Meddling and Murder

by Ovidia Yu

  Aunty Lee watched Jonny Ho run his eyes over Nina. Without saying or doing anything improper, he made it clear he was interested in her as a property worth acquiring. Aunty Lee felt worried. She hoped Nina would not try to forget Salim by falling for someone else. But Nina was looking bored and stupid. It was the look she wore when Selina was lecturing her. That was all right then, Aunty Lee thought in relief. She turned her attention back to Jonny Ho. He really had a very nice face, Aunty Lee thought, though she would have liked it better with less make-up. His skin was as smooth and white as a steamed rice flour bun and didn’t seem to have any pores.

  ‘I remember this house,’ Aunty Lee said. ‘I haven’t been here for so long. Wah, you are doing big renovations here, hor? All this dust must be very bad for children, right? In the old days there was a fountain here, right?’

  ‘We had to get rid of the fountain. Mosquitoes,’ a woman said briskly, coming out of the house.

  Aunty Lee recognized her at once as Beth, Patty’s sister. In school they had all called Elizabeth Kwuan ‘Bossy Betty’. Beth was wearing a smart dress and lipstick, but still looked like a strict, rule-bound schoolteacher. She would be the teacher schoolgirls made fun of while in school and remembered fondly as part of their girlhood – like acne. Now, though Beth smiled and nodded to Selina and her visitors, there were frown lines between her brows, and the sides of her mouth immediately returned to their usual down position. She looked like she was looking out for faults just to show she was paying attention. Working for this woman would not be easy. Beth looked like the kind of boss who had already driven one helper into running away and would soon make Nina realize that Aunty Lee, however meddling, was easier to work for.

  She was the perfect temporary boss for Nina, Aunty Lee thought.

  ‘Selina told me your helper ran away,’ Aunty Lee said.

  ‘Did she?’ Beth looked surprised and disapproving. Selina, who had meant to surprise her but differently, glared at Aunty Lee and started to explain: ‘You said you needed someone to clear away the dust and rubble before painting—’ but Aunty Lee continued over her.

  ‘I remember you from school. I was in the same class as Patty. Don’t you remember me? I’m Rosie! Here—’ Aunty Lee pushed the pineapple tarts at Beth, ‘from my shop. My condolences about Patty. Poor thing. She was still so young.’

  ‘At least she was still beautiful when she died. Oh Rosie, of course I remember you. Thank you. Jonny can take … I’m sorry, I’m in quite a hurry right now. I have to go for a meeting with the ECDA. Planning permissions and regulations and all that. I’ve been phoning and phoning but there aren’t any taxis … ’

  ‘There’s a taxi waiting at the end of the road,’ Aunty Lee said. ‘Maybe you gave him the wrong address.’

  ‘No. I didn’t even manage to get through. They kept putting me on hold. If there’s a taxi there the driver is probably having a smoke and waiting for peak hour. I have to go now.’

  ‘We’ll drive you in,’ Selina said quickly. ‘Or Mark can drive you in. I’ll stay here and help Jonny with the cleaning up.’

  Aunty Lee saw Beth’s eyes go from Selina to Jonny and back to Selina. She thought Beth probably understood Selina better than Selina herself did. But then she had probably watched Patty go through more than her share of adolescent crushes and passions.

  ‘If you and your husband stay here and start on the cleaning up, Jonny can drive me.’

  ‘If you’re going to see the ECDA people, I should come with you,’ Selina said. ‘I’m part of this, after all. Aunty Lee and Nina can start on the cleaning.’

  ‘I have to get back to my shop!’ Aunty Lee said firmly. ‘Nina will come back with me until you get time to talk about who pays Nina’s salary while she is working here. She can still come back and sleep in my house at night.’

  Beth looked surprised. She turned to Selina and started to say: ‘Aren’t you the one who pays—?’

  ‘We can discuss this later!’ Selina seized Aunty Lee by the elbow and hissed: ‘You mustn’t spoil this for us! You know that it is actually illegal for Nina to be working at your shop, right? If we report you, you’ll be fined and your café closed down and Nina sent home and never allowed to come back! But if she helps us get through this then she can go back to you after.’

  Aunty Lee was taken aback to hear Selina put it that way, but not as taken aback as Mark was … though Selina was only repeating what he had told her. Mark looked shocked. Beth looked interested. Jonny Ho looked beautiful. He was also watching Selina with more interest than he had shown before.

  ‘Dear … ’ Mark said in alarm but nobody paid any attention.

  ‘Well?’ Selina’s attention was fixed on Aunty Lee.

  A combination of Peranakan pride and mission school upbringing meant Aunty Lee did not scratch herself in public whether the pain in her pants was due to bugs or blackmail. Instead she turned to Beth and said conversationally: ‘What is Fabian doing now, by the way? The last I heard he was still in America.’

  ‘Oh, Fabian is back in Singapore,’ Beth said quietly, matching Aunty Lee’s tone and turning away from Selina. ‘Last time he was here, he barely talked to me. He spent most of his time talking to Julietta outside.’

  ‘He knew her?’

  ‘Of course. She was working for his parents for years, since before he left Singapore.’

  A helper who had been working for one family for years didn’t sound like one who would run away without warning. ‘You think he told her something that made her run away?’ Aunty Lee asked with interest.

  ‘Poor Fabian has always been excitable, high strung. He was upset about us setting up the school here. But Patty knew that I’d always dreamt of having a little school of my own. When we were children, Patty would always play at getting married. She was always the bride. I would play at being a schoolteacher. Setting up a school is a big dream for me. I know it’s what Patty would want.’

  Selina was furious. The woman she had tried to manipulate and the woman she wanted to impress were talking together like old friends and ignoring her.

  ‘About your helper,’ Aunty Lee said to Beth, ‘you didn’t report Julietta missing because you think she ran off with her boyfriend and you don’t want to get her into trouble. What are you going to do with her if she comes back?’

  Beth looked taken aback then hugely relieved. ‘That depends what she says. I spent so long as a teacher I know how stupid young girls can be. You are so brave to go into the café business on your own, Rosie. I wouldn’t dare to if I didn’t have a partner who understands how these things work.’ Aunty Lee sensed some gentle criticism there, as though it wasn’t quite ladylike of her to be running a business, far less making a success of it. But having come from the same mission school as Beth she understood where she was coming from. And though Beth would have thought it presumptuous, Aunty Lee felt a little sorry for her. Starting a new business was terrifying as well as exciting, all the more so when you were using your own money but putting your confidence in someone else.

  So somehow she agreed that Nina would start immediately on a trial month, helping Beth with the cleaning and supervising renovations.

  ‘Mark can drive Jonny and me to town in his car for the meeting. And Selina and Nina can get started on the clean up here and wait for the workers to get back,’ Beth decided in her flat, decisive schoolteacher voice, conveniently not hearing Selina object that it would make more sense for her to drive Beth, and Jonny and attend the meeting with them.

  ‘And I will take taxi back to the house and pack up some clothes for you,’ Aunty Lee told Nina.

  Aunty Lee tried to hail the apparently free taxi at the end of the road, but was ignored by the driver. She could see him there, behind the wheel. She was thinking of photographing the taxi’s licence plate with her phone so she could report the driver for ignoring an old lady when Beth said that Jonny Ho would drive Aunty Lee home to collect Nina’s things.

  ‘I will go with Jonny and get Nin
a’s things,’ Selina said quickly. ‘Aunty Lee is better at cleaning.’

  But Beth was even more used to getting her own way than Selina. Beth had also seen at once that the threat Selina used against Aunty Lee could easily be turned against her and her school. Besides, Beth did not like the way Selina was looking at Jonny Ho.

  ‘Don’t forget you are pregnant, Selina. You shouldn’t be driving around in sports cars in your condition. I’m sure your husband wouldn’t like it.’ Beth smiled at Mark. ‘Shall we go?’

  Jonny Ho had a bright blue low, flat Subaru. It was a shiny, flashy car and Aunty Lee saw he was as proud of it as a woman with her first pair of Jimmy Choos. When it came to plump elderly ladies, designer cars were as uncomfortable as designer shoes. But when Jonny carefully helped her into the low front seat and leaned across her to lock in her seatbelt Aunty Lee couldn’t help being flattered. Like dried lotus leaf soaked in warm water she felt herself relaxing. No wonder rich old men liked to go to massage parlours to be pampered by pretty young women. There ought to be spas specially for rich old women to be pampered by pretty young boys.

  ‘So, where is this shop house of yours? You live above it, right? Selina told us you run a little cake shop. You will never get rich by making cakes. You should learn to cook real Chinese food. It is impossible to get good Chinese food in Singapore. You should let me take a look at your business. I am very good at turning businesses around. Give me six months and I can give you a profit!’

  ‘No, not to the shop.’ Aunty Lee decided, remembering Cherril and the curry potato crisis. ‘Take me back to my house.’ She directed him deeper into Binjai Park and told him he could leave his car on the grass verge outside.

  ‘You want to come in and wait while I pack some things for you to take back for Nina?’

  Jonny Ho was impressed by Aunty Lee’s Binjai Park house, especially by its size and location. He had studied the wealthier housing districts in Singapore and could sum up its market value pretty accurately. Aunty Lee might look and sound like a low class, uneducated peasant, but she had obviously married into money. Jonny looked at the photo portraits of her dead husband while waiting for her to pack some things for Nina.

  ‘You have a lot of pictures of your dead husband,’ he said when she reappeared wheeling a cabin bag with a large plastic bag balanced on top. ‘He has been dead for some time, right? Don’t you think it is time to be moving on?’

  People expect beautiful people to be sensitive, just like they expect beautiful cakes to be delicious, Aunty Lee thought. It was not true. ‘I have moved on,’ she said evenly. ‘I have my shop and my business.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you need to work in a shop when you have a house this size. If you need the money, you can rent out rooms. Even better, you can convert this place into several apartments. I see you got all that land behind, nothing but grass and trees. So wasted.’

  ‘Those are fruit trees! You should see them during mango season and rambutan season.’

  ‘Women are no good at seeing business opportunities,’ Jonny said complacently. ‘That’s why they need men.’

  ‘I should introduce you to my partner,’ Aunty Lee said. ‘You two can go and talk business opportunities together!’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Helen, & Aunty Lee

  ‘So, you finally got to see Patty’s leng zai?’ was the first thing Helen Chan said to Aunty Lee. ‘What did you think? That one time I saw him, he was gorgeous!’

  Helen Chan was the same age as Aunty Lee. They had met in school and stayed friends over the years despite their differences. People might look at Aunty Lee and call her a typical Tai-Tai, as in a married woman of a certain age and certain class who doesn’t have to work for a living. But Helen was the kind of Tai-Tai that people saw at charity fundraising dinners and in magazines like Lady and Singapore Tatler. Helen wore bouffant hair, diamond Rolexes, played mah-jong and was addicted to facials and Korean dramas. And she was a loyal friend.

  Aunty Lee had phoned and told her old friend all about meeting up with Patty Kwuan-Loo’s sister and husband. Helen had, of course, insisted on coming over to hear all about it in person. Since Aunty Lee did not want to talk in her own café, where Cherril was trying out yet another new serving system and two huge tubs of curry potatoes waited in the chiller, Helen had come over to collect Aunty Lee then told her driver to bring them to her favourite reflexology spa off Upper Bukit Timah Road. Such places usually discouraged talking during treatment, but at this hour there were no other clients and the staff, clearly used to Mrs Helen Chan, created a cosy corner for them with hotfoot baths and a choice of flower teas.

  ‘I need a pedicure,’ Helen observed as her feet went into the hot water.

  Aunty Lee had not been for a pedicure in years. Who wanted to sit still for so long to get your toenails painted when nobody short enough to see them mattered? But as she leaned back in the luxuriously padded recliner and wriggled her toes in the fragrant water she felt the attractions of the Tai-Tai lifestyle. What if she left the running of the shop to Cherril? It was disheartening to hear that, after all her hard work, people still thought of her restaurant as a ‘cake shop’.

  ‘So, has he gone old and fat?’ Helen cut into her thoughts. ‘Please tell me he’s bald with a big paunch. I swear I was ready to trade in the old man, given half a chance.’

  ‘He’s stupid,’ Aunty Lee said crossly. ‘He thinks I run a cake shop.’

  ‘Well, your cakes are very good, what. Especially your pineapple tarts and your ang ku kueh. Nobody else gets the mix of peanuts and mung beans in the ang ku kueh filling just right. But, he’s still handsome?’

  ‘If you like the sort,’ Aunty Lee said curtly.

  ‘Hey, I’m just joking!’

  The truth was, Jonny Ho looked like he could have played the lead in one of the Taiwanese or Korean soap operas … the good but falsely maligned son who returns to avenge his foolish father and rescue his true love, who is on the verge of marrying a no-good rich playboy who will drink and gamble away her family fortune. Of course Jonny Ho would also look right playing the no-good rich playboy. Very often the evil villains in these shows were very good-looking too.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it myself when I heard about it. You know, I thought at first Patty married him out of pity, to get him out of China.’

  As Helen spoke two old men greeted them in Mandarin, sat on stools at their feet and started the treatment, wrapping one foot in a warmed towel while expertly massaging the other. Though she thought of them as ‘old men’ compared to the young women at the reception counter, they were probably around the same age as Helen and herself, Aunty Lee thought. She wondered if, like Jonny Ho, Avon and Xuyie, and the Guangs, these old men had recently come from China to rub feet for a living.

  ‘Shh … ’ Aunty Lee said to Helen.

  ‘Don’t worry. They don’t mind. There’s nobody else here, after all. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes. I thought Patty was just helping somebody who wanted to get a Singapore PR. Like all those men who marry girls from China and Thailand and Vietnam, and get divorced once they become permanent residents. These countries don’t allow you to adopt babies from them, but you can marry them and get your own babies. Anyway, that’s what I thought when I heard about Patty getting married again. Then when I saw the man I could totally understand. And he was so sweet to her, listening to her, asking if she wanted another drink. Not like the Singapore men we’re used to.’

  ‘There are a lot of very rich Chinese people coming out of China these days,’ Aunty Lee said, thinking of the Guangs who had bought and extensively renovated the house next to her kesum leaves, ‘buying houses in good estates.’

  ‘But Jonny Ho isn’t one of them. If he was, people would have been less shocked when Patty married him! Rich people can do funny things and nobody minds. Jonny Ho was one of the very very poor who clawed his way up to just very poor. Patty told me that his mother was a prostitute and pedicurist who lived in an illegal und
erground apartment in Beijing! She said he didn’t even know who his father was, but someone sent money for him every New Year, so his mother must have known. The only money he has now is what Patty left him!’

  ‘You were at her first wedding, right? Ken Loo was a respectable guy, but alamak, so boring and so ugly.’

  ‘But I remember feeling jealous at the time. Wasn’t she one of the first of our batch to get married? But we didn’t really keep in touch after that.’

  ‘Patty and Ken Loo were childhood sweethearts. They got married right after he graduated. Then the first boy was born barely six months after that. Of course, they had to go around telling people how the baby is so premature, but six pounds eight ounces so premature, meh? Maybe premature baby elephant!’

  ‘Was that Fabian?’ Aunty Lee winced slightly as her masseuse found a sore area on the outside of her left foot and worked it with gusto. Through the pain, she felt the right side of her neck loosening and relaxing. ‘I remember Fabian. He was such a cute, chubby little boy.’

  ‘No. The first boy was Roland: the one that fell off the slide and broke his neck. I heard Patty attacked the kindergarten teacher who was supposed to be watching the children. Slashed her with a pair of scissors. That’s why her Fabian was so precious to Patty. No kindergarten parties, no school excursions! But that boy so precious until he don’t know how to study. Cannot get into university here so they had to send him to America to study. Wah, there was such a fuss when they tried to get him to come back for his National Service and he refused to come back. In the end they had to find a doctor to say that he had a weak heart, cannot do NS.’

  ‘I hear he’s back now, though.’

  ‘Oh yes. Fabian’s back, and making trouble again.’ Helen said. The relish in her voice might have come from the reflexology points in her feet. ‘He ignored his old, sick mother alone for so many years, then comes back as soon as she dies, expecting her to leave him everything.’