“So, you’re leaving,” Adam leaned against the doorframe, eyes not managing to reflect the weak smile on his lips.
Ken nodded.
“I have no choice. She’s left me no choice. The press is going to be all over this as soon as it breaks.” He slid his reclaimed laptop into its bag.
“She confessed?”
“Everything, but not to me. She won’t speak to me.” He opened the nightstand drawer, started emptying it. Adam watched him with a pang. ”She’ll be extradited back to Japan tomorrow, it seems,” Ken continued. “She’s got a good lawyer.”
“And you…?”
“I couldn’t really go back home even if I wanted to, but I don’t think I want to,” Ken told him. “I made a few phone calls this morning. I’ve liquidated my assets and centralized my holdings to a bank account in Switzerland. I think it’s time for me to travel the world, and start over.”
Adam’s hands clenched and unclenched, and then he hesitantly walked up to him, feeling an undefinable emotion.
Wakamoto looked at him, and had a distant smile.
“You know, you can come with me, if you want, Adam,” Ken said in a low voice, eyes fixing Adam’s blue eyes.
Adam blinked.
“If anything you said earlier is true, about what you feel…” He gazed at him searchingly. “Then come with me. Exile is a lonely road. I’ll need companionship.”
Adam’s mouth opened and closed a few times.
“I have enough money to last us a while,” Ken assured him, putting his hands on Adam’s arms. “If you don’t spend it all, that is,” he smiled.
Adam finally found his voice.
“I’ll try not to, Ken, I promise I’ll try.” He felt just a little breathless, and just a little broken. And crushingly relieved, and unfamiliarly humble.
Ken smiled.
“That’s all I can reasonably ask.”
Adam found himself shivering a bit. Guess it’s time for me to try not being a crook, for a while………
He looked up full of doubt to Ken’s eyes, and found nothing but understanding there.
***
“So,” Anne swung her feet in the sand, sipping a piña colada in the sunset. “I… still don’t get it,” she smiled sheepishly at Kanahele. “Why the daughter?”
Rob sipped his own beverage politely. She’d insisted on buying everyone a drink once it was all done – he’d politely but firmly turned her down – but finally they’d compromised on a virgin colada, seeing as he was still on the job.
“She did it because hated her father, of course,” Fujita smiled. She was in a long loose spaghetti-strap dress and had kicked off her flat sandals, burying her toes in the warm sand. She had officially gone on Christmas vacation two hours ago, and even if Kanahele refused to mellow out before the reports were filed, Cindy had no such compunction, and her lime-mango daiquiri was full strength.
Stacy trotted up, with a heavy tray of nachos.
“Sorry. They were taking too long so I brought it myself. Are we talking about the crime? I still can’t believe that rotten little bitch killed the guy.” She sat down at the picnic table, beside Cindy. Anne smiled a bit, and passed her her raspberry daiquiri.
“I’m not sure this is appropriate,” Rob pointed out, but the girls ignored him and dug into the nachos with appetite. He sighed. “And I don’t think we should be discussing the case before trial, either.”
“Oh, but we’ve been so tangled up in it from the start. I’ll go crazy if I don’t know the bottom line. Come on,” Stacy had a puckish smile, and sipped her crimson drink from a bright pink straw.
Anne glanced at Kanahele, a little shyly.
“I sort of am going crazy, too,” she admitted. “I promise we won’t tell the press or anything.”
Rob looked at her…
“We won’t tell a soul!” Stacy insisted.
“Well, it’s not like she didn’t confess everything,” Rob admitted, with a shrug. “She’ll be pleading guilty anyway, and we have it all on tape.” Still…
“She did it to ruin her father’s life,” Cindy said. “That’s what she said.”
“What? Why?”
Rob looked into his drink thoughtfully.
“She says her father killed her mother.”
Anne looked at him with shock.
“Quite some allegation,” Stacy said, her own expression echoing her friend’s. ”She’s serious?”
“Terribly,” Rob mused, and took a sip.
“Dead serious,” Cindy said, without humour. Serious enough… for murder.
She really really loved her job sometimes.
“What does Wakamoto say about this?”
“He denies it, of course,” Rob said. He put down his drink. “Her death hasn’t ever been considered anything else than an accident. And this isn’t our turf anymore. I suppose it’ll all come clear in the trial.”
There was a lengthy moment of silence, punctuated only by the crash of waves and the crunch of nachos.
“What I don’t get is,” Stacy broke the silence, “why take it out on Kazuma? Why not kill her father directly?”
Kanahele had just been deliberating taking one of the tasty-looking chips, but suppressed his interest when the question was asked, sitting up straighter again.
“From how I see it, she found humiliating him would be better. He’s never going to live this down, you realize,” the detective explained, looking across the young women’s attentive faces. “The press will get a hold of this story, and he’ll be finished.”
Anne looked down, nodding thoughtfully… One way or another, no matter who was to get blamed for the murder, it would force Wakamoto’s secrets into the open. It was awful, but in a way, for what it was, it was sort of brilliant.
“There’s more to it,” Cindy chimed in. “Misato Wakamoto believes believes that her father killed his wife so he could be free to have homosexual relationships. Ueshiba, well, he was the embodiement of that.”
Anne ate a chip and pondered this. “That doesn’t even make sense,” she shook her head. “Wouldn’t he seem less suspicious if he had a wife and all that?”
“Maybe she was a henpecking bitch,” Stacy volunteered, forgetting the adage about speaking ill of the dead. “I mean, if the little one’s any indication. Maybe their women are crazy.” She said this rather unsettlingly cheerily.
“What’s important is how Misato felt, not what the truth is,” Kanahele pointed out. “She believed that Wakamoto was willing to commit murder to be rid of his wife. And, well. Look at how Misato herself dealt with her troubles. It’s possible it’s her father she takes after, not her mother.” His eyes flitted from face to face, looking for agreement. Cindy gave it to him, nodding, thoughtfully…
Anne shook her head.
“She must have despised him.” Her voice was soft, and heavy with confused wondering. “And yet, she slept with him?” She looked up at Kanahele.
He gave her a very small but sincere smile.
“She hasn’t struck me as the most well-balanced young lady.”
Anne smiled too, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear…
“Good point.” Still, ew.
“So, her accusation might be crazytalk?” Stacy put down her now empty glass.
Kanahele looked away from Anne’s face, a little self-consciously, and turned to Stacy.
“She didn’t offer evidence, and unfortunately it’s up to Japan to decide whether or not to follow up. I’m forwarding the case file to a detective over there, once I’ve got it all typed up. She’s being extradited, my hands are tied here.”
“So no Christmas break for you, huh, inspector?” Stacy waggled a nacho, smiling playfully.
“Justice doesn’t sleep,” Rob said, in a way that made it difficult to tell whether he was joking or not.
Anne smiled brighter, and leaned her chin in her hand.
“I suppose not, but it can take a few days off, can’t it?” Her dirty-blue eyes took in Kanahele’s features. “Misato’s mother is a cold case anyway. Nobody will be jumping on the investigation next week or anything. Right? Am I right or am I right?”
Rob looked at her in surprise, and had a small laugh.
“Well. When you put it that way……” He smiled. He thought about it… “Just maybe you’re right.” He nodded.
Cindy looked at Anne in pleased surprise. She knew full well how brutally hard it was to make Rob unhook from work-mode. He was the type of person who never really went out for a beer with the guys, or who only made a brief appearance for appearances’ sake at station luaus before going back to work. It explained how he made detective so young, but it also made it hard to be friends with the guy…
“It’s my mother who’ll thank you, I suppose,” Rob said.
Anne smiled at this.
“Going home for the holidays?”
Rob gave it a moment’s thought, and then a sighing nod.
“Yes. That’s what I’ll do.” She hasn’t seen me in too long. I don’t want her thinking I don’t care about my family…
Stacy and Fujita eyed them suspiciously. Stacy stared for quite a while, eyes narrowed, at the two of them talking softly together, before finally sighing and turning to the sergeant.
“Well, whatever. I’ve got more questions, anyway. You up for hearing them?”
Cindy measured her words carefully.
“…I think I’d be doing him a favour if we went and talked elsewhere. You know what I mean?” She nodded towards Anne and Rob, and then winked at Stacy. Stacy rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m not blind. Hey Annie, I’m going to get my shawl, all right?”
Anne turned to her, and nodded, a little absently, before returning her attention to her conversation partner.
Cindy pressed her lips together in a smile and pulled Stacy away.
***
“Jeez,” Stacy said. “Yeah, so I didn’t see that coming.”
Fujita chuckled. ”I’m pleased. He hasn’t had so much as a date since his divorce.”
Stacy rolled her eyes. She did not want to think about that.
“Anyway. What I want to know is, Villenza. The second murder. I guess that was her too?”
Cindy nodded.
“And what? He witnessed the first one? How was he involved, what was up with that?”
“She says,” Cindy walked down the twilit beach, swinging her sandals in one hand, “that he was an accomplice. Organizing the murder was a two-man job.”
“Yeah? How was it done?”
Cindy loved this part. The dénouement… Unraveling the mystery.
“Well. First, she got a job here. She left a couple weeks before her father and his lover, pretending to be at school.”
“Okay… ?”
“She took on a fake identity, a male identity, of Taki Sawada. Forged some work-study papers. Befriended another employee, Carlos Villenza… Somehow convinced him to help her out.”
“So he knew about the murder plans all along?”
“I’m not sure he knew it was murder. I think she told him they were planning extortion. She was going to give him a share of the profits.”
Stacy strayed a bit closer to the waves, letting the water touch her bare feet.
“Yeah? So, you think that was the plan in the beginning, and it escalated to killing?”
The sergeant shook her head.
“No way. This girl already has all the money in the world. She just wanted to destroy her father, and all he loved.” She shuddered.
“Urgh,” Stacy made a face.
“Tell me about it,” Cindy sighed, looking sidelong at the ocean. “Sometimes it really feels good to catch a perp, you know?”
Stacy grinned. “Betcha gonna get a medal for that,” she said, encouragingly.
Cindy laughed. “Eh, doesn’t really work like that. But I’m sure it’s a good notch towards a promotion,” she nods, justifiably proud of herself.
“There’s a lot to be said for women’s intuition,” Stacy splished her feet in the water. “How did you know?”
Fujita shook her head.
“It just didn’t make sense to me. It couldn’t be any of the suspects we had. I guess part of me was just waiting to see who’d bolt first. Turns out it was Sawada. When I, well,” she cleared her throat. “The kid was pretty waterlogged by the time I caught her. Let’s put it this way – she couldn’t have won a wet t-shirt contest, but she sure as heck wasn’t a boy. The step from that to figuring out it was Misato… it wasn’t a very long step. It all just sort of clicked into place,” Cindy had a little smile.
Stacy watched the stars come up on her last night in Hawaii.
“So… Villenza didn’t react well to the murder, and he wanted to turn them in, is that it?”
Fujita nodded.
“He was gnawed with guilt, I guess. He’d helped Misato get the boat out, set other stuff up. Seems she took Kazuya out in a dinghy and killed him there,” she said. “She used a set of weights from the gym to do him in. And tied them onto him so he’d get good and sinky, but I guess she wasn’t a girl scout, cause the knots untied and he bobbed back up to the surface…”
Stacy made a face. Being a cop did weird things to people.
“So she killed Villenza with a barbell too, or whatever?”
“Yeah. She couldn’t risk him coming clean.”
“And… the underwear?”
“Oh!” Cindy laughed, giving a little stretch, really quite content to have solved the mystery and to be on vacation. “Planted by Misato, if you’ll believe it. Graphology confirmed it’s her writing. Isn’t that sort of gross? She was getting pretty desperate by then, forgetting that her initial plan was that she didn’t care who got caught, even if it was her. Self-preservation makes people stupid sometimes. She picked your friend as the fall guy and bolted as soon as she thought she could get away clean.”
“Why Anne, though?”
“A bad case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess.”
Stacy sighed and kicked the surf. It was all her fault and she knew it. She just hoped she’d manage to make it up to Annie one way or another. She’d brought only trouble onto her friend this whole time. Talk about a failed vacation.
“I want another drink if you do,” Cindy smiled chipperly.
Stacy sighed, and nodded.
***
Anne Reynolds put her arms around herself, feeling the chill of the night air. Stacy had never come back, of course, and although her first fear was that someone had killed her, she quickly dismissed it and remarked to herself that she was being paranoid. She was probably off doing shots and/or playing strip poker with a gaggle of gym bunnies and, hell, probably that weird sergeant, too. She stretched her legs out and let the bright southern stars and the sound of the sea soothe her.
“I’m sorry, where are my manners,” Kanahele frowned. “I’ve gone and kept you out here too long.”
She shifted and turned, and smiled at him.
“I’m okay,” she nodded. “It’s a gorgeous night. Although it does seem we’ve been abandoned.”
“I noticed this as well,” he huffed. Oh well. There was nothing he could do, Sgt. Fujita was off duty, anyway. As anyone sane would be, a few hours before December 24th.
“This was nice,” Anne said, looking at the inspector. A little expectingly, a little awkwardly.
He had a stilted nod in agreement. It had been, but he still felt coming out here had been a mistake.
“You’re leaving tomorrow, right…?” He looked at the starlight on her face and suppressed a sigh. It had been foolish, anyway, to think anything of this. He shouldn’t even have been thinking it. He’d just set himself up for a fall, again.
“Oh,” Anne smiled! “Actually, I put in a request for an extra two weeks’ off. I’ll need a vacation to recover from this vacation, you know?” she laughed, and sighed, and leaned against the table. “I don’t think I could handle going back to work in three days. Stacy’s so sorry for having booked our vacation here of all places that she says she’ll try and do my workload too, although I’ve told her she’s being silly. Anyway, I’m lucky enough to have understanding bosses. They said they’d spare me, even if they’re not happy about it. Better paying two weeks vacation than years of therapy, you know?”
Rob found his palms sweating a bit. He pressed them discreetly against the knees of his jeans.
“You’ll be remaining at the hotel, then?”
“Oh, hell no,” Anne said. “I’m sticking around until our reservation runs out at 11 AM tomorrow, but not another minute if I can help it. Enough murders. Enough happy gay couples that make me feel like a frumpy old maid. Enough resorty… resortness. I need a real break this time.”
Rob rubbed his palms on his jeans and looked down into his watery, melted colada thoughtfully.
“Anne… if you have nowhere to be,” he said, with a forced teenaged nonchalance he still always hoped he’d grow out of, “you can come with me to have Christmas at my mother’s. She’s 71, but she still makes a mean ham,” he offered, managing to give her a smile.
Anne brightened.
“Really?”
Rob nodded, encouraged by her reaction.
“She loves having guests over. Our family’s small and all spread out, and not everyone makes it back every year.”
Anne tucked her hair behind her ears and grinned.
“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds amazing. I’d love to, inspector. I’m really honored.”
Rob pursed his lips.
“Rob, okay?”
She pinked a bit.
“Okay. Rob.”
Kanahele watched the sky deepen into a velvet blue.
“You know…” he admitted, awkwardly, “my mom… She’s a wonderful woman, but… well. She’ll uh, the odds are she’ll assume we’re sleeping together. Just,” he gave her an uncomfortable look, “thought you should know. Before you decide. She’ll take positively to it, though.” He had an embarrassed smile. His mother always said he needed a girlfriend…
Anne nibbled her lip.
“Well hey,” she leaned on her hand and looked at him, “I’m ok with that.”
“Mm? Her assuming, or us sleeping together?” Rob raised an inquiring eyebrow.
Anne smiled.
= THE END =
For reals this time!
Feel free to comment if you think I left any threads unresolved! I’ll address any gaps you find, and include them in later revisions. I think this is only the second mystery I ever finish and pass around. I had tons of fun, and I’m happy to answer any questions or whatnot. Thanks for your patience! – PS: I leave you with this little gem, even if it’s the wonderful and classic Bing Crosby version that ran in the background of much of the writing of this piece ~
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