The Bride's Kimono

by Sujata Massey

“How stupid,” I muttered. I’d forgotten about the nuances of Japanese gift giving when I’d told that casual lie. The conversation with Hana on the plane played out again in my head.

  “What’s wrong, Rei-san? You look as if you are feeling very ill.”

  “I’m—I’m just thinking.” I sat on Hana’s bed, staring at Kyoko, an uneasy feeling growing. Hana had said that she was getting married because she didn’t have other choices. She’d confided to me her dream of owning a karaoke bar. She said she couldn’t do it because of money, and the societal pressures of being a wife.

  “Did Hana ever talk to you about wanting to open a karaoke bar?” I asked.

  “Karaoke box,” Kyoko corrected me. “A box is smaller than a bar. It’s a tiny place where you can go with a few friends to sing and have it recorded. But she’s not going to open a box—she’s getting married.”

  “How much do you think it would cost to get a business like that going?”

  “Not so much—I guess it all depends on location. What are you thinking, Rei-san?”

  If Hana had the bridal kimono and could sell it for even a fraction of what it was worth, she’d have a karaoke box’s rent covered for at least a few years. And if she opened her business in a small town or city in Japan, she could get away from the pressure of her parents. And I wouldn’t find her.

  No, I told myself.

  Hana couldn’t have the knowledge and guts to pull off such a scam, I told myself. Office ladies might play fast and loose with their money and with men, but they didn’t indulge in truly criminal activities—or so I’d thought.

  10

  I said a quick good-bye to Kyoko. As I emerged from her room, I caught sight of Hugh standing thirty feet down the hall, knocking loudly on my door.

  Kyoko saw him, too, and tugged me back into the room.

  “What is it?” I asked her.

  “That man! He could be the thief. I saw him here earlier. He said he was your friend, so I told him your room number. I’m very, very sorry—”

  “It’s all right. Actually, he’s my lawyer. He’s going to help with the kimono problem.”

  We parted again, and I hurried down the hall to Hugh, shushing him. It was late, and I didn’t want to wake the whole hallway of sleeping office ladies.

  “Thank God you showed up, Rei. I was beginning to think you’d been stolen.”

  “No, I’d just taken your suggestion and gotten some quick help with a translation from my friend Kyoko. I think you might have met her when she gave you directions to my room earlier this evening.”

  “Whoever it was seemed very timid, and rather sad—”

  “Yes, for a good reason. Her friend is missing, as I mentioned earlier.” I opened my door with the key card and sat down cross-legged on my bed, working out a quick written translation of the Japanese sentences Kyoko had told me. I handed it to Hugh to read, and when he was through, he shook his head.

  “There’s no mention of insurance here. Do you have any document mentioning insurance?”

  “Just the loan receipt, and as I told you before, the bride’s kimono isn’t listed on it.”

  “Who knew you had the kimono in your room?”

  “Allison and Jamie at the museum knew. I don’t know whether they told anyone else. Although when we saw each other at Pan Asia, I almost forgot about the bag holding the kimono. It could be that Dick Jemshaw looked in the bag and got interested.”

  “I don’t think so,” Hugh said. “I was the one who picked up the bag and gave it to the maître d’. I watched him take it straight to you. Besides, I can’t imagine why you think a chairman of the advisory committee would want to nick a kimono. A hotel employee is more likely, I’d think.”

  “Perhaps,” I said slowly. “There was a young female manager at the front desk who knew that I needed a safety-deposit box. When she brought the box out, I asked if she had anything larger available. She didn’t, so I went away. I guess I was pretty stupid to leave such a big gaping clue.”

  “Don’t blame yourself.” Hugh came over to the bed and sat down next to me. He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. “If anything, it’s my fault. I’m the one who lured you from your room. If the theft happened when we were talking downstairs, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “It could also have happened when I was at the mall a few hours ago,” I said. “I just learned that the girl I was looking for there—Hana Matsura—had told her roommate, Kyoko, that I had something of value in the boxes.”

  “What? How would she know?”

  “Hana figured it out because we’d sat together on the plane and she saw the way I handled the boxes. I guess I just was not an experienced enough courier to be properly subtle. Anyway, who knows how many people Hana told about me and my mysterious boxes, or if she decided to hunt for the boxes herself? Supposedly she’s out tonight looking for a one-night stand. I wonder if that’s really true.”

  Hugh shook his head. “I can’t even get you to drink tea with me. And you say a nice Japanese girl would want to find a one-night stand in a place where she knows no one?”

  “She told me that she wanted to find a quote-unquote playboy. She planned to have a wild fling in another country, and then she’d go back to a regular life. I’m sure it’s a concept you can understand—”

  “You were no more a fling for me than I was for you,” Hugh said tightly. “At least, that’s what I hope.”

  I wouldn’t give Hugh the gratification of a true confession. Instead, I said, “Well, back to the point of Hana. I think she could have gotten in my room to snoop around if she were able to get her room’s key card recoded to enter mine. To get the key card working, all she would really have to do was say that she was me.”

  “But would the hotel believe it?”

  “Sure. Hana is just a bit taller than I, and her hair is dyed close to my color. She’s a friendly, well-spoken girl. Why would they suspect anything bad of her?”

  “You do,” Hugh said.

  “I know it sounds crazy, but I can’t rule it out. I’ve got to call the security officer to come back. Tell me if there’s anything I shouldn’t say, all right?” By now, I was feeling pretty grumpy.

  “Well, you have nothing to offer in English that could show him that the bride’s kimono exists. You’ll have to convince him, somehow, that you lost it, and offer to have the museum people back up your story tomorrow with a phone call. I think the important thing is to get them moving on figuring out who of the hotel staff were around tonight and any unusual goings-on, during the times you were out of your room. I don’t suggest you say anything about your idea that Hana Matsura committed theft. She could call your assumptions libelous, if she comes back tomorrow morning and gets hassled by hotel security or the cops. If she doesn’t come back, well, that’s a different story.” Hugh paused. “How much talking do you want me to do?”

  “None,” I said. “I mean, if I need your help, I’ll ask. But this is my loss. I think I should describe it to them myself.”

  When Mark Leese arrived, he wasn’t alone—he’d brought the hotel’s young night manager, Brian Hunter, and Mrs. Chiyoda, who was wearing a terrycloth bathrobe and a very annoyed expression. It softened slightly when she looked at Hugh—apparently, she liked a good-looking man, and Hugh obliged with a faint ducking of his head.

  “I was woken with the story you’re missing an item. My tourists have never before reported such a problem,” Mrs. Chiyoda said, her eyes moving between us—as if she trusted neither.

  “My lawyer, Mr. Hugh Glendinning, came to assist me because this is such a serious problem.” I switched to Japanese and outlined to Mrs. Chiyoda the loss of the kimono, and the fact that some people had knowledge of the valuables I was carrying.

  “Well, I knew, too!” Mrs. Chiyoda said. “You reserved a seat for some boxes. Spending extra money that way is a sign that the items carried on the plane are valuable.”

  Nobody else in the room could understand what we were talking
about, and I felt my pulse race. Mrs. Chiyoda. Would she risk her successful career as a tour operator to steal from a guest?

  “Where were you tonight?” I asked.

  She glared. “At the hotel all evening, resting. If you don’t believe me, ask the waiters in the restaurant who served me!”

  “What are you all talking about? I need to take my incident report,” Brian Hunter said.

  The things the young night manager asked were all straightforward—when was I in the room, when was I not, when had I last seen the kimono? Brian asked me for a receipt to show the kimono’s value, which of course I didn’t have—just the short note, handwritten in Japanese, that Mr. Shima had written.

  “I can translate,” Mrs. Chiyoda said grandly, and she read it. She shook her head when she was done reading it.

  “It describes a very old robe belonging to a museum, but it doesn’t say exact age or value. I cannot begin to guess value—that is not my expertise—but I can think that nobody should have given such valuables to a young person to carry. Antique kimono are irreplaceable cultural treasures.”

  “Right,” I said coldly to her. “Can’t we move on and get in touch with the police?”

  “What I’d like to do first is interview the maid and the maintenance superintendent to your floor—they’d be the only ones with master key cards to your room,” Mark Leese said.

  “As Mrs. Chiyoda pointed out, this is a very valuable item,” I said. “We can’t let time pass and for it to slip farther away. Starting immediately, I’d like the police to conduct intensive searches of luggage at all the airports—Dulles as well as Reagan National and that one closer to Baltimore.”

  “Miss Shimura, I know you’re from a different country,” Mark Leese said. “Unfortunately, in the U.S. of A., the police wouldn’t put out an APB on a missing bathrobe.”

  I saw Brian Hunter’s mouth quiver, and then it came—the laugh. He thought the whole idea of an allpoints bulletin for a young woman’s bathrobe was hilarious.

  “I keep telling you that a kimono is not a bathrobe,” I said between gritted teeth. “Now, I’ve got a question for you. There were two times today that the entry code to my room didn’t work. Each time I had the key card recoded to work. Once it was recoded by a woman called Julie, and then, most recently by you, Brian.”

  Brian nodded. “I remember that.”

  “At the time you said something that I remember very clearly. You told me that there were a number of guests having problems with their key cards. I want to know their names.”

  “Ma’am, we prize confidentiality for our guests—”

  “Let me put it another way, then. Exactly how many requests did you have about entry problems with Room 410?”

  “I’m sure just the ones you made—”

  “How can you be sure? I mean, how can you be sure that the person asking for entry to Room 410 was always really me?”

  “We don’t give out key cards without asking for ID. It’s hotel policy.”

  “You forgot to ask for my ID—”

  “No, I didn’t!” Brian was tugging at his goatee as if he’d become extremely nervous. He knew that I knew. But he wouldn’t admit it in front of the security officer.

  A cellular phone hanging in a case attached to Mark Leese’s belt sounded a high, shrill beep. “Yeah. No kidding. We’re in 410. See you.” He hung up and grinned at me.

  “Well, I have good news. Your passport’s been found in the area where we recycle scrap paper. I guess you must have dropped it in your room and it was accidentally thrown away.”

  “I’d never drop something as valuable as a passport,” I protested, shutting up when Hugh put a restraining hand on my arm.

  A moment later there was a knock on the door. Mark Leese opened the door to a maintenance worker in a horribly stained uniform who handed him a small red booklet with a flourish.

  “Found it in the recycling Dumpster. It was pretty close to the top,” the man said.

  “What amazing work!” I said. “Were you also looking for the kimono?”

  “Sure. They told me to look for a robe, but I didn’t find one. Anyway, why would it be in paper recycling? Something made of cloth would have gotten mixed up in laundry.”

  I watched Mark Leese turn over the pages of the passport with a frown.

  I said what I’d been thinking since I first saw the passport in the maintenance worker’s hand. “It’s not my passport.”

  “How’d you know?” The security officer shot me a suspicious glance.

  “Japanese passports are red. American ones are blue.”

  Mark Leese nodded. “Yes, unfortunately this isn’t yours. But it’s good we found it.”

  “Why? It’s not as if you can give it back to the owner.”

  “What are you saying?” Mrs. Chiyoda interrupted. “Of course he will give the passport to me, and I will give it to the correct member of my tour group!”

  “You can’t give it to Hana if she’s not here,” I snapped.

  “How did you know the name on the passport?” Mark Leese demanded. Every face in the room turned to me.

  I looked at Hugh, and he shook his head ever so slightly. I remembered belatedly that he’d urged me to keep Hana’s name quiet for the time being. I’d spoken without thinking because I wanted to confirm my suspicion.

  “Hana is a friend of mine,” I said, making a slight exaggeration. “She was supposed to meet me earlier today and she never showed up. Her roommate and I are a little worried about her whereabouts. In fact, we searched the mall for her between seven and eight-thirty this evening.”

  “It’s just midnight! Don’t worry,” Mrs. Chiyoda said, giving me a phony smile. “Some of our ladies like to stay out quite late.”

  “You’re sure you never saw this passport before?” Mark Leese asked. “You’re sure you didn’t have this Japanese woman’s passport and accidentally drop it in the recycling?”

  So he suspected me, all because I’d known the name on the passport. If he thought I was dishonest, he might think there had never really been a bride’s kimono in my luggage—he could think I was concocting a theft in order to make money from an insurance company.

  “I’d not seen the passport before,” I said, my voice cracking. “I just sensed that since Hana Matsura’s missing, she might be in trouble—”

  “Please don’t worry,” Mrs. Chiyoda repeated to me. “Our girls occasionally stay out so late that they don’t come back till morning. It is the excitement of travel in America. I’m sure that Matsura-san will be very glad that her lost passport was found so quickly. My thanks to the excellent work of your hotel staff.” Mrs. Chiyoda nodded to Mark Leese and Brian Hunter. Then she turned to me. “Please get some sleep, Shimura-san. It will be a long day tomorrow at Potomac Mills.”

  “I’m not going. I’ve got to work.” Though I would have gone in a flash if that mall had a boutique that could replace the kimono I’d lost. But this was the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth, and the fabric of the day was polyester, not Japanese silk. And I was no longer in Japan but America, where things moved more quickly and dangerously than I’d remembered.

  11

  When I peered at the clock radio the next morning and saw it was seven-thirty, my first smug reaction was that I’d adjusted to the U.S. time difference. A half minute later the events of the previous evening came back. It was around one A.M. when our tense gathering had broken up and I’d walked Hugh Glendinning to the hotel lobby to say good night. He had looked at me for a long moment and asked, “Do you want me to stay?”

  “Of course not! You know how I feel about you—I mean, how I don’t feel about you.” I was blushing, giving myself away.

  “Forget it, then. I just thought you might be nervous about security. Do you think you’ll move out tomorrow?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not particularly afraid for myself. And I know I’ve got nothing left to steal—not unless the thief is into vintage clothes, which I doubt, becau
se my own wardrobe was left untouched.”

  Hugh cracked a smile. “Every cloud has a silver lining. I’ll go off now, as my day tomorrow is quite demanding. I could meet you for dinner, though. Call me, if you’d like that.”

  He’d put the ball in my court, but before I had a chance to volley back, I had to deal with meeting Allison to discuss my outlines and then figuring out whether to tell her, as well as the Northern Virginia police, about the stolen kimono. The more I thought about getting police help, the warier I felt. I knew that the police in my mother’s hometown of Baltimore—just forty miles north of where I was—couldn’t even solve 50 percent of the city’s homicides. I could only imagine how little energy would be devoted to a hunt for a kimono that belonged to a Japanese institution. If I reported the theft to the police, the only certainty I could count on was that Mr. Shima and his cohorts would hear that I’d fallen down in my courier duties within my first twenty-four hours of service. Furthermore, the kimono exhibition hadn’t yet opened at the Museum of Asian Arts. The Morioka Museum might decide to remove all their kimono because of the theft of the one that the Museum of Asian Arts hadn’t been willing to protect. Then I’d have Allison Powell furious with me, too.

  No, I decided, it wasn’t time for the police yet. If there was a chance that I could quietly get back the kimono from Hana, or whoever else had taken it, I’d be saved. The Morioka and the Museum of Asian Arts would never know. At least, that was my theory.

  I couldn’t dial my parents for advice because it was only four-thirty A.M. in California, so I decided to damn my budget and call Takeo Kayama in Japan. In Tokyo it was early evening. I called the country house first.

  Japanese phones ring differently: they have a soft, fast, and high-pitched trill. I was overcome with homesickness as I heard the sound of the ring. If I’d stayed home I wouldn’t have lost the museum’s kimono. I would be starting off my morning with a nice long run, followed by a morning of shopping in antiques galleries or reading some of my trade magazines. How peaceful my old life had been.