by Kay Hadashi
Chapter Twenty-One
The Rolex wristwatch was burning a hole in Gina’s curiosity ever since Detective Kona returned it to her, with the message that it was useless in his investigation. Even though she was piecing together some of the clues in Danny’s death, the Rolex wasn’t fitting in. Nobody was owning up to knowing anything about it, and quite oddly, no one wanted the thing that was worth thousands of dollars. But it had something to do with Danny, she knew it. There was no way a Rolex found in the grass only steps from where Danny’s body was found, and within only twenty-four hours, that it could have nothing to do with him.
Gina dressed in the bikini she’d brought from home. It was a gift from her sister right before coming to Hawaii, and for as much as it revealed, it was more of a gag gift. Putting on her last clean blouse and a pair of shorts, and gathering a towel, water, and a paperback book in her bag, she left home with the Rolex in her pocket.
After a couple of wrong turns in town, she found the mall Detective Kona had suggested. Leaving her beach bag in the Datsun, she left that behind.
“Hey!” a guy said coming in her direction. “Nice truck. Where’d you get it? Toys ‘r Us?”
“Yeah, funny.” Gina kept walking toward the mall entrance, but peeked over her shoulder a couple of times to see what guy was doing. The last thing she wanted was for some wise guy to vandalize her borrowed truck. When she saw him climb into his own giant pickup truck, she figured it was just testosterone speaking for him.
She was almost in the mall when she heard a terrible scraping sound of metal on concrete, followed by a string of profanities. When she looked back, the wise guy was out of his truck, examining the shiny paint on one side. When he looked at the concrete pillar next to his truck, she knew what had happened.
“Oh well, that’s what you get from driving a pointlessly big truck to the mall parking garage.”
Gina took a lap through the food court, where she recognized a few of the fast food places. Most of the food served there represented cultures of the Pacific Rim. After touring the lower floors, she went up the escalator to the top level. Just like Detective Kona had said, it was an entirely different world, with expensive clothing stores, jewelers, and handbags that cost as much as a new car. Avoiding the glitz and glimmer of stores she’d never even heard of, she went to one of the jewelry stores.
The air-conditioning hit hard when she entered the jewelry store. Walking a slow lap through the store, she looked through glass cases, figuring the stock in that one little shop could buy all of Little Italy at home. But she found a cabinet of Rolex watches, the reason she went in. She lingered at the case, trying to match her watch with the others.
“May I help you, Miss?” a man in a stiff white shirt, necktie, and expensive suit asked. Even his eyeglasses looked too rich for ordinary use.
Gina took half a step back, wondering what sort of white-collar hell she’d fallen into. “I, well, hope so.”
“Interested in a Rolex specifically?”
“I’m interested in some information.” She dug the Rolex from her pocket and held it out to him. “I need to learn something about this particular watch. Is there a consumer database that can be accessed to identify the owner of it?”
He barely glanced at it. “It’s not yours?”
“I found it a few days ago. I’ve been asking around if anyone has lost it, but no one knows anything about it. I’m figuring Rolex might have a customer database that identifies the owner. If so, I can return it once I know the owner’s name.”
He flicked his fingers for her to hand it over. Touching it with as few fingers as possible, he took a close look. He didn’t seem satisfied with something, and used a single ocular loupe for a closer inspection.
“It’s not stolen, at least not that I know of,” she added.
“I’m sure that it’s not, Miss.” He opened the clasp and looked at the back of the watch, again with the magnifying loupe. Popping the loupe from his eye to put away, he returned the watch to Gina. “I am also sure that the owner probably isn’t missing it.”
“Why not? I sure would be if it were mine.”
“It is not an authentic Rolex timepiece.”
“Oh.” Gina looked at it, wondering how he knew that. She wasn’t sure if she should be disappointed or happy.
“Maybe I should explain,” he said. “There are two things not quite right about it. First, the color of that face is one of the current colors they use, but the lettering and numerals are from a few years ago. That color and those numerals were never found on any of their timepieces at the same time. Also, if you look at the reverse, you’ll find incorrect serial numbering.”
“Incorrect?”
“That serial number would not be found in the Rolex database, except under one circumstance.”
Gina tried reading the tiny numbers on the back. “Which is?”
“It would be listed as not authentic.”
“It’s a fake number?”
The man seemed to stiffen at her choice of words. “You could say that, yes.”
“I don’t understand. Doesn’t every watch have a unique serial number? How could you possible know this one is fake without looking it up?” she asked.
“Every jeweler and seller of fine Rolex timepieces has that serial number memorized.” When a customer came into the store, he leaned closer to the counter to speak with Gina privately. “Somebody somewhere is making imitation watches, not just this brand, but of other fine brands. They are all of very nice craftsmanship, extremely well made, but they are copies. The first few times these came onto the market, jewelers were fooled by the quality. But when they started showing up in large numbers, the serial numbers were shared. That’s when we discovered they all had the same identifying number, one that is not listed in the Rolex database as authentic. In fact, their database mentions that specific number as being, how did you put it? Fake.”
For some reason, Gina felt disappointed, even though it was a found item. “It’s not worth anything?”
He took the watch from her again for another close examination. “What you have here is a very nice watch of high quality movement and construction. If the maker of these watches would’ve branded them in some other way, even with his own name instead of trying to dupe people, he could have had a very profitable career as a watchmaker. But with that brand name on the face and the inauthentic serial number on the reverse, I’m afraid it’s entirely worthless. No proper jeweler even wants it in their shop, as you can imagine.” He gave the watch back to her.
“I guess that’s why nobody is looking for it?”
“Probably. It is a very nice watch, though. Maybe it could be a gift to a boyfriend or your father, as long as you told them it was not an authentic Rolex, of course.”
“Of course.” She put the watch back in her pocket. She had to save face somehow, and not simply run from the store. Even though it wasn’t her watch and she’d had no way of knowing it was fake, she still felt embarrassed by bringing it into the nicest jewelry store she’d ever been in. “Mind if I look around for a moment?”
“Please,” he said, smiling.
While he chatted with someone that seemed to be a regular customer, Gina took another lap through the store, looking in cases of wedding rings and bracelets.
“Yeah, like I’ll ever get a ring from a place like this,” she mumbled.
The same man came back. “Would you like to try one on?”
“A ring? Me?”
He unlocked a case and brought out a velvet tray of diamond rings. They flickered and flashed in the lighting, exactly the way they were supposed to. He took out one of the smaller ones and slipped it on her finger. She assumed that since it did not have a tag on it, the price was in the home mortgage range.
“What do you think?” he asked.
She held her hand up and waved it in the light. “I think any man that could afford something like this would give it to someone besides me.” Gina took it off and hande
d it back.
He got another ring, the largest and flashiest in the tray. “This would be lovely on your hand.”
She slipped in on her ring finger, took one look, and slipped it off again. “Yes, lovely on a hand with dirty nails. I’d look fabulous digging in the garden wearing that.”
He smiled politely while putting away the tray.
“Thanks for letting me fantasize,” she said. “And for the information about the watch."
“It’s been my pleasure. What is your name?”
“Gina.”
“I’m Grayson. I hope to see you here again.”
“Thanks. I think the stores downstairs are a little more my speed.”
He got her attention again with a polite flick of his hand. “We’re having an unadvertised sale next month, if you’d like to participate.”
Gina couldn’t get out of the store fast enough. Too many shiny baubles, and the mention of a sale, were bad news for someone from Little Italy with a few bucks in the bank. It wouldn’t be hard at all to…
Grayson had followed her out. “Miss?”
She turned back to him. “Yes?”
He let the shop door close behind him and looked up and down the mall walkway. “Even though I just made a point of the inauthenticity of your timepiece, I know someone who might be interested in owning it.” He smiled, but nervously this time. “As a way of getting it out of the fine jewelry marketplace, of course.”
“Of course. How would I find this collector?”
“Through me, naturally.”
“Naturally. What would it be worth to your friend the collector?”
“A hundred.”
If there was one thing Gina could do, it was horse-trading, and it couldn’t be that much different in Hawaii than in Cleveland. “You just got through telling me how well made it is. I’d expect more than that,” she said.
“Are you interested or not?”
“I’d be much more interested in a much higher price.”
“I…my friend couldn’t go much higher.”
“For the price being offered, the free info about it was worth more to me.” Knowing she could always go back at a later date, she gave him a smile as though she’d won the trade, even if no horses had been swapped. “I might see what others have to say about it. I can always use it as a gift, like you said.”
He seemed frustrated, even angry as he returned to his shop.
“I can never go back in there,” she said, hurrying to the steps down to the lower levels. “What I’d like to know is what do I do with a fine quality fake Rolex?”
She found a juice shop, and when paying, the cost of the drink seemed like nothing after the store she was just been daydreaming in. She found a table near lush tropical plantings to sit for a while, and to think about what she’d learned from the jeweler.
“Just because it’s fake, that doesn’t mean it had nothing to do with Danny’s death.”
Little doves pecked at the ground around her shoes, the same kind that cooed in the mornings at the estate.
“Okay, what do I know about dead man Danny? He died within a few hours of being dumped on my front porch two days after Christmas. He had very little in his stomach, only a partly digested cheese sandwich. All he had in his pockets were a broken pocketknife, an empty wallet except for one black and white picture of a lady and kid, and a Tuyo beer bottle cap. He had freshly mown park grass on his shoes, and his white T-shirt and dark trousers had seen better days. On the day he died, he wasn’t wearing the windbreaker that I saw him wearing on previous mornings.
“He died when someone stabbed him in the liver with an ice pick, an injury that took a couple of hours to kill him. He drank at Bunzo’s Bar, or at least had his last beer there, apparently a Tuyo, but not within a day or two of his death, because he had a zero blood alcohol level and no beer in his stomach, according to the coroner. The only place I’ve been able to find Tuyo is at Bunzo’s, and they had exactly two bottles missing from a case, the one I drank, and maybe the one Danny had. But I don’t know if Danny actually drank a Tuyo, or if he just happened to find a bottle cap and kept it for some reason. But why would he do that? There’s no reason for anybody to keep a bottle cap from what is possibly the worst beer on the planet.
“Did he keep it, just so he knew what to avoid drinking in the future? That doesn’t make sense, either. I know the name of Tuyo beer is burned into my taste buds forever more. No reason to keep a bottle cap to remember that stuff.”
She was interrupted from taking notes on a napkin when her phone rang. It was a call from Millie.
“Now what have I done?” she muttered, wondering if she should answer it. “Probably fired. I can pack my stuff and move into a cardboard box at the park where I belong.”
“Gina? This is Millie Tanizawa. I’m wondering if you have time to meet this afternoon?”
“Yes, I suppose we should. I’ve been meaning to explain about the delays at the estate.”
“What delays?”
“The fish pond hasn’t been dug, and I’m nowhere near ready to do something with the Japanese garden.”
“I was just there a few minutes ago and everything looked fine. There’s another reason we’d like to meet with you.”
“We?”
“The rest of my family. We have a few ideas to share about the work you’re doing.”
It almost felt like she was being taken home by her boyfriend to meet his family for the first time. “The whole family?”
“It’s not a big deal. We’re just having a barbecue and were wondering if you’d like to join us?”
“Today?”
“If you have the time, yes. It’s not far from the estate.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gina was glad for the barbecue invite, because it gave her a reprieve from displaying her bikini-clad body at a public beach. The only place she’d worn it without a layer of clothes over it was in her bedroom. She got the directions for where to go, yet another part of town she hadn’t yet been. It sounded as though she could just drop in whenever she wanted, and after buying a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of red wine at the market, she found the street on the map she kept in the Datsun.
St. Louis Heights turned out to be very close to the estate, a long narrow residential area that followed the ridge above the estate. Looking up from the gardens at the bottom of the valley, she’d noticed a few of the houses. On the opposite side of that ridge was yet another valley with its own stream. What she had to do was find the street that wound its way up through the neighborhood that clung to the ridgeline.
“Wouldn’t be able to drive these streets in the snow and ice,” she muttered, following a zigzagging street. “Be great for sledding, though.”
Gina wasn’t sure of what to expect of the house that her employers lived in, or exactly who lived there. All she really knew about the Tanizawas were the estate gardens that she was recreating, and that they had farms on the island. She’d even seen Tanizawa produce in the supermarket, mostly specialty stuff for Asian cooking. What she didn’t know was if the farms were giant impersonal places like in the Midwest, or smaller family-run operations.
When she found the address, it was for a house hidden from street view. All that showed in front were the glazed-tile roof and lush tropical plantings. It was positioned near the top of the ridge, and considering its location, it would have a view down into the same valley as the estate, and the city beyond. It was older, but well-tended and stretched out to the sides instead of up. Large trees provided shade at each side and along the front.
Several cars were parked along the curb on both sides of the street, and she wondered if they were all for the afternoon barbecue. Parking half a block away, she took her wine and bouquet to the house. It was a matter of walking down a set of steps to get to the shaded main entrance that had a cool and inviting feel. She didn’t need to knock before the door opened. Millie was there smiling.
“Any problems finding us?”
“Almost got car sick driving around in circles, but no,” Gina said. She handed the flowers to Millie when she went in. “I guess it’s a little lame bringing flowers to someone with a yard full of them.”
Millie smiled politely. “Not at all. We don’t have this kind here at the house.”
A man about the same age as Millie joined them in the front hall. He had the same face with narrow eyes and dark skin, and one leg was bowed. Like everyone else in Hawaii, he was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. He smiled to Gina.
“You must be Miss Santoro?” he asked, extending his hand to shake hers.
“I hope so. Otherwise, I’m in big trouble.”
The smile on his face froze before it started to drift away. Millie abandoned her then, taking the flowers with her.
“I’m sorry, yes, I’m Gina. I shouldn’t say things like that. Nobody ever gets my sense of humor.”
He smiled again. “It was funny. I’m Dwight, by the way. You already know my sister, Millie. Come out to the patio and meet the rest of the gang.”
Gina followed him through the middle of the house. With only the quick glance she got, it looked like the bedrooms were off to the left, and the living room and kitchen were to the right. Going out a large sliding glass door to a long narrow patio, Gina froze in her tracks. There had to be two dozen people there, including a few kids, all smiling at her. Most were Asians, a couple of them white, and a couple others were Polynesian. Behind them was open sky with a view of the next ridge in the distance, and the valley below. White clouds were coming from over the mountain range. Feeling as though she were an actor thrust on stage before she knew her lines, all she could do was smile back.
Dwight did the introductions, and all Gina could do was smile and nod at each of them in turn. Some had Japanese names, others the same as old friends. Kyle from the hardware store was there with his wife, as was Brad, the other hardware store employee she’d met a few days before. Looking at the two couples, she was struck by how odd they seemed. Japanese Kyle was married to a blond-haired and blue-eyed woman named Koni, and white as snow Brad was married to a Japanese woman named Reiko. Her next surprise came when she was introduced to the handyman that had been at the house so many times, Kenzo.