Hot Pot Murder by Jennifer J. Chow

Author:Jennifer J. Chow [Chow, Jennifer J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

At the restaurant, we could hear aggrieved voices coming from behind the partitioned banquet room. Celine and I crept inside, where Detective Strauss was waving a rectangular piece of paper in the air.

“How do you explain this?” he asked Ba.

“I really don’t know anything about it.” My dad slouched in his chair at a table with two filled water glasses.

I placed myself between my dad and the irritated detective. “What’s going on here?”

“Your father has survivorship rights and used them today,” Detective Strauss said.

“Could you repeat that in layman’s terms?” I asked.

“A check was written,” he said, “and recently issued by AAROA. I figure it’s a test run before writing a bigger check to a personal account.”

Celine strolled over to my side. “I don’t get it,” she said. “People voted Nik in as president this morning. Wouldn’t the check need to be cosigned to work?”

The detective placed the check on the table like a winning card in blackjack. “No. Because once Jeffery Vue is out of the picture, one person can write the check by himself. The treasurer.”

This must have something to do with the “survivorship rights” the detective had mentioned before.

Detective Strauss continued. “Maybe because of this new election, your father”—he looked at me and then moved his gaze to Celine—“and your uncle, knew a window of opportunity was slipping away and wrote a check as soon as possible.”

“That’s not even my dad’s signature. It’s too messy.” I turned to my cousin. “Celine, grab me a guest check pad and pen.”

She did so, and I let Ba reproduce his name. He topped it off with his usual flourish of a pen stroke.

“See.” I tapped the signature on the pad. “Not the same as the one on the check at all.”

“It’s still suspicious,” Detective Strauss said and grabbed one of the glasses on the table. He drank the water down.

As I watched his fingers gripping the cup, I thought back to the announcement at the police station. We’d all celebrated with chilled apple cider back then, using labeled cups, and the detective had collected all our trash afterward.

He must have dusted those cups, hoping for a match to the evidence he’d already discovered on the Swiss Army knife. “You wanted fingerprints,” I blurted out. “From the men in AAROA.” I remembered that the detective had only invited select individuals to the meeting.

Detective Strauss widened his eyes at my accusation, but he didn’t confirm my theory. It wouldn’t be aboveboard for him to go and investigate like that. Even if he’d secured a matching set of prints, that kind of evidence couldn’t be admissible in court.

Was the detective at Wing Fat even now because he thought the fingerprints he’d discovered belonged to Ba? Loyalty to my dad battled with friendship for Nik.

I glanced over at Ba, pacing around the room. He looked older somehow, more frail. Family won out in the end, and I threw Nik under the bus. “The prints on the Swiss Army knife,” I said. “They might belong to Nik.

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