“Um.” Riki clears his throat. “You mentioned that we’re both suspects? Can I ask why?”
“Oh yes.” Vera sets down her teacup. “You mustn’t take it personal, okay? Oh, you young people take everything so personal nowadays. So what if I think you might be a killer? That doesn’t mean I think you are a bad person.”
“Uh . . .” Sana licks her lips. “I mean, I think it kind of does?”
Vera tuts at her. “What nonsense. Of course not.”
“But why do you think we’re suspects in the first place?” Riki says, tugging at the collar of his shirt.
“So many reasons.” Vera holds up her left thumb. “One, everyone knows that killers always come back to scene of the crime. Yes? They like to admire their handiwork. So I know, all I have to do is wait and see who turns up. Both of you turn up yesterday, so you automatically go on my list. See? Nothing personal.”
“You said there are many reasons?” Sana says, though she’s unsure that she wants to know the other reasons.
“Yes, of course. Okay, ladies first. Sana, where were you on night that Marshall was killed?”
Sana’s mind implodes, filling her head with nothing but bright white light and a high-pitched squeal. Say something, she screams silently at herself. Anything! But nothing comes out.
“This is silly,” Riki says.
Sana looks at him, her heart sprinting like a hunted rabbit.
“We don’t know Marshall, Vera. We certainly don’t have to tell you where we were on the night he died.” He seems so sure of himself when he says this. Is this what it’s like to be able to stand up to an elderly Asian auntie? Sana is both impressed and horrified at the same time. “Let’s focus on why you think Marshall was killed to begin with.”
Vera shrugs, though her expression stays sharp and alert. “Okay, you don’t have to tell me for now. I will figure out later. Let’s see, why else do I think Marshall is killed? Well, this Marshall guy sounds like very bad person, the kind that would get killed, you know?”
Sana could swear her intestines have morphed into snakes and are slithering around inside her belly. She feels like throwing up. Because yes, Vera is exactly right. Marshall was a very bad person, the kind that would very much get killed. Then she reminds herself that she’s not supposed to have known Marshall personally, so she forces her features into what she thinks is an expression of bland interest. “Oh? What have you found out about Marshall?” She belatedly adds, “I’m asking because of my true crime podcast, obviously.”
Vera leans closer to them and says in a conspiratorial voice, “I think that this Marshall guy has something people want. Something that he keep himself, very safe.”
When Sana was six, her parents took her and her sister up to Tahoe and Sana saw snow for the very first time. She and her sister had flung themselves into the soft snowbanks and threw snowballs at each other, laughing and shrieking. She remembers her sister grabbing the back of Sana’s jacket from behind and dumping a fistful of snow down her collar and the shock of the cold freezing the back of her neck before slithering down her back. This moment feels exactly like someone dumped a handful of snow down her neck. Something that Marshall kept safe? How does Vera know?
But before Sana can say anything, Vera claps once and stands up. “Okay, you all done drinking tea? Come upstair and help me carry something down. You young people are much stronger than me. Come!” she barks when both Sana and Riki remain sitting, looking stunned.
Sana and Riki stand at the same time and exchange another helpless glance before following Vera up the narrow, rickety stairs. Faded pictures hang on the wall, many of them crumbling inside their old-fashioned, chipped frames. The second floor turns out to be Vera’s living quarters, a small, dark space filled to the gills with what looks like broken, ancient junk. Sana eyes the towering piles of old newspapers and magazines, the cobwebbed sewing machine, an old typewriter missing half its keys, and boxes probably filled with similarly unusable items. It’s a familiar sight to her. Her parents’ house is pristine because her mother is ruthless about keeping her house immaculate for the many interviews and videos she shoots for her fans, but as a kid, whenever Sana visited her friends’ homes, especially the first-generation kids, she’d often find houses filled with crumbling boxes full of stuff. Mementos from their parents’ homeland, too old to use, too precious to throw away, too painful to look at. So they are left to age gently, a reminder of everyone who was left behind.
“Come,” Vera calls out from the small kitchen, and Sana tears her eyes from the mountains of memories in the living room and heads toward the kitchen.
Vera is unloading container after container from the fridge and piling them on the kitchen counter. “Put them inside those bags.” She points at a couple of reusable shopping bags.
Sana and Riki each take a bag. “What’s in these?” Sana says as she picks up a Tupperware container and peers through the plastic. She spies something brown swimming in thick gravy.
“Food. That one has pepper beef, very tender. I marinade the beef chunk in rice wine, make the meat so soft, like biting into marshmallow.”
“I don’t know that beef should have the consistency of marshmallow,” Sana says, sliding the container into the bag.
Vera frowns at her. “Obviously it’s just a saying. You will see later, it is the perfect tenderness. Ah, that one has braised tofu and mushroom. Children will love that. It was my Tilly’s favorite.”
Before long, both bags are stuffed full of containers.
“Okay, carry them downstair,” Vera says cheerfully. “Be careful! I spend all morning cooking!”
“It’s literally only ten in the morning,” Riki says. “You couldn’t have cooked all this food this morning.”
Vera gives him a savage side-eye. “You can if you wake up early enough.” She marches past them and starts heading down the stairs.
“But—” Sana heaves the bag up with a grunt. “Wait, what’s all this food for?”
Vera doesn’t miss a beat. “My fourth suspect, of course.” Just then, the downstairs bell chimes. “Ah, that’ll be my third suspect. Come, we don’t have all day!”
Sana will learn to stand up to pushy Asian aunties one day. It seems, however, that today is not that day.
ELEVEN
VERA
Vera’s murder investigation is going so well that she wonders why more people don’t just decide to leave their boring desk jobs and go into detective work. She’s started daydreaming of having the huge VERA WANG’S WORLD-FAMOUS TEAHOUSE sign taken down and replaced with VERA WANG: PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. Maybe she should, just to see the expression on Winifred’s face. Then again, maybe the reason why her investigation is going so well is because no one expects a tea expert to also be an expert at solving murder mysteries. Vera is basically undercover. Yes, better to hide the fact that she is a sleuth as well as a tea doctor, as she sometimes likes to refer to herself. Tilly, of course, would say, “What’s a tea doctor? Do you treat teas when they have indigestion? When they break a limb?” But that’s Tilly for you. He’s going to be very annoyed when he finds out that his mother has only gone and solved a murder.