by Ovidia Yu
“We both grew up here. Neither of us has been married before. Neither of us got divorced from a crazy person who was threatening to sue the new partner before getting herself murdered. It’s a big, big difference.”
“I’m not saying it is the same. I am only saying that if people want to do something, they will not listen to anything you say. Plus they will get angry with you for saying it.”
Cherril thought back to her own marriage. It was different for her and Mycroft of course. She had had concerns initially (much as she wanted to be with him), but once she decided to commit she had not had any doubt it was going to work out for them. She would not have gone into it if she had had any doubts. But she had also thought that they would have moved on to the next stage of marriage by now.
“It’s going to be difficult for your children too.” It was as though Nina had picked up Aunty Lee’s ability to follow other people’s thoughts.
“Not in Singapore. There are more and more mixed kids in Singapore these days. As long as they know who they are, it should be all right. But this Mike lives in England and has kids in school there and everything. Josephine’s always wanted to get out of Singapore, but I don’t think she knows what it’s going to be like. A new country as well as a new man and his kids. And kids can be difficult even if they’re your own. Think what it’s going to be like handling those two with half-crazy genes. That’s not fair to Josephine.”
“Does Josephine want children?”
“Of course!” Cherril’s voice rang out in the room louder than she intended. Nina looked at her as though she had just answered an important question. “I mean, who doesn’t, right? Hey, are there any mangoes left? I’ve been thinking of trying something with them.”
“More than enough!” Nina was successfully diverted. “But no room in the fridge lah. Anything you make got to put in the freezer.”
Some of the mangoes were already going soft. But that just meant they would be nectar sweet and easy to pulp in a blender.
Josephine was not as busy as she would have liked people to think. Her artistic floral arrangements had been a big hit. But the same fickle fashion that had drawn people to her designs had soon pulled them elsewhere. Now she was not even covering the costs of running the little shop space she rented. It would be time to move on soon, to make herself over yet again. She was quite looking forward to this.
Josephine DelaVega examined herself in the mirror and, as was happening more and more frequently these days, wondered about plastic surgery. Though she had not gone under the knife, this daughter of two secondary school teachers had reinvented herself, enhancing or removing facets of herself to suit the image and lifestyle she desired. All in all things had worked out quite well in her life so far. Even the pregnancy had not been a complete accident.
She had thought it would prompt Mike to get over his reservations about marrying again. Mike was the kind of man who had to be pushed into recognizing what he wanted to do. Josephine could see his late wife had taken full advantage of that.
Remembering Allison drew Josephine’s thoughts to Vallerie, Allison’s sister.
Allison had been the elder of the siblings. This made Vallerie, like Josephine herself, a younger sister. Growing up, Josephine had dealt with this by taking the opposite path to whatever her sister, Margaret, had done. And she did not regret it. Though she envied Maggie’s happy married-with-three-children life, Josephine would have hated to live her life as a dentist, married to another dentist, spending their waking hours looking up people’s nostrils to finance a mortgage and their children’s education. And besides, now there was Mike. No, Vallerie didn’t matter. Josephine would do what she could for the woman, just enough to show Mike how generous she was, and sooner or later Vallerie would go back to America or wherever, and Allison’s ashes would go with her in a jar or be scattered in the sea or whatever, and Mike and Josephine would live happily ever after.
The stupid woman had gotten so worked up at the suggestion she join Josephine and Mike for a drink before they all had dinner together at Aunty Lee’s Delights. “No way in hell” would Vallerie sit down at a table with Mike. She was convinced Mike had killed Allison and would never rest till she had proved it—
“Nobody warned me he was coming for dinner. That busybody old cow was trying to set me up, wasn’t she? You’re all in it together. Well, I’m not standing for it!”
“Fine. So don’t meet Mike.”
“I told the police that if it wasn’t him, somebody killed Allison to stop her from taking you to court. I told them you and your devil boyfriend murdered her between you. They’re going to be watching you!”
Josephine recognized the malicious triumph of a child on Vallerie’s pudgy face.
“Don’t think that just because she’s dead it’s going to stop.”
Josephine had hoped being nice to Vallerie now would pay off in the future. Someday when she and Mike had settled down it might be useful to have one more aunt to take his children off their hands. But Josephine was finding it really difficult to be nice to Vallerie.
She smoothed fungicide over some large sunflower stems, hands encased in thin latex gloves to protect them. Josephine paused in the act of cabling the flowers to their stand, remembering the look on Vallerie’s face. The woman’s intense, focused, knowing hatred so startled Josephine that for a moment she had imagined the dead Allison glaring at her through her sister’s eyes. Then it was gone and the bloated and bleary-eyed Vallerie was back with her childish spitefulness. Had Josephine imagined that look?
19
Hotel Coffeehouse
When the clearly busy Jacky finally disappeared to attend to the calls he had been ignoring, leaving them alone to wait for Salim’s arrival, Aunty Lee suggested they do that in the hotel coffeehouse.
“I need to sit my old bones down. And I always like to check out the competition. And if that nice policeman comes to talk to us here, you can tell him about anything that’s missing from your things while we are still in the hotel.”
Vallerie agreed, though it was unclear whether it was the hotel tea or sitting down that appealed to her. And once in the Orchid coffeehouse, Vallerie agreed to have something hot to drink (just to calm her down) and something to eat (just to keep her strength up). Aunty Lee knew that feeding people often made them more open to cooperating than starving them did. It was a physiological fact that a comfortably full stomach signaled that if it was safe to eat with someone, it was likely safe to talk to him or her. By the time Vallerie had finished a hot honey-lemon infusion and buttered waffles with imported genuine Canadian (though packaged in Japan) maple syrup, and was considering a chocolate mousse pie, she seemed willing enough to talk.
“So, you and your sister were close?” Aunty Lee started innocently enough.
Vallerie nodded. She could hardly say “I couldn’t stand my sister.” All Aunty Lee wanted was to get the conversation going. Listening and watching how people responded to questions told her more about them than the answers they gave. Her late husband had joked that his Rosie functioned like a human detector kit when it came to people’s food prejudices, and perhaps also other prejudices beyond food. Though of course it was trickier with people she did not know, and even more so with foreigners like Vallerie.
“So close even though you lived so far apart?” Aunty Lee asked. “That’s so good.”
“Like I’ve said over a hundred times, we had no one else.” But Vallerie seemed willing enough to repeat it a hundred and one times. She pointed out the mousse pie (with a salty almond pretzel crust) to the hovering waiter and sat back to continue. “We were the only ones left in the family. Doesn’t make any difference whether we were close or not. We had to watch out for each other, because there wasn’t anyone else. Nobody else gave a damn for either of us. Of course it didn’t help that we were living so far apart. If I had stayed in England I could have been nearer to Allison. I could have done more for her, just been there, you know? After all, it was where w
e grew up, where everything was familiar. But oh no. I preferred to stay far away from her and home, even knowing what she was going through. But it’s too late now, isn’t it?”
Guilt showed up in strange ways and for strange reasons. Aunty Lee wondered if that was why Vallerie was focused on the wrongs done to her dead sister—wrongs done by herself as well as everyone else. She ordered a second chamomile tea for herself. “At least you accompanied her to Singapore when she needed you.”
“Fat lot of good I did her. And I didn’t even stay in the room with her—I just left her alone there for someone to come and kill her! I’m not letting it go. I’m going to make sure everybody knows what happened to Allison!” Vallerie’s words were angry but she did not get up to leave, so Aunty Lee let her go on talking. “All those people who said those terrible things about her. I want them to know this is all their fault. Oh, I should have stayed in the room with her!”
“But you never know, right?” Aunty Lee said comfortingly. “If you had stayed then both of you might be dead now!”
By the time Inspector Salim arrived, the efficient (and apparently multilingual) Jacky had already gathered the details—and people—Aunty Lee had asked for, from the Mandarin-speaking ex–front desk staff to his Malay- and Tamil-speaking cleaning and security personnel.
And when Salim requested the floor plans of the hotel, Jacky promptly handed him a photocopied set in a clear binder.
“Very good,” the officer said, clearly impressed. Jacky beamed and blushed.
If Cherril ever expanded operations to the extent that they needed to hire a restaurant or business manager—or if for some reason she ever lost Nina—Aunty Lee thought she could do worse than come back here and look for Jacky.
“There are two suitcases and they say they just packed everything they could into both of them and then put everything else in plastic bags,” Jacky said. “I told them to but only after your officers said it was all right.” He stopped and looked at Salim. “Did you want to test for DNA and fingerprints and things like that?”
It was the result of too many crime scene investigation shows on television, Salim thought. These days everyone who watched American television was a forensic expert.
“It’s all right. The crime scene tech team has already gone over everything.”
“Ah, that’s all right then.”
“Mrs. Rosie Lee and Miss Vallerie Love are in the coffeehouse. If you would like to join them there I can send down the staff members that Mrs. Lee wants to talk to?”
“Perfect, if I can have a coffee,” Salim said with a smile that almost melted Jacky.
Vallerie, however, was less pleased to see Salim and hear his first question.
“Look, you have no business judging us. People like you segregate women and make them cover their heads and treat them like ignorant animals. How dare you ask how long we were staying here? What business is it of yours? Your job is to find my poor sister’s killer, not sit around asking me stupid questions!” Vallerie flared up. The way she looked at Salim made Aunty Lee think she had been looking for an excuse to deliver the tirade. “You people don’t like to see white women traveling alone in the East. That’s why you’re trying to intimidate me, admit it. You’re covering up for whoever killed my poor sister by instead coming in here and harassing me with stupid questions!”
Salim was used to people who turned on the police under pressure. As far as he was concerned it was far better for them to vent their rage on a police officer than on an innocent passerby or helpless family member. What he found interesting was how an apparently innocent question had triggered Vallerie’s outburst. The woman was clearly uncomfortable about something. Aunty Lee’s bright, interested eyes showed she had noticed that too, but all she said was, “Hiyah, Salim. If you want to know how long Vallerie and her sister have been in Singapore, why not just ask the hotel—or check their passports!”
“We’ll do that.” They had already done that, of course. He had wanted to know what Vallerie would say. “And you said Allison was not feeling well that day she arranged to meet with the former Animal ReHomers? Did she see a doctor?”
Vallerie had been adrenaline-poised to tear down any defenses, apologies, or justifications—ready and looking forward to a fight. But the police officer sounded as though he hadn’t realized she was attacking. Social conditioning made her match his tone automatically.
“Allison wasn’t really feeling unwell. She just got scared and upset by the attack on the vet clinic.”
“Your sister had been feeling sick for some time, right? The room cleaner said she didn’t clean the room because someone wasn’t feeling well.”
“Oh, that was because she didn’t want to go out in the heat. And she had to stay with our things because we didn’t want the hotel people poking around and stealing our valuables while we weren’t in the room.”
Aunty Lee opened her mouth to defend Singapore hotel cleaners but caught herself in time. It took almost as much effort for Salim to hold back a grin on seeing this. “Your sister, Allison, spent some time in Singapore years ago, didn’t she?”
“I already told you that. That’s why she knows what it’s like here. That was when she was still married to that jerk. He got posted to a bank here and she came out to look after him and the children. Sacrificed her own career to support his and he just dumped her. She wasn’t even getting support from him, you know.”
“This is Mr. Mike Fitzgerald?”
“That jerk, yes. Who killed her and who you fools still haven’t arrested. If not for him and his stupid job, Allison wouldn’t even have been in Singapore and all that fuss about a stupid dog would never have come up. You guys are bringing him in, aren’t you? He should be made to face what he did to her. You should go and check up on him. And that stupid Brian Wong. If not for him Allison would still be happily married and none of this would have happened!”
“Brian Wong? Allison blamed him for breaking up her marriage?” Salim’s electronic tablet came to life on the table as he made a quick notation with his stylus. He sensed an almost electric sizzle of attention from Aunty Lee, who quickly turned away to examine the water feature (probably placed to disguise a former smoking corner rather than for good feng shui) behind Vallerie with utmost attention.
“He was the one that tried to lead her on and everything. Anyway, he’s one of your important people now so nothing’s going to touch him, right?”
“What makes you say Brian Wong was leading your sister on? On to what?”
Vallerie spoke through a mouthful of chocolate. “How would I know? You should ask him yourself. Men are all the same. Look at that hopeless husband of hers. If Mike Fitzgerald hadn’t dragged her out here Allison would be alive and happily married and not lying dead in this godforsaken country!”
One of the cleaners, a young dark-skinned man whom Aunty Lee had glimpsed earlier with a vacuum cleaner, approached their table shyly. Vallerie saw him and started to shriek. The startled man backed away, looking more terrified than Vallerie. He got entangled with the drinks trolley and a second cleaner—older and female—coming toward them with Jacky. Aunty Lee only just managed not to smack Vallerie. Whether or not slapping helped calm people having hysterics, it would have felt most satisfying to smack Vallerie Love right then.
“Sorry,” Aunty Lee said, rising to her feet and trying to shout reassuringly to the two cleaners. “My friend is a bit upset. Her sister just died. Please, come and join us. Yes, please do come and sit down.”
“Those cleaners! Always sneaking around and trying to get into rooms to spy on paying guests!”
Neither of them came up to the table. But when Jacky unobtrusively brought chairs for them they sat down on either side of him a little distance away. Aunty Lee appreciated a manager who did his own fetching and carrying and took care of his staff.
“Yes, I know,” the man replied to Aunty Lee. He spoke with a South Indian accent but Aunty Lee could understand him without any trouble. “H
er sister is very nice. I am very sad she is dead. I did not know which sister died. I get the sisters mixed up, even though one is fat and one is thin.” The woman nodded several times as he spoke but said nothing.
“You met the other sister?” Aunty Lee asked.
“The other sister stayed more in the room. But sometimes when I am cleaning she open the door and say hello. She is always very sleepy. And then one time she asked me to help her to move the cupboard because her phone charger got fall down behind. And then after that she asked me around here where to go to eat cheap cheap, where to go and buy things cheap cheap. Once I saw her downstairs, she asked me to help her to carry her shopping bags inside. Because one of the bags the plastic got tear. So I give her another one, she is very happy.”
“What did she buy?”
“Just tourist things. Postcards. Good luck beads.”
“What did she do with them?” Aunty Lee had not seen anything of the sort in the storage room.
The cleaner shrugged, suddenly cautious. “I don’t know. I never take one.”
The man looked acutely uncomfortable, avoiding looking at Vallerie, who had at least quieted down. Aunty Lee had a sudden glimpse of the wretched life of a foreign hotel cleaner. He was probably working there illegally. And that meant he was probably being paid far less than a local or legal “foreign talent” would have cost the hotel. And he obviously bore the brunt of any lost (or misplaced) items from any of the rooms he cleaned. Still, she sensed there was something more from the intensity with which he avoided Vallerie’s stare.
“But you took something else, didn’t you? Were you the ones who cleaned the room and packed the bags?”
The woman cleaner moaned softly and started crying, muttering something in a dialect that Aunty Lee did not understand. The younger male cleaner looked as though he was about to cry himself.
“What did you take?” It was a different Jacky who spoke now, with all the weight of authority in his voice. The woman next to him moaned more loudly. Without understanding a word, Aunty Lee could tell she was trying to take the blame on herself. Without taking his eyes off the young man, Jacky put a hand over the woman’s, which were clasped tightly in her lap. It was unclear whether this was meant to comfort or quiet her, but she subsided into nodding to herself.
