“What are you, a Communist? Come on, a fair price is one that makes both parties happy.” Hugh turned off the computer and snapped it closed. “I’m off.”
“I’m going back. I’m sure my room is well-aired by now.” I shifted from foot to foot, knowing I owed him something. “Thank you for taking me in last night.”
“I do have a minute to get your thoughts on what might have happened.” He paused, the joviality gone. “Last night, you were speaking hysterically of someone rigging the gas.”
“It really happened. Whoever did it jammed the door so I couldn’t get out.” I spoke in what I hoped was a reasonable manner, adding, “The whole episode makes me curious whether Mr. Nakamura really left town yesterday evening.”
“Of course he did. Yamamoto and I saw him off.” Hugh dug through his suitcase for a tie.
“He could have traveled to the next station and returned to set the gas. Or had somebody else do it,” I suggested, watching him loop the tie and straighten it.
“What’s the motivation for Nakamura to gas you?” Hugh looped and straightened his tie without so much as a glance in a mirror.
“He hates me.” Haltingly, I told the details of how Nakamura had confronted me outside the minshuku bathroom and practically accused me of murdering his wife.
“You’re overreacting. But what about your chums Mr. and Mrs. Crime? The husband’s an engineer, which he means he’s rather adept at mechanical things. If he could open your souvenir box, he could surely tamper with your heater and trip the right fuse.”
“Taro Ikeda is my friend,” I protested, thinking uneasily of his and Yuki’s unexplained absence during the afternoon.
“He’s mad for murder and mayhem! Mrs. Chapman told me how he got his thrills in the torture chamber. Sometimes, there’s a thin line between fantasy and action.”
“What’s your excuse? You vanished after dinner.”
“Like I told you, I was upstairs working. Ask Yamamoto, he’ll vouch for me.” Hugh paused. “Surely you don’t think I fixed the gas to drive you into my bedroom?”
“Don’t be an idiot.” Upset at his accurate guess, there was nothing for me to do but leave.
Even after a long, hot shower I had a headache, and the smell of gas hung heavy in my memory. I shut the window in my cold room and began searching for aspirin. A tiny enameled pillbox had spilled open in my backpack, and the business cards and receipts in another pocket were crumpled and out of order. My natural tendency toward disorder appeared to be spiraling.
I wasn’t that messy, I thought, going over to my duffel bag. Unzipping it, my fears were confirmed. Someone had tossed everything about and even rifled through the pages of the kanji dictionary. My passport and money were still intact, which made me relieved until I began wondering what the intruder had wanted. When had he or she been in the room? After the accident.
Not bothering to pour myself water, I swallowed the aspirin and went downstairs.
“Sleep well? You’re down late today,” Mrs. Chapman commented when I dragged myself to the table.
“Not really. There was a problem with my gas heater, and I was overcome by some fumes. I suppose it was a malfunction, so I’m going to see if I can get it replaced,” I said, watching people’s faces.
“Gas heaters are extremely safe—in fact, there’s an automatic shut-off bar in the case of earthquake. You must have made a mistake, Rei-san,” Taro said sternly.
“You sure you want to stay on here, honey? For what we’re paying, you’d expect central heating!” Mrs. Chapman was outraged.
“Actually I don’t expect it,” I said, sensing more disapproval from Yuki and Taro. “I don’t expect this to be a little America.”
“Well, I’ve done all I can with no heat and the rabbit diet.” Mrs. Chapman peered into her bowl of miso soup and put the lid back on. “I’ll get on to Singapore and some real food, if I can get a flight out today.”
“Today? You need to talk to a travel agent because it’s the middle of the holiday season! What are you going to do in Osaka if there’s no connecting flight?” I had a terrible vision of her with a pile of luggage and no one to help.
She refused all logical arguments, though, and wound up having Taro call an agent. No space, as I’d expected. Since she was so sulky, Taro helped book her on a day tour of the Alps with an English-speaking guide. I agreed to take her to Alpenhof myself to meet the bus.
Half an hour later, as I slipped into my boots at the minshuku entrance, Mrs. Yogetsu marched up to me.
“You made a lot of noise last night and tore the shoji paper over your window.” Her voice was as frigid as the wind that had blown through it.
“That’s because the heater in my room broke. I could have died from gas poisoning!”
“If you don’t know how to use a heater, please ask for help.”
She had a lot of nerve to treat me like a foreigner, given all her lectures to me were in Japanese. I figured the only way to fight back would be to give her a taste of my American mother’s haughtiness. In a cold voice, I told her, “I do know how to use a heater, and I know the one in my room is broken. I’ll need a new appliance or a new room tonight—your choice. Just have it done by the time I come back.”
At the Alpenhof Hotel, I carried Mrs. Chapman’s overweight carry-on bag into the bus and saw her settled among a nice group of senior citizens from Canada. I waved until the bus disappeared into a red blur against the winter landscape. Then I was alone, feeling worse than I’d expected.
I had to do something. Anything. I wandered like a zombie through the town until I found the Shiroyama Folk Art Center, a gallery nestled in the downstairs rooms of an old merchant’s house. The curators had assembled an excellent exhibit on three centuries of regional lacquerware, so I forced myself to study the spare elegance of the shunkei handicrafts Setsuko Nakamura had lectured us about in the living room on New Year’s Eve.
Thinking of her made me sad again. If I had gotten off on the right foot, we could have become confidantes. I could have told her about the Tokyo group I knew who helped women break away from abusive marriages. I might have given her a reason not to walk out in the snow to her death.
Back at the minshuku in mid-afternoon, I struggled to open my bedroom door, this time from the outside. I fiddled with it and at last the obstruction, a small, stiff wedge of paper, dropped to the ground. I lay on my futon and unfurled it. A Lotte chewing-gum wrapper. What did it remind me of?
When it hit me I was off the futon and groping wildly in the pockets of the jeans I had worn the two previous days. I slid my hands to the very corners. Nothing.
I must have thrown away the similarly tiny scrap of paper that had been stuck in the bathroom door New Year’s morning. But there wasn’t a waste basket in the dressing room; I’d taken it with me. Then I’d reused it. I closed my eyes, recalling the feel of the paper in my hands, how I’d unfolded it to wrap the chopstick rest before taking it upstairs for safe-keeping.
I began rummaging through the tea caddy where I’d stashed the chopstick rest. My hands quickly sorted the spare coins and receipts I’d been collecting and pulled up the small piece of blue and white ceramic. Its wrapper was gone.
8
Hugh had not returned from the Sendai meeting at the Alpenhof, although Mr. Yamamoto had. He answered my questions about Hugh’s whereabouts in a sullen tone that made me think he had been closed out of something. It was tough to be the youngest person in a Japanese company, I knew from experience. I offered a sympathetic look which was not returned.
I went back to my room, combed my hair, and changed into the plaid miniskirt I’d worn on the train. It had a slimy residual feeling about it, but it would look better than my snow- and salt-drenched jeans. It was already five P.M. and dark; I thought Hugh might be knocking off in the bar with his colleagues.
I’d guessed wrong. The concierge told me the Sendai group was still in session. All the tables in the bar were taken, so I wound up leaning agai
nst the circular wooden bar with a half-pint of Asahi Super-Dry beer. I eventually found a seat next to a middle-aged skier who couldn’t get over my funny accent—did I come from Hokkaido or somewhere like that? I didn’t agree or disagree, just wondered how long I could last.
On my way through the lobby a half-hour later, the concierge caught my eye and inclined her head toward a bank of elevators where Hugh was huddled with two of his Japanese colleagues. As the elevator doors opened, all the men boarded and faced out ward. Hugh looked straight through me as the doors closed.
I reentered the bar feeling miffed and let the skier buy me another beer. A rotten idea. Forty minutes later, I was running through a variety of excuses for not wanting to go to dinner with him. I was feeling pretty desperate when Hugh finally came in, briefcase in hand and a luxurious shearling jacket slung over his shoulder. He ordered two bottles of McEwans Lager in English; the bartender rolled his eyes. The skier settled his bill, muttering something in Japanese about whores.
“That’s a Campbell tartan you’re wearing.” Hugh was scrutinizing my short skirt. “I don’t suppose you’re related to any Campbells?”
“Of course not! And what was that business in the elevator?”
“I pretended not to see you. My colleagues haven’t stopped giving me hell about the girl who stayed with me last night.”
“Yamamoto must have told. I could kill him!”
“He’s just a boy looking for attention, the last person to worry about. Now tell me what’s so bloody urgent you tore yourself away from your museum schedule?”
I took a deep breath. “I need you. You have to come back to the minshuku bath.”
“What are you, mad? At least wait until my colleagues depart on the evening train.”
I waved the torn paper in his face. “What I’m trying to tell you is that this gum wrapper was stuck in my door; just like another paper jammed the bathroom door on New Year’s Eve.”
“Where’s the first piece of paper?” Hugh tapped impatiently on the bar.
“Stolen from the tea caddy in my room.”
“You call not being able to locate a piece of rubbish an act of theft?” He gave me the same exasperated look as when I’d argued with him about Sendai’s monopoly on the Eterna battery.
“Between last night and this morning someone went through my room. Everything was out of order. Now I know what they wanted, it’s so obvious—”
“What’s obvious?”
“On New Year’s Eve, someone intentionally jammed the bathroom door so he wouldn’t be interrupted while killing Setsuko.”
“But Setsuko’s body was outside,” he said as if I hadn’t been the one to find her in the first place.
“She was naked, I always thought it was strange she was lying unclothed in the snow. Maybe she was killed in the bath or the shower. This afternoon I tried to go down there and look around, but the men’s sign was on.”
“So you wanted me to go into the bath to serve your purposes,” he said slowly.
“That’s right. But I’ve been waiting here so long”—I made a pitiful face—“I’m sure the man inside is gone. If it’s ladies only, I’ll go in. Or if no one’s inside, we can put the family sign on and search together.”
“What’s this change of heart? You couldn’t get far enough away from me when I asked for your help last night.” He swiveled around on his barstool to face me, his knees bumping up against mine.
“That was before someone tried to kill me,” I said, moving my legs away.
“Why would anyone want to kill you? Setsuko’s the one we should worry about. Now that I have a copy of the autopsy, we can see—”
“The police gave you the autopsy?” I interrupted. “Don’t they know you’re illiterate?”
“Actually, I nicked it from Nakamura and photocopied it at the hotel desk.”
“You mean you stole it?”
“Oh, just temporarily. Do you think you can translate it?”
“Of course I can.” A vast exaggeration, but he didn’t need to know. “Let’s go back to the inn and get started.”
“No, we need to talk things through.” He drained his bottle. “We’d best not linger here, though. If my colleagues see me, I’m done for.”
Five minutes later, we were in a taxi I’d hailed outside the Alpenhof. I pulled out my copy of Gateway to Japan and suggested Furukawa, the next town over.
“My guide mentions a charming little shop that sells zsui for just four-hundred yen!” I told Hugh. “That’s a type of rice stew. We could get a bite there—I’m going to need something after all those drinks.”
“Why not a charming little steak house?” Hugh countered.
“We’ll talk about it when we get there,” I said diplomatically. “Food is hardly the issue. I just need to know the truth about Mr. Nakamura.”
“The truth?”
“Everything you know about Mr. Nakamura, and at this point, don’t you dare plead company privacy. Not when my life’s in danger.”
“Okay, okay.” He held up his hands in mock surrender. “What I know from company records is his full name—Seiji Nakamura—although you can probably imagine we’ve never been casual enough to be on a first-name basis. Anyway, he graduated from university in the mid-sixties and went straight to Sansonic Stereo. Seven years ago, he had risen to a midmanagement position in strategic planning, which he resigned to join Sendai.”
“I wouldn’t have left a famous company like Sansonic. Sendai is newer, so the benefits probably aren’t as good. And Japanese men in his age group usually work at the same company for life.”
“That’s right. Setsuko told me that as the younger generation was coming up through the ranks, her husband began struggling. He ignored some good ideas because he couldn’t stand the thought of his employees showing him up.”
“Madogiwa-zoku” murmured. At Hugh’s blank expression, I explained, “It’s a slang expression that literally means window-side tribe. At my company, it’s what they call the older men who are assigned desks by the windows because they’re not in the heat of things anymore.”
“Really? I have windows in my office.” Hugh sounded pensive. “Getting back to my story, Sendai recruited key employees from its competitors. They threw a lot of money at people, and Nakamura did the smart thing and went over.”
“Why would they want an old window-tribe member?”
“He’s an aged, well-connected negotiator who knows a million people in the government, including the fellows who regulate exports and patents.”
“So he was appreciated.”
“Until recently. In strict confidence, I’ll tell you that the Sendai auditors have discovered he’s abusing his company credit cards. Charges for entertainment expenses: half a million yen spent during one evening at a hostess bar none of us have even heard of. He’s living like its the bloody eighties. No one can afford expenses like that anymore.”
More than $4,000 dollars spent at a hostess bar? It almost made me think I’d picked the wrong career. I asked why Nakamura hadn’t been fired yet.
“They were planning to ask him to account for it all, but now that he’s lost his wife, that plan’s on hold.” He stared down my outrage. “Yes, we talked about it today. I advised them to wait because the charges could have been related to demands Setsuko was making and might very well end with her death.”
I shook my head, remembering how passively she’d accepted her husband’s verbal jabs. It was impossible to think of her holding the reins.
As we entered Furukawa, I asked the driver for some recommendations. We settled on a small, cheerful-looking restaurant that served yosenabe, simmered one-pot dishes that were a specialty of the mountain region.
“Does this include eel or octopus or anything really dreadful?” Hugh asked when we entered a spacious tatami room decorated with large neon sea creatures.
“Don’t worry. You’ll love it,” I said and ordered seafood nabe for two, a platter of crab legs and artfully
sliced raw vegetables we cooked by dipping them into a pot of broth bubbling on a small fire built into the table. It was a pleasure to eat simply after the elaborate, tense dinners at Minshuku Yogetsu.
“I don’t miss eating with everyone, but I want to go back soon.” Using a sharp metal skewer, I pulled a long strip of crab meat from a claw and placed it on Hugh’s rice bowl, tired of watching his futile antics with chopsticks. “We should be there already. I just know she died in the bathroom. If only Yuki and Taro had gotten inside that night!”
“Maybe they did.”
“You’re joking,” I said, nevertheless recalling how Yuki had spoken of the mess in the bath New Year’s morning. What had she seen, and why had she moved things instead of waiting for Mrs. Yogetsu to do it?
“If you think I’m joking, why don’t you laugh? You’re far too sober for twenty-seven.”
“How do you know my age?” I was taken aback.
“Mrs. Chapman’s a talker, and we both think it’s a shame you’ve limited yourself to the teaching ghetto. Had you done law instead of art history, you’d be at the top of corporate Japan.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Lawyers don’t make money anymore. In America, things are so bad that half the young graduates are moonlighting as shoe salesmen.”
“Really? Tell me more.”
“About lawyers in America?”
“No. About how you grew up and came here to blaze a trail through the blackboard jungle.”
Since he was making fun of me, I wouldn’t. Never at a loss for words, he launched into his own stories about how he had grown up in a small village in the Lowlands, studied at Glasgow University, and practiced law for two years in London before signing with an international firm. By thirty-two, he’d consulted for companies in Barcelona, New York, Düsseldorf, and Buenos Aires; Tokyo was his first posting in Asia.
“Where does your wife live?” I asked, having heard on the Tokyo grapevine that Brits never wore their wedding rings.
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