Aunty Lee's Delights (9 page)

Aunty Lee looked at him for a long moment. She was not refusing to answer, just studying him; SSS Salim got the feeling that she was reading his mind. In reality, Aunty Lee was engaged in putting together all the facts she had so far—including the appearance of a police vehicle at her doorstep—and also studying Officer Pang, who was standing soberly by the entrance.

“You aren’t just here to follow up on my phone call,” she said finally. “You came to tell me that Laura Kwee is dead.”

The handsome policeman looked startled enough to confirm it.

“Of course we try to follow up on every tip we get,” SSS Salim explained. “But most of the time it doesn’t come to anything.”

“This time it did!” In spite of the horror of the news, Aunty Lee was clearly fascinated by it. She waved to Nina and hot tea (ginseng and
Cordyceps
this time to strengthen them against the shock) was made and brought out for all of them along with some of Aunty Lee’s peanut biscuits.

“What we want to ask you . . .” As SSS Salim spoke he nodded to Officer Pang, who produced a small recorder that he placed on the coffee table. This was obviously the start of the official interview. “What alerted you to the fact that Miss Kwee was missing?”

“But she was killed, wasn’t she? Or are you not sure whether it’s her? I don’t think I have any photographs of Laura Kwee . . . Nina, can you look up Laura Kwee’s Facebook page for the officers? Or would you like Nina to go with you to the mortuary to identify her body? I can come with you also, but my eyes are not so good already now.”

“We are certain it is Miss Laura Kwee,” SSS Salim cut in hurriedly before Nina could follow up on any of Aunty Lee’s instructions. He was still calm and still authoritatively patient, but he was starting to show signs of the bemused stress that affected most people when they were first taken over by Aunty Lee. “I mean we are certain of her identity. We don’t need to identify her. What I would like to know is what made you report her as missing.”

“I read in the newspapers this morning that you were trying to identify the body that was found,” Aunty Lee explained. “Or rather Nina read it to me. And yesterday already we heard it on the radio. So I thought I should help if I could.”

“When did you phone, ma’am?” Nina usually had to dial the numbers for Aunty Lee.

“Yesterday. When you were at the back setting up the grill, before all the other people arrived,” Aunty Lee admitted. “I didn’t want to worry you. Nine-nine-nine is such an easy number to tap-tap-tap, I thought I would just take care of it without bothering you.”

“None of her colleagues or family members reported her missing.” SSS Salim was not to be diverted. “In fact, when we spoke to them, most of them said they thought she had gone off on holiday over Chinese New Year and taken leave to extend her trip. And when we checked—we found she had taken leave. So what alerted you to the fact that she was missing?”

Nina was beginning to feel irritated. Shouldn’t these policemen be out running after whoever had killed Laura Kwee and thrown her into the sea rather than cross-examining Aunty Lee about her phone call?

“We didn’t think that Laura Kwee is missing,” Nina said. “In fact we were sure she was not missing because just before dinner last night she phoned Ma’am Selina to say she not coming.”

This was of interest to both policemen. “You say last night someone called Selina says she got a phone call from Laura Kwee?” SSS Salim asked for the benefit of the recording even as Officer Pang glanced at his watch to carefully note the time this nugget of information had been handed to them. “Do you know what time this call came through? And can you tell me how to get in touch with this Selina? What is her full name?”

“Selina Lee. She’s married to my late husband’s son, Mark. You are trying to narrow down the time of death, right? Selina told us about the call around seven p.m. That means Laura Kwee must have phoned her earlier than that. That means she must have been killed between—” Aunty Lee stopped abruptly.

“You found a body yesterday morning,” Aunty Lee began again. “You are saying that is the same body that you have now identified as Laura Kwee—even though Laura Kwee was alive yesterday evening.”

“And that has probably been in the water for at least three days. That is why we would like to talk to Selina Lee,” said SSS Salim.

“Ma’am Selina is going to be angry,” Nina suggested after the two police officers left with their information. That was not saying much, given how often Selina found something to be angry about.

“I’m sure we’ll hear all about that soon enough,” Aunty Lee said. “Invite those two over for dinner tonight. Tell them I want to cook for them because they will be too tired after talking to the police. And then phone that Carla Saito for me. Tell her it is not the body of her friend Marianne, but I want her to come and talk to me. If she doesn’t want to come here or go to the shop to talk to me, I will go to her hotel to talk to her there. Quick, do it now!”

5

Carla Saito’s Story

Carla Saito chose to meet Aunty Lee back at the café.

“Marianne didn’t go diving with friends,” she told Aunty Lee. “She just told her parents she was going to be with friends they knew so they wouldn’t worry about her. She took extra time off work because she was going to spend time with me. We had a lot to talk about.”

Marianne Peters and Carla Saito had met the year before when Marianne visited Washington for an IT conference. They had instantly clicked, despite being from such different backgrounds. Carla had shown Marianne around Washington. Even though it was not her hometown, she knew her way around better than Marianne, who was on her first visit to the States.

“And I know what you’re going to say, but it wasn’t just a holiday thing. We spent all our time together there; she skipped all her final sessions so that we could take a quick trip to the mountains. And after she went back to Singapore—I mean came back here—we talked every day on Skype—”

“You became very good friends very fast,” Aunty Lee observed sweetly.

Carla Saito looked at her for a moment, but there was nothing but curiosity in Aunty Lee’s expression.

“Yes, we did,” Carla said quietly. “And we planned this for a long time. Me coming out here to join her, I mean. I had to sell my apartment and hand in my notice—”

“What do you do? For work, I mean.”

“Well, to put it simply, I work with computers. I’m in IT security.”

“But you can’t go on staying at the Frangipani Inn. That kind of place is not good for a single girl staying alone. Why don’t you come and stay at my house? I have a lot of room in my house. Nina, you can make the bed in the side room for her, right? You can have your own toilet, and then if you want to go and talk to Marianne’s family tomorrow, you can walk over. They are just nearby, just further up the road and up the hill. If it’s not too hot, you can easily walk. I can show you where to go or I can go with you. I know her parents very well.”

“I don’t know—”

“Don’t worry.” Aunty Lee sensed her alarm. “If you are happy in your room there, then that is fine.”

“Well, it’s not so bad. But the main thing is, Marianne booked the room for us. She put down the deposit and I just had to check in when I got here. She was going to meet me there so that we could talk. Plus it’s cheap because it’s a backpackers’ haunt and nobody her family knows would ever go near there, so it was safe.”

“You must be glad Marianne is all right,” Aunty Lee said to Carla. “I mean now that you know she is not the body that they found.”

“Of course I am. I just don’t understand why, if she’s all right—and why, if she could call someone else—she didn’t call me.”

Aunty Lee nodded, understanding. Even a tragedy was easier to understand than abandonment. “As long as there is life, there is hope,” she said. “Tell me why you came here to look for Laura Kwee. How did you know that Marianne would get in touch with her about not coming?”

“I didn’t. But Marianne told me Laura got her brother interested in this place and he got her and his wife to go too. And then there was some fuss at the first dinner, right? Laura was trying to match Marianne up with some guy? But Laura called her afterward and they talked and she explained things to her, and then she said Laura was getting someone to help us.”

“Help you? What do you mean?”

Carla Saito shrugged. “I don’t know. It was going to be some big surprise for me. All I know is she was pretty excited about it. She said we could have some time together to work things out in peace without really leaving Singapore. Anyway, I should be going. It’s really late. Thank you very much. For the food and for listening.”

“Would you like me to come with you to Marianne Peters’s house and ask her mother where she is?”

“No! I mean there’s no point. I know what she’ll say. She thinks that Marianne is off on a travel vacation with friends. Marianne was only telling them that because she wanted us to have some time together. I don’t want to tell them she was lying. If she comes back and finds out I told them she lied, she’s going to be so mad.”

“Then why not just meet her somewhere else? Why come to Singapore?”

“Because if we managed to figure out what we want to do, then we could have gone to tell her family together. I mean, if I managed to persuade her to see things my way,” Carla Saito said quietly. “I wanted everything to be clear and open and honest from the beginning. This way, even if her family wasn’t happy about it, at least they would know how we felt and what we wanted and they could take their time to come around to the idea—but they would never have to think that we lied to them. Of course, it didn’t quite work out that way. Marianne said I didn’t understand what traditional Asian parents were like.”

“You have to tell her parents,” Aunty Lee said. “They have a right to know Marianne is not away with her friends.”

“No. I mean . . . just wait. Please. If she just took some time off to think about things and I’ve gone and talked to her parents—”

“If you don’t want to talk to her parents, at least tell her brother. Mycroft is a nice boy. He won’t say anything—”

Carla Saito shook her head. “No. I know all about Mycroft Peters. He’s the worst of them all.”

6

Family Dinner

Though she was far from convinced, Aunty Lee agreed not to say anything to Marianne’s family—at least for the moment. In contrast to Carla Saito’s relief to find out that Marianne was not the body found on Sentosa, the news left Aunty Lee feeling even more worried. There was a problem with the phone call no one else seemed to have noticed. If Laura Kwee had already been murdered, how could Marianne have left a message with her? And if the message had not come from Laura, why had Marianne been mentioned at all unless . . .

Aunty Lee did not want to follow that thought through till she was forced to. Fortunately having Selina and Mark come to dinner provided ample distraction.

For once Selina was paying more attention to her own plate than what Mark was or was not eating. And she was eating Aunty Lee’s food with gusto. Mark watched his wife helping herself to sambal squid and black-bean fish without a word about cholesterol and preservatives, and helped himself as well. It was about time Selina had a good meal without worrying about what she was eating. It seemed as though being questioned by the police had improved both her mood and her appetite.

Aunty Lee had been half afraid that Selina would blame her for talking to the police. But Selina was surprisingly good-natured about the experience. She and Mark had had to go to the Bukit Tinggi Police Post for an interview with SSS Salim and had spent almost four hours there.

“I told them I had no idea whatsoever that Laura was missing. I expected her to turn up like we arranged, she texted me to say sorry she couldn’t make it—that’s all I knew. But they kept asking all these questions about how well I knew Laura, had she said anything about boyfriends or stalkers—and they took my phone. I think they are going to try to trace where her text came from. All I can say is they better get it back to me soon! What am I going to do without a phone—I’m running a business, you know! What if my clients try to call me?”