Strawberry Yellow (5 page)

“And you remember Billy.”

Appearing from behind a wilting bouquet of roses was Billy, who barely nodded an acknowledgment. Mas reciprocated with a half-nod of his own. Was this the killer of the woman with the yellow hair? Or was it the crushed figure of a man who had experienced a double dose of death on the same day?

“Sorry,” Mas said, at a loss for what more he could say. Even “sorry,” perhaps, was too much. It could mean sorry for his dead father, sorry for the dead girlfriend, or maybe even sorry for the expedition to the Stem House. Or maybe all three.

Billy barely grunted.

“It’s been a hard day for all of us,” Minnie offered as a weak apology for her son’s apparent rudeness. “And especially for Billy.”

“You never liked her.” Billy’s heavy eyebrows hooded his eyes in the dimly lit room.

“That doesn’t mean I’m not sad, horrified.” She turned to Mas, her face twisted in embarrassment. “Billy had something tragic happen to his friend last night.”

“She wasn’t just my friend, Mom. She was my fiancée.”

“You can’t be married and have a fiancée.”

“Dad’s gone, Mom. Let’s be real for once, okay?”

“I gotsu go.” Mas had had enough. He’d peered down into the depths of Shug’s domestic life and didn’t wish to go any further, at least for today.

Before he left the house, Minnie squeezed his callused hand hard. “We’ll talk more later this week. You can stay a few more days,
ne
?”

Ah,
tsukamaita
, mourned Mas. He was caught like an undersize trout lured by fluorescent pink Power Bait. This hook could not be easily extracted, so admitting defeat, he nodded yes. He was on the radar of the Watsonville Police Department anyway, so he might not have any choice in the matter.

He’d barely taken two steps outside from the front door when he felt someone pulling him back on the porch. Not
surprisingly, it was Billy. Mas didn’t know how to react. Was this the face of a killer?

“I heard what you said to Sergeant Salgado,” he said. “Thank you.”

News traveled fast, and Mas had no doubt that it had been Robin who was the news spreader.

“Where’su you last night?” Billy at least owed him an explanation.

“I woke up in the middle of night. Had a nightmare and had to get out of there. I just walked to the motel and drove myself back home. Didn’t want to bother you by waking you up.”

No, instead you decided to leave an old man alone in a haunted house.
Domo arigato
, thought Mas.

“I didn’t kill her. I have no idea what she was doing in that greenhouse. I just blame myself for not being with her last night. If I was, she’d probably—” Billy turned away to hide his face.

“She gotsu enemies?”

Billy swallowed. “Well, there are people out there that don’t like her. But to kill her? No, nobody would go that far.”

“Police gonna ask you some questions. I cover for you, you knowsu.”

“I’m going in tomorrow morning. Just want to thank you for trusting me. Sergeant Salgado would just love to pin this on me. Your story will make it harder for him to do that.”

They heard Minnie’s voice calling for Billy. “I have to go back in. I’ll talk to you more later.” Billy squeezed Mas’s elbow, which only confirmed that they were co-conspirators. As he proceeded down the porch stairs, Mas felt his body
being shaken with the pounding bass of the sound system next door. An old Impala sedan with a black hardtop pulled up to the curb. Mas couldn’t help but stare at the car.
Natsukashii
. It was indeed nostalgic because he had the same model Impala at one time. In the heat of Southern California, his daughter Mari used to complain that her bare legs would sizzle on the vinyl seats when he drove her home from summer swimming lessons.

A teenager in a gray hooded sweatshirt got out of the driver’s seat. “Whaddaya lookin’ at?” he challenged Mas.

Mas just shrugged his shoulders and looked down as he made his way to his truck. Nostalgia was a dangerous thing and so far, coming back to Watsonville had led to nothing but trouble.

T
he fog had cleared some, but not completely. Long, opaque fingers stubbornly held onto the edges of the chocolate-brown furrows. Mas knew that strawberry picking started early, but not as early as he’d imagined. He parked the Ford along a dirt road on Jimi Jabami’s farm. It was a relatively small one, only about five acres, just a postage stamp compared to the immense farms that paid allegiance to the kingdoms of larger distributors. Jimi was definitely on the side of Sugarberry, a smaller cooperative that was founded by his father and four other Japanese partners, including Shug’s father.

A few minutes before seven, the cars started arriving. Minivans, Toyota sedans, old Buicks—all in better shape than Mas’s truck. The pickers, both men and women, seemed in better shape than Mas as well. They were mostly in their twenties and late thirties, wearing hoodie sweatshirts and tying bandanas over their mouths. He was surprised to see some kind of manager in the fields; the old Jimi that he’d known was more hands-on. The manager checked all the pickers in; there was obviously some kind of routine. Mas had heard that everything was regulated now, with the government wanting a piece of every transaction.

The strawberry boxes were more streamlined, but other than that, not much had changed in the actual picking. For harvesting most fruits and vegetables, machines had taken
over, because hadn’t they taken over much of everything? But strawberries were different. Their red meat was delicate, easily bruised. The only way to pick them off their stems was with human hands. Hands that belonged to a body that was constantly hunched over.

Someone turned on an old battery-powered radio and Spanish-language music spilled out over the furrows. Mas preferred to do his outside work in silence. Nothing was completely silent, of course, when you were working with gasoline-powered blowers or even equipment that was unplugged or unmotorized. There was the
gari-gari
of the rake and the
shu-shu
of the water from the hose. Work was music to him, so he didn’t think much of these pickers’ selection. But then, the manager probably figured that if the beat leads to one extra box of strawberries being packed, then let the beat go on.

The pickers ignored Mas because he seemed like just part of the landscape. Another old Japanese farmer whose days were numbered. A new generation had arrived, and they, like the old, were here to stay.

Jimi Jabami wasn’t a gossip or the town’s historian, but he was a watcher. He watched people fight. He watched people say
warukuchi
about someone else when his or her back was turned. He watched couples exchange knowing glances before sneaking into packing sheds and corporate offices after hours.

He was as predictable and ever-present as a daily vitamin or blood pressure medicine. Seemingly innocuous, but if you ignored him, you might be risking your life.

Jimi watched a familiar figure from his kitchen window. The body was certainly that of an Arai, short and sinewy. The face had that kind of openness that could be welcoming if bent with a smile. But it was turned inward, the mouth a straight line. The man was watching the fields and now the house.

Jimi had seen this Arai at the funeral. This one sat in the back, and that was the first sign that he might be trouble. Jimi could deal with men who had to be at the front of the line, the center of attention. Hadn’t Shug, in fact, been that kind of man? Jimi hoped that Shug had suffered like he and his family had suffered, would suffer, but his death seemed almost not eventful enough. Jimi looked out the window. This Arai was now walking up the walkway to his door. He would let him in.

To Mas, Jimi Jabami actually looked about the same as back in the 1940s, but only because he’d resembled an old man for most of his life. His face was broad and his eyes bulged out slightly like an owl’s. And now, with the crown on Jimi’s head pure white, Mas, more than ever, could imagine a supernatural version of the old man perched on a tree. Jimi was known as being one of the best cooks in town, celebrated for his pies and cakes. He had apparently been a junior cook at the mess hall in Poston, Arizona, during World War II. Back then he’d won over not a few fans for baking leftover clumps of rice with some sugar to create sweets reminiscent of treats Mari created with cereal and melted marshmallow. When it was
rhubarb season, usually in mid to late spring, Jimi’s phone would be ringing off the hook for people wanting him to donate his signature pies to the latest temple fund-raiser.

This morning Mas would be treated to apple cobbler. He felt embarrassed because he’d abruptly arrived with nothing in hand. He had come to say hello to Jimi’s wife, Ats, as well as to get a handle on the situation in Watsonville these days. Any Nisei or even Sansei, in his daughter Mari’s case, knew enough that you needed to bring a six-pack of Coke or even a wilting pot of lilies—hell, it was only
kimochi
! What did the
hakujin
say, it’s the thought that counts. And here Mas did not have the decency to come with even one simple thought.

What made matters even worse was that Ats was ill, ill enough for her to be hidden behind her bedroom door.

Atsuko, or Ats, as most everyone called her, had been a bright flame to give balance to Jimi’s subdued personality. Her presence had given life to her husband, but now, with her out of the room, Jimi seemed faded, his energy extinguished. Even his ever-watchful eyes looked cloudy. He appeared to not quite remember Mas.

“I live in the house for coupla years,” Mas said.

Jimi continued to stare at Mas, as if he were going through some old photos in a tattered album. “How are you connected to Shug Arai?”

Mas frowned. Had this old man really forgotten? Mas knew that he wasn’t that memorable, but it seemed like
inaka
folks were better at keeping accounts with the past. “Cousin of cousin.”

“Second cousins.” Jimi’s face flushed with recognition for a moment, and Mas hoped the light bulb had turned on.
“You the one who got in some trouble.”

Mas felt his body lurch forward. He hadn’t heard about that incident in about fifty years. Since that time, so much had happened—he had moved to Los Angeles, started his gardening business, got married, and raised a daughter. Life brought its share of semi-criminal activity—secret poker games, questionable practices at horse races—but nothing big enough to involve law enforcement, until quite recently. He and Shug, in fact, had an unspoken vow. Never mention it again. So both had buried the youthful indiscretion, the crime committed when they were still in their teens.

“I, I,” Mas stuttered, not knowing how to proceed.

Jimi’s mind seemed to be clicking and processing information like an old-time computer. “Ats was living at the house at the same time you were.”

Eager to change the subject, Mas nodded. “I picked strawberries for you back in forty-eight.” He quickly steered the conversation back to his original purpose. “I knowsu your papa, smart guy, start Sugarberry with Shug’s papa.”

“You didn’t know my father.” Jimi pushed his half-eaten plate of apple cobbler away. “What have they said about him?”

Mas was confused. It wasn’t as if he was being a gossip. It was public knowledge that before World War II, Goro Jabami had been an amateur hybridizer who’d learned about mixing strawberry varieties out in the fields rather than in the classroom.

“My father did the work. That Wataru Arai was just the talker. The money man. He had that house.”