by Ovidia Yu
“That’s why you so sad, is it? Don’t worry lah! Nowadays all you young people nonstop fly here, fly there, frequent flyer everywhere. What’s the problem? And you tell your parents, once you teach him to eat Singapore food then he will be Singaporean lor. Case closed. So you are getting married and getting baby, you should look more happy!” Aunty Lee said. “What’s his name? When can you bring him here to eat in my café?”
“Like I said, it’s complicated. Even my parents don’t know yet. So please don’t say anything—”
“Don’t worry,” Aunty Lee said with deliberate vagueness. Aunty Lee was genuinely fond of Josephine’s mother, and it was no more than her responsibility to find out what was going on for Connie’s sake, even if she never told Connie what she learned.
“I’m going to drive Vallerie to Holland Village to get some things,” Selina said. Aunty Lee had forgotten about Selina till now. “She heard there’s a shop there where they have decent plus-sized clothes. And because she doesn’t feel comfortable here with some people around.”
Vallerie was already standing by the front door with her back to them.
“Good idea,” Aunty Lee said, disappointing Selina, who expected awkwardness, apologies, and invitations to stay. “Good-bye.”
Once they were gone, Aunty Lee returned to the subject. “Don’t think you must marry that man just because you are having a baby.”
“What?”
“That man—that dead Allison’s husband. He is your boyfriend, right?”
Aunty Lee talked fast to explain before Josephine had time to feel offended. “I am not against that Mike Fitzgerald because he is a) divorced, b) foreign, or c) much older than you. Of course those are things to keep in mind. But you should not get married for the baby. It’s not good for the baby.”
“My parents will freak out because he’s a divorcé. They’ve got this whole church hang-up thing.”
“A man who gets divorced once finds it easier the next time,” Aunty Lee warned. “Same like killing chickens. Better for a baby to have no father than to have a murderer for a father.”
“You have no right to say such things. Even the police aren’t calling him a murderer!”
But Josephine did not walk away, and Aunty Lee was encouraged to ask, “This Mike Fitzgerald was not your boyfriend at the time the dog was killed?”
“Of course not! After Allison accused us of harassment and libel and trespassing, the police set up a mediation meeting to try to calm everyone down. It didn’t work, of course. It lasted twelve hours and that was the first time Mike and I met. I was all fired up to make sure Lola wasn’t just forgotten, and of course Mike was there to back up Allison. I remember being so mad at him for saying over and over again that it was just a dog and unwanted dogs were being put down every day, why didn’t we just go and pick up another one instead of wasting time and money on this one.” Josephine paused and looked at Aunty Lee with tears shining in her eyes, as though to give cameras time to focus (they always had on previous occasions when she delivered this speech). “He just didn’t get the point.”
“What was the point? Why was that dog so special?” Aunty Lee was not sure she got the point either.
“Every dog is special, given the chance,” Josephine said, returning to her script. “But that was not the point. The point was that that wife of his signed a legal agreement without reading it, and then lied to us, and still thought she hadn’t done anything wrong because she was above the law here.
“Allison knew very well we needed a couple of days to find someone else to foster Lola. Cherril told her so. She asked if Allison would help pay for boarding costs, but that was only because Allison wanted someone to go and collect Lola immediately. We were all volunteers because we loved animals, and I thought Allison and her family did too. I remember feeling so happy that an expat family had adopted Lola, because they could afford a house with a little garden in front and I thought she would enjoy that. Instead she ended up dead.
“Allison refused to back down and everything just dragged on and on. Mycroft Peters was helping us pro bono and I thought that meant we would have no problem. Mike tried to get us all to say it was a misunderstanding and shake hands and move on, but his wife called him a traitor and swore at him. I remember feeling sorry for him. But by nine P.M. I was too tired to think or to care about anything other than I didn’t want Lola just swept away and forgotten.”
“Cherril got Mycroft to help?” Aunty Lee asked as Cherril came to join them after watching Selina drive away with Vallerie.
Cherril looked awkward but sat down with them as Josephine answered, “No—in fact I think that’s probably when Mycroft and Cherril first met. Is that why we didn’t win the case? Because Mycroft got so caught up in you he wasn’t paying attention?”
“Don’t be nuts.”
“But once you decided to go after Mycroft you abandoned the animals, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“I’m just kidding. That lying bitch swore she thought the puppy was going to spend the rest of its life in a cage and she was doing it a favor by putting it down. She wouldn’t shift from that. It was all one huge waste of time.”
“I think Allison Fitzgerald convinced herself that’s what I said.” Cherril shook her head. “It was like she had a filter around her: only certain things got through.”
Aunty Lee smiled at this. “We all see things through filters. But like air-con filters and fish tank filters, we must regularly clean out the rubbish from our filters otherwise everything gets blocked. But you are saying that it was during that long meeting that you and Mike Fitzgerald sat down in the same room for the first time?”
“I suppose—yes.”
“Then it was not a waste of time. You got so tired that your filters came off, both of you. But if your Mike is innocent, then why did he have to sneak back into Singapore without telling you? You didn’t know he was already in Singapore until the police found him, right? If Mike Fitzgerald did not come to Singapore to see you, then why did he come?”
Josephine looked pointedly at Cherril. “You should ask her.”
“Cherril?” Aunty Lee said in disbelief.
Cherril took a deep breath. “Mike Fitzgerald contacted me and said he was looking for business opportunities here, because of Josie. He wanted it to be a surprise for her. It was too good a chance to pass up, because to go big scale and international we’re going to need an international guy, someone with international business experience. And he was willing to come out without expat pay so that he could be in Singapore with Josie.”
“Why did you do that without even discussing with me? And that means you knew that Josephine and Mike were a couple and you never told me!” Aunty Lee saw the younger women exchange glances.
“I guessed there was something but I didn’t know for sure. The important thing is Mike Fitzgerald knows about running big businesses and he has contacts in America.”
Aunty Lee looked doubtful. She shook her head and waved her hands. “So confusing, all of your men. Got one ‘Mark,’ now got one ‘Mike.’”
“It’s easy to tell them apart,” Josephine said smoothly. “With Mark, what you see is what you get. There’s nothing more to him. But Mike is really Michael. There’s more depth to him.”
Cherril giggled. “Lucky someone’s not here. That would make her so mad!”
“You must tell that Silly-Nah when she comes back!” Aunty Lee said.
“I want you to meet Mike,” Josephine spoke up. “Right now the police are talking to him. Cherril, you have to go and tell the police why Mike came here without telling me. And, Aunty Lee, you’re friendly with the police commissioner, right? You have to tell him that Mike didn’t do anything to his ex-wife.”
“I’m sure that if he didn’t do it the police will find out soon enough,” Aunty Lee said. “Besides, it’s a bit funny, isn’t it? The way he came to Singapore so sneakily without even telling his girlfriend? What kind of man does something lik
e that?” Aunty Lee wondered what Josephine saw in that foreign man, why she couldn’t have ended up with someone like Brian Wong, for example. She sighed. Josephine DelaVega and Brian Wong were both so energetic and passionate about changing the world for the better. And they were both so tall and good-looking and rich and would have such pretty babies that they could afford to dress up. Plus they might have asked her to cater their wedding buffet.
Instead Josephine was throwing herself away on some divorcé with two children who might or might not have killed his mad wife.
“I know you don’t like Mike. But you’ve got to help prove that he didn’t do it because he didn’t. It’s just something else that ex-wife of his is trying to set him up for.”
“His ex-wife is dead.”
“She may be dead but this is all still her fault.”
Aunty Lee felt sorry for Allison—even sorrier than she had on hearing of her death.
14
Young People These Days
“Josephine really didn’t know that Mike Fitzgerald was here because he came into Singapore early to meet Cherril. No, nothing like that, Raja. You and Brian Wong are both so biased against ang moh men. Mike went and got in touch with all three of them after he and Allison got divorced. He said he wanted to apologize for his part in what had happened to the dog in Singapore. That led to Josephine falling in love with him and Cherril asking him to help expand the business. He came to Singapore early to discuss working with Cherril on business expansion plans.”
Aunty Lee knew from experience how difficult it was to get into Commissioner Raja’s office in the police headquarters, even if you knew he would want to see you. So instead of trying to get through the various levels of administration, she had gone to the staff canteen in the basement and phoned him from there. Since her fall, Commissioner Raja had dropped in on her often with gifts of food and genuine concern, so it seemed only right, now that she was more ambulatory, that she should drop in on him. Admittedly she came bearing chicken curry, pineapple tarts, and a request . . . but as she had expected, Raja Kumar was still glad to see her.
“How did you get here?” It was not yet lunchtime for most people, and only the coffee and dim sum stall was busy with takeaway business.
“Nina dropped me off. She’s going to pick up some more chickens and she will come back and get me in an hour.”
“With a car full of live chickens?”
“With the freezer in the car boot full of dead chickens. They kill them with electric shock, very fast. And then they have a machine that can clean and remove feathers very fast.” In the old days killing chickens had been a far more laboriously messy business. Aunty Lee still felt a twinge of nostalgia for her younger self, the girl who had decided that the best thing for both chickens and herself was to learn to kill them as quickly and painlessly as possible. There were “high-class” girls who preferred to shriek and considered themselves superior to tasks only suited for servants, but Aunty Lee believed that what could not be avoided should be tackled as quickly as possible. So—
“I want to talk to you about Mike Fitzgerald. How is the curry?”
“It’s good, but not as good as Sumathi used to make.”
Commissioner Raja had already dipped a convenient teaspoon into the curry gravy. He always remembered to pay tribute to how well his late wife cooked. Aunty Lee remembered Sumi too, and her advice to the much younger Rosie Lee on the secret of her chicken curry: “If it looks funny, dump in a tin of Amoy chicken curry to make the color right.” It had worked too, though Aunty Lee had not had to resort to tinned curry for some time now. But Aunty Lee knew that the reason Raja Kumar fondly remembered Sumathi’s curry as the best in the world was a testimony to the power of love and memory rather than the Amoy brand.
“I must get some French bread. It soaks up gravy better than rice. Sorry, what did you say?”
“Mike Fitzgerald.” Aunty Lee repeated what Josephine and Cherril had told her the previous day.
“So Cherril is talking to strangers about expanding Aunty Lee’s Delights without telling you first?”
“She tried to talk to me. I told her it was no use even thinking about overseas franchises for the business unless we had someone with overseas experience. I thought that was the end of the matter. Cherril thought I was telling her to go ahead and recruit somebody.”
“Young people,” Commissioner Raja snorted. “Young people these days think they know everything and try to tell their grandfathers what to do! You know what they call young people these days? The YOLO generation—the You Only Live Once generation. And because they only live once they cannot be bothered to work on things that will take longer or benefit other people. But at the same time they feel entitled to take, take, take everything that other people have worked to build up!”
Aunty Lee was familiar with Raja’s rants over the quality of new recruits and young officers. And he had other reasons to be frustrated by young would-be tyrants. His son-in-law was strongly hinting that Raja Kumar think about signing a prenuptial agreement if he wanted to marry again, while tiptoeing around the question of how much Rosie Lee was worth. Or even better, dividing his assets among his offspring now, before he inconveniently descended into death or dementia. When he was in a good mood he laughed about it, but at the end of the day when his energy was low and he most missed his wife, it got him down and left him drained the next morning.
“I never thought they would grow up so mercenary.”
“They are trying to protect you, you know. They are probably afraid I’m going to take all your money and spend it at the casino and leave you with nothing to pay your medical bills in your old age.”
“So? That’s still my business, not theirs. And the café is your business. Cherril should have talked to you first!”
“When Mike offered to come out and look over the factories Cherril had short-listed, she thought it would be a good idea. She says he was willing to come on board as a partner investor.”
Commissioner Raja looked skeptical. “There are people selling plots for time-share holidays on Mars if he’s looking for something else to invest in.”
“I doubt he would be interested unless Josephine DelaVega is going to be living on Mars. The point is, he was going over factory costs with Cherril when the vet was killed. He couldn’t have done it. And if you are sure that the vet was killed by the same person who killed his wife, that means he did not kill his wife either.”
“Because Mike Fitzgerald was with Cherril the morning it happened.” Raja Kumar had reached for a notebook and was making notes. The investigator in him had surfaced and Aunty Lee knew he would confirm all the details.
“That’s what she says. I would be very happy if he killed his wife. I mean, better him than Josephine or Cherril or Brian. But if you say whoever killed his wife also killed the vet, then he didn’t do it.”
“Unless they were in it together.” But it was clear he didn’t believe it. “And the girlfriend really didn’t know he was already in the country?”
“It was supposed to be a big surprise for Josephine. They didn’t want to get her hopes up in case they didn’t manage to talk me round.”
“At least Cherril was going to ask you before signing him on!”
It was hardly necessary to comment on the failings of the younger generation again.
“Can you really believe that if Cherril knew her good friend’s boyfriend was in Singapore she didn’t say anything to her friend? Girls like that talk. Cherril would have told her.”
“They both swear she didn’t know. Mike says he didn’t want to raise false hopes in case it didn’t work out. But I think it’s more likely he’s just secretive by nature and being married to Allison made him more so. He made each of them promise not to tell anybody that he had got in touch with them. Remember, the three of them also went through quite a difficult time during the dog business. They didn’t want to dig things up again.”
“But Josephine goes and falls in lov
e with him.” This seemed to be the major point Commissioner Raja held against Mike Fitzgerald, even outranking the possibility that the man had killed his ex-wife. “And they really didn’t tell anybody, didn’t even discuss it among themselves?”
“They were not as close as they used to be.” That was another unpleasant aftermath of the puppy killer case, Aunty Lee thought. It would always be something the friends reminded each other of.
“What about Brian Wong? He was also involved in that puppy killer business.”
“He’s a big-time entrepreneur now. Sitting on government boards and committees and handing out grants, he’s practically a national resource.”
“That means the big bosses won’t be very happy to find out they’ve got an infamous activist handing out their big-time grants. You know what Singapore is like about such things. He’s the one that had the most to lose from Allison’s suit. Even if she didn’t win his entire activist past would have come out. He would be the one hiding his head and running out of the country!”
“Of course Brian Wong didn’t kill Allison,” Aunty Lee said firmly. “I know Brian Wong. Brian can’t even kill cockroaches. Oh, I wish you could just prove Mike Fitzgerald was the murderer.”
“Because he’s a white man or because he’s a divorcé and unemployed?”
“Because he is not from here and I don’t know his parents,” Aunty Lee said honestly. “And because he’s got such good motives here—if that vet had not put down that dog for his wife, if his wife had not made such a fuss about everything, he would still have his cushy lifestyle and expat benefits, and Josephine would be in love with Brian Wong by now. But he didn’t kill them.”
“So what do you want me to do about it? Go and spring him out of prison? If I do that they’ll fire me and take away my pension!”
“He hasn’t been arrested,” Aunty Lee pointed out. “He’s just ‘assisting inquiries.’ Let me assist him to assist you.”
“Here’s Nina. That means there’s a car full of dead chickens in the car park . . .”
