Aunty Lee's Delights (12 page)

Mark Lee—
dining room. Made several trips out to his car to get things he had forgotten.

Selina Lee—
sidewalk
,
front shop. Used her mobile phone to text and call.

Harry Sullivan—
sidewalk. Stayed outside till last minute smoking because no smoking inside
,
dining room.

Frank and Lucy Cunningham—
front shop
,
dining room
,
toilet
,
Lucy Cunningham was texting
,
Frank Cunningham went out front and back to take photographs.

Cherril Lim-Peters—
dining room
,
went to car several times with Mark Lee.

Carla Saito—
outside somewhere. She said that she came looking for Laura Kwee and had come straight in as soon as she arrived, but in fact she arrived much earlier and was watching from outside.

The contact numbers for all these people were written down in Nina’s careful script on the reverse side of the paper.

SSS Salim was very impressed. People were always coming up with ideas and suggestions on how he could do his work better, but they seldom passed him anything he could use, and even when they did, it was never so organized. In fact Aunty Lee’s list reminded him of an ingredient list for one of his grandmother’s recipes; written out casually but carefully.

“How do you know that?” SSS Salim asked, pointing to the comments that appeared after Carla Saito’s name. “Did you see her outside? What was she doing?”

“Oh no. I didn’t see her outside. If I had, of course I would have asked her to come in!”

“Then how do you know she hadn’t just arrived?”

“We didn’t hear a taxi. And she was sweaty but breathing slowly. As though she had been standing still in the heat for some time, not like somebody who had just walked in from the main road. And when she came inside to talk to us, I could see that right away she was looking at the women to see which of them was Laura Kwee. That showed that she didn’t know who Laura Kwee was and that she already knew how many women were in the room. Therefore she must have been watching for some time, to know who came in.”

All that made sense. “Thank you. I will keep it in mind,” SSS Salim said.

“But you shouldn’t waste time suspecting her,” Aunty Lee said firmly. “Why I want you to take note of her now is because if Carla Saito was outside the shop for a while, she might have noticed whoever put the phone into the burning bin—if that’s when they did it.”

A police officer in most other countries would probably have dismissed this (politely or not) as the view of an old woman who knew nothing. But SSS Salim was a Singaporean before he was a policeman and he had been brought up by a grandmother who had kept him all too well aware that systems were most efficiently run on the experience of those who had been running them the longest. He also knew it was vital to differentiate facts from prejudice.

“Do you think the phone was put there at some other time? Not right after the text was sent? Why?”

“Because that fat Australian man always likes to stand there and smoke until the last minute. He always puts his cigarette butts inside the bin. I don’t know how he can still taste my food after all that smoke. But if anybody put the phone in, then he would have seen, right? Afterward also, he didn’t go off right away. He went to smoke there again.”

“That’s not very respectful,” SSS Salim said.

Aunty Lee laughed. “Don’t worry. I expect the ghosts can enjoy burned cigarettes as much as they enjoy burned paper money.” Then, as a thought struck her, she looked sober again. “It’s the attitude that matters, right? Not what you give to the dead but what you want to give them.”

SSS Salim saw the old woman’s maid look alarmed. But it seemed to him purely the alarm of a nursemaid concerned that the child she was looking after was toddling into the path of danger. There were portraits of an august-looking gentleman all over the house—both alone and with Aunty Lee—but no other sign of him. Still, the presence and positioning of those portraits said more about how the man was remembered than any amount of flowers and joss sticks could have done.

“I will have to send someone to take your statement formally,” SSS Salim told Aunty Lee. “Thank you. You have been very helpful. If you don’t mind, I will keep this paper, and if you give us permission to examine your shop space, we will be very careful—”

“Keep it, keep it. I have my own copy.” Aunty Lee dismissed the paper. “You can come and look around my shop, but you won’t find anything. If anything was left there, Nina would have found it already. Nina can find anything. But come, we can all go down and look now. I want you to show me where you found the phone.”

As Aunty Lee started off, Nina gave SSS Salim a sympathetic look.

“Your boss is very energetic, eh?” Salim said.

“Slowly, slowly you will get used to her,” Nina said. She waited for Salim to go after Aunty Lee, then followed them both out. “You don’t suspect her, do you?”

“We have to suspect everybody. Tell me, are you familiar with the other members of your boss’s family?”

Something in the way he said this made Nina pay attention. “Who are you asking about? Why?”

“The phone. There are ways of tracing calls and messages that I am not at liberty to discuss. But several of the messages on Laura Kwee’s phone came from the phone belonging to Mrs. Lee’s stepson, Mark. And there was a message from him telling her there was no need for her to come back.” He paused and Nina waited.

“Sometimes there are things that family members do not notice or cannot say,” Salim said. “But if you notice anything . . .” It was his turn to wait.

“I don’t know anything,” Nina said firmly. She held the door open for him.

Suddenly it was important to him to let her know that he was not just a policeman following routine.

“Very nice plants,” he said. Then, feeling that this had sounded lame, he added, “I can’t keep plants alive. Everything I try to grow dies.”

“You are worried about Marianne Peters, aren’t you?” Aunty Lee was standing in the driveway. Officer Pang had gotten out of the car and had positioned himself between her and the gate. He looked as though he was not sure if he would be called to stop her should the old lady decide to make a run for it.

“Whoever sent that message didn’t know whether it was Laura’s body you people found. Let’s say it was whoever killed the poor woman and threw her into the sea. Obviously he was hoping the body would not be identified and wanted to throw you off the scent. But why would he add that Marianne said she wouldn’t be there? Did he throw more than one body into the sea off Sentosa? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“Ma’am,” said SSS Salim. “I cannot comment on that.”

The way he spoke told Aunty Lee that if he had not thought of the possibility she’d just suggested, he would certainly be considering it now, but she felt little triumph. Carla Saito might seem relieved that it was not Marianne’s body that had surfaced, but Aunty Lee felt she would not be comfortable till she saw Marianne in person. There was still something Carla Saito was hiding. And even if Carla did not want to tell her what this was, Aunty Lee would have to get it out of her somehow.

In the meantime . . .

“You should speak to Marianne Peters’s family. Find out more about this holiday she’s supposed to have gone on. I’m not saying they have anything to do with the murder, but it seems very strange that they seem to have no worries at all about not hearing from Marianne!”

Part 2

Middle

8

Waiting for Police Interviews

It was a pleasant enough room. Rectangular with a row of seats facing a long counter, it could have been the waiting area of a neighborhood dentist. But it was not. The Bukit Tinggi Neighbourhood Police Post was not where the Cunninghams had expected to be spending any of their time in Singapore. But Frank and Lucy were making the best of it. Lucy caught up on her e-mail and daily Bible verses on her MacBook Air while Frank took photographs of the station. The officer behind the counter looked uncomfortable but did not try to stop him. However, when Frank pointed the camera in her direction, she said, “No, no, cannot.”

“It’s just for a souvenir,” Frank Cunningham said. “To show where we’ve been.”

“No, sorry, sir. Photo taking is not allowed.”

“Frank, don’t bother the poor woman,” Lucy said without looking up from her reading.

“In case you’re never seen again, they don’t want any proof you’ve been here!” Harry Sullivan said. He laughed to show that he was joking, but his laughter was not very convincing. It was plain to the Cunninghams, and probably to the police officer as well, that Harry was not happy about where he was.

The neighborhood police post was not an unpleasant place to be waiting. At least there was air-conditioning. Despite her son’s tirades against power consumption and global warming, Lucy Cunningham felt like a functioning human only in an air-conditioned room. And the nice officer had told her she was welcome to plug her computer into the station’s outlet, so she was quite content to catch up on her reading and e-mails. Traveling with Frank had left her very little time on her own. He didn’t like to see her sitting quietly because he thought she would worry and brood about the matter that was looming so painfully over both of them. Frank knew that getting anxious about how things might work out never changed anything. But knowing this didn’t always stop the worrying, and that was why anything, even this local inconvenience, was a welcome distraction. But though she appreciated Frank’s good intentions, Lucy sometimes wished they could talk about it. She wanted to wallow and be miserable, even if it did not help. She wished she could let herself go and have a good cry, but she did not want to upset Frank, so she went on reading the selected Bible verses on her little computer.

“How long do you think this will go on?” Harry Sullivan asked. “I mean, we didn’t even know the poor girl; it’s nothing to do with us!”

“You met her, didn’t you? What was she like?” Harry might just have been venting his frustration but Frank Cunningham was always ready to talk.

“Not a real good looker. A bit too much flesh on her, but she knew how to dress to catch a man’s eye, if you get what I mean. If you ask me, that’s what got her into trouble. She was looking for the wrong sort of attention and she found it.”

Frank Cunningham nodded. He knew the type. “I’m okay with women dressing to please themselves. That said, some girls today forget there is also the need to dress appropriately because of how others will see you. Otherwise they’ll just attract sex predators and perverts.”

“Hear, hear,” Harry Sullivan agreed.

Frank Cunningham warmed to him and to his subject.

“Look, from an honest man’s point of view, if a woman dresses like a slut, the probability of her getting sexually assaulted rises, am I right? We call ourselves civilized, but the animal, carnal nature of man is still very real today and you cannot deny sexual attractions are for real. So how a woman dresses does affect the probability of attack. Here we’re not discounting her right to dress as she pleases. It is her safety we’re concerned about. Talk all you like about women’s rights, we can’t fight sinful human nature!”