Aunty Lee’s Deadly Specials

by Ovidia Yu

  “It’s not a simple operation.” Cherril had read up on the subject after Aunty Lee told her what they had learned at Benjamin Ng’s flat.

  “For one thing, obtaining a donor heart is very difficult because it must be a heart in good condition, matching his tissue type as closely as possible to reduce the chances of rejection and belonging to someone who is brain-dead and stable on life support.

  “His blood would be channeled through a heart-lung bypass machine while the surgeon works on his heart. This machine supplies his body with oxygenated blood during the procedure. To save time the donor heart may be stitched in place on top of his own heart. It’s a very complicated procedure. Not something you would risk doing in a fly-by-night clinic. You would need a full operating team and anesthesiologist. You would need equipment and monitors . . .”

  Aunty Lee thought of the receipts they had found. “How would you put together a surgical team?” she wondered.

  “Nobody would put together a team to operate on Leonard Sung,” Nina said. “The boy was already in such bad shape, all the drugs poisoning his body.”

  That reminded Aunty Lee of another thought chain she had been following. The poison in buah keluak was cyanide. If murder in this case was meant to be blamed on the buah keluak, then likely that was what had been found in the dish. But though cyanide was also found in almonds, apple seeds, and tobacco products, there was likely to be too small an amount to do any harm. Where else? Insecticides and pesticides, most likely.

  Thanks to Nina’s online skills, Aunty Lee had been able to find out everything she wanted to know about cyanide except where to get it.

  “Did the pool at the Sungs’ house look green to you when we were there?” Aunty Lee asked Cherril.

  “Wasn’t it blue? Water is always blue, right?”

  It irritated Aunty Lee when Cherril let what she thought she knew override what she actually saw.

  “If it was green that means they had algae bloom.” Then again Cherril occasionally came up with gems like this that put everything else into context. Aunty Lee was a rabid autodidact with a bad memory but Cherril went through life picking up nuggets of information without stopping to process them.

  “The pond at Mycroft’s parents’ house got algae bloom last year. The water turned completely green. They kept asking the gardener to change the water but it kept turning back green until they got somebody to come and do an Algae Bomb. I didn’t believe it would work. It sounded like one of those lose-weight-without-dieting or whiten-your-skin-without-peeling advertisements, but then it really worked! Just one night and the next day the water was not green anymore. But then of course all the fish died.”

  “Really, in just one night . . .” But Aunty Lee was not thinking about the fish. “What did they do?”

  “They just added the Algae Bomb. I think it came in a tub of powder. They came and added it to the water and warned us not to drink out of the pond . . . not that we would have anyway. It was very effective but they said the algae would come back, it’s just how nature works if you have sun and you have oxygen in your water. Actually it means that you have a healthy environment, it just doesn’t look very good. I tried to ask what chemicals they used. I’m sure there’s a cheaper way to do it on our own. You just need some kind of poison, right? I asked them, can’t I just pour in a bottle of Dettol or dump in some cockroach pellets? They said it’s more complicated than that. I can understand it’s more complicated if you want to kill the algae without killing the fish, but since the fish died anyway I don’t see what’s the big deal.”

  Aunty Lee’s mind was working furiously. She knew there was something significant here. She couldn’t say what it was yet but she knew this was a trail worth following. “Nina?”

  “Yes, madam?”

  “Nina, can you find out for me who treated the water in the Sungs’ pool? And when it was done?”

  Nina knew better than to ask Aunty Lee why. But doing anything was better than doing nothing. Since the café kitchen had been closed she had already cleaned the café and the bungalow as thoroughly as she did before Chinese New Year and even waxed all the teak cupboards.

  “It’s illegal to sell rat poison containing cyanide in Singapore. But people always say it’s the only kind that works. They usually get friends to bring it down for them from Malaysia.”

  “But you can’t even buy rat poison in Singapore,” Cherril pointed out. “Mycroft’s parents had an awful problem with rats one time. None of the traps they bought worked and it’s illegal to use rat poison unless you are a licensed exterminator.”

  It was very unusual to find someone so law-abiding, Aunty Lee thought. She wondered whether it came from being married to an NMP.

  “My friend’s boss also got rats,” Nina said. “She asked her sister to get her rat poison from Malaysia. Just put inside a plastic bag with other shopping things, no problem. They didn’t know how many rats they got because they only see them at night. Then sometimes see one or two running past. But then the rats ate the poison in the night, then the next day they went out into the garden to die. Almost twenty of them! Anyway, it was cyanide, probably from rat poison. It would be colorless but come with a bitter taste.”

  “Can you find out whether the Sungs were using Algae Bombs or rat poison or anything else with cyanide?”

  “No need to ask, ma’am. That day underneath the table with the plates and cutlery got the bottles for the pool cleaner. I asked Madam Sung where can I put them and she told me, just leave them there.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Anyone could have killed them!”

  “How do I know that their pool cleaner got cyanide?”

  Aunty Lee amended her thought: Anyone who had known there was cyanide-based powder under the buffet table could have killed them.

  And Mabel herself had known the bottle was there—asked Nina to leave it there . . .

  The women who thrive in life and business are the ones who know how to make the best of circumstances. More important, they know when a battle is no longer worth fighting. Was that why Mabel Sung had decided to kill herself and her son? Because she did not want him to suffer anymore?

  That might work in theory but it did not fit with the impression Aunty Lee had got of Mabel Sung that day and Aunty Lee trusted her own impressions more than other people’s clichés. That was the problem.

  There was also the question of why Mabel Sung, with all her connections, had not been able to push through a legal transplant for her precious son.

  Cherril said Mycroft had already gone through this with her.

  In Singapore, the Transplant Ethics Committee must approve living-donor kidney transplants and approval was only given after thorough investigation showed the donor understood and was not being forced into the operation. Otherwise, organ trading was banned in Singapore and in many other countries to prevent the exploitation of “poor and socially disadvantaged” donors who might be forced into selling body parts.

  “He said poor people are forced to sell their time and health and self-respect, but they have a chance to earn back these things, but they can never earn back a kidney.”

  Aunty Lee knew the laws. Middle-class Singaporeans prided themselves on knowing that even the wealthiest and most powerful were subject to laws that protected the poorest and most overlooked. Only a year ago there had been a scandal when the executive chair and head of one of Singapore’s top family businesses was fined and publicly shamed in the newspapers and social media for arranging to pay over twenty-two thousand Singapore dollars for a kidney flown into Singapore by its Indonesian donor. Aunty Lee knew the gentle and generous man had been as desperate for a kidney as its would-be donor was for money, and was not sure justice had been served in this case. Though both parties had entered knowingly and willingly into the agreement, they were both fined. And as the poor (in every sense) donor obviously did not have ten thousand Singapore dollars, he spent twelve months in jail, which did not help his own health or family financ
es. Aunty Lee reflected that laws designed with the best intentions to protect people could hurt them badly if applied inflexibly. It was like someone trying to make kaya and blindly stirring coconut cream into their eggs because the recipe said so without noticing one of the eggs was bad.

  “To do it properly you must examine every egg,” Aunty Lee said out loud. “Egg by egg. That’s the only way to do it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They should examine case by case,” Aunty Lee said. “Not anyhow say one law fits all.”

  “Mycroft says one law should apply to everybody.”

  “But even if you have the organs, how does the law decide who gets them? It’s like playing God. Throw a dice, pick at random,” Aunty Lee said. “As long as the people can pay.”

  Cherril started to protest but simultaneously defending the laws of God and Singapore confused her, and Aunty Lee continued: “There’s no right way to make some decisions. But if nobody decides, then we are all stuck and everybody suffers. So somebody makes a choice, any choice. And then we all follow. If it was the wrong choice, then somebody else makes another choice. Otherwise we are like people sitting in a restaurant without ordering. Or every time ordering the same white porridge because when you were a baby you were fed white porridge and you know it is safe.”

  Aunty Lee got up to stir the tau suan in the slow cooker. Some people took long, slow walks when trying to work out problems. Aunty Lee preferred to put her problems in the slow cooker. She stirred in a slurry of sweet-potato flour to thicken the sweet soup before ladling out three bowls and topping them with crispy dough balls. Most people used cut-up dough fritters but Aunty Lee preferred to fry up tiny dough puffs that stayed light and crispy longer.

  “Eat. Machines and people cannot work without fuel.” And money was fuel that someone might kill for. “Maybe I should go and visit Doreen Choo,” Aunty Lee said thoughtfully. “We didn’t really get to catch up that day and after all I haven’t seen her for so long.”

  16

  Doreen Choo’s Flat

  “Quick, Nina! Go and see what do we have ready that we can bring to give to my friend Doreen. I think her teeth are not very good, so nothing too hard that might make her teeth come out. She is the kind that will make me pay her dentist bill and then go and get extra whitening and straightening and what-not-ing done!”

  Aunty Lee had decided to pay a visit to Doreen Choo. But paying uninvited, unannounced visits made her nervous. Nina calmly prepared a tingkat of hot herbal chicken soup (defrosted in the microwave but no one would be able to tell).

  “You don’t have to go, madam.”

  “Of course I do. Besides, with all these people canceling their bookings, what am I going to do if I just hang around?”

  Nina knew very well what Aunty Lee would do. She would fuss and fret and get in the way of Nina, who was doing her best to prepare and flash-freeze as much of their freshly purchased produce as possible. They had large enough storage freezers and not too much had been wasted yet. But even so, what was the point? Who knew how long people would continue to be afraid of nothing? However things turned out, Nina would get more done without Aunty Lee playing detective in the kitchen.

  “But how can I just go and drop in on her and say what—‘Hello, I just came to see whether you are having an affair with Henry Sung and can I come to your prayer and healing meeting because I want to find out who took over after Mabel died?’”

  “You should go,” Nina said decisively. “Give her the soup. Tell her you got nothing to do here because nobody is coming to your shop anymore. Say you miss your husband and pretend to cry a bit. Ask her to pray for you. She will ask you to go to the meeting with her.”

  “Nina, you are devious.”

  “You should be happy I am looking out for you, madam. I will go and put the soup in the car. I got the address already, I will drive you there.”

  Mrs. Doreen Choo lived in an apartment in Taman Serasi, opposite the Singapore Botanic Gardens. If only the Botanic Gardens were air-conditioned, it would have been lovely to walk through them and up to Garden Vista. Instead Aunty Lee enjoyed being driven past the huge old trees and luxuriant greenery and got Nina to drop her, the nourishing herbal chicken soup, and two of Aunty Lee’s Tasty Tarts (Pineapple) at the lobby of Doreen Choo’s building. Few could resist the buttery pastry encasing Aunty Lee’s homemade pineapple-and-coconut jam. Indeed it was the overwhelming number of Chinese New Year orders for her pineapple tarts that had prompted the conversion of Aunty Lee’s baking hobby into a business. The tarts still served a very important purpose. Nobody turned away a visitor bearing pineapple tarts.

  “When you want me to come and pick you up, madam?”

  “I will call for you. If I don’t call for you after one hour, then you come and wait outside.”

  “I keep the doors closed because I’m very afraid of dust,” Mrs. Doreen Choo explained when Aunty Lee arrived at her apartment. She opened the front door herself. Aunty Lee noticed a note of smug, querulous martyrdom women adopted when living with a man they wanted to show off.

  “I can’t get my new maid to come and open the door. She’s scared of the doorbell. I thought it was a good idea to get a maid from Myanmar. If she doesn’t understand the language here, she can’t have boyfriends and get pregnant and forfeit my deposit, right? And she cannot run away because she won’t know where to go. At least that’s what I thought. But this girl is so stupid she doesn’t understand anything I tell her to do. I have to speak so slowly and repeat myself so many times and she still doesn’t understand me. Sometimes I just want to throw something at her. But I have to control myself, or afterward kaypoh neighbors will report me, and I’ll end up in the newspapers holding my handbag in front of my face. I can’t even pronounce her name properly and I end up calling her ‘Girl’ and I feel like one of those slave owners!”

  Aunty Lee could tell that Doreen Choo was feeling awkward.

  “What is your name?” Aunty Lee asked the shy girl looking round the kitchen door.

  “Madam, my name is Hae Mar Hinin Hnin Khine.”

  “What name does your family call you at home?”

  “At home they call me Daisy because I like to learn English.”

  “Can we call you Daisy?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Rosie, you’re wonderful. I don’t know how you do it,” Doreen Choo said once the girl had left them, taking the soup and sweets with her. Aunty Lee accepted the tribute as her due and advanced into the apartment.

  “Your apartment is beautiful,” Aunty Lee said. This at least was honest enough. It was not necessary to add that she did not like it. The furniture was all of good quality and all visible surfaces, including the artificial flowers, were dust-free. The apartment was large but crowded. Aunty Lee knew the Choos had downsized from a huge east-coast mansion when the children went away to university and it looked as though Doreen had crammed as much into it as would fit.

  “Your children don’t live here with you?”

  “No. When my husband sold the old house he bought them one apartment each, and of course there is space here for them if they want to stay here. But my son straightaway went and sold his. He wants to live in some old rented shophouse. This narrow, narrow space and three floors high. Cannot even put in a lift for me because it is conservation property. What for? I ask him. There is so much room here. What does an old woman like me needs so much room? But that one won’t listen. He says he needs his privacy. What privacy? I asked him. I am his mother, okay. There is nothing about you I haven’t seen, okay. But what to do. Sheng wants his independence. At least he comes back to see me. The others all cannot be bothered. I have to find ways to look after myself now. Cannot depend on them.”

  Doreen’s vague garrulousness told Aunty Lee there was definitely something on her mind she didn’t want to reveal but was dying to tell.

  The Myanmar maid brought tea things. A very nice bone-china set with a pattern of light yellow vine
leaves over the white of the china and accented by gold filigree highlights. Like Mrs. Choo herself, parts of the pattern and filigree had worn away with time and there were nibbles around the edges of the saucers and rims of the cups.

  “Very nice,” Aunty Lee said, thinking that one advantage of failing eyesight was that one did not notice signs of decay.

  “I got this set in England years ago. It is imperial bone china, you know. Can you believe my children wanted me to sell it? This is something that should remain in the family, don’t you think so? Young people these days don’t know how to appreciate good things.”

  “Your children don’t want to keep these in the family?”

  “They don’t care for such things. Now all they want is nonbreakable, machine-washable . . .”

  “Young children,” Aunty Lee guessed. She had to get off the subject of Doreen’s children and find a way to get invited to the prayer and healing session before Nina got there.

  Mrs. Choo shook her head. “Noisy, stubborn children. They spoil them. It is my late husband’s fault. He spoiled his daughters, now they are spoiling their own children. From the time they were young I could see they were getting spoiled, now look at how they are treating me. Their own mother and I am living here alone and nobody bothers to drop in and see how I am.”

  “Are they in Singapore?”

  “Two of them. One of them went to America to study, next thing you know she got boyfriend, got married, never came back. I warned him, I warned my husband, don’t let her go. But that man never listened to me.”

  Aunty Lee began to get an inkling of why Doreen Choo’s children never came by to visit her.

  “But at least you can get around on your own, right? And your eyes are still so good. I have so much trouble seeing these days.” Aunty Lee blinked confusedly and almost tipped her teacup off the edge of the table. Fortunately Doreen grabbed it in time. And even more fortunately she leaned forward to whisper: “My eyes—same problem. I had cataracts. That stupid family doctor never bothered to warn me this could happen. I thought I was going blind, so what to do? Just pray and see what happens, right? That fool doctor never told me anything. And those children of mine never even bother to find out whether anything can be done. Finally I let Mabel drag me to one of her meetings. Do you know about those meetings?” Doreen’s tone was cautious.