Читать книгу: «Meddling and Murder: An Aunty Lee Mystery»

CHAPTER ONE
Aunty Lee’s Life of Crime

‘This is a big emergency! There is a human body in the drain next to our house. It is a very big body. Please to come fast.’

That was as much as Staff Sergeant Neha Panchal could make out from the panicked caller whisper-shouting in a mix of Mandarin and English.

‘I’ll be right there.’

Panchal got the address and set out immediately, calling to notify her boss, Inspector Salim Mawar, on the way.

The Bukit Tinggi Police Post was mainly responsible for the Binjai Park residential district. Some of Singapore’s wealthiest residents lived in the area and the Bukit Tinggi posting was considered both a career breaker (for its lack of serious crimes) and career maker (from exposure to Singapore’s most influential people). The last few emergency calls from Binjai Park had been triggered by badly parked cars and monkeys stealing fruit.

SS Panchal’s first thought had been to qualify for a new posting as soon as possible. Now she had to admit she had learned a lot from this posting about how understanding people helped untangle the crimes they got caught up in. But Panchal would never understand why Inspector Mawar, who seemed like an intelligent man, would reject offers of promotion to remain in charge of the Bukit Tinggi NPP.

There was indeed a body in the big storm drain next to the caller’s house. Fortunately, it was a live body. It was also very familiar and wearing a bright yellow Curry Up! tee shirt over pink and green batik pants. SS Panchal winced just a little before she leaned over the drain barrier’s green metal railings and called: ‘Aunty Lee! What are you doing down there? Are you all right?’

‘Panchal!’ Aunty Lee looked up, squinting against the sun. She did not seem hurt and was clutching clumps of weeds. ‘Good, you are here. Come down and help me!’

Suspicious heads were watching from the windows of the house. That would be Mr and Mrs Guang who had phoned the police, Panchal guessed. They had to be newcomers to Singapore as well as Binjai Park, or they would have recognized Rosie ‘Aunty’ Lee of the famous Binjai Park café, Aunty Lee’s Delights.

Thanks to her kebaya-clad image beaming from jars of Aunty Lee’s Amazing Achar and Aunty Lee’s Shiok Sambal, Aunty Lee was familiar to food lovers in Singapore and beyond.

And Aunty Lee was familiar to Panchal and the rest of the police force, thanks to the murders she had been involved in. But Aunty Lee was seldom out without her faithful Filipina helper. For an instant Panchal wondered if something was wrong.

‘Aunty Lee, what are you doing in the storm drain? Where is Nina?’ Panchal did not want to be the one to tell her boss that something terrible had happened to the main reason he chose to stay stuck in this backwater posting. ‘Is Nina all right?’

‘Hiyah, everybody only interested in Nina,’ Aunty Lee said grumpily. ‘Why should I care where is Nina?’

Nina Balignasay was Aunty Lee’s domestic helper. Nina, whose nursing degree was not recognized in Singapore, had started as a home caregiver to Aunty Lee’s late husband. Seeing she was smart and hard-working, the Lees had sent her for computer classes and business courses and even driving lessons. This last had required intricate bureaucratic wrangling since foreign domestic workers were forbidden from driving in Singapore. Permission for Nina’s driving licence had only been granted after two doctors and an MP testified she was the sole caregiver for two old people who might need emergency medical treatment.

The Lees’ intention had been to equip Nina for a profession after she left them. Instead, she had become invaluable to Aunty Lee’s business as well as her closest friend and companion after M. L. Lee’s death.

Aunty Lee was the ultimate snob when it came to durians and spices, but she was egalitarian when it came to people.

It was only today that Aunty Lee was cross with Nina.

Back in Aunty Lee’s Delights. Nina was also cross with Aunty Lee. She knew her boss meant well. But why did she have to keep trying to interfere with her personal life?

Nina had already taken care of everything. She had told Salim she would not go with him to meet his mother; made it clear that she would not go anywhere with him, they could never be anything more to each other than customer and waitress. This was slightly complicated by the fact that the customer was a police officer and the waitress was violating her domestic work permit. But if Salim had accepted it, why couldn’t Aunty Lee?

Singapore was a multiracial, multicultural city largely run by English educated Chinese people, and Aunty Lee was a very wealthy English-educated Chinese woman. Fond as she was of her boss, Nina suspected Aunty Lee was barely aware how differently the island’s rules and regulations looked to those below and from the outside.

After Aunty Lee’s last tirade on love and the rarity of ‘Good Men’, Nina was not sorry the older woman had gone out. She only hoped Aunty Lee was not headed to the police post to tackle Salim. Again.

‘What’s wrong with Nina?’ SS Panchal asked. She wondered if it had anything to do with Inspector Salim’s subdued mood over the last week. You didn’t have to be a kaypoh – a busybody – as Aunty Lee was to see how much Salim liked Aunty Lee’s helper. Aunty Lee had not seemed to mind, but her kiasu side might have kicked in. Had she, afraid of losing Nina, banned Nina from seeing the police officer?

‘What’s wrong is that stupid girl won’t listen to me! I told her they should quick quick make up their minds and get married now that the property prices are down. Then they can get a flat near here … Clementi perhaps, or Bukit Batok. Then Salim can go on working at his police post and Nina can go on working for me.

‘I told Nina I was going to tell Salim to faster faster apply for permission to marry her. Do you know what she told me?’

‘That it’s very difficult for foreign domestic helpers to get permission to marry locals?’ Panchal guessed. That was well known. ‘Aunty Lee, can I help you get out of the drain?’

‘Difficult is not impossible. Foreign domestic helpers also not supposed to drive, what? But I got permission for Nina to drive. You just got to apply and apply and apply until they see you are serious. But Nina told me “No”. She and Salim never getting married. Good bye! Finish! Chop-chop!’

‘Ah.’ Panchal could not remember anything about talking people out of drains. But she had attended a seminar on talking suicides off balconies. ‘If you come out of the drain we can talk about it?’

Just then, her phone buzzed.

‘Inspector? No, not another burglary. It’s Aunty Lee. She’s in a storm drain. No, she’s not hurt.’

‘Tell Inspector Salim I said Hello!’ Aunty Lee called up.

Despite having been involved in several of Salim’s murder cases, Aunty Lee was still somewhat in awe of the Inspector. She had been on her way to tell him what cute and clever children he and Nina could have together. And how true love would be enough to overcome any differences in their Muslim and Catholic backgrounds. But remembering Nina’s refusal to listen to her, Aunty Lee’s steps had slowed … that was when she had seen the wild kesum growing on the slope by the storm drain next to the house that had been under construction for so long.

Daun kesum or kesum leaves were such an essential ingredient in making laksa that many people referred to them as daun laksa or laksa leaves. The oils of the young kesum leaves gave just the right aroma to spicy assam laksa. In the old days the creeper with its tiny purple flowers had been easy to find in muddy roadside ditches or growing along shallow drains. When you wanted to cook you went outside and plucked what you needed. But today’s Singapore lacked muddy ditches and shallow drains. As a weed rather than a cash crop, kesum was seldom found in markets and never in supermarkets. Too often Aunty Lee had been reduced to using mint leaves as an alternative. Though no one had complained, the compromise galled her. Forget love problems. Make good laksa, she had decided. That renovations had damaged the protective barrier around the drain made it easier for her to climb round to the weed-filled slope.

‘Inspector Salim would like you to get out of the drain, Aunty Lee,’ SS Panchal said. ‘And I need to let Mr and Mrs Guang know you are not at risk.’

By now the Guangs had come downstairs and were watching from just outside their gate. ‘How did you get down there? Can you get out?’

‘There’s a path on that side behind the bushes. Here, hold for me first.’ Balancing against the stone side of the drain, where it ran underground beneath the road, Aunty Lee reached up with a bunch of leafy stalks which SS Panchal squatted to pull through the railings.

‘Please be careful, Mrs Lee.’

‘You please be careful of my kesum leaves!’

Once her hands were free, Aunty Lee scrambled up the overgrown slope on her hands and knees as a child might. Though undignified it was effective and she was soon standing by Panchal brushing herself down.

‘You should apologize to these people for worrying them.’ SS Panchal smiled at the Guangs. They nodded back cautiously.

‘I don’t see what the big fuss is about. Nobody was going to use the kesum. Anyway it will grow back. I didn’t pull up the roots. Why shouldn’t I take it?’ Aunty Lee grumbled.

‘Outside of community gardens of which you are a registered member, the plucking of fruit and flowers in public spaces without permission is an offence which carries a fine of up to $5,000,’ Panchal recited dutifully. Now it was time to Defuse Neighbourhood Tensions. She handed Aunty Lee’s leafy loot back to her before waving to the new neighbours. Mr and Mrs Guang came over, still looking suspicious. No doubt they had expected Aunty Lee to be removed in handcuffs.

‘So sorry I frightened you! I wanted to get these leaves to cook my laksa. Later you must come to my shop and try my assam laksa. My treat. I hope you will come and try?’ Aunty Lee beamed hopefully at the Guangs, and to Panchal’s surprise they melted. Aunty Lee was so plump, positive, and genuinely good-natured.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ they repeated, bowing.‘We hear there are many house burglaries in Singapore, that’s why we are worried,’ Mr Guang said. ‘And the police signs say we must report suspicious activity.’

‘Oh I totally understand!’ Aunty Lee said. ‘One of my old school friends kenah. So terrible hor!’

They launched into an animated discussion of burglar alarms and guard dogs till Panchal said: ‘You want me to phone Nina to come and get you?’

‘No! I don’t want to see Nina!’ Aunty Lee winced at the thought of facing Nina with nothing resolved. ‘Don’t you have to take me to the police station to question me?’ Perhaps she could still have a quick word with Inspector Salim.

‘We know where to find you if we need to ask questions. Don’t you want to get your leaves back to your house or to your shop?’

Aunty Lee’s bungalow was deep in the right branch of the housing estate, about ten minutes by foot beyond the row of shop houses where her café was.

‘You better bring me back to the shop,’ Aunty Lee sighed. She got into the police car then lowered the window to call out to her new friends: ‘You must come to my shop to eat!’

Truth be told, it was not just because of Nina that Aunty Lee was feeling a bit out of place in her own shop these days.

Aunty Lee’s new partner, Cherril Lim-Peters, was a very skinny, very smart, young woman who never seemed to get tired. Aunty Lee liked Cherril’s energy. What she found difficult to deal with was Cherril’s constant need for change and improvement. She was always coming up with ways to do things faster, better, and to greater profit.

Selina Lee, Aunty Lee’s stepdaughter-in-law, said Cherril was compensating for growing up in a Housing Development Board flat and studying in a government school. Selina never missed a chance to correct Cherril’s pronunciation or grammar. But Cherril knew far more about business productivity.

Given that Cherril’s determination was directed towards building the business and making more money, taking Cherril on as a partner had certainly been good for the business side of Aunty Lee’s Delights. It also made Nina’s temporary absence possible. (Aunty Lee had picked out several honeymoon packages to start off the marriage Nina was rejecting). Before Cherril came on board, Nina had taken care of Aunty Lee’s accounts, ordered supplies, and planned menus as well as helping with the actual cooking and serving.

Initially, Cherril had only taken over the drinks side of the business that Aunty Lee’s stepson, Mark, had started and given up. But lately Cherril had been talking about introducing new healthy alternatives. She had also taken over the accounts and balancing the books after taking an online course on cost-effective business accounting. Nina was just Aunty Lee’s assistant in the kitchen again. And not even the sole assistant, now that Cherril had hired two Chinese nationals to help in the shop during peak hours. Avon and Xuyie were both fair, pretty girls who claimed to speak English.

Aunty Lee could not understand their English any more than they could follow her Singlish. Luckily Cherril could give them instructions in Mandarin. Aunty Lee wondered if Nina felt left out, listening to the three Chinese girls chatting and giggling incomprehensibly. Aunty Lee certainly did. Both Aunty Lee and Nina were comfortable enough with Chinese dialects to do their marketing, food ordering, and scandal gossiping in Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese. But neither had studied the government-sanctioned Mandarin. In the old days, newcomers to Singapore had learned English to integrate. The recent influx of Mandarin speakers no longer seemed to find that necessary.