“By my estimate, the incense burner, the dance fan, the plum tea bowl, and the war fan could fetch something in this range, if we find the right buyers.”
She pushes her notebook across the table, turning it so Chiyo can read the sum.
“Seven to ten thousand yen?” Chiyo squeaks. That would feed her family for years, might even rebuild the store!
“Of course,” Mrs. Miura reminds her, taking her notebook back and scribbling two more figures beneath, “minus our commission, that means you would net something more like this.”
She pushes it across the table. Three-point-five to five.
Oh. Right. Pawnbrokers don’t work for free. Then Chiyo does the math, and rounds on the boy, incensed.
“Fifty percent? I thought you said you were taking me to someone who would give me a fair price! Taking half is . . . it’s not fair!”
“Actually . . .” The boy glances at his mother. “It is.”
Mrs. Miura explains, “That’s the going rate for objects with . . . special circumstances.”
“‘Special circumstances’?”
“The instant you untied that carrying cloth, I could smell Senkō-ji temple burning to the ground.” She flicks through the stack of papers on the corner of the table and pulls one out, hands it to Chiyo. It’s a police circular, dated April 5th, headlined, “BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR STOLEN GOODS.”
The blood drains from Chiyo’s face. Every item on the table is described in detail.
“In the future,” Mrs. Miura advises her in a dry voice, “maybe you shouldn’t try to unload everything all at once.”
45.
Present-Day Japan
TUESDAY, APRIL 8
Tokyo
The train eases to a stop at the station nearest Miura’s pawnshop. Nori stops in the ladies’ room to swipe the weepy smudges from beneath her eyes, then beeps herself out through the ticket gate, pulling her muffler up. Head down against the wind, she hurries past the Korean restaurant, determined to get some answers from the only man who might be able to help her.
Daiki cracks open the door. “Oh. It’s you.” Awkward silence. “So . . . did you find another buyer?”
“No. Can I come in?”
“I guess.”
He unchains the door and lets her in.
As it closes behind her, she says, “I need to talk to your grandfather.”
“Why?”
“The police have Hikitoru.”
“What? Why?”
She describes her meeting with the experts from the auction house, tells him how they’d ambushed her with the police report and confiscated the tea bowl.
“They say it’s stolen,” she tells him. “That it was stolen from Senkō-ji temple in 1945.”
“What?”
“Your grandfather didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
“But he knew, didn’t he?” she insists. “I think that’s why he wants to charge fifty percent commission. If Hikitoru can only be sold to someone who doesn’t care if it’s stolen, that’s a lot less outrageous. But how did he know?” She leans in. “I need to talk to him, Daiki. I need to find out how he knew it was stolen.”
The boy looks doubtful.
“He’s not feeling very well today, but I’ll go up and ask.”
By the time he reappears, Nori has nervously picked up and set down half the dusty merchandise in the shop.
“Come back to the office,” he says. “My o-jii-san is waiting.”
Miura is seated at the table in his stiff, out-of-date suit, fresh comb marks in his thin hair. He bows and invites her to sit, as the boy closes the office door.
“Daiki tells me the police have Hikitoru.”
“Yes. I showed it to some auction house experts, because I thought fifty percent commission was unreasonable. But now I understand. They told me it was stolen from Senkō-ji temple, in 1945.”
Miura won’t meet her eyes.
“You knew, didn’t you?”
He contemplates his gnarled hands, clasped before him.
“And I think you know who stole it.”
No answer.
“Please help me!” she implores. “If the police don’t find out who took it, they’re going to arrest me instead.”
His head snaps up.
“I think I know who it was, and I think you do too,” she blurts. The words tumble out. “There was a stack of men’s clothing hidden in the same place as Hikitoru. Dark clothes, like a burglar might wear. My grandmother had a brother she doesn’t talk about, an older brother who died right after the war. I think he stole that tea bowl, along with the other stuff in the police report. Please,” she begs, “the truth is, my grandmother is really sick. She’s in the hospital. She can’t give them a statement. You’re the only one who was around in 1945, the only one who might be able to tell the police what they need to know. Will you help me? Please? Go to the police and tell them the thief was my grandmother’s brother?”
Miura coughs. Dabs at his mouth with a handkerchief. Sighs.
“I can’t,” he finally says. “Because it wasn’t.”
He raises a hand, anticipating her protest.
“It’s not that I have a problem with lying to the police when necessary,” he explains, “but the facts are too easy to check. Your grandmother’s brother was so badly burned in the firebombing, he never recovered. The hospital sent him home after the next attack—they needed his bed for those who were even worse off—but someone had to feed him, wash him, and change his dressings day and night until he died.”
“That’s . . . terrible.” She pauses, digesting the news. “But if it wasn’t him, who was it?”
It couldn’t have been ’Baa-chan’s grandfather, who died in the same firebombing that destroyed Senkō-ji. And it couldn’t have been ’Baa-chan’s mother, whose failure to help with even the most basic survival tasks still inspires diatribes half a century later. But that left—
No.
“’Baa-chan?” she whispers. “It was ’Baa-chan?” Miura’s silence says it all.
Her grandmother stole the tea bowl? The same grandmother who punished her for shoplifting a single lipstick by making her scrub toilets until she’d earned enough money to pay for it? The grandmother who marched her to the drugstore to make a full confession and a formal apology? That grandmother was a thief?
“Stop,” Miura says, reading her face, shaking his head. “You don’t know what it was like, near the end of the war. Every day, death and destruction could rain down on us again at any moment. We were so hungry, we scavenged through the rubbish for anything edible, and we made tea from anything green. Every day, we thought it couldn’t possibly get worse, and then it did. The only people who survived were those who were willing to do whatever it took to stay alive, and,” he sighs, “the ones who’d been breaking the law before the war had a head start. Those of us who were new at it, well . . . we had to help each other.”
Wincing as he rises, he allows Daiki to steady him across the room to a tokonoma alcove between two bookcases. He kneels, reaching beneath the lip of the wooden slab to fiddle with a latch. The boy shifts the heavy lid for him. The old man returns to the table with a narrow wooden box. He opens it, offering Nori the contents.
She takes the war fan, unfolds it. Looks up, confused.
“Gold on black, Oda family crest.” She recognizes it from the police report.
“Made in the year Tensho 1,” Miura affirms. He turns to his grandson. “Do you know what the Oda clan was doing a few years later, in 1575?”
“Uhh . . .” Daiki consults his phone. “That’s the year Oda Nobunaga won the Battle of Nagashino.” His eyes widen. “Do you think this fan belonged to him?”
“It might have,” his grandfather says. “And that’s the story we’d have told collectors, if it hadn’t been way too hot to sell.” He turns to Nori. “But I’m trusting you to keep that to yourself. My mother told your grandmother that we got an excellent price for it, even minus
our exorbitant commission.”
Nori sits there, stunned. So that’s how ’Baa-chan got the money to rebuild the store. Her grandmother had stolen the goods, and the Miuras had sold them for her. Or not, as the case may be. Which made the obligation she owed them even greater.
She bows over the table, murmuring words of utmost gratitude. But her heart is filled with despair, because now she can’t press Miura to tell the police what he knows. Not when it would shift the police crosshairs from herself to the old man and her grandmother instead.
46.
Present-Day Japan
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9
Tokyo
Robin steps into the office elevator thirty minutes early, to avoid being trapped for twenty-two floors with higher-ups who’d been known to seize that opportunity to saddle captive underlings with extra work. Half an hour is a small price to pay for avoiding hours of overtime, and between now and Monday, she needs to spend all her waking hours proving Hikitoru had never rightfully belonged to Senkō-ji. In five short days, it will be handed over to that chauvinistic head priest, and another scholar will scoop the discovery right out from under her.
But giving in to her frustration isn’t going to help. While she tries to figure out how to keep Hikitoru from disappearing into the black hole of Senkō-ji, she can test Mamoru’s pottery pieces and find out if the Hayashis are sitting on an archeological treasure trove.
She unlocks the door to the lab, takes Hikitoru from the safe, and unwraps the shards Mamoru had found in the woods. Her eyes flick back and forth between the tea bowl and the fragments, comparing the color of the clay, the nuances of the glaze, the thickness of the wall. Side by side, they appear to have been made by the same artist. She sets to work proving it.
By the end of the day, she’s as sure as anyone can be. The chemical signatures of both the tea bowl and the shards match the published test numbers belonging to Yabō, Yoshi Takamatsu’s other Shigaraki-ware bowl. And the thermo-luminescent samples she’d prepared yesterday confirm they’re all the same age.
She picks up the palm-sized piece. What was it part of, before it was broken? A tea bowl? A water jar? Is the rest of it buried out in the woods behind the Hayashi kiln? She imagines the fanfare that would accompany such a find. The press conference, the dramatic photo of the first reconstructed piece on prestigious journal covers . . . and the balding, gray-haired head of the scholar most likely to be directing that research. Because unless she manages to get her doctorate, it won’t be her. She won’t even be on the team.
She lets out a moan of frustration, confronted with the same dilemma she’s been wrestling with since her bosses refused to accept the seven empty boxes as proof that Hikitoru belongs to Reverend Uchida. She has to return the tea bowl to Uchida in order to see the document proving his ownership, but she has to prove his ownership in order to persuade Fujimori-san to return the tea bowl.
If only the police hadn’t taken it away from Nori Okuda. She’s sure she could have talked Nori into letting her borrow Hikitoru long enough for Uchida to—
That’s it.
Owning the tea bowl isn’t the key to getting access to Uchida’s document—performing the ceremony is.
Pawing through her purse, she retrieves the priest’s number, taps out a message.
Uchida-san,
I just finished testing that tea bowl, and I’m sure it’s the Hikitoru you’re looking for. How soon could you be ready to perform the ceremony your ancestor described? If I brought it to you Saturday morning, would you have time to do it on Saturday afternoon?
She reads it over, corrects a typo.
Send.
47.
Present-Day Japan
THURSDAY, APRIL 10
Tokyo
Nori guiltily snaps to attention as a last-minute shopper steps into the store. It’s been a long, dreary day, with few customers to break the tedium, but her grandmother would skin her alive for being buried in her phone instead of ready to greet them, even those who arrive ten minutes before closing.
“Irasshaimase,” she sighs. Welcome to our shop. But not really.
The latecomer charts a course through the displays like a barge squeezing through a neighborhood canal, a shopping bag from a fancy department store grasped in one fuzzy-gloved hand.
Stopping short of the counter, she ventures, “Okuda-san?” from behind her muffler.
Her accent. Her height. What’s Robin Swann doing here?
“I’m sorry to bother you at the end of a long day,” the intruder begins, unwinding her scarf as if she plans to stay a while. “I, uh, wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“How kind of you,” Nori replies stiffly. Put that scarf back on.
“So . . . are you all right?” Robin persists.
“I’m fine.”
The truth is, Nori is hungry, her feet hurt, and she wants to close up shop, but the ’Baa-chan in her head is reminding her she’s still on duty for five more minutes.
“Thank you for taking the trouble to stop by,” Nori says, without enthusiasm. Please leave.
“Oh, it’s no trouble.” Bright smile. “On my way home, actually.”
Wrong answer. And the mouth-watering aroma of grilled chicken wafting from that shopping bag is nearly unbearable. Irritated by Robin’s inability to take a hint, Nori is forced to be more explicit. She begins to tidy the sales desk.
“I’m afraid you caught me about to close up shop, so . . .”
“Great! I was hoping you’d say that.”
Huh?
“I stopped by the Mitsukoshi food hall on my way,” Robin explains, setting the shopping bag on the counter, “and picked up a few things for dinner. There’s plenty for both of us, if you’d like to share?” She tips the bag, offering a view of the contents.
Nori stares, astonished, confounded. What kind of person would walk up to a near stranger and offer food? In public. From a bag. Is this barbarian really suggesting they share a meal from take-out cartons? It’s time to put a stop to this, leave no room for misinterpretation.
“That would be. . . a little difficult,” she says firmly.
“Oh no! Did you already eat? I thought if I came early, before you got off work . . .”
What the—? Everybody knows that “a little difficult” is Japanese code for “impossible.” Someone who’s as fluent as Robin Swann ought to—
Wait. Those unnaturally blank round eyes. Could she be misunderstanding on purpose? She is. She’s playing dumb, refusing to take “no” for an answer. That’s why she cornered Nori at work, knowing it would be unthinkable for a shopkeeper to be rude to a customer.
Politeness be damned! “I’m sorry. I can’t eat with you.”
Surprised look. “Oh.”
Good. She’s getting the message.
“Are you vegetarian, or something?”
“What? No!”
The big pigeon stands there, confusion written all over her face.
That’s it. Nori is done with being shoved around like a little marker on everybody’s go board. Done with Anzai, done with ’Baa-chan, and most especially done with Robin Swann.
“How can you not understand?” she says, in a voice that would freeze a freshly crushed hand warmer. “Would you eat with someone who set you up?”
“Set you up?” Robin looks shocked. “You mean . . . last Friday?”
No need to dignify that with a reply.
“But I had nothing to do with that,” Robin protests. “Hashimoto-san didn’t tell me that your tea bowl was stolen. Or that Mr. Anzai was with the police. I found out the same time you did.”
Nori doesn’t care. “You’re still on the team trying to put me in jail.”
“Jail?” Robin blinks. “What do you mean, ‘jail’?”
“If they don’t find out who stole Hikitoru, the police say they’ll arrest me instead. For ‘intent to sell stolen goods.’”
“What? They can’t do that!” Robin’s brow furrows. “Can they?”
<
br /> “I don’t know. They say they can.”
Robin bristles. “But that’s wrong. Everything about this is wrong. I’ve been trying to tell them, but they won’t listen. The police . . . my boss . . . her boss . . . they all think they can ignore anyone who’s below them, that we’ll just shut up and go away. But you know what? I’m not going to let them get away with it. Not this time. I’m not going to let them ignore the truth.”
The truth? What truth?
“I’ve been doing some investigating,” she says. “The real crime involving Hikitoru has nothing to do with you. It happened long before 1945.”
“What?”
“It was stolen from someone else, long before it was stolen from Senkō-ji.”
“It was?”
“Yes. But . . . I can’t prove it.”
“Oh.”
“Not yet, anyway. But together, I think we might be able to.”
Together? Nori takes a step back, feeling the hope radiating off of Robin like heat from a New Years’ bonfire.
“I don’t understand,” she replies, wary.
“Explaining might take some time.” Robin lifts the shopping bag, inclining her head toward the open office door. “Eat while we talk?”
Nori relents. “All right. I have to be at the hospital at seven to visit my grandmother, but I’ll listen. Wait in the back room while I close up shop.”
By the time she joins Robin in the office, a feast that only a foreigner could have assembled is laid out on the low table. Japanese grilled chicken skewers, Chinese potstickers, spicy eggplant, crab croquettes, seaweed salad, and two kinds of cake—chocolate and green tea—plus a tall can of Premium Malts. The outlandish combination would never appear on a Japanese menu, but after Nori fetches dishes and chopsticks to satisfy her sense of decency, she surrenders to the decadence, helping herself to specialties from six famous makers. She hasn’t eaten this well since before her grandmother became ill, and it must have showed, because as she sets aside her third bare skewer, she catches Robin observing her with a small crooked smile.
The Last Tea Bowl Thief Page 24
