by Toby Neal
“Sure.” Lei took out another evidence bag and picked up the paper carefully, leaning past the dead man to retrieve it. The fruity smell of decomp, faint but powerful, rose from the corpse. “If Corby’s prints are on that tape, he’s got to be dead at least two days.”
Ken had his camera out and shot the scene. “Just what I was thinking.”
Fukushima appeared, the gurney’s clattering wheels, pushed by her assistant, announcing their arrival. “What have we got?”
Ken told her, while Lei read the suicide note. It was written in beautiful calligraphic script on a translucent square of the paper used to make lanterns.
Dear friends. I have no family to shame with this choice to avoid my last months of suffering. I have pancreatic cancer, as many of you know, and I’m ready to go now—not in another three months when the doctors say I will. Please accept that I chose not to burden anyone with my end-of-life care and recognize my right to choose how to die.
And to my friend Soga, I finished my lanterns. Please light one for me at the Floating Lantern Ceremony.
Alfred Shimaoka
Lei felt her heart do a little flip as she looked back at the row of lanterns. Chances were very good the Soga he referred to was her grandfather Soga Matsumoto, whose home was mere blocks away. Her grandfather also volunteered at the Shinnyo temple, helping to build and repair the beautiful lanterns lit annually and floated out to sea in Waikiki on Memorial Day.
She slid the paper into the evidence bag without comment, sealing and marking it, as Ken and Fukushima continued their conferring and Ken took more pictures, circling around to her side and shooting the body from every possible angle.
“We’re going to want to go over this vehicle inch by inch,” Ken said. “If there’s anything else Corby left, we need to find it.”
Lei nodded, setting the bag with the others next to her kit. “I want to deal with that dog.”
“Poor dog,” Fukushima said. As usual, the fastidious ME was swathed in sterile wear and even wore a particle mask. Ken gestured to the keys, still in the ignition. “Chances are the door key is there.”
Lei lifted them out carefully, holding the side of the main key. She’d fingerprint that later—but for now, she walked across the garage to the back door and inserted a silver Schlage into the lock.
The dog that charged the door, yapping fiercely, was a wire-haired Jack Russell terrier, white with brown spots and a good deal of attitude.
Lei squatted down, lowering her voice and extending her closed fist for him to sniff. “Hey, boy. You hungry?”
The dog tentatively sniffed at her hand, and his tail wagged. She slowly stood up and advanced into the kitchen, spotting his bowls (both empty) against the wall. She picked up the water bowl first, turning on the sink and letting her eyes roam around the room, looking for anything out of place.
It was spotless and pristine except for a corner near the trash bin where the dog had succumbed to biology and defecated. She refilled the bowl and located a lidded trash bin filled with dry food. She refilled that too as the dog frantically lapped water.
Ken came up into the doorway. “We should search the house.”
“I know. Got a lot of detail work ahead, but I want to figure out something for this little guy.”
“Strange that Shimaoka didn’t give him away before he died. People planning their suicide usually do that. Another oddity.”
“Maybe he didn’t have time. Maybe it came up suddenly,” Lei said, frowning thoughtfully as she set the dog’s bowl down. The little terrier chomped down the food as fast as he could. “Did Ching find out the dog’s name from the neighbor?”
“Ask me yourself.” Ching approached across the garage with his clipboard.
“Hey, Detective. Did the lady who found the body say what the dog was called?” Lei ignored his attitude.
“His name’s Sam.” They all looked at the little dog with his nose in the bowl. “She said Shimaoka usually took good care of the dog.”
“I wonder if she’d be willing to take care of him until a relative or something can be located.”
Ching leafed through the papers on his clipboard, removed one and handed it to her. “Here’s her contact information.” He was clearly not volunteering for dog care duty. “She seemed attached to Shimaoka. Cried a lot over the discovery. Said she knew about the cancer.”
Sam finished eating and darted out the open doorway and through the garage, past the open door of the SUV, where his master’s body was being awkwardly wrestled into a body bag by Dr. Fukushima and her assistant. Ching and Ken hurried to help while Lei ran after the dog. Sam trotted into the immaculate little front yard and did his business. Lei scanned the neighbors still clustered on the other side of the tape Ching had put up at the end of the driveway.
One woman, dressed in purple sweats and a T-shirt with a lei hand painted across the front, was crying into a dish towel. Lei approached her, glancing at the paper Ching had handed her. “Hi there. You wouldn’t be Sherry Thompson, would you?”
“Yes.” The woman looked up, brown eyes streaming. She had the kind of complexion that didn’t age well in Hawaii, tissue-like freckled skin patched with red. “I was a good friend of Alfred. I can’t believe he did this to himself.”
“Tell me what happened, please.”
She listened to a recap of what Ching had already told them, with embellishments of shock and grief. Finally, when Sherry was winding down, Lei gestured to the little dog doing a patrol lap of the front yard. “Any chance you could take care of Sam? I’d hate to see Animal Control have to come take him to the Humane Society.”
Sherry squatted and opened her arms in reply. “Sam! Come here, boy! I’m happy to take him and at least try to find a home for him.” The terrier ran to her, and she scooped him up. “Can I get his leash and food?”
“Just a moment,” Lei said, trying to physically turn the woman away from the sight of Fukushima and her assistant loading the black body bag and gurney into the ME van, but she was unsuccessful. Sherry watched with her mouth ajar, color draining from her highly colored face. As if sensing her distress, Sam licked her chin until she looked back down at him.
“I can’t believe he didn’t do something for Sam,” Sherry said. “He loved this dog. Took such good care of him.”
“You seem like you’re surprised Mr. Shimaoka took his own life, but Detective Ching said you knew he had cancer.”
“I knew he had cancer, but not what kind. He was in pain, and he didn’t like to take medication. We’d talked about that several times. I guess if I’d known it was pancreatic cancer—which is painful and terminal—I wouldn’t have been so shocked.” She stroked the little dog’s fur. “I better get his things.”
Lei led Sherry and another helpful neighbor into the kitchen to pick up the dog’s food, leash, bed, and toys. “Thank you, Agent Texeira. You’re very kind,” Sherry Thompson said.
“Just want to find him a good home.” Lei couldn’t remember anyone calling her kind before—she must be mellowing with age. She kept the women from going any farther into the house and rejoined Ken at the SUV as the ladies walked off with the dog and his accoutrements.
“Whew. Got that taken care of. Got a little more information on our victim too.”
“Good.” Ken handed her the handheld vacuum with its special trap for fibers. “Back to work. Let’s get this car done.”
Evening bloomed a salmon glow over clouds above Punchbowl when Lei was finally able to drive out from the Bureau headquarters into her grandfather’s neighborhood near where Alfred Shimaoka had lived. She’d told Ken about the likely connection to the name in the note, but it had taken hours to go over Shimaoka’s car inch by inch and then to search his house. They’d then taken samples, fibers, prints, and photos back to headquarters and spent more hours processing the evidence in Workroom One. Finally Ken had dismissed her, saying, “I want you to interview your grandfather. He’s the only person mentioned by name in the note.”
Lei drove through the quiet neighborhood with its neat lawns and monkeypod shade trees, passing Shimaoka’s house and going on to Soga Matsumoto’s. She’d made a photocopy of the suicide note after they’d analyzed it—no prints but Shimaoka’s were on it.
Lei continued to wonder how Corby’s prints could be on the duct tape off the tailpipe, indicating an assist with the suicide apparatus. Yet important areas where other fingerprints would have been, like the suicide note and the keys, were marked by none but Shimaoka, indicating the death was by his own hand.
How could two such different people ever even meet, let alone join in executing Shimaoka’s death? And then someone had assisted in Corby’s too.
There were still too many missing pieces in both cases.
Lei pulled her silver Tacoma up to the curb in front of her grandfather’s low, modest ranch home. The grass of the front yard was a beautiful, putting-green quality Bermuda, decorated with a small cement temple and a single, clipped bonsai juniper.
Lei usually met her grandfather for lunch at his favorite noodle house. She’d been over to his home only one other time, at the holidays, when her grandfather had invited her and her visiting aunt and father over for tea. It had been a tense hour for Lei, full of awkward pauses, but an important gesture on Soga’s part as her parents’ marriage hadn’t been supported by the Matsumotos. They’d never tried to find or contact Lei after their daughter Maylene died, and without her aunty Rosario’s intervention, Lei would have ended up in foster care.
Aunty Rosario had brought her famous poi rolls, a Tupperware of the Portuguese bean soup her restaurant was known for, and a mouth tight with disapproval—until she’d had several cups of warm sake and Soga had patted Lei’s hand. “Having Lei in my life has made me so happy. I wasn’t able to see her before my wife died.”
The delicate inflection confirmed what Wayne Texeira had told Lei and Rosario—Yumi Matsumoto, Lei’s grandmother, was the author of the separation between the Matsumotos and the Texeiras. Now she was gone, dead of a heart attack more than a year ago.
Lei had witnessed the visible relaxation of adults affected by a powerful presence she had never been able to know. The tension was also eased for Lei. The remaining members of her family were willing to find common ground with one another for her sake.
Lei walked up the cement path to the shiny black-lacquered front door with its geometric knocker. She had to knock hard, several times, before she heard her grandfather’s footsteps—deliberate but not shuffling. He opened the door and smiled at the sight of her, his stern face lighting up. “Lei!”
“Hi, Grandfather.” She’d decided on that slightly formal appellation a while ago—it suited him best. “Can I come in? I have to talk with you about something.”
“Of course. Let me put on some tea.” The door opened into a dining area, with a sunken table flush with the floor, preserving the Japanese seating tradition. The colors of the room were quiet grays, muted in dim lighting. A black leather couch against the far wall set off a framed watercolor of Mount Fuji.
Lei followed him through the room into the kitchen, an immaculate space filled with golden evening and shiny surfaces. She seated herself at the round table for two beneath the window while he filled an electric kettle with water. She took a moment to look into the backyard with its tiered rows of orchid shelves and open workshop, a dangling bulb lighting a workbench covered with materials for making lanterns.
The Floating Lantern Ceremony was a huge event organized annually by the Shinnyo Buddhist Temple to honor the fallen and lost on Memorial Day. Her grandfather had invited her to participate last year, and they’d lit three lanterns at the ceremony: one for her mother, one for her grandmother Yumi, and one for her friend from the Big Island, Mary Gomes. Lei would never forget the sight of the lanterns in the Canal in Waikiki, the magical way the yellow candles had glowed by the thousands reflected in the water.
Her grandfather and Alfred Shimaoka were among the many volunteers who retrieved, repaired, and built new lanterns each year for the event. She reached into the backpack that doubled as her purse and took out the photocopied suicide note, placing it facedown on the table as her grandfather returned with a bamboo tray set with small ceramic cups and a teapot.
“It is good to see you.” The evening light shone on his silver hair as he set the tea tray on the table. “The water will be a few more minutes.”
“Okay. I see you’ve got a lot going in the workshop.” Lei pointed out the window to his lit workbench.
“I have many lanterns to get ready by the end of May.” It was mid-March. He opened a canister of loose tea leaves and scooped some into an empty hand-thrown ceramic pot.
“Well, that’s in part what I’m here about. Did you know Alfred Shimaoka?”
“I know him, yes.” Soga looked at her. Dark eyes, shadowed by the fold of his eyelids, revealed worry in the creases. “He is my friend.”
“I’m very sorry to tell you—but he’s died.”
The teakettle began a high-pitched squall, and Soga got up. She saw his shoulders draw up tightly and then drop, a deliberate loosening. As he returned to the table, his face had smoothed into neutral. He poured the boiling water into the teapot.
“I knew he was sick.”
“Yes, he was. But he didn’t die of cancer. He committed suicide.” She slid the letter in its plastic sleeve over to him. “He mentioned you.”
Soga ignored the note lying in front of them like an accusation. He stirred the tea with a bamboo whisk, placed the lid on. “It must sit for a few minutes.”
Her grandfather was deliberate in everything he did, especially tea. She wasn’t surprised at his lack of reaction to Shimaoka’s note—he always took time to adjust to things. He’d read it when he was ready.
Soga got up. “I have something for you too. I was waiting for the right time to give it to you.” He walked out.
Lei took the simple handleless cups, with their translucent green glaze, off the tray and placed one in front of each of their places. She’d heard of the Japanese tea ceremony but didn’t know anything about it, assumed her grandfather did.
He returned, carrying a large wooden box with a slanted top and handed it to her. “This was your grandmother’s writing desk. She kept some keepsakes of your mother’s and photos in here. I thought you should have it.”
Lei felt her stomach clench. She might as well be holding Pandora’s box. Her voice was pitched high as she replied. “Wow. This is special. Thank you, Grandfather.”
“You’re welcome.”
Soga set a strainer over Lei’s small cup and, using both hands, carefully poured the tea into the cup. “I would like to take you to Japan sometime. Show you a real tea ceremony.”
“That would be wonderful.” Lei inhaled the delicate fragrance of the tea, scented with jasmine, and watched as he transferred the strainer to his own cup, poured, then set the teapot down on its trivet. Each movement was precise and economical.
She set the box of memories down by her feet and turned to face her grandfather, copying his movements as he folded his hands and made a slight bow to her; then they both picked up the cups and sipped.
The tea was hot and tasted like toasted flowers. “Delicious.”
Her grandfather got up and fetched a small box of rice crackers. “A little taste of something. We always try to balance the taste of the tea.”
“Thank you.” Lei took a cracker. It burst with the salty flavor of nori seaweed on her tongue. “These sort of melt in your mouth.”
“Yes.” They ate and drank for a moment as Lei felt the stress of the day drain away in this peaceful setting. What did it matter whether the meeting took five or thirty minutes? She was with her grandfather in his world. Finally, when his tea was gone, Soga reached over and drew the note to him, turned it over. His face was stoic as he read.
“What can you tell me about Alfred Shimaoka?” Lei asked at last. “Why do you think he mentions you in the note?
”
“I knew Alfred for many years.” Soga poured himself another cup of tea, refreshed Lei’s. “He was a good man. A man of his word. He had an obligation to fix the lanterns, and he fulfilled it. He mentions me only because he wanted to be remembered that way, and it doesn’t surprise me. He has no family, no children.”
“I know he was an architect. Tell me about his work.”
“He was a good architect. He worked for a big firm, Matsei and Company, for many years. He was very good at his designs. He retired when he got sick.” Soga ate a cracker. “I will go to his house and bring the lanterns back here.”
“Not yet, Grandfather. It’s still a crime scene for a little longer.”
“What do you mean? He died by his own hand.”
“Anytime there’s a strange death, we investigate it. And there are oddities about his death.”
Soga looked up at her with eyes so dark they were almost black. “Oddities?”
“I can’t say more than that, and really there’s nothing more to add. But did you know of anything in Alfred’s life that . . . didn’t fit? That would lead him to suicide?”
“No, other than he was sick with cancer and became withdrawn. He was in pain, but he disliked medicines. This does not surprise me, his choice.” Soga looked down at the note, but his hands remained in his lap. “He would not talk about it. But he did not like medication.”
“Did you know his little dog, Sam?”
Soga smiled, a fan of creases folding from the corners of his eyes. “Yes. So energetic, his dog.”
“Well, one of the oddities is that he just left the dog in the house. Did not give him away or have anyone care for it. It seems inconsistent.”
“Yes.” Soga picked up his cup with two hands, his gnarled fingers delicate on the rim. “I think that’s strange too. He loved that dog.”
“A neighbor is taking care of Sam right now, but she already has a dog. What do you think of adopting him?” Lei asked impulsively.
Her grandfather set down the cup. “I have a quiet house. I don’t have time.”
