by Ovidia Yu
“Maybe she fell asleep in the office and told the girl she was working all night. Or maybe there was a deadline.” Aunty Lee knew this was unlikely even as she said it. She had heard GraceFaith say there were no cases pending; in fact Mabel had stopped taking on new clients since Leonard’s return to Singapore. And the office was closed the next day for Sharon’s partnership party. How long could a law firm survive without taking on new clients? Well, if the old clients were satisfactory, Aunty Lee supposed it could continue indefinitely. Perhaps Mycroft would know.
“Or maybe Sharon went to meet a boyfriend her parents disapprove of. Then GraceFaith told her parents and they scolded her and she got angry and killed her mother.”
“I don’t think so—and if that was the case, wouldn’t she have tried to kill her mother and father instead of her brother?” Aunty Lee thought back to what she had seen of Sharon Sung. She did not look like a girl who had a secret boyfriend. Of course different girls reacted differently to boyfriends. Some took more pride in their appearance; both triumphant hunter and trophy. Others dressed in their boyfriend’s old shirts and settled down to grow fat and happy. No, Aunty Lee was sure Sharon Sung did not have a secret boyfriend.
“And the day after her mother died, this Sharon went back to the office to work some more. Can you believe that?”
Aunty Lee could believe it all too well. The day after ML’s death she had also gone straight from his deathbed in the hospital to work in her kitchen. In her case, making labor-intensive orh kueh or yam cake. The amount of work and mindless focus needed to soak, slice, and chop dried mushrooms and dried prawns had got her through that terrible day. She felt she could understand Sharon Sung and she felt sorry for her. Keeping her mother’s law firm going was her way of paying tribute to her mother.
“It wasn’t an accident. That means either suicide or murder. Or suicide murder. But why choose to do it like that? And why—”
In Aunty Lee’s opinion there were different kinds of murder. The quick flash sparked by sudden rage and the slow stew, the boil that finally bubbled over. But which was this?
The answer had to lie with the people involved. People were drawn to certain ways of committing murder the same way they were drawn to certain foods. That was where she had to start, Aunty Lee thought. Often what people ate was not even a matter of conscious choice. They were drawn to a taste or a texture because on first encounter (even if they hated it then) it had impressed itself on them as how the world was and how it should forever be.
“I forgot to tell the police about the long-haired China woman,” Aunty Lee said. “I don’t think she was a guest because she didn’t know Mabel Sung. I saw Dr. Yong introducing them. I think they were talking about money. She wanted money from Mabel to finance something or because Mabel owed her for financing something . . . I couldn’t understand very much.”
“Madam, how do you know? You cannot understand Mandarin. You are imagining things again.” Even Nina had picked up more Mandarin during her years in Singapore than Aunty Lee had done during her whole life on the island.
“Mabel Sung’s Chinese is almost as lousy as mine. Edmond Yong translated for her, so I could understand those parts. The woman sounded like a PRC, she had that posh shwa-shew-shoo accent that the local Mandarin speakers don’t have. Does your Salim know who she is yet?”
“She is from the People’s Republic of China, here on a visitor’s pass.”
“I got the feeling Dr. Yong was trying to impress the long-haired woman. Men always have that slightly off-center look when they are trying to impress someone and trying to look as though they don’t care, don’t you think so? And he was very nervous about something.”
Or the man was anxious by nature or had not been worried about anything in particular that day. That was the difficulty in figuring out things about people you didn’t know well. The only solution was to find out more about them.
And there was a name Aunty Lee knew would not be on the list. The vaguely familiar young man at the gate looking for his friend had not been expected. He said his missing friend had been doing some work for Mabel Sung. Aunty Lee did not know what the young man’s name was but the friend he was looking for was named Benjamin Ng. That was a start.
“Benjamin Ng,” Aunty Lee said. “Why did his friend go there to look for him? Did he think his friend would be at the party?”
Nina had nothing to suggest.
Aunty Lee thought back. “I don’t think he even knew there was a party. He wanted to talk to Mabel Sung and he couldn’t get in to see her at her office, so he went to her house. For a moment I thought he was an undercover policeman, can you believe it?”
“Why, madam?”
“Timmy Pang. The handsome staff sergeant who used to be here . . .”
“Tim Pang got big promotion already, not here anymore. Madam, what’s wrong?”
“I remember Timmy Pang very well.”
The phone rang, it was Cherril. Could she and Mycroft come over for a moment? Of course Aunty Lee said yes. She was only surprised they had called to ask first. Neighbors usually just shouted from the gate if they wanted to drop in. Aunty Lee hoped Mycroft was not pressuring Cherril to drop the catering business. This was not purely selfish on her part. Aunty Lee thought Cherril and Mycroft were a good match but how many careers would Cherril think worth sacrificing for this marriage? And Aunty Lee was glad to have a chance to ask Mycroft about the running of law firms.
Inspector Salim was also thinking over the people Mabel Sung and her son had left behind as he drove himself home. From observing Henry Sung’s body language when he took a phone call, Salim suspected the older man already had someone on the side. It might not be relevant of course. And there had been tension between Sharon and Mabel’s assistant GraceFaith. But what had Edmond Yong been doing at the Sung Law office?
The easiest solution for everyone would be if this turned out to be an accidental buah keluak poisoning. The newspapers would run articles on the dangers of buah keluak alongside photos of Mabel Sung, new restrictions on importing it would be set up, and the whole business would be forgotten . . . along with Aunty Lee’s Delights.
At Aunty Lee’s house, Mycroft Peters was saying much the same thing to Aunty Lee.
She had served a dessert soup; rice-flour balls stuffed with peanut paste served in hot, sweet ginger broth that was both stimulating and soothing.
“You can’t tell that the rice balls came out of the freezer, can you?” Aunty Lee asked.
Instead of answering, Mycroft got straight to the point.
“You may be in trouble because of this buah keluak business.”
“I tell you, my chicken buah keluak had nothing to do with what happened to Mabel and her son. So many people ate it, I ate it myself, why nobody else got sick?”
“That’s not relevant. The Sungs are important people. Mabel Sung was a real pain but she had connections. If these people decide to make trouble for you, it could be very messy.”
“I thought they were supposed to be so Christian,” Cherril said sullenly. “Aren’t they supposed to forgive and forget?”
“People like them crush whatever they don’t like, so there is nothing left to forgive or forget.”
But he didn’t say anything about Cherril leaving the partnership. Aunty Lee guessed that had already been discussed and dismissed.
“My mother knew Mabel from school. She didn’t like her. Used to call her ‘porridge face,’” Mycroft said. “Mum said Mabel Sung had a dangerously elevated sense of her own importance and entitlement. Dad said as a lawyer she would bend the law to get what she wanted. I just don’t like the idea of you people coming up against her. You are nice people. You don’t know how people in her league fight.”
“Mykie, she’s already dead. There’s no reason for us to be scared of her now.”
“She’s dead but you don’t know what someone like her left behind. And this is confidential.” He lowered his voice, “But Mabel Sung cashed out her
personal insurance some months before she died. So she can’t have been killed for that.”
“She could have, if the killer didn’t know Mabel cashed it out and still hoped to get the money,” Cherril persisted.
“If you’re going through all the trouble of planning a murder, I’m sure you would check up on that,” Mycroft said genially. It was clear he didn’t take his wife’s murder-solving hobby very seriously. But it was also obvious that he was very fond of her. In Aunty Lee’s mind, that made up for a multitude of defects.
“How do you know Mabel Sung cashed out her personal insurance?”
Mycroft shook his head. Aunty Lee knew there was no use pushing him further.
“Okay, you don’t have to tell me how you know. But I heard Mabel Sung stopped taking on new cases and clients after her son came back to Singapore. Like that can also do business, ah?”
“If the firm has strong retainers—sure it’s possible. But Sung Law . . . let’s just say that it wasn’t in very good shape. They weren’t taking on cases because all the lawyers who could find anything else have jumped ship. There’s even talk of them filing claims that Mabel was financing her religious group with company money. Not that they’re going to get anything. Sung Law is verging on bankruptcy. Maybe Sharon Sung can pull things together, but if I were in her position I wouldn’t bother.”
Salim smelled his mother’s cooking as he got out of the lift. It reminded him it was “cook a pot of curry” day. This year was the first time Aunty Lee had missed coming round to the station with a pot (or several) of her curries in various degrees of chili heat.
At his mother’s flat there were several neighbors sitting around the table and they called out greetings to Salim as he took off his shoes at the door.
“Quick, go and wash and come and makan. Mrs. Kumar brought mutton curry and Vera brought petai.” Salim also saw his mother’s ayam masak merah, the golden-brown pieces of fried chicken in spicy tomato sauce that made him look around for—
“Yes, here is your tomato rice. In the kitchen because no space on the table. Go and wash, quick.” His mother was already setting out a plate with a mound of his favorite rice. They were laughing affectionately at him, these old neighbors who had become an extended family.
It felt good to be hungry knowing there was good food to come. Money was not everything. Salim thought of the Sungs in their grand empty house and was grateful for his humble family home. His mother would cook for him as long as she lived. All she wanted was for him to marry and have children before she died. He was the only child left at home now. He put the rich, dead people out of his mind as he washed himself. There were unvoiced problems at home too. The subject of his marriage and future, for one. But that could wait. At least till after the curry dinner.
Then his cell phone rang. His hands dirty, he let it go directly to voice mail: “I know who that man trying to get in the gate at the Sungs’ house reminds me of!”
13
Police HQ
At Aunty Lee’s Delights
“Are you going to the service for Mabel Sung? I suppose they haven’t asked you to cater it—ha ha.”
“Are you and Mark going?” Aunty Lee asked Selina. She suspected Mark and Selina happened to “just drop by” the shop to find out whether she had been closed down.
“I don’t think so. I don’t think Mabel Sung would remember me,” Selina said. Aunty Lee managed not to interrupt to say that the dead Mabel Sung would not remember anybody. Unless of course she was looking back from the beyond with all her memories intact, in which case she was as likely to remember Selina as anyone else.
“Anyway, I heard Sharon is planning everything. You know how people always put ‘No Donations’ when they announce such things, or ‘All donations will go to . . . whatever abandoned-cats or lame-dogs or sick-babies charity the dead person supported? Apparently Sharon didn’t. She’s just going to let her mother’s friends pay for her mother’s funeral.”
“Poor girl,” Aunty Lee said. “Maybe she forgot. It must be so difficult to plan a funeral for somebody who might have been either a murderer or victim. I know there’s supposed to be an Order of Service to cover every possible case, but I haven’t seen this one yet. Anyway, I’m sure all Mabel’s friends will want to help.”
“They’re a lot of old busybodies who want to see what’s happening.”
Aunty Lee thought that was probably true and all the more reason for being there.
“I should go. Just to show them there’s no hard feelings. After all, we all have to go one day.”
Though death was not something people usually prepared for, Aunty Lee liked to be prepared for everything. She was almost sidetracked into wondering what would be served at her own funeral, perhaps she ought to draw up a menu in advance (curry puffs, perhaps; a reminder to take pleasure in life while you still could) just to make things easier for Nina or Mathilda or whoever had to plan that day . . . but she pulled her mind away from this tantalizing thought. Always deal with the current funeral first, she reminded herself. There would be plenty of time to plan her own later.
In Commissioner Raja’s Office, New Phoenix Park Police HQ
“Tell them they can go ahead and have whatever services they want but we cannot release the bodies to them until we finish with them.”
“Sir, they are not happy about that. In fact they are not happy that we are performing autopsies without their permission and without letting them observe.”
“Say whatever you have to, to keep them happy. But we cannot release the bodies to them until we are finished with them.”
Commissioner Raja’s aide left his room to face the angry Sungs.
Commissioner Raja turned to look at Inspector Salim, who had sat quietly, apparently uninvolved, through the exchange.
“Satisfied?”
“Thank you. We just need to give the labs a bit more time to make us all satisfied.”
“That’s not the only reason I asked you here today. I hear you paid a visit to an NMP yesterday, Mycroft Peters?”
Commissioner Raja was one of those keeping an eye on Inspector Salim in the Bukit Tinggi Neighborhood Police Post. A great many influential people had homes in the area and it was vital that they felt safe in the hands of Inspector Salim. And now Nominated Member of Parliament Mycroft Peters, one of the most influential of those people, had complained.
“I got the feeling Mr. Peters was not comfortable with his wife talking to us, sir,” Salim said. “But he did not indicate he intended to make a complaint.”
“Did you get anything useful from the interview?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you expect to?”
Staff Sergeant Panchal had appeared confident she could get something useful from Cherril. Salim, who thought she was following up a hunch and believed it was important to empower his staff, had backed her up. But then back at the station the officer had admitted that her intention had been to record Cherril saying it might have been the buah keluak that killed Mabel and Leonard. In Panchal’s words, “Mrs. Peters is not a cook. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. All we had to do is get her to say maybe it was her fault and we can slam a fine on them and wrap up this stupid case. But you saw how her lawyer husband wouldn’t let her say anything.”
Salim did not say anything either. He would save it for Panchal’s assessment report.
But it was as Panchal’s supervising officer that Salim now said, “I had to follow up all possible leads, sir.”
Fortunately Panchal’s clumsy attempt at entrapment had not been too obvious. And the governing party would be pleased to have “nobody is above the law” so plainly and publicly demonstrated. Sometimes it was as important to show they were investigating as to actually investigate. Commissioner Raja waited for Salim to put it in words while Salim waited for Commissioner Raja to acknowledge that some facts were best accepted unspoken.
“What do you suggest I do with the complaint from Mycroft Peters that the police h
ave been harassing his wife at her home as well as at her place of work?”
“I will send an apology, sir. But, sir—it was too short a visit to ask questions. Nothing that could be interpreted as harassment.”
“Yes, I agree. The fact Mr. Peters took the trouble to file a complaint over this is interesting, but what you make of it is up to you. Putting that aside for the moment I also have a complaint from Staff Sergeant Neha Panchal, currently serving at Bukit Tinggi Police Post. She says that your close friendship and ties with residents in the area is obstructing you from carrying out your duties. She says she repeatedly recommended you shut down the café that provided the food that caused two deaths but you ignored all evidence and refused.”
“The forensic evidence is not in yet, sir. Aunty Lee’s Delights has been in operation for almost three years now and we have not received any other complaints about them. And, sir, may I point out Mr. Peters’s complaint regarding harassment at his wife’s place of work contradicts SS Panchal’s complaint?”
Commissioner Raja sighed. He not only had a law degree from a Singapore university but degrees in criminology and criminal psychology from Cambridge and Harvard. Though most of the time he did his best to conceal the facts of his education, it occasionally proved useful.
“She is an ambitious officer?”
“I believe she is trying to do what she thinks is right.”
“You don’t agree with her methods?”
“We don’t even agree on what’s right, sir.”
Commissioner Raja allowed himself a wry laugh. “Sorry to haul you down here. But best to get these things out of the way as fast as possible. And it’s easier to clear up things face-to-face.”
“Not a problem at all, sir. In fact it’s good I came by HQ.”
“Okay, what else do you have on your mind. I can tell there’s something.”
“It’s a ‘who’ actually. And she sent you these curry puffs.”
Elsewhere in New Phoenix Park