by A. J. Low
Wendy sneezed, probably from all the dust in the room.
“Did the thieves do this, Uncle Qiang Tian?” I asked, offering Wendy a tissue.
“Oh my gosh, don’t call me uncle! I’m only 29!” he shouted. “And my name is QT! Who are these children, BC?”
I looked at Uncle Boon Chong. “Calm down, Qiang, I mean QT. This is Sherlock Sam and his Supper Club. They’re famous detectives and they’re here to help.”
“And-we-are-not-his-Supper-Club,” Watson said. “We-are-all-the-Supper-Club-together.”
“Okay, that is a brilliant idea for a TV show, but we don’t have time for that right now!” QT shouted. “My script is missing!”
“I’m not pitching a show, QT. These kids are actually detectives. They’ve worked many cases with the Singapore Police Force and even solved a case in Penang.”
“So you’re really here to help?” QT asked, staring at Watson. “And the robot actually talks? Do you have an agent, robot?”
“Yes, Uncle…I mean, QT,” I said. It was going to be difficult getting used to calling this man QT. “As in yes, Watson talks. But no, he doesn’t have or need an agent.”
“Yet,” Watson added. I tried to stop my eyes from rolling. I really did, but I failed and they rolled anyway.
“Anyway, no, the thieves didn’t make this mess,” he said. “I did when I realised the script was missing.”
“You threw a tantrum?” Eliza asked. “What is wrong with you? Are you incapable of behaving like an adult?”
“Okay, Eliza,” Mom said. “Let’s go outside for a while.” Eliza looked at Mom, then looked down at the floor.
As Mom left with Eliza, Dad turned to me with a questioning look. I shrugged.
“That really hurt my feelings,” QT said, his lower lip sticking out.
“I’m sorry about that, but can we please focus?” I asked. “Who would know where you keep your script when you finish it?”
“Everybody on the crew!” he said, throwing his hands in the air. “And his brother.” He pointed at Uncle Boon Chong.
“Anything you can remember about this place before…it got messy?” I asked.
“I walked in here, and my script was missing,” he said. “It was right next to my typewriter. But that’s all I remember.” He picked up a fedora and put it on. He then replaced it with a bowler hat.
“Is there anybody you can think of who might have wanted to steal your script?” I asked.
“Oh, plenty of people. There’s Shukri, Lee Swee, and of course, Koey.” He looked accusingly at Uncle Boon Chong. “They would all have their silly little motives.”
I quickly wrote down the names.
“Okay, erm, any other questions?” Uncle Boon Chong asked, looking a little nervous.
“Just one,” Jimmy said. “Why do you wear so many watches? Is it in case one breaks, you have seven backups?”
“It’s fashion,” QT said dismissively.
“Is that also why you’re wearing a scarf in this heat?” Nazhar asked.
QT stared at him, blinking.
“Okay, let’s allow QT to rewrite—”
“What do you mean ‘rewrite’?” QT asked. “That script was genius! I can’t just rewrite it from memory!”
“You’ll have to try, Qiang Tian,” Uncle Boon Chong said, raising his voice, “because if we can’t find the original script, the one you insisted on writing on a typewriter instead of on a computer where it could have been backed up, then we’re going to need something, or someone else!”
QT abruptly sat down, took off his bowler hat and put the fedora back on.
We left QT’s office and walked upstairs to Uncle Boon Chong’s office. It looked very similar to the writer’s room but it was much neater. There were a lot of schedules and storyboards posted on the walls, as well as old photographs of Run Run Shaw and P. Ramlee, and a big Masters of the Screen poster, like the one in QT’s office. And this office had a window overlooking the set outside.
Mom and Eliza rejoined us, just as Uncle Boon Chong said, “I’m sorry I got angry in front of you guys. But he can be so irritating sometimes! He used to write his scripts on a computer like a normal person until he found that ridiculous typewriter. Now he has to write everything on it. And he won’t even use carbon paper because he says it’ll make his carbon footprint bigger!”
“I-do-not-think-he-knows-what-a-carbon-footprint-is,” Watson said.
Eliza nodded. I was surprised she managed to keep herself from rolling her eyes.
“Can we talk about all the suspects he mentioned?” I asked.
“Yes we can, but I think maybe I should tell you a bit more about QT first,” Uncle Boon Chong said, sitting down at his desk. “He’s a good writer, but he’s been late before. I wouldn’t be surprised if he made up this whole thing just so he wouldn’t get into trouble again. I actually threatened to fire him the last time he turned a script in late.”
Uncle Boon Chong sighed and leaned back in his chair. “But then again, he’s been boasting about how fantastic his final script is and I don’t think he’d have faked that.”
“But he could have, as a ruse to make you think he was actually writing,” I said.
“Heh. Unlikely,” he said sitting up, “he can’t fake that. He’s a terrible actor. The worst. Like you, Mike.”
“Hey! There’s no need to keep harping on the past,” Dad said, scrunching up his face.
“QT played a cleaning uncle in the episode that just aired and he was just horrendous,” Uncle Boon Chong continued. “He couldn’t remember where to stand and he kept staring straight into the camera. Then he tripped over air. There was literally nothing there and he tripped over it anyway. It would have been funny if I hadn’t been on the verge of having a heart attack.”
“Hurm. He seemed really upset when he found out the script was missing,” Nazhar said, pushing his glasses up. “If he is that bad an actor, it had to be real, right, Sherlock?”
I nodded. “That’s true. Now what about this Shukri everyone keeps talking about?” I asked. I realised that while I knew all the characters in Masters of the Screen, I didn’t actually remember the names of the actors who played them. I could make an educated guess, but I wanted confirmation.
“Oh, he’s the actor who plays P. Ramlee,” Jimmy said. “Mama likes him a lot. Like, a lot! She bought the calendar with all his photographs too!”
“He really looks like the real P. Ramlee,” Nazhar added, nodding.
“Yah, Qiang Tian probably thinks he’s a suspect because Shukri was unhappy about what we had planned for his character in the final episode,” Uncle Boon Chong said. “He wanted the storyline to be rewritten but both Qiang Tian and I were against it.”
“And if the script were to go missing, it would mean that he would have a better chance of getting it changed?” I asked.
“But wait, isn’t this show based on real life?” Nazhar asked. “How much could you possibly change?”
“It’s based on real events, yes, but we take some artistic license so that the story moves along faster. Makes it more exciting for the viewer. No one wants to watch one hour of people standing around talking, right?” Uncle Boon Chong said. “But if we don’t find the script before Shukri has to leave for the US, QT will have to write P. Ramlee out of the final episode. And, to make it worse, when Shukri comes back, he could refuse to act until he gets us to change the planned storyline for P. Ramlee.”
“Sounds complicated,” Wendy said.
“Mama says Shukri wouldn’t do that, though,” Jimmy said. “Mama says Shukri is ‘a very respectable young man’.”
Uncle Boon Chong smirked. “Well…Shukri can be a diva sometimes, but that’s just because he’s very passionate. He’s really a fantastic actor! And he knows this show made him famous and got him that Hollywood movie. His role in that is actually quite small, but it’s still important. But I think he knows how much he needs Masters of the Screen to help further his career.”
I looked at my list. “Next is Lee Swee. Is he another actor?”
“Yep. He’s playing Run Run Shaw,” Uncle Boon Chong said, then he snickered. “Run Run Shaw. I always like saying his name. Run Squared Shaw. Heh.” Everyone stared at him. He coughed, then continued. “Anyway, the show was originally supposed to focus on the two Shaw brothers who came to Singapore, but when we saw how fantastic Shukri was, we just had to change the focus to P. Ramlee.”
“Do you think that made Uncle Lee Swee jealous?” Wendy asked.
“Well, maybe a little bit. But Lee Swee is super professional. Very well-behaved,” Uncle Boon Chong said. “If Shukri really has to leave before we can film the last episode, Run Squared Shaw would definitely get more airtime, but Lee Swee knows that the fans want more P. Ramlee. He understands show business very well. Plus, he wasn’t even on the set this morning. He had a family emergency. I don’t know if he’s on set yet.”
“Then why are we wasting time talking about him?” Eliza muttered under her breath.
“The last name QT mentioned was Koey. Who’s that, Uncle?”
Uncle Boon Chong sighed and leaned back in his chair again. He stared up at the ceiling.
“Erm…well, Koey…Koey is…erm, I really hope it’s not him.”
“Koey is Uncle Boon’s little brother,” Mom said. “He directs a comedy series for the same production company, but Boon Chong’s show has been doing better than his.”
“Correction, Koey is my not-so-little brother,” Uncle Boon Chong added, grimacing.
“But do you really think people would switch to watching his show if anything happened to your show, Boon?” Dad said, tapping his chin. “I guess they might move his show up to your more popular time slot instead of later at night, huh?”
“Yeah, that’s definitely a possibility. Anyway, Koey drops by sometimes. Once he even tried to get Shukri to make a guest appearance on his show. But I really don’t think he would do this to me. I mean, we’re brothers after all. And he got all the muscles!” Uncle Boon Chong said, looking down at his tummy.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Wendy shaved my eyebrows once, and I never thought she’d stoop that low.”
Wendy giggled. “Who says! It was cute! You looked hilarious without your eyebrows.”
“Are there pictures?” Eliza asked, not even trying to hide her smirk. “There’s this thing called the Internet that we can use.”
“There are no pictures!” I shouted.
“There-is-photographic-evidence,” Watson.
“WHAT?” I yelled at my robot.
“Was your brother on set today, Uncle?” Nazhar asked, poking me in the arm.
Uncle Boon Chong sighed again. “Yep, he was. We had breakfast and he dropped me off here. He hung around for a while to say hi to people before he left. It’s a small industry. Everyone knows everyone else.”
“Are there any other suspects you can think of, Uncle?” I asked, glaring at my robot. I would take up the issue of my eyebrowless photographs with him after the case was solved.
“I don’t know. I really can’t believe that anyone I work with could have done this, but somebody obviously did,” he said looking at his watch. “Oh, no! I’m sorry! I think you guys missed meeting the cast and crew because of all this!”
I looked out the window to see Auntie Kim Lian fanning herself while a Malay actor talked to our classmates. “Thank you for all the information, Uncle. I’m sure it’ll be very helpful.”
We walked back outside. The actor Shukri kissed Auntie Kim Lian’s hand before he left and she nearly swooned on the spot. Mom and Dad had to help her to a bench.
“That’s four really good suspects, Sherlock,” Nazhar said. “Do you think you can figure this out?”
“Wait, Sherlock! There’s actually one more suspect!” Jimmy said. “The mean James Mok!”
“He’s definitely a jerk, but if he had stolen the script, he wouldn’t have said anything about knowing who did it,” I said. “And he doesn’t have any real motive to delay the show, as much as I would love to catch him red-handed.”
“James also didn’t have any motive to pretend to be missing what! But he still did that! He’s horrible!” Jimmy said.
“You’re right,” I said grimly. “We have five suspects.”
“Okay! Everyone SIT DOWN!” Mr Lim yelled. “It doesn’t matter if you’re seated next to someone from a different class. Just SIT DOWN now! If you see an empty chair, sit in it!”
We had just arrived at Loy Kee Chicken Rice with the rest of our schoolmates for lunch. Everyone was excitedly talking about how they had met the actors of Masters of the Screen and how they couldn’t wait for the final episode of the season to air on TV. The waiters looked petrified at the number of loud children in their restaurant.
The restaurant was bright and airy, filled with wooden chairs and marble-topped tables (or at least they looked marble-topped). There were a lot of pictures on the wall of famous people enjoying their chicken rice, including Uncles Boon Chong, Lee Swee and Shukri. Many chickens, both roasted and steamed, were hanging in the glass case.
“I want roasted drumstick only!” a boy from Wendy’s class shouted.
“I don’t like drumstick! The meat is so sticky!” Chin Han from my class yelled in returned.
“Can I have extra rice? My mom always orders extra rice for me,” a girl from Wendy’s class earnestly asked Mr Lim.
Mr Lim and the waiters looked at each other and took a deep breath as they girded themselves for battle. I saw Mom, Dad and Auntie Kim Lian across the street, waiting for the traffic to ease before they crossed the road. Dad gave a cheery wave to Mr Lim, who had just caught sight of them as well. Mr Lim grumpily motioned for them to hurry to the restaurant.
“I’m surprised you’re not already giving your order to—”
“I would like a roasted drumstick with extra rice and an egg,” I said, interrupting Eliza and putting down the menu. “And please make sure that there’s black sauce with the chili sauce, thank you very much.”
“Who-are-you-talking-to?” Watson asked. “There-is-no-one-here-to-take-our-order-yet.”
“It’s just in case I’m not around when a waiter comes,” I replied, “so you guys know what I want.”
“Just ONE drumstick?” Wendy asked, snickering. “Not the whole chicken?”
“One prata!” Jimmy said, startling a waiter who just happened to walk by our table.
“What? Jimmy, there’s no prata here,” Wendy replied, looking as confused as the waiter. Jimmy puffed out his cheeks and went back to looking at his menu.
“We should eat well so we can focus on the case,” I said. Fortunately, because of Watson’s quick feet, the Supper Club had all managed to sit at the same table. I spied James seated two tables away. As always, Moran was standing at his side, politely. I didn’t know anyone could stand politely, but Moran certainly did. When James caught my eye, he arched his eyebrow and gave me a friendly smile. I knew he was just pretending for the adults.
By this time, Mom, Dad and Auntie Kim Lian had entered the restaurant and were helping Mr Lim with the orders. It wasn’t long before all the children were fed and the waiters could retreat to the kitchen for a well-deserved break.
“The chicken rice here is really fantastic,” Dad said, patting his tummy.
“Mr Tan, Mrs Tan, Auntie Kim Lian,” Mr Lim said as he came up to the grown-ups. “The students are taking the bus back to school, but it should be okay if you and your children want to stay here.” Mr Lim knew about my detective exploits and had once talked to me about writing my stories for English class. Watson volunteered to continue assisting me by documenting all my screams of terror.
“Are you sure, Mr Lim?” Mom asked, looking worriedly at the large group of students. They were relatively quiet and talking among themselves.
“Yes, it’ll be fine,” Mr Lim said, running his hands through his messy hair. “They’re fed now and that makes them sleepy and hopefully doci
le.” Mom chuckled. Mr Lim went to supervise the children as they walked out of the restaurant. Dad, Mom and Auntie Kim Lian followed Mr Lim to help load the kids onto the school buses.
“Sherlock is certainly docile after he’s fed,” Wendy said, giggling. Nazhar and Jimmy laughed.
I glared at my sister.
“Siblings are such a bother,” a voice said from behind me. I turned and, sure enough, there was James. “I’m glad I’m an only child. I can’t stand the thought of having to share any of my things with someone else.”
“Do you have to practise at being this unpleasant or does it come naturally to you?” I asked.
Ignoring me, James continued, “I’m sure the director of the TV series also wishes he were an only child. Oh! I almost forgot. I must have a word with Mr Lim. Good luck on your investigation, Samuel.” He paused and smiled his fake easy smile. “I’m sure you’ll need it.”
James walked out of the restaurant to join the other students.
“What did he mean by that, Sam?” Wendy asked me. “The thing he said about Uncle Boon Chong.”
“Do you think it was a clue?” Nazhar asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It might be. But it might just be his way of throwing us off the real thief. Remember, James is a master of misdirection.”
“But that’s exactly why Uncle Koey might be the thief!” Jimmy said. “James knows we know he’s a master of missed directions, and he might be trying to get us lost!”
“That…that actually made sense,” Wendy said. Eliza just sighed deeply.
James gave me a little salute from outside the restaurant and pointed at his watch as he and Moran walked towards Mr Lim. I knew time was of the essence, I didn’t need the reminder. The two classes piled into the waiting school buses and took off. Right then, the soundtrack of the My Little Pony TV series rang out, causing everyone to jump slightly. It came from Eliza’s handphone, which she had placed on the table.
“Who’s ‘Jake’s Mom’?” Wendy asked, looking curiously at the screen of Eliza’s smartphone. The phone had quite a few My Little Pony handphone charms dangling from it.