The Kizuna Coast: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mysteries Book 11) Page 30

  Once the driver stopped, I decided to disembark, as well. I still needed aspirin, and I wanted to visit the nearby street where the girls had said they’d found Mayumi’s backpack. I also needed to ascertain whether the Takara Auction House door was in clear view of the jungle gym where Masa had perched. I figured that I could be finished in about a half hour and walk the mile back to the shelter.

  I explained my plan to the Hanedas, promising I’d see them at dinner. Then I joined the line to get off.

  I hurried ahead of the shoppers, passing the butcher’s shop and aiming for the Family Mart. Although the convenience shop was still closed, it was brightly lit within, revealing a group of people scrubbing and shoveling. Outdoors, on the side of the shop, a small rubble pile lay. This was the place where the girls had found Mayumi’s backpack. A young woman wearing denim overalls and long, thick rubber gloves was examining each piece from the big pile before placing it onto a new pile. I saw piles for photographs, sodden books and papers, toys, and kitchenware.

  I greeted the woman and asked if she’d let me sort through some of the piles.

  “Wouldn’t you rather come back when you’re dressed to work?” She looked skeptically at my outfit.

  “Yesterday some girls found a backpack belonging to a young woman called Kimura Mayumi. I’ve returned to look around because the pack didn’t contain Mayumi’s cell phone. I thought there might be a chance it was in another place.”

  “We have a section of phones, but almost all of them are broken because of their hours underwater. Do you know the phone’s make and model?”

  “I believe it’s a later model iPhone inside a case featuring the cartoon character Totoro.”

  “Better put some gloves on. And please roll up the sleeves of your nice cardigan.”

  I put on rubber gloves and began examining mobile phones. So many different brands of phone, and even one Totoro case, although it was yellow and housed a Samsung. I kept picking up phones, the gloves growing grimier from all that I touched. I was looking for a clean phone, because it had probably been with Mayumi all along. And the only reason it hadn’t been in the backpack—or on Mayumi’s body—was because someone had separated it from her.

  After I was done, I said goodbye to the woman, who promised to send the phone over to the volunteer shelter in care of Mr. Yano, should it be found. I felt too grubby to go into the Family Mart for aspirin, so I walked back the way I’d come on the busy shopping street.

  I stopped in my tracks when I saw the Tanuki Carpentry truck right by Takara Auction House. Akira was unloading a long, plastic-wrapped roll. At the sight of me, he nodded.

  I came up to him and spoke in a low, apologetic tone. “Hello, Akira-kun. I’m sorry for not coming over yesterday evening.”

  “It’s okay.” His half smile told me he understood.

  “What are you working on here?”

  Morioka-san wants new carpeting installed into his place. He offered a good price if we could do it now.”

  “So you can do carpeting as well as carpentry? Is there anything you can’t do?”

  “This will be my first time doing carpet.” He sighed. “There’s a lot of important rebuilding work to do around town, so it’s a little inconvenient. And those stairs weren’t carpeted before, so I’ll have to remove trim from the sides and do other things to prepare. But before I forget to say it—Michael-san is looking for you.”

  “Really! So he’s returned from overseeing the boats?”

  “Yes. I gave him a ride back to headquarters after the tow left. Those boats are going to a harbor about thirty miles west from here. You should call him. He was concerned that you hadn’t come back from the hospital along with the others.”

  “I tried to call him earlier. I’ll do it again.”

  “Michael-san told me some children found Mayumi’s family’s lacquer collection. That’s really good news for the family, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, and not just because they had a valuable collection returned,” I added, when I saw his cynical expression. “They opened a whole conversation about Mayumi that was really nice.”

  “Was anything else inside her backpack?”

  “Unfortunately, nothing. The phone and wallet were either lost or removed.”

  “Removed,” Akira said with a grimace. “I still think someone killed her.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” I admitted. “A doctor who ran a few x-rays on her body said the upper front of her skull was crushed, and her shoulder was dislocated.”

  “Really!” Akira’s eyes flared with emotion. “But who would do that to her? Who could hate like that?”

  “Maybe the answer is in her missing phone. I’d like to stop by the playground next to the auction house. She was seen going in by one of the boys on the jungle gym.”

  “That must be Masa-kun,” Akira said. “He’s the younger brother of one of my school friends, just starting high school.”

  “Yes, it is. How observant do you think he is? Some kids that age exaggerate things—”

  “Not Masa-kun. He’s a good kid, and smart. What did he say about Mayumi?”

  “Masa said Mayumi was on the street and tried to encourage all the boys to come up with her inside the auction house to take shelter. Masa stayed outside—I guess he was the group’s leading daredevil—but the others went in with her. Masa says his friends came out but wasn’t sure if he saw Mayumi do that.”

  “But if she’d been with Ishida-san and Morioka-san, she would have survived.” Akira gave a long, low whistle. “Of course, there’s a back door. It’s where I went in earlier today when I had to measure. Maybe that’s the exit she took.”

  I said goodbye and walked over to the opposite side of the street, continuing down the block to the playground. Mud had been shoveled and sawdust laid down to give children a path to the swing set and other equipment. Two young boys and a girl were on the swings, laughing and pumping their legs as they soared.

  Like many jungle gyms, this one was a dome of criss-crossing iron bars, with the top of the structure about twelve feet off the ground. It had also been scrubbed clean. Climbing up carefully, I found a clear view of the view of the auction house from one direction and the ocean from the other. Would Masa really have stayed facing the auction house?

  No. He’d already told me about watching the coast, camera-phone at the ready.

  As I turned away from the water to look back at Takara Auction House, I noted the dark water line close to the top of the first-floor windows. This water line showed the height the wave had reached. I remembered how thick the mud was on the ground floor and the depressing sight of so many antiques drenched in dirt. My boots had been heavy with mud; I’d had to remove them before going upstairs.

  I saw again those steps made of cedar, the local tree that gave Sugihama its name. They were wide stairs, suitable for at least three or four people to climb at the same time, which made sense for a place that had been designed as a kindergarten.

  Was I correctly remembering the staircase? I stared hard at the building, and then began climbing down.

  Seconds later, I’d jogged the short distance to the shop. Akira’s truck was no longer parked outside. I guessed that he’d dropped off the carpeting roll and moved on to do something else.

  More than ever, I needed to speak with Mr. Morioka about whether he’d seen Mayumi and the boys run in and out of the shop. If he were not in, I’d take a quick look at the stairs to satisfy my curiosity about the strange thoughts that were percolating.

  A jingle of antique cowbells announced my entrance as I opened the door. Mr. Morioka had improvised a historic alarm. I stood in the auction house threshold, glancing around the well-lit room. A roll of gray carpet stood like a fat, woolly pillar at the bottom of the wide staircase. A thin sheet of paper lay atop a big toolbox next to the carpet. Glancing down, I saw that the cost of the carpet was about $4,000, with labor $3,000. I’d thought contractor prices in Hawaii were high, until I saw this.

>   The letterhead said TANUKI CARPENTRY, and Mr. Rikyo’s signature and inkan stamp were at the bottom of the page. Mr. Morioka had also signed and marked with his own inkan. Forest and high knoll were the characters for his first name. Every time I saw kanji characters I recognized, I felt a brief surge of competency. His first name was even easier: the kanji for “big” followed by the kanji for “myself.” Read aloud, it started out “Dai.”

  Daigo. This was the older gangster-type Mayumi had met in Tokyo.

  All this time, I’d thought Daigo was someone who’d fenced to a dealer: a gangster middleman to unethical dealers. But now it seemed the other way around. He was a bona fide antiques dealer with mob connections. And since Mayumi hadn’t known this, he would have been able to collect double commissions from her on the lacquer.

  It was a lot to ponder. However, I couldn’t forget what I’d been thinking about while staring at the building’s exterior. I turned on the flashlight function of my phone and approached the stairs, sweeping the bright yellow light over the cedar stairs.

  The center of each step was a slightly lighter, worn shade than the edges: evidence of all the foot traffic from the kindergarten years. Although the entire staircase had been scrubbed, the bottom ten steps were still discolored from the days that mud had lingered; and the plaster on the wall near these steps was also stained.

  The top half of the staircase had never been flooded. It was unmarked, excepting two steps marked by several rusty, reddish brown blots. The previous times I’d been here, I’d had too much on my mind to notice any particular marks on stairs. But I didn’t hurry today.

  During my years buying and selling antiques, I’d seen all manner of stains on wood. But never blood.

  Chapter 35

  Using my phone’s camera, I shot a quick, close picture. I wanted to take another shot at enough distance to make it apparent the bloodstained step was part of Mr. Morioka’s staircase.

  The door’s jingling bells made me think Akira must have returned. I could only imagine his reaction when I told him whose blood marked the stairs.

  “Hey, Akira!” I put the phone in my pocket and began hurrying down to meet him. But as I reached the halfway point, I stopped.

  It was Daigo Morioka. At first, he gave me the kind of surprised, professional smile one might give a customer. As he saw past my new hairstyle and city clothing, though, that smile dropped.

  Acknowledging his recognition, I made a slight half bow. The plan had changed. I needed to evacuate without alerting him that I’d figured out who he really was.

  “You are alone.” He said. He was dressed ruggedly, in work pants, a down jacket, boots and gloves.

  “I’m here with my husband.” I put emphasis on the word, trying to make him believe I wasn’t in the auction house alone. But my predicament was obvious. If I’d been on the ground floor, I could have rushed for the door. But because Mr. Morioka was blocking the foot of the stairs, there was no way out.

  Mr. Morioka narrowed his eyes, looking at me skeptically. “Why are you back? You found the Kimuras’ lacquer.”

  “How did you hear that?”

  “Ishida-san rang me with the good news.” As he spoke, his gaze shifted to the toolbox near his feet. He bent down, rummaged for a moment, and then came up holding a large hammer.

  “You left Mayumi’s backpack where it could be noticed. What a kind gesture.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the hammer. Morioka was a quick thinker who wasn’t afraid to act violently when he had the opportunity. How clever of him to go after me with a hammer already marked with Akira’s fingerprints.

  “Kindness?” He made a snorting sound. “After Ishida gave me the details of every piece, I realized his knowledge and communication about these goods to other dealers would make the lacquer impossible to sell. And then, there was the problem of you.”

  “Yes. Because you worried about me, you tampered with my mobile phone.”

  “A precaution. From the moment you started asking questions, I knew you could be troublesome. You should have just taken Ishida back to Tokyo.”

  I shrugged, trying to appear calm. “That was not his wish.”

  “I never realized the connection between them. The stupid girl I’d met in Tokyo phoned me two weeks before, saying she wanted to take back the lacquer. I couldn’t, of course; it was going to be a high point of the event.”

  “It meant a lot of money,” I added, looking at his flushed face.

  “Money that nobody’s getting now,” he grumbled. “What a vulgar, noisy kid; she ruined everything.”

  “Actually, the tsunami ruined everything. And when the sirens blew and she wanted shelter, I don’t know how you could have turned her away.”

  “She tried to drag in a bunch of town teenagers with her. Lots could be stolen with urchins like that lingering on my third floor.”

  “Did you know those kids died?” I stared at him, and from the way his eyes dropped for a moment, it seemed he might feel guilty. “When the tsunami siren rang, you knew that if Mayumi perished, you’d have the lacquer collection to yourself, if you could get it upstairs in time.”

  A jingling arose near the door. Someone was coming; hope surged within me.

  “Excuse me, mail delivery,” a cheerful male voice called out.

  “Help,” I shouted, but the clanging bells from the door closing drowned out my voice. Mr. Morioka picked up the hammer and advanced up the first step toward me.

  “You shouldn’t have called out like that.”

  The moment had come. I pulled out my phone and punched in 110. Glancing down, it was clear to me that the cell network wasn’t working. But he didn’t know. I said, “Soon, they’ll be on their way. And you’ll have a second murder charge.”

  “Don’t you understand that there was no murder? I had to push her away from the door. That’s all I did.”

  “You hit the front of her head. Maybe with the same piece of wood you threatened me and Mr. Ishida with, when we surprised you the first time.”

  From the tightness of his expression, I guessed I was right. “She fell down. I don’t know any of the other events. I had one minute to lock that door and get to the third floor. I was shocked to open my door after the waters went down and see that she’d stayed. All I did was move her to a place where she could be collected.”

  “So you got rid of her.”

  “Later that night, I rolled her into a carpet that I carried to the butcher shop on the next street. So much was going on that nobody gave me a second look.”

  I reconsidered my earlier thoughts about escape. If I ran into his second-floor apartment, I could lock the door behind me. I remembered a landline phone on the desk. If the line wasn’t functioning, I could raise the window and call out for help to the street.

  I made a snap decision. The stairs creaked horribly as I swung around and began running up. At the second-floor entrance, I found the door was locked fast. Damn it. Even if I’d had my tools with me, I would not have had time.

  Mr. Morioka was chuckling as he now mounted the stairs at a leisurely pace.

  “Forget it,” I yelled, sounding tougher than I felt. “You can’t get out a body out with all the volunteers around.”

  “Work stops in the evenings, doesn’t it? You know the volunteers’ schedule.”

  Mr. Morioka surged toward me, filling my view. When we were a foot apart, he raised the hammer. As it traveled fast down toward my forehead, I ducked and punched out with braced arms against his belly. He lost his balance, and in an instant, he tripped backward down the stairs.

  At the bottom, he lay moaning, his hands cradling his head. I made my way down, my entire body shaking. I leapt over his body, not wanting to risk him catching me by the ankle.

  There was no need to do anything more with him. All I wanted was to get out of the dark auction house and into the light.

  Across the street, the Tanuki Carpentry van had reappeared. Michael was sitting on the rear bumper. He was
drinking a canned coffee with Akira. Seeing the two strong men chatting over their petite cans of coffee—while I’d almost had my brain bashed—was damn annoying.

  “Oh, there you are!” Michael greeted me happily. “We were hoping you’d turn up. I didn’t know if your phone was on silent mode, or if the cell network is down again.”

  I shook my head at him. I didn’t know where to begin.

  “Rei, what is it?” Michael’s voice shifted an octave.

  “You are clueless,” I exploded. “Morioka murdered Mayumi! I was in there, and he trapped me on the stairs and was coming at me with a hammer. I just barely got away, and now I think I might have killed him!”

  In that instant, Michael grabbed me to him. I felt his heart pounding against mine.

  “Rei, I’m so sorry. I had my suspicions, but I can’t believe you were alone with him—”

  “Well, if you want to see the results, he’s lying at the foot of the stairs.”

  “What’s wrong?” Akira cut in, as if sensing the rapid-fire English passing between us meant a major problem.

  “Please contact the police,” I said to him in Japanese. “My phone didn’t work.”

  “I’ll call these guys in to help.” Michael jogged off toward a group of Japanese soldiers shoveling mud.

  Akira dialed the police and then handed me the phone. When I’d finished explaining to the dispatcher about the need for both police and an ambulance, I hung up and told Akira about how Daigo Morioka had killed Mayumi. Before I was quite finished, he was running for the building, his face red with anger.

  “Don’t kill him,” I called out, following him. “He’s already down!”