Lee answered for her. “She came to help me with the buffet and drinks.” Aunty Lee was cross with Panchal’s officiousness but managed not to show it. There was no point antagonizing people you wanted information from—something this police would do well to realize. “Cherril will show you her IC afterward. But there was another woman here just now you should talk to. She won’t be on the guest list because Mabel didn’t know her. Long-haired, Mandarin-speaking. Do you know who she is yet?”
“All in good time. Mrs. Lee, can you tell me why did you include the buah keluak dish in the buffet if Mabel Sung ordered a nasi lemak buffet? Buah keluak is not a dish that usually comes with nasi lemak.”
“Mabel asked specially for my chicken buah keluak.”
“Mabel Sung came to your café to make the order?”
“GraceFaith Ang told me that was what Mabel Sung wanted when she made the order,” Aunty Lee said. “I remember quite clearly. A nasi lemak buffet with yellow chicken curry and chicken buah keluak on the side.”
The policewoman made a note on her pad.
Aunty Lee saw the implication. If Mabel had been planning to kill herself and her son, there would have been no better way of concealing the taste of poison than by putting it in the buah keluak. Mabel ordering the dish seemed to suggest that she had planned the deaths from the start. Aunty Lee hoped the police would pick up on that point but this officer did not seem very bright.
“Can you give us anything to substantiate that?”
“You can ask GraceFaith. She is the one who said Mabel requested it specially. Don’t you see?” Aunty Lee burst out. “It’s premeditation on her part!” Buah keluak definitely indicated premeditation, given the amount of preparation time it needed. But the police officer looked politely noncommittal.
“It may be premeditation,” Staff Sergeant Panchal said, as though to herself, “or just food poisoning.”
“You can’t think—” Cherril burst out indignantly.
“They have to suspect everybody first,” Aunty Lee said genially, though she was equally cross. It was always the easiest solution to blame it on the cook and food poisoning. Well, on behalf of all the cooks in the world, Aunty Lee was going to make sure they did not settle for the easiest solution. Aunty Lee remembered the young man at the gate. He had seemed so certain that Mabel Sung or someone else there would know where his friend was. There had been something so familiar about him but she still could not put her finger on what it was. She had not met him before, of that she was certain. So why was he so familiar?
“There was a man shouting at the gate. He tried to get in to look for his friend Benjamin Ng and they shut the gate on him. Do you know who he is yet?”
“I’m sure someone is looking into it,” Staff Sergeant Panchal said. Her tone was polite but Aunty Lee could tell she didn’t know or care if it wasn’t part of her assignment.
“You should really pay more attention to details and strange people if you want to rise through the ranks,” Aunty Lee told her kindly. Panchal ignored this.
“Mrs. Lee, can you sum up how well you knew Mabel Sung?”
“I suppose I knew her as well as I can know somebody who I have got nothing in common with except race, language, and finances. She and her husband were acquaintances of my late husband. We ran into each other a few times at the Island Club and those fund-raising dinners where people donate a lot of money to get invited to eat expensive food with other people who donated a lot of money. She would say, ‘How is your restaurant doing?’ and I would say, ‘It’s not really a restaurant’ and she would say she really had to come with friends one day. But she never did. That’s why I was quite surprised when she asked me to cater the buffet at her house.”
“Do you have any idea why she called on you to cater this function if she had never eaten at your café before?”
“I think it was because she didn’t want to spend too much. My catered meals cost a lot less than the places she usually goes to. And she was having her prayer-gr
oup people over, so she probably didn’t want them to think she spends a lot on food. I know what you are thinking right now.”
Panchal was just thinking that old Chinese aunties were just as nosy as old Indian aunties.
“You are thinking I’m an old busybody. But can you help an old busybody by just looking and telling me whether you have a Benjamin Ng on your guest list? That is the name the man at the gate was shouting. They must have given you Mabel’s guest list, right? You tell me yes or no and then later after you have checked everything here you can come to my shop in Binjai Park and look through everything in my kitchen and all my buah keluak ingredients and leftovers and put samples in plastic bags to take back and show them how thorough you are. That would impress them, right?”
It would, Panchal supposed. Inspector Salim might be impressed. Panchal was always polite and proper in procedure and felt Inspector Salim’s standards were somewhat lower than hers. But still, he was a senior officer. And he would be impressed by her going through Aunty Lee’s kitchen and cooking equipment on her own initiative. She guessed that Inspector Salim was a little afraid of Aunty Lee. Some single men were uncomfortable around women, especially women like this Aunty Lee, who could move from planning your meal to planning your life and before you knew it you were settled down with a wife and she was picking the best possible names for your children. Well, Panchal was only too happy to take the heat off Inspector Salim and be nice to Aunty Lee if it meant getting ahead in the investigation.
“There’s no Benjamin Ng on the guest list. One or two other guests mentioned seeing the man at the gate but no one has identified him. However since he did not actually get into the grounds he is not on our list of suspects.”
“He didn’t get in through the back gate. But what is there to stop him from going round to the front gate after they didn’t let him in? And that would be nearer to the main house, where Mabel and her son died. I could tell that young man was very anxious to get in to see her. After getting himself there and knowing she was home, I’m sure he wouldn’t just have given up and gone away.”
Staff Sergeant Panchal barely acknowledged this. She was busy thumb-texting a message into her mobile. Aunty Lee was pleased by what she had learned. She did not believe the anonymous young man had had anything to do with Mabel’s death but his showing up when he did made him relevant to why she had died. These days computer cooks believed success came from following online recipe measurements to the precise second and centigram. Real cooks knew that a successful meal came from taking everything into consideration, right down to the color of the plate you served it on.
Cherril was also texting on her phone, presumably to her husband, because it rang a moment later and she answered it with “Mykie, you’ll never believe what just happened! Mabel Sung and her son are dead, poisoned, and the police are here talking to us. We’re part of a murder investigation!”
As she listened to what her husband said, her face changed.
“Mycroft says we may be in big trouble. We shouldn’t say anything until he gets here.”
9
Family and Partners
Despite the best efforts of Mycroft Peters and Commissioner Raja, the guests (and caterers) of the ill-fated brunch party did not get home till after dark that Saturday.
However, Aunty Lee (with Nina in tow) was at Aunty Lee’s Delights before nine the next morning. The café and shop did not open till eleven but there was a catering job that evening to prepare for and Mark had texted Aunty Lee and Cherril saying he would be over to discuss something important with them. Aunty Lee hoped this meant the handover would finally be completed and was preparing a celebratory breakfast—chwee kueh, or little steamed rice-flour cakes with savory preserved radish topping. She was still buzzing with excitement from the previous day’s happenings, and stirring boiling water into sifted and salted rice and tapioca powder to form a smooth batter was as good an outlet for her energy as anything. And of course she did her best to keep up with the news. For this she now needed only Nina’s good eyesight and an iPad2 (on the kitchen counter) but so far there had been nothing new.
Running the café had kept Aunty Lee blessedly busy after her husband’s death. She felt he watched over her there, not least of all because one of the last portrait photos of the late ML Lee, taken with him in his wheelchair, hung by the door of the café. That was where he used to sit in his wheelchair, when walking, even from their house up the road, became too tiring. There was at least one photograph of him in each room of the house and shop so that Aunty Lee could talk to him wherever she was. He did not answer, but then he had seldom answered even when he was alive. He had always said his energetic little wife talked enough for them both. In this photograph ML was wearing a blue-and-white golf shirt and squinting a little against the sun.
Aunty Lee loved the little café kitchen. It was small enough to get around quickly but there was space to fit in friends. She always felt that bonds formed while cooking together ran deeper than those formed merely eating together.
“Smells good.” Cherril came into the shop and joined them in the kitchen.
Aunty Lee said, “Mark likes chwee kueh. I made the traditional topping but also gula melaka banana sauce to pour on top.”
“Good.” Cherril looked haggard and stressed.
Despite the excitement Aunty Lee had gone to sleep fast and slept well. She had mastered the technique during her husband’s last illness (turn air-conditioning to very cold, take a very hot shower, turn off phone and all lights, and repeat “wake up at six A.M., wake up at six A.M.” to herself till she did) or she might have been up all night going over the events too. She felt sorry for Cherril, who looked as though she had not slept at all the night before.
“You better go home and rest after settling everything with Mark. I can manage tonight myself with Nina’s help.”
“I have to go home by eleven anyway. The police are coming to the house to talk to me.”
“Why not come and talk to you here? We are all here; they can talk to us all together!”
“The police already listen to you talk too much yesterday, madam,” Nina pointed out. Nina was worried about repercussions her boss seemed to have missed. After all, wasn’t the caterer always the first suspect in a food poisoning case?
“Mycroft thinks Mabel Sung killed her son because he was not going to recover and she didn’t want him to suffer, and she couldn’t bear to live with the thought, so she killed herself as well.”
“Mabel Sung didn’t kill herself,” Aunty Lee said firmly. “She wasn’t the type. And she wouldn’t have killed her son. You tell me she killed her husband, I say maybe. But not her son. And no way she would kill herself.”
“Hello, Aunty Lee.” Mark came in, followed by Selina.
“Aunty Lee, lucky for you more people didn’t eat your buah keluak yesterday!” Selina said.
Though Mark had comfortably addressed his stepmother as “Aunty Lee” since before she married his father, it sounded strange to Aunty Lee when Selina called her that. But then perhaps it only felt strange because Selina seemed to be enjoying it so much as she continued, “Aunty Lee, you could have poisoned everybody at the party. It could have been a mass murder. Aunty Lee, we could be coming to visit you in Changi Prison now!” Selina laughed and nudged Mark to share the joke. But Mark only said, “Hello, Cherril, how’s things?”
“Cherril, you look tired. Are you sick? You look like you’ve put on weight. Are you pregnant?” Even the thought of her stepmother-in-law in prison could not distract Selina for long from the threat of other women.
“That’s the first thing people always say. Food poisoning,” Aunty Lee said to the photograph of ML Lee on the wall by the wine room door.
“Let people say what they want. As long as they don’t come and make a lawsuit,” Nina said in the same direction.
“If it wasn’t food poisoning, then what? You’re not going to say there’s another murderer around?” Mark laughed.
> “I heard Sharon Sung tell the police it was probably suicide,” Aunty Lee said. “She said her brother was depressed from being sick and a burden and he talked about killing himself before. And then she said maybe her mother killed her brother because she couldn’t bear to watch him suffering, but then Dr. Yong said no way because Mabel knew that Leonard was going to be completely healed soon.”
“Must be one of the praying healing people said that, madam.” Nina wiped down an already clean counter.
“No, it was the slimy little doctor,” Aunty Lee said eagerly. “And I saw Sharon give him such a nasty look and he stopped talking.”
“I still don’t understand why anyone would risk eating something that smells funny and could kill them!” Mark laughed again.
“Some people eat fugu fish,” Cherril snapped. She flashed a glare at Mark that came and went so quickly Mark was not sure he hadn’t imagined it. He had recently shared photos of his first taste of fugu fish (350 Singapore dollars for a few translucent slices) at a top restaurant in Japan.
“Some people like taking funny risks,” Selina said, looking around the café meaningfully.
Cherril felt this was directed at her. But she was in no mood to spar with Selina. “Look, Mark, you said we could settle the handover today?”
“It’s not a handover,” Selina said quickly. “It’s a buyout. You’re buying out the business from Mark.”
The others looked at Mark but he only gave an exaggerated “Don’t ask me, she’s the boss” shrug. It was clear he had been instructed to let Selina do the talking.
“We have an estimate of how much the business is worth. That’s not including the profits that come with the wine dining program. We are not including wine dining as part of the deal because Mark is willing to come in and help with that, for a consultation fee, of course.”
“Frankly put, you need me,” Mark said. “I know every bottle of wine in the wine room with my eyes closed.”
A police car slowly drove past the road in front of Aunty Lee’s Delights, going deeper into the estate where their houses were. Cherril watched it, distracted. “I should be going.”