The Flower Master (Rei Shimura #3) (20 page)

"If you weren't on the premises, maybe your aunt was," Takeo said. "She has easy access to the building."

"So do hundreds—thousands—of other teachers and students. But go ahead and blame my aunt. She thinks that finding Sakura's body ruined her image here forever, so I'm sure this new bombshell won't make a difference." I was really angry with him. "What about you? You could have taken the Kayama ware a while ago and had somebody fence them to Mr. Ishida. You apparently already knew that I'm close to Mr. Ishida, that I would wind up noticing the Kayama ware in his store. Then, presto, I get caught with a piece and take the fall for your crime."

"Presto?" He repeated the word as if he wondered what it meant. "Rei, my personal net worth is more than one billion yen. That's seven million American dollars at this week's exchange rate, and you know I've got much more coming when my father dies. Why would I be interested in fencing an insignificant collection of 1930s ceramics?"

"Earlier you told me that the ceramics were rare. Now you say they're insignificant? What is the truth?" I seized on that as a way to hide my annoyance that someone my age had such a revolting amount of money.

"The Kayama ware is important to me because it is my family property. That's all." He looked at me hard. "Even if you unsuspectingly bought the suiban at Ishida Antiques, it's still stolen property. Ishida- san could be charged for selling it. I could report him with one telephone call to the police."

I envisioned my seventy-five-year-old friend being forced to kneel for hours in a harsh prison cell, and a wave of depression swept over me. I couldn't look at Takeo's triumphant face anymore, so I looked at my lap. How was I going to get out of this room and this terrible situation?

I heard a creaking of chair springs and then felt a hand on my shoulder. Takeo was touching the place where a bra strap would have been, had Aunt Norie not decided to confiscate most of my underwear for mending.

"I'm not calling the police yet."

"Oh?" I asked grimly.

"Yes, a murder and a poisoning within one week 's time are about all the school can handle."

I sat up straight in the sagging chair, shaking Takeo's hand off my shoulder. "I'm not a thief. I will even speak to Lieutenant Hata about it—if you'll come with me and tell what you know—about everything. I think the theft of the containers is probably related to Sakura's death."

"How so?" Takeo was studying me in the same intent manner as a crow watching the garbage being put out in my neighborhood.

I told him about the woman who had swept into Ishida Antiques, arranged for a consignment ratio strongly in her favor, and left a phony telephone number. Takeo's expression didn't change, but at the end of my recitation he walked to one of his crowded shelves and removed something. He handed me a framed photograph of a slender young woman in a garden holding two infants. Both babies were wearing blue-and-white cotton kimono and were absolutely adorable, with small heads bristling with thick black hair and big eyes peering from sweetly round faces. They were much cuter than Lila Braithwaite's sniveling children. I smiled.

Takeo made an irritated sound. "Don't waste your time staring at Natsumi and me. You know us already. This is my mother. The one and only Mrs. Kayama—excepting, of course, my grandmother, who died five years ago."

"The woman who came to Mr. Ishida was in her fifties, he thought," I said.

"My mother would have been fifty-three this year. I don't think there are any other Kayama women in the same generation." Takeo kicked at some lint on his junk-covered rug, and the stack of
National Geographics
toppled. He didn't pick them up.

"I want you to talk to Mr. Ishida about her," I said. "But the only way I'll introduce you to him is if you promise to be polite. You cannot go into his shop blazing with the outrage you showed me."

Takeo pressed his lips together. "Blazing with outrage? Is that how you see me?" When I nodded, Takeo said, "I'll try to stay in control. Will you take me there now?"

"Better not," I said, thinking that I needed to warn Mr. Ishida about the situation ahead. "Mr. Ishida's shop closes at six. Maybe I could get him to meet us for dinner."

Takeo shook his head. "You and I can't be seen together."

Feeling insulted, I said, "What about the izakaya? You took me there for a beer right after the murder."

Takeo wrinkled his nose. "Nobody knew me in that dive."

"I see. Well, I've enjoyed the interrogation, and I wish you luck in your ventures. I'll be leaving. Would you be kind enough to call off the Rottweilers downstairs?" I waved and headed for the door.

"Rei." He looked at me with his bottomless-cup-of-coffee eyes.

"What is it?"

"The reason I can't be seen with you is that you are the blood relation of a woman who is the chief suspect in a murder committed in my family business. If you want me to meet you and Ishida-san tonight, I'll come. But not in this neighborhood. Yours."

While sketching him a map showing the directions from Sendagi Station to the teashop, I said, "The best place to go is the Yanaka Teashop. If you put on a decent suit and trade those hiking boots for wing tips, nobody will recognize you as the Kayama School's billion-yen boy."

"Look like a salaryman, you mean?" Takeo sounded annoyed.

I picked up my suiban, silently defying him to tell me that I couldn't take the property I'd paid for.

He let me go.

* * *

In the lobby downstairs, I was met with deep bows.

"I am so sorry that I did not know about your special historical project. Takeo-sensei just telephoned to tell us about it," Miss Okada said.

"I apologize for delaying you, madam." The doorman's eyelashes were practically grazing his green polyester knees.

So Takeo had called downstairs and given me a cover. I could give as good as I got. "Oh, please don't apologize! It was my fault for not explaining the situation."

"We are so looking forward to reading your article on the historical significance of ceramics in the Kayama School," Miss Okada said.

"What's that?"

Smiling, she replied, "I'm speaking about the article that will be published this fall. Takeo-sensei said you will be writing about the Kayama ware for
Straight Bamboo
magazine. How lucky for us."

I smiled faintly and headed out into the spring afternoon. Takeo had provided a believable excuse for my having the suiban, but he wouldn't be the one who would have to explain months later what had happened to the article. Even if I were a writer, I wouldn't waste my time writing about the Kayamas.

Still, I knew that Takeo had let me off easily. He could have tried to have me arrested for buying stolen goods. Instead, I'd made it out of the school with my flowers, the suiban, the list of teachers, and Mrs. Koda's mysterious white tablet, as well as an evening appointment that could prove fruitful.

Half an hour later, as I turned into my street, I heard the cheerful calls of children racing on bicycles. Expecting little ones on bikes with training wheels, I was almost knocked over by two girls in their late teens riding mountain bikes. I should have remembered that girls tried to sound childlike as long as possible; it was considered very cute. Funny how Lila Braithwaite's seven-year-old son had sounded considerably more world-weary. Western kids grew up faster, even in Japan.

Inside my apartment, I shut my windows against the squawking girls. The air was heavy with the smell of My Peto cleaning spray. My aunt had cleaned recently, but she wasn't around.

I played back the messages on my answering machine to see if she'd called me. However, both of my calls were from overseas, the first a message from my parents asking about my recovery, and the second from my ex-boyfriend Hugh Glendinning. He'd seen a photograph in a newspaper somewhere of cherry trees in bloom and thought of Japan, and of me. Too little, too late, I thought, and erased the message.

I called Mr. Ishida to book him for the evening, and once that was done, I called my cousin Tom. He said that he had heard of Nolvadex but would need to check the Physicians' Desk Reference to get more details.

Disappointed that he wouldn't give me a quick answer about the drug's toxicity, I hung up. I stared at the freshly vacuumed tatami, spotless except for a crumpled paper lying near the door. I must have dropped it on my way in, because Aunt Norie would never miss such a thing.

As I picked it up, I realized it was an envelope folded in two. I opened it and saw the same cherry blossom paper decorated with three lines of text. The poem was once more written in hiragana so I could read it.

Haru kaze ni
Osaruru bijo no
Ikari kana!

In English, I knew it as:

The breezes of spring
Push the beautiful girl,
Arousing anger.

I held an image of a rough spring wind whipping a girl's hair into her face. Perhaps the poet was saying that the girl was irritated by the wind. But like its predecessor, this haiku could be read in a more sinister way. A girl pushed. Was someone threatening me?

Although I was certain both poems had come from the same person, I still wanted to compare this new haiku with the other one. I pried up the lid of the yukashita, where I'd placed the first haiku letter for safekeeping underneath a box of Belgian chocolates. I lifted up the box and stared down at the storage drawer's bottom. It was no longer grimy, and the letter was gone.

* * *

Damn my cleaning-genius aunt. I jammed the latest haiku in my raincoat pocket, which was the only safe place that I could think of and left. I moved as if I was on automatic pilot through Yanaka Cemetery's road, bedecked with cherry trees, to my favorite temple.

Although the sky threatened rain, I wanted to be outside. Sadly, the tranquil small garden was now littered with cherry blossom petals, leftover sake bottles, and sushi boxes. I sat down anyway on a small bench and took the papers out of my pocket. I first studied the haiku and then read the Stop Killing Flowers flyer that Che had given me outside Mitsutan. It was printed in three languages, and the English text was well written and easy to understand. Colombia, the world's second largest cut-flower producer, employed young female workers to grow and cut the flowers to be shipped for overseas sale. The flowers were heavily sprayed with pesticides, including the highly toxic methyl bromide, endosulfan, and parathion, pesticides that were banned in most parts of the world. Making matters worse, some flower producers sprayed the flowers while the women were working in the greenhouse, giving them only torn masks and gloves for protection. The effects of the pesticides on the women ranged from fainting and skin irritation, to respiratory and neurological problems. If the women workers became pregnant, miscarriage, premature births, and birth defects often followed. The pesticides also had a possible link to breast cancer, based on evidence from a study done on female agricultural workers in Hawaii.

Because Colombia had laws on the books against use of these pesticides, environmental activists had tried to get the government to force flower ranchers to change their practices. However, there were only two health inspectors for the region, and some companies denied the inspectors access to their sites. The inspectors quietly went away, and the dangerous practices continued.

I shut my eyes, imagining what it would be like to work in a thick fog of chemicals, snipping flowers for women to arrange in their ikebana classes. They were my age, but they just happened to have been born into the wrong country and economic situation. The dash of ant poison I'd tasted was nothing compared to what they had to endure on a daily basis.

I watched a middle-aged couple ladling water over their hands, a step symbolizing purification, before they approached the temple to worship. My thoughts turned from pesticides to the way that money was running through my own hands. I hadn't brought in any income since the gilded screen I'd sold to the dealer from Kyoto—yet I'd just bought flowers at My Magic Forest and an ikebana container. At the rate at which I was going, in a months' time I wouldn't have money for rice, let alone pesticide- free flowers from My Magic Forest.

There was something familiar about the couple who had washed their hands. They stood praying a few feet away from the main religious building, a wooden structure with its doors open to reveal a bronze figure of Buddha. After studying the woman's familiar lavender coat, I realized the worshiper was my Aunt Norie. Her male companion had a light suitcase on wheels at his side. The man's bowed head revealed the same light thinning as my own father's. I recognized Uncle Hiroshi, back at last from Osaka. He and my aunt had come to the shrine to pray before they even dropped off his luggage at my apartment.

They had walked straight past without noticing me moping under the cherry trees. I was not certain whether I should stay put or interrupt their prayers. When Aunt Norie finished the prayer by throwing some money into the wooden box in front of Buddha, she turned around and saw me. She beamed and called out my name. Uncle Hiroshi bowed, not a formal, waist-deep gesture, but a quick inclination of his head and shoulders.

"Welcome home, Ojisan. It's so good that you're here." The words sounded flat, but I really didn't know what else to say to the man I had not seen in two years, not since his transfer to his company 's regional office in Osaka. I didn't think the years away from Norie had been good for him; he was heavier, and his face wore a tired, unhappy expression. I wondered if my aunt was still glad that she'd struggled for the right to marry him.

"What a pretty sight: my niece under the cherry blossoms." Uncle Hiroshi 's voice sounded reassuringly the same—as deep and sonorous as my father's. The stress and accent in their speech were the same, although their languages were different. My father usually spoke English to me, while Hiroshi naturally preferred Japanese.

I spoke quickly to my aunt, making an excuse so that she wouldn't think I'd been following her. "Isn't this a nice place? I sometimes come here at lunchtime.''

"Have you eaten already?" Norie surveyed the wooden boxes and paper wrappings around me with disapproval.