Meddling and Murder

by Ovidia Yu

  Aunty Lee wanted to smack him on the back of his head but reminded herself he was a driver. The fines for assaulting taxi drivers had recently been increased.

  If Nina had been there she would have told Aunty Lee not to allow herself to imagine so many crazy things, but then, if Nina had been there, Aunty Lee would have been relishing these crazy imaginings, not worrying herself sick over them. If only Nina was all right, Aunty Lee swore that never again would she make her helper do anything for her own good.

  Beth stared at the tiny screen propped up on top of the mess of papers on her work desk. Since Patty’s death, she had cancelled newspaper delivery to the house. It more was ecological – and cheaper – to keep up with the news on her iPad.

  Actually, the iPad had also been Patty’s. Another great waste. Patty had only used it to play Candy Crush and talk to her son on Skype. Every time Beth put on one of Patty’s old dresses (clothes were another unnecessary indulgence Patty had spent too much on) or watched something educational on Patty’s iPad, Beth felt the triumph of knowing that she had not wasted a cent on these things and was putting them to far better use than her sister would have.

  But today all her glow of virtue was discombobulated by the news that a woman’s body had been found in a construction site. If the concrete had been poured on schedule her body would never have been discovered, the reporter announced. But, because of flooding caused by the recent rainy weather, work had stopped temporarily, and when the workmen returned to work this morning they found a body in the mud.

  Beth stared, feeling dizzy. The screen speed scrolled several pages down under the pressure of her damp fingers (damn that touch screen!) and she held her breath till she laboriously fingered her way back to the original news report. But there was nothing more than her first glance had told her: an unidentified woman’s body had been flushed out by floods in a construction site. The workers were being questioned. The woman’s identity was being sought.

  Could it be Julietta’s body they had found?

  Beth did not want to think of Julietta as dead. She had found Julietta annoying and rude and careless with the housework. But then Beth found most people annoying and careless. And she knew it had been mostly Patty’s fault for not keeping a stricter eye on her helper. Given time, Beth was sure she could have trained Julietta properly. And in time even Julietta would have had to admit that she learned more working for Miss Beth than Madam Patty.

  Since Julietta’s disappearance, Beth had almost convinced herself that the maid had run off with a boyfriend. When Beth confiscated Julietta’s phone she had found text messages that suggested she was seeing a local man, so this wasn’t too far-fetched. Well, if it was really Julietta’s body that had been found, it must have been that man she was seeing. Surely it would be obvious to anyone that Julietta must have run off with a man: a man who had killed her and put her body in that construction site. Or even if the man had not intended to murder her, perhaps Julietta had met him at the construction site for an assignation and she had had a fatal accident (weren’t there always reports of fatal worksite accidents?) and the man had not dared to report it. Perhaps she should tell the police about Julietta’s phone? But then the police might ask her why she had not reported Julietta missing …

  ‘Madam, are you all right?’ It was Nina, the maid that Selina Lee had planted in her house, no doubt to spy on her. As though Selina’s daily ‘Good Morning’ and ‘This is the Day the Lord has made’ text messages weren’t irritating enough.

  Beth wished she had never met Selina Lee. But Jonny said Selina and Mark Lee were worth knowing because they were part of the younger married set who had money and would soon have children. He didn’t seem to think much of Beth’s friends, though she knew most of the people Patty had been friends with.

  ‘Of course I’m all right. Why are you standing around looking at me? Didn’t I tell you to wipe up the rain that came in?’

  ‘Finish already, Madam.’

  ‘How can you finish already? It’s still raining! The water is still coming in!’

  It was still raining, but it was not thundering down with the same force it had an hour ago, and the sheets of blue tarpaulin that Nina had tacked over the empty window frames kept the rain out.

  Nina had weighted down the edges with some of the metal strips left by the workers and the remainder was neatly stacked against one wall. The rags and buckets they had left had also been cleaned and stacked. The floor was dry, and as far as Beth could see, shone with cleanliness. She could not see anything in the room to find fault with, except for the incomplete windows and she could not blame Nina for that. Suddenly, she found herself crying. Why couldn’t it always be like that? Why hadn’t Julietta kept the house clean and herself quiet?

  ‘Sit down, Madam,’ Nina said firmly, ‘I will bring you some hot tea.’

  ‘I don’t like tea,’ Beth said faintly.

  But Nina had already gone. And when she returned with a cup of hot ginger tea (no caffeine, no tannin, sweetened with honey instead of sugar) Beth allowed herself to be persuaded to sit down and put her feet up. She drank the hot, warming tea and felt herself relaxing and dissolving. It was very good and sweet and just what she needed, though she usually tried to avoid sugar in her drinks. That had always been her biggest weakness. She could only relax when someone told her to, and when she relaxed she let her guard down.

  ‘Madam, you want something to eat?’ Nina asked. ‘I can fix something for you?’

  Beth pulled herself together with an effort. ‘Don’t pretend to be concerned. You just want the chance to steal food.’

  Nina got one piece of bread for breakfast and a packet of instant noodles for lunch and dinner, same as Julietta had got. Julietta had always tried to steal leftovers so Beth assumed Nina would too.

  ‘Go and clean the toilets.’

  ‘Madam, I cleaned the toilets already.’

  ‘Go and clean them again. And don’t talk back to me!’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Questions

  ‘We have an ID, Sir.’

  ‘That was quick.’ Inspector Salim managed not to say ‘for once’.

  ‘One of the maid agencies has identified her, Sir. Her name is Mirasol Santos. They said they were quite worried about her, because some of her family members called them to say that she did not contact them at home for a while. The agency owner said he also tried to call but got no answer. He tried to call her employer but also no answer, so he assumed the family went on holiday and took the maid with them and that’s why she did not respond to her family’s calls.’

  ‘Have you managed to contact her employer? They didn’t report her missing?’

  ‘No. The employer didn’t report. We are trying to call them now. So far no answer. You want somebody to go round to the house?’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Bukit Timah NPP.’

  ‘What is the maid’s name again?’ Salim looked down at the file. He had already skimmed through it but the woman’s name had not stuck.

  ‘Miss Mirasol J. Santos. But the agent says she went by the name Julietta.’

  Aunty Lee was being excluded. She had made it to the Bukit Tinggi Police Post before the questioning started, but she was most definitely being excluded from what was going on. It didn’t help that she didn’t have Nina to keep her informed of the latest news reports. When she told SS Panchal to tell Inspector Salim that the dead woman may have been a foreign domestic helper employed by her friend, the officer had nodded and whispered: ‘He already knows. Her employers are being brought in for questioning.’

  It was all about outsiders and insiders, Aunty Lee thought. Right from school days when coming from the right school made so much difference to who you knew and what groups you belonged to: which school, which nationality, which race … the sad thing was when the bond within a group had less to do with what they had in common than who they could exclude.

  Jonny, Beth and, to Aunty Lee’s surprise, Fabian, ha
d all been brought in to give their statements. Aunty Lee thought of Seetoh, the taxi driver, who had seemed so in love with Julietta. Ought she tell Salim about Seetoh? It didn’t seem possible that Seetoh could have done anything to hurt Julietta. But she remembered Seetoh’s almost insane obsession with Jonny Ho and wondered. She would try to talk him into going to the police himself, she decided.

  And there was something else that Aunty Lee wanted to talk to Salim about. This had nothing to do with the dead woman, so it was probably not a good time. But with Jonny Ho already at the police post it was too good an opportunity to miss.

  Station Superintendent Mark Sheridan looked doubtfully at the plump lady who wanted him to pass a note to Inspector Salim. He was relatively new to the posting and, despite the title on his desk, one of the most junior officers apart from the uniformed station receptionist.

  ‘The Inspector is very busy, Madam. Are you sure that I can’t help you?’ Most of the problems brought to the station since he arrived had been to do with misplaced keys, purses, and dogs, though last week there had been a python scare that had been quite exciting. ‘What is it about?’

  ‘Several things. Well, first I heard that you found my friend’s missing maid dead, right?’

  ‘I cannot say, Madam. All information … ’

  ‘Well, just in case you did find my friend’s maid, Julietta, dead in a construction site like it says on the news, will you tell Salim to make sure to check if Julietta’s work permit, phone, and passport were found with her. And if not, were they left at her workplace?’

  ‘I’m sure Inspector Salim knows what to do, Madam.’ Sheridan scribbled a reminder on his notepad just in case.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he does. And the other thing is, I believe the husband of another friend of mine is here, a Mr Jonny Ho.’

  ‘I cannot say, Madam.’

  But Aunty Lee saw the heavyset young man’s eyes dart to a line on the log in front of him and was satisfied.

  ‘Anyway, another friend and I were talking about those house break-ins that have been going on.’

  ‘We are doing what we can, Madam. We have increased bicycle patrols in all the affected estates and—’

  ‘Rosie Lee! What are you doing here? Are you being questioned also? What are you questioning her for?’

  Aunty Lee looked around. She was the only woman in the vicinity apart from SS Panchal, who had come out of the ‘restricted’ area escorting Jonny Ho. And Jonny Ho seemed to be talking to her. It was as though he had forgotten all about how he had dumped her unceremoniously on the side of the road before rushing off. But Aunty Lee had not forgotten.

  ‘The lady is not being questioned,’ SS Sheridan said. ‘She was just leaving.’

  ‘Good to hear. We can escape, then. Come on, Rosie. I will take you home.’

  ‘I’m not ready to go home yet. I want to wait and talk to Inspector Salim first. And I want to see Fabian.’

  ‘Fabian will be stuck here for a long time. Maybe forever, ha-ha! And Inspector Salim is probably going to be here even longer. And even when he comes out he’s not going to have time for you. Come on, I want to finish our discussion. We can have a meeting in the car. And I will make sure that Inspector Salim makes time to talk to you later, okay? Fabian also. But I should warn you that Fabian may not be going home for some time. I had to tell them the truth about him. Beth also. We didn’t want to say anything earlier, but you can only keep quiet about things for so long, right?’

  Aunty Lee sensed tension and alarm under Jonny Ho’s bright charming chatter. Was it from being at the police station or was it from seeing Aunty Lee there? Did he think she had chased after him to complain about being abandoned?

  ‘Sorry our date got interrupted! Come on, let me make it up to you!’

  ‘What did the police question you about? Do they know yet what happened to Julietta?’

  Jonny looked surprised, then grinned. ‘Scared that I am a killer, is it? Don’t worry, I make killer deals that’s all. Anyway I told them the same thing as Beth told them. We were together all day that day at the house. Big headache with the renovations. Crazy regulations say supposed to have sound insulated walls … do they expect us to tear down the walls to put sound insulation then build back again? Might as well tear down the whole house and build from scratch! Anyway you cannot keep kids indoors all day, right? Kids will run around outside, so what’s the point in insulating the wall? Anyway we were discussing the rules and the renovations and the costs … business stuff. That’s why we didn’t even notice that Julietta went out. We saw her talking to that Fabian outside. If you want to suspect somebody of being a killer that’s the guy I would recommend, that Fabian. The guy is a psycho. We had to tell the police that.’

  Aunty Lee hesitated, pulled in different directions. There was so much more she wanted to learn from Jonny, especially what more he could tell her about Fabian. And there was no telling how much longer the wait would be to see Salim. Aunty Lee had nothing against waiting as long as you knew progress was being made, like queuing before sales or waiting for a state funeral cortege. You knew that as long as you kept waiting the doors would eventually open or the coffin would eventually pass. But in this case, she had caught a glimpse of Inspector Salim when she first arrived. She knew he had seen her because she had waved and called and he had given her the nod that a waiter gives to quieten an impatient customer; I see you, but your order is in the hands of the kitchen/the gods.

  Aunty Lee had no idea when or even if Salim would talk to her. Recently he had avoided all her attempts to advise him on how best to talk Nina round. And if Aunty Lee wanted to find out what Beth and Jonny Ho had told the police and what the police had told Beth and Jonny, surely it would be much easier to get the information from Jonny than from the police!

  But what about Fabian? There was still no sign of him. Station Superintendent Sheridan called Jonny Ho over to sign out, and Aunty Lee hurried to SS Panchal and passed her a flyer with the address and phone number of Aunty Lee’s Delights. ‘Give this to Fabian Loo. Tell him to come back to my shop and I will cook something good for him. I used to know his parents, and I was in school with his Mum. Tell him I will make for him the stewed ginger root chicken that his mother used to like so much.’

  It was not just about finding out what Fabian might have said to Julietta the day she disappeared. Aunty Lee had first seen Fabian Loo when he was a plump little boy, and she felt some responsibility for the plump unhappy young man that he had become. Even if he was a killer, at least she could give him a last meal before he got put in prison.

  SS Panchal looked at Aunty Lee, then at the card. Aunty Lee saw Jonny Ho heading in her direction.

  ‘Just give Fabian the card. I knew his mother. Really I did.’ Aunty Lee said. ‘Tell him to phone me and I will try to help him. And I will cook some good food for him. For free, as a guest, not as a customer.’

  ‘Let’s get going, Rosie. I’ll drive you back to your house. I’m not going to leave you here alone.’

  ‘What about Beth? Are they keeping her here?’

  ‘They are taking her to identify Julietta.’

  ‘Aren’t you going with her?’

  ‘One ID is enough.’

  Jonny Ho settled Aunty Lee into his flashy car again. He was obviously in a hurry to get out of the police presence but, as before, there was something about him that made her think of a little boy trying to impress. Aunty Lee found that quite touching. She decided to be impressed, to make him happy. Very often it was only when people no longer needed to make a good impression that they relaxed and let you see what they were really like. So Aunty Lee tried to say all the nice things she could think of. Unfortunately, she had to repeat the things she had said on her first two car rides because there was only so much you could say about the inside of a car: ‘Wah, your seats are so comfortable’ and ‘the cup holders are big enough to hold the Starbucks Wendy cup’ but Jonny didn’t seem to mind, in fact he seemed genuinely pleased. Aunty Lee
knew he was listening, because on her first ride in his car Jonny Ho had asked her: ‘What is a Wendy cup?’

  ‘Wendy Cup is the Starbucks biggest cup. The middle size they call the Grand Prix cup, and the smallest one they call Tall. Like people are always telling the smallest children, “Wah you so tall now”.’

  That time he had looked suspicious, as though suspecting she was making fun of him in some way. But when she repeated the cup compliment this time he just smiled, looking pleased. Aunty Lee thought she had confirmed his suspicion that she was just an old woman who repeated herself.

  ‘It may interest you to know,’ Jonny said, ‘I am complaining to the people in charge. The big boys, you may call them. I know all those people. I have worked with them. They know me and they trust me. Brother–Brother.’

  ‘What did you complain about?’

  ‘I told them their precious Inspector Salim physically abused me.’ He said it like the punchline of a joke, roaring with laughter as he pulled into traffic.

  If there was a joke, Aunty Lee didn’t get it. ‘Inspector Salim? Why, what happened?’

  ‘We were alone in the room. My word against his. I have a degree and a business. And I have powerful connections. He is wearing a uniform chasing people from parking in handicap lots. Who do you think they will believe?’ Jonny grinned. He looked very young and very confident and struck her as someone posing for a photograph as financial advisor or dentist … those whitened teeth.

  ‘Besides, he has no business being here, did you know that? This isn’t even his police station. He doesn’t even have an office here. He had to kick the dirty-blood cop off his desk to use his phone. I told the guy he should also file a complaint!’

  ‘“Dirty-blood cop?”’

  Jonny said something in Mandarin that Aunty Lee did not understand, then: ‘You know, the same meaning as “prostitute’s son” in English.’ Jonny and Aunty Lee had clearly learned their English from different sources.

  ‘You mean the grago policeman? Station Superintendent Sheridan?’