The Bride's Kimono Page 26

  “Well, I suppose you’ve got your own view of things, just as I do, and Mr. Shima does.” Was it my imagination, or did she stress his name?

  “Actually, Mr. Shima has heard the truth,” I said. “I started telling him about the things that have gone wrong around here, security-wise, and he’s considering withdrawing the kosode collection immediately.”

  “Exactly when are you going back to Japan?” Allison asked.

  “Not for a while.” I spoke aggressively because she’d made me very angry, and also because I’d heard someone walking in the hall outside the office. At this point she couldn’t possibly murder me. “I can’t travel because the person who stole the kimono stole my passport. It’s now police property, and I haven’t had the time to get a new one.”

  “I suggest you try to make the time for it,” Allison said. “If you’re worried about your hotel bill, you should try to avoid staying in this country for a longer period than planned.”

  “I agree, but outside of the Washington Suites, there’s nowhere I can stay.” An image of a narrow brick town house with a garden of yellow roses came to mind, but I pushed it away. I could stay at the Sofitel with Takeo, or freeload off my parents. I guess I did have a few options, but pride would keep me from ever using them.

  “All right,” Allison said, looking at me coldly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks. I was hoping to…say hello to Jamie. Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. She takes the weekends off.”

  “She was gone yesterday, too.”

  “She didn’t call in, which was a bit unusual, but I suspect she was tired from the VIP reception.”

  “Do you think she’s okay?”

  “Of course! If you really want to speak to her, why don’t you call Monday afternoon? I might be able to tell you then what the accountant says about your check. But do call ahead instead of just coming here unannounced. It’s so much easier for us if we anticipate you.”

  I knew I should just leave, but I couldn’t. I felt humiliated, a typical sensation for me in Japan; though a Japanese person bent on shaming me would never have behaved as erratically as Allison did. It would have been a smooth and subtle operation. Despite Allison’s velvet headbands and her Locust Valley lockjaw, she really had no manners at all.

  “You remind me of someone,” I said, looking hard at her. “At first I thought it was my mother, but that was wrong. You’re like a man at a singles bar. At first, when you talk to a likely candidate, you’re completely charming. But then, after she’s serviced you, you treat her like a lowlife you can’t wait to get out the door.”

  “How dare you say I’m a lesbian! Just because I’m a woman of a certain age, alone, doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with men again—”

  “I’m not talking about sex. You used me because I look Japanese and fit into a kimono nicely. You didn’t expect much of a lecture, because that would steal attention away from you. When it turned out I had something to say, that irritated you.”

  Allison sucked in her breath. “You sound as if I’ve treated you shabbily, when in fact I paid you more than the planned amount—”

  “Money isn’t everything. You made me assume personal responsibility for the Morioka’s bridal kimono, when I know you could have worked out something with Metropolitan Insurance to ensure its safe storage here. Not that you run this place as tightly as you should—the lack of security is deplorable.”

  “Since when have you become an expert on museum security?” Allison demanded.

  I shrugged. “You shouldn’t have left any of the kimono galleries unattended during the VIP party. I bet you still don’t know the identity of the Asian guy casing the galleries—let’s just hope he doesn’t come back.”

  “I don’t want you back,” Allison said rapidly. “Truth be told, my life has been virtually ruined by young women after master’s degrees and the wealthiest trustees!”

  Was she really talking about Jamie? Suddenly I recalled something my mother had said about Allison’s divorce.

  “Your ex-husband’s girlfriend. She’s younger than you, I guess?”

  “Twenty-five last August, and from what I read in the Washingtonian, my husband celebrated by giving her a big party at Jean-Louis. I rather doubt she knew her appetizer fork from the dessert one; she came from nowhere—Nebraska or someplace like that—to Georgetown. I was dumb enough to give her an internship, and dumber still to let her stay over the holidays at my house, because she couldn’t afford to fly home.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and as the words came out, I really was. Unbidden, a picture flashed into my mind—of a wealthy Tokugawa lord and the two women who loved him. This time I thought about the first woman, his wife of many years, the one who wore exquisite, but properly subdued, kimono. This was the woman who had mothered his child, and watched helplessly as her husband fell in love with a younger, more beautiful woman.

  I’d focused previously on the pain that the courtesan Ai must have felt at being sent off to the boonies to marry a tea merchant. My sympathy had been in the wrong place. The real forgotten lover was Ryohei’s wife—and the ultimate sad irony was that she’d been considered so unimportant that I hadn’t found any record of her name.

  I left Allison with regretful feelings about my insensitivity, though I still felt justified in my anger at her refusal to insure the bride’s kimono. There still, of course, was a chance that she’d been involved in its theft. I had some questions about that for Jamie, but as Allison had said, she wasn’t at the museum. I hadn’t seen her since six o’clock on Thursday. Was she all right, or had the person who’d killed Hana gone after her, too?

  I went into the museum’s small hall, which had a pay telephone near the coatrack, and I did a little research on Jamie’s home address. Then I realized I needed to retrieve Takeo. It was half an hour since I’d left him on the main floor. I found him sipping a cup of green tea in Pan Asia.

  “This is the worst tea I’ve ever tasted,” he said with a mournful sigh. “Why do Americans even bother?”

  “Let’s go outside,” I said. “There are some things I want to talk to you about privately.”

  “What happened upstairs? Did you get the paycheck?” Takeo asked when we were walking on S Street.

  “No. Allison gave me some song and dance about why it wasn’t ready. I was disappointed, but at least I got something out of my visit to her office. She had left her personal computer showing an Internet site—an auction place called eBay. There were over five hundred kimono listed for auction there—I didn’t have time to go through them at all. But I think it’s worth checking if my bride’s kimono is listed for sale.”

  “If so—why would the seller be checking auction progress from her work computer? It would call attention to her.”

  “Nobody at the Museum of Asian Arts is concerned about the bride’s kimono—Allison is the only one who knows it was stolen.”

  “Who cares about eBay? I’m a little more concerned about the prospect that you might not get paid. Isn’t that the whole reason you came here?”

  “I want the money, of course, but now that I know the kimono’s probably on some Internet auction site, all I want is to get it back for the Morioka. Hana Matsura’s dead, most likely because she had the kimono, and now Allison’s assistant Jamie is missing. That kimono needs to go back into storage at the Morioka—end of story.”

  “I can help you with that eBay site,” Takeo said. “I’ve looked at it before. I once listed some rare back issues of National Geographic and they sold in a flash.”

  “Do you think you could check whether anyone listed the bride’s kimono? The thief might very well not know the exact period, so you will have to search by physical description of the fabric, and stuff like that. I’ve got a slide I can give you.” I opened the envelope and found the Morioka’s slide of the bridal kimono. “If you can spend even an hour looking for auction sites, I’ll never be able to thank you enough—”

&n
bsp; “You will, tonight. After dinner.” Takeo’s smile was engaging, but I felt more miserable than ever before.

  28

  It was five o’clock, and my parents were drinking coffee in the Revolutionary Idea when I finally dragged myself back to the Washington Suites.

  “Here she is!” my mother said brightly, as if nothing were amiss.

  I sat down and looked coolly at her. “I apologize for being late. The business I had to take care of took longer than I’d expected. It was rather complicated, in fact, by the fact that you gave out Hugh Glendinning’s phone number to someone calling my room.”

  “It was just an innocent guess,” my mother said. “You weren’t at home, but I saw your friend’s business card in a prime spot near your phone. I only gave the number, not any name, to Takeo. I also said that I couldn’t guarantee you’d be there, but the person answering might know your whereabouts—”

  I cut off my mother. “How did you even get inside my room?”

  “I asked the front desk for a key. They gave it to me when I showed identification proving that I was your mother. I had a copy of your birth certificate with me, because the police originally told me to bring it when I came to identify you.”

  “I wish you hadn’t spoken to Takeo. He called Hugh’s apartment wanting to see me.”

  “Takeo Kayama is here?” My father’s eyebrows rose.

  “Yes. At the Sofitel. I promised him that I’d eat with him tonight, but I want you two to come along. He’s tired from his travels, so he requested that we just eat downstairs in the hotel’s French restaurant—I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Bring on the coquilles St. Jacques,” my father said, smiling. “I’m glad to finally meet the young man Aunt Norie has spoken about. And I’m sorry about our conversation earlier, Rei. I don’t want to cause any more misunderstandings.”

  “It’s okay, Dad. I’m sorry, too.”

  “So we don’t make any more mistakes, can you tell us whether Takeo is informed about your relationship with Hugh?” my father prodded.

  “No. He knows nothing right now, but I plan to tell him at the right time.”

  “Does Hugh know about Takeo?” My mother had picked up my father’s trail.

  “Unfortunately, yes. He practically threw me out of his apartment when he heard I was going to see Takeo again.”

  “I don’t wonder. In light of today’s socio-sexual climate—with the presence of HIV, hepatitis, and many other sexually transmitted diseases—it doesn’t seem fair to submit one’s partners to multiple risks.” My father sounded like a more technically souped-up version of me lecturing Hana on the plane. Oh, how ironic it all was.

  “We took precautions,” I said, feeling even more humiliated than I had when the police had called me a whore.

  “Nothing’s foolproof,” my father said briskly. “Quite a few of my patients contracted AIDS even though they took precautions. The live virus causing HIV has been found in saliva. I doubt you had a dental dam inside your mouth all evening.”

  Of course I hadn’t. I didn’t even know what a dental dam looked like. I stared at the tablecloth, wishing I’d never come back to the hotel. My father had never talked about sex with me before, and he was doing it in such a graphic way. He was right about the threat of disease, of course—but with Hana dead, Jamie missing, and an antique kimono vanished into thin air, I hadn’t been thinking practically last night. I’d yearned for, and gotten, satisfaction—a glorious feeling that had long since faded.

  “It’s not like in the old days, Rei,” my mother said. “Men and women could have a little fun when they were dating, and if worst came to worst, you took penicillin. Daddy’s made some good points, and if you don’t mind a little advice from me, I see an easy solution to your dilemma.”

  “And what’s that?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Marry one of them. And after that, don’t look back.”

  I shook my head. “You’re just as old-fashioned as Dad, aren’t you? I don’t want to introduce Takeo to you. You’ll scare him out of his mind.”

  “All right, so have dinner with him alone. At his hotel. I don’t expect we’ll see you again, because our flight back to California leaves tomorrow,” my mother said, sniffing.

  “Why are you leaving so soon?” Sure, I was irritated with my parents, but the thought of them leaving so fast, and in the midst of a fight with me, was distressing.

  “I began to get the feeling that you’d rather spend your time doing other things than see us, so I called the airline and got us wait-listed on something leaving tomorrow. We didn’t have forever to spend here, you know. Daddy’s got to go to work on Monday morning, and I’ve got a show house committee meeting that afternoon.”

  “Well, in that case, I’ll definitely have dinner with you tonight,” I said glumly. “I don’t know how I’ll cancel Takeo, but I’ll do it.”

  “No,” my father said. “It’s not fair to him since he’s come all the way from Japan, and we would like to meet him. And I can promise for myself, as well as your mother, that neither of us will violate the confidentiality of our discussion. At least you were honest with us.”

  “All right,” I said, calculating that if I drove into Washington with my parents, I would have to drive back with them, thus circumventing the issue of staying overnight with Takeo. It was a cowardly way out of things, but at least it would get me home.

  “Now, there’s one thing I ask of you,” my mother said.

  “Oh?” I asked cautiously.

  “If we’re going to a nice restaurant for dinner, you’ve got to change out of those clothes. I’ve never seen you look so much like—like the man in the advertisement for Colombian coffee. I don’t know if this a trendy look or not, but it simply is not you.”

  To satisfy my mother, I wore the blue Nicole Miller dress she’d bought me two days earlier. I had raced through getting dressed in my room, because the telephone was blinking with messages—two from the police, who wanted to have another conversation, and one from the Japanese consulate. As I heard the cold, recorded voices ordering me to call them back, I sensed that what they had in store for me was bad. For the first time I began to think of fleeing. My parents could take me back to our house in California, where I could bury myself under the pink-and-green duvet that had been my favorite since childhood. But if I was going to do this, I needed to prepare.

  I got out my driver’s license from the hotel vault and tucked it into my bag just before my parents and I drove off to the Sofitel. When we’d picked up Takeo in his room, after the bows were made and polite greetings echoed by both my parents in Japanese and English, I explained to Takeo that my parents knew about the trouble with the bridal kimono, and that he could discuss what he’d found on the Internet in front of them. Takeo said—in his almost fluent English—that he’d gone through eBay and a half-dozen other auction sites to search for antique kimono, but not come up with anything that looked like the slide of the Morioka bride’s kimono.

  “The thief could be holding on to it—perhaps to put it up for sale after you’ve gone home to Japan, and the interest in the theft has died,” Takeo said. “You’ll need to keep checking in the future. You might want to get your own personal computer.”

  “That’s a very good idea,” my mother said, beaming. “I’ve been trying to get Rei on-line for the last few years. It would save me a small fortune in phone calls.”

  I rolled my eyes and said, “A computer. I can hardly think of a more enjoyable way to spend my check from the museum, if it ever comes to me.”

  “We Japanese don’t like to talk about money,” Takeo said, smiling at my parents and me. “I would much rather enjoy dinner with you.”

  Takeo had gone all out to make a good impression. He wore an elegant taupe velvet jacket over a black silk turtleneck and cream-and-black checked pants that I’d never seen before. He could have come straight from the window at Neiman Marcus, seeing how my mother gave him an approving once-over and winked at
me.

  Things were going pretty smoothly, I thought as we went through course after course of classic French food. Thank goodness there were things for vegetarians—I had a roasted portobello-mushroom sandwich. Takeo ate linguini with fruits of the sea while my father and mother satisfied themselves with steak frites, though they were busier with asking questions than with their food.

  My mother wanted to know about the areas in Japan where Takeo had grown up; my father wanted to know about his hobbies. There was an awkward pause when my father asked what the two of us liked to do together, in our spare time.

  “On a Saturday night, we might see a foreign film at Yebisu Garden Cinema, have dinner at Rei’s aunt’s house, and then end the evening dancing with a cross-cultural group of friends,” Takeo ad-libbed.

  “Oh, how lively!” my mother said happily. “It’s good for Rei to get out like that. She’s always been the introverted type.”

  “What?” Takeo asked, shooting an amused glance at me.

  “They’ve known me from birth through graduate school, and I studied almost all that time. It’s only in Japan that I relaxed enough to have fun.” I stopped talking, remembering the missing bride’s kimono. I couldn’t imagine when I’d have fun again.

  Takeo yawned heavily when we were having after-dinner coffee, so I insisted that I would see him upstairs to his room. “I’ll be down in five minutes,” I promised my parents.

  “What was that all about?” he grumbled in the elevator. “You’re twenty-eight years old. Isn’t that old enough to spend the night with your boyfriend? Your father’s a psychiatrist. I think he would consider it abnormal if you didn’t stay up here with me.”

  “He’s not that way at all, he’s like a typical Japanese father! And besides, I have to drive them home tonight. Did you see how much they had to drink?”

  “A small glass of wine each! Four people sharing one bottle of wine—pitiful! I didn’t think it could be done.”

  “Well, I drank just a half glass, so I’m the designated driver. I’m sorry, Takeo. I have to go with them.”