The Flower Master (Rei Shimura #3) (35 page)

Lila closed the door behind her and came closer to me. "You're a regular little tour guide to Japan, aren't you, Rei? You speak the language. You sell the furniture. You even give legal advice! Well, be assured that Masanobu isn't harassing me. We're two adults who made a choice to do something together. Apart from our children. Just for us!"

I was about to respond rather snappishly that she did have a husband somewhere, even if I'd never seen him, but I controlled myself. She was right. I'd opened first her apartment door and then her bedroom closet door. You couldn't get much more invasive than that.

"I'm not going to tell anyone." I meant that. "I couldn't bear for Takeo to go through the embarrassment of knowing what his father had done. He had enough pain trying to work through the loss of his mother."

"I don't believe you." Lila's voice trembled.

"I promise." I kept my eyes on her. "As long as you don't have a connection with Sakura's murder."

"I—we—she—" Lila stammered a bit, then spoke in a dead tone. "Sakura knew. She was mean to me in class, and she hinted about her knowledge to Masanobu. But he just gave her a new promotion. He made her a super-grandmaster, with a new salary scale. Money solves everything, you know. Masanobu would never, ever lift a finger to hurt a woman."

"But he scratched you," I said, remembering the marks I'd seen when she was getting teacups in her kitchen.

Lila was silent for a beat, then said, "I asked him to do that."

"Do you mean . . ." A vision of kinky sex flashed into my mind.

"You're not married," Lila said bluntly. "When you're a single woman, love is supposed to be hearts and flowers. Well, when you've been around for a while, sometimes you want to be pricked by thorns." I must have been blushing, because Lila snorted. "You're embarrassed. You're so young, aren't you? Well, be assured that our love affair is over. He's no longer interested."

"He broke up with you?"

"Masanobu rushed off, saying the relationship would be impossible to pursue now that you'd found us out. I begged him to calm down and think it over, but he insisted he needed to leave. I assumed he would be coming here to oversee the final preparations. I think the only reason he isn't here is to avoid me. But it's a terrible party without him! I don't know how his children are going to carry on the show. They've failed miserably tonight."

"Did the headmaster mention this party to you?" I asked.

Lila looked startled by my question. "No. I received my invitation yesterday but didn't bring it up. I had other things on my mind. Our time together was so limited."

"If it's any consolation, he didn't know about this party," I said. "Natsumi and Takeo didn't know, either. It was set up with RSVPs taken by an answering service outside of the school so that Norie none of the Kayama staff would get wind of it and tell the family. That's why Mrs. Koda isn't here."

"Then . . . who sent the invitations?" Lila's eyes were wide.

"I don't know. My guess is someone who wants to devastate the family."

"Or who loves the family," Lila said softly. "If nobody had sent out invitations for tonight, there wouldn't have been a cherry blossom viewing party this year. The person who sent the invitation was saving the tradition—one hundred and forty-five uninterrupted years of cherry blossom viewing parties. For the Kayamas, tradition is everything."

* * *

I pondered Lila's theory after she left, hurrying down the stairs to Nadine, who was calling for her to join in a group photograph.

Tradition. I thought about the years of Kayama history as I found myself again looking at Reiko Kayama's scroll hanging in Takeo's bedroom alcove. I knew that I should go downstairs and try to find Takeo and ask him about this idea of tradition. Maybe he had noticed a teacher or student who had exhibited a strange fascination with the past.

Before leaving the room, I wanted my own record of Reiko Kayama's artwork. I pulled Aunt Norie's camera out of the little handbag I'd been dangling from my wrist and focused on the scroll. I wanted to get a close view of her writing, so I zoomed in with the telephoto lens.

Looking at the scroll, I was struck once more by its dissimilarity to the haiku letters I'd received. The handwriting style would be different, but there was something else. As the flash went off, the answer came to me.

The difference was that in the text of Reiko's original scroll— the one that I was looking at now—there were four kanji characters: the ones for "spring," "wind," "beauty," and "woman." I had skimmed over them without a hitch because I was getting better at reading kanji. The notes that were slipped underneath my door were written completely in hiragana, the phonetic lettering.

Hiragana was used specifically for me. The person sending me the note thought that I couldn't read much Japanese and wanted to ensure that I understood the message.

Who knew that I couldn't read kanji? Not Takeo. I'd fibbed to him in the restaurant about being able to read the menu.

Who knew that I couldn't read? I repeated to myself, and then I remembered.

* * *

"Where's your mother?" I asked Tom as I hurried up to him. He was standing tense and unsmiling over the emptying buffet table.

"Oh, there you are! She wanted me to tell you that she was going outside to get something for Natsumi."

"She went with Uncle Hiroshi?" I guessed.

"No, look at him!" Tom inclined his head toward the garden. I could just make out Uncle Hiroshi talking animatedly to a small man with a familiar-looking back. "He's talking to the president of Sendai Limited. Mother saw that, and she didn't want to disturb him."

"Oh, no!" I knew Masuhiro Sendai, one of Japan's captains of industry, through my ex-boyfriend Hugh. Sendai Limited had meant phone calls disrupting dinner and sleep on a daily basis. How ironic that Sendai was already distracting Hiroshi when his wife needed him.

"It doesn't hurt for my father to talk with Sendai- san. It can only help," Tom told me.

"But your mother shouldn't have gone out into the dark alone. Forget about watching the food, Tom. We must find her."

"I'm sure that she'll be safe. She's with Iwata-san." When I looked at him uncomprehendingly, he added, "That's right! You know Iwata-san by her first name. I'm talking about her friend Eriko."

Several of the lanterns hanging in the trees had blown out, so it was even darker outside. A wind had come up from nowhere, and there was the feeling of approaching rain. I kicked off the cumbersome sandals and jogged in my silk-stockinged feet toward the kura. The little purse was a hindrance, so I set it down on a rock, taking out the camera and slinging it around my neck.

The kura, which had seemed small to me before, looked larger this time. It was a building the size of a typical house in Yanaka and appeared to be two stories, I guessed, from the bits of light seeping through a shuttered window set high above the door. Just like the tiny window in the Kayamas' toilet room, this window served an important function. The storehouse hadn't had a light on before. Someone had been, or still was, inside.

I was glad to be without shoes as I crept up to the storehouse. The entrance was similar to a pair of barn doors, with a latch in the middle that had been opened. I pulled softly on the left door, cringing in expectation that it would creak. It was well oiled, though, and swung open without a sound.

I stood in the doorway, scanning the storehouse. Now I understood why there were no windows on the ground level. All the walls were lined by deep shelves that went up to the second level; and all the shelves were filled with large, lacquered boxes. A step tansu chest that was built in the form of a staircase accessed these shelves. I'd seen step tansu used decoratively in houses, but not in a way such as this. The tansu didn't look like a staircase I'd trust, given that the treacherously narrow, steep steps were aged and dry wood. As I ventured a bit further into the room, I saw that a storage box close to the far wall had been opened. Red silk cascaded over the edge. Maybe it was one of Reiko's kimonos. But where was my aunt?

With the crackling sound of lightning hitting something outside, the lights went out. I was left in stillness, and the kura's special fragrance, a mixture of old wood, fabric, hay, and earth, had been replaced by the smell of my own fear. Rain pounded on the tiled roof as musically as a taiko drummer. The storm was on.

I edged back toward where I remembered the door was. I was at an advantage, being downstairs and close to the exit. But as I moved, I became aware of a new scent, a heavy floral perfume.

I had lost my orientation in the darkness. I was no longer sure of the way back to the door or the distance to the shelves full of boxes. I stretched my hands out carefully, trying to gauge things, and moved sideways. I had to be quiet.

After three minutes of moving very slowly, I bumped into a row of shelves. The sound of my hand knocking against wood was like the thunder outside. Remembering the layout of the shelving, though gave me an idea. I crouched down and used my hands again to ascertain how high and deep the bottom shelving was. It was probably large enough for me to crouch in, if I could move one of the cumbersome kimono boxes out. I did that with very little noise and squeezed into the vacated space.

The temperature in the storehouse seemed to have risen a notch. I guessed it was my anxiety. The air was faintly smoky, as if somebody was smoking a cigarette.

Takeo smoked. I remembered his long-ago offer of a cigarette. I'd declined and bhe had never smoked in my presence after that. Was he inside and smoking as he leisurely made his way toward me?

No, he wasn't the one. I knew that the danger was Eriko Iwata. I heard feet in zari clopping carefully down the wooden-step tansu and onto the ground floor. My territory.

"Is it you, Rei-san?" Eriko's soft voice reached me. "Your aunt had an accident up in the loft when we were looking for Natsumi's kimono. I need your help."

Nausea punched at my stomach as I thought of what Eriko had done. The realization had come when I was contemplating Reiko Kayama's calligraphy scroll written in kanji, not hiragana. I remembered Eriko noting my inability to read kanji at the ikebana class. The woman running back into the shadows of the refreshment area at the Mitsutan exhibit had been Eriko. She'd tried to kill me. Now she had my aunt.

The sound of steps came close, and I caught a glint of something in the darkness. What was it? Civilians weren't allowed to carry handguns in Japan.

Eriko coughed. The smoke was affecting her, too. But the cough was more distant—she had passed and gone in another direction.

"I'll help you, just as I helped the others. Especially the headmaster," Eriko said in a wheedling tone. She was unhinged, I realized. And nobody had ever known.

"You made him miserable! And all of us as well!" Takeo's voice rang out from somewhere above me.

This was a shock I hadn't expected; and I felt my anxiety rise even higher. How had a woman only five feet two inches tall overpowered a man significantly larger, stronger, and younger than herself? She was an enemy like none I'd ever faced.

I heard the sound of a bolt slamming into place, and I realized the door had been latched. Had she locked us in and left?

"Where are you?" I called to Takeo.

A flashlight's wide yellow beam flashed over the shelves where I was hiding. I bumped my head in my eagerness to get out of my hiding place, but I stopped when I heard sandals clip-clopping back in my direction.

"Thank you for speaking. Ah, there you are!" Eriko said.

The flashlight illuminated my face. She shone the light so closely at me that I couldn't see much of anything except the shining steel samurai sword outstretched in my direction."This is one of the Kayama family's prized blades. I asked Takeo-san to take it out of storage for me," she said.

"Don't touch her—I thought you'd use it on yourself," Takeo shouted from above. "Isn't that the honorable thing for someone to do after she's been revealed as a murderer?"

"The sword is to make you move where I want you to go," Eriko said tightly. Come out of that place, Rei-san. I don't want your blood to soil the premises."

"Is this how you trapped Takeo?" I asked. "You convinced him to give you the sword, and then you turned it on him? What did you do to my aunt?"

"I'm with your aunt on the second floor," Takeo called down to me in English. "Eriko was attacking her with ikebana scissors when I came in. She's still alive, but she's very weak."

My aunt was bleeding to death. I knew it without needing to see her. I felt something inside me break. How much I loved Norie—and how rarely I told her. And now, we would all die.

"Move," Eriko ordered me, waving the tip of the sword in front of my face.

I began edging my way out, and Eriko backed away slightly, keeping the flashlight and sword aimed at me. I unfolded myself and stood up, using my hand to keep myself steady. One of my feet had gone to sleep. Within a few seconds, as blood rushed back to it, it would prickle painfully."Go!" Eriko ordered me, waving the sword in my face.

"My foot went to sleep, so it will take a minute—"

"Believe her," Takeo called down from upstairs. "Her foot went to sleep the first time I took her out. It's the problem with Japanese raised in the United States. You're going to have to give her a few minutes to get her strength back."

I called back to Takeo in English, "How did you get caught?"

"I came in because I saw the light in the storehouse from my upstairs bedroom. I thought that if Stop Killing Flowers were here, I could calm them down. I walked right in, and Eriko called from the loft that Norie was hurt. When I made it up the stairs, Eriko threw a fishing net over my head and said that if I didn't tell her where the swords were stored, she'd throw your aunt over the edge and down to the floor. She tied both of us together against one of the beams. She invited all the people here to embarrass my family and keep everyone occupied while she finished off your aunt and you."

"I understand English," Eriko spat back. "Don't talk behind me."