Nightshade

by Jonelle Patrick

  “I didn’t say the information isn’t available. I said the official report might not get to headquarters for days. Especially in a case that’s presumed to be suicide, the kind of case that wouldn’t interest the murder squad. Unless somebody requests their assistance, they won’t be assigned to move into the precinct unless there’s a major crime to investigate.”

  “Ah.” Kenji understood. “You don’t happen to know anybody who could get this advance information from the specialists, do you?”

  “As a matter of fact, just last month I attended a conference with the head of staff at Tokyo University’s School of Legal Medicine.”

  “In that case, I’ll talk to Section Chief Tanaka to see if he’ll authorize a post-mortem on the girl. Thanks, Rowdy-san.”

  Kenji sat back in his chair. He looked at his notes and reread the words he’d underlined as he talked with Loud.

  No drugs.

  Fifty Pinky tablets, swallowed whole. Swallowed whole as though they were pills.

  Rika Ozawa had swallowed pills that wouldn’t kill her and left a suicide note that didn’t say anything.

  Chapter 17

  Monday, April 8

  6:00 P.M.

  Yumi

  “I’m not wearing that.”

  “But Yumi, you’d look lovely in it. It’s perfect for the season.”

  Mrs. Hata held up the pale pink kimono, dripping with cherry blossoms. She’d already sewn the white undercollar on, so it would be ready to wear.

  “No.”

  “But Yumi, Mrs. Mitsuyama said—”

  “I’m not dating Mrs. Mitsuyama.”

  “But the Empress—”

  “I’m not dating the Empress, either.”

  Yumi’s father called from the kitchen. “Okaa-san, do we have any more Otokoyama?”

  Mrs. Hata sighed. She folded the pink kimono over her arm and went to fetch a fresh bottle of sake.

  Yumi didn’t really intend to wear the slinky cocktail dress she’d threatened her mother with, but she’d been irritated at being pressured by Mrs. Mitsuyama, and when her own mother jumped in, trying to dress her like a 1970s tourist souvenir, it was just too much.

  If she had to wear a kimono, at least it could be a stylish one. Pulling open the bottom drawer in the wide kimono chest, she flipped through the carefully wrapped layers. Too bad she couldn’t wear her favorite—its purple morning glory design wouldn’t be in season until early September. Digging a little deeper, she pulled out a flat package wrapped in washi paper. Untying the cord, she lifted out a 1920s kimono of slithery crimson and black silk, patterned with large white flowers that looked like they were made of lace. She removed several obi sashes from another drawer, held them up one by one against the kimono, then put away all but the one woven with a lively geometric pattern of spring green, pale yellow, and red. By the time her mother returned, she’d stitched on a green-and-white-checkered undercollar and was halfway dressed, clips and ties holding the underslips in place as she tucked up the kimono so it would just skim her zori sandals.

  Mrs. Hata sighed in resignation and pitched in to help.

  “Why is Dad home so early tonight?” Yumi asked, holding her arms out to the side.

  Her mother adjusted the folds in back before measuring out the first wrap of the four-meter-long obi. “Today he was interviewed by the faculty panel for that professorship he’s hoping to get.”

  Yumi held one end of the obi while her mother wrapped the other end around her. “How did it go?”

  “He says it went great, but . . .” Yumi’s mother pulled the obi tight as both of them silently finished the sentence: That’s what he always said.

  Her mother started working on the bow in back, one of the elaborate winged knots that would identify her daughter as an unmarried women.

  “When will they decide?” Yumi asked.

  “Next week, I think.” Mrs. Hata tweaked the checkered obijime cord that held the obi in place and pulled back, eyeing it critically. “Want to go to the Nezu Shrine with me tomorrow to make a few offerings? Can’t hurt.”

  Yumi clipped a rosette of vintage lace to the cord, pinned on a veiled crimson hat at a jaunty angle, and pulled on her favorite black mesh gloves. She turned to look in the mirror, and her reflection confirmed she’d made the right choice. Technically traditional enough, but not boring.

  Her mother nervously adjusted the bow in back, frowning. “Why do you have to wear all those strange accessories? You look like one of those girls who parade down Omotesando Boulevard!”

  Yumi smiled, pleased that she’d succeeded. The doorbell rang. She snatched up her sandals and looped a shimmery silver evening bag over her wrist. Shuffling to the entryway, she set down her zoris and stepped into them, putting on a smile as she opened the door.

  It wasn’t Ichiro.

  “Oh! Good evening, Mrs. Mitsuyama,” Yumi said, startled to see his mother instead.

  Formal greetings were exchanged and kimonos mutually admired. Ichiro’s mother presented the Hatas with a box of expensive rice crackers, apologizing that she couldn’t come in because her husband was waiting in the car.

  The driver bowed and opened the back door of the big Lexus. Mrs. Mitsuyama slid in first, next to Ichiro’s father.

  Yumi peered in, checking both back and front seats. “Isn’t Ichiro coming?”

  “Didn’t he tell you? He had to be there early—he’s performing.”

  Yumi groaned inwardly. No wonder he’d been reluctant to invite her. This wasn’t going to be a date with him, it was a date with his parents. Too late now. She arranged her face into a pleasant expression and folded herself into the car next to Mrs. Mitsuyama.

  But the car ride wasn’t as awkward as she’d feared. Instead of seventeen stops on the subway with a change at Ueno and a long walk from Kamiyacho Station, the big car purred smoothly through the traffic and pulled up to the curb right in front of Suntory Hall as they chatted about music.

  The Mitsuyamas whisked her inside. As they made their way to their seats, Yumi was caught up in a dizzying whirlwind of introductions. Smiled upon by an ex-prime minister, casually invited backstage by a legendary Kabuki actor, and complimented by the man who would be shogun if the Meiji Restoration had never happened, by the time they reached their seats, her head was spinning. It was the first time she’d experienced what it was like to be a member of the Mitsuyamas’ inner circle.

  She’d barely finished looking over the program when everyone stood and five hundred pairs of hands began to clap. A slight woman stood at the rail of the box opposite and waved graciously. The Empress was much smaller than she looked in photographs.

  The first half of the program was a performance by the wife of the American ambassador, playing two-piano Rachmaninoff with her Japanese counterpart. When the curtains reopened, Ichiro stood with his quartet, looking dashing in a tuxedo, his violin gleaming in the spotlight. The four musicians bowed first toward the Empress, then to the audience, before raising their bows to begin the first movement of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden.

  The intensity on Ichiro’s face was something Yumi hadn’t seen before. On stage, lost in the music, he wasn’t the plain, somewhat stiff man she had met across the o-miai lunch table. And he was surprisingly good. Yumi hadn’t really noticed how well he played at the long-ago Asia Society gathering in Boston. When the musicians lifted their bows in a final flourish at the end of the “Presto,” his features lit up with an incandescent smile. Applause rose in waves from the audience.

  After they bowed deeply to the Empress, then the hall, the curtain closed. The audience continued to clap and when the curtain reopened, the quartet bowed again, joined by the pianists. As they straightened, Ichiro looked up at her. She smiled back and clapped harder.

  Afterward, she hovered at the edge of a scrum o
f well-wishers backstage, as Ichiro flicked glances in her direction over the shoulders of the fashionable young men and women crowding in to congratulate him. As soon as was polite, he excused himself and made his way through the crowd to Yumi, leaving no doubt in anybody’s mind whom he’d been playing for that evening. Ichiro’s parents took a taxi home, leaving them the car and driver.

  She followed him back to the practice room where the quartet had warmed up. Well-worn cork tiled the floor, and dark scrapes along the walls attested to the instrument cases that had been wrestled in and out by generations of performers. Ichiro’s violin case sat open on one of the stackable chairs arranged in a haphazard semicircle behind battered black music stands. Musicians and their admirers drifted past the door, gearing up for the afterparties.

  The viola player had already put away her instrument and was pulling pins from her hair. She shook it out, and Yumi was surprised to see a magenta streak that had been carefully hidden under her chignon. She was wearing a pair of conservative Mikimoto pearl earrings, but tiny piercings marched up the sides of both ears.

  “God, I’m glad that’s finally over,” she said, shrugging a black leather biker jacket over her gown. “Mitsu-boy, you played well tonight.”

  “So did you.” Ichiro grinned.

  Turning to Yumi, the viola player said, “Apparently you’re a good influence. I’m Nikki.”

  “And I’m Yumi. Pleased to meet you. Great concert.”

  Nikki made a face and shouldered a black leather purse dripping with silver chains and crosses. “Just don’t tell anybody you saw me here, playing Schubert and dressed like this.” She gazed down scornfully at her black Vera Wang gown. “My band would disown me.”

  “How’s that going?” Ichiro asked.

  “We’ve got a ‘live’ at a club on Friday, actually. And I’ll tell you one thing—Goths pay a lot better than Her Imperial Highness.” She grinned wickedly. “You should come. It’d be good for you.”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Mitsu, you’re hopeless. Such an incurably dutiful eldest son.”

  The cellist stuck his head in the door. “Nikki-chan, you coming? The cab’s waiting.”

  She picked up her case and whispered to Yumi, “Work on loosening up Mr. Heir Apparent here, will you?”

  Chapter 17

  Monday, April 8

  11:30 P.M.

  Yumi

  A few hours later, after making an appearance at the sponsors’ gala, Ichiro and Yumi sank onto a leather sofa in the penthouse suite of the Grand Hyatt at one of the private afterparties. Vast windows framed a view of the twinkling boulevards far below, and reflected the floor-to-ceiling bookcases lining the spacious room. Nearly half the young women were wearing kimonos, exotic flowers against the stark black of their escorts’ tuxedos.

  Ichiro’s black tie was hanging loose, and Yumi had stopped caring if her obi bow got crushed. The son of the chairman of Suntory uncorked a bottle of Chateau de Beaucastel and poured the wine around, assuring everyone they’d be ruined for any other Bordeaux after drinking it. Yumi secretly would have preferred a lemon-flavored, canned chu-hai, but Ichiro and his friends were clearly used to more-sophisticated drinks. She didn’t want to embarrass him, so she dutifully accepted a glass. It wasn’t nearly sweet enough, but she managed to sip it without making a face.

  She wondered if she’d ever develop a taste for French wine. It was hard to imagine preferring it to a nice, fruity cocktail that hid the taste of the alcohol, but stranger things had happened in the past few weeks.

  Until a month ago, her entire social life had revolved around Rika and Coco. All three of them chafed against the unspoken rules about everything from proper dress to proper ambitions, but her friends would never understand why she sometimes felt like such an alien in Japan. Rika and Coco had never been out of the country, didn’t even have passports.

  Ichiro’s friends were different. Their families had been moved across the global chessboard by diplomatic and corporate assignments, their childhoods salted with exotic foreign languages. They too had encountered inedible-looking foods like artichokes and made foreign faux pas that were as embarrassing as forgetting to take off the plastic toilet slippers when returning to a Tokyo dinner party. This was the third time she’d met Ichiro’s friends, and she was still astonished she had so much in common with the privileged scions she’d expected to find snobby and spoiled. Unlike most people she met in Tokyo, they made her feel she was already a member of their club. She no longer felt uncomfortable with their expensive clothes and casual acceptance of luxury; the only thing she envied was that they were all so at home in Japan.

  Ichiro’s face was glowing as his friends drifted in and out, congratulating him on his performance. Sitting on the sofa next to him, aware of the city spread at their feet, she realized with an almost electric shock that she could choose this. Not just the luxury, but the belonging. She’d been trudging along, one foot in front of the other, and suddenly found herself on the crest of a ridge, looking down into a dazzling country she hadn’t realized existed. For the first time, she let herself imagine what it would be like to be part of Ichiro’s life.

  A sneaking discomfort interrupted her thoughts. She was going to need a bathroom soon. The penthouse suite was so trendily Western she knew it wouldn’t have a Japanese-style squat toilet, and experience had taught her that Western toilets and kimono could be a disastrous combination. Should she venture out into the public part of the hotel in search of a Japanese-style o-tearai? Or wrestle with her clothing en suite?

  Urgency decided for her. She’d better seek out the closest one. Excusing herself, she walked through the sitting room next door and found a powder room down the hall.

  It took a good ten minutes to deal with her kimono, then repair her makeup. Finally satisfied with what she saw in the mirror, she retraced her steps down the hallway, but slowed at the sound of men’s voices in the sitting room she’d have to pass through on her way back to Ichiro. Their confidential tone warned that it would be an intrusion to burst in, so she hung back and waited, hoping they’d leave soon.

  “. . . by the time she went with the building manager to open the Hamadas’ front door, Hiro was in really bad shape. Hadn’t eaten in over a day, hadn’t called any of his relatives to tell them the news. My mother said it looked like he’d been drinking his way through everything in the house. Empties everywhere. He was pretty out of it.”

  “No wonder. Poor guy. Losing both parents like that.”

  “Yeah, what a shock.”

  “Was it really . . . jisatsu?”

  “That’s what the detective told our building manager. Found them dead, early Saturday morning, in a car at the Komagome Shrine. Hiro was out of his mind with grief, saying all kinds of crazy things. My mother was so worried she asked our doctor to come over and give him a sedative. She called his aunt and stayed with him until she arrived.”

  “I wonder what’ll happen to Hamada Sweets. Will Hiro take over?”

  “I guess, but until he gets himself promoted to president, nothing much will change except the size of his golf bets.”

  “When are the funerals?”

  “Haven’t heard.”

  “Well, one thing’s for sure, he won’t be playing in the tournament next Saturday.”

  “Damn, that’s right. The tournament.” Yumi heard a groan. “Do you think we can get Mitsuyama to make up our foursome?”

  “I’ll ask him. You want another drink?”

  “Nah, it’s getting late. I have to work tomorrow.” The leather chairs sighed as they rose to leave.

  Yumi stood in the hallway, stunned. They’d been talking about the two people who’d been found in the car with Rika! Were they really the parents of someone Ichiro knew? What would it be like, to lose both parents at once? For a moment she let herself taste that immense
loss: alone, in the drafty house in Komagome, kept company only by the ghosts of her disappointed father and worried mother. She shivered, remembering the weekend her parents had been away in Hakone, how dark and silent the house had felt the night she’d broken up with Ben.

  Smoothing her kimono, she made her way back to the party. The crowd had thinned and quieted. Intimate conversations warmed the room, lamps illuminating the faces of Ichiro’s friends. From the doorway, she watched him laughing easily with a pair of girls in beautifully cut gowns. She joined them and Ichiro pulled her down next to him with a grin.

  “Where have you been all this time? I thought you’d never come back,” he whispered in her ear, and she curled up next to him, grateful for the warmth.

  Chapter 19

  Tuesday, April 9

  12:00 P.M.

  Kenji

  After a morning spent tying up loose ends on the gang case, Kenji finally escaped the station with Suzuki to track down the fired Hamada Sweets purchasing manager. They fortified themselves at a convenience store near Ueno Station with rice balls and cold tea before venturing into the warren of residential streets nearby.

  As they searched for the address, Kenji wondered whether the forensic specialist would do Rika Ozawa’s autopsy today. Her mother had given tearful permission that morning, and the body had been transferred to Tokyo University’s Legal Medicine morgue. He’d left a message on Yumi’s phone about the post-mortem.

  While Suzuki walked down the street searching for the Aritas’ apartment building, Kenji spotted a grandmotherly woman sweeping her front step with a twig broom. The indigo-dyed farmer pants she wore were as old-fashioned as her house, a one-story wooden structure crouching between the tall, stuccoed apartments. Her hair was pinned back in a bun, and her worn wooden geta clopped on the pavement as she bustled back and forth.

  “Good afternoon, honorable auntie,” he said, bowing and showing his police ID. “I’m Detective Kenji Nakamura. I was wondering if you know which building the Arita family lives in?”