Aunty Lee's Chilled Revenge (23 page)

Aunty Lee looked at the photo she had just taken down. Much as she liked it, she did not feel as close to ML when he was standing in formal wear next to Inche Yusof bin Ishak, the first president of the Republic of Singapore, and sur
rounded by foreign dignitaries. Now, as she caught her reflection in the glass front of the portrait, she was the one who looked like a shadowy ghost. As a ghost, she thought she could still pass for a wife of about the same age as the late ML Lee had been in this photo. Would the day come when she looked into this dear face, more familiar to her than her own, and see a much younger stranger? The thought upset her.

“Let me just sort out this mess with Jojo and Connie's girl,” Aunty Lee whispered. “Then I'll be ready to join you.” But now as she stared into the reflection of her eyes she already looked old—old, useless, helpless, and unwanted. Even Nina, who had not returned from putting away the stepladder and was probably trying to get the latest news from Salim on the phone, would be better off without having to look after her. And if she died now, if there was some unimaginable existence beyond, would her ML recognize her in the old woman she had become? And anyway, wouldn't he prefer to be with his first wife who had died young? Her reflection was looking too upset. The rational part of Aunty Lee's mind warned, Snap out of this before you make yourself miserable for nothing! But then a strong, calm thought came into her head in ML's voice:
Here we neither marry nor are given in marriage. Here we are like angels in heaven
. It was so clear that for a moment she thought someone had spoken.

“But I don't know what angels are like,” Aunty Lee said softly.

Mr. Ian Woon

“Mr. Ian Woon speaking.”

The name sounded Chinese but the voice was West Coast American. Aunty Lee wondered whether the speaker was very young or very insecure, to introduce himself with a “Mister” when answering the phone. Then again, it might just be an American custom she was not familiar with.

“My name is Mrs. Rosie Lee. I am phoning from Singapore so no small talk please, this is costing me a lot of money. Are you the lawyer that Allison Love talked to in Long Beach, California?”

“I cannot discuss my clients—”

“Allison Love is dead,” Aunty Lee said bluntly. “So we want to find everybody who might have known her and tell them.”

There was a pause. Then, tentatively, “Is this some kind of
joke? Because it's not funny. You can get into serious trouble for making jokes like that.”

“What's your fax number?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Do you have a fax? Or an e-mail address? Yes, then give me your fax number, Mr. Ian Woon!”

Nina faxed over the newspaper report of the murder. Aunty Lee fixed herself a drink of sour plum tea and dialed the number again. This time Mr. Ian Woon answered on the first ring. “Mrs. Lee? This is terrible. You have my condolences. I believe Allison went to Singapore with her sister, Vallerie. Is Vallerie Love still in Singapore? Is she all right?”

“You know Vallerie Love?”

“It was Vallerie Love who brought her sister, Allison, to us. She said Allison was visiting and needed a lawyer. At the time I thought she was just humoring her, but now it's almost as though she had a premonition of some sort.”

“So you knew that Allison was coming to Singapore to file a lawsuit?” Aunty Lee was not sure how premonition came into this.

“Allison Love mentioned she was going to Singapore to sort things out with her ex-husband. But she didn't elaborate on that. At least not with me. I remember she was very eager to get her will done in a hurry,” the lawyer said. “Do you have Skype, Mrs. Lee? There's someone else you should talk to but I'll have to call you back in about an hour.” He paused. “Should we be sending this information to the police?”

Aunty Lee decided to make things easy for Mr. Ian Woon
by having Salim come by the café at the time of the call. Salim assumed it was Vallerie who had called her late sister's lawyer and seemed pleased. It was only Aunty Lee's efforts to help that he labeled “interference,” Aunty Lee thought. She would bring it up when there weren't so many other interesting things going on.

“Thank you for speaking to me, Mr. Woon,” Salim said after identifying himself. Fortunately Selina had taken Vallerie out for a pedicure and foot rub, so Nina had linked the MacBook to the television mounted on the wall beside the cold room door. This way Aunty Lee and Salim could sit side by side at the counter and Nina was on hand to fix any computer connection issues.

Aunty Lee had warned Salim of the importance of using the “Mister” when addressing the American lawyer without understanding why. But the two people who showed up on-screen soon explained it.

Aunty Lee had imagined Mr. Ian Woon as a small Chinese man, compensating for goodness knew what imagined inadequacy of height, race, or prowess by lording it over his clients. Instead Ian Woon as seen on-screen was a broad-faced, broad-shouldered man whose fair skin and light brown hair suggested mixed rather than pure Asian ancestry. And the woman beside him—

“I'm Mrs. Yen Woon,” said the woman on the screen. Smaller than her husband, she looked pure Chinese but also spoke like a West Coast American. “My parents named me Yen Ling but everybody calls me Yen. If you think this is con
fusing you should see our family reunions. My sisters are Yen Mei and Yen Seng, and all their partners, friends, and in-laws call them Yen too!” She laughed. “Of course my marrying an ‘Ian' didn't help matters!”

Beside her Mr. Ian Woon grinned, content to let his wife talk.

“We're both lawyers and we work together when I'm not on maternity leave.”

“You got new baby?” Aunty Lee interrupted here. As far as she was concerned, babies were always worth talking about. The dead would stay dead, but babies changed so quickly. “Boy or girl?”

“Girl, thank goodness. After three boys I was getting seriously outnumbered here!”

“Wah! You got three boys already, ah? I thought young people these days all don't want to have so many children?”

But even as Salim was wondering how he could steer the conversation back to his murder inquiry, Mrs. Yen Woon said, “Vallerie Love brought her sister in to consult my husband. But after one meeting with her he asked me to take over.”

“Why was that?” Inspector Salim asked.

“My wife is an expert on wills and successions,” Ian Woon said.

“So is my husband, actually,” his wife said. “But I'm less intimidated by loud women.”

Aunty Lee thought of Vallerie. The sisters must have been quite alike.

“I got that Allison was having some problems with her marriage. The first thing she said was that she'd left her
husband, Mike, with the kids to give him a taste of what it was like looking after them all day and night. She wanted to set us right too, expecting everybody to have heard about the ruckus in Singapore. She said she had had to put down a vicious dog that had been sent to her for fostering. No one had warned her that the dog was dangerous, and she had two children and a maid in the house to worry about. If she had sent the dog back it would have spent the rest of its life in a cage, and she couldn't stand the thought of that so she had it put down. All that was no different from what she would have done in the UK and she had no regrets. She would have done the same thing over again, she kept saying. But there was a vicious woman in Singapore who was after her husband and stirred up trouble, just to be vindictive. According to her this woman started up a whole online bullying thing, and she was talking about Chinese triads and the Yakuza and how they had barely managed to get out with their lives . . . I'd always thought Singapore was a pretty safe place to live. So safe it sounds boring, no offense. I didn't know whether to believe her or not, but that wasn't the point, was it? So we just listened and let her talk.” Yen Woon lowered her voice. “I got the feeling Vallie thought Allison had demonized Singapore in her mind and seeing it for real might snap her out of it. Plus her sister had turned up without warning and she was afraid she might stay for good. Every time Vallie asked when she was leaving Allison would cry and say people were hateful to her . . . I think Vallie just needed to find a way to get her out of her place!”

It was much how Vallerie seemed to have settled at her house, Aunty Lee thought.

“Vallerie Love is here in Singapore now.” Inspector Salim concealed his dislike of the woman. Very often you understood people better once you saw their friends, and these friends of Vallerie's seemed like pleasant people. “She came over with her sister. It was a great shock for her, of course. She hasn't been able to tell us much about Allison.”

“Aunty Vallie is still in Singapore?” A young boy came on-screen, standing behind his mother and leaning against her shoulder so their faces were side by side. “How is she? Can she talk to us? Can you given her a message from us?”

There were advantages to having so many crime shows on television, Salim thought. People assumed that giving the police information to help them with investigations was just part of the routine.

The child was hushed by his father as his mother explained they had thought something was wrong with Vallerie when she stopped Skyping them. They had tried calling the hotel but she had not been in, and Allison told them Vallerie was all right, only the phone and Internet connections in Singapore were very unreliable (Aunty Lee was very offended on behalf of Singapore's Internet providers but held her tongue).

“Aunty Vallie said she would buy me manga!” the boy protested. “But I just wanted to tell her thanks for the pineapple tarts!” He shot a reproachful look at his parents, who had forgotten their manners.

Aunty Lee pounced on this. “Pineapple tarts? Bengawan Solo?”

“Yes, I think so,” Mrs. Yen Woon said. “Anyway they were delicious—and all gone now.”

“Tell Aunty Vallie to send some more!” another child piped up.

“He's a cop, Marko, not a message service, yadada?” But Ian's tone was affectionate. Two younger children joined their brother in front of the camera now, one climbing into his mother's lap. “Are you recording our mum?” the eldest asked. “Do you need to use her testimony in court? You can fly her over to Singapore if you need her, you know. We can all testify if you like.”

“I'll keep that in mind, thanks,” Salim said agreeably. The affection this family clearly had for Vallerie Love made him think he had misjudged her as being racist. “Any other messages?”

“Just tell her we said hello.”

There was a chorus of groans to this and “You can do better than that!” and “Tell her to climb the Merlion!”

“Tell her we're here for her. There'll always be a bed for her over at our place, okay?” Yen Woon said. “Just remind her she's not alone.”

“Tell Aunty Vallie if she comes back to babysit I will brush my own teeth,” the hitherto silent toddler announced from his mother's lap.

“And we'll get back to yoga” from Yen.

Yoga? Vallerie Love? Aunty Lee sniffed around the idea as though it was a possibly ripe durian.

“Vallerie did yoga?”

“Oh yes. And she loved it. We took yoga classes together. It
was great! She used it to de-stress from her crazy sister—oh sorry. I forgot.”

None of this fit with the image of Vallerie Aunty Lee had seen so far. Of course she must have been shocked by her sister's murder and shock did strange things to people. But scrambling a chicken egg did not turn it into a duck egg. The essential nature of eggs—and people—did not change.

“Vallerie is fat,” Aunty Lee said plainly. “If fat people like her can do yoga, then I also can do yoga, right?”

“Oh, I'm so glad you asked!” Exaggerated groans from Mr. Ian Woon and the little Woons worried Aunty Lee a little. As far as she was concerned, fanaticism was a form of madness, whether it took the form of devotion to God or to exercise.

“First of all, everybody can do yoga. Real yoga, I mean. I'm not talking about the jumping around in hot rooms sweating to get skinny sort. But if you do real yoga and you get balanced, you'll find you lose weight without even trying. You may not get skinny, but your body will get balanced, toned, and healthy. Yes, dear Vallie was overweight when she first got here. She had all kinds of eating issues from her childhood and then both her parents dying. But once she settled here things just fell into place. When the student is ready the teacher appears and all that, you know? And Vallie was ready.”

“And you haven't heard from her at all?”

“No. I left several messages on her phone and I know she'll get back to me when she can. If not, I'll see her back stateside.”

It was almost impossible to offend someone who did not take offense, Aunty Lee thought. “Just one more thing. It
may sound crazy but can you get something for me and send it over? Salim will give you the address.”

Salim said what Aunty Lee was thinking: “They don't talk about her like she's a fat person.”

“Maybe that's because they're Americans,” Aunty Lee mused.

There were still times Aunty Lee forgot ML was dead. The next morning, in the drowsy swamp between dream sleep and waking, she found herself earnestly telling ML that talking on Skype was not much better than talking on the phone, just better than nothing . . . and feeling irritated because instead of listening he said, “Remember, there's always a bill, Rosie. Always check the bill.” As awareness dawned, she tried to cling to her husband and his sweet presence in her dream. But as always happened, she surfaced into the new day. ML Lee was dead and had been for some time. And Brian Wong was newly dead.

“Nina, can you find out for me how much the Skype calls cost?”

“Madame, the bill will come end of the month like usual.”

“But can you find out earlier? And can you find out from the bill the numbers that were called from here?”

“Madame, you want the number for Mr. Ian Woon I have got it, I can give it to you.”

“I just want a printout of all the numbers, not just last night. Please?”

Nina shrugged as she put Aunty Lee's two soft-cooked eggs and
kaya
toast in front of her. It was a breakfast familiar from her childhood, and Aunty Lee was not sorry to be on her own to enjoy it while looking out on the dwarf coconut trees, the mango tree, and the rambutan tree in the garden. All these had been here since before ML died, indeed before the first Mrs. Lee died. She was the only one around to enjoy them now. And she enjoyed the lingering scent of night jasmine from the bushes, the soft warm eggs with their burst of rich yolk, the crisp toast, and the gently nourishing rays of morning sun. No matter how much you lost, feeling the loss reminded you that you were still alive.

“Someone else has been using the connection from here to make Skype calls.” Nina returned faster than she had left. “Must be Miss Vallerie. But she is always saying she has got no family to contact, right?” She looked up at the second-floor window but there was no sign of Vallerie, who seldom appeared till ten at the earliest.

“Can you tell—was she making overseas or local calls?”

“Better than that, I can call back.”

Feeling guilty (though it was her house and her computer after all), Aunty Lee moved herself into ML's study and seated herself in front of the computer that Nina had set up for her. Without asking, Nina locked the study door before joining her.

“I have a right to use my own computer, you know.”