I raised my eyebrows at Yasahiro, but Itsuki plowed on.
“But I want to help out with the investigation into Ria’s disappearance if I can.”
“It’s not really an investigation,” I reassured him. “I just thought I’d look into it if I could. My friend, Akai-san, is still broken up about her going missing.”
“I remember Akai from those days.” He smiled for the first time. “I see her around town now and then, but from what I gather, she works from home.”
“She’s a bit of a shut-in,” I said, kindly. “She inherited the Fukuda house, so she’s been going through everything there.”
“She inherited the house? How interesting. But I guess she was kind to Ria’s father after Ria’s mom died. My dad said Akai-san was there a lot, taking care of him. Has Akai-san found anything interesting?” He leaned forward, enfolding the coffee cup in his palms.
“Nope. Fukuda-san was a hoarder, and besides his used soap collection, there wasn’t much there to find.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Your father said you and Ria-chan dated for a short time, so I thought maybe you’d have some insight or memories that would help me figure out what happened.”
“Hmmm, I honestly don’t remember much about my time with her, like nothing specific. We dated whenever I was home from school in Tokyo. She was very bright and sweet, and I would’ve proposed to her. I thought she was perfect for me and that we were in love. But she broke up with me months before she went missing.”
I looked hard into his face for signs of distress or anger, but instead, I detected resignation. He had been passed over, and at some point, he had accepted it.
“I met my wife the next year at school, so although I always wondered where Ria-chan went, my continued interest in her faded quickly enough.”
It seemed a likely scenario though I questioned how much he could’ve loved her if he moved on that fast. I saw the impact Ria had had on Akai, and most people I talked to who had barely known her still remembered and thought about her on occasion. Something didn’t seem right about him putting her in his past that easily.
When I didn’t respond, he asked, “Is that the kind of information you were looking for?”
Yes and no.
“What about those three or four months in between your relationship and her disappearance? Did she date anyone else? Did she say why she broke up with you?”
He looked down at his coffee cup and shook his head. “She never said why she was breaking up with me, so I assumed she didn’t love me anymore. I stopped coming home on the weekends after the break-up, so I have no idea who she was hanging around with.”
The back of my brain itched, and I crossed my legs under the table, readjusting my belly. I didn’t like the way he wouldn’t make eye contact with me. Maybe he was ashamed of being dumped though. I’d have to check with some other people around town to see if it was something he’d hidden or ran away from. Perhaps Minato would know?
“Anyway, I did want to help out.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “I did some searching, and I asked my dad about it, but this is the name of the private investigator that Fukuda-san hired after Ria-chan went missing. You should talk to her and see what she remembers. Especially about Ria-chan’s dad.”
“Her dad?” I perked up. “Why?”
“He was strict with her, and they fought all the time. I’m sure the PI investigated him too in the course of her work.” His eyes narrowed. “I never liked him. He put Ria-chan down constantly for reading manga and drawing, two things she loved. She was smart, and she would’ve gone to school for something practical, but there was no need to be mean to her about her hobbies.”
He sighed as he stood up from the table.
“I wish I had more for you, and I’m sorry we can’t do business together.” He turned and acknowledged Yasahiro for the first time in the conversation. “If you want taiyaki, please come and get them yourself.”
Translation: don’t let Mei come back to my place of business again. Ugh. And I loved those sweet confections.
“Sure. We understand.”
The two men bowed to each other, and Itsuki beat a hasty retreat from the apartment building.
When Yasahiro closed the door and turned to me, I sank back to my chair.
“His taiyaki aren’t as good as mine,” he said, coming and kissing me on top of the head. He tapped on the piece of paper on the table. “Looks like you have more digging to do, Mei-chan.”
Chapter Twenty
Yasahiro pulled up outside the rundown building in the next town over and parked the car.
“So, you’ve got five minutes before you need to go inside. What did you think of the properties we saw today?” He reached across the car and into my foot well, pulling a manila folder out and shuffling through the papers inside.
“I think…” He pulled out the words into two long syllables. “These two are our top contenders.”
I tried not to sigh as he turned in his seat and laid the two sheets of paper on the console between us.
“This land is smaller, but it’s closer to the elementary school and the bus. But then I also think it may be too noisy.”
I stared at the information sheet, recalling everything I could about the property. The house on the land had been abandoned for five years. No one lived in the house next door either, and the whole block gave me the creeps when I thought of how many people had uprooted themselves and left.
But Yasahiro saw this as a clean slate. He only cared about location, location, location. As he should.
“And then this place, I feel good about it too. This location has a stronger neighborhood, but it’s farther out from everywhere we would need to be, including the school.”
I looked at the second choice and tried to imagine us living there. The house here would have to go as well. There was no way the structure could come back from all the rain and water damage it had suffered for the past ten years.
“Hmmm,” I said, wanting to be helpful but not feeling it so much.
“Come on, Mei-chan. Think out of the box. We have the money. What do you want to do?”
I stared out the window of the car, and finally, I let go. Tears brimmed in my eyes, and I didn’t command them to go away. I’d had it.
“I want to do what we originally planned. Renovate my mom’s house and all live together.”
His face fell.
“I want to convince her that we’re better partners than Hirata and Yuna. I want to make up for all the hardship I’ve caused my mother.”
“Hey now.” He grabbed my hand, and I tried to jerk it away. He held on tighter. “You haven’t caused your mother hardship.”
“Yes, I have. I’m a horrible daughter. It’s my fault the barn burned down. It’s my fault we went starving over the winter. It’s my fault she lost so much money that she had to call Hirata for help. It’s my fault that I’m selfish, and I cause so much trouble.”
The tears turned into a waterfall, cascading over my cheeks and plopping onto my shirt and the sheets of paper between us.
“And now all of my misdeeds have caused you and me to have problems. I’m such a stupid fool.”
Yasahiro unbuckled his seat belt and leaned across the car to hug me. “Is this what you’ve been thinking about the last couple of days?”
I nodded into his shoulder, and he sighed.
“Now I know why you’ve been so quiet.”
I would’ve laughed, but I couldn’t find the humor in my own problems.
“Whatever your mother said to you, she’s dead wrong. I know that she bailed you out last year and that you both lost a lot in the barn fire, but that’s not your fault. I feel confident that if that bastard Tama hadn’t tried to kill you, you would’ve found a job and paid your mom back right away. All of this is his fault, not yours. You’ve just been dealing with the aftermath since then.”
He squeezed me once and pulled away.
“I’m going to do that macho thing I never d
o and tell you that I don’t like all the stress this situation has put you under. You’re almost twenty weeks pregnant. You have your own life you want to concentrate on. This” — he waved to the private investigator’s office we were sitting outside of — “is what you want to be doing.”
“Nah…” I waved my hand at him.
“Please,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t deny it. You love solving mysteries. I wouldn’t even be here today if you weren’t so good at it.” He squeezed my hand.
“I miss Oshabe-cha. I miss painting too.”
“And they both miss you.” He cleared his throat and pointed to the properties again. “From now on, we’re going to concentrate on us. If your mom doesn’t want us to be a whole part of her life, we won’t worry about it. And we’re not going to work for free either,” he stressed. “There are other family businesses, but there’s always a stake in it for everyone. My friends in Hakone? The ones we visited over New Year’s Eve? They’ll inherit the business when her mother dies, and they have a place to live. My other friends help out their parents, and they earn profits. No one gets anything for free.”
I nodded, glad he put his foot down. Because he was right.
“Don’t worry. I’m coming up with a plan to work it out with her. Business is business.” He said the last sentence in English, and I knew it so well, the phrase was comforting at this point.
He jiggled the papers, and I pointed to the first one.
“This one. I like that this plot is closer to the school and the bus, but the vacant house next door creeps me out. Can we look into buying that too? We could turn them into a double lot and garden, no?”
His face split into a wide smile. “I like the way you think. The house next door was listed under a different agency, so I’ll call them and ask about it.” Glancing at the clock on the dashboard, he clicked his tongue. “You better clean yourself up and get inside, or you’ll be late.”
I’d called the private investigator after Itsuki left the apartment to see if she was working on a Sunday, and her scratchy and worn voice had said, “Honey, I work every day. Come by my office around 15:00.”
The faded sign on the door to the second-floor office indicated that Sakiko Yoshida, Private Investigator was in. The carpet in the hallway was stained and smelled of mildew, and the door squeaked and ground open. A rolling cloud of cigarette smoke wafted over me, and I held my breath before calling out, “Excuse me!”
The front section of the office held two chairs, a water cooler, and a coffee table, all under fluorescent lamps. A three-quarters high cubicle wall separated the front from the back, and over the top of the divider, the aforementioned cigarette smoke puffed along the ceiling, stained brown with nicotine.
How lovely.
“Be right with you,” Sakiko Yoshida called out. Hers was the same gravelly voice I’d spoken to over the phone. The tap-tap-tap of a keyboard took over the silence, Yoshida pounding away at something.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to hang out in her office if she was smoking up a storm. I’d avoided second-hand smoke since becoming pregnant, and the smell really bothered me. I was about to head back out when the sound of a chair scraping across the linoleum stopped me, and Yoshida came around the divider, the cigarette dangling out of her mouth.
“Oh! Oh crap, you’re pregnant. I’m sorry,” she said, immediately putting out the cigarette and turning on an air filtration unit. “Sorry.” She fanned the air. “I should’ve known better. Get plenty of pregnant wives in here checking up on their husbands, but it’s Sunday. I tend to give myself a break on the weekends.”
I bowed to her. “Please don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.”
“Still, it’s a shame to meet like this.” She bowed back. “You’re Mei Suga, you said? Come on back and have a seat.”
I tried not to hesitate and followed her around the divider. She moved a fine, cut-glass tumbler filled with two-fingers-worth of whiskey to a side table and pulled a stack of papers off of the chair opposite her desk. Cigarette butts and ash overfilled a glass ashtray to the right of her ancient computer. Really? This woman was living twenty years in the past.
“Sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but I thought I’d call and schedule something for the week.”
“It’s no bother,” she said, waving her hand. “Better to meet now. I have two jobs this week tailing cheating husbands, so I won’t be around the office all that much.”
My curiosity surged. “Um, is that normally what you do? I’ve never hired a PI before.”
She smoothed out her gray hair, its bun loose at the back of her neck. The black suit she wore was two sizes too big on her, and the white blouse underneath was unbuttoned and stained with coffee.
“You married?” she asked me.
“Yes. My husband is outside in the car.”
“Is he well off?”
“Uh yes?” I was unsure where this was going.
“Then you may not have hired a PI before, but his family probably hired one to investigate you and your family. Count on it.”
I squirmed in my seat. Would his family do that? Even if they had, we were married, so it obviously didn’t stop the wedding.
“That’s my other most reliable income. Cheating husbands and engaged couples.”
“What about cheating wives?” I asked, suddenly even more curious.
She laughed, and her yellowing teeth flashed in the fluorescent light. “Those too. I get them all.”
I laughed as well, thinking it had to be fun to run around and spy on people. This was the exact opposite way I was raised, but then maybe my attitude said a lot about why Mom and I didn’t always get along.
I wondered more about this interesting woman in front of me. Had she enjoyed her job? Would she recommend it to others? She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Perhaps her job wasn’t appealing to suitors though I could imagine a hundred different ways she could fall in love with a client.
“So, what’s this about the Ria Fukuda case?” I jolted out of a daydream of a young Yoshida spying on the love of her life cheating on her with someone else. For some reason, my daydreams always went to high drama. She leaned back in her chair and grabbed a paper from the printer behind her. Her eyes scanned over the print.
“Ah, yes. Missing persons. I don’t do those anymore.” She shook her head. “Too many upset parents or spouses, always begging for me to do more. Too heartbreaking.”
She was so business-like that I questioned whether she had a heart to break, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
“Disappeared about thirteen or fourteen years ago… Hmmm. Yes. I remember this one. She was a nice girl, not too popular, good at school, in all the school clubs. People spoke highly of her. I suspected the father more than anyone. He was a real piece of work.”
The back of my neck began to sweat. “How so?”
She eyed me for a minute. “What did you say your relationship to this case was again?”
“My friend inherited the Fukuda house, and I’ve been helping her clean it out. I promised her I’d follow up on any leads if I came across them.”
Yoshida was quiet as she examined me. “Wait a second. You’re Yasahiro Suga’s wife, the one that helped clear his name in that murder case earlier this year.”
My face heated, and I was sure my cheeks were rosy red. “How... how did you know about that?” All the news organizations focused on the Chikata police force and Yasahiro. No one ever had the chance to interview me because I never gave them the chance. I ran past every reporter, and I hid out at home until the scandal blew over.
“I have connections,” she said, not elaborating. She leaned across the desk. “Ever given any thought to becoming a PI?”
“Ummmm.” I drew out the word. Of course, I had thought about it, but I was newly married, pregnant, trying to run a business, thinking about getting into real estate, and property shopping at the same time. The chaos was enough to haunt my dreams at night.
“What about a year from now?”
Why was she pushing me? I was here to find out more about the Fukuda case.
“Um, maybe?”
“Hmmm. I know you. You more than helped out with that murder case, you were also involved in the capture of Fujita Takahara, that Midori Sankaku executive. And I know about Tama Kano, too.”
I squirmed in my seat as her smile broadened.
“Never thought you’d walk into my office.”
“Well…” I was tempted to grab my bag and hightail it out of there.
She laughed, grabbing her glass of whiskey and taking a sip.
“So you’re here to find out more about Ria Fukuda because your friend asked you to. How well did your friend know Ria-san?”
I relaxed a millimeter, now on more comfortable ground. “Pretty well. They had grown up together and been best friends until high school.”
“Then you ask her this. Why did Ria-san’s father lock her inside on the weekends? Is that how much he trusted his daughter?”
I thought about the door of Ria’s room and the imperfections on both the door and the frame. Had he put a lock there at some point? I tried to swallow but couldn’t.
“He never admitted it, but I saw the evidence, and his wife alluded to their discipline problems. You can’t control teens like that,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s impossible. If it had been me, and my daughter was sneaking out to meet up with boys, I would’ve driven her there. Not forbidden it.” She picked up the paper again and handed it over to me. “Here’s everything I gathered on the case. From what I suspected, I figured she ran away to meet up with her boyfriend and give her daddy a scare. I don’t know why she didn’t come back.”
I scanned down the page, and nothing jumped out at me but Itsuki’s name.
“Do you know who she was dating at the time?” I looked at the front and back of the page and saw nothing.
The Daydreamer Detective Returns a Favor Page 13