“Wasnt there any ID on him?” Corky asked as they settled into the lieutenants office.
“If there was, I wouldnt have been able to get to it. There was no way of prying the body out until the wrecker showed up with torches. I dont envy Clyde having to deal with the mess. In the meantime, our crazy German can hardly wait to get to the body.”
The phone broke in before Corky could comment. She watched as Hank grunted into the phone and scribbled down a name. Hanging up, he said, “Sounds like a tourist, all right. The car was rented to a Junichi Ushiroda.”
“Hey! Ive heard the name before. I think its one of those guards, one of those bodyguards Masa Ono brought over with him.” She sprang up. “Ill go get my note pad.”
She returned, reading her notes and announcing her surmise was correct before she realized Hank was on the phone again. “Yeah,” she said, “he is one of the bodyguards, the martial arts type.” She looked up to see Hank slamming down the phone.
“Cmon,” he said. “Weve got another one.”
“Another wreck?” Corky had to run to catch up with him.
“Nope. Something different this time. A suicide. Care to take a wild guess as to who it is?”
Corky knew the new body had to have some connection with the Ono case, because there was something in Hanks expression indicating intense satisfaction. He seldom looked that way short of a breakthrough which would keep Chief Yamada off his back.
Corky wracked her brain as they roared away from the curb. “Domingo De Rego!!” she shouted over the noise of the siren. She regretted almost immediately she had said anything, since Hank turned to look at her. While doing so, he barely negotiated the corner onto the cut-off to the highway.
After straightening out the car and again slamming the throttle to the floor, he asked, “How in hell did you know?”
***
Sigrid Ono looked as startling as ever. When Kay stepped into the apartment, the barefooted woman was wearing a light blue cotton skirt, which showed her shapely legs to advantage, and a long sleeved white blouse. The simplicity and effectiveness of the ensembles design suggested an expensive purchase.
Something by Telemann or VivaldiKay could not decide whichwas playing softly in the background.
After they had flopped down on the same cushions they had occupied before, Sigrid said, “Your friend, Hideko Northrup, is a charming person.”
The broad mouth widened into an even broader smile. “I liked her especially because she was so frank with me. She said shed never met anyone with Williams before and wanted so badly to interview me. She was apologetic, but I told her she neednt be. People often look at me strangely, but dont understand. So it was nice to have someone to talk to who does understand.”
“I spoke to her about you after the interview,” Kay said. “If the unlikely should happen and we have to go to trial, she could be an important witness.”
Sigrids smile faded. “I almost forgot about Masa. Theyre sending his ashes back to his home tomorrow. I hope this is cleared up soon, because I do feel obliged to be there for the funeral ceremony. Shigeru called and asked me a few minutes ago to find out if I knew when wed be free to leave. I told him I had no idea. Do you, by any chance?” “
“Im sorry, but thats up to the police. Personally, I think were close to a solution to the crime. Thats what Id like to talk to you about. Could you tell me again exactly what happened the night Masa was killed?”
Sigrid rested her chin on her hands and her elbows on her folded knees in a contorted pose.“Im not sure what time we left the dining room, but it must have been around ten. Masa just nibbled at his food and seemed rather nervous and impatient, which wasnt like him. I assumed it was business problems, and later, when he said he was going out for a while, I thought he was going to his office.
“I really didnt think much about it. Masa suffered badly from insomnia and sometimes stayed up all night. I have insomnia too, but nowhere near as badly as he did. It was close to midnight when I decided to call room service for some hot milk. Id been studying Farsi, and the time just seemed to slip by.” Sigrid hesitated and seemed to be concentrating on something in the far distance.
Kay was puzzled by the pause. “You went right to bed then?”
“Yes. Room service came up quite promptly. I took a book along in case the milk didnt do the trick. It did. I must have fallen asleep five minutes after I drank it.”
Kay knew there was something missing in the narrative. She also knew if Sigrid decided to hide something, it would stay hidden until she made up her mind to reveal it.
Sigrid looked at her with her peculiar eyes. She smiled, but somehow the smile was different. Again, Kay could only feel the difference, without having the least hint of what it might consist of. “I woke up to a call from Lieutenant DeMello about five-fifteen,” Sigrid continued. “He said he wanted to see me.”
“What did you think he wanted to see you about?”
“I was sure it had something to do with Masa. He had a bad heart, you know. So I wasnt surprised when the lieutenant told me he was dead.”
Kay was now convinced how whatever it was skittering around in the background would stay in the wings, no matter how much she tried to bring it on-stage. The thought made her abruptly switch to something else. “What was Keiko Sugiyama like?”
Sigrid broke into one of her infectious laughs. “She was like the typical Swedish girl. You should have seen how upset the older Japanese were with her…all except her father. She could do no wrong, as far as he was concerned. She was independent. I liked her. As I told you before, Masa was heartbroken when she died. And then losing his grandson, too.” Sigrid shook her head at the thought. “It was terrible.”
The feeling something was radically wrong with what Sigrid was saying came back even more strongly. Kay squirmed at the feeling, tried to dredge up the underlying material, and got nowhere.
The conversation drifted off to other matters. Sigrids genuine interest in Kays family brought out a glowing description of Sid. Kay caught herself and laughed aloud. “You should go into counseling, Sigrid. Ive never even told Sid how much I value him, and here Im baring my soul to you.”
Sigrid laughed in turn. “People do seem to take me into their confidence.”
The talk now veered off into family background and homes. Sigrid described in detail the suburban home she had been raised in. Kay pointed out the contrast with the home she and Sid now occupied. Her enthusiasm for“the ranch,” as she called it, ended with an invitation to Sigrid to come out to see it.
“I would really love to. Whereabouts is it?”
Kay began to give detailed directions, and Sigrid threw her hands up in despair. “Im terrible at finding places. Im sure Id get lost.”
“Ill make it simple. Do you know where Ridge Trail is?”
“Oh, yes. Masa and I went the length of the island on it. Its beautiful up there.”
“Then just turn onto it, and a mile-and-a-half after the turn, on the left-hand side, youll come to a newspaper box with carved wooden letters on it saying Yoshinobu and Chu. Turn there, and at the end of a hundred foot driveway youll find our house.”
“Got it. You did make it simple. Ill come by, for sure.”
Kay said once finances allowed, they were planning to add a tennis court to their property and mentioned she had heard how Sigrid liked tennis.
“Yes. Im not very good at it, but I do enjoy it.”
“Sid and I play two or three times a week when hes here. I miss getting out on the courts. Maybe I could talk you into playing a set or two.”
“Id love to, but the doctor still has me on tetracycline, so I cant take much sun, and I dont like playing in floppy clothes.” She gestured at the sleeves on her blouse.
“Lets go out at night. The courts here are lit, and the nights are even better for playing.”
“Why, it would be…not really. I…really should be packing, you know…but thank you anyway. Maybe next time Im in Hawaii
.”
Kay was caught completely off guard by the hesitation followed by the confusion and the all-too transparent excuse.
Chapter 18
Werner had been busy supervising the worker wielding the blowtorch, when the two pig hunters came running up the side road. Spotting the policeman standing by Clyde, the younger of the two, a local Hawaiian, rushed over breathlessly to announce, “Offisuh, someone hangin by his neck from one tree down duh road.”
Werner was the first to fully comprehend what the young man had said. In a matter of moments, he, Clyde, the patrolman and the hunter were bouncing down the road in the police car, which repeatedly bottomed out on the rutted road. A thousand yards toward the ocean, their guide said, “Right heah.” Pointing off to the right, he added, “He stay off deah hangin ovuh one hole.” The hunter added how he had recognized the hanging figure. “Hes one Domingo De Rego. Work with my broduh in the machine shop at the Malalani.”
They headed in the direction indicated. At the end of a hundred foot trail which stopped abruptly at the edge of a sink hole, a lifeless body hung from the limb of an old and gnarled haole koa clinging tenaciously to the rim. The hole was part of a collapsed lava tube, the floor of which was some ten feet below the surrounding ground.
Werner stopped the patrolman as he leaned out to snag the body and pull it back to the edge.“No! No! You must that not. We will a ladder get. You must it from below down take.”
The patrolman turned to Clyde for both clarification and confirmation of the order. “Do as he says.” Clyde gestured toward the bottom of the sink hole. “We should be able to get an emergency vehicle out here in a few minutes, and it isnt going to make any difference to him.” Clyde nodded in the direction of the body which the onshore breezes were turning first one way and then the other. He and Werner scrambled down to the floor of the hole. The feet of the dead man hung toes-down just two or three inches beyond Clydes long reach.
The wait was actually a ten minute one, giving Werner more than enough time to explain why he wanted the body to be taken down carefully. “Much bruising can there be when the body lowered is. Very careful must we be.” He described, with extensive gestures, exactly how he wished the body to be handled.
The lowering was done carefully, under the unwavering gaze and explicit instructions of the German pathologist. Standing on a ladder propped up in the sinkhole, one of the medics held the dangling corpse around the upper legs and lifted upward. The other medic reached out from the edge to untie the knot holding the rope to the tree limb.
“No! No!” Werner cried out when he saw the medics intention. Standing at the bottom of the pit, he yelled, “Amesser…a knife. It must a sharp one be. Cut the rope. Cut it at the branch, not at the neck.”
Finally, after a cautious descent from his perch, the first medic reached the ground with his burden. Werner was there to help lower the body ever so carefully to the smooth pahoehoe surface of the lava. Even more carefully loosening the taut rope, he then began to examine the neck of the victim with a jewelers loupe. “See! See!” He reached out for Clyde without looking up.
Clyde took the glass, looked through it for a few moments and then shook his head. “The rope marks, the rope marks!” Werner shouted, only inches from his ear. “A small bruise under the larger one runs.”
As Werner spoke the words, the smaller, more livid mark became obvious. It centered in the bruise left by the larger rope most of the way around the front of the neck. Along the sides it was lower. At the back of the neck, only a single mark was evident, the narrow line Werner had emphasized.
“So, you see,” he went on, accompanying with complex hand motions every event he was mentioning. “First has he with a very thin cord garroted been. Then has one the rope over the bruise tied. Then the killer the end over the branch thrown, the rope tied and the body over the edge pushed. And…”
Werner interrupted himself as he stooped to examine the front of the dead mans neck. “Here! Feel!” So saying he grasped Clydes fingers and placed them where he had been probing. “It gives two fractures of cricoid cartilage. One from the cord and one from the rope.”
Clyde could feel neither fracture, but Werner now stood up and assured him the post mortem would clearly reveal a double fracture.“Many times have I that seen, but usually from the hand strangulation.” To illustrate, he tried wrapping his hands around Clydes throat, one thumb above the other. “You see, with the hands is it very easy two fractures to cause. But from a simple hanging? Never.”
While Werner still had his hands on Clydes throat, the discomfited county pathologist looked up to see Hank grinning down at the scene in the pit.“Guess we got here just barely in time, Clyde,” the lieutenant said.
***
Ramon had not exaggerated. The fax basket was full, and Leilani told Kay she had already emptied it twice.
“What was the morning like, Leilani?” Kay asked while sorting through the sheets she had picked up from the basket.
“Except for the fax,” the older woman nodded toward the offending machine,“it was real quiet. I even managed to get some work done.”
“How about phone calls?”
Leilani looked over her note pad. “One for Qual, one for Sid, and two for you. One of yours said hed call back. Didnt leave a name. The others an old client who cant resist picking up things in the shops without paying for them.”
“Not the Colonel again?”
“You guessed it. His brother was the one who called. He wants the Colonel to stay in jail overnight for a change, so hes not going to put up bail until morning.”
“Thats a relief. Im not up to running over to the station and trying to get him out this evening. Its going to be tough on the old boy. Hes never been behind bars before, because weve always gotten to him in time. Maybe the brothers right. An overnighter might be good for him. At least it will keep him out of the shops for one evening. Anything else?”
“All except for the morning mail and an express package. I put all of „em and the first two stacks of faxes on your desk.”
The fat Federal Express envelope was from Seattle. It turned out to be the report of the review board which had investigated the crash. Kay looked at it, at the pile of mail, at Onos will which she had pulled out of her dispatch case, and at the formidable stack of faxes.
Sorting through the papers, she decided everything not connected with the Ono case would go unread. The results of the sort left ninety percent of the papers in the Ono pile. Kay sighed and decided she should at least skim quickly through the mass of material. Even so, she knew she would be fully occupied during what was left of the afternoon.
The will contained a few minor surprises. Amounts were in yen, so Kay had to mentally convert them into dollars. Page after page of technical material regarding the disposition and control of various corporate enterprises Kay dealt with quickly, hardly glancing at the material in the numerous pages. In a few moments, she found the bequests. Sigrid received five million in cash plus additional shares in companies whose names Kay did not recognize, presumably parts of Masas empire outside of Ono Electronics. Another five million was given jointly to Shigeru and Mariko.
A recently attached codicil provided an additional five million for his unborn grandchild, the sum to be in trust and to become his or hers at the age of twenty-five. Other names, with lesser sums attached, continued for several pages. Among them, Nicks appeared. Since his bequest consisted of shares in a Japanese firm, Kay had no way of determining its value and made a note to check on it.
Neither of the two bodyguards appeared on the list. The final pages were bequests to various organizations, chiefly charitable institutions. Kay flipped back to the earlier portion of the will and found Shigeru listed as receiving the major portion of Masas sharesa controlling interestin Ono Electronics. And it was there where she found one surprise.
Sigrid was also named here to receive shares of Ono Electronics. Immediately following the bequest, however, was a proviso forf
eiting her shares should she be elected and accept election to the Board of Directors.
“Thats weird,” Kay said aloud.
The review boards report on the crash was a mass of technical information which Kay quickly realized was beyond her. The conclusion, however, was as clear and unequivocal as a negative finding could be. Severe vibration of unknown origin had occurred in the right engine during the flight, making it lose power. The end result was such extensive structural damage to the wing it would have been impossible for the pilot to land safely.
While it was indicated he might have been able to save the plane by reacting quickly enough to warning signals of engine failure, the board arrived at no finding of pilot error. They had concluded there was no way of determining the length of time between the onset of the vibration and the occurrence of structural damage. Hence there was no way of evaluating the pilots response or lack of response to the engine failure.
At first the faxed biographies, while lengthy, seemed equally uninformative. Then the Rhinos resume caught her eye. Kay reached for her atlas. Nishimura had been born on the west coast of Japan in a village whose name was written in the smallest lettering on Kays detailed map.
Born forty-three years ago, Noboru had been a fisherman for all of his adult years until he joined an Italian carnival company. There, he had performed as their strongman at the age of forty-one. Evidently the Japanese public had little interest in Italian carnivals, since it soon failed. Nishimura then remained unemployed until hired by Ono Electronics.
If Tokumis right, Kay mulled the matter over in her mind, then theres a real mystery here. How does a Japanese fisherman from a remote village get to know English, and know it well? Surely a five month stint with an Italian carnival couldnt account for it.
Kay reached for her computer keyboard and suddenly thought of Sid. If he were here right now, hed say Id gone off the deep end, as usual. Bringing up her list of phone numbers, she highlighted the private investigators number and hit return.
The Yoshinobu Mysteries: Volume 2 Page 46