“What’s going on out there?” she asked, waving her cane at the hallway as I entered. Goro waved back to her, and I closed the door on him, laughing.
“A more thorough search of Etsuko’s apartment.” I left my boots at the door. “We may have some leads. Did someone ever come by here to do a police sketch of the men you saw coming and going from her place?”
“Yes,” she said, sitting down on her couch. “I did give descriptions, though I’m not sure how well I did. My eyesight isn’t the best anymore.”
“Okay, fine. Can I get you some tea?”
She nodded, so I filled up a mug from the hot water boiler in the kitchen and dunked her favorite green tea a few times, bringing the mug out to her in the living room. As I set the mug down on her kotatsu, I spied the cardboard box of bentos again. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten about this! I was about to open it when a soft knock upon the door stopped me.
“It’s Akiko!”
I changed directions and opened the door. “Oh good! I was hoping I’d see you today.”
“Mei-chan, you look much healthier now. I haven’t seen you around the neighborhood. Where have you been?”
I sighed as I took her coat and she sat next to Murata on the couch. “She’s been living at Suga-san’s place,” Murata said, tattling on me.
Akiko gasped and I nodded. “It’s been a crazy week. He has heat and food.” I shrugged my shoulders. “And he insisted I stay.”
“Oh, please,” Akiko said, unconvinced by my aloofness. “He’s smart, talented, handsome, and rich, and you’re sweet, pretty, and resourceful. I’m sure you’ll be married in no time.” She said this without an ounce of bitterness, so I believed she meant it. But married? Really? I couldn’t imagine myself married. I could barely imagine myself with a real boyfriend.
I stared out Murata’s window at the back of Yasahiro’s building and imagined us there in the summer, having a barbecue on the rooftop deck, him proposing on one knee. How had he proposed to Amanda? I’d never asked though I had seen the ring in photos.
I shook my head. No. We had a lot of work to do before we ever got to that point. His parents had to let go of Amanda, and I had to kick her out of my head. I needed to get a real job so I could contribute to an equal relationship. I wanted to be able to travel with him and go the distance.
“What are you thinking about over there?” Akiko asked, sitting next to Murata, placing her stethoscope on her lap and opening her blood pressure monitor.
“Oh, nothing. I’m going to clean the kitchen.” I edged past Akiko and Murata, but Akiko caught my hand.
“What happened here?”
I had forgotten that my right hand was scraped up. The injury had been under gloves for the past few hours, and between the search and the shoveling, the bandage was falling off and the scrape was still bleeding.
“I slipped on some ice yesterday. No big deal.”
“Sit,” she directed. Murata shook her finger at me.
“I already have a mother, thank you very much,” I warned Murata, but she laughed and made me smile.
I sat patiently while Akiko swabbed the wound with antiseptic and antibiotic and placed a new bandage on it. “Wear gloves,” she said to me, and I nodded. Murata had dish gloves and I’d wear them.
My phone buzzed in my pocket with a text from Kumi. “Goro called to say they have leads and you found the evidence! So excited! Come to the bathhouse tonight after the police station. Have a hot bath and sushi, my treat.” My chest tightened and I held back tears. I loved Kumi. I wished I could do even more to prove that Etsuko had been doing some of this against her will. She had been too nice to be a criminal. Perhaps this business was legitimate? We were thinking the worst, instead of believing she was a good person who would never do this kind of thing.
“Sure. I’ll be there!” I texted, and then continued to look at my phone.
Opening my browser and navigating to Google, I searched for Fujita Takahara again. The top stories about him were about the death of his father and how he was now one of the wealthiest people in the prefecture. He’d inherited his father’s fortune, and in one interview, he made a statement that he would be leaving the Midori Sankaku Board of Directors.
I glanced at Murata and Akiko, and they were checking her blood sugar, so I continued. Sitting on the Board of Directors for Midori Sankaku, he had been involved in new store placement for the past five years among other things, like buying up land and planning out new business strategies. This is why he’d been in town so much the last two years. He had helped place a Midori Sankaku store in Chikata and got us the greenhouse too, both of which had revitalized the town to a point I hadn’t seen in twenty years. His decisions had impacted our community in a positive way. How was he involved in all of this? I didn’t care what kind of sex he had on his own time, but apparently, Etsuko had reasons to keep those photos. Why?
I pulled up a photo of Takahara, dressed in a tux, zoomed in and sat down next to Murata.
“Murata-san…” I showed my phone to her as Akiko took notes in her journal. “Have you seen this man before?”
She squinted at the photo and pulled back. “Of course I know him. Mei-chan, that’s such a silly question.”
Akiko raised her eyebrows at me.
“Why is that silly? How do you know him?”
She blinked at me. “He owns the building. He’s my landlord. Well, sort of. There’s a management company that takes care of the place, but I often see him in the building a few times per week. Especially when they were renovating the apartment under Etsuko.”
My hearing rang, the new information knocking me over the head. “He owns the building?”
“Yeah.”
I glanced at his photo again. He was entrenched in this town, wasn’t he?
“Okay. Thanks.” I slipped the phone in my pocket.
This was something I could never wrap my head around — rich people and their money, and what they do with it. I was sure I only knew a tiny, infinitesimally small part of what Yasahiro does with his money, and he wasn’t half as wealthy as Takahara. When you had that much money, what did you do with it? Especially if you didn’t want to pay taxes?
While Akiko tested Murata’s reflexes and watched her walk, I cleaned the kitchen, snapping on dish gloves, and gathering dirty dishes and glasses from the rest of the apartment. I let my mind wander while I scrubbed, imagining the web of lies that surrounded Etsuko, the young men from Ne Kitsune, Takahara’s proclivities, and the stacks of cash hidden under her kitchen cabinets. I began to sweat as I stacked up dish after dish and cleaned the counters.
“I’m heading out,” Akiko said, right behind me, and I jumped, almost dropping my sponge. “Hey…” Her hand rested on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
I sighed. “I’m tired, and I’ve been busy with my new clients. Yasa-kun’s in Paris, and he told me he might run into his ex-girlfriend, Amanda, while he’s there. And I’ve been trying not to think about it… I haven’t been thinking about it, actually, but it must be there in the back of my head because everything feels wrong without him here.” I yanked off the gloves and hung them on the sink to dry.
“Well, your eyes look better and your skin is flush and pink again. So whatever he’s doing for you, keep it up.” She winked at me and I blushed. “If he knows what he’s got going for him, he won’t cheat.”
“He doesn’t strike me as the cheating type.” But then, Etsuko could be a criminal. Takahara could be into men. And I hadn’t believed I’d ever be in this situation. I bit my lip and stared at the floor. I didn’t know what to think anymore.
“Me neither.” She squeezed my arm. “It’s Amanda you’ll have to watch out for.” Before I could ask what she meant, she turned away. “I’ve gotta go. Lots of paperwork to take care of today. Murata-san is fine. Make sure she gets out later this week.” She threw on her coat and stepped into her boots. “And be careful out there! So much snow. My car was slipping everywhere.”
&
nbsp; Car. I wonder if Mom had sold the car?
“Want to bake some bread? I have a loaf in the oven rising.” Murata rose from her spot on the couch, and I compared her apartment to Etsuko’s in my head.
“How do you have a real stove and oven, and Etsuko had neither?”
“My son bought the stove for me and had it installed. I’ve lived here for twenty years. I do what I want.” She winked at me as she hobbled by, and I smiled back.
My gaze fell on the box of bentos again in the corner. I needed to remember to take it with me when I left later.
I arrived at the police station, wheeling the box of bentos on a luggage cart. The warm air of the station welcomed me, and my clothes, wet with snow, steamed as the door closed behind me. Murata had been happy to let me borrow her cart especially since I was getting rid of the big box.
“Mei-chan!” Kayo shouted as I approached the front desk. “Come on back. We’re almost done cataloging the evidence.”
The man at the front desk buzzed me in, and I wheeled the box to Goro’s desk.
Kayo waved at me. “I’m off for the night. See you both tomorrow!” She walked off, bundling up against the weather outside.
“What’s this?” Goro asked, pointing to the box.
“This was addressed to Etsuko’s bento box company and had been sitting in Murata-san’s apartment for the last week. She signed for it the Friday before she died and had forgotten about it.” I sank into the chair next to Goro’s desk and melted into a snowy puddle. “So had I. I saw it the last few times I was there but forgot to say anything.” It had been tough getting the box to the police station, what with the snow on the streets, and I was exhausted from all of the hard labor I’d done. I needed a large meal and a hot bath, and at least ten hours of sleep. I groaned as I pushed into the chair. “I feel like I’ve lived ten days in the last one.”
Goro grabbed a letter opener and cut the box open after glancing at the address label on top. Inside, twelve stacks of five bento boxes apiece lined the available space. A paper invoice sat on top, and the sender’s address was from an area north of Tokyo.
“Huh. It’s just bento boxes.” Goro folded his arms across his chest.
“It was safe to assume it would be bento boxes considering.” I rifled through the boxes on top. One box immediately felt out of place — too heavy. “Well, here you go. Not just bento boxes after all.” I pulled a stack of money from the box and handed it to Goro. It was hard to watch it go. Thinking back on all of the cash I had seen at Etsuko’s apartment, and the money in front of me now, I couldn’t help but be jealous. Did you have to be dishonest to make this kind of money? I was barely scraping by because I played by the rules, and playing by the rules didn’t pay like this did. But this business had killed Etsuko, and I didn’t want that kind of danger in my life. It was bad enough when Tama tried to kill me because I wanted to help Akiko. There was no way I could handle an illegal money-laundering business.
I licked my lips as the money was dropped into an evidence bag, and one of Goro’s coworkers took it from the room.
At the next desk over, several men examined the photos of Takahara. They snickered and giggled, pointing to one after another. It was like they’d never seen porn before.
“You gonna let them do that?” I pointed to them and rolled my eyes. Goro walked over, snatched the photos from their hands, and told them to get back to work. He handed the photos to me, but I placed them face down on the desk. “I have no idea why Etsuko would even have these photos.”
Goro returned to his desk chair. “Blackmail, obviously. The real question is how did she get them in the first place.”
“Ew. I don’t even want to think about it.” I was hoping, for everyone’s sake, that she wasn’t involved in a sexual relationship with them. I had a feeling that would be the last straw for Goro and Kumi. Kumi had always thought the best of Etsuko. As it was, she was going to be crushed when she learned about the money laundering.
“So, do you have everything?” I wasn’t sure where to begin asking him questions about evidence since I knew nothing about police procedure.
“Well, we have a lot. We have her phone, computer, bank statements, bills, her journal, and everything we found and cataloged today.” Goro scrolled through a long list on his computer. “But now that we have to look into this side business she had, that will open up a whole other line of investigation. Because we’ll have to trace the money, trace her suppliers, and figure out why she got involved.”
“That’s a lot…” I remembered that night we all went to Izakaya Jūshi together, and my thoughts clicked into place like a newly oiled gearshift. “Wait. Her phone? She had two phones.”
He turned to me. “Are you sure? We only ever found one phone.”
“I’m positive. The night we went out together, remember? The day before she died. She took a call while we were out to dinner. I remember her outside talking on the phone while her other phone sat on the table. She had two phones. I’m sure of it.”
“Great,” he mumbled, rubbing his face. “More missing pieces.” He slammed back the last of some cold coffee in a can. “It’s already 18:00, and I have at least two more hours of work to do. We’ll go to the office space in Sumida tomorrow morning. If it hasn’t been cleaned out by now, we may find more clues there.”
“Don’t you think they would have closed down the office right when Etsuko was found dead?”
“I would have, but we don’t know how stupid these people are. Etsuko was smart enough to hide things. It looks like she did billing out of her apartment,” he said, waving at the cardboard box I brought in. It had her home address on it. “The only thing with the office space address is her bank ledger. We would never have found it otherwise.”
“I always thought she was a smart girl.” I raised a weak smile and nodded. I had liked Etsuko, and I was sad this was the way I would remember her.
“Want me to drive you anywhere?” Goro asked, grabbing his coat and locking his computer. “I’m going to head out to grab some food and more caffeine.”
“Yeah, if you don’t mind. Your lovely wife invited me over to the bathhouse for dinner tonight. I’m going to take her up on the offer.” I hoped I didn’t fall asleep in the bath. I was hoping to text with Yasahiro before bed. I hadn’t heard from him all afternoon. I missed him.
Goro placed a hand on my shoulder. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you kept everything we learned today a secret. I told Kumi we made a breakthrough and we found some more evidence, but I didn’t say anything else. I don’t want to say anything else until we know the whole truth.”
I nodded in response as I buttoned my coat. “I’ll be honest. I don’t want to tell Kumi-chan. She loved Etsuko so much. That should be your job.”
It must have been tough, being married and having to break bad news to your spouse or a loved one. I remembered when my mom had found out Dad was dead from the neighbor who found him in the fields. My heart had broken for her.
“I understand. Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I rolled over in Yasahiro’s bed and groaned. I was so sore, I was ready to die. Everything hurt. Everything. My legs, my arms, even breathing hurt. I had really overdone it yesterday, and I’d be lucky if I could hobble around the rest of the day. I dragged myself to the bathroom and rummaged through Yasahiro’s medicine cabinet until I found a bottle of Eve, Japan’s version of ibuprofen. It was right next to a bottle of Advil, its bottle covered in English. Hmmm, I guessed that had been Amanda’s. I filled a glass of water, popped the pills in my mouth, and swallowed, hoping they didn’t give me a sour stomach. My digestive system was pretty hardy, though, so I wasn’t worried.
I placed the bottle of Eve and Advil on the counter and looked at them while I brushed my teeth. Even when I thought Amanda hadn’t invaded my head space, she had. I continued to brush my teeth and pawed in the drawer of Yasahiro’s vanity, looking at things he had in there, but nothing struc
k me the way the American bottle of Advil did. He could have bought the painkillers on a trip to California or New York, though. It didn’t have to be hers.
Ugh, what was wrong with me? I tossed both bottles in the drawer, pulled my hair into a ponytail while whimpering (My shoulders! They were on fire!), and headed into the kitchen to have breakfast. Being as inept at cooking as I was, I made coffee and ramen, which both tasted amazing if I didn’t eat them together in one bite. I sat at Yasahiro’s giant dining table, listened to the clock tick, watched the clouds race by outside, and felt the hot air currents from the furnace waft by me. I loved Yasahiro’s apartment, but I wasn’t used to it yet.
I slurped noodles while I spent some time in my head. How long would I stay here before I had to return to the farmhouse and live with Mom again? If I made this place mine, wouldn’t I regret it later when I had to leave? A lot of the walls were painted but bare, except in the bedroom, and I began to imagine my own artwork up on the wall. I dreamed up a giant landscape to hang to my right, something surreal. I’d been thinking about painting landscapes and substituting the colors for something more alien and jarring — purple trees, green skies, pink clouds. I closed my eyes and wondered if I should change my focus to something almost science fiction. I could paint landscapes with moons or other planets in the background! I’d never done that before. Lots of people designed landscapes like this with graphic design programs, but I hadn’t seen the concept done with oils. I should search and find out what other people had done.
I picked up my phone on the table, disconnected the charge cord, and the first thing on the screen was the conversation I’d had the previous night with Yasahiro. I scrolled back through the texts and started at the beginning.
“Are you busy?” I’d texted him around 22:00 my time, knowing it was 14:00 in Paris and he could’ve been busy with either a class or that restaurant opening he had been talking about. He didn’t write me back, so I got in bed to read.
“Are you awake?” He’d texted around 0:15 my time. The phone buzzed on the nightstand and jolted me out of a half-sleep, my eReader sitting on my chest, and the lights still on.
The Daydreamer Detective Braves the Winter Page 19
