The Daydreamer Detective Opens a Tea Shop

by S. J. Pajonas

  “We’re sure she didn’t get into a cab, right?”

  Kayo shook her head. “It didn’t look like a cab, but it could have been a car service.”

  “Oh, yes. You’re right.” I deflated for a moment. “I feel like Amanda is a black box on an airplane. If only I could open her, I could learn her secrets. But she let nothing loose publicly, especially not to me.”

  “What about Yasahiro-san? Would she have spoken with him in private?”

  I shook my head as I thought back through the day. “Not that I can recall. They were never alone.”

  Mom patted my hand. “Well, you didn’t know her very long, just a couple of hours.” Mom folded her arms across her chest. “And it’s not like we wanted to be friends with her either.”

  “Why is that? Sorry. I know nothing about this woman.” Kayo leaned against the back of her chair and turned to listen.

  “You know she’s an actress, right?” I asked and Kayo nodded. “And she used to date Yasahiro-san in Paris?”

  “I got that much.”

  “They were engaged, but she cheated on him, and within a month or two, they broke up.” Mom glanced sideways at me, but I went on. This was Yasahiro’s private life, but with a murder investigation ongoing, secrets needed to be spoken.

  “Then he moved here to start his own restaurant. Ending the engagement was hard on him, so he stayed away from her to keep things civil. He wondered if she would come back though. Amanda has a reputation for being very hard-headed and determined in Hollywood. She always gets what she wants.” Except this time.

  Kayo thought about this for a moment. “Seems to me, being hard-headed and determined are code words for being a bitch.” Mom gasped, but I was glad someone other than me said it. “And that’s a great way to make enemies. Maybe she stole someone else’s role in a film? Or she got this book deal through devious means? Oh! Or she didn’t even write the book and her ghostwriter now wants revenge?”

  “Wow. I never would’ve thought of those things.” There could be a million motives!

  Kayo beamed with pride. “Coming up with possible motives is one of my strong suits.” She entered more notes into her phone and tapped her index finger against her bottom lip. “Did she know anyone else in Japan? Maybe a friend, business person, ex-boyfriend? Well, besides Yasahiro-san.”

  “Kumi-san saw online that she was dating someone here in Japan, but Goro-san knows about that already. Amanda complained about the injuries and said she needed a massage. That she missed her massages.” Kayo wrote this down. “It seemed like a regular thing for her, but I don’t know anything more about it. Honestly, she droned on and on about a bunch of stuff, and I tuned it all out. Oh wait!” I reached out and grabbed Kayo’s arm. “Giselle and Robert.”

  “Who are they?” Mom asked, leaning forward.

  “I met them the other night at the restaurant opening we went to. They’re here in Tokyo, but I don’t know where.”

  Kayo typed away on her phone, her eyebrows drawn together. “What’s up with them? Do you think they saw her recently?”

  “I have no idea, but… But! Amanda cheated on Yasahiro-san with Robert.”

  “So either one of them could be a suspect?” Kayo continued her note taking.

  I remembered Giselle and Robert from the party the other night. On first impression, they were both snooty and standoffish, but later in the evening, I’d spoken again with Robert, and my opinion had softened. He’d been polite and easy to talk to, a decent man. Giselle, though, had never come back to the party again after she stormed off from their argument.

  “I suppose you should include them. They seemed nice, but they fought in public, had a big fight a few people at the restaurant opening witnessed. I don’t know what it was about though. I was across the room, and I couldn’t hear them.”

  “I’ll…” Kayo hummed and stared off into the distance. “I’ll have to track them down somehow. I’ll start with incoming immigration records once I get their full names from Yasahiro-san. You’re supposed to declare where you’re staying in Japan when you enter.”

  There were so many things I didn’t know about traveling or even my own country. I filed away this information for a later date.

  “Amanda was also on her phone a few times. She got a few weird calls where she heard nothing but birds.”

  “Birds?”

  “Yeah. She seemed freaked out by it. Did you recover a phone from the crime scene?”

  Kayo finished up her notes and turned off her phone. “Yeah, we did. But it’s locked, and we don’t want to try passcodes right away until we get a better idea of how the encryption on the phone is set up. We have a few people on retainer who do this thing, not at the station. Want something to drink?”

  We chose the vending machine coffee, and Kayo used the station’s key card to buy them for us. While I sat and sipped, I remembered Amanda’s final warning to me. “Don’t try to play in the big leagues with me, Mei. You’ll lose.” She wanted Yasahiro back so badly. Why didn’t she hold onto him in the first place?

  “What’s next for Amanda?” I asked, wondering what would happen to her.

  Kayo sighed. “American funerals differ from Japanese ones, and her mother is Chinese, so they’ve asked that we hold her body until they get here. Well, after the autopsy.” She swallowed and cringed. “I hate dealing with dead bodies, especially bloody ones. Anyway, her parents will be on a flight here in an hour or two. Won’t land until sometime tomorrow. We also phoned her agent who said she’d take care of the publishing company.” Kayo sighed and drained her coffee can. “I expect the media to show up any moment.”

  She leaned forward and looked out the door, but no one was there. “The agent will cancel Cheung-san’s events and people will start talking. The chief wants to hold a press conference at city hall this evening, maybe tomorrow morning if we can get more leads tonight.”

  We all looked at the clock. It was already past 17:00. Time had slowed to a crawl.

  “They’ll suspect Yasahiro-san if you don’t send them in a different direction,” Mom said and Kayo agreed. “Because he’s the only reason she’d be in Chikata in the first place. If she’d been killed in Tokyo, we wouldn’t be in this mess. She told Mei-chan and Goro-san, she had a stalker at the hospital.”

  Right. One more suspect to add to the list. Maybe the same person who assaulted her the previous night came back to finish the job. But then why would she get into a car with the person who was stalking her?

  “Well, we can check on the stalker angle and anything else you may think of once Yasahiro-san is cleared, if he’s cleared.” Kayo stood up, ready to act on whatever was next on her to-do list.

  “What do you mean, if he’s cleared? You don’t actually think he would kill Amanda, do you?”

  Kayo shifted between her feet. “No, not likely?” She didn’t sound convinced. “Do you think he killed her?”

  “No!” Both Mom and I shouted in unison. Kayo raised her eyebrows at me to say “Really?” without saying it. I opened my mouth to defend Yasahiro and halted.

  Was I the best judge of character here? Tama was my old boyfriend. I slept with him, and he ended up trying to kill me. Had I gone down the same road again? Was the man I was in love with a killer in disguise? I pressed my fingers into the space between my eyes. My whole body hurt, and I needed rest.

  The door to the main offices swung open and Goro emerged, his face drawn and pale.

  “I have some, uh…” He rubbed the top of his head. “Some possibly precarious news. Yasahiro-san says he hasn’t seen Cheung-san since this morning, which is basically what you said, Mei-chan.”

  “Okay then? What?”

  “Well, he also says he wasn’t at the restaurant all day either.”

  My skin flushed, horror washing over me. Had I been wrong about him all this time? Please don’t let this be!

  “He says he left for a few hours from 13:00 to 15:00. I’ll have to go speak with the other employees to verif
y his story.”

  I blinked my eyes a few times, trying to understand this news. He was absent from the restaurant while Amanda was being killed.

  “But, if Yasa-kun killed Amanda, why would he even admit that he wasn’t at Sawayaka?” I stood up, running my fingers through my hair and grabbing my scalp. “This makes no sense.”

  “Tell me more about this lawyer business,” Goro said, grabbing my shoulders and steadying me.

  “It’s like I already said. They own this apartment together in Roppongi Hills. Amanda was staying there while she was in town, and she gave Yasa-kun the business card of a lawyer they would visit on Monday.” I closed my eyes and remembered the scene from Sawayaka. “Come to think of it, though, she never said they were going to the lawyer because of the apartment.” I huffed, frustrated with myself for jumping to conclusions. “It could have been anything.”

  Goro nodded his head slowly, and he softened. “This is exactly what Yasahiro-san thought too. She could have wanted anything. So, he says he went to see his own lawyer today after the lunch hour. The attorney he regularly uses for business matters is a friend and was able to meet him on the weekend. If we can corroborate the story, he can go.”

  “See, Mei-chan?” Mom got up from the chair to hug me as I hung my head. I was filled with doubts, and they ate away at my trusting nature and good will. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “There’s plenty to worry about, Mom,” I said over her shoulder. “This isn’t over.”

  “No, it’s not.” Goro pulled his phone from his pocket. “I have to follow up on his alibi, and he’s under house arrest until I do. You should go home with your Mom. Officers will stay with him overnight until I get this cleared up.”

  We all turned to the door as squealing tires came to a halt outside of the station, and two men jumped out of a car with news station logos emblazoned along the sides. Goro and Kayo sighed at the same time.

  “Kayo-san, take them out the back door, please.”

  I didn’t get to see Yasahiro again, and we barely made it through the office door before the reporters entered the station.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I was supposed to wake up in Yasahiro’s bed this morning, but instead, my eyes popped open, and I was greeted with my bedroom at home. The early, pink sky filtered in through the blinds, and the birds chirped in the bushes outside. I rolled over and put my back to the window.

  Everything had gone horribly wrong. Amanda was dead. Yasahiro was under house arrest. Our trip to Kumamoto was off. And my tea shop, the only thing I had been moderately successful with, was technically owned by the same boyfriend under house arrest. I could pick up everything inside of the tea shop and bring it somewhere else, but I doubted I’d find someone who would give me retail space for free. I was so screwed. My love life was in shambles. My career was dead in the water. Again.

  Plus, there was a murderer on the loose. I didn’t believe Yasahiro killed Amanda. I couldn’t believe it. Yes, he wanted her out of his life forever, but kill her? No. I pressed my eyes closed tight and tried to imagine him stabbing her in the chest a dozen times and then leaving her by the side of the road. No matter what I did, the picture wouldn’t form in my head. My brain imagined a hand swiftly driving a knife into Amanda’s chest over and over, but the face remained blank.

  I threw myself over onto my back and huffed. What did it matter? It’s not like my opinion or my daydreams proved anything. Yasahiro was missing for a span of time yesterday when Amanda was killed. He said he visited his attorney’s office instead of working at the restaurant. It was a likely explanation, and I hoped it was true. Otherwise… My scalp tingled, and my stomach turned over. Ugh. I was so nauseous lately. Everything about this Amanda business made me sick.

  I grabbed my phone and looked at the time, 6:35am. It was too early to call anyone to talk, and I couldn’t really call anyone anyway. Akiko was at the last day of her conference, and she wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. I’d have to call her around dinner time and let her know everything that was going on. I couldn’t call Kumi either. If I explained to her I was apprehensive and worried about Yasahiro, wondering if there were any more secrets he kept from me, she’d tell Goro. I needed to keep my mouth shut and not make any false accusations until I heard what was going on. Over the past few months, I’d learned to be less impulsive, and it would finally pay off.

  I got out of bed and grabbed the framed photo of Yasahiro and me from the top of my dresser. The photo was taken after our onsen winter trip. In the photo, the two of us smiled and raised our beers to the camera. We had spent a wonderful day with my family after driving home the previous night from a disastrous vacation. After all the New Year’s Day festivities, we’d gone back to his place that night to sleep in each other’s arms and talk of the future. I smiled as I held the frame to my chest and closed my eyes.

  “Mei-chan! Breakfast is ready!” I jolted awake, still holding the framed photo against my chest. I must have fallen back to sleep. I groaned as I got up, placed the photo on my dresser, got cleaned up in the bathroom, and went straight into the living area.

  The front door was open, the screen door cracked. Mom must have gone outside for something. I followed to the front door, slipped on my outside shoes, and peeked out. The front driveway and porch were quiet and vacant.

  “Mom?” I walked around the porch to the side of the house. No one was there. Huh. Maybe she forgot to close the door behind her when she came in earlier?

  A loud creak from the floorboards of the porch around the front made me jump, and I quickly circled the house to see who was there. No one but the wind chimes swinging in the early morning breeze.

  “I’m in the kitchen,” Mom called.

  I stood on the front porch, trying to decide what, if anything, I had heard. It was hard to say. I was still tired from sleeping.

  Returning to the house and leaving my shoes in the hall, I closed the door tight, locking it too while I was at it.

  “Mei-chan, you look pale,” Mom said, coming to me as I entered the kitchen. “You haven’t been eating enough lately, I can tell.”

  “I, uh, I think you might have a ghost, Mom.”

  Mom paused for a moment before bursting into a hearty laugh. “That’s a good one, Mei-chan. This house has never been haunted. Not in six generations, at least.”

  “I just…” I jerked my thumb at the front door and then thought better of it. Never mind. “Anyway, I could always eat more.”

  “Sit down and eat something while I get this chicken taken care of.” She was in the middle of processing a chicken for yakitori later that evening. I loved my mom’s grilled chicken and my mouth watered as she placed a bowl of rice in front of me with a side of warm salmon and miso soup. The rice smelled delicious, but the fish and miso soup had a different scent to them.

  I turned the plate around to inspect it on all sides, and Mom raised an eyebrow at me. “What?”

  “Did you cook this differently?” I poked at the fish with my chopsticks.

  “No. Mei-chan, stop being so picky and just eat.”

  I sighed and ate the rice first before folding in the fish. It didn’t taste different. Weird. My brain was playing tricks on me.

  “Mom, what do you think of Yasa-kun going to talk to a lawyer yesterday? He didn’t mention it to me at all.” My voice cracked, but I kept eating. The feelings of betrayal were riding high.

  Mom kept chopping up the chicken. “I think he’s a smart man in a difficult situation. He and Amanda lived together a long time before they broke up. I’m sure a lot of their finances were mixed up. It must have been hard for the two of them to separate the money when they split.” Mom dumped chicken parts into a container and thrust it into the refrigerator. “Remember that he has his own businesses and his own money, and he doesn’t have to share those things with you.”

  I did my best, despite wanting to jump up and rage at my mother, to keep a straight face. Okay, fine. We were only dating, and I
didn’t have to know everything. We’d only been together a little over six months, and we’d made no promises for the future except that he gave me the space for Oshabe-cha for free, and I was basically living with him half the week. I remembered New Year’s night when we made tentative plans to go to France, plans that became reality later in the month, and how he said he could see himself with me in Chikata for the rest of his life. It wasn’t a promise, but he had said it.

  “But…” Mom dragged out the word, and I perked up. “If he’s going to make things right this time around with you, then he should open up about everything, including his finances. Secrets killed his relationship with Amanda.”

  “Wow, Mom. Were you his psychotherapist or something before we were together?”

  Her lips quirked as she returned to her chopping.

  “He couldn’t go to his own mother about this, so he came to me. But I promised to take what he said to the grave if I had to. He was tired of everyone poking at his life. If you hadn’t noticed, he’s only ever said one thing about you in public, that video from Paris. Otherwise, he only talks about the restaurant or work.”

  I had noticed this, but I wasn’t sure what to think of it. My mother, once again, was a better observer than me.

  “He doesn’t want people knowing everything about him.”

  I ate more rice to cover up my unease. Either I was expecting too much from Yasahiro, pushing our relationship too far, or I was doomed because I didn’t know enough. I hated this limbo I was in, and it felt like nothing was secure. On Friday, I was happy with my painting, happy with the progress I was making on the tea shop, and happy to be leaving on a special trip with Yasahiro. None of those looked good anymore.

  Nausea crept up my spine, and my upper lip broke into a sweat. The smell of breakfast overwhelmed me as soon as Mom started chopping onions. The situation I was in, the craziness of my life, and all the scents of Mom’s kitchen crashed over me, and I had to go, to get out and away from it. I sprinted out the back door to get some fresh air. A cool morning breeze hit me in the face, and immediately, my stomach calmed.