“No,” said Max. “Have you noticed anyone suspicious in your perusal of the visitors?”
“Well, there’s a gang member here. He knew Benny a long time, so he must have known how superstitious he was. But I think street gangs usually go in for something more direct than murder by cookie.”
“Hmm.”
John’s brother finished repairing the damage to Benny, then went to check on the Yee family.
Realizing I was a little mussed after my tumble across the room, I patted my hair and straightened my clothing. Then I turned to Max to continue our conversation. I was about to suggest Mrs. Yee as a likely murder suspect when a woman said in an American accent, “Oh, my God, that was the best ever! I have to thank you.”
I turned to find Susan Yee greeting me. A pretty woman with a short, chic haircut, she wore black slacks and a simple black silk blouse. She exchanged introductions with us, pointed out that Nelli was an impractical size for a therapy dog in Manhattan, and then said to me, “Jumping in the way you did, you saved my aunt from an aggravated assault charge.”
“By happy coincidence, I also saved the other woman from a crushed skull.”
“Oh, she deserved it. But I wouldn’t want to see my aunt go to prison over trash like that. And watching that disgusting woman go flying into the coffin that way, and then getting dragged out of here by John!” She laughed, then covered her mouth and looked around, apparently remembering she was at a wake. She leaned forward and said in a low but enthusiastic voice, “It was priceless!”
“She seemed to be, um, close to your uncle,” I said.
“Close? That’s one word for it, I suppose,” Susan said with a sneer. “But no one expected Aunt Grace to blow her top like that. We thought she didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know that her husband was, er, personally involved with that young woman?” Max asked.
“Well, Aunt Grace certainly had her suspicions that there was someone. Especially since it’s happened before—Uncle Benny keeping a woman, I mean.” Susan seemed to be as indiscreet as she was harsh. Maybe she noticed the surprise in our expressions, since she said, “Yeah, I know, I know. Don’t speak ill of the dead, and all that. Especially not if you’re Chinese.”
“Ah.” Max nodded. “Reverence for ancestors.”
“And for elders,” she added with a courteous nod to him. “But in all honesty, my uncle was kind of a pr . . .” She hesitated, looking at Max, then said to me, “Uh, not a very nice man.”
“That must have been hard on your aunt,” I said.
“Well, I sure couldn’t be married to a guy like that,” she replied. “But you know the older generation. Benny was a good provider, gave Grace three sons, and didn’t ever come home drunk or violent. So she thought he was a good husband.”
“Despite his infidelities?” I asked. If Susan was willing to gossip about her relatives, then I was certainly willing to encourage her.
“That upset Aunt Grace, of course. She got really furious with him a few times—well, you’ve seen her temper. But she’s also got an old-fashioned ‘men will be men’ attitude, and she never threatened to divorce him for playing around.”
I wondered how to ask tactfully, only a few feet away from Benny’s coffin, whether his wife had ever threatened to kill him for it.
Susan said with a puzzled frown, “Anyhow, I know she suspected lately that Uncle Benny was having another affair, but I was sure she didn’t know who it was. In fact, just this morning, she was saying to my mother that maybe the family should try to help Benny’s secretary find another job. Man, did I have trouble keeping a straight face when I heard her say that.”
“It didn’t occur to her that your uncle’s secretary might be his girlfriend?” I asked.
“It sure didn’t seem like it. But then, Uncle Benny had a lot of practice at this sort of thing, so I guess he covered his tracks well. I can remember Grace telling my mother about how stupid and vulgar Benny said his secretary was, the ignorance and mistakes he put up with, all so he could earn merit by keeping this uneducated immigrant girl from turning to prostitution because she’d never find another decent job. Stuff like that.”
I figured that if Mrs. Yee had really accepted that story from a serial adulterer, then she wasn’t the first woman who chose to believe whatever improbable fiction would help maintain stability in her marriage.
Or, as an alternate explanation, maybe she just wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
“So this morning, your aunt wanted to help the young woman?” Max mused. “Yet this evening, she attacked her when she showed up here.”
I said, “I guess all that weeping over the casket gave the game away, and Aunt Grace realized the woman was more than just a grateful employee.”
“Maybe,” Susan said with a shrug. “Or maybe someone blabbed. Half of Chinatown knew what Uncle Benny was up to. He kept Aunt Grace in the dark, but he wasn’t discreet.”
“Telling her about the affair now would so unkind, though,” I said. “She’s a new widow, after all.”
“Even so,” said Susan, “people gossip.”
“How true,” Max said gravely.
“Anyhow, Esther, you flinging that awful woman into the coffin like that—it was the best thing I’ve seen all year,” Susan said with a grin.
“Well, the year’s only a few days old,” I said modestly.
“Your year,” she said. “But ours is nearly over.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “That’s coming up soon, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Two weeks.”
The traditional Chinese calendar is lunar, like the Jewish calendar, and none of the annual milestones coincide with the Gregorian solar calendar that’s used throughout the West. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, usually occurs in September, but occasionally it falls in October. The Chinese New Year is sometimes celebrated in January, sometimes in February.
So as Susan had just noted, in the Chinese calendar, the old year was in its final days now.
The Lunar New Year is always a big event in Chinatown. It kicks off with the firecracker festival, in which impressively costumed lion dancers roam the streets, accompanied by musicians. They go from shop to shop throughout the neighborhood, dancing outside the doorways (and sometimes going inside) to demand “lucky money” in red envelopes for the New Year. They’re also fed big heads of cabbage, which they “chew” up and “spit” out at the gathered crowd, to share the good luck and abundance that the green vegetables represent. If you don’t mind getting cabbage and firecracker confetti in your hair, it’s a fun day out. The famous Dragon Parade, which is usually on television, wends its way through Chinatown a week later.
Given what a bust the recent New Year had been for me, starting off jobless and in jail, maybe I’d aim for the Chinese New Year as my chance to start over, shed bad habits, and get a certain man out of my system.
“So how did you two know Uncle Benny?” Susan asked us. “If you’re two of his dearest friends, then, boy, am I embarrassed. But, no, I guess I’d have seen you around before now, if you were close to him. Did you do business with him or something? I know he did business with a lot of people,” she added, looking around at the dense crowd.
Max and I exchanged a glance, realizing at the same moment that we hadn’t prepared an explanation for our presence at this wake. Susan had just handed us a good reason for being here, but I wondered what sort of business we should say we had done with Benny.
Then inspiration struck me. “I’m an actress. Benny told me he was backing a film and there might be a part in it for me.”