The Daydreamer Detective Opens a Tea Shop

by S. J. Pajonas

  Goro took three long strides back to his computer and started typing and waiting, typing and waiting.

  “Ah! Here it is. She buried it in chapter thirty-one.” He cleared his throat and recited, “But if I had learned one thing about being famous, it was that everyone wanted something from me. Even the ones I loved, the ones who found comfort in another man’s bed instead of mine, wanted my face and name attached to their life. It was a hard lesson to learn, that I was only worth something if I had fame. I ended a good relationship to save my career, losing a man who believed in me. From then on, I couldn’t gain back the respect from anyone. Instead, I had to gamble for it. I didn’t always win.”

  We both sat in silence, listening to Amanda’s words from beyond the grave. She was cryptic on purpose, probably not wanting to name names and get dragged into lawsuits. But now that I had her emails, this paragraph made some sense. In Amanda’s eyes, Shōta had used her for her fame like all her other friends. Hiroshi had been a casualty of war. He’d been caught in the middle. Had he loved Shōta enough to kill Amanda? To keep her away from them?

  And I had to guess that the part about ending a good relationship to save her career was about Yasahiro. As far as I knew, though, he encouraged her career, wanted her to do better, climb higher. She wouldn’t have had to leave him in order to “save her career.” Damn. Another mystery on top of every other mystery I was dealing with.

  I grabbed my laptop while Goro stared into space. In later emails from Hiroshi, he called her a “stuck up bitch” after getting angry with her for seeing Shōta behind his back while she was in town. She then threatened to screen-cap the emails and show them to the whole world. She would trash his family and destroy his future. After that, he was silent except to do his job by arranging meetings. Even that was too much for Amanda though.

  Using the cursor, I grabbed the scroll bar and went as far back in her email as I could. I finally saw Yasahiro’s name around 2013. I let the archive list load into the browser as my heart pounded in my chest. There was evidence here! Did the police have this too?

  “That’s it,” Goro blurted out, and I jumped.

  My eyes were glued to Yasahiro’s name and the email subject line consisting of at least a dozen messages, “See you next week?”

  “The killer must be Hiroshi Ota. He had a motive, and he could have had an opportunity as well. We need to figure out if he picked up Amanda the day she was killed.”

  Goro beckoned to my computer. “Come, Mei-chan. Give me your computer. I want to look at Amanda’s texts and photos.”

  I minimized the browser with Yasahiro’s emails in view and handed it over. If Goro suspected Hiroshi was the killer, then I wasn’t going to stand in his way.

  The front doorbell rang, and I heard Mom call my name.

  Goro glanced at me. “I’ll come. Just in case.”

  I was nervous, my hair standing on end as I walked to the front room, but I sighed in relief as I saw Akiko.

  “There you are!” She wrapped her arms around my shoulders, squeezing me, before pulling away. “My word, you look awful.”

  Mom and our guests both looked at me, their heads cocked to the side.

  “She’s right. You don’t look well, Mei-chan.” Mom rested her hand on my forehead.

  “Mom, I’m not sick.” I pushed her hand away, but Akiko had my wrist in her hand, taking my pulse. She leaned in and looked at my face before scanning me from head to toe.

  I turned to shrug at Goro, and he shrugged back. “You look the same to me. I’ll go back to work.” He jerked his thumb at my bedroom and retreated down the hall.

  “Akiko-chan, I’m fine.” I waved her off. “I’ve just been a little sick with all the stress lately.”

  She paused for a second, her face adjusting into the clinical facade she gets with patients. “Of course. I’ve been getting caught up on the news. This situation sounds stressful, and Yasahiro-san is right at the center of it all.” She hooked her arm into mine and pulled me to the door. “Why don’t you come across the street with me to my house and fill me in? A little fresh air will do you good.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Mom jumped right in.

  “That’s a great idea,” she exclaimed, pushing me along and standing over me while I put on my shoes. “Please get out of the house for a while. You and Goro have been in there for almost two hours, and the sun is going to set soon. Akiko-chan, bring her back in an hour for dinner, and you should stay too. I’ll cook a big meal.” Mom handed me my coat as I relented.

  “Fine. We’ll be back soon. Tell Goro to keep looking while I’m gone.”

  “I will!” Mom pushed me out the door, closed the screen and stood waiting for me to leave. “Go on now. Get your mind off of this for just an hour. You won’t regret it. I promise.”

  I stumbled down the steps after Akiko, she took my arm, and led me away from the ticking time bomb of my life, ready to explode and leave me in shatters.

  Tick, tick, tick…

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Sit down,” Akiko directed me, pointing to the kotatsu in her living room as Kirin-chan jumped and barked, happy to see us both. I barely had my shoes off in her front entryway, and she was bossing me around. I bit my tongue because starting a fight with Akiko was the last thing I wanted right then. I hadn’t seen her in over a week, and with everything going on, I needed her stability more than anything else.

  But being in her house made me anxious, my hands wringing of their own accord. I had evidence to sift through, mountains of it, and I didn’t have time for a social call filled with gossip and tea.

  “Can we make this quick? I’ve missed you and all, but you’ve seen what I’m dealing with. Goro-chan and I have been going through evidence together for the past few hours.”

  Akiko blew by me and headed straight for her bedroom, Kirin-chan plopping himself down at the foot of her bed. I leaned to the side so I could see in the door. She opened her closet and pulled out several cardboard boxes, setting them on the floor and rummaging through them. Pharmaceutical samples rained down around her.

  “Have you been eating?” she asked, not making eye contact with me.

  My body heated, anger surfacing at her tone, the tone of a nurse questioning her patient, clinical.

  “Yes. No. Kind of?” I admitted, glancing at the clock. “My appetite has been hit or miss. Too much stress.”

  She stopped for a minute and looked my way. “Are you sure it hasn’t been anything else? Anything at all?”

  “Sure, I’m sure.” I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s not been a good week, Akiko-chan.”

  She went back to searching the box only pull something out, wrapped in plastic. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help out. But I’m here now.”

  Akiko stepped over the box and handed me what she found.

  “Go into the bathroom and pee on this.”

  I focused on the packaging, “Home Pregnancy Test. 99.5% Accuracy.”

  “What?” I dropped the test on the table, got up, and backed away from it. Was she serious? “No.”

  My brain completely stopped like I’d crashed into a concrete wall.

  “Come on, Mei-chan,” Akiko said, tip-toeing towards me. “I have a feeling —”

  “Screw your feelings. No. We used condoms. I’m not pregnant.”

  I tried to swallow past a suddenly dry throat, a wave of heat rising up from my feet, practically cooking me from the inside out.

  Akiko folded her arms across her chest. “You’re not eating. Your appetite comes and goes. And your face has changed.”

  “What?” I squeaked, darting by her to the mirror over the TV. I stared at my own face. Had it changed? I ran my fingers over my cheeks. They did seem rounder. “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes. Maybe no one else has noticed because they see you every day, but just… trust me.”

  I closed my eyes against Akiko’s “feeling.” She had a gift for knowing the human body, the perfect nurse. Her feelings we
re always right. Always.

  “When did you last have your period?”

  My knees weakened, but I rallied to stand straight. I flashed back to Amanda’s bathroom in the Tokyo apartment. I held her birth control pills in my hand and wondered about my own period. Why hadn’t I listened to my gut?

  I counted backward in my head. “Too long ago. Five or six weeks?”

  She picked the test off the table and handed it to me, her face sad and sympathetic. I merely nodded and made my way to the bathroom.

  No. There was no way this could be true. This couldn’t be happening. After all I’d worked for? No, I couldn’t believe it.

  Denial was such an amazing thing. If I just wished hard enough, the test would come out negative, and I’d have nothing (more) to worry about.

  My fingers were numb as I pulled the plastic stick from the wrapper and read the directions. I had to pee on the end and wait. I checked the expiration date, and it still had a solid six months on it, so I couldn’t delay with that excuse.

  I did my job and set the stick on the counter, putting the lid on the toilet down, sitting, and resting my head in my hands. This was the last thing I expected today. And what would happen if it was positive? What could I possibly do? I stared at the lines of grout between the tiles on Akiko’s bathroom floor, following them back and forth from the wall to my feet. My brain refused to work, and I wanted to go back in time and stop everything. Just stop it all. How could I be more screwed?

  Ironically, it was impossible for me to be more screwed.

  Positive. I was pregnant.

  I swore out loud, screaming at the ceiling and allowing the tears I’d been holding back to come. The door cracked, and Akiko stuck her head in before opening the door and letting me collapse into her arms.

  “I’m so sorry, Mei-chan. So sorry.” She rocked me back and forth while I let the terror and anger I had in me pour through my eyes and mouth. I was carrying Yasahiro’s child, and he was being investigated for murder. I wanted to deny it, crush it, kick the idea out of my head, just keep going and not believe it.

  But all the signs were there. I just didn’t see them because I was concentrating on the murder case. My appetite had been spotty. Food smelled or tasted weird. I wanted to throw up most mornings, and my sleeping patterns were becoming strange and restless. All things Kumi complained about in her first trimester.

  I sucked in a hot breath, my face pressed into Akiko’s shoulder, and shuddered out a moan.

  “What am I going to do?” It came out of my mouth sad and low.

  Akiko cooed and shushed me, like she was holding a baby. She smoothed my hair and hugged me tighter. “What do you think you should do?”

  I let go of her, squirming out of her arms to stalk out of the bathroom. I needed space and fresh air, so I angled through the kitchen and out the back door. I was in my socks, and I didn’t care. What mattered was not throwing up everywhere.

  My gaze scanned the farmland, already changing with the construction of the Midori Sankaku greenhouse. Midori Sankaku. I hadn’t even thought of that place in days, but life went on without me. Time kept ticking, people kept living, and I was stuck in a hell of Amanda’s making.

  Akiko followed me out, standing shoulder to shoulder as we watched the sun dipping in the distance.

  I sniffed up, rubbing the snot from my nose across the back of my hand.

  “If Yasa-kun makes it out of this mess and sticks around, I’ll tell him and hope he’s still interested in being with me.”

  “Of course, he’s still interested —”

  I laughed and rolled my eyes, interrupting her. “Please. He only just told me he loved me a few days ago. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if he dropped me like a hot coal.”

  “That’s not true,” Akiko said, grabbing me and looking me in the eyes. I held her stare. “He may not have said it, but I know, for a fact, that…” Her voice trailed off as her eyes lost contact with mine.

  “What?”

  She sighed, dropping her arms. “It’s dumb. I want to reassure you, but I can’t even know how he’d feel now after going through this. I certainly would want to give up and run away.”

  “See? It’s not far out there to believe he’d leave me. He’s already tried to break up with me twice over this nonsense. To spare ‘my honor.’” The air quotes were filled with sarcasm. “As if I’d have any left as a single mom.”

  “You don’t have to have this baby, if you don’t want to.”

  My skin crawled with a shiver, and I hugged myself. I was pregnant with the baby of a man I loved, and the word ‘abortion’ hovered in the surrounding air. My life path twisted from a bright and shiny new road into a fire pit, right back to where I was as a burn victim so long ago.

  And then there were Amanda’s last words about Yasahiro. That he loved women he could fix up and make whole, then he moved on. I couldn’t even come close to predicting what he’d do if he found out I was pregnant.

  “If he gets out of this and wants to move away overseas without me, I won’t tell him. I’ll let him go and move on.”

  “Will you keep the baby?” Akiko asked, and I nodded. I imagined hiding somewhere overseas and giving the baby up for adoption. It was the only alternative I would consider. Maybe abortion was the right choice, but I couldn’t think about it.

  “If he goes to jail, too.”

  “He won’t go to jail.” Her eyes widened, and my temper skyrocketed.

  I flung my arm toward home. “If you saw what I’m up against, you wouldn’t say that! Anything could happen. Anything.”

  “I don’t think he’d confess, do you?” She took a step back from my vitriol.

  “He might. To save his family pain.” My face contorted into an ugly cry, lips curled and eyes wide. “I really hope he doesn’t. I don’t believe he killed her!”

  My teeth chattered, the “fresh air” having turned chilly as the sun sank lower to the horizon.

  “I need to get back. I have work to do.” I careened through the house, bumping my hip against Akiko’s kitchen table and wincing. I rubbed the sore spot with my hand as I returned to the front door.

  “I want to believe everything will be fine, and you and Yasahiro-san will be happy and in love once again.” She detoured to the bathroom to grab the test and hand it to me. “Here. You may want to keep it.”

  I stared at the two lines and wondered if I would ever be okay again.

  “Maybe you should go pray for my soul,” I said, only a hint of bitterness to my voice. I had to pull myself together before seeing Goro again.

  “I will. I’ll go pray at the shrine right now.” She grabbed her coat. “I’ll walk you back first. Are you going to tell your mom?”

  “No!” I pulled away in shock. “She’d die of a heart attack on the spot. She’s been lecturing me for months about restoring our family honor. This? This would end us.” I slipped on my shoes and headed out. “And you’re not to tell anyone. Can I count on your help with… this?” I waved at my belly.

  “Of course.” She touched my arm, but I didn’t want any more affection. I didn’t feel I deserved it.

  I slid the pregnancy test up my sleeve to keep it hidden as I entered the house. Mom was in the kitchen with our guests so I snuck past her and went straight for my room.

  “Oh good. You’re back,” Goro said as I closed the door behind me. “I’ve been looking at… Why is your face all red? Have you been crying?”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Yes. I needed to get it out. Akiko kept asking questions, and I kinda lost it.”

  “So I’m here working while you’re crying across the street?”

  A roiling volcano of anger erupted in my chest, and I threw my arms wide. “What’s your problem?” I watched in dismay as the pregnancy test went flying from my sleeve onto my bed.

  We both stopped and stared at it, time grinding to a halt.

  Goro moved first. “Is this —?”

  I dove to the bed to grab
it. “It’s nothing.” My hand came down on the test first, and I swept it away.

  “Mei-chan,” he said, admonishing me. “I know exactly what that is.”

  “Stop!” I held up my hand to him. “It’s none of your business. You saw nothing. Do you hear me?” I glared at him with such menace, he took a step back. My big, burly police friend was scared of me for a moment.

  Just a moment.

  “I know what I saw.” He nodded at me, and I turned my back on him. “Mei-chan, if you need anything from me, just say it, and I’ll help. I promise.”

  I sighed, letting my anger dissipate. “Just let it be. None of this matters now.” I took off my sweater and threw both it and the test stick into the closet.

  “Well, it may matter because I think I know who the killer is. Look.”

  I followed him to the desk. He had six photos lined up on his screen of Amanda’s book launch party. In each, he had circled the same man, wearing dark jeans and a black coat with a hood.

  “Look familiar?”

  I leaned in and magnified the photos. “Yeah, it’s Hiroshi. He was there at her book launch party? I wonder if Amanda saw him there.”

  “I don’t know. He’s back in the crowds in all these photos. He must be the same one who assaulted her that night. The man who witnessed the assault said it was a man in a dark jacket with a hood and jeans, medium build.”

  The clouds parted and a ray of sunshine fell down on my mood, lightening me a fraction.

  “Maybe he meant to kill her that night?”

  “And came back to finish the job the next day.” Goro took out his phone. “I can feel it. This is our guy.”

  I compared the determined and stoic Hiroshi in the photos with the scared man I met earlier in the day. I wasn’t so sure he was the killer but eliminating a suspect was a step in the right direction.

  “Kayo!” Goro bellowed into the phone. “Come pick me up!”