Aunty Lee’s Deadly Specials

by Ovidia Yu

  Nina might laugh at Aunty Lee’s passion for crime shows imported from America, but Aunty Lee was certain some of their technology had to be founded on fact.

  “She’s right, you know,” Henry Sung said. “Girl, maybe we should just—” He made a vague gesture that Aunty Lee could not interpret. But Sharon was not to be stopped.

  “Just do nothing like you’ve been doing nothing all your life? If you had stopped Mabel’s mad schemes, we wouldn’t be in this mess now. So just keep your mouth shut. Have you got the needles?”

  “Now?”

  “No, next week. Or maybe next month. Just get them, will you?”

  As her father went to obey her orders Sharon turned back to Aunty Lee, “Of course they can do all the tests on you they want. And of course they’ll find out that you were murdered—by your maid, who stole all your money and disappeared. Mark and Selina will get your house and money like they’ve always wanted and everybody will live happily ever after.”

  Aunty Lee’s attention was drawn again to the slightly open wine room door. Had she heard something or was it wishful thinking? Her eyes moved to the portrait of ML Lee on the wall by the wine room door. ML Lee smiled, benignly protective. ML would not like her killed in front of him by these people, Aunty Lee thought. This reminded her that she did not want to be killed by these people.

  “Dad, what are you doing? Give me that!”

  “What is it?” Aunty Lee asked, pleased (and surprised) to find her voice quite steady. She could be scared later. Right now she had to make sure she had a “later.”

  “Digoxin,” Henry Sung said with a trace of professional pride. “Digitalis is no longer the first choice of treatment for congestive heart failure, but nobody will be surprised if you have a heart attack due to digoxin overdose.”

  “I thought you were going to make it look as though Nina killed me. Where would Nina have got hold of digoxin?”

  “Nobody is going to worry about that,” Sharon said. Almost mesmerized, Aunty Lee watched her tilt the syringe and depress the plunger to expel any air.

  “People will ask.” Henry put a hand on Sharon’s wrist. “Raja will ask questions. You don’t know how much trouble that man made about closing this place. He refused to believe Rosie Lee could have poisoned anybody accidentally or on purpose. He said he would sooner believe his own mother was a murderer. I had to get a former cabinet minister and former president of SINDA to put pressure on him before he gave in. And then he tried to resign. Over a simple kitchen closure!”

  “Why SINDA?”

  “The Singapore Indian Development Association. All the important Indians and those who want to get anywhere are members. But I tell you, if anything happens to this one, Raja Kumar is going to dig into it. And nowadays they can run tests to show what people died of.” Henry shook his head.

  Dear Raja Kumar, Aunty Lee thought. He had got himself into trouble for her and not even told her about it. Aunty Lee felt bad. But she would thank him if she got out of this alive.

  And Henry Sung?

  “You’re not already taking digitalis, are you?” Sharon asked Aunty Lee.

  “No. My heart is very healthy. Checkup last week showed no problems at all,” Aunty Lee said brightly, though she had not been for a medical checkup for years, not since her husband died.

  “Dad, you are so stupid sometimes.” Sharon slammed the syringe onto the counter, snapping the needle. Aunty Lee winced. But how Sharon handled sharp objects was the least of her problems right then.

  “You’re such a hopeless case! Why did you pick that of all things?” Sharon shouted at her father.

  “Why are you shouting at me? You are the one that told me to get something that would kill her fast! Anyway you should just leave her here and start a fire. Then even if they run tests it will show she died of smoke inhalation after being knocked out. Then they will blame it on the maid. Especially if the maid disappears with all her money. We should find what money she has here and take it. And from the house also. You should go there and take the maid’s clothes and passport to show that she ran away after killing her boss.”

  “There might be a fire alarm?” Sharon said. “Is there?”

  “Of course,” Aunty Lee said. “Kitchen regulations.” She looked at the kitchen she was so fond of . . . the storage cubicles specially designed for her dried goods, spices, and oils . . . the neat stacks of scraped but unwashed plates.

  “She’s bluffing,” Henry Sung said. “Where’s the fire alarm, do you see it anywhere? In these small places they never bother. Plus in a kitchen with all the cooking and burning and smoke inside and all the smokers with their beer outside, if she really had a fire alarm it would never stop ringing. Just tie her up, start the fire, and we get out of here with the servant.”

  Aunty Lee said nothing. But she was offended by the suggestion of smoke and burning in her kitchen. Still, it was better to feel offended than scared.

  “Tie her up with what?” Sharon looked around the kitchen space. “I already used the ketupat raffia to tie up the maid.”

  “Or just lock her in. There must be a toilet or something. Nobody will be able to tell whether the door was locked from the inside or the outside. They will think that she locked herself in to escape from the maid and the maid started the fire and ran away.”

  Aunty Lee did not say anything but she threw a long, shifty glance in the direction of the wine room. Sharon’s eyes lit up.

  “In there!” Sharon pulled Aunty Lee to her feet and started dragging her toward the wine room.

  30

  Hot Save

  One advantage to being of a certain age is that people expect you to be physically weak. Aunty Lee stumbled feebly and fell against the wall of storage cubicles containing jars of spices and oils.

  Sharon Sung backed into the wine room, pushing the door open with her shoulder as she pulled Aunty Lee away from the counter she was steadying herself on.

  “Come on, hurry up. Damn, the light in here’s not working—”

  The crash of breaking glass and Sharon’s cry of pain startled Aunty Lee. But not so much that she forgot Henry Sung, who left Nina to see what had happened to his daughter. Aunty Lee twisted open the jar she had grabbed (with some exasperation at Nina’s strong fingers that had twisted it shut).

  “Henry,” Aunty Lee called out, “over here!”

  Automatically Henry Sung turned to Aunty Lee. She threw the contents of the jar in his face.

  “Hey, what—” the old man cried out, startled. He wiped down his face with his hands, his eyes tearing. Then he screamed, “It’s burning me!” He reeled away, bumping into a table and knocking over a chair before collapsing to his knees, moaning and sobbing. He would not be making any more trouble for a while.

  Aunty Lee hurried to the wine room, then stopped cautiously at the door. Should she just lock it and call for help?

  “Madam! Madam!”

  “Nina, wait. I have to find that crazy girl!”

  “Untie me first, madam!”

  “She said the light inside is not working. I think a bottle fell down and hit her on the head. But just now I thought I heard someone inside. And why was the door open, did you open it?”

  “Madam, untie me!”

  Now Aunty Lee definitely heard someone in the wine room, “Who’s there—Cherril, is that you?”

  “Hi, Aunty Rosie.” It was Mark. “There’s nothing wrong with the light. I unscrewed the bulb. I was inside when they came in through the back and I didn’t want to interrupt, so I just kept quiet—”

  “What did you do to Sharon?” Aunty Lee asked Mark. “Where is she?”

  “I just hit her with a bottle. On the side of her head. She’s somewhere on the floor. I don’t think she’s really hurt, but there’s glass—and wine—all over the floor so I’m not sure.”

  “You came to take more bottles, right?” Nina turned on him. Being threatened by death had a way of making your employers less frightening. “You are the one who
took the bottles and then Madam Silly blame me! Because you don’t want to pay Madam Rosie and Madam Cherril!”

  “Oh, Mark.” Suddenly Aunty Lee was teary and trembling with relief. It seemed to her that ML’s portrait seen over Mark’s shoulder was smiling with relief too. “Your father would be so glad you are exactly as you are!”

  Mark put his arms around her and gave her a big hug. “I heard what Sharon said about Selina and me wanting Dad’s stuff. It’s not true.”

  Aunty Lee’s “Selina?” was slightly muffled by Mark’s comforting shoulder.

  “No. Not all the time, anyway,” Mark admitted. They both laughed.

  That was when Inspector Salim kicked open the kitchen door and rushed in. Once he saw Nina, he stopped and took a deep breath.

  “If this was some kind of joke, I’ll kill you myself,” Salim said to Nina.

  At least she looked glad to see him, Aunty Lee thought.

  “What took you so long?” Nina demanded. “I left my phone on for so long the battery is dead!”

  After Salim released her from a most inappropriate but totally satisfactory hug and went back to his car to radio for support, Nina kept watch with a pair of lethal-looking rotary barbecue skewers while Aunty Lee tied the dazed Sharon’s hands behind her with bamboo and reed strings that were soaked and rinsed and all ready to tie up bundles of nonya rice dumplings. Modern cooks used raffia, but anyone who had ever struggled with knotted bamboo and reed twine knew their tenacity. It seemed unnecessary to tie up Henry Sung. He was sitting on the floor against the wall, moaning, with tears running down his face, and ignoring the confused stream of mumbled complaints and commands coming out of Sharon.

  “What did you do to my father? Help him! Call an ambulance! Dad, don’t just sit there—do something! You better let us go or I’m going to sue you until you wish you are dead! Oh God, my head hurts.”

  “What did you do to him?” Mark asked. “Is he going to be all right?”

  “Naga king chili oil,” Aunty Lee said. “My best home-dried and fried chili-oil concentrate.” Two or three drops of the prized oil was enough for most dishes. A liquid potent enough to burn careless fingertips . . . even now Aunty Lee winced at the thought of what it could do to the eyes and lips.

  “Nina, take some coconut milk from the fridge and rub on his face.” Coconut was an all-purpose salve, working especially well to soothe chili burns.

  “Salim is back. I can see the car. I go and talk to him first.”

  “You knew exactly what Wen Ling’s people in China were doing, didn’t you? You put them in touch with people willing to pay for transplant organs and they were supposed to pay you enough to save your house and the law firm.”

  “It would have worked too, if you hadn’t come nosing around. It was good for everybody. We could have saved a lot of people’s lives!” Henry Sung wailed.

  “And what about that poor man?”

  “That poor man had no job, no money, no prospects. He could have been hit by a car and killed and it wouldn’t have made a difference to anybody on the planet. He was willing to sell a kidney for money and people die on the operating table all the time. We gave his family compensation money, more than he would ever have earned if he survived,” Henry Sung said. “Alive he was worth nothing.”

  Aunty Lee decided it would not hurt to let the man burn a while longer. She put away the coconut milk.

  “Maybe you should take out an ad in the papers,” Mark said to Aunty Lee, “telling people there was never any poison in your buah keluak, that a murderer who wanted to cover up killing people to make money off illegal organ transplants framed you and your restaurant.”

  That sounded too complicated even for Aunty Lee. Singaporeans didn’t like complications around their food or in their food. Besides . . .

  “Newspaper advertisements cost a lot of money,” Nina said, coming back in.

  Things were getting back to normal, Aunty Lee thought. “We’ll just open and see if anybody comes,” she said.

  31

  Open for Business

  “Well, the crowd in here is not bad tonight,” Mark said. He had finally completed the transfer of the wine business to Cherril Peters.

  Being hailed as a hero suited him. Aunty Lee had made much of the fact that Mark had saved her life, and no one asked why he had sneaked back into the shop. Selina must have known. After all she had been waiting in the car outside. But she didn’t say anything either.

  Aunty Lee’s Delights was full of customers again.

  Not only were people coming back, they were all ordering Aunty Lee’s Deadly Special, the chicken buah keluak, and taking photos of themselves “risking” their lives.

  “They are crazy,” Nina said. But these were paying customers, so she said it indulgently.

  As far as Aunty Lee was concerned, a traditional dish had been given a new lease on life and that had to be good.

  Aunty Lee’s Delights was extra-safe that night too, because the very police officer who had kicked in the back kitchen door leading to the alley was stationed by it, well supplied with the best samples of what the busy, happy cooks thought were their best dishes.

  Of course another reason Salim was more comfortable in the kitchen was that his big boss, Commissioner Raja, was in the main restaurant and seemed determined to stay until he saw Aunty Lee safely home.

  “You don’t have to play security guard here all night. If you can’t eat any more you should go now,” Nina told him as she saw his appetite flagging.

  “Of course Salim can eat more!” Aunty Lee swept by, depositing a dish of gelatinous blue rice cakes by him as she passed. “We haven’t fed him for days!”

  “I surrender.” Salim laughed helplessly. “But I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”

  “She will be happy that you are full,” Nina promised. “But I will pack the pulot tai-tai cakes up for you to bring home. The butterfly pea flowers for the coloring came from the old vines behind the police post, your Sergeant Panchal helped collect for us. She is not too bad when she not trying to show off for you. You can give your mother for breakfast, they will last two, three days.”

  Salim did not try to digest all Nina’s information at once, but he accepted the blue cakes along with a container of kaya, or coconut jam, for dipping them in. “Thank you. My mother likes homemade kaya very much. And speaking of my mum, she wants to meet you.”

  “What?”

  “Come for lunch at my mum’s place this Sunday.”

  “No, Salim.”

  “Nina, we are alive. We should take full advantage of being alive before it is too late. I keep thinking, if Mark had not been there—”

  “Salim, don’t—”

  Nina knew that if she had died, Salim would have grieved in a most genuine and romantic way and everyone would have pitied him and left flowers and candles for her. But alive, they would get very little sympathy or support. Restrictions on foreign domestic workers marrying were severe. And as a police officer, Salim must be only too aware that many of Singapore’s laws and restrictions equated “racial harmony” with “Chinese majority,” and “traditional values” with “Christian morality.”

  “It’s just a lunch. My mum knows you are always cooking for me. She wants to cook for you.”

  Nina wavered. “I have to check with Aunty Lee first.”

  “Don’t worry. Giving domestic workers their day off is mandatory now, remember? If Aunty Lee won’t let you come, I’ll arrest her!”

  “Mycroft’s here,” Cherril said when the café was almost empty.

  Mycroft had asked Cherril to wait at Aunty Lee’s Delights till he came to walk or drive her home. It was probably safer for a woman to walk alone along the well-lit housing estate streets of Singapore than almost anywhere else in the world, but Cherril was smart enough to be appreciative. And Aunty Lee had made up a bento-box dinner for Mycroft.

  “Any news? Have you had your dinner yet? We packed up something for you in case. Just some leftov
ers. Do you know what’s going to happen to Sharon Sung yet?”

  “No I haven’t had dinner,” Mycroft admitted. “Oh, thank you—I was going to get some cup noodles at home—”

  “This is much better for you than cup noodles,” Cherril said. “Why don’t you eat it here and tell us what you heard? Aunty Lee won’t mind waiting a little while, right?”

  Aunty Lee, all agog, had already set up a serving place for Mycroft and plunked herself down across from it. “Cherril, sit down so that Mycroft can eat and tell us. Raja, don’t pretend you’re not interested. Come here and listen to what happens to murderers after your people bring them in!”

  Both Henry Sung and his daughter, Sharon, had been charged with murder, attempted murder, and a host of other things Cherril dismissed as unimportant. Given they all paled in importance next to the attempted murder of Aunty Lee, Aunty Lee agreed.

  Mycroft said that Henry Sung had been calm, even genial. He smiled, waved, and told reporters, “Her mother could probably have got us off with no problem, but now we’ll have to wait and see what’s going to happen. I don’t have as much influence as people think.” Henry Sung did not seem to feel any remorse for what he had done.

  “It could be part of his defense. He’ll probably say his late wife was responsible for everything and he and Sharon were only trying to cover up for her.”

  Asked about Mabel and involvement in the black-market organs, Henry had said, “You people don’t understand about Mabel. She did it for our son. Any parent would do that. If it was your son who was dying, maybe you would be able to understand.”

  He could not grasp that other people had lost their children because of his wife’s actions. Perhaps people other than family were not quite real to him.

  “I suspect he still thinks he and his friends can smooth everything over once public interest has died down. But that’s not going to happen. GraceFaith came to testify at the preliminary hearing. Sharon started shouting and screaming she was going to kill her and had to be taken away,” Mycroft said.