by Ovidia Yu
Aunty Lee waived that off as irrelevant. ‘I told you: all that stuff I leave to you. But that is why I remember you told me about buying McDonald’s. So I knew that that other Miss Wong knew about my stuff.’
‘Your equities,’ Wilhelmina Wong corrected almost absentmindedly. ‘There is no other Miss Wong here that I know of. Certainly not at this level in this office. Nobody here should know about your portfolio aside from you and your relationship manager.’ She nodded towards Darren.
‘I keep her updated,’ Darren said to Wilhelmina Wong. ‘I made sure I sent her all the documentation … ’ Again he was waved aside.
‘You said someone spoke to you here, in this office, as Miss Wong, that day when I saw you,’ Wilhelmina said to Aunty Lee. ‘Given it clearly wasn’t me, can you tell me what the meeting was about? Were you asked to sign anything? To hand over anything?’
‘No lah, I am not so stupid as that. I never sign anything unless I show these two young men first.’ There was a release of tension in the atmosphere at that as both ‘young men’ and Miss Wong relaxed slightly on hearing this. ‘That Miss Wong wanted me to sign. She said that, nowadays with all the computer fraud and online fraud, you can’t trust anything you get on the computer or printed out, so the only recommendation you can trust is one you get in person from Cognate. That’s why I had to come here and in person. But I didn’t sign because that is the first time I saw her. Then today I come back to Cognate and you are also Miss Willy-Mini-Wong, but you are a different woman. So how can I trust you?’
‘I assure you I am Wilhelmina Wong,’ Wilhelmina Wong said. She tapped the name plate on the desk. She certainly seemed more comfortable in this office than the other ‘Miss Wong’ Aunty Lee had met. The cool minimalist dark wood decor in the office matched her calm, authoritative manner and the deceptively simple elegance of her silky green dress and perfectly fitted jacket. ‘If you’ll wait here for a moment I’ll see if I can locate the person you are looking for. Darren … with me.’
Mycroft released a huge breath once the door closed behind them. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? You can’t just let strangers bring you places without telling anybody. You’re lucky they just tried to con you. If this was anywhere other than Singapore, you might have been kidnapped and held for ransom!’
‘If this was anywhere other than Singapore, I wouldn’t have got into his car.’ Aunty Lee was unrepentant. Her eyes were shining, and she was excited. Things were finally coming together! ‘Anyway, I put chilli oil in a perfume spray bottle and when I was inside his car I kept my hand on it. If he did anything … Ssssss.’ Aunty Lee whipped out the little perfume bottle. ‘I didn’t clean out all the perfume so, even if he can’t see, he will smell nice.’
The young woman whom Aunty Lee had met on her previous visit was re-introduced as Eva Tan, one of Miss Wong’s legal assistants. Eva might have been about the same age as her boss, but they had little else in common. Eva’s attempts to look good … the glossy pink lipstick, the thick concealer … were far more obvious and far less effective than anything Wilhelmina might have done. Aunty Lee recognized the ‘Miss Wong’ of her previous visit at once when she was brought back into the office, and Eva’s initial attempts to laugh it off as ‘just a joke’ were rapidly crushed.
‘It’s not a joke,’ Mycroft spoke up. ‘You are probably going to lose your job here and, after you are reported, you will probably be disbarred by the Law Society and lose your licence to practice law in Singapore. Do you think that’s funny?’
‘No harm was done,’ Eva said, looking scared but defensive. ‘All we did was talk. It was all a joke. Anyway no harm was done.’
‘I phoned up to ask about Patty’s account here. I was put through to Miss Wong’s office, but you must have taken the message and told Jonny Ho instead of Miss Wong, right?’
Miss Wong was stony-faced and not giving away anything in front of outsiders but her look did not bode well for Eva’s future career within the company. Eva probably knew this and thought she had nothing to lose. Aunty Lee thought the young woman had the air of an amateur actor taking on a role practised many times in her mind. And she wasn’t playing the role of the exposed criminal, but the heroine who knows she is in a temporary setback, but that everything will come out all right in the end. Any attempt to force her to admit she and Jonny Ho had deliberately tried to deceive Aunty Lee would only be met by further declarations that it had all been ‘just a joke’. Eva Tan had probably already said it to herself so many times that she believed it.
‘No harm done,’ Aunty Lee said quickly. ‘It was just a joke.’ The others looked at her in surprise and varying degrees of suspicion. Eva herself looked the most surprised.
‘You are the girl in those photos he took, right?’
Eva stared. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. What photos?’ Now she looked worried. But it was too late. Aunty Lee knew she was right.
Aunty Lee knew many wannabe cooks like Jonny Ho. Their focus was always on themselves, and they thought their strength was in their recipes which they changed as little as they could. They were lazy-minded people who served the same dishes over and over again to different people because they assumed that something that worked once would work forever.
‘Jonny Ho took photos of you, didn’t he?’ Aunty Lee turned to include Darren and Miss Wong in her explanation. ‘That man has been going around taking photos of naked women. She is not the only one he took advantage of.’ Unlike those cooks who put their faith in secret recipes and techniques, Aunty Lee adapted her dishes to the people she served them to. Everything she did was adapted to the people she was serving and how she wanted to make them feel. Most of the time this was generic, of course … back in the café it was generally safe to bet that her customers were hungry people who wanted familiar food that took a bit more effort and energy than they were willing to invest at home. But even there she adapted, experimented, influenced their choices by offering tasting portions of dishes she knew they would fall in love with … and falling in love was something that had happened here too, she suspected.
‘No, he didn’t!’ Eva spoke automatically but she was staring at Aunty Lee in a shocked way that showed she thought the old woman had seen the photographs. Aunty Lee’s guess about the photos had been verified.
‘That had nothing to do with anything here!’ Eva looked at Miss Wong. ‘Those were private pictures. I don’t know how Mrs Lee got hold of them but they have nothing to do with her.’
‘You do know this Jonny Ho?’ Miss Wong asked. There was sympathy in her voice. ‘He made you impersonate me in my office?’ Darren and Mycroft looked confused and embarrassed, but this woman had immediately picked up what Aunty Lee was trying to do and joined her. Aunty Lee was impressed. She made a mental note to bring Miss Wong some curry puffs along with a giant jar of achar.
‘I know him. We’re friends. Actually, we are more than friends. We are going to get married once we work things out properly.’
‘Financially?’ Miss Wong still sounded understanding, though she was leading Eva into incriminating herself further.
‘Yes … not just financially. We needed to work out the money side of things, yes. But also we wanted to do it properly. Those pictures she saw … ’ Eva jerked her head in Aunty Lee’s direction without meeting her eyes, ‘it’s not like she makes them sound. They are artistic pictures. Jonny is very artistic, and photography is one of his passions.’
An involuntary laugh came out of Darren.
Eva glared at him. ‘People like you will never understand.’
No, Aunty Lee thought, Darren would probably never understand someone like Jonny Ho. But though he might never rise to the heights scaled by Jonny Ho’s reckless self-confidence, Darren would likely never crash as disastrously as Jonny was going to. It was saddest for the Eva Tans of the world, who might have spent their lives comfortably discontent with Darrens if they hadn’t been swept up in someone’s warped vision of himself. Even if Jonny Ho made
it to the top, the Eva Tans he made use of on the way up would be jettisoned once he got there.
Miss Wong must have tapped a call button at some point, because there was a discreet knock on the door and a young woman looked in inquiringly,
‘Take Miss Tan to clear out her personal items from her desk. Eva, give Christy your key cards.’
Eva looked shocked and started crying. ‘You don’t understand. Once Jonny got the capital he needed, he would have made Mrs Lee rich too. It would have been for her own good! Jonny could guarantee her money back plus guarantee her profits … ’
‘No such thing as guaranteed profits,’ Darren said automatically.
‘You only think so because they got you totally brainwashed to slave for them,’ Eva snapped tearfully. ‘You are all so stupid. Mrs Lee, you know that Jonny only did it to make you feel safer investing in him, right? He would have told you the truth afterwards … after he made you rich he would have explained it all to you. You trust him, right? Ask him, he will tell you. Aside from that I never did anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong here except sit at your desk; you can’t fire me for that.’
‘You got the details of all my investments with Cognate,’ Aunty Lee pointed out. ‘I remember the other day you were talking about the McDonald’s and I remember Darren telling me about the McDonald’s so I know that that was really my account. You looked up my account details for him, right?’ This made the others snap to attention.
‘She accessed your confidential investment records? Aunty Lee, why didn’t you say so earlier?’ Mycroft, who had been sitting back and enjoying the show, was suddenly alert.
‘Darren?’ Miss Wong snapped at the same time.
‘Not from me,’ Darren said with absolute confidence. ‘I went strictly by the book. You can see my call records.’
‘She wanted to trust Jonny,’ Eva wailed. ‘She must have told Jonny about all her investments. He said she is one of those old aunties that only invests in what the bank tells her so if he wanted to help her he had to make her think that the bank approved of him! It’s not my fault. I only tried to help!’
‘Your bank people are very thorough,’ Aunty Lee said comfortingly to Miss Wong, ‘especially your Darren. I told him so many times already: “do what you want”, “I trust you lah”, but every time he does anything he must send me the report. By phone and then by mail. Waste so much paper.’
Then, with a jolt, Aunty Lee remembered Jonny Ho playing with a notepad made of her recycled investment updates in the café kitchen. She had had to replace that notepad, not thinking anything more of it till now. All her recent account transactions would have been there.
‘Maybe Jonny Ho looked through my dustbin and found the records that Darren sent me. I never gave him anything,’ Aunty Lee said vaguely.
‘You should get a shredder.’ Mycroft was tapping something into his mobile phone. ‘When is the last time this Jonny Ho contacted you?’ His question was addressed to Aunty Lee but it was Eva who answered.
‘I haven’t seen him for some time. He told me he was going to be busy for a while, then I didn’t see him. We’re getting married but I haven’t heard from him for over a week, and he doesn’t answer my calls.’ Eva tearfully dabbed at her face with a tissue, and Aunty Lee noticed she had glitter patterned nails that matched the glitter floral earrings she was wearing. Eva Tan would land on her feet.
‘You still have to go,’ Miss Wong said.
‘Not yet,’ Mycroft said. ‘The police will want to interview her.’
Eva’s wail of ‘It’s not fair!’ came at the same time as Aunty Lee’s murmur how ‘Young girls always getting taken advantage of. Luckily nothing serious happened.’
‘Mrs Lee will not be taking any further action,’ Mycroft said.
‘But the police will have to be notified,’ Miss Wong said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Housebreaking Gang Caught
SS Panchal had come round to the shop to pick up some tea snacks for the office, and to tell Aunty Lee (unofficially) that the stalking and harassment charges against Inspector Salim had been dropped after Nina told them she had not made, and had no intention of ever making, a complaint against Inspector Salim.
Of course, Aunty Lee made her sit down with a cool glass of homemade barley water while a fresh batch of 10-spice chicken wings was fried up. And, of course, Aunty Lee had to tell her all about what had happened at Cognate the day before.
‘That man should be charged for trying to cheat you!’ Panchal echoed Mycroft. But Aunty Lee, who had never been at any real risk of being cheated, had her mind on other things.
‘So is Inspector Salim back at work yet? Now that they know the man who complained about him is a liar and a swindler they should say sorry to him and bring him back, right?’
Because, although Nina was back, she was still keeping Salim at a distance. Now it was because she blamed herself for everything that had happened to him. To Nina, even the disgrace of Salim’s suspension was her fault. If there had not been so many unanswered messages from Salim on her phone, Beth’s spiteful complaints would not have got him into so much trouble.
‘No, the Inspector’s not back at the office yet,’ Panchal told Aunty Lee. ‘But he’s aware of everything that’s going on.’
‘So, what is going on?’
It was unofficially understood that Aunty Lee could be told what they had got from the phone she had handed in to the station. Not just because it had come from her, Panchal suspected, but because more might come from her. Even in modern Singapore there remained respect for the old village wise woman.
From fingerprints found, the phone that Nina had found hidden behind a drawer in the tiny room at the top of the stairs was identified as Julietta’s secret phone. Seetoh verified it was the phone that he had given Julietta, and the number matched the one she had given Fabian. The police found long conversations with Seetoh, which incriminated him in their eyes. They had obviously had a relationship, and Seetoh had been trying to get her to run away with him. Aunty Lee felt bad that the police were now looking for Seetoh, but she was (almost) certain he would never have hurt Julietta, and once Salim was back on the job everything would be cleared up.
There were also messages from Fabian, some of them angry, complaining that Julietta was avoiding him and not answering his calls. Fabian had wanted Julietta to give evidence against Jonny in a police report he was making. Fabian alleged that Jonny had stolen jewellery, cash, and art pieces belonging to his late mother, and needed Julietta to find proof. In short, he wanted Julietta to find or manufacture evidence that Jonny Ho had sold valuables belonging to his mother and late father and would pay Julietta to do so.’
‘Is Fabian in trouble? He could just have been joking, what,’ Aunty Lee pointed out.
Panchal did not want to talk about the amount of trouble Fabian might be in. There were other secrets in Julietta’s phone, most significantly a photograph of Patricia Kwuan-Loo’s will. According to this will, dated the day after Helen Chan’s house had been burglarized, Fabian was his mother’s sole beneficiary, aside from the sum set aside for Julietta’s children.
‘There’s also a big difference in the money she left to Julietta.’
‘No, there isn’t. It’s one of the few things that doesn’t change.’
‘In the old will, the money was to be sent to pay their university fees with an allowance for books and living expenses.’
That was wise of Patty, Aunty Lee thought approvingly of her dead friend. She wanted to do good but she was no fool. Had she been concerned about Julietta’s children or Julietta herself? Even bills for study materials were to be paid through the lawyer’s office. Why then did the new will pass the money for Julietta’s children directly to her?
‘Do you think Julietta’s children will still get the money? To be fair it should go to them, right? They’ll need it even more now their mother is dead.’
‘Did she tell Julietta to photograph it?’
Because Julietta had come to feel she and her children were entitled to the money, what Patty might have intended as incentive had been seen as judgement.
Aunty Lee thought Fabian’s sense of entitlement had warped him. It seemed he had not been the only one.
‘I think after Patty told her that she was going to the lawyer to make a new will, Julietta took a photograph of her rough draft and showed it to Jonny and Beth, to warn them. Even though she had been working for Patty for some time, Julietta’s first loyalty was always to herself and her family. She was angry with Patty because she had expected to get money for her children when Ken Loo died; her son had been counting on that; but now, instead, she had to wait for Patty to die too, and even then her son would not get any money unless he went to university. I don’t know whether Jonny Ho sweet-talked her with business propositions or if he seduced her, but you know he has always had a way of talking women around. I don’t think Julietta expected them to do anything to Patty.’
‘Julietta could have said something to the police. She never did.’
‘Maybe she couldn’t. It was only after Patty died that Beth became so strict about not giving her time off and not allowing her out of the house alone, remember?’
‘There was nothing to be left to the new husband?’
‘What she was leaving the new husband and the old sister was the interest that they wouldn’t have to pay back to Fabian. She made a note of it there, as though she expected her lawyer to ask about it. Because that was the draft she was going to bring to her lawyer. Remember, all Patty’s previous wills were drawn up by her lawyer. She might have had good sharp business sense, but being married to a lawyer for so many years made her realize that what somebody intends doesn’t count as much as what is written down and properly signed and witnessed on paper. She would never have written that new will in private.’
