Aunty Lee's Delights (20 page)

The bombs had been basic Molotov cocktails: glass bottles filled with turpentine and plugged with cloth wicks that had been lit. Despite Aunty Lee’s faith in criminal forensics, the police had not been able to recover any fingerprints from what was left of the bombs.

“And I hear you were accused of being a terrorist?”

“What? Oh. No, sir. The gentleman was in shock. He apologized later. He said he just saw me and panicked.”

Commissioner Raja nodded. Neither he nor Salim mentioned that racial stereotyping had probably contributed to Harry Sullivan’s mistake. There was more than enough of that being done maliciously.

“And you disarmed him with magic . . .”

“Sir?”

“That is what the Australian lady claims in her statement. She said he rushed toward you with a stick, but you just held out your hand and Mr. Sullivan fell down.”

“
Silat
, sir. Energy that emits outward from the center line is defensive. I blocked him and his own offensive energy moved backward into his body.”

Commissioner Raja nodded again. Salim did not think this was a good time to ask if he believed him. He also didn’t know Commissioner Raja was thinking it was a pity this was not the best time to discuss incorporating
silat
into basic combat training.

“You are currently the officer in charge of the Bukit Tinggi Neighbourhood Police Post, right?”

Salim nodded. He was suddenly very tired. He also felt thirsty and hungry and wondered fleetingly when Aunty Lee would be opening her café for customers again. He would probably have all the time in the world to eat there once the commissioner had finished firing him. If only he didn’t also end up with a disciplinary hearing. But then once he was fired, he could hardly spend his money on eating out at expensive cafés. He had no idea how much Aunty Lee’s Delights charged for their meals since Aunty Lee had refused to let him pay up till now, but after he lost his job he knew that would not continue.

“Do you have someone you can appoint to take charge temporarily at Bukit Tinggi?”

“Yes, sir. Officer Pang,” Salim said. So, he was being suspended, then. “I mean in the normal course of things, Officer Pang would handle things, but right now, with everything going on . . .” Suddenly he forgot how tired he was. “Right now it’s complicated. I would need more time to brief him.” There were so many things going on in the peaceful little neighborhood that he wanted to get to the bottom of it all himself.

“Good. I am appointing you temporarily to the CID. You will be serving under your old jurisdiction, but I want you to report directly to me.”

SSS Salim nodded again. The main thing was that he still seemed to have a job. “Why?” he asked, without meaning to. He was not questioning the commissioner’s decision, just trying to understand it.

Commissioner Raja managed to keep his face impassive. “Mrs. M. L. Lee phoned. I believe you two have met before. She seems to have formed a good opinion of you, said you saved the lives of those people and without you there her shop would have burned down.”

“Actually there was no real danger of that happening, sir.” SSS Salim felt he had to point this out.

The commissioner nodded his approval of the comment but continued as though Salim had not spoken. “Nonetheless she is nervous after all the things that have happened. She seems to have confidence in you, and she asked that we appoint you to keep an eye on things. Also she is the wife of an old friend and alone in the world now. We don’t want anything to happen to her.”

SSS Salim could understand the commissioner’s concern . . . although it seemed to him that there were few people less alone in the world than Aunty Lee, and he could not imagine her feeling nervous about anything. But he knew that the commissioner had just given him the opportunity that could make or break his career, so he kept his thoughts to himself.

“Go and get the statements of those people in hospital and make sure that Mrs. Lee is all right. Understood?”

“One more thing, sir.”

“Yes, Salim?”

“I don’t know if it is relevant to the case. But I heard that Mrs. Cunningham was calling to someone to call Joe for her. Perhaps you better find out who this Joe is.”

When he left the commissioner’s office, Salim felt much less tired than he’d felt when he went in. His career was not dead and life was full of possibilities again, but he had no idea where to go from here. His phone buzzed—he had put it on silent mode before going into Commissioner Raja’s office—and when he saw the call was from Aunty Lee, he answered it right there in the corridor. He was not sure whether to thank her for saving his job, but before he could say more than “Hello, Mrs. Lee—”

“We’ve found Komal,” Aunty Lee said. “The Peters family’s missing helper, remember? She wouldn’t have run away for nothing!

“And I think I know what the Cunninghams’ secret is,” Aunty Lee announced proudly. “Or rather we will all see soon—you too if you go round to the hospital. And you should know about the e-mails that Laura Kwee had been sending Marianne and the Cunninghams too. Carla Saito should have told you about them earlier . . . Because you see, the key to all this is Laura Kwee. The sort of person Laura Kwee was. How soon can you get to my shop? I want to show you everything before you drive me to the hospital!”

SSS Salim was a bit overwhelmed. When he arrived, Aunty Lee insisted on ushering him into her café, though it was still closed. Aunty Lee said it was officially because of the damage caused by the fire. Unofficially because too many people were coming out of curiosity to see the damage, and serving them took up too much time. “After all, for now this is our headquarters,” she said. “We can’t have people walking in and out nonstop.”

Salim wondered about customer loyalty. But after all, that was Aunty Lee’s business (in every sense). Either she knew her customers well enough to know they would return or this was an issue she simply didn’t have to worry about. It must be nice to be rich enough not to worry about such things.

“Everybody has secrets,” Aunty Lee said. “That poor girl Komal, for instance. She is so scared of her employers, she is scared of the police. Even if she has done nothing worse than eating leftovers, she is scared. But I can talk to her. Everybody hides something, so they seem suspicious. But some of these things are going to be innocent stupid things like women trying to lose weight but eating peach cake secretly. So we have to rule out the innocent secrets, and when we have done that, we will know who is responsible for these terrible crimes!”

It sounded very simple. Salim felt he ought to warn her that this was not how things were done in Singapore, but when he tried—

“Nonsense,” she exclaimed. “This is how problems are solved all over the world! Now the secrets. Nina, can you write them on the board for Salim, please?”

The board was the one on which the daily specials were written.

The Cunninghams:
Not wanting to say why they are in Singapore. Lucy Cunningham seems to be hiding something.

Mycroft Peters:
Not reporting his sister missing. Seems more eager to move on from her murder than solve it.

Cherril Lim-Peters:
Is she interested in starting a business with Mark or simply interested in Mark?

Carla Saito:
What really happened between her and Marianne Peters that she doesn’t want to tell us about?

Mark Lee:
What is the secret he and Laura Kwee shared
,
that she threatened him with revealing?

“Is that all?” SSS Salim asked. He was joking, but Aunty Lee took him seriously.

“Well, we should include Harry Sullivan because he was here on all the wine dining nights. But though the man has his own issues, I’m not sure he keeps them secret . . .”

From what SSS Salim had seen of the man, he had to agree. Mr. Sullivan had made clear what he thought of nonwhite people as well as what he thought of other white people who didn’t hold themselves up to his standards—the Cunninghams, for example. What had he said? That they were living off the fat of the land with no thought for their children, which was not surprising because—

“Harry Sullivan seems to think the Cunninghams have something to hide.”

“For example, I’m sure you have secrets,” Aunty Lee said confidently. She was not just teasing the young man. She had sensed how he and Nina looked at each other—probably before they were aware of it themselves.

“No,” SSS Salim said.

The plan Aunty Lee drew up:

Find out who the damned pervert is that Frank Cunningham thought was after them.

Find out about Laura’s relationships and mysterious phone calls.

Obtain copies of Marianne’s e-mails from Carla Saito.

Get the Peterses to talk about Marianne.

“Is all this enough to start with?”

“Plenty.”

“Of course, if you are too busy with your own leads, I can follow up on these myself.”

“Not at all.”

“Now you better get home and have a shower and a rest. I want to go to the hospital and then talk to Komal.”

When Salim left for home, he again had that feeling of being looked after. He had lived alone since his return to Singapore. The grandmother who had brought him up had died right after he graduated, almost as though she had been waiting for her long lifetime of responsibility to be over. There were times when he stayed on longer at work than he need have, just as he had once stayed late in school, simply to avoid going back to the empty rooms.

As he was leaving the café, Nina came in from the back and passed him a flimsy red plastic bag, the sort people used to carry fresh fruit bought off market stalls.

“Money plant,” she said. “It’s very tough. If you don’t have a flowerpot, put it in water and it will grow. Better still, put it in a bowl near the window.”

“Mosquitoes . . .” SSS Salim said automatically. But he took the bag.

“Then get fish,” Nina said firmly. “Those small fish, fifty cents each. Then, when you go home, you won’t be alone.”

It touched him that she had not forgotten what he barely remembered saying.

Aunty Lee was still staring at the chart when Nina returned from seeing Salim off.

“All the ingredients here. We just have to put them together the right way,” Aunty Lee said. “But first I need to do a bit of research. You said you found Laura Kwee’s laptop, right?”

“I already looked at it,” Nina said, unabashed. “I was looking for the guest and payment list for the wine dining, but there’s nothing.”

“Then do me a favor. Laura was helping me by writing about my café and products. I just want to make sure nobody tries to reach her through her sites and links. Can you get me in to look at her connections on her computer?”

“You can do that from your own computer, ma’am.”

“But it would be so much easier from Laura’s, right? Because she would have set up all the name lists and who has paid and who has not? If you like, I will get in touch with her family and ask them—plus Laura was so lazy and secretive she is sure to have some complicated passwords and then have lists of her passwords. If we can get hold of that, it will be so much easier.”

“Now I’m going to take a look around the employment agencies. Don’t look so worried, Nina. After sharing all my secrets with you, I’m not going to let you go so easily.”

14

Collecting Ingredients

Aunty Lee had a knack for preparing foods people swore tasted exactly as they remembered them from their distant childhoods. She was frequently asked for recipes and accused of withholding vital ingredients when these did not produce the desired result. In truth, she withheld nothing, but she could not give instructions for instinct. That had to be developed over years of experience. Ingredients today were either far purer or diluted with very different kinds of impurities than they had been when Aunty Lee was learning to cook. And the taste buds of those she cooked for were less sensitive as the people grew older. When cooking, you had to make allowances and adjustments to compensate for all these changes.

Moreover, Aunty Lee knew how important it was not only to know your ingredients but also to know the people you were dealing with. She kept that in mind when trying to figure out “human recipes.”

While the Cunninghams were recuperating in hospital, the Peterses’ runaway maid had been found. Aunty Lee could not claim credit for this.

Nina had finally managed to track down Komal Chandani. She could not have done it without her vast network of friends, their relatives, friends of their relatives, and so on. Aunty Lee was very impressed. She had lived in Singapore all her life, while Nina had been there all of seven years, but when it came to having contacts in helpful places, nobody was better than Nina. Until this talent of Nina’s surfaced, Aunty Lee had been limited to counting on taxi-driver and Tai-Tai networks for information. This had always involved taking more taxi rides and attending more charity dinners than Aunty Lee was happy with.

When she got home from the café, she found Nina and SSS Salim in her living room along with a small, dark, frightened-looking girl.