Aunty Lee's Chilled Revenge (9 page)

Commissioner Raja (now semiretired) had been spending more time with Aunty Lee since her ankle injury, so it was hardly surprising to see him. He had only dropped by as often as was proper, of course. Commissioner Raja was nothing if not proper. An officer of his seniority in the Singapore
Police Force had to be as carefully discreet as any member of parliament or megachurch leader. Singaporeans were much more interested in the personal failings than professional achievements of public figures, and several institutions had had their respectable reputations crippled by personal shenanigans. Vallerie stared at him with hostile suspicion. This did not surprise Aunty Lee, who had come to realize Vallerie regarded the familiar with resentment and the unfamiliar with suspicion.

“Raja!” Aunty Lee called out. “I am so glad you are here. I've got so many things to talk to you about. Did you come for dinner? We are closed today you know, but Nina can fix you something.”

“Closed means closed,” Vallerie muttered. “Can't people bloody understand that?”

“I know you're closed today. I just happened to be in the area,” Commissioner Raja said blandly. “Since you're a semi-invalid I thought I would see if I could persuade you to leave things to Nina and let me take you out to dinner.” He looked around the café, his eyes pausing on Vallerie, who was making for the washroom without being introduced. Aunty Lee nodded without waiting for his question.

“I've eaten dinner already. I eat at six
P.M.
Sometimes five thirty. Before the dinner crowd comes. Even when there is no dinner crowd.”

“Ah yes, I thought so. That's why I brought dessert. I thought we could eat up at your house, where we can talk.”

Aunty Lee seized her walking stick. “You drive.”

Aunty Lee waved her stick at Nina, ignoring Vallerie's “I
have to go back to the house too. Are you leaving me alone with your maid?” whine. Nina would get Vallerie safely back to the house . . . after she had finished in the café.

People tended to have misconceptions of the police, Aunty Lee felt. All the police officers on the imported American and Korean crime dramas seemed to be clever or good-looking or both, and adept at hunting down criminals while cracking jokes and having love affairs.

Most police officers in Singapore were quiet and respectful young people who reminded Aunty Lee of the sons and daughters of friends. They were physically fit but drank too much coffee, ate too much fast food, and got too little sleep while trying to figure out the best way to handle difficult situations with no perfect solutions.

Then there were senior police officers like Raja Kumar, who had been a good friend of the late ML Lee and whose girth made Aunty Lee feel girlishly slim by comparison. He growled and let her lecture him on exercise and healthy eating as though he were stupid, but she knew Commissioner Raja Kumar was a very clever man, plus one who recognized talent and intelligence in others. As for love affairs, Commissioner Raja had been single since the death of his wife years ago. Recently Aunty Lee had wondered whether he had been getting more friendly with Anne Peters . . . and if not, whether he could be persuaded to. But that was something she would have to follow up on when she did not have a murder to solve.

Commissioner Raja had been concerned about Aunty Lee. Her physical injury did not worry him—it was nothing more than a sprained ankle, after all. But when he brought colleagues to Aunty Lee's Delights for a weekday lunch Aunty Lee had been uncharacteristically
bo chap
as Selina and Cherril battled over their seating arrangements.
Bo chap
was a Singlish term that might be translated as “don't care” or “can't be bothered,” and he recognized it as something he had seen too often in newly retired officers when their change in status made them see themselves as old and useless. It was this attitude, rather than any physical disability, that ruined the richness of their well-earned third age. Some created new ways to make themselves indispensable, like volunteering for ex-offender rehabilitation or driving grandchildren around, but those who sank into the lethargy of pointlessness were often dead within years of retirement. Raja had feared Aunty Lee was headed in that direction. Plus the seasoned investigator had sensed his old friend was hiding something from him.

But this evening he saw at once Aunty Lee had perked up. Her eyes were as bright as they had been before her fall, and he had not seen her so animated and full of life since last analyzing a new dish or old murder.

“Shall I get dessert forks from the kitchen?”

“No, don't go in the kitchen! I mean, why don't we use back the same plates and forks—we are supposed to be having an indoor picnic, right?”

Commissioner Raja was glad he had not forgotten his des
serts. And he could tell that even if Aunty Lee was not hiding anything from him, she was definitely hiding something.

Knowing Rosie Lee well, he had brought a copy of the menu. She liked to read about any innovations she was sampling so she could have Nina look up ingredients and recipes later. The mid-autumn Moon Cake Festival was coming. Though celebrated by Chinese people worldwide, in Singapore this festival was celebrated by anyone with children and anyone who made, bought, or ate moon cakes. Traditional moon cakes were heavy palm-sized baked pastries containing lotus seed paste and often a salted egg yolk. But Commissioner Raja (thanks to an office party) had discovered snow skin moon cakes, ice-cream moon cakes, and mini jelly moon cakes, small and light enough to be swallowed in two mouthfuls.

He had picked up a selection from that last category: pandan jelly moon cakes; chrysanthemum honey and goji berry moon cakes; and osmanthus, chrysanthemum, and plum
konnyaku
jelly moon cakes. Nothing too heavy, as he proudly said. Indeed, these might even be considered healthy offerings.

Aunty Lee's little espresso spoons were soon abandoned as she adopted Raja Kumar's more efficient finger-pick method. She was fond of jellies as well as of moon cakes and almost forgot the murders in her delight at their sweet and slightly tart taste, their firm yet smoothly elastic texture. “To work as moon cakes, the jelly has to be both firm and elastic. I wonder whether Cherril has tried these.” Food purists would
scream of course—but that only heightened Aunty Lee's pleasure in the little treats.

“I can make shark fin jelly instead of shark fin soup for New Year's. One big bowl shape and you can see all the ingredients, thick in the jelly. Much better for our climate here, right? And serve it with warm vinegar. Of course cannot use real shark fins nowadays. I can use agar-agar or
konnyaku
. . .”

“Shark fin is banned in Singapore now? I didn't know.”

“Banned by Mathilda. For me that is same as banned by Singapore. And nowadays vegetarians and animal lovers won't come to your restaurant if you sell shark fin, you know. But first tell me what happened to the vet girl. I don't even know how she died. Usually murder is not so hush-hush, right? Government ministers having affairs or church leaders stealing money—that I can understand must be hush-hush. But this is just murder, right? Why cannot tell people how she died?”

“You haven't found out yet? Not even Inspector Salim would tell you anything?” Commissioner Raja teased with a straight face.

“I've got this thing stuck on my leg, how can I find out anything?” Aunty Lee thumped her cane on the floor with exaggerated frustration and then (more gently) on her ankle-stabilizing cast. She had phoned the police post several times but had been politely told they knew nothing. As far as Aunty Lee was concerned, nothing worked as well as pinning down someone in person and making them tell you all they knew. If only she could get about on her own, she was
certain she could have gotten it out of a member of Salim's staff by now.

“So how long do you have to keep the cast on your foot?” Raja segued away from the murder. “How long until you're back to walking normally?”

“Actually this is just to keep the ankle stable. I can walk already. You know they wanted to keep me in hospital longer for observation? They said at my age must be careful. I told them I cannot sleep in hospital; I can sleep better, recover faster at home. I already took their MRI, nothing wrong they said. Very expensive you know, these tests, but didn't find anything.”

Raja Kumar nodded without admitting he had already seen her medical reports. “Best thing is if it was a waste of money, because you don't want them to find anything. They probably just wanted to make sure there is no risk of you falling again.”

Aunty Lee popped a whole jelly cake into her mouth and said around it, “So how was the vet killed? You think the same person who killed the puppy killer killed her, right? Her sister is staying with me so she is my responsibility and you should let me know. Her sister thinks those Animal ReHomers people killed them both.”

He nodded. This was not news to him.

“Must try putting sweet fungus in the goji berry jelly cake,” Aunty Lee murmured. But she was only temporarily diverted. “Josephine said Allison Love was the kind of person that would poison herself to show you how bad your food is.” Aunty Lee looked at her friend hopefully. “Was Allison
poisoned? I thought she was strangled. They wouldn't let us see her neck. They pulled down the cloth from the top to her chin, and then when I asked to see more they pulled it up from the bottom to show her legs. Did she hang herself? Her head looked like somebody hit her very hard in the face. I thought her sister was going to faint or vomit.”

“Did Josephine really say that? Josephine DelaVega?”

“She wasn't talking to me but I heard. Could that Allison woman have set this up? Maybe she found out she was dying of incurable cancer or something, so she came back and killed herself in such a way that the Animal ReHomers would be blamed. Her lawsuit against them was probably just her excuse to come back to Singapore. Nobody here would take it seriously, right?” The plump old lady paused, looking at Commissioner Raja with all the eager anticipation of a puppy that has just laid a precious dead frog on its master's foot. “Could Allison Love have killed herself? And then gotten somebody to come and hit her in the head after she was dead? Because that only happened after she died, right? That was not what killed her.”

“What makes you think so?” Commissioner Raja asked impassively. Even after so many years he could not tell whether Aunty Lee was stating a fact or fishing for one.

“The meat on her face—I mean the flesh. The way it looked. There's a difference in how the meat looks if you hit a pig to stun it before killing and if you hit it after killing for tenderizing.”

Aunty Lee pushed the little tray of unfinished jellies away from her. She fully acknowledged the need to kill in order
to eat, but she suddenly no longer felt like eating. “If your hospital pathologists did not tell you that, then you go and tell them I said they don't know their stuff!”

“She didn't kill herself, Rosie. I'm only telling you this because I don't want you going and getting involved in something that may turn out to be dangerous—no, listen to me. This is not some poisoning case that you can solve by finding out who has been using bad meat.”

Aunty Lee's lips pursed at this but she continued, refusing to be distracted. “I want to know how she died because I don't want to get blamed for poisoning people again. The last time you people blamed my special
buah keluak
dish and shut me down when it was nothing to do with me.” It could not hurt to remind Commissioner Raja that Aunty Lee had not only been wrongly blamed but had also helped apprehend the real killer.

“And you know I won't tell anybody. Except Nina. But telling Nina is like outsourcing my brain. With other people I just tell them enough small gossip to keep their brains occupied so that they don't notice I'm not telling them the big thing.”

Her convolutions would likely have knotted up Raja's brain if he had tried to unravel them. So he didn't.

“Allison Love was hit in the face with something like a fire extinguisher. Very likely the fire extinguisher from the hallway outside her hotel room. And yes, the forensic report suggests it happened after she died.”

“‘Very likely'?” Aunty Lee took all kinds of liberties with
the English language, but she knew it well enough to know Raja Kumar did not.

“We have to wait for confirmation of the samples sent to the lab.”

“Just in case it was used to bash somebody else in the same hotel who you haven't found yet.
Hiyah
.” Aunty Lee accepted the need for professional caution but could not help a sigh of exasperation. “So how was she killed?”

“There was also a cable tie pulled tight around her neck to suffocate her. It was a loop of two cable ties, actually. There would have been no way to get it off without cutting once it was pulled tight. That would have been enough to kill her, but it looks like the killer panicked because he thought she was not dying fast enough and went out to the hallway to get the fire extinguisher. She was already dead when he came back with it, but he hit her with it just to make sure.”

It was not a pretty picture. Aunty Lee winced slightly. “Not a very experienced killer.” She had seen enough animals killed to prefer a calm, experienced killer to a sympathetic, clumsily shrieking one. But she had no sympathy at all for people who ate meat without acknowledging it came from dead animals. That honesty was one of the things about her that made Commissioner Raja trust her.

“The blows suggest great rage or great panic. I would say some kind of emotion that goes beyond sanity.”

Aunty Lee shivered slightly. It was always easier to deal with the greedy than the crazy, because you could follow their reasoning even if you didn't share their values.

“Vallerie's really upset, but I still feel she is hiding something. I can tell that she is really frightened. But I don't see why any animal activists would attack Dr. Kang after she apologized publicly for euthanizing the dog. You remember she also donated two months of her salary to the Animal ReHomers. And just days ago she was one of the heroes who saved all the animals during that clinic fire. Couldn't her death be just a coincidence or an accident or even a suicide?”