“Stop stop stop…” He came after me, grabbing my shoulder. I jerked it away from him and reached for the car handle, but before I could open the door, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders. “You think I pity you?” he whispered into my ear. I nodded my head, unable to talk because the tears were coming.
“Mei-chan…” He pressed his cheek against mine. “You’ve been so down to earth about it, I didn’t think you cared all that much.”
“About being poor?” I lived way below the poverty line, and the only thing I’d spent money on in the last three weeks was a few convenience store lunches and the art supplies, of which Mom paid for half.
“Yeah. I know a lot of people who struggle and it really bothers them, but you’ve acted okay with it.”
I sighed and stepped out of his embrace. “I’m trying to be. Really trying. But it’s hard when I see how much everyone else has.” I swiped the tears from my face. “And that sounds horrible too because I have a roof over my head, a computer and mobile phone, and I’m not going hungry. I’m just…” I threw my hands up and let them fall back down again. I didn’t know what I was.
“Do you get a headache when your blood sugar is low?” he asked, and I jerked in surprise. “My sister was like that. I can see it on your face.” He stepped closer to me, running his hand down my arm. “The space between your eyes is scrunched. You’re hungry?” I nodded, stunned into silence. He was more perceptive than I gave him credit for. “You’ve been out all morning and you need a break.”
What did I have for breakfast that morning? A cup of coffee and a slice of toast. Mom had left, off to run errands, and she ate noodles she cooked up and forgot to leave some for me.
“Yeah. I’m hungry, and I do have a headache.” It’s times like these I felt like a liar because he could see the truth before I could.
He put his arm around my shoulders and directed me towards Sawayaka. “Let me see if I can get you a table. You will always eat for free in my restaurant. Always. Even if you dump me.”
I laughed as I smoothed out my face and wiped my eyes. “If I dump you, I doubt I’d come back to your restaurant. Just to save face, you know?”
“I know, but you could.”
We walked straight past the people waiting, stopping to hug Ana and chat for a minute, and Yasahiro craned his neck to look around. Several people caught his attention, and he stepped to them to chat, smile, clasp hands, or bow. I watched him navigate the waters of his success, both envious and slightly proud of this guy who came out of nowhere to woo me.
He circled around to me, leaning over to take my hand and whisper in my ear, “The place is packed. Come back to the kitchen.”
“Oh my god,” a hoarse voice uttered from my right. Haruka stood up from her table, noticing my blush at how close Yasahiro was to me. I tried to back away from him, but he was good about detecting my instinct for flight, and pulled me closer by my waist. “Wow, Mei-chan. You certainly work fast around here.”
“Haruka-san, hi.” The blood drained from my face when her ring flashed in front of me. She was engaged to Tama, remember? And I was investigating him for the death of his father.
Despite our past history of antagonism, I was tempted to tell her what was going on. Maybe she could remove herself from Tama before it was too late. But I couldn’t. Letting her know would let Tama know he was being watched. And if he was the killer, I couldn’t let him get away.
“So, you and Yasahiro-san? How does that even happen?”
I glanced at Yasahiro, and his face fell from a smile. Here we go, Mei. He was about to find out how unpopular it was to date the local farm girl.
“Haruka-san,” he said, returning the smile to his face, “I hope you enjoyed your lunch.”
She smiled, cocking her head to the side. “Sawayaka is the talk of the town. You must be proud.”
“I am,” he said, squeezing me before letting go and leaning close to Haruka’s ear. I couldn’t tell what he said, but her face flattened and her skin whitened. She nodded once as he pulled away. “Have a great afternoon. Your meal is on me, ladies,” he said to the entire table behind Haruka.
They all smiled and bowed and thanked him over and over, as he took my hand and pulled me to the kitchen. We side-stepped a waitress exiting and entered into the controlled chaos of plates clinking, ovens whirring, and pans sizzling.
“What did you say to Haruka-san?”
“Doesn’t matter.” He pulled out a stool at the island and sat me in it. “I know you had udon yesterday, but how about some noodles with sesame sauce, and I have fish or eggs, too?”
“Sure. Sesame noodles sound good, and eggs.”
I looked out at the restaurant as the door swung open, and everyone at Haruka’s table was gone. I didn’t think I wanted to know what he said to her. It was probably better I didn’t.
A plate of egg sushi appeared in front of me with a glass of water, and Yasahiro returned to work, his jacket off and chef’s whites back on. I popped the egg and rice in my mouth and chewed as I watched them work together. One washed plates. Another stacked them. Two people worked the stove while Yasahiro chopped and called out orders. He was at ease in his kitchen, like it was part of his own body, not some foreign place he had to struggle to work in. The man and woman cooking at the stove talked about their weekends and laughed over some inside joke, and Yasahiro dropped by each to dip a spoon in, taste, and nod or instruct. He was so good at this.
My phone rang in my bag at my feet. I bent over to dig it out, and when I straightened up, he was behind me with a bowl of noodles. I could’ve sworn he was checking out my ass.
I raised my eyebrows at him as I answered my phone, and he set the bowl down next to the sushi.
“Hello?”
“It’s Goro. I decided to call instead of waiting for you to come here.” I set down my chopsticks and braced myself. “No luck, Mei-chan. We found nothing on the surveillance cameras.” He sighed, sounding more than exhausted. “It’s a dead lead. I guess we’ll have to go back and question the second woman again. Maybe, with some prompting she’ll talk to us.”
“Oh no. I’m sorry. I really thought you’d find something.”
“It’s okay. It was a good idea and worth a shot. Back to the beginning for now.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“See you Wednesday, if not before.”
“Okay. Bye.” I hung my head in defeat. All of that work for nothing, and my eternal bad luck had resurfaced.
Now what?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I woke up on Tuesday morning, warm in bed, the alarm beeping incessantly at 7:00. Right. I wanted to wake up early and go for a run before harvest time. Today, we had pumpkins that needed to be brought in, and some of them were so large, we’d hired one of the local workers to come and help out. He’d be here at 9:30, so I had enough time to run and eat some breakfast.
I stared at the ceiling for a little while, willing myself to emerge from the warm cocoon of blankets to the chill of the morning. Mom turned on the space heater in the main room when she worked between there and the kitchen, and the kotatsu could be turned on at a moment’s notice, but that didn’t stop my room from being ice cold each morning. It wasn’t even winter yet! Winter would be brutal.
I threw off the covers quickly and jumped into my warm terrycloth robe, one of my favorite belongings. Opening the shades on my window, weak morning light filtered in and highlighted the complete disaster I called my room. Okay, I’d had it. I had to clean it right now or else I’d hate myself. Plus, my clean running gear was in there somewhere and it would take a bulldozer to find it.
First thing, I opened my closet and prepared it to accept my clothes. I threw open the doors and cleared out the old stuff from high school — papers, folders, and notebooks. I could recycle or burn those later if I needed to. I opened a cardboard box, pulled out my clothes still on hangers, and hung them in the closet. When I was a teen, I had this closet converted from all shelves to on
e for clothes as well. It used to be a place to put a futon, but I wanted something modern and easy. I emptied two large boxes of clothes onto the rod in the closet and then looked them over. I wondered if I should keep these? I could sell most of them to a second-hand clothing shop and make a few yen. It wasn’t like I was going to find a new job any time soon, and I’d shrunk a whole size in the last four weeks.
With those boxes emptied, I opened my door and threw them into the main area.
“Mei-chan, you’re up?” Mom called from the kitchen.
“Yes! I’m finally cleaning my room.” I turned back to the disaster and sighed.
“Coffee?” Mom called again.
“Sure!”
I picked through my pile of clean laundry and started to fold clothes, actually putting said folded clothes into my empty dresser.
“Wow,” Mom said, handing me a cup of steaming hot coffee with milk and sugar. “I’m beginning to see the tatami.”
“I’d had enough.” I sipped the coffee, set it on my dresser, and kept folding.
“I’m heading outside soon. Let me know if you need anything.”
I nodded before she left, speed folding and sorting. Way at the bottom of the pile, I found my workout clothes and set them aside. I went through two more boxes, finding things like knickknacks and photos and placing them on my dresser and windowsill. There was a stack of bills, all paid now, I could add to the burnables. I gathered up my dirty clothes and threw them in the hamper, but at the foot of the bed, I found a pink and orange furoshiki bundle. Oh no! The package Chiyo gave me when I arrived in Chikata!
I set the bundle on my bed and opened it hesitantly. If I remembered correctly, she gifted me a whole bunch of newspaper clippings and her homemade sweets, and they were probably pretty gross by now. Why hadn’t I eaten them when they were fresh? The sweets, wrapped in wax paper, were growing mold, so I placed them in my pile of burnable trash, then I withdrew the newspaper clippings she gave me. I almost threw them in the pile as well, but stopped, familiar names and faces swimming out of the random text.
Sitting down on the bed, I began to read through them. The top article detailed Midori Sankaku’s plans for the town, their partnership, and projections heading into 2018. In the accompanying photo, Shin Tajima and Fujita Takahara shook hands and walked around the town. I wondered where Takahara was now and if he was angry with me for turning him down.
The next article was from the business section showing Chiyo outside of her new bathhouse. The article stated that she hoped to open before the end of October and that the whole community looked forward to the new ownership.
I flipped through a few more articles about my old high school athletic teams doing well today and the shake up in town as new places of business opened. I paused on an article about Yasahiro and Sawayaka. He garnered an entire half page on his time spent in Paris, the breakup with Amanda, the restaurant he worked at in Tokyo, and now his success at Sawayaka. I set that one aside. I wanted to put it on my dresser so I could see him every day.
I read through more of them becoming bored by the second. Chiyo had always been the town gossip, and her newspaper collection was legendary, though Goro started her on clipping them and recycling anything older than five years. Otherwise her home would have been a fire hazard. It was just like her to find out I was returning to town and try to catch me up on everything Chikata related.
The second to last article made me stop and pay attention. Another news story about my old high school, the one where Tama currently taught, boasted about the after school clubs’ successes. In a photo of Tama with teenage kids in the woods, he pointed at plants and the kids examined them. The caption read, “Tama Kano, chemistry teacher and head of the survival skills club, uses his love and knowledge of botany to instruct students on edible wild plants.” Another inset photo showed him posing in his home garden.
Home garden. Botany. Survival skills. Edible and non-edible wild plants. Poisonous plants.
I jerked my hand out and reached for my computer, powering it on and heading straight for my browser. I googled, “Japanese poisonous plants” and clicked on the top link entitled “Three Major Poisonous Plants in Japan.” Aconitum, or Wolfsbane, was the top number one plant on the list. I’d seen these purple flowers all around the area, and I’d always known they should never be picked, but I didn’t know they were this poisonous. Wikipedia said, “If ingested, the initial signs of poisoning are gastrointestinal including nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. This is followed by a sensation of burning, tingling, and numbness in the mouth and face, and burning in the abdomen.”
Senahara said Kano had stomach problems for a few months until one day he suddenly got better. Is it possible that…? No. I examined the photo of Tama again, smiling in his garden and with the kids he teaches. But I knew he was capable of menace. He practically threatened me in my studio. He had seemed cold and aloof, not warm and paternal like he did in these photos.
Had he used his knowledge of poisonous plants to try to kill his own father? And when that didn’t work, he smothered him?
A wave of chills traveled up my spine and made all the hair on my head stand up. I felt sick imagining this. How did Tama do it? Slip it in Kano’s food? He would have had to be at the house every day and put it in food his father ate regularly. That seemed impractical. Maybe he made a liquid of it? Put it in his saké? But then Tama may have accidentally poisoned Akiko as well, and Akiko had never complained of being sick.
I closed my computer and imagined every possibility. I walked through their house in my head and tried to remember everything I last saw when I was there — the kotatsu, the pile of tins next to the TV, the stack of blankets. Nothing jumped out at me. It had to be something!
I picked up the phone and dialed Akiko. It was almost 8:00, and she must have been getting ready for work or on her way out.
“Morning, Mei-chan. How are you?”
“I’m good,” I said, playing cool. “I was just cleaning my room before heading out for a run.”
She laughed. “Won’t that take a solid week?”
“Ha, ha. Funny. Yes, it was super messy but I couldn’t find my running clothes. Hey, I was wondering about something…”
“What’s that?”
“Remember when your dad was sick over the summer?”
“Yeah,” she said, sighing. “He was sick every day for a few months. Lost a lot of weight.”
“What was wrong with him?”
She hesitated, and it sounded like she was opening a car door. “They thought it was a parasite or something. So we put him on a restricted diet and gave him antibiotics and he felt better after that.”
“And that was it?”
“Yep. Sad that he had to be sick so long before he died of something totally unrelated. Tama-chan says the police think he killed himself. I don’t know…” Her voice fell off. “Anyway, it’s over now, and I can’t bring him back.”
Over now? That was a weird choice of words.
“Akiko-chan, maybe he was poisoned all those months he was sick?”
Silence for a few heartbeats. “Poisoned? Mei-chan, what’s gotten into you?” Her voice sounded angry, so I began to backpedal.
“Nothing, nothing. I was just thinking—”
“Please. Poisoned? That’s ridiculous. Look, I’m on my way to my first patient of the day, so I have to go. Just…” She sighed again, sounding as worn out and tired as she did a few days ago. “Just let this go. I know you want to help, but continually dredging this back up again is too much. I need to move on.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. Really. I just wanted to help.”
“Don’t.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you tomorrow night at the Kutsuro Matsu opening. Let’s put this all behind us.”
“Okay. Sure. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
We hung up and I looked between the phone and the clippings of Tama. I couldn’t help feeling that this was the missi
ng piece of the puzzle. It set off every warning bell in my head. Didn’t Goro tell me to go with my gut?
I dialed him, thinking that if anyone was going to take me seriously, he would.
“Poisoned? Are you kidding me?” Goro’s voice raised almost an entire octave. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
Refusing to work properly, my voice cracked and my lips bumbled. “He was sick for a long time with stomach problems. What if Tama had tried to poison him and it didn’t work? So he moved on to smothering Kano-san when he didn’t get results.”
“You realize you’re describing a cold-blooded killer, right? Do you really think Tama is capable of that?”
I didn’t know! I held two very distinct images in my head of Tama and neither of them seemed real anymore.
“No.” In my heart, I hoped Tama wasn’t capable of that. If he was, I was in deep trouble.
“We’re running out of ideas, and the prosecutor is close to moving on since we have no real suspects. You know they only ever go to court if the evidence is rock solid. Tama hasn’t complained about the death of his father, and Akiko is the only other person mentioned in the will. With no one throwing an uproar and no evidence, this will die out and be done with in no time.”
I nodded at the phone, a tear leaking out of my eye, down my nose, and falling onto my robe. The poor man. He never had a chance.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mei-chan. You’ve done good work here. Don’t forget that.”
“Thanks.”
I hung up the phone and glanced over at my running shoes. I should’ve gotten dressed and headed on out. I should’ve put this behind me. No one cared enough about Kano’s death to do anything about it. Tama was untouchable. Akiko was resigned. And now the police were ready to move on, too. Mom still cared, but who else could I persuade to my side?
I scrolled through my address book until I saw Yasahiro’s full name.
“Morning, Mei-chan. How’d you sleep?” His voice sounded tired but not depressed. Nothing like Akiko’s.
“Did I wake you?”
The Daydreamer Detective Page 22
