The Kizuna Coast: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mysteries Book 11)

by Sujata Massey

  “You aren’t the hippest girl on the planet, but you do look properly Tokyo,” Richard said, fussing with my hair as he walked around me.

  “Richard, I’m only going to the ATM.” Kissing my friend goodbye, I headed out and soon discovered that every teller machine in the vicinity was out of service. I finally found an open Citibank, where there were long lines of people in need of money. When I came to the teller’s window, I was asked for my passport before the teller ran my ATM card through a handheld machine. Minutes later, the young woman gave me an envelope fat with yen notes. I’d asked for the equivelent of $1,000 because I was doubtful about bank access when I reached Tohoku.

  But there was no point in going to Tohoku until I checked out what had happened at Mr. Ishida’s shop in Yanaka.

  The subway was in operation with more trains than the day before. I caught the Chiyoda Line to Sendagi Station, the closest stop to the district of Yanaka. Mr. Ishida’s neighborhood was a tucked-away, urban hamlet that had the superb fortune of escaping both American bombs and the Japanese building boom that came in the postwar period. The area was still a patchwork of small streets with tiny gardens, tall trees, and charming wooden buildings: the kind straight out of woodblock prints or children’s picture books about olden times.

  Yanaka had been my home for a few years, too, so I was distressed to find several small, familiar buildings had collapsed. But plenty of people were sweeping in front of their houses as usual, or had opened their shops for business. As I drew near Mr. Ishida’s place, I saw the next-door senbei shop had its metal grille raised.

  As impatient as I was to get into Ishida Antiques, I decided it was worth stopping to say hello to Mr. Okada, since he and Mr. Ishida had shops so close to each other.

  In Okada Senbei, the wooden shelves that always displayed twenty varieties of crackers were bare, as if a horde of shoppers had bought up every morsel. But Mr. Okada was toasting new crackers with tongs held over a charcoal-filled brazier that had been his grandfather’s. He looked up at me.

  “Irasshaimase!” he said, the standard welcome greeting to customers.

  “It’s been a long time, Okada-san.” I bowed, hoping he’d recognize me. “I’m Ishida-san’s former assistant, Shimura Rei.”

  “I remember you, Shimura-san. You prefer seaweed-sesame crackers with a dark soy glaze.” Mr. Okada was in his sixties now. He had a friendly, round face with plenty of smile lines, which now creased deeply. “I’m happy to see you again. But didn’t you move to Hawaii?”

  “Yes, I’m married now, and we own a little house by the beach. But I’ve come to help Mr. Ishida.”

  “He’s away somewhere.” Mr. Okada’s tone was urgent, and his smile lines vanished. “Actually, I’ve been quite worried. I checked the morning after the earthquake to say hello, but except for his dog, Hachiko, nobody was in the shop.”

  I had so much to share with Mr. Okada, but I wanted to know the essential details first. “Did Ishida-san call you to ask for help with the dog? Or to say anything else?”

  “No, I haven’t had any telephone calls from him. But I’m his neighbor, so of course it was my duty to help the little dog. Unfortunately, city regulations don’t permit animals on premises of a food seller. Because Ishida-san’s apprentice didn’t come around to get Hachiko, I brought her to stay at the neighborhood veterinarian.”

  It had been a long recitation, and the cracker Okada-san was roasting started smoking around the edges. Shaking his head, he dropped the burnt circle in a wastebasket.

  “Mr. Ishida and I spoke only once on the phone, and that was March twelfth. He said he was in a shelter for injured people in a place called Yamagawa. My husband tried to get the Red Cross to send a message to a shelter in Yamagawa, but they couldn’t locate a place.”

  “Yamagawa is one of those little towns hit hard by the tsunami,” Mr. Okada said. “I heard its name mentioned on the news.”

  “Ishida-san was at an auction. I don’t know whether he was actually caught up in the water, but he mentioned that he suffered a head injury and couldn’t return to Tokyo without help.”

  “That would be a good job for his apprentice. But I haven’t seen her since March tenth.”

  “Maybe she’ll be at the shop today,” I said, though I doubted it. “I heard her voice on the phone several times over the last few months, but we’ve never met. What’s her name?”

  “Mayumi-chan was what he called her; her full name is Kimura Mayumi. Ishida-san said the Kimuras are a well-known lacquer family originally from the Aizu section of Fukushima. They relocated to a small town in Tohoku Prefecture when Mayumi was very young.”

  Kimura meant tree village: a fitting place to come from if one was involved in the lacquer arts. The name carried a more peaceful association than my family name, which meant warriors’ village. The two last names, Shimura and Kimura, sounded very similar. Maybe Ishida-san used Mayumi’s first name to avoid tripping over old memories—or because he considered her a granddaughter.

  I stifled this strange, swift flicker of jealousy and thanked Mr. Okada for helping Hachiko. I told him I planned to go into Ishida Antiques to look for more clues to Mr. Ishida and Mayumi’s whereabouts and then stop at the veterinarian to see how Hachiko had fared.

  “Won’t you take some freshly roasted crackers as a small welcome back?” Okada-san offered. “I also can lend the key I have to Ishida-san’s front door. It’s quite simple to get into the place, I’m afraid. I think he should have an alarm system, but he doesn’t like wires.”

  Mr. Ishida believed that a guard dog was a greater deterrent than any alarm. He had once told me that Hachiko could sense if certain people were trouble. The dog once stalked a customer who turned out to be a shoplifter. Mr. Ishida had said, “When Hachiko put her paws and nose on the fellow, he quickly took a jade figure right out of his pocket and handed it to me!”

  Mr. Okada placed three packages of seaweed-sesame crackers in a crisp navy shopping bag with a striped-ribbon handle. I thanked him for the kind gift and wrote my Japanese cell number on my business card and handed it to him. “Just in case I don’t see Mayumi-chan at the shop, and you do happen to see her after I’ve gone to Tohoku.”

  “I will keep your card right by my reji,” Mr. Okada said, gesturing toward the old-fashioned cash register. “And when you find Ishida-san, do call in case there’s anything I can do here to make his return.”

  The fact that I didn’t have to pick Mr. Ishida’s lock was almost disappointing. Michael’s little black case containing fifteen picks and four tension wrenches designed for narrow Japanese locks would remain inside my jacket pocket.

  I walked around the building’s stucco exterior, relieved to see no parts of it had crumbled. Fitting Mr. Okada’s spare key into the old brass lockplate, the knob turned, and I stepped into the shop.

  It didn’t smell quite right. I was used to the scent of wax and green tea, but today I smelled some kind of spoiled food. A few more steps until I spotted two moldy oranges lying on the floor. They’d fallen, along with a square porcelain dish, from an ornately carved miniature Buddhist altar.

  Unfolding a tissue from a promotional packet somebody had thrust at me by Sendagi Station, I gathered up the oranges and broken pottery and deposited them in a small trash basket near Mr. Ishida’s fifty-year-old desk. Now, as I looked around, I saw more evidence of the earthquake. Several pieces of porcelain had fallen off display tables and lay broken on the shop’s worn pine floor. Several drawers were hanging open on a step tansu, and some folders of shop receipts and records were scattered across the floor.

  How surprising that Mayumi had not cleaned up. Uneasily, I looked on the desk for a note or other evidence of her last time in the shop. But there was nothing, and the store telephone had no blinking lights promising messages, because the power was off.

  Next I moved on to scrutinize the aged plaster walls near the desk. Beside a museum calendar featuring old woodblock prints was a taped-up paper that looked li
ke a printed reproduction of an Internet web page. This was the same picture I’d found online of Mr. Ishida and a teenage girl with hair dyed as brilliantly blue as an anime character’s. Close by this weird picture was another shot of the blue-haired teenager posing with Hachiko. The girl was sticking up a couple of fingers to make rabbit ears over Hachiko’s head: a classic move employed by young Japanese posing in photographs. Belatedly, I realized that the young, punk-looking girl could be Mayumi Kimura.

  I felt shocked that Mr. Ishida had hired someone who looked like this to help sell his high-end antiques. I conceded that she was pretty, with sleepy-looking eyes and a full, pouty mouth. But she was about as far from me as he could get. And Mayumi’s juvenile appearance was perhaps the reason he called her “Little Mayumi” and not “Miss Kimura.”

  I returned my attention to the Tokyo National Museum calendar. There, written on March 10, was the town name Sendai. On the eleventh was another Japanese word I could guess at, because it was in kanji characters that had multiple readings.

  The Internet browser was down, so I couldn’t use the kanji decoding website. I took out my cell phone and snapped a close-up picture to show my relatives at dinner. Aunt Norie and I had already confirmed via texts that I would arrive by seven.

  As I put the phone in my pocket, my gaze fell on a familiar red lacquer box sitting on the desk’s blotter. This cashbox was typically locked and kept in the bottom desk drawer. Touching the edge of the lid, it flipped up.

  No money inside: not even a hundred-yen coin. This didn’t make sense, because Mr. Ishida always kept a variety of bills and coins for making change. Perhaps he had deposited everything before his auction trip, although Mayumi would have needed cash on hand to make change if she’d stayed back to keep the shop open for business.

  Perhaps a burglary had occurred. But then, more than money should have been missing. I’d not been inside the shop for over a year, so I didn’t know the stock; although I recognized some very expensive pieces that apparently still hadn’t found the right buyer. But then I remembered the shop’s inventory list.

  Mr. Ishida listed all his goods by hand inside ordinary lined notebooks. Dozens of these notebooks, going back for decades, filled a shelf above his desk. Inside the notebooks, each item in his inventory was described along with its date of acquisition, original price paid, and if applicable, the buyer, date of purchase, and sales price. He wrote the items’ names in both Japanese and English because he wanted to be able to quickly present a precise description for foreign clients who might telephone or contact him by mail.

  I opened the most recent notebook marked 2010 and recognized Mr. Ishida’s handwriting on most of the pages. Over the last six months’ dates, though, a new, tinier script had recorded most of the inventory information. Mayumi’s entries were like a handful of sand in my eyes. She’d written in Japanese, not English.

  But I would always know where the most valuable things were kept.

  In a clear, locked glass case, I saw the shop’s exceptional collection of inro and netsuke, the ancient snuff containers and coordinating fasteners that wealthy gentlemen of past centuries wore on silken cords attached to their obi belts. And in a tall rosewood chest, all the long boxes that should have held calligraphy scrolls were still full. Finally, I went to the heavy old safe in the kitchen. The combination was still the same: 060721, the date Mr. Ishida’s father founded the shop. Inside the safe, I was relieved to open up some small silk pouches and find some small pieces of jade and elaborate gold-and-pearl jewelry. But there was also a three-foot-square black lacquer box that was empty. It was impossible to guess what might have been stored inside.

  Clearly, some goods had been removed from the safe. I wondered if it had happened before or after Mr. Okada came in to get Hachiko.

  I thought again about how I’d entered the shop. The door had been locked. Would a thief have bothered to lock the shop again after getting in? That could only have happened if the thief had found the store’s spare key.

  I went back to the desk’s top drawer. The spare key rested inside an old cigar box, just as it had in my day. I also saw the sheet of important phone numbers. These were for Mr. Okada, Dr. Nakajima, Mr. Ishida’s personal physician; the Japan Post Bank, Federal Express, and me. At the very bottom were two new numbers: one for Animal House Veterinarian and the other for Mayumi.

  Perhaps there wasn’t a burglary. I could be sending myself on a private trip to new, paranoid heights. Just because there was an empty lacquer box in the safe didn’t mean anything was missing from it. Maybe Mr. Ishida just kept the box there. I could call Mayumi to ask her about it, now that I had her number. I pressed this number into my phone and waited, tight with anticipation.

  Four rings, and then a high-pitched, cheerful woman’s voice came on. Mayumi here. Leave it at the beep! Arigato gozaimashita!

  As I struggled to think of what I should say, the phone vibrated, and Michael’s number flashed on the screen. I hung up on Mayumi’s voice mail to answer.

  “Great timing!” I let out a gusty breath. “You’ve caught me inside Mr. Ishida’s shop.”

  “That’s right, you took the lock-picking set. How hard was it to get inside?”

  “Too easy. I was offered a spare key from Mr. Okada, who owns the senbei shop next door. But now that I’m inside, I’m a bit worried something might have happened here.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, the earthquake threw some objects on the ground, but that doesn’t explain why the cashbox is sitting empty on top of the business desk, and there’s another lacquer box inside his safe that’s empty.”

  “Think there was a break-in?”

  I heard a sipping sound, and imagined that Michael was drinking his customary glass of ice water, having arrived from canoeing home.

  “Very possibly. I suppose the police could figure it out—”

  Michael interrupted, “Tell me more. What exactly do you see?”

  “Okay,” I said, looking around again. “A number of things are lying on the shop floor, mostly pottery, but I saw folders, too. Right away I noticed that a plate of fruit had fallen from Mr. Ishida’s Buddhist altar. The oranges had rotted on the floor, and the plate was completely smashed. ”

  “Sounds like an earthquake. Can you tell if anything’s missing? Sorry. You’ve not been in the shop for over a year, right?”

  “There’s an inventory list, but Mayumi’s chosen to list the acquisitions only in Japanese. I really need the English to be able to understand what’s what. It also seems that plenty of valuable pieces are still around. If a burglar came in and left behind the inro and netsuke collection, he was pretty clueless.” I paused, not sure I wanted to give voice to my darkest thought. “Unless someone threw everything around to look like a burglary.”

  “Who’s Mayumi?”

  “She’s the hip apprentice Mr. Ishida hired last year. I telephoned a number Mr. Ishida had for her in his desk, but there wasn’t an answer.”

  “What’s hip about her?”

  “Well, she has blue hair. It’s utterly ludicrous for someone working in a shop like Mr. Ishida’s, you know?”

  “Excuse me, sweetheart, but you had a navel ring the first six months we were together.” There was laughter in Michael’s voice. “I didn’t ask you to get rid of it, either.”

  Hastily, I said, “I’m not going to judge her taste. But it’s kind of teenagery to color one’s hair like that. And if she’s anywhere near Tokyo and hasn’t come by, it seems irresponsible.”

  “Call her again,” Michael advised. “Public transportation is still erratic, so perhaps she hasn’t been able to get into the neighborhood. And you’ve no idea what her character is.”

  “It’s irrational, but I have a weird feeling about her. I found out that Mr. Ishida’s dog, Hachiko, was left alone in the shop during the earthquake. Fortunately, Mr. Okada went in the morning after with his spare key, found her, and brought her to a kennel. But you’d think Mayumi would
have come to save the dog.”

  “At least you know Mr. Ishida’s okay; he’s got to be the person to untangle what happened.” In the long pause, I could practically hear Michael thinking. “If I were you, I wouldn’t call the police yet. It would be upsetting all around if you sicced them on an innocent person, whether it’s Mayumi or this Okada guy, who seems to have just as much access. And don’t forget that you could be detained. The fact you came in when the store was locked automatically makes you suspicious, should it turn out any valuables really are gone.”

  “You’ve convinced me. I won’t call the police. But I’m really worried what Mr. Ishida will deal with when he returns.”

  “There’s not much you can do until you see him. And he’s probably more worried about his dog than anything else.”

  “Okay, the veterinarian is my next stop.”

  “Good idea. What kind of dog is a Hachiko?”

  “Hachiko’s her name, silly. She’s really cute in the picture I saw that’s posted near Mr. Ishida’s desk. She has an Akita’s thick fur and curling tail, but also a beagle’s facial structure with the long nose.”

  Michael whistled. “What a mix. Akitas are loyal working dogs, and beagles have great temperaments and noses. My hunch is, once you see her, you’ll want to be with her 24/7.”

  “The last thing I need is a dog.” I shuddered. “Not with this possible burglary, an apprentice who’s gone AWOL, and no ride yet to the tsunami zone.”

  My husband sighed. “Sometimes the little things are all we can pull off. But that doesn’t mean they don’t matter.”

  Chapter 8

  After we’d said goodbye, I realized I hadn’t asked Michael about his work or the renovation progress at Ewa Landing. I made calls to the general contractor and the plumber, but they didn’t answer. I’d have to hope for the best. I also rang the senbei shop to ask Mr. Okada if he’d noticed the same disarray on March 12 that I’d just seen.