“I see. Sounds like it. I’ll keep trying.”
“I would suggest you return to Shinjuku and drop it off at a koban so the police can find him.”
“I will. I don’t want to spend anymore time looking for him.”
“Have a nice day!” she chimed.
“You too.” I swiped my phone to hang up.
“He was busy all day that day,” I said, placing my phone back in my purse. “Yokohama, Ginza, and Ueno. I don’t believe he was the murderer either. It would have been hard to sneak a trip to Chikata in amongst the other things he was doing.”
“I see. Well, I suspected him too. Goro doesn’t like him one bit, but I think it may be jealousy. Between Takahara-san and your chef, Suga-san, all the ladies in town have been head-over-heels for the injection of hot men Midori Sankaku has brought in.”
I waved my hand at her. “He’s not ‘my chef’ so please don’t say that. I challenged him to prove to me that slow food is as tasty as regular food. He must secretly hate me for giving him more work. It’s not a date.”
“Sure it’s not.” She said that seriously, but deep down I could tell she believed we’d be a couple in no time. I didn’t even know him! He was handsome and could cook, but what else? Maybe he had a schoolgirl fetish or collected train sets. He could’ve been completely weird. I didn’t do weird. I needed normal.
“Who else could have killed Kano-san?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Tajima and Takahara are out. Akiko-chan?”
I shook my head. “I really don’t think so.”
She narrowed her eyes at me.
“I’ll get into it later. I just don’t think so, okay?”
“What about Tama-chan? He’s always been aloof with me.”
“And that makes him a killer?” I asked, taken aback.
“No. Just strange. So, not Tama-chan?”
“No.” I didn’t feel like explaining my feelings on this matter either, so I moved on to the basics. “I’m sure Goro-chan told you he was at school with a solid alibi.”
“Right. Right.” Kumi nodded her head, defeated, before perking up, her eyes wide. “What about Kano-san’s neighbor?” She snapped her fingers a few times. “Senahara?”
“Old Man Daichi? Why would he kill Kano-san?” I pictured Senahara as my mom last saw him, pants down in his fields, pissing into the cabbage with a saké bottle in his hand. “He’s an angry, old drunk but not a killer.”
Kumi glanced at the clock on the wall. “Oops, I said I would unload the soaps and stuff by 15:00. Come into the back with me?”
“Sure.” I followed her into the ladies’ washroom, averting my eyes from my painting on the wall over the baths. In the center of the wash stations, four giant boxes of liquid soaps, shampoos, and conditioners occupied the washing area’s floor space. Kumi sliced each open with a box cutter she pulled from her back pocket.
“The story with Senahara-san is that he doesn’t want to sell to Midori Sankaku ever. He’d rather go down in flames than ever give up his land.” She handed me several bottles of shampoo, and I stood still with them in my arms. Was I supposed to put these away? “But there were rumors Kano-san was going to sell.”
I flashed back to the day I walked in on Akiko yelling at Tajima and Takahara. Tamjima had said, “Her father hinted he might be amenable to our plan before he died.” Oh no. He had said that, hadn’t he?
“What? If so, that would ruin all of my theories on why the murder happened.” If Kano sold before he died, that would have put an undue burden on Akiko. She would have had to facilitate moving her father to a different place of residence, sell the house and land which she loved, and then where would the money go?
My skin slicked with sweat as Kumi took bottles of shampoo from my arms and placed them at each station. Suddenly, my best friend had the perfect motive for killing her own father.
“Senahara-san and Kano-san were always fighting. Senahara-san thought Kano-san should stay till the bitter end, never sell, and screw those big city bastards that came to ruin our town.” Kumi raised her fist into the air in a mock tribute to Senahara. “That old man was constantly screaming about something. He was outside of the Midori Sankaku building protesting when they broke ground, and he and Kano-san fought at Izakaya Jūshi. My friend, Etsuko, works there. She told me all about it. That’s where Kano-san was heard to say he would sell.”
“This changes everything,” I whispered, lifting my gaze to my painting at the back of the sentō. I felt like everything I’d ever known was a lie, even my own painting up on the wall. I looked at it and believed someone else painted it, not me. Just like my own best friend could be a killer, or my town was a veneer of deception coated over the truth.
Kumi followed my line of sight to the depiction of Mount Fuji.
“Mom is looking forward to her painting of a pine tree forest. Your mom came by yesterday and said you were in town picking up painting supplies.” She reached out and squeezed my forearm, and the sudden contact unfroze me. The warmth of her hand defrosted my thoughts. “I’m glad to hear you’ll be painting again. From one artist to another, creating something is a great way to work out your demons. Who knows what you’ll find once you start a new project.”
I hoped I would find a way out of this for everyone I loved.
Chapter Seventeen
I walked into Sawayaka on Tuesday sleep deprived and anxious. I’d spent all night running through lists of reasons why Akiko could never kill her own father, but the list items reversed in my head and instead she became the perfect murderer. She had motive and opportunity, especially if her father planned to sell to Midori Sankaku. Her patients and the nurse service she worked for weren’t watching her every move on that Friday, so how could they be sure she didn’t sneak away and do the job?
By morning, I felt sick, and my run was jerky and no fun. Still sweaty and upset from my run, I worked in the fields with Mom picking daikon for two hours. She tried to talk to me about our schedule for the next month, but I kept slipping away into my head, watching my best friend suffocate her own father under a pillow. Chills racked my body every time I thought about it.
At 14:00, Sawayaka was almost deserted. I hesitated at the door, thinking it was wrong for me to come here today with everything I had on my mind because I clearly wouldn’t be concentrating on the food. I took a deep breath and went in anyway.
Ana smiled again when she saw me, so I snapped out of my daydreams and came back to the present. “Yasahiro-san is looking forward to eating with you today,” she said, beaming a blinding smile at me. Right. I had almost forgotten I asked him to sit with me.
The usual spot was set for two, and this time I wove around empty tables, their white table clothes absent, and sat facing the kitchen.
“He’ll be right out.” I watched her return to the front hostess station where she grabbed a coat from the hook near the front door, bundled up and walked out into the daylight. It was warm in the restaurant, so I shrugged off my coat and took my phone from my purse.
I opened the texting app and my thumbs hovered over the keyboard, reading the text I exchanged with Akiko last night. She wrote, “I’m so sick of Tama. He’s going to kick me out of my own house, I know it.”
I responded that she just needed to hang tight until they found her father’s killer. I doubted anything could be done until that was worked out. She never wrote back. Did that mean something?
“Hello again, Mei-san.” Yasahiro appeared over me, deftly carrying several plates and bowls along his forearms and in his hands. “I hope you’re ready for Day Two of our challenge.” His smile eased away some of my anxiety, and I smiled in return, relieved to think of something else for a moment. The scent of freshly chopped cilantro wafted to me, and I inhaled deeply.
He placed a small bowl and a plate in front of me. “Mini bowl of pho and pork bánh mì.”
I pulled back from the dishes, surprised. “Are we touring Asia all this week?”
He pl
aced his own bowl and plate across the table. “We can, if you like,” he said, chuckling. “I thought you might like a little variety.”
“I do.” Taking a napkin from the table, I draped it across my lap. His restaurant provided linen napkins which was such a foreign thing to do in Japan unless your place catered to an upscale clientele, which he did. I glanced around the room again and took note of everything, the plaques in the window shouting acclaims of his culinary brilliance, the snippets of five-star reviews, the Michelin star, the low lighting, the uniforms of everyone who worked there. No wonder Mom quickly backed him. Sawayaka was the epitome of high dining.
“I noticed a hesitation there.”
I ignored him and sipped the pho. “Mmmm. I’ve never been a big fan of pho but this is pretty good. What’s different about it?”
“The spices. I like to go easy on the Chinese five-spice powder because cinnamon is usually a little too weird for the Japanese palate.”
I sipped again, lost in my head. One time, Akiko came to Tokyo to visit me and we went to have Vietnamese in Shinjuku. I didn’t enjoy the soup but I did like the rolls.
“Mei-san.” Yasahiro interrupted my thoughts by waving his hand in front of my face. “Are you in there?”
“Yes! Yes, sorry. My brain is preoccupied today.” I shook my head to clear it and returned to sipping the soup. “Tell me, Chef-san, what kind of restaurant is Sawayaka?”
He blinked a few times before picking up his sandwich. “I thought that was obvious. The name means ‘fresh’ and the menu is all Japanese traditional slow food.”
He bit into his sandwich and nodded at the taste. “Mm, could use more sauce.”
I picked mine up and took a bite. The pork, tender and bursting with flavor, had a crisp, vinegar dressing on it. The cucumbers and carrots inside crunched with the tang of cilantro.
“I think it’s perfect,” I said, from behind my hand. “And this lunch is very tasty, as was yesterday’s meal.”
I stopped complimenting him to eat, taking a pair of chopsticks and slurping up some of the rice noodles from the bowl.
“But?” I looked up from my meal, and he had ceased eating, inspecting me over the tops of his steepled fingers.
“No buts. It’s delicious. It’s not something I would eat every day, but I like it.”
“I don’t believe you.” His eyes narrowed, and I sighed, setting down my chopsticks and leaning back into my chair.
“Okay. Okay. It is really delicious, but I don’t understand why you would serve me Thai yesterday and Vietnamese today, when your specialty is Japanese slow food.”
His face fell. “I, well, I figured you would be sick of Japanese slow food. You do realize that a lot of the dishes I serve here come directly from your mother’s kitchen, right?”
I smiled, sweeping my hand over the food. “Exactly. You do realize that until this past week I haven’t eaten my mother’s food since I was an early teen, right?”
“You’re joking around with me, aren’t you?” He laughed, picking up his sandwich. “I like this about you. All the other women I know are too serious.” Opening his mouth wide, he chewed off a chunk of his sandwich, half of it disappearing straight into his stomach. All men ate like this, I swore it.
I cocked my head to the side, placed my chin on my hand, and blinked at him. “I am dead serious.”
He paused for a full second, mouth in mid-chew, and hands holding the last of his sandwich.
“What?”
“You heard me. I’m not lying.”
He threw the sandwich down on his plate and jumped up from the table.
“You can’t be serious. Your mother is a bastion of traditional Japanese food. Chefs worldwide have raved about her techniques. I was honored beyond measure that she took me into her confidence.” His hands grasped at his hair, and I worried he was about to have a heart attack before he deflated. “Did you know she gets mail and email almost every day from other chefs that want to learn from her?”
Whoa. I had no idea! I loved my mom, but I never cared about her cooking, so she never bothered me with it. Huh. Was my mom famous? It never occurred to me to Google her.
Yasahiro sat down, calm now, and pushed his plates to the side. Too hungry not to eat, I continued to consume the sandwich.
“You stopped eating your own mother’s food when you were a teen?”
I had his full attention now, so I soldiered on with my sad tale of woe.
“I was one of those over-achiever student types. I ate breakfast at home, and I’ve always loved my mom’s breakfasts, but that was the extent of what she cooked for me.” I switched to the soup. I would’ve asked for the recipe, because I did like it, but I would never cook it. “I ate school lunches, went to cram school, and ate convenience store food for dinner. Mom was always asleep by the time I got home. That was when my deep love of convenience store food grew to staggering heights.”
I sighed, wistfully, and his eyes grew wide.
“You actually like convenience store food?”
“Like? I love it. Adore it.”
He twisted his lips to the side.
“Hey, don’t be a snob. You can’t tell me you don’t love hot oden from 7-Eleven on a cold winter day.”
His mouth dropped open.
“Admit it.” I set down my spoon and crossed my arms.
Yasahiro rubbed his face and sat back. “Of course, I do. I’m just, wow. I can’t believe you don’t eat her food. You’re so… different from what I expected.”
“Excuse me?” What was that supposed to mean? Has someone been gossiping about me? My eyes darted around the room, certain I was being watched.
“Never mind,” he said, waving me off. Ugh. Fine. “Do you eat her food now?”
“Well, yeah, I do now because I’m home.” I frowned and he appeared ready to jump up and flip the table in rage. “It’s starting to grow on me.” I waved him back to calmer levels. “But it’s taking time so far. I still go to the convenience store when I can.”
We sat at the table, silent while I finished off the soup and picked at the leftover crusts of bread on my plate. “Did you get this bread from the bakery by the train station? It’s really good.”
“Don’t change the subject.” His face settled into a stony expression.
I cleared my throat, sipped water, and smoothed out my fine-gauge knit sweater. He drummed his fingers on the table and stared out the front window, past me to the street outside.
“This changes everything,” he whispered, and it reminded me of my conversation yesterday with Kumi. Akiko could be the murderer. My face grew cold and my upper lip broke into a sweat.
“Are you all right?” he asked, leaning forward and grasping my arm lightly for a moment. The genuine concern on his face brought back some warmth.
“I was just reminded of Akiko-chan and her father. Did you know Kano-san was murdered? The police say he was suffocated.”
“No. Really?” He pulled back, shock covering his wide eyes and parted lips. “I heard something was wrong, but I didn’t know what.”
“I’m worried about Akiko-chan. I’ve been trying the last week to figure out who murdered her father, but I’m not getting anywhere.” Or I’m denying the evidence that’s right in front of my eyes, but I can’t say that to Yasahiro.
“You’re trying to solve the crime? That’s very —” he paused, examining my face “— noble of you. Especially to help your friend.”
I remembered my suspicions yesterday about him being the killer. “Where were you the morning Kano-san was killed?”
He laughed, good-naturedly, and my body relaxed. “I was here, of course. We open the kitchen at 7:00, me and the staff, but most days I don’t come in until 8:30 or 9:00. On Fridays and Saturdays, though, we’re always busy, so I make it in early to help prep. Want me to call someone over to verify?” He looked towards the kitchen where some of his staff were eating lunch, but I shook my head. No. This was dumb. I didn’t know him, but ever
yone else found him trustworthy. I liked to believe I could tell when people were lying, and he struck me as the honest and open type.
“No. I believe you.” I smiled, hoping to ease back into a normal conversation.
“I think your efforts will be helpful, regardless of who you question.” He pulled his plates back in front of him and smiled.
I swallowed in a dry throat and grasped the water glass to chug down half of it. “Yeah, well, we’ll see how far I get. So far, I haven’t managed to do anything but eliminate two of my suspects, and I’m at a loss as to what I should do next.”
“I didn’t know you had a desire to be a private detective. Your mother said you were out of work right now.”
“Oh, she did?” Thanks, Mom. I wanted to say, no, no I have a job. But that would’ve been a bald faced lie. “Yep. I got fired from my last job almost three weeks ago now. It was my third crappy job in five years. So much for being the over-achieving student, right?” He stared at me, his eyes blank and unbelieving. “Now, I’m back to being a farmer’s daughter again, picking potatoes in the morning and falling asleep at 20:00 when the sun goes down.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a farmer’s daughter,” he said, his voice softening. “I’m a farmer’s son.”
“But you’re a successful chef now. Just look at this place.” We both turned and looked at the tables, the rustic yet refined decor, and the people reading the menu outside the window. “You have so much to be proud of.”
“Aren’t you proud of anything?”
I didn’t like where the conversation was going. I was a complete failure. I wanted to be a successful businesswoman, a project manager at a high-end ad agency or a design firm. Instead, I had been a low-end sales rep at a string of jobs, my best being a print job manager at the last place that fired me.
The Daydreamer Detective Page 11
