The Daydreamer Detective Returns a Favor

by S. J. Pajonas

  “Mmm, I do. And I’ll fill up any empty bottles too this morning, just in case.”

  “Great idea,” I said, thinking about our recycling bins, both here and downstairs in the tea shop. I should do the same. “Will you call a few people to spread the word about being closed today? I could really use the help.”

  “Of course, Mei-chan. I’ll do that right now. Are you going out to the farm today to evacuate your mom?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it. Do you think it’s necessary?” After the way we left Mom on Monday morning, I hadn’t spoken to her at all yesterday. She was angry with us, and we were angry with her, and I wasn’t sure who was going to break first. It should’ve been us, but Yasahiro wanted to give her time to think everything over before making a hard and fast decision about the farm and our future.

  “Probably. They’re saying that low-lying areas will flood.”

  I knew this situation all too well. Mom’s fields flooded when it rained too much, and this usually damaged a lot of crops. We hadn’t had a big flood in about five years, and she was more than due.

  “And the river on the other side of your mom’s property may overflow as well.”

  That was true. The Kino-Tsukoshi River had swollen this year on several occasions during heavy storms. It was on the other side of the woods, maybe a kilometer away from Mom’s main fields, so it wasn’t a direct threat to her on a regular basis.

  But today would be anything but regular.

  My stomach churned, and the baby kicked and twisted, urged on by the small amount of caffeine from my morning half-cup of coffee. I needed to set aside my anger with Mom and get out to the farm to help them as soon as possible. There was no way I could let this situation come between us.

  “Thanks for all the news, Murata-san. You stay safe, and I’ll check in with you later today.”

  “Be safe, Mei-chan,” she said and hung up.

  “Yasa-kun!” I called out, heading to the bedroom. I needed to get changed. “We should go!”

  Out at the farm, the wind picked up, bending the long grass and pushing it to the ground. I craned my neck to see the status of Akiko’s house and caught sight of Yuna’s boys kicking a soccer ball around in her backfields. At least they were close by and hadn’t gone to school today. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure when and where they would be going to school. Maybe in a week, they’d be at my old elementary school on the other side of town. Akiko’s car was in her driveway. Good. If I needed her, I’d know where to find her.

  Yasahiro followed me into the house as we searched for Mom and Yuna. The papers we’d given to Mom two days ago still sat on the dining room table, and Mimoji-chan was laid out next to them, not a care in the world.

  “Mei-chan?” Yuna came out of the back of the house, wiping her hands on a towel. “We weren’t expecting you today.”

  I hefted a huge sigh of relief. “We closed up Sawayaka and Oshabe-cha and came out here to help you prep the house for the typhoon.”

  “Really?” She raised her eyebrows at me. “What is there to prep?”

  I held my temper in check. It wasn’t her fault she knew nothing about the farm. She hadn’t grown up here, lived through countless typhoons, survived off canned foods for an entire winter because the crop was destroyed when the fields flooded.

  “A lot. Anything almost ripe needs to be picked and brought in or it could rot in the wet fields. Mom’s fields flood during a typhoon, and we’re going to get hit hard with this one.”

  Her face fell. “I had no idea. Mom is outside now getting out the wooden shutters for the house. Minato-san is out in the fields.”

  I looked at Yasahiro, and we nodded at each other. “Let’s divide up,” he suggested. “We have an hour before the wind gets too strong, and the rain comes.”

  Thankful for the cooler weather, I promised to handle the last of the tomatoes, zucchini, and other summer squash. Smaller pumpkins and winter squash peppered the fields, not ready to be picked yet. We’d hope for the best with those. Yasahiro helped Mom cover the windows with the typhoon shutters, bring the potted plants into the barn, and pick up any of the toys the boys had left on the lawn. Minato hauled potatoes into the barn with the tractor, way too heavy for me to lift or care for.

  “There’s still a lot of produce in the fields, Mei-san,” he said, leaning against the wind ripping through the open barn doors. “You may lose the sweet potatoes, beans, and several other crops.”

  “I know. Not much can be done about that,” I replied, draping the tomato flats with a length of burlap and tying it down to protect them. They were one of our best selling items, and I didn’t want them to go to waste.

  “I’m going to head home now and help my wife prepare the house if that’s okay with you.”

  “Of course.” I squealed as the wind picked up and nearly took my hat away.

  He laughed, pulling the rear door closed and latching it tight. Yuna, to my surprise, pushed a wheelbarrow across the grass to the barn with a big smile on her face.

  “Mom and I loosened up a few sweet potato fields yesterday, so I knew just where to go.”

  I was impressed with her gumption and ability to work in an emergency. Though this whole situation with Hirata and Yuna taking over the farm made me angry to the point of tears, at least Yuna was taking things seriously. Hirata wasn’t even here to give her support, yet she was determined to learn.

  “Fantastic,” I said, stepping to the side so she could get in.

  I joined Minato at the open barn door, his eyebrows drawn together and eyes staring into the distance. I followed his line of sight out across the road to Akiko’s house, both of our eyes trained on the scene in the far fields. The workers for Midori Sankaku had left at some point this morning, if they had arrived at all. The heavy equipment was absent, and the torn up fields sat quiet and desolate… Except for one man climbing out of a hole or some depression, and Yuna’s boys running back to Akiko’s house.

  “What… What is happening there?” asked Minato.

  “I don’t know.”

  And then the clouds rolled in, and the rain began.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It was amazing how the weather went from a few drops of rain here and there to a torrential downpour in a matter of moments. I grabbed my umbrella and skirted the side of the house, hoping Yasahiro and Mom had finished putting up the typhoon shutters.

  “We’re all done,” Yasahiro shouted over the heavy rain. He was already soaked. “Your mom is inside.”

  “Mei-chan!” Yuna called out, running up to us. “The boys. They’re still over at Akiko-chan’s.” Her forehead was pinched with worry.

  “I just saw them running to Akiko-chan’s house. I need to go check in with her, so I’ll go get them.” I was already wet, but not too much to enter Akiko’s house. Yasahiro, on the other hand, would drip everywhere.

  “Go. I’ll dry off, and we’ll head back to the apartment when you return.” He squeezed my arm as we passed each other, going in opposite directions.

  Crossing over to Akiko’s house, I almost lost my umbrella twice in the wind. Before long, it would be shredded and unusable. It was a good thing I had three more at home.

  “Oh good! I was wondering if I should send them home or not, but they keep telling me something weird is going on out back in the fields.” Akiko held the door open as I ducked into the wind and jumped into her house’s entrance area. I didn’t want to go any further and get anything wet, especially since Kirin-chan barked from her temporary prison in the bathroom.

  Both of the boys’ eyes were wide, their faces pale.

  “What’s going on?” I placed my hand on Korota’s shoulder. He was the older of the two and a little more reliable.

  He shook his head slowly, his lips pressed together.

  “Out with it,” I demanded, only able to be stern for a moment as his skin whitened.

  “Yushin and I were kicking the ball around out back. I swear we weren’t going to snoop
or anything.”

  “Okay…”

  “And then we saw a police car drive up to the temporary lot, you know, where all the diggers are and everything. The ones digging for those buildings next to the greenhouse. A police officer got out of the car, grabbed a shovel from the trunk, and walked out past where all the dirt was.” He waved his hand in the general direction of Akiko’s backfields, where Midori Sankaku’s greenhouse was. “Yushin and I thought it looked funny. He went to a specific spot where there was already a big hole and started digging.”

  I glanced at Akiko, but we were both too curious to stop him.

  “We came over the top of the hole and asked him what he was doing, then he yelled at us and told us we were going to be arrested for trespassing if we didn’t leave right then.” His face hardened. “I swear we didn’t know we weren’t supposed to be there. Are they going to put us in jail?”

  The tips of my fingers cooled as I reached out to pat his shoulder. “No, I’m sure you’re fine.”

  I kicked off my boots and took Korota by the arm through Akiko’s house to the back door. “Come here. Do you know where the man was? Can you point to the spot?”

  “Ummmm.” He bit his lip before pointing. “You see that mound right there? He was right on the other side.”

  “You sure?”

  “I could show you.” He straightened up, squaring his shoulders.

  “No. Your mom is worried about you. You go to the front and put your shoes back on. Akiko-san will take you home.”

  He nodded and left, but Akiko grabbed my arm.

  “What’s going on?”

  I bit my lip as I looked out at the pouring rain. How could I put my fears into words? I couldn’t. Akiko was still recovering from the shock of her older brother killing her father and trying to kill us too. What would she say when I told her I thought one of his old friends was a killer too?

  And he was a police officer in our own town.

  I needed to be ambivalent. “I don’t know yet. Let me go find out.”

  “You’re going to go out? In this?” She gestured to the backyard that already had puddles obscuring the grass. “This is epic level rain, Mei-chan. Everything out there will flood in a matter of minutes.”

  She was right, but I had no choice. It was now or never.

  “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

  We redressed at the front door, and I sent Akiko across the street with my nephews while I trudged off into the fields in the pouring rain. My boots stuck in the mud, but I pushed on, knowing it was now or never to investigate this. If I waited until after the storm was over, there might have been nothing left for me to investigate.

  Rain ran in a river down my back under my raincoat, flying sideways at my umbrella as the wind picked up. The umbrella was doing a poor job of keeping me dry, but I didn’t want to just abandon it in Akiko’s fields.

  I counted my steps as I got closer and closer to the spot Korota had pointed to.

  What are you doing, Mei?

  I should’ve at least called Goro for backup. He may have been dealing with the impending typhoon, but he would want to hear my suspicions and talk me down off the cliff I was ready to walk out onto. I glanced over my shoulder as I got closer, and no one was around.

  Thank goodness for small miracles.

  The mound of dirt in front of me was a muddy mess, and there was no way I was climbing over it. So I skirted the edge of the mound and peered down into the hole. It was filling with rainwater, and I squinted my eyes to see through all the muck.

  “Of course. Nothing is going to be easy today,” I yelled up at the sky. The rush of rain was deafening, but I was already wet to the bone and in the middle of a construction site. I might as well go all the way in.

  The opposite side was lower and sloped into the depression, so I entered the hole from there. The edge towered over my head by almost half a meter, a wall of dirt between Akiko’s house and me. This must have been a spot the heavy machinery had dug out for the administrative buildings. I dragged my booted feet along the bottom of the hole, hoping to find something, anything, that would justify this stupid excursion. My boots scraped against rocks, but that was about it.

  I turned left and right, frustration building in my chest.

  “What am I missing?” I asked aloud. I didn’t expect anyone to answer, but just then, my eyes zoomed in on something flapping from the side of the hole.

  Rain ricocheted off a piece of heavy-duty clear plastic exposed in the wall of the hole. I approached it slowly, wanting yet not wanting to see the real reason the plastic was there. Scratch marks around it led me to believe it had recently been dug at. By Kohei Watanabe?

  Probably. We’d have to get the boys to describe him.

  Since the umbrella wasn’t doing me much good, I collapsed it and let the wind and rain have its way with me as I hacked away at the mud wall with the umbrella’s handle. The whole process was slow, and my umbrella bent under the force with which I stabbed at the solid dirt.

  Mud covered my hands, and my vision tunneled as I worked harder and harder. I forgot about Akiko, about Yasahiro waiting for me across the road, about Mom going blind, about my own baby growing in my belly, and I hacked away until I saw it.

  I let my arms fall to my side and dropped the destroyed umbrella into the rising pool of rainwater.

  There, beneath the clear, aging plastic, was a knot of long hair attached to the decayed head of a dead body.

  I had finally found Ria.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Mei-chan, you’re a mess!” Mom cried as I stepped into the house and foyer. I dripped all over the stone floor, my muddy boots and hands creating a dark puddle around my feet.

  My hands shook, and I couldn’t stop them. Between the cool rain and what I’d just witnessed, I wondered if they’d ever stop again. Ria’s face had been right there, her hair. I swallowed, trying to halt my thoughts from piecing the two together. Only a glimpse of skin had been visible, but in my head, my imagination had blown it up to her whole body.

  Yasahiro emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel, when his smile dropped, and he ran to me.

  “Are you okay? What happened?” His hands skated over me, checking my shoulders, arms, and belly before peeling my raincoat off. Only about two square centimeters of my shirt was dry, if that. “Your face is so pale,” he said, resting his hands on my cheeks.

  “Your hands are warm,” I chattered out. My jaw shook from trying to keep it steady. “I need my phone.”

  “You need to get undressed and in a hot bath immediately,” Mom demanded. A hot bath sounded heavenly, but no.

  “N-N-No time.” I held out my shaking hand beckoning my phone to it. I had left it inside on the charger while out in the fields. I figured it should be at full strength before the typhoon hit.

  Yasahiro retrieved my phone immediately. He must have known something big was happening because he didn’t fight me. Mom scoffed, though. She hated when I went against her.

  “I’ll find you some dry clothes,” she said, stalking off to the rear of the house.

  I dialed up Goro, and he answered, shouting into the phone. “Mei-chan! Where are you?”

  “Out at Mom’s. Look, I need —”

  “Out at your mother’s? Are you crazy? I asked for everyone out there to be evacuated!” His voice rose so high I had to pull the phone away from my ear.

  “Evacuated?” Both Yasahiro and Yuna who’d been standing and listening stiffened. “No one came by or called.” I raised my eyebrows at Yasahiro, and he shrugged.

  Goro swore. “We sent Watanabe to your side of town to evacuate everyone. The Kino-Tsukoshi River is at its banks after thirty minutes of rain.” He sighed. “We had so many rain storms this summer that it was already swollen before this. I expected you all to be at Yasa-kun’s place, not out at the farm!”

  Kohei Watanabe was supposed to be out here evacuating us, not digging in the dirt looking for the girl he killed
a decade ago. Why was I not surprised to hear he shirked his duties to cover his own butt?

  The wind strengthened on Goro’s end, and he swore again. “I’ll try to send someone out there to retrieve you guys, but the road is flooded. So much rainwater is flowing into the sewers that the manholes are overflowing. If someone doesn’t reach you in an hour, you need to prepare for the worst.”

  A new chill ran over my back. “Goro-chan, listen to me. I think I found Ria.”

  “What?” he screamed into the phone, and I got the feeling he genuinely hadn’t heard me because his end of the line sounded like complete chaos.

  “I found Ria!” I yelled back. “She’s buried in the fields behind Akiko-chan’s house!”

  The whole house went silent around me. Even the wind seemed to gasp for a moment before it picked up its pace again. Mom stood in the hallway, her arms filled with clean and dry clothes, her eyes wide.

  “And my nephews saw Kohei Watanabe right near her just before the rain started. You sent him out here to evacuate us, but instead, he was looking for Ria’s last resting place.” Silence stretched on the other end of the line. “Did you hear me?” My voice squeaked, and all the energy drained from my body.

  “I heard you, Mei-chan. I’ll handle it. Whatever you do, don’t try to drive out of there. The road is flooded, and your tiny cars will be swept away. Hold tight. I’ll do what I can from here.”

  And he hung up. I stared at my phone for a moment before I used my shaky fingers to turn it off.

  “We have to be ready to evacuate,” I said, handing my phone back to Yasahiro. “The river is overflowing, and the roads are flooded. They’re going to try to send someone out here to get us.”

  The wind picked up, and the lights flickered. My stomach sank, and finally, my body waved the white flag. I’d had just about my limit for the day, and it was far from over. My right side cramped, sending a shock of pain through me. I winced and placed my hand on my swollen belly.

  “Mei-chan.” Yasahiro dived forward to put his arms around me. “What’s wrong?” His eyes, usually so serene, were filled with worry.