Meddling and Murder: An Aunty Lee Mystery. Ovidia Yu

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       CHAPTER THREE

       Beth and Jonny Ho

      Beth Kwuan stood at the upstairs window looking down on Jonny Ho talking to the new contractor. She’d had to come up to change for a meeting at the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) which oversees the setting up of child care centres in Singapore. Those bureaucrats had demanded to see her plans for soundproofing and toilet facilities. All the rules and regulations, requirements, and inspections were ridiculous, Beth thought. In the old days all you needed to train children were rattan mats on the floor and a tin potty in the corner. And hadn’t those children turned out much better than the youth of today?

      When it was not raining the children played catching and hopscotch and jumped rubber bands outside, and if it rained they played Happy Families or five stones inside. Part of her wanted to throw up this whole idea of running her own preschool. But Jonny had worked on the figures with her. There was no other way she could keep this house. She tugged at the blue and white striped knit dress she had changed into. It was a bit tight on her, like all her late sister’s dresses. But they still looked better on her than any of her own clothes.

      Beth knew she should leave soon if she didn’t want to waste money booking a taxi, but still she stayed at the window, watching Jonny Ho wave his arms around as he talked. She wished Jonny would come with her to the ECDA. He was so much better at charming people than she was. And he could impress them with his Mandarin. But Jonny despised Singapore’s rules and regulations. He was convinced their permits were taking so long because Beth was too stingy to hand over the necessary bribes, and refused to believe that was not how things were done in Singapore.

      ‘That’s how things are done everywhere!’ he had said.

      Beth didn’t want to think about how Jonny was managing the renovations. The new batch of foreign contract workers Jonny was working with were all Chinese nationals. He had fired the first lot of men and demanded only Mandarin speakers this time. At least he wasn’t hitting them like he had hit that Indian welder. Jonny got very angry when people didn’t follow his instructions exactly and immediately. He had thought the Indian workers were making fun of his English when they tried to ask him questions. Their first contractor had quit after making a huge fuss about Jonny breaking that welder’s arm. Luckily Jonny was good at handling people like him. After Jonny threatened the contractor with all kinds of things from invented violations to Jonny’s close friends in the permits department to broken legs, the first contractor had quit the job and taken his workers with him. They were already behind schedule, and they left walls half hacked and stacks of child-safe railings propped on piles of padded play area squares. But Beth hardly had time to panic before Jonny announced he had got them a replacement contractor.

      ‘Even cheaper! The first bugger was trying to swindle us!’

      Of course Beth still worried. But then Beth worried all the time about everything. That was how she had always been. It was wonderful to have someone like Jonny Ho around to say: ‘Leave everything to me!’ and take over.

      ‘Leave the building renovations to me!’ he had told her, and she did. Jonny had so much more business experience. Despite being younger, he had so much more experience in everything, and when he said: ‘Everybody will always try to cheat you if they can. But don’t worry! I will watch out for you!’ Beth knew she could trust him. It was what she had always believed.

      That didn’t mean she didn’t worry about him, of course. Beth worried about what Jonny had thought of Julietta, and how he would react to Fabian. Julietta had disappeared after her nephew Fabian turned up at the house and made a scene.

      ‘If you can’t show some respect to your elders you’ll have to leave!’ Beth had told Fabian. To her relief, he had left. But she had seen Julietta slip out after him. Should she have stopped her? Beth had no idea what Fabian might have said to Julietta; what he might have tried to get her to do.

      Well, there was no point wondering about that now. There had been no sign of Julietta, no queries from Julietta’s family members or friends, which Beth took as a good sign. It looked as though Julietta had been in touch with them even if her employer didn’t know where she was.

      The only person who kept bringing up the missing woman was that stupid Mrs Selina Lee, who asked: ‘Where is Julietta?’ every time she came by.

      ‘I don’t know.’ Beth had finally told her.

      This was difficult for Beth, who liked everything and everyone to be in the right place all the time. Surprisingly, Selina Lee had not seemed surprised. Nor had she seemed surprised that Beth had not reported Julietta as ‘missing’. Why get the government involved unnecessarily? Beth said. It would just mean more red tape and more delays and they could not afford more delays right now.

      ‘She’ll probably show up when her boyfriend gets sick of her or she runs out of money,’ Selina had said, making Beth feel almost fond of her. Beth liked Selina’s shy husband, Mark, though the poor man was clearly under his wife’s thumb.

      Beth liked having a man around to handle things. If she had her life to live over again, there was only thing she would have done differently. She would have worked harder to get married. She would have liked to have had a man around. One who could earn enough for her not to have to work. It was another thing she blamed her late mother and sister for. The two of them had talked clothes and shoes and make-up together but they had never included her, never shown her what to do. Even though Beth had despised them for being superficial, they should have helped her. Her life would have been so much more comfortable now. Instead she was still the spinster sister. With all her things from her flat, she was squeezed into the small room that had once been her nephew’s while Jonny still occupied the much larger master bedroom he had shared with Patty. He insisted on cleaning the room himself. Though he let Beth do his laundry, he asked her to leave it on the little cupboard at the top of the stairs. Of course Beth had gone into his room to look around when he was not in. She had been half afraid of what she might find … a shrine to her sister, perhaps. But fortunately there was nothing of the sort.

      ‘What are you doing in here? How dare you spy on my things!’ Jonny had demanded when he came home unexpectedly and found her in his room.

      Beth could not tell him that she had been lying on the bed enjoying the scent of his shampoo and aftershave on his pillow. Embarrassment turning into anger; she had lashed back at him: ‘Why shouldn’t I? This is as much my house as yours!’ and, for an instant, she had been certain he was going to hit her. ‘My sister’s dresses,’ Beth had said. ‘I need something to wear to the Ministry. I thought since Patty has so many dresses I could borrow something.’ The lie was convincing because her sister had always had too many dresses.

      Jonny had glanced towards the walk-in closet, and the rage that had flamed up in his eyes lowered to a pilot light. ‘You should take all of them,’ he told her. ‘Give me more space.’

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