by Ovidia Yu
But Nina was kneeling on the floor in front of the kitchen sink with her arms behind her, beside the legs of Henry Sung, who was sitting on a chair.
“Nina, what—are you all right? Henry, you’re still here? I thought you left long ago!”
“It’s all your fault. If you didn’t come nosing around, everything would be all right.”
Sharon Sung was standing behind the kitchen door, which she now closed. And Sharon was holding Aunty Lee’s favorite Korin Suisin High-Carbon Steel Gyutou chef knife to Aunty Lee’s only (and therefore favorite) throat.
“Please be careful with that!” Aunty Lee said. “That is a carbon steel blade that can slice through a two-centimeter-thick pumpkin shell as though it is tofu!”
“Oh, now you’re scared, are you? It’s about time but it’s too late now.”
“That is not a stainless-steel knife, you know. It will tarnish if you don’t rub it with oil after washing it. The cloth I usually use for that is over there by the sink, behind Nina. Nina, are you all right, girl?”
Nina nodded silently. She looked scared but otherwise unhurt.
Aunty Lee’s mind seemed to have jammed. All she could think of was that the whirring from the wine cooler room’s air chiller was unusually loud. The door had probably been left ajar again. Customers seldom realized they had to turn the lock after leaving the room to close it properly. This had always annoyed Mark, who worried more about the temperature of his precious wine than about someone getting locked inside the cooler room by accident.
Aunty Lee shifted her attention away from the wine cooler room. The kitchen door leading to the back alley was also standing open.
“You left and came back through the back door?”
“Which I made sure to unlock. I thought those people would never leave!”
“You should not have come back.”
Sharon laughed, shaking the knife point against Aunty Lee’s neck. Aunty Lee winced at the sensation rather than from pain as the blade’s svelte point slid smoothly through her skin and drew blood.
“Sharon! Be careful!” Henry Sung spoke for the first time. “Blood, your fingerprints, these days everything is dangerous. Be careful, girl!”
Sharon ignored her father. “I want the bills you took. The ones you stole when you went to see GraceFaith in the office that night.”
“Did I?” Aunty Lee looked as though she was trying to remember. “I went to see her in your office, yes. But you gave me a cheque for the catering already, so no more bills.”
“The electricity bills. Mabel’s payment records. She was a fool to keep them in the office. Just now you said GraceFaith gave you something important when you saw her.”
“GraceFaith has relatives in Hong Kong. She told me she knows somebody that can get me the secret recipe for Tian Tian XO sauce.”
“Don’t talk rubbish.”
“It’s not rubbish. It is a very special sauce they never sell outside the restaurant and their employees have to sign contract saying they will not reveal the secret ingredient.”
“Anyway, that doesn’t matter now.”
Aunty Lee was counting on Sharon’s patience running out before she had meandered through her old-lady stories. A lifetime in the kitchen had taught her that impatience always made people careless. The problem was, Aunty Lee had no idea how to take advantage of this until . . .
“Sharon, I really didn’t mean to kill your mother and brother, you know,” Aunty Lee said piteously. She turned to look at Henry Sung, ignoring a second knife prick.
Sharon laughed. She pushed Aunty Lee roughly, making her fall onto the ground next to Nina.
“Dad, did you hear that? This stupid old fool thinks we’re after her for killing Mabel and Lennie!”
Henry Sung studied Aunty Lee, who tried to look like a helpless old woman struggling to get up.
“My leg—”
“Aunty, what happened to your leg?”
“My leg so pain. I don’t know what happened—”
“Shut up, both of you. And stay down there.” Sharon paced around the kitchen, still holding the knife.
“Don’t trust her,” Henry Sung said. Sharon ignored him. Aunty Lee thought that was a good sign, though she had no idea how to make use of it. She fluttered to Henry: “Henry you mustn’t be angry with me. I am so sorry. I swear I would never have done anything to hurt Mabel on purpose. But you know what buah keluak is like . . .”
“I know you didn’t kill Mabel. I killed Mabel,” Sharon snapped. She was clearly annoyed that Aunty Lee was paying more attention to Henry than to her.
Aunty Lee managed to look suitably shocked. “But you were telling everybody that I poisoned your mother!”
“And you went around saying you didn’t and making trouble. If you had just shut up everything would have been fine. And then now you turn around and say you thought you poisoned her all along. You stupid old woman.” Sharon laughed again. She sounded tired, Aunty Lee thought. She was probably very tired. That was not good. Tired people were often irrational and self-destructive. And in this case likely to be destructive of others too. “If you had just kept your loud mouth shut, everything would have been all right.
“I put the Algae Bomb powder in Len’s buah keluak before making Edmond bring it up to the house for him,” she went on. “I only meant to make him sick, really sick for once. To pay him back for lying around and making everybody run around doing things for him all the time. And I thought if Edmond ate it and got sick too, it would serve him right. He was so greedy, always sneaking around and pinching things. How was I to know that it was poisonous enough to kill people? It’s supposed to be for swimming pools, for goodness’ sake. And how was I to know my mother would go up to eat with him? She never ate with me. Anyway, it was her own fault. I’m not sorry.”
“You are saying you accidentally killed your brother and your mother,” Aunty Lee repeated as though she was slow-wittedly trying to understand this. Actually she was thinking fast of ways to distract Sharon, though she was not sure what good it would do. All the shops in the row were closed and no one would be coming around till midmorning. Nina was frowning with a faraway look in her eyes. Aunty Lee hoped she had not been hit in the head. And Henry Sung did not look surprised to hear that his daughter had murdered his wife and son.
“Sharon, if you tell people it was an accident, I’m sure they will understand.”
Sharon shook her head at Aunty Lee’s stupidity. “It turned out to be the right thing to do. It was the only thing to be done. Now, without Leonard draining us, I can start over with a clean slate and save the company. And you and your maid are going to help us.”
Henry Sung was shaking his head. But he had been trained all his life to obey his wife without question and now that she was gone he obeyed his daughter.
“Mabel set up the whole system. We just have to use it better than she did. People need healthy organs, we can give them healthy organs—for the right price.”
“You want to take and sell our organs?”
“Not yours, old woman. We can use Nina as the donor body. And we are going to set things up here so that everybody thinks that Nina killed you and disappeared with all your money. This way we get rid of you and nobody’s looking for her. Or rather, everybody will be looking for her as a criminal. Isn’t that brilliant?”
The girl was so desperate for approval, Aunty Lee almost felt sorry for her. “But why—”
“Don’t talk to her. She’s mad,” Nina said. Almost casually Henry Sung smacked her hard on the side of her head and she fell against Aunty Lee.
“Ow—my arm—twisted—” she moaned.
Henry Sung laughed. He was not a nice man, Aunty Lee thought. He probably kicked dogs when he thought nobody was watching. She put an arm around Nina and helped her sit up.
“Anyway, you don’t know anything,” Sharon said. “You don’t even know why I’m not sorry I killed my mother!”
“Why aren’t you sorry you killed your m
other?” Aunty Lee asked obligingly. What she had felt in Nina’s hand made her even more eager to distract Sharon and Henry. “Mabel was such a good woman. Such a dedicated lawyer and devoted mother.” She had heard so many people say this over the past couple of weeks.
Henry Sung nodded. “God rest her soul,” he said automatically.
Sharon stared at him. Aunty Lee could not tell whether the expression in her eyes was directed at her father or at the soul he spoke of.
“You have no idea what I had to put up with!” Sharon said. “Nobody knows. People fawned over her and she thought she was the Virgin Mary and the Second Coming all rolled up in one. And all the time I was the one staying back in the office doing all the work that she took on, just to look good. And did she ever say thank you? Did she even acknowledge who was doing all the real work? Ha! All she said was ‘You’re late again’ and ‘Can’t you wear some makeup or something. People will think you’re one of those butch lesbians.’”
“Girl, I’m sure nobody thinks that you—”
“Shut up, Dad.”
Henry Sung shut up, as he had been shut up by his wife throughout his married life.
“I thought Mabel making me partner meant she was finally realizing how much I’d done for her. I thought she was finally remembering she had two children, not just one useless son. I asked if I could look at the private company files and she said ‘why not?’ and left. Idiot that I was, I was actually pleased. I thought that showed how much she trusted me. But the truth is, she just didn’t care anymore.
“Mabel only made me partner because she was washing her hands of Sung Law. She dumped it on me like she dumped everything she couldn’t be bothered with.
“I started reading her stuff and I couldn’t believe it. I went through all her back files and ended up staying on in the office the whole night. It was all there. Sung Law was going bankrupt. You didn’t know that, did you? Nobody knew except Mabel. That was the last straw. She didn’t make me partner because she was proud of me. She just wanted to wash her hands of it, so she dumped it all on me. She told GraceFaith she was going to announce her retirement at the party and then she was going to cash out her insurance. She already got GraceFaith to make an appointment with the insurance people. Mabel was going to take Len on a holiday with the money that was left after his operation. Can you believe it? The firm is broke, we’re losing the house, and she’s showing him holiday brochures?
“Sung Law was mine, my inheritance. Everybody knew that. I worked for it, I earned it. And Mabel totally ruined it before handing it to me. What’s more, she had a second mortgage on the house. You didn’t know that, did you, Pa? There was even a note to herself, a reminder to tell me she was going to retire to look after Len, but she still forgot to tell me. She systematically stole from the firm, drained it to pay for Len’s medical expenses, then put me in charge to take the blame when things fell apart.”
“Poisoning her with my buah keluak wouldn’t help you keep your law firm or your house,” Aunty Lee managed to interject.
“I told you I only wanted to make Len throw up because the only thing that my mother minded was her precious Lennie feeling bad. She died because she shared Leonard’s food, though she never shared mine.”
“So she died because of your brother, Leonard,” Aunty Lee said. Henry Sung glanced at her suspiciously but the old woman was looking sympathetic, as though she understood what parents had to put up with. “But your poor brother couldn’t help being sick. Liver failure is a terrible thing. I had a friend who was on liver dialysis for two years and poor thing, she—”
“Bullshit!” Sharon snapped. “Don’t you see? My fool of a brother did it to himself. My parents paid a ton of cash for him to study in the States because he didn’t qualify for Uni here, but instead of getting a degree, he got addicted to heroin. That’s why his heart was failing, that’s how he got AIDS.”
“Long-term heroin use causes infection in the heart lining and valves,” Henry told Aunty Lee, “and HIV can be transmitted on needles. Lennie was never one of those gays.”
Sharon snorted.
“Of course not,” Aunty Lee said soothingly. Then, as though by natural thought progression, “What happened to Benjamin Ng? He helped design the ICU and operating theater at your house, right?” Aunty Lee asked.
“He was stupid. He thought it was an end-of-life facility for Dad and Mabel and he was so proud of it. His job was done, finished, but of course that idiot Edmond hadn’t paid him because he didn’t have the money and apparently Benjamin Ng came back to check something or change something and saw the body on life support.”
“You mean the dead man from China.”
“He wasn’t dead. That’s the whole point. He was a live donor. Anyway, Edmond freaked out. Benjamin Ng was threatening the deal, and if the deal didn’t go through there would be no money for anybody.”
“So Edmond Yong killed Benjamin Ng?”
Sharon shrugged. “He’s an idiot. He panicked and hit his friend on the head, then dragged him into the pool and drowned him. I only found out about it later because he got the PRC people to get rid of the body, and Wen Ling, his PRC contact, charged Mabel for it.”
And that had been the end of Patrick Pang’s friend. Aunty Lee wondered if Patrick would ever recover.
“But all that was nothing to do with me,” Sharon said. “Mabel was a fool to trust Edmond Yong. She should have dealt directly with Wen Ling like I did. In less than one week I set up Mabel’s system much better than Mabel did. Even Wen Ling said I was much better at it than my mother. Everything was working out fine and then that fool GraceFaith went and sabotaged everything. But the equipment is still there even if the body is dead. We just need a new live donor.”
Aunty Lee did not like the sound of that. “And Edmond, did you kill Edmond too?”
“Again, nothing to do with me. After Wen Ling met me, she decided it was much better working with me than with Edmond. Frankly Edmond was only good for babysitting my brother. He probably couldn’t even have done the transplants.”
“My friend Doreen Choo said Edmond Yong did her transplants.”
“I did Doreen’s transplants,” Henry Sung said. “They went very well. She was very pleased. I’m the one who did them. The boy was just a robot. My robot hands. I told him exactly what to do and he still had trouble. We need to find a better doctor.”
“But when you found out your mother was making money off the organ transplants—” Aunty Lee began.
“It wasn’t about the money!” Sharon snapped. “If Mabel had thought more about money, we wouldn’t have got into such a mess. She was rehearsing for Len’s heart transplant. She didn’t want to take any risks with him. She took risks with everything else but not with her precious son!”
“I told Mabel that God was testing us by asking us to sacrifice Leonard,” Henry said. “If only we trusted God, it would be all right. God would send a ram to be sacrificed instead. But Mabel tried to act on God’s behalf. She tried to provide the sacrificial ram herself. And now they are both dead.”
“Shut up, Dad,” Sharon Sung said.
“But that’s over now,” Aunty Lee pointed out gently, “and nobody is blaming you for anything. Why not just forget it and move on?”
“Move on with what? There’s no money left, why can’t anybody see that? But Mabel’s transplant setup works, even if she was too stupid to see that. We can easily make back enough to save the firm, save the house.”
It was all about money after all, Aunty Lee thought. For some people it always was—money and pride, because money was the only thing they valued enough to be proud of.
“I’m doing this for my mother, don’t you see? I’m going to make sure people remember her as the founder of Sung Law. And as my mother.”
“Wen Ling wanted to be paid for the organs your brother needed before the transplant operation, didn’t she?” Aunty Lee asked. “That’s why Dr. Yong brought her to the house the day of the party, to meet Ma
bel and prove they were rich people who could afford to pay. They agreed that Wen Ling would take the house if Mabel didn’t come up with the money.”
“Mabel would never have let her have the house,” Henry Sung said. “She would have come up with something. She always did.”
“How, by burning it down too.” As Aunty Lee said this she realized she should have made that connection long ago. That was how Dr. Yong’s debt-laden clinic had been disposed of.
“Father wanted to just turn off the power, let the man die, and get rid of the body. But then how were we going to pay for the mortgage on the house, etc.? That body was money. And we had already paid for it in a way.”
“You’ll have to find another doctor,” Aunty Lee said, “and the police have got the PRC gang.”
“So we’ll find another doctor. Not a problem. There are tons of doctors from India complaining online that they have medical degrees but Singapore won’t let them practice here. My father can supervise the operations. And who needs the PRC gang? I just need to find another living donor.”
“No—”
“Not you, old woman.”
Aunty Lee did not like the way Sharon looked at Nina.
“People will ask questions,” Aunty Lee said. A small part of her brain warned her to keep quiet and be terrified because this madwoman was going to kill her and Nina. But if that was true she had nothing to lose. “People saw you here today.”
“Everybody who was here saw us leave,” Sharon retorted. “And Doreen will swear we were at her house all night.”
“Nowadays,” Aunty Lee observed, “forensic pathologists can take one look at dead bodies and tell how the people were murdered!”