The Jerejak Resort Murder

By Bruce Allsman

The Jerejak Resort Murder by Bruce Allsman

 

Sam Lee, a self-exiled former MMA champion and ex-Theravada Buddhist monk, takes a break from his mixed martial arts training school in Bangkok to return to Penang to help his twin brother, Brian Lee, solve a murder connected with a ghost from the past.

 

Brian, who runs a private investigations firm with his wife, May Lee, finds himself framed for the murder of a house detective at the Jerejak Resort. Due to the actions of an overzealous recently-appointed public prosecutor, Brian languishes in jail without bail. Desperate, he seeks Sam's help to prove his innocence by finding the true culprit.

 

As Sam works with May Lee to unravel the hidden threads of truth about the murder, they uncover new evidence about his tragic past in the mixed martial arts world. Years ago, guilt-ridden, he had forced him into self-exile to a Buddhist monastery in the Thai Forest Tradition. Now finally able to find the closure he needs as they work toward solving the case, he and May Lee uncover the identity of the culprit, and foil a greater threat to the world.

 

The Jerejak Resort Murder, a Penang #murder #mystery #novel

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce Yeoh
• Release date: Mar 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393194378

Book preview

The Jerejak Resort Murder

Bruce Allsman

All of the characters in this book

are fictitious, and any resemblance

to actual persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

The Jerejak Resort Murder

Copyright © 2021 by Bruce Allsman

All Rights Reserved

Published by Bruce Yeoh

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

About the Author

Books by Bruce Allsman

Prologue

THAT EVENING OVER DINNER at the restaurant I waited for the right time to get away for a while to execute my plan to kill the bastard. When the time came, I slipped away to the staff locker room and made sure that no one saw me. Carrying the 500 ml bottle of mineral water in a gloved hand, ready to plant it in the target locker, I went straight to the locker and unlocked it with the master key I had duplicated earlier. After replacing the bottle of water that was in the locker with the one in my hand, something else in the locker caught my attention. It was a small brown backpack. Although curious to see what was inside it, I didn't touch the backpack. There was no time to fool around. Quickly, I secured the locker, strode out of the locker room, and hurried back to the dining table.

Chapter 1

AFTER A SHORT DRIVE over the new bridge connecting Penang island to Pulau Jerejak, one of its several satellite islands, Brian Lee reached the Jerejak Resort at about eight in the evening. He left his car with valet parking, strode into the main reception area, sat on a couch, and observed the resort staff and guests while waiting to meet a Mr. Ong Boon Seng, who would be off-duty soon.

Brian recalled from his notes that Mr. Ong, a retired police officer, had been working as a house detective at the resort for three weeks now. He hoped the house detective wouldn't mind answering a few questions about certain past events when he was with the Butterworth police department. Brian was given a lead by Amita, who had told him that the man, a narcotics detective twelve years ago, might know who had supplied drugs to Siva, her long deceased brother.

Soon Brian noticed a sixty-something-year-old man coming out through an office door behind the front reception desk. The man was slim with gray crew-cut hair, not more than five feet eight inches tall, and around a hundred and fifty pounds in weight. His face was clean-shaven, and his eyes were close together as if they were trying to oust the small nose off his face. He had thick lips and a square jaw. The man's features matched the description Brian had obtained from Amita.

Brian watched as Ong Boon Seng, with a small brown backpack strapped to his back and a bottle of a mineral water sticking out of a side compartment, walked toward the front entrance. When Boon Seng approached within speaking distance, Brian rose from the couch and called out, Mr. Ong?

Yes? Boon Seng said and turned toward him.

I'm Brian Lee, he said. A private investigator. Can we talk?

About what?

Can we go somewhere to talk, in private?

No, right here is okay with me, whoever you are.

I'm Brian Lee.

Right, so Mr. Lee, what do you want from me?

Twelve years ago, you were a police detective right?

Yes, you're right, why?

Do you know a Sivalingam son of Arumugam? A MMA.

MMA? What is that?

Mixed martial artist.

I see.

Do you know Siva?

Nope, I can't remember. Why?

He overdosed on some drugs, died during a match.

I see, but I don't know him.

At that time, you were a narcotics detective right?

Yes, but I was handling other cases.

Do you know who handled Siva's case?

Why are you asking me this? I already told you I don't know!

Maybe you may have heard, he said but Boon Seng cut him off suddenly.

Nothing! I heard nothing!

Several staff and even guests at the resort stared at them.

All right, all right. Take it easy.

You don't tell me what to do! Fuck off, Boon Seng said and shouldered past him.

A small bottle of mineral water fell out of the backpack's side pocket, and Brian stooped to pick it up.

Without a word of thanks, Boon Seng grabbed the bottle from him and strode out of the resort's front entrance.

Brian figured he had rattled Boon Seng a bit, for now. It may be enough to force the man to reveal something useful.

Chapter 2

BRIAN LEE, ONG BOON Seng mumbled to himself as he shuffled down the marble steps of the resort onto the concrete driveway. When he reached the end of the circular driveway, he turned left and began walking along a newly paved road that led toward his home, a small single story house provided by the resort. It was a ten-minute walk to the end of the road at the seashore.

He sighed. It had been a long day. Early this morning, some filthy rich old couple from KL had reported the lost of a valuable piece of jewelry. They had reported it stolen and whether or not that was true, he had to investigate and uncover the truth soon because it was their last day at the resort. At the end of the day, however, he couldn't find anything to tell them. Visibly upset, they had reported the matter to the police and left in a huff, vowing to sue the resort and never to return. After the humiliating scene, he ate his dinner at the resort's staff cafeteria and felt much better until that pesky PI showed up, asking dangerous questions, trying to dig up the past. Of course, he knew who Siva was, but he wasn't going to divulge anything to a PI or to anyone.

He paused to pull out the bottle of mineral water from his backpack's side pocket. As he walked, he sipped the water and thought about this Brian Lee, a private eye, and recalled the man's physical appearance. At five feet eleven inches tall, Brian was slim, neither big or fat. He had short black hair, not styled with hair gel but neatly combed, side-parted. His square face was clean-shaven. He had sharp eyebrows, intelligent eyes, and a high nose. And he had a firm jaw, definitely the sign of a stubborn man. What did he really want from me? By now Boon Seng had finished drinking, and so he slid the empty bottle back into the side pocket of his backpack. Feeling tired today, he had walked much slower than usual, and he reached his house after fifteen minutes instead of the usual ten.

After unlocking the front door and entering the house, he shuffled straight into the bedroom, dropped his backpack onto a chair, and undressed. Grabbing a bath towel off a rack, he went into the bathroom. He turned the water on all the way and enjoyed a forceful torrent of cold water on his head and face. At that moment a sudden intense nausea rippled through his head. Within seconds, a searing pain in his abdomen swelled to an unbearable pitch. He reached for the shower faucet, trying to turn off the water, but he couldn't do it because his hands went limp. A bitter acidic taste propelled up into his throat and mouth. He gagged and threw up on the shower stall's floor, his bloody vomit swirling in the water. By then his legs couldn't support him any longer, and he slumped onto the floor, choking on the torrent of water pouring into his nose and open mouth. He struggled to keep his eyes open, but it was futile because he had lost control over them too, and seconds later, he plunged into the darkness of death.

Chapter 3

WHEN I SAW THAT OLD bastard, Boon Seng, talking and then arguing with a tall man near the lounge at the front lobby, I thought of a brilliant idea and acted on it immediately. After taking the tall man's car key fob from the valet room, I hurried to that man's car and planted in its trunk the bottle of mineral water I had taken from Boon Seng's locker. I figured many people had seen him arguing with Boon Seng, and the police would find it suspicious if they were to discover later, in his car, a mineral water bottle with Boon Seng's fingerprints all over it.

After that I waited for half an hour until I was sure I could go to Boon Seng's house to confirm his death and to get rid of his body. I knew that, from observations over the past few weeks, he would usually drink a bottle of mineral water while walking home in the evenings. Certainly, today was no exception. I had laced his mineral water with the highest possible dose, enough to kill a dinosaur. He wouldn't be able to taste or smell it, and he would feel its deadly effect within minutes.

For security reasons, I decided not to drive nor walk over to his house, because I don't want to leave any tire tracks or be seen by anyone. So, I used my small motorboat docked at my private jetty behind my house. I used oars instead of the motor, rowing quietly in the darkness, keeping close to the mangrove coast all the way to the back of the old bastard's house. I docked beside a small dinghy at the jetty behind his house, hurried to the back door, unlocked it with a key, and stepped inside.

As expected I found the old bastard's lifeless body in the shower stall. I dragged him out, cleaned him up, and dressed him to make it look like he was going rowing. He loved rowing his dinghy, especially at night after work. I carried him out the back door to the jetty and dumped him into the dinghy. And I checked to make sure there were two oars in there. After that I got into my motorboat and towed the dinghy a short distance away from the jetty. Then I edged alongside the dinghy, pulled his body and shoved him overboard. Finally, as I rowed away from the scene of the crime, I hoped I had done all I could to make his death look like a drowning accident.

Chapter 4

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, after thanking Azlina from Human Resources Department for the employees late attendance daily report, Karen Soo ended the phone call, read the report and frowned. She leaned back against the executive chair behind her desk and glanced at the time on her smartwatch. It was already nine in the morning, and Mr. Ong hadn't come in to work. Very unusual, she thought. Boon Seng was usually on time, sometimes early but never late, not even for a few minutes. Today he was half an hour late. Maybe due to sickness, but he didn't call HR to report. In fact, as far as she knew he hadn't claimed any MC, not even for half a day since he started working at the resort several weeks ago.

She recalled that three weeks ago, she had assumed he came in response to the resort's job advertisement for a house detective, but she was mistaken about his purpose. He came to visit his daughter, Christine Ong, a very dear friend who was spending an evening with her that day, and she invited him to have dinner with them. However, she sensed that Christine wasn't happy with him, but she didn't dare ask why. Anyhow, when she found out he was an ex-police detective, she offered him the house detective job, and he had accepted it without any hesitation.

Karen picked up her smartphone and dialed his number. His phone rang and she waited until she heard the no-answer notification before ending the call. Strange. He would normally answer her call without any delay, even when she called him once in the middle of the night when there was a security issue. She waited a minute and called again. There was still no answer, so she decided to go over to his house to see if he was all right.

She strode out of her office, through the front entrance of the resort and hurried onto a well-paved road, shaded by a row of mahogany trees along its entire length. The private road led to a small company house, provided for Mr. Ong, located at the end of the road, bordering the southern shore of Pulau Jerejak.

When she reached the white-painted single story concrete house with red roof tiles, she headed straight to its front door and pressed the doorbell's button. Chimes echoed throughout the small house, but no footfalls followed them. She waited a minute, but no one came to the door. Then she went along the left side of the house and peered through the windows of the living room and the kitchen. No one. After returning to the front of the house, she crossed over to its right side and peered through the bedroom window. Again, no one.

She tried to open the front door but it was locked. Then she walked to the back of the house. The back door was closed and also locked. As she turned to go back to the front, she glanced at the jetty behind the house and noticed that the dinghy was missing. Strange. Why would Mr. Ong go rowing this early in the morning? She strode toward the wooden jetty, walked to its end, and scanned the surrounding waters.

She spotted the dinghy. It was close to the shore, bobbing up and down, at about ten yards away from the jetty. And tangled among the stilt roots of a mangrove tree was, she was sure of it, a body faced down in the water. Her heart began hammering. Mr. Ong? Could it be him? She recognized his white T-shirt and gasped. With trembling hands, she pulled out her smartphone and dialed 999.

Chapter 5

AN HOUR LATER THAT morning, Dr. Christine Ong's smartphone rang when she was busy at a microscope in her research lab on Pulau Kendi, a small