The Bride's Kimono Page 32

  From the next gallery, I heard a soft sound—the whisper-soft noise that silk makes when it is folded. Mr. Shima was going to steal the entire kimono collection. Maybe it hadn’t been his original plan, but now he had the opportunity. And unfortunately, if he decided to take all the kimono in the show, he’d eventually unwrap the bride’s kimono that was sheltering me.

  So, Hugh’s dream had been a premonition. I was wrapped in the bride’s kimono that he had dreamed about, and the man in black was near. I would never know what the dream had really meant to Hugh, but I knew for myself that the man in black was a representation of evil: the kind of evil that would snuff out the life of a young woman who was in the way, and a second woman who knew too much.

  I took a few breaths to calm down. I was spinning into an irrational state. If the fire door at the back of the museum could be opened, Mr. Shima would surely leave with the goods. That would be an ideal situation, since I could call the police, who would later catch him with everything at the Sofitel or one of the airports.

  I concentrated every bit of my energy on listening. The whisper-soft sounds of the kimono collection being folded continued. Then the folding stopped, and his footsteps walked softly along the carpeted gallery floor.

  Suddenly I couldn’t hear him anymore. Had he quietly walked out through the other gallery and to the back door? I wanted to weep with anxiety. And then, as if in answer to my absolute misery, I heard the tinkle of breaking glass, and then the museum’s alarm began to ring. It roared with the kind of fierce, ominous sound of Japanese sirens warning residents that an earthquake has taken place.

  To me, the sound was welcome. I understood that Mr. Shima had done what I’d hoped for: he had broken out of the museum.

  I’d been clutching the inside of the kimono so tightly that my arms had cramped, so as I emerged from the protective tent of the bride’s kimono, I took a moment to stretch. I rotated my neck with relief, turned around, and froze.

  Mr. Shima was still there.

  He was standing perfectly still and watching me. I glanced at him, and at the pile of neatly folded kimono in the corner of the room.

  “You’re wearing her coat? But how…” he murmured, looking at Hugh’s Barbour hanging loosely on me.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. He must have thought I was in Hana’s coat. He knew what Hana had been wearing. I’d been right in my guess that he had killed her.

  “For once you have nothing to say. I’m surprised,” Mr. Shima said.

  The alarm continued to bleat, and I found myself marveling at the Japanese registrar’s calm. Didn’t he understand what the alarm meant? At last my voice came back, though I had to struggle to speak in Japanese. “Um, do you hear the alarm? It means the police are on their way.”

  “No, they aren’t. The alarm company will telephone this place, to make sure the siren didn’t go off by accident. Because of your nice American accent, I’ll have you answer the phone and tell them not to worry. Won’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, because my eyes were on something that Mr. Shima had slipped out of his pocket. It was a small dagger with a mother-of-pearl handle. A bride’s knife—the kind that was still tucked into an obi as a decoration.

  Mr. Shima stroked the knife, looked at me, and said, “I need the receipt. I saw you put it in your pocket earlier today.”

  It wouldn’t do to make him angry. I handed the receipt over, and he put it in his pocket. “Thank you. I was careless to give it to you the other day.”

  “My father would say—he’d say it was the unconscious working,” I said.

  “What?” Mr. Shima sounded distracted, as I’d hoped he would.

  “Unconsciously, you feel bad about what you did. You wanted to be caught. And as you heard earlier, I’ve already told someone about when you really arrived here. You won’t get away with anything.”

  “The girl you were talking to is no problem. My partner will handle that.” Mr. Shima broke off because the phone had started ringing, true to his prediction.

  “Not yet,” he said as I started for the phone. I stopped and let him wrap an arm around my body. Then we moved as one to the reception desk. He sat down on the receptionist’s chair, jerking me down so I was on his lap. It was horrible being close to him like this, especially because I could feel the unmistakable sign of his arousal. So violence excited him as much as the prospect of stealing.

  “When you pick up the phone, you must answer ‘Museum of Asian Arts,’ he instructed, and I nodded, feeling the edge of the bride’s knife on the nape of my neck. “Do it now.”

  I picked up the phone and said in a shaking voice, “Museum of Asian Arts.”

  “Darling, is that you?” Hugh was on the other end.

  Mr. Shima was sitting very close to the receiver—I wasn’t sure how much he could hear.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “We set off the alarm by breaking a window…” Hugh’s words were hard to hear because of the static coming from his cell phone. “Takeo…”

  “What’s going on?” Mr. Shima hissed in my ear in Japanese.

  “The museum is closed right now,” I said stiffly. I wanted Hugh to sense that things were not right.

  “Did you hear that?” Hugh sounded excited. “Takeo and I met…rough going at first, but okay now—”

  “Thank you for calling, sir. I must end this call,” I said as woodenly as possible.

  “What? Oh, I get it, you don’t want the phone to be tied up in case the alarm service phones…so stupid about these things—”

  “Not at all,” I said. I used those words because I didn’t think they’d trigger any suspicion from Mr. Shima. To the Japanese ear, it was a common, innocuous phrase that meant “you are welcome.”

  “What did you say?” Hugh paused, sounding a bit uncertain for the first time.

  “Not. At. All,” I repeated emphatically. Mr. Shima was holding the receiver and listening in at the same time that I was speaking.

  “You’re not okay,” he said.

  “Not at all,” I repeated.

  “Ah, I think I get it—”

  “I urgently request that you call during regular museum hours, when someone else can assist you,” I said, flinching as the knife nicked my neck. I was too frightened to feel pain—all I felt was a trickle down the back of my neck and Mr. Shima’s arm tightening around my diaphragm.

  “What’s going on?” Mr. Shima whispered into my ear in Japanese. “Who’s on the line?”

  “The caller is not dangerous to you. He just wants to know what hours the museum is open,” I said back to him in Japanese. Then, into the phone, I said, “The museum lobby opens at ten daily. Closing hour is five. Do you understand?”

  “I think so. Ah, what is the price of admission?”

  “Admission is five dollars, but as our kimono exhibit from Japan’s famous Morioka museum is so cutting edge, an additional donation is requested—a very sizable, significant amount.”

  “Right,” Hugh said. “I will make the greatest contribution I possibly can. Is there anything else I should know about the exhibit?”

  “You need to clear the line of this stupid caller so we can take the call from the alarm company,” Mr. Shima said in swift, angry Japanese. “If you don’t hang up now, I’m going to cut through the back of your neck. Do you understand?”

  Tears came to my eyes. Even though Hugh could probably overhear Mr. Shima muttering to me, he wouldn’t have any inkling of how terrible the words were.

  “I must tend to business here,” I said stiffly. “Thank you for calling the museum.”

  I hung up the receiver.

  “Who was that?” Mr. Shima looked at me closely.

  “Like I said, a caller to the museum—”

  “Well, we’ve got to hurry now. That call should come soon, and I’ll need you to take it. I’ve changed my mind about what you’ll say to the alarm company. You will say that you’re going to kill yourself.”

  “Wha
t?” I looked at him, shocked.

  “It makes perfect sense. You were going to be exposed as the kimono thief, and you’d just lost the respect of your Japanese boyfriend. Good reasons to die, neh?”

  “You think I’d slit my own throat?” I asked.

  “Of course not! I wouldn’t let you hold the knife. I’ll do it myself. We’ll wait two more minutes to see if the alarm company calls. If they don’t, we’ll just go ahead with business.”

  “Why don’t we just leave?” I asked, thinking if I got outside, at least I’d have the chance to run. Even if Hugh had called the police, it would be a while before they arrived and could figure out how to enter the museum. It had already been five minutes since the alarm had gone off and no company representative had called.

  “I will. After the police arrive and are concentrating on examining your lovely body,” Mr. Shima said with a slight laugh.

  “I still don’t understand why you stole your institution’s kimono in such a roundabout way,” I said, determined to distract him from the two-minute countdown.

  “I’m not removing these textiles—I told you that already. I am interested in getting your fingerprints on them so it looks like you were the one who wanted to steal them.”

  “So if you don’t want these kimono, why did you take the one from my room?” I said, walking back into the gallery at the prompting of the knife blade he held between my shoulders.

  “I wouldn’t have had to even take it from your room if it hadn’t been for that stupid girl. She was there first and complicated everything.”

  “What time of day was it?” I asked, because I still wanted to know.

  “The early evening. You’d gone downstairs with that man, and after I’d followed you and gotten a sense that you’d be a while, I went upstairs with my special tools. I was surprised to see the door was slightly ajar—quite delighted at my good luck. I went inside and got right to work, but then she came out of the bathroom—a vulgar young woman with a lipstick in her hand—”

  “My MAC lipstick,” I said, hardly able to believe it. So that was where my missing stick of Rage had gone.

  “I don’t know. I can tell you that when we struggled, some of it touched the kimono, and that’s when I became very angry. To damage something that our museum had cherished so carefully for years!”

  “So you killed her then?”

  “No, I had to convince her to leave the hotel with me. I did that with the aid of the very knife at your neck, Miss Shimura. And when we got outside, to a quiet place, I found that it worked just as well as the ancient samurai thought it would.”

  We’d reached the stack of kimono, and with Mr. Shima holding the knife in front of me, I sat down, awkwardly, and began doing as he said—touching each kimono, pressing my hands firmly along the front of each garment.

  “The kimono—you liked it, but it was because of more than the fabric,” I pondered aloud as I methodically imprinted my hands along the silk. Detective Harris had mentioned smuggling drugs in the kimono. Now I recalled how, at the X-ray machine at Narita Airport, the security officials had wanted to look in the box. An interesting shape, or shapes, must have appeared on the screen.

  “There was something hidden inside the garments,” I said, thinking out loud. “Something else from your museum. But because the customs broker helping me was a pro, he was able to finesse things at the X ray so they wouldn’t bother opening the package.”

  “Oh, really? If the goods were there, why didn’t you see them when you opened the package?”

  “An uchikake has a very deep hem. In the Edo period, when so many people weren’t allowed to show their wealth, they wore their jewels inside the kimono, sometimes sewn into the hems,” I said.

  “The Morioka doesn’t have jewels,” Mr. Shima said.

  “True, but it has a priceless netsuke collection.” I looked at him, and knew that I was right to have guessed that small ivory figurines, once worn as ornaments hanging off kimono, were the most sensible objects to smuggle out of the Morioka Museum. They were more valuable than kimono because there was a much bigger market for the exquisitely carved ivory.

  “Never say priceless. Netsuke are easier to sell. My American contact has a waiting list filled with the names of people who don’t ask questions, just pay.”

  “Dick Jemshaw,” I said, just as the phone began to ring.

  “You’re right again, Miss Shimura, but there’s no more time to chat. You’re going to answer the phone, and act confused, but make up something if they ask you to give them the password. Then I want to hear you say you’re going to kill yourself. If I don’t hear you say those words, you know what I’m going to have to do.”

  I understood. I moved at a quick pace toward the ringing phone with Mr. Shima right behind me.

  Mr. Shima picked up the receiver and made me press my face close to his so he could hear what was being said on the other end of the line. I prayed it wasn’t Hugh again.

  “Museum of Asian Arts.” My voice came out in a whisper.

  “This is Mr. Jones calling from Professional Sentry Services, the company that has a contract with the museum. An alarm went off and I’m calling to check what the situation is. Is everything all right?”

  I looked at Mr. Shima. He was nodding emphatically.

  “Yes, everything’s fine.”

  “And who are you?”

  Again, he nodded and mouthed the word “Shimura.”

  “Rei Shima—Shimura,” I said, as if I were merely stuttering. If there was a tape of the call, maybe someone would figure out later what I’d been trying to say.

  “Ms. Shimura, we don’t have you listed in the computer as a museum staff member qualified to sign off on security concerns.”

  “Um, it must be because I don’t normally work here,” I said, looking anxiously at Mr. Shima. He smiled. It was all going according to his plan.

  “Just give me the password, and then I can sign it all off.”

  “Let me see…I’m trying to remember. It’s been a while since it was given to me.” I paused. “Something about…cats, no, I think it was something about dogs. No, it was Japanese history—”

  “It’s easy to forget. Do you have it written down somewhere?” The alarm company employee was entirely too accommodating—not very good for a security company that should be on the lookout for thieves, I thought. But that was beside the point. I had a minute more to talk before Mr. Shima killed me.

  “Why don’t you try to think really hard, run through what seems most likely to you,” the security-company man suggested.

  “Chippendale,” I said, knowing that there was no way in hell that it could be right.

  Mr. Shima was so physically close that I could feel his head nodding alongside mine.

  “Chippendale…that’s not right. I can give you a hint, if you can tell me the museum curator’s mother’s maiden name.”

  I almost laughed. The ultimate irony is I knew Allison’s maiden name—Lancer. But not her mother’s.

  “Howard,” I said, giving my mother’s own name.

  “What’s that? I couldn’t quite hear you.”

  “The alarm is so loud. I’m really sorry I set it off,” I said miserably, trying to speak louder. It did make it hard to hear the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Don’t worry! It happens to many of our clients. Can you spell the maiden name for me?” Could the alarm-company guy be so stupid that he was willing to believe whatever word I made up? If so, nobody would ever come to look for my dead body that night. The only thing I could think of doing to delay was misspell the word. “Okay, I think it’s H-O-W-A—”

  “I didn’t hear the third letter, can you repeat it all again from the start?”

  “H-O-W—”

  I fell backward as Mr. Shima gave a sudden jerk. Oh, God, this was it. He was stabbing me. No, he’d just fallen backward. Because I was on his lap, I fell, too—but in the next moment strong hands seized me under my arms and yanked m
e over the table.

  “You okay?” asked a man wearing a baseball cap and black T-shirt with the word POLICE on it, setting me down on an antique Chinese chair that I knew the museum didn’t want anyone sitting on.

  “How—How—” I broke off, not sure whether I should keep spelling my mother’s maiden name, or whether I should ask what had happened. “How did you get here?”

  “We got the message from your friends outside—the ones who set off the alarm in the first place,” the man said as he snapped handcuffs onto Mr. Shima. “Because of the information you relayed when they called you, we were able to guess that you and the suspect were downstairs near the reception area, and that the suspect was armed with a knife.”

  I wasn’t going to have to explain my way out of anything, I thought with amazement, as I heard the SWAT man give Mr. Shima the Miranda warning. After he’d finished, the warning was repeated by a Japanese man I vaguely recognized from the Japanese embassy.

  Mr. Shima was crying, but I didn’t feel sorry for him. He’d killed Hana and thrown her in the garbage, just because she got in the way of his netsuke smuggling operation. And he would have killed me.

  “After you get your medical done, we’ll see you downtown,” the SWAT man said to me. “In the meantime you might as well catch a ride downtown in the black Lexus parked outside. You got a couple of friends in there who are very worried. They seem like out-of-towners, though—you think they’ll be able to find their way around town?”

  “A couple of friends?” I repeated faintly. “You don’t mean—one Japanese and one Scottish?”

  “Yeah, exactly that. Two good-looking guys with strange accents, both very concerned. They’re the ones who set off the alarm in the first place.”

  “I see.” This was an etiquette situation that neither the American nor Japanese experts could tell me how to handle. But as my mother would say, it was the kind of problem more than a few women would like to have.

  35

  Hugh hugged me first, wordlessly. His face was as wet as mine. Then Takeo took me in his arms, dry-cheeked, but murmuring an apology that I thought I’d never hear from him.