Aunty Lee's Chilled Revenge (10 page)

“We are quite certain that Allison's killer also killed the vet because they were both strangled by cable ties. That incidentally establishes that Mike Fitzgerald is unlikely to be Allison's killer since we had already located and were keeping an eye on him when the vet was murdered.”

“And unlikely to be Vallerie also. She cannot even tie up her own hair, how to strangle somebody with cable ties? Was the vet also whacked on the head?”

“No. The only thing that links them is the cable ties.”

Cable ties? Aunty Lee thought about the sturdy nylon tie wraps that locked irreversibly once their pointed tips were pulled through the ratchet case teeth. Once through, they could be pulled tighter but not released. Aunty Lee used cable ties for everything from hanging up waxed ducks and smoked sausages to holding up Christmas and New Year decorations and fastening flower arrangements to invisible supports. Cable ties were indispensable, but she would never look at them the same way again.

It was difficult to think of cable ties as a murder weapon. Cable ties had come into the news in Singapore when it was revealed that they were used to secure rail claws on the is
land's Mass Rapid Transit lines after some major line disruptions. They had subsequently fallen into disfavor with the subsequent report that rail claws on the MRT's rail network continued to dislodge despite the cable ties. But that would be nothing compared to a revelation that cable ties had been used in the murder of a British tourist and local veterinary surgeon Samantha Kang.

“Are you officially ruling out suicide in the vet's case? Because if you don't have anything to cut them with, strangling yourself with cable ties sounds like a good way of committing suicide.”

“She didn't.”

Aunty Lee accepted that. “I wish there was some way to find out about Allison's state of health in England, state of her mental health also.”

“I'm sure Salim already has someone looking into that,” Commissioner Raja said. “How is the sister doing, by the way?”

“Holding up very well, all things considered.”

“Rosie, just between us, your having the woman's sister staying with you makes things a lot easier for us. Feed her, look after her, listen to her. And I want you to let me or Salim know everything the sister tells you, even if it doesn't sound important. And if anybody contacts her, I want you to let Salim know immediately. I'm not asking you to spy on your guest”—he held up a hand to forestall the percolating objection—“I am asking you to help us keep her safe. You will be my undercover operative, how about that?”

“Undercover operative.” Aunty Lee turned the words over on her tongue. “It makes it sound like I am doing illegal op
erations. I can be your undercover cook. But why is Salim in charge of this case? It is not his district, what.”

“I asked Inspector Salim Mawar to take it and he agreed,” Commissioner Raja said. “Officially anyway. After all, Allison Love's only appointment in Singapore was in your café, and that is in his district.”

“And unofficially?”

“Salim asked if he could look into it. He's got experience in this sort of thing and he's got more time to look into it than the guys in town—tourist season, you know what that's like.”

Aunty Lee did know. As tourists flocked into Singapore with money to spend, many others came to relieve them of it via cheating, stealing, or sex acts. Processing their victims' complaints occupied a great deal of manpower, let alone following through on them.

“Vallerie feels responsible for what happened to her sister,” Aunty Lee said. “She says that just by coming to Singapore with Allison she was responsible. If she had refused to come, if she had broken her leg or didn't want to leave home for some reason and Allison didn't want to make the trip without her, then Allison wouldn't have come and she wouldn't have gotten herself killed.”

“Whoever wanted to kill her could have killed her somewhere else.”

“And that would be sad for her. But she wouldn't have been killed here and it wouldn't have been our business.”

Commissioner Raja studied Aunty Lee. “So you're saying this is our business? And if she had been killed anywhere else it wouldn't matter?”

Aunty Lee jumped in to answer. “Of course it matters,
what
. It's just not our business. Every day women are being killed in Gaza, in Ukraine, in airplanes getting shot down, and we say, ‘
Aiyoh,
so terrible,' and think about what are we going to eat for dinner tonight. Allison Love is Singapore's business because she died in Singapore. Bad for Singapore's reputation if people come here and get killed. Her sister is my business because she is staying in my house. And, of course, Josephine DelaVega is your business as well as my business because she is a Singapore girl who grew up here. This Vallerie is going around telling everybody that Josephine hired somebody to kill Allison so that she can marry Allison's husband.”

“Josephine is Jojo and Constance DelaVega's youngest?” Raja had made a point of not seeing Josephine himself and not taking calls from the DelaVegas till he understood more about the case. They were old friends and he understood their reaching out to him. Parents always believed their children either innocent or justified. As an old friend he sympathized with them, but as a police officer he could offer no comfort.

“Yes. She's one of the people Allison came to Singapore to sue for breaking up her marriage.” Aunty Lee shook her head. “Crazy woman. Husband already left you, you think that acting more crazy will make him come back?”

To her surprise the commissioner did not agree immediately. “That puppy killer business must have been a terrible experience for Allison and her whole family. There were tens of thousands of people signing on to the ‘Justice for Lola' page online and crying for her blood. It's mob justice. Many
people don't feel responsible for their behavior when they are part of a mob because they see everyone around them doing the same thing. And the Internet amplifies this because you don't see your target's reactions, so there are fewer social inhibitions. It can get really ugly.”

It did sound frightening. Aunty Lee felt the first stirrings of real sympathy for the dead woman. “But nobody actually attacked her, right? All she had to do is not go online and read what people were saying about her
lor
!”

“Given she was an expat wife far away from family and friends, that wouldn't have been easy. The puppy killer story went viral. It was shared over a thousand times on Facebook even before the full story and facts were established. Because they feel anonymous, online people post things they may not say in person. Mob vigilantes post things that make other people even angrier. Tensions really boiled over and it got really ugly. Maybe they were taking it out on her because she was a rich white expat, I don't know. One of those sociologists will be able to explain it. And the online community was doxing her—‘doxing' short for ‘document tracing.' They found out where her husband was working and sent e-mails to the company asking for him to be fired and sent home. They posted photographs of the house she was living in and photographs of her with her children with comments on how she looked and what should be done to her. The vet and the clinic also got some hate mail, but Allison got it the worst. Probably because she insisted that she had not done anything wrong.”

“If she said sorry like that vet did, maybe people wouldn't
have been so angry.” Aunty Lee remembered how angry and upset Mathilda had been. “But she was behaving like Japan after the Occupation ended. Instead of saying, ‘Sorry we invaded you and killed your fathers and brothers and raped your mothers and sisters,' they pretended it never happened and said, ‘You shouldn't have dropped the bomb on us.'”

Raja Kumar did not follow the red herring Aunty Lee trailed across the conversation. The generation of Singaporeans who had lived through the Japanese Occupation was dying out. And with or without apologies being given, memories of atrocities would die out too. He held no personal grudge against Japan. The only problem he had with the whitewashing of history was knowing that lessons not learned were often repeated. Still, his responsibility was to deal with people's problems in the present—not those causing trouble five or fifty years ago . . . unless that was where present problems were rooted.

“I suspect expats coming here on huge incentive packages get unsettled by cultural differences from what they assumed was the god-given norm,” he said. “Their natural biases are triggered and they react with defensiveness or disgust. It's not just cultural prejudice. I think Allison Fitzgerald was feeling insecure and trying to make herself feel better by belittling locals.”

“But why did everybody focus on her? Her husband must have been involved too. He was living in the house; he must have known what was happening to the dog. Why didn't people get angry with him too?” It was not only because of what happened years ago that Aunty Lee wanted to get the
answer to this. If Mike Fitzgerald was the sort of man who pushed blame on to his wife, Aunty Lee would make sure that any rumors that Josephine DelaVega was involved with the man would come to nothing.

“Allison was the one who signed the contract. She was the one who made the agreement. But I agree with you. The man had to have known what was happening. You could say that he's noble for standing by his wife no matter what she did. Or if you want to be really old-fashioned and patriarchal, you can say that he should have kept his wife in order and made her behave better. Other than that there really wasn't anything on him.”

Aunty Lee did not fully agree. People who lived together influenced one another. It was part of the give and take of daily life and community. Either he had accepted his wife and her personality or he had failed to change her. And had he left her because of that? But she put that aside to gnaw on later. The problem with having too many questions bursting out at the same time was it got difficult to keep track of getting the more important ones answered.

“I'm surprised they didn't just leave.”

“They did leave. And that should have been the end of the matter for us.”

Not for the first time Aunty Lee wished the woman had not come back. “And the vet? The angry online people went after her too, right?”

“They did. But right away the vet said very publicly that she was wrong to have put the dog down, that she blamed herself. She cried on TV and gave two months' salary to the
ReHomers and the SPCA and was donating her time to sterilizing strays, so they left her alone after that.”

“It seems unlikely she would be a target for them then,” Aunty Lee said. “But Allison might have felt Samantha Kang betrayed her.”

She studied Commissioner Raja, who was wearing his most impassive expression—and waiting.

“It could just be a coincidence. Or it could be somebody who wants you to think that the animal people killed Allison, not her ex-husband. Vallerie thinks Allison's ex-husband followed her to Singapore. Is that possible?”

“If he did I'm sure you'll know soon.” In case Aunty Lee paid too much attention to pronouns he rushed on: “So overall sounds like the sister is holding up okay?”

“She's in shock, of course. But I think she's eating normally—no spicy stuff, she likes lots of sugar and crispy food. Not very healthy, but I get the feeling she's tougher than she looks. And I don't think she and her sister were all that close.” Aunty Lee did not think it necessary to mention tabloid papers rather than Vallerie had been her source of information. “From what I gather, Vallerie Love moved to America years ago, just after her sister and her family came to Singapore, and she hasn't been back to England since. What's more, she didn't go back to England when her sister was getting her divorce. You would think she would have, if the sisters were that close, right? And that makes it more surprising that she accompanied Allison here. But she said it was the least she could do, and she had never been to Singapore before so why not? I suppose Allison's children
went to stay with their father when their mother left England.”

“The two children were already staying with their father. After the divorce the court gave custody to the father. In fact he took out a restraining order against Allison.”

“Against her coming close to him or to her children?”

“Children. She was only allowed supervised visits, and she could not take them out of school without their father's permission.”

“Poor woman.” Aunty Lee had been as set against Allison the Puppy Killer as anyone else in Singapore, but she was definitely feeling sorry for her now.

“The court wouldn't have granted a restraining order without good reason,” Commissioner Raja said. He looked thoughtfully at Aunty Lee. “Are you sure the sister doesn't know anybody in Singapore other than those three Allison came to Singapore to sue?”

“She doesn't even know them. Met them for the first time the day her sister died. Your sergeant Panchal gave her a list of contacts in the British Council and the American embassy but she refused to call them. She says they never helped her sister when Allison needed them. But it's not a problem. I want you to tell your people that it's all right for Vallerie to go on staying at my house. You know I have lots of room. Your people can reach her here whenever they want and she will be quite safe. You can put a guard outside if you want, but don't make him stand in the sun. And I want you to make sure we can get back into the hotel room to get her things. For somebody her size it's not so easy to just go out and buy
clothes here. Of course I can go to Holland Village and pick up a few caftans for her, but just think about the underwear!”

“Hmm. Of course.” Commissioner Raja grimaced involuntarily and made a weary shooing gesture. “Fine, fine. Just keep an eye on her. Don't let her fall into a drain or walk into a door and sue you for damages. And don't let her talk you into getting involved in investigating her sister's death. This time it is really nothing to do with you. We just have to sort it out with the hotel security.”