the missing tin

Ah Wei's family makes pineapple tarts once a year. Only for Chinese New Year. They are the best thing I have ever put in my mouth that was not a durian.

I want to be fair to the durian. The durian is also very good. But the durian does not wear a little hat of golden pastry curled around a small sun of pineapple jam. The tart does. A tart is the size of a fifty sen coin and it is worth a lot more than fifty sen.

Ah Wei is in my gang. His family runs a stall, so Ah Wei always has food, and Ah Wei always shares it. In his family a thing not shared is a thing wasted, and a thing wasted is the worst thing there is. If you are sad, Ah Wei finds you and puts something in your hand. He does not even ask why you are sad. He just thinks the world is fixed a little once your mouth is full.

This year his family let me come the day before the big reunion dinner, while the tarts were cooling. There was a red tin of them on the side. A big round one with a gold lid.

I counted them. I count things. It is a useful habit and nobody has ever once thanked me for it.

Forty.

I went home for lunch. I came back. I counted again.

Thirty-six.

Four tarts had left the tin in the time it takes to eat rice. Nobody eats four tarts and forgets. Four tarts is a decision. Four tarts is a crime.

So I opened a case.

"I am opening a case," I told the gang. I called us the New Year Tart Recovery Unit. Nobody called us that again, not once, not even me by the end, but at the start it felt very official.

A detective needs a board. I made one out of the back of a calendar. I drew a tin in the middle. I drew arrows coming off it. An arrow needs somebody at the end of it, so I started finding people for the arrows.

First arrow: the cat. There is always a cat at New Year. This one walked along the top of the wall looking like it had already done several things it would not discuss. I drew the cat. Under the cat I wrote its motive, which was that it is a cat.

"A cat cannot open a tin," said Divya.

Divya is my best friend. She lives down the lane and she is right about things, which is a hard quality in a best friend. She had come along with her arms folded, which is how Divya helps.

"This cat could," I said, and drew the cat slightly bigger, which is not evidence, but it felt like winning.

Second arrow: Kavi. Kavi is in the gang and Kavi only has one volume and it is loud. Before I had even said his name Kavi said, "It was not me, I did not even see the tin, what tin," very fast, which is the most suspicious thing a person can do. So I drew an arrow to Kavi.

Then I drew a second arrow back. The thing about Kavi is he would tell you if he ate the tarts. He would tell the whole street. He would tell it from the roof.

Third arrow: Aiman. Aiman charges money for everything. He would charge you to stand in his shade. He sidled up while I was drawing and said he had evidence, and the evidence was for sale. The evidence turned out to be three tarts in his pocket, which he was very happy to show me and not at all happy to put back. He said these were different tarts. He said he had brought his own tarts from home, to a tart investigation, by coincidence. I drew Aiman with the biggest arrow.

I did not draw Ah Wei. Ah Wei shares everything. A person who gives you the food out of his own hand does not sneak it out of a tin. That is not a thing that boy does. I knew it the way you know a wall is a wall. So I left him off, and I felt good about leaving him off, like a fair and serious detective.

The makciks arrived. The makciks always arrive. One of them had already eaten a tart and was telling Ah Wei's grandmother the pastry was very good this year, better than last year, and last year was also very good. Nobody had given her the tart. The makciks do not wait to be handed things. They are already there, and they already know which tin the tarts are in.

I did not draw the makciks. You do not put a makcik on a board. They would know before the pencil touched the paper.

While all this was happening, I made my first mistake at the table.

Ah Wei's grandmother gave me an ang pow. A little red packet, for luck. I knew you say thank you. I did not know the rule about who gives them. So, to be polite, I tried to give her one back. I did not have a red packet, so I folded up a bit of my detective paper with two sen inside it, and I held it out to her.

The whole table went quiet in the nice way. Then everyone explained, gently, all at once, that the ang pow only goes one way. From the big people to the small people. It does not come back up. I put my two sen away. I have decided the rule is a kind rule, and I did not fully understand it, and I went quiet, which for me is not easy.

Then I sat down in the wrong chair. The one at the head, the one nobody sits in until the grandfather sits in it. I sat in it like a small empress. Four people moved me out of it without a word, gently, the way you pick up a thing that has been left in the wrong place.

A detective should maybe learn the table before she investigates the tin. I did not. I went back to the tin.

Thirty-two.

It was happening while I watched the wrong things. The tin was emptying right under the case I had built to catch it emptying.

So I did the only thing left. I stopped drawing arrows. I sat down where I could see the tin and the door and nothing else, and I waited. A stakeout. I told nobody. I just went still, which the gang found so strange that they all wandered off to do New Year, and that was good, because the tin needs a quiet room to be robbed in.

It did not take long.

Ah Wei came in. He looked at the door. He looked at the tin. He looked sad in a way I had not seen on him before, which is wrong, because Ah Wei is the one who fixes sad in other people. Then he opened the lid, fast, and ate two tarts, fast, and stood there chewing with his eyes shut.

I came out from behind the chair.

"It was you," I said. It did not come out like a clever detective. It came out small.

Ah Wei looked at me with his mouth full and his cheeks pink, and he did not run, because where would he run, it was his own house.

"My ah ma's recipe," he said, when he could. "It never makes quite enough. Every year the tin comes up a few short of full."

"So you eat them," I said.

"I eat them so the tin is empty," he said. "If the tin is empty, nobody counts. If I leave some, somebody sees it came up short. Ah ma sees. And then ah ma feels bad about her own tarts on her own new year, and that is the one thing I will not have."

I am a person who counts things. I had counted them this morning, forty, and counted them down all day. I was the somebody he was hiding the number from.

The thief was Ah Wei. He was eating his own grandmother's tarts, fast, with his eyes shut, so the tin would be empty before anyone could find it four short. So his ah ma would never have to know her hands had made a few less this year. So she would not feel bad. I had spent the whole day drawing arrows, and I had pointed one at a cat.

Then I did the only sensible thing left. I reached into the tin and ate one myself.

"What are you doing," said Ah Wei.

"Helping," I said. "If we both eat them, the tin empties faster. Then it was just a good year, and everyone finished them all, and nobody counts." I ate another one. "I am very good at not counting. I have decided to start being good at it just now."

Ah Wei laughed, which is the right noise for that boy to make, and then he ate one too, and we stood at the side of the room and emptied his grandmother's tin together, tart by tart, until it was properly, honestly empty.

The reunion dinner came, with all the cousins and the round table. The food did not stop arriving. Dish after dish, until the table could not see itself. I got the table mostly right this time. I did not give anyone luck the wrong way. I sat where I was put.

By the end it was just the two of us left at the table, the way it is when everyone older has gone to talk and everyone younger has gone to be loud outside. The tin came round. There was one tart left in it. The last one. The best looking one, with the most jam.

Ah Wei picked it up. He did not eat it. He put it on my plate. Then he took the very last crumbs of the tin for himself, and we ate the end of his grandmother's tarts at the same time, the two of us, and the tin was empty, and it had been a very good year, and everyone had finished them all.

Nobody counted.