Strawberry Yellow (11 page)

He pointed to the sliced strawberries tagged on the cutting board—apparently those were the Masaos. “Anyway, just by doing a special taste test, these don’t seem to be anything special. I mean, they’re sweet, very sweet, but the meat doesn’t hold up.”

Mas let out a deep breath. He was disappointed to hear that his namesake was just like him. Totally unspectacular.

Billy wasn’t completely finished. “There’s something about this strawberry, though. You can’t tell by just looking at them.”

Masao felt a little sick. What did Shug try to hide, and did Laila discover his secret? Who made the threatening calls to Laila? Perhaps there was a connection between Shug’s death and Laila’s. Maybe finding out what happened to Laila would provide new information about Shug.

Mas’s head felt like it was spinning. “I needsu to go,” he told Billy. He stumbled out of the laboratory and finally into the lobby, where he saw a familiar-looking teenager talking with Oily.

“Okay, I’ll check on that, too. Maybe the server’s been compromised,” the teenager said, and Mas immediately recognized the voice. It was the same one that had challenged him at Shug’s house. The owner of the Impala hardtop.

Mas scurried out of the lobby and got into the Ford. What was a no-good teenager doing at the Everbears headquarters, talking to Oily? Didn’t make any sense. He decided to learn more.

Mas moved the truck to the other side of the street next to a strawberry stand. As he waited, he drained the last bit of coffee and threw the crumpled disposable cup onto the passenger side floor. It was probably ten minutes before the boy got into his Impala and left.

Mas followed, staying at least one car length away, which was difficult as the cars became fewer and fewer on the country road. He was about three car lengths back when the Impala slowed and then came to a complete stop. It then backed up suddenly until the Impala’s rear bumper almost touched Mas’s truck, forcing Mas to brake. The boy leapt out and stalked over to Mas’s side window. “Okay, so what the hell do you want?”

Mas sat frozen behind the 1970 dashboard, which he had installed some years ago.

“C’mon, this pile of junk, I can see it a mile away. I know you were following me since Everbears.” The boy was wearing old-fashioned thick-framed glasses, the kind that
Shug used to wear.

Mas rolled up the window as far it would go, about an inch from the top of the window frame. He attempted to shift to reverse, but another pickup truck had come from behind and was honking its horn.

“Pull over,” the bespectacled boy ordered before running back to his car. They both moved their vehicles to a dirt embankment next to a strawberry field.

Grasping onto a crowbar from behind his seat, Mas was ready for anything that would come. He came out first.

The teenager, seeing Mas with his weapon, began to laugh. “Cool it, old man. I’m not going to do anything to you. I just wanted to know why you were following me.” He put his hands in his hoodie sweatshirt. “I’ve seen you at Mister Shug’s house. You a relative? You kind of look alike. Around the eyes.”

Mas didn’t know if the teenager was insulting him or not, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Heezu cousin. Of cousin.”

The boy’s face softened. “Uh, sorry then, man. We all went to the funeral. Even my brother and he doesn’t like to get out of the house much. My great-grandpops used to work for Mister Shug’s old man. That was a long time ago.”

The boy handed him a business card. Victor Duran, DuranDuran Recovery, it read. You Lose It, We Find It. Mas had one of his own, ORIENTAL LANDSCAPING, but he doubted it would hold any water with this Duran boy.

“It’s my brother’s and my company. He’s an information security expert. Went to Cal State Monterey and worked at Clay’s high-tech company before it got bought out. Got
downsized, so we decided to go out on our own. I’m the people person, so I meet with the clients.”

People person? Mas shuddered to think what the brother was like.

“So why you following me?”

“Tryin’ find truth. About Shug dyin’.”

The boy’s face, which was dark, turned a shade of olive green. “Who you talking to, the cops?”

Mas shook his head. Yes, he had been talking to Robin, but she was officially off the case. “Minnie ask me to help.” And Billy had, too, in his roundabout way.

“How’s she doing, by the way? Haven’t talked to her in a couple days.”

“Lotsu goin’ on.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking of Mister Shug. I saw him getting the newspaper the day he died. He always called me Ichi—that was his nickname for me. You know, for Number One. Said that I was smart. Not too many people have called me smart.” Victor’s face grew tender for a moment. Mas was surprised.

“I was going out for a morning appointment. Wish I’d been around. Maybe I could have done something, but I don’t know what.”

“Your brotha home?’

“Yeah, but he’s kind of useless with stuff like that. Just stays in his room with his computer. Our
bisabuelito
, great-grandpops, even has to bring him food; he won’t eat otherwise. But Mister Shug was worried about something. All about the announcements of the new varietals next week.”

Shug was right; this Ichi was smart.

“Yeah, about a week ago, he actually hired me. I mean, I usually don’t do work for Sugarberry, since, you know, Everbears is one of their competitors. But Mister Shug is almost like family. And it was personal. His laptop was stolen from his house. He had a computer Lo-Jack on it, but he said he didn’t want to involve the police.

“So we said that we would handle it. At first the thief didn’t turn on the computer. It’s like they knew that Mister Shug had some kind of tracker on it. But then it was turned on for about an hour. Enough to see that Mister Shug had wiped clean the hard drive. Through the tracker we located the computer out by Moss Landing harbor. I’m sure it was eventually tossed in the water.”

He pushed up his glasses, which were starting to droop down his nose. “One thing they didn’t know was that something else was on. A webcam. My brother was just able to download the saved image.”

Mas straightened his back in anticipation.

“I can’t say anything, okay. I can’t get involved, you know, for professional reasons. But I can show you.” Victor went into the Impala’s trunk and took out a laptop. Opening it, he clicked a few keys and rubbed a mouse pad. Bringing it over to Mas, he said, “This is what my brother got.”

The image was a bit dark, but Mas could make it out.

A face—boxy and framed by thinning gray hair. Oily Takei.

During his lifetime, Oily Takei had gone through three
marriages, which didn’t surprise Mas in the least. During the short time Mas lived at the Stem House, he’d witnessed the Casanova in action. He usually started things off with some undivided attention, some compliments, and then flowers. Next came picnic lunches with
onigiri
that Shug’s mother had made, along with some teriyaki chicken. Then before you know it, the girl was hanging on Oily’s arm, a nice new brooch on her dress collar. After a month or two, the whole cycle would repeat itself, much like planting new crops on the same piece of land.

Oily was smart enough not to practice his romantic moves on the girls living in the Stem House. They weren’t going anywhere for a while, and he couldn’t deal with bumping into a former lover in the hallway on his way to the bathroom. But it was obvious, at least to Mas, that Oily had long carried a torch for Minnie.

Minnie, with her cat-eye glasses, was not Oily’s type, and Oily, being all brawn and little brain, was not Minnie’s, but perhaps that was the attraction. She was a flavor that he could not easily try, and Oily was all about new flavors.

One day they all went down the coast to go clam digging at Pismo Beach. They brought shovels and pails, rolled up their pant legs, and went to work at low tide.

The clams clanged as they tossed them in their pails, and at one point, Oily called Minnie over to his.

“Look,” he said.

The curiosity was a clam with a fat siphon extended like an excited
chinko.

“Oily.” Minnie turned bright red. It was obvious that he wanted to stir things up with her. Shug then made a joke
and all of them laughed. Minnie’s honor was immediately restored.

Shug at that point had been playing it cool. But once it was clear that Oily had his sights set on Minnie, Shug finally moved in, drooping shoulders and all, and he prevailed. Their wedding had been simple, Mas gathered. By the wedding day, he’d moved to Los Angeles and contact, unfortunately, became more sporadic. Now with funerals, the gang had more opportunities to be reunited.

Mas wondered if he really knew anything about Oily as he was now. Some things most likely hadn’t changed since their teenage days. Oily was no friend of loyalty; in fact, he’d been the first to leave Sugarberry for Everbears. And more recently, according to the Duran boy, he had recruited Billy to work for the competition. And as with his work, Oily liked to keep his options open in his personal life. After Wife Number Three left him, he must have been lonely. With Shug out of the way, the path to Minnie was free and clear.

“Can’t say anything to him,” Victor said. “He’s our main contact at Everbears. You know, our bread and butter.”

“You’zu in a bad situation,” Mas said.

Victor nodded. “My
bisabuelito
thinks we should take this direct to Mister Oily. My brother says let sleeping dogs lie. As for me, I don’t want to think the worst of Mister Oily. He wouldn’t do anything against Mister Shug, would he?”

Mas honestly didn’t know. Oily talked a good game, but from personal experience, Mas knew that his old friend had a tendency to flip-flop allegiances. Victor, looking at his vibrating cell phone, said he had to get going.

Mas wasn’t quite finished with him. “One more thing—you’zu help Shug with sumptin else?”

Victor frowned, his thick eyebrows now dark slashes above his glasses.

“Minnie findsu it.”

The teen sighed. “It’s not illegal or nothing. My friend was getting rid of one of his guns. Shug said that he needed it. For protection. He had this feeling that somebody was out to get him.”

“Mister Jabami,” said the caretaker, picking up her purse as she walked from Ats’ bed to Jimi, who was standing in the bedroom doorway. “I hate to say this, but I need my money tomorrow.”

Jimi nodded, embarrassed that he’d had to ask her to wait on her payment for a week. He was expecting that the money from this week’s harvest would have come through by now, but that was before the yellows. The second mortgage on the house and the loans on the farm equipment all had been pressing down on him, squeezing him, causing him sleepless nights.

He knew that he probably should have spoken to their children, but they had their own lives in faraway places. No, it was his responsibility to figure this out. And he had. The mortgage insurance policy would take care of the farm and the house, and that’s all that really mattered. The children wouldn’t sell the property, he knew. Most likely, it would be the divorced daughter in Texas who would come out and
move in. Her children were almost all grown.

Sometimes in the middle of the night when the moon was full, Jimi would walk the perimeter of his house alongside his strawberry fields. He’d check their leaves, touch the berries, and talk to his fruit.
Gambare
, he’d encourage them. Hang in there. The winter had lasted too long this season, but he’d ask them to persevere. Then he’d come through his gates into the front yard, where the lemon tree gave shelter to his sisters. Sometimes he’d imagine them as babies, their fat thighs and skinny eyes. Even though they were newborns, in his mind they would be dancing, laughing, saying full sentences to one another. They were free and would remain free, as long as the Jabamis had their land.