by Ovidia Yu
“I don’t know. He didn’t know, he was just following their specifications. He thought it was some kind of geriatric home-care system. For end-of-life home care.”
“They paid him in advance?” Aunty Lee asked. “I hope he got a deposit at least.”
“No, he didn’t!” Patrick burst out. “And it’s not as though they can’t afford it. I saw the size of their property. You could build a condo in there. Two condos. With a gym and pool. But they didn’t give him an advance, they even didn’t pay him for all the planning proposals he drew up for them. They said that since he was overseeing the construction and setup, they would pay him everything in one lump sum at the end. Maybe they never meant to pay him. Maybe they just locked him up somewhere on the grounds—”
Or in the pool house, Aunty Lee thought.
“Maybe we should get you a lawyer,” Timothy Pang interrupted, the brother in him overpowering the policeman. “Maybe you shouldn’t say too much right now.”
But Patrick had a question for Aunty Lee: “Did they tell you Ben designed their building? They were so hypersecretive he had to sign a confidentiality contract even. And that goondu went and signed it without getting a written contract. So he didn’t have any proof he had done the work, but if he complained about not getting paid they could sue him. Crazy, right?”
Goondu indeed, Aunty Lee thought. But often the innocent and trusting were seen as silly and foolish by the rest of the world. And too often they suffered for it.
Timothy’s phone buzzed and he moved away to mutter into it. It sounded to Aunty Lee as though he was trying to get someone to meet him and his brother, but partway through the conversation, another call must have cut in because he switched into an explanation of how stopping to fix a tire on the expressway for an old man had led to a migraine and a messed-up uniform and if there was nothing urgent at the station he was going to head straight home . . .
“Did the Sungs tell you Ben built the home ICU for them?” Patrick said to Aunty Lee, too softly to catch Timothy’s attention.
“No.”
“Then how did you know?”
“I guessed. The paintings on the walls here and outside,” Aunty Lee said. “Your friend painted them, right? I saw the painting on the side of the building at the Sungs’ place, by the pool. The creeper with leaves that looked like it was climbing up the wall.”
“Oh, that. Yes. Ben showed me photos. His artist side keeps coming up. I’ve still got them somewhere. He was very proud of how he got the green of the leaves to exactly match the green of the pool.”
“The pool wasn’t green.” Aunty Lee remembered the brilliant blue tiles at the bottom of the swimming pool.
“Yes it was. You can see it in the photos. I’ll show you—”
The pool water in the photographs was indeed arrestingly green. Aunty Lee could see why it had caught the artist’s eye.
“He’s a very striking artist. And trained as an architect?” Aunty Lee said. “Very interesting. I would like to see some more of his work.”
“Actually I’m not sure it’s very suitable.”
“Good. Suitable art is just propaganda. Can you boil some water? I brought some of my homemade chrysanthemum and wolfberry tea sachets. Very good for calming down the system and giving you energy at the same time. Those cups will be fine. I’ll just give them a quick rinse . . . while the water is boiling you go and bring me your friend’s ‘unsuitable’ work. And if you can find it, I want the address of the shop where you got the singing-birds doorbell from.”
“These folders here are just his artwork. Private artwork.”
They were indeed collections of Benjamin’s erotic art. Salim and Timothy turned away, embarrassed, so it was Aunty Lee who found a folder containing architectural sketches inside, several e-mails, and extensive notes comparing the merits of oxygenating blood in gas-filled hollow fibers (effective but short term—best for use in operating theaters) versus homogeneous membranes (approved for long-term life support).
And something else.
“I think that’s the new device he told me about. Instead of making the heart beat, it has spinning rotors that circulate the blood. After all, humans don’t fly by flapping wings, humans don’t have to circulate blood by heartbeats.”
“So which of those things did he install?” Inspector Salim asked.
“Both.” Timothy looked grimly through the receipts. “It looks as though money was no problem. Though of course it wasn’t his own money he was using. At least we can track who paid.”
“You don’t have to track very far.” Aunty Lee held up a receipt signed by GraceFaith.
15
Information
The next day Aunty Lee filled Cherril and Nina in on what she had learned at Patrick Pang’s flat. Having time to talk was one small advantage of the drop in business at Aunty Lee’s Delights.
Benjamin Ng had designed and supervised construction of a home-based life-support system and ICU on the Sungs’ property. Patrick Pang thought it likely that Edmond Yong had introduced Benjamin to the Sungs, as Benjamin had also designed Dr. Yong’s aesthetic medicine clinic, Beautiful Dreamers, a few years back.
“He said that was also a bit under the table because some of those beauty procedures they are not supposed to do in clinics.”
“I’ve been to the Bukit Timah Plaza clinic,” Cherril said. “I think it got destroyed by fire last year. That’s probably why Dr. Yong took the job looking after Leonard Sung. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense. He was a very ambitious sort. Always signing up for those get-rich-in-twenty-four-hours and getting-to-know-useful-people courses. He had shelves of those books in his office in the clinic. I would have trusted him more if he had had medical books.”
“And Otto called me last night,” Aunty Lee said. “He said Patrick Pang got in touch with him and asked him whether I could be trusted.” She paused, beaming.
“What did Otto say?” Cherril asked obligingly. Aunty Lee had only met Otto and his partner, Joe, the previous year but after solving murders and family issues together they were closer than most blood relatives.
“Dear Otto. He said he told Patrick I’m wonderful and his favorite aunty and he would totally trust me with his crown jewels.” Aunty Lee laughed gleefully. “Anyway, Otto had no idea Benjamin had done a job for the Sungs. He said he would have warned him if he’d known. He had all kinds of stories about Leonard Sung. Apparently this boy was mean and a bully and he could be really nasty.”
“Maybe he just don’t like gay,” Nina suggested. She was not entirely comfortable with homosexuals herself, or with Aunty Lee’s lack of discrimination.
“I don’t like people who put oysters in laksa but I don’t pick on them.”
“Yes you do, Aunty Lee.”
“Okay, maybe I do. But that is such a waste of oysters and laksa. Anyway, that’s not the point. Otto said Leonard was a troublemaker right from his school days. He didn’t just bully the other boys. One time he picked on a trainee teacher that all the other boys liked. He thought it would be a great joke to seduce her and tie her up and take photos. He told all the other boys what he was going to do. Then he went after Miss Rozario. He brought her expensive presents, offered her free weekend getaways on the excuse of tutoring him, told her he would take her to dinner on a no-limit credit card . . . but Miss Rozario told him to get lost. She even reported him to the school for stalking her. Otto said all the rest of the boys thought it was a huge joke. They liked the teacher all the more. But it was a shock for Leonard.
“Otto thought Leonard had a crush on Miss Rozario. But the only way he could relate to a woman was to try to humiliate her. And that was probably the first time he realized money couldn’t buy everything. After that Leonard did everything he could to make life hell for Miss Rozario. In the end she left the school and Leonard said driving her away was what he meant to do all along. People thought he was like his dad, just smiling and not bothering with anything. But actually he was like his mum. He h
ad to get what he wanted once he set his mind on it. He didn’t care what it cost. He just didn’t want the same things as the other boys because he already had them. And he thought it was a huge joke to get people into trouble. Leonard got kicked out of Otto’s school after charges were filed against him for beating up a girl he met at a gaming outlet because she wouldn’t go back to his room with him. Then in his next school he took photos of schoolmates using recreational drugs and put them online. He called it ‘Singapore drug bust.’”
“Leonard disapproved of people using drugs?” Cherril was surprised, given what she knew of the dead boy.
“Otto gave me the impression Leonard disapproved of people using drugs they hadn’t bought from him. In fact, by the time he was sixteen Leonard Sung was boasting that he didn’t need his parents’ money because he was already earning more than they ever would.”
It sounded as though Leonard Sung could also have made more enemies than his parents ever did.
“But Leonard was really in bad health, right? He wasn’t just pretending, to get away from people?” By now Cherril was ready to believe anything of him.
“Otto thinks he was really sick. Leonard used to say that he would die before going back to Singapore.”
“So maybe he’s the one who killed himself and his mother?”
Aunty Lee remembered the emaciated figure she had seen dead on his bed. Leonard Sung had been severely underweight, his bones sticking out prominently. His skin was covered with rashes and warts as well as bluish-purple swellings.
“If Leonard poisoned them somebody had to help him. He couldn’t have got the poison without help. I don’t think he could have got out of bed without help.”
“His mother, then.”
“That would be the same thing as her doing it. And I don’t think Mabel Sung would have. If anybody, I think it was that doctor who was supposed to be looking after him.”
Aunty Lee would have liked to pin the blame on Dr. Edmond Yong. She hadn’t liked the way he tried to impress people with his importance and connections. But would this doctor have killed a paying patient? Aunty Lee didn’t think so, going by how he had devoured her food at the buffet.
Aunty Lee learned as much about people from watching them eat as from listening to them talk. It was not only a matter of what they ate but how they ate that revealed the most about them. This had less to do with table manners than their relationship with food. Because this relationship with the food that nourished them grounded their relationship with themselves and everyone else.
That Saturday Aunty Lee had watched Edmond Yong go for the more expensive dishes, like her chicken buah keluak, almost shoveling the food into his mouth with the practiced skill of one who did not know when another chance might come round. It was very hard not to like someone who appreciated her food, but Edmond Yong had not been eating. He had been systematically filling himself up like someone pulling up to a gas station and demanding, “Full tank.” And even after he was full Dr. Yong had lurked around the buffet, slyly scraping clumps of juicy (and pricey) crab roe off shrimp patties with his fingers. What was left on the plate had had to be discarded. Aunty Lee was sure that a man capable of such wanton waste was capable of wanton killing. She just did not think Edmond Yong was the kind of man who would murder his own meal ticket.
But who else? Aunty Lee thought back over the eaters at the party that had barely begun before ending so tragically. Though it was her party, Sharon Sung had eaten hardly anything.
And now it seemed Sharon was already back at work, trying to take over where her mother had left off. Some found this surprising but Aunty Lee did not find it strange at all. Sharon was probably trying to work through her grief like Aunty Lee had done after her husband’s death.
During that terrible time (worse even than the time leading up to his death because there was no focus and no hope) the people who kept telling her “Rest” or “Take things easy” had not understood what she needed at all. It was not one’s body that needed rest and comfort at such a time. It was one’s heart and life that had been terribly amputated, and sitting and brooding over the bloody mess left behind was more torture than comfort.
No, if Sharon could lose herself in taking over her mother’s work, then Aunty Lee would leave her to it. But Sharon’s discomfort around food had also been painfully obvious even as she prepared food for her brother. Or had it been her brother she disliked? Otto seemed to think Leonard Sung’s parents were blind to his dark side, but his sister must have known what he was like. Aunty Lee wondered whether Sharon Sung was one of those people who were so uncomfortable with food that they could only eat when no one was watching. She had put the meal together efficiently enough for Leonard but had not eaten anything herself, beyond taste-checking what she got him. Aunty Lee grabbed on to the thought.
“I saw Sharon Sung tasting the buah keluak she took for her brother. So either the poison that killed Mabel Sung and her son was put into the buah keluak after Sharon delivered it or it was never in the buah keluak at all. They just swallowed pills or something.”
“Or Sharon put the poison in after tasting it,” Cherril suggested. “Or GraceFaith. I saw her taking the tray from Sharon. I think she just wanted an excuse to go up to the house.”
Aunty Lee had seen GraceFaith up in the house herself.
“And speaking of funny business, I want to find out what that Doreen Choo was really doing inside that house and where she went. One minute she was there talking to me and then suddenly she was gone.”
“Maybe she slipped off to poison Mabel. Maybe it’s your friend Doreen who got Mabel out of the way so that she could get Henry Sung for herself?” Cherril suggested.
Aunty Lee stared at her. “She wouldn’t do that,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Anyway, Doreen Choo is already seeing Henry Sung,” Nina put in.
“Doreen Choo? Never! I don’t believe it!” Aunty Lee said with relish. This went with what she had already observed but disbelief usually drew out more information.
“Even when her boring old husband was alive, that woman never had affairs with anybody. Why would she bother to now?”
“She dresses very nicely, ma’am. And she always goes to the hairdresser to make her hair black.”
Aunty Lee’s lack of dress finesse was a sore point with Nina, who felt it reflected badly on her. Her bringing up Doreen’s efforts in an attempt to inspire her boss told Aunty Lee that she was feeling more optimistic about their situation.
“Anyway, Doreen is not going to mess up her black hair and her makeup and her nice dress by having an affair. Who did you get that from?”
“My friend’s cousin is working for Doreen Choo’s neighbor in the same condo, opposite Botanic Gardens there,” Nina said. Aunty Lee would never betray her sources but she had to know who they were before she trusted their information. Nina had been through the same process when buying sun-dried anchovies and fresh tempeh.
“She said almost every night Henry Sung goes to Doreen Choo’s house for dinner and he does not leave until eleven something. They go to the healing prayer meetings together.”
“Still? But the boy is dead already. And Mabel is dead, so who is running this?”
“Always got other people to pray for, madam. Sometimes his daughter also goes. And her boyfriend.”
It did not sound like any kind of affair to Aunty Lee. And did Sharon Sung have a boyfriend? Aunty Lee cast her mind back to what she had seen of the girl. No, Sharon Sung was a young woman with an obsession but it was not for any man.
“Does your friend know where the meetings are?”
“No, ma’am. Doreen Choo’s maid is from Myanmar. She only just came to Singapore three months ago and does not speak much English.”
“You must have other friends from Myanmar.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“You should get one of them to go and talk to Doreen’s maid. The poor girl, so new to Singapore and not knowing anybody
. It must be so difficult for her.”
“Ma’am, how can? We don’t know her. And if she is from Myanmar she will not get Sunday off.”
Aunty Lee filed this away to follow up on later. “I want to go to one of those healing meetings. I also want to find out more about what Tim’s brother’s boyfriend built for Mabel Sung. And what that PRC woman was doing at Mabel Sung’s house.”
“Maybe she wants to marry a Singapore doctor,” Cherril suggested. “Not every Chinese visitor is part of a gang.” She had heard Aunty Lee’s story about foiling the PRC gang enough times to suspect that was where the old lady’s thoughts were going.
“Dr. Yong is Malaysian, not Singaporean. If that girl wanted a Singapore husband she could find a much better one than that. No, she was there to do some funny business.”
“Anyway, we don’t know someone wanted to kill Mabel. What about her son? From what you said it sounds like plenty of people had reason to dislike him. Maybe someone wanted to kill him and Mabel was just collateral damage.”
“There was no reason for anybody to kill Leonard. He was going to die anyway. All they had to do was wait.”
“Mabel thought he was going to recover.”
“That’s only because she was his mother.” Aunty Lee looked at Cherril speculatively. “Would you kill yourself for a child?”
“Why are you asking me that?” Cherril looked so startled that for a moment Aunty Lee wondered whether her thoughts had been running along the same lines.
“Just wondering.”
“If it is guaranteed the child survives, then of course,” Nina said. “But if cannot guarantee, what’s the point?”
“But nothing like that can be guaranteed,” Cherril said. “Especially if you kill yourself and you’re not around to watch out for the kid. I might kill for my child, though. If that’s what was at stake.”
“Leonard’s drug use probably caused the damage to his heart but we can’t rule out there may have been a congenital defect to begin with. That may have been what Mabel wanted to believe. He would have been experiencing chest pains and nonfatal arrhythmias for some time, going by the state his heart was in.” That’s why she was praying for a new heart for him.
