The Salaryman's Wife (31 page)

“Please try it,” he said.

“
Itadakimasu
.” I said grace before sampling the steaming, pale green liquid. “A little grassy tasting. Fresh.”

He looked pleased. “It is
gyokuro
, the highest grade of green tea. It comes from a farm that is eight generations old in Shizuoka Prefecture. I brewed it for exactly one minute.”

I drank more, remaining quiet. His strange behavior might be influenced by my notoriety; perhaps he was checking to see if I were still the same person he knew.

“I’ve done something I’m not sure you will be pleased about,” he said when we were drinking our second cups. I knew then he must have been contacted by the press, tried to stick up for me, and had it go wrong.

“I understand,” I said. “Everyone’s talking, my colleagues, my old friends…”

“Talking?” He looked confused.

“You know, to the tabloid reporters.”

“Tabloids?” His face looked as dour as it had the time a shrine sale vendor had tried to sell us some reproduction wood block prints. “I stopped reading all but my art magazines five years ago. Is there some new trouble?”

“Yes, there is. But nothing that relates to our friendship,” I said carefully. “Please tell me what you thought might upset me.”

“It is about the box from Shiroyama.”

I sighed. So it was a fraud, after all.

“You see,” Mr. Ishida continued, “Although the box is not my property, I have arranged for its sale. I was unable to reach you to ask permission, so again, my apology.”

“Tell me—” I leaned toward him, putting both elbows on the tea table. Realizing my etiquette lapse, I jerked them off. Patience.

“The Shiroyama Folk Art Center is the buyer. My friend at the National Museum sent a close-up photograph and his appraisal of your box and they made a bid. It’s as simple as that.”

“Your friend authenticated it as Princess Miyo’s?”

“As well as anyone could. Princess Miyo was an odd young lady,
neh
?” Mr. Ishida smiled. “One strangeness was that she used her left hand for eating and writing. My colleague believes the carving was done by a left-handed person living in the mid-nineteenth century.”

“Is that enough to identify something? Surely—”

Mr. Ishida held up a hand, stilling me once again.
“Even today, most left-handed people must use the right. You know that.”

That had been my father’s ordeal. Half a world away from his proper Yokohama upbringing, he at last felt free enough to write left-handed. Still, he would never dream of using the left hand for chopsticks.

“The box itself, as you recognized, was not especially high quality, and was produced at the workshop of Koichi Hashimoto between 1850 and 1860 in Hakone. At that time, it would have sold for just a few
sen
. My friend believes Princess Miyo was probably given the box by a relative or friend of the family, someone who had stopped in Hakone while traveling along the Tokaido Road.”

How ironic the antiques business was! For years I had strived to buy the finest quality I could afford; now I’d bought a piece of nineteenth-century junk and it meant something. Something major, in fact, to the small town where it came from.

“The reason I suggest you sell the box is that it has limited interest and won’t appreciate in value,” Mr. Ishida told me. “It is, however, of great significance to the Shiroyama Folk Art Center.”

“I’d be happy to donate it, since I hardly paid anything and took it from the town where it belongs,” I suggested.

Mr. Ishida was shaking his head. “And have your reputation as an antiques dealer vanish like a trace of smoke? I will not allow it.”

“But I’m not a dealer,” I said, although I had started thinking about the money.

“Miss Shimura, I insist on payment. I have arranged everything, and it would be a massive loss of face if you cancel this agreement.”

“May I ask how much they’ll pay?” My blunt question hung in the air, embarrassing me.

“One-point-two million yen. At first they were hesitant to exceed the million yen mark, but they changed their mind. That’s why I’d be embarrassed if you decline.”

I made him repeat the figure to ensure I’d gotten it right. He was talking about ten thousand dollars for a box that had cost me fifty dollars, the going price for a
Rei-Styru
haircut.

“They can afford that?” I was amazed, remembering the small gallery.

“The center is supported by descendants of the Shiroyama family, who have a significant lumber fortune. And the trustees know that what they pay you will be easily surpassed through increased admissions. They plan to use the box as a focus for a new public relations campaign, with articles and advertisements in the local and national press and a search made for the family that once owned the treasure you unearthed.”

“People will finally know that Princess Miyo escaped. Maybe even who she became.” It was oddly similar to my search for Setsuko.

“This is the contract I drafted. If you like, you can bring it to a lawyer first.” Mr. Ishida held out a packet of papers.

I shook my head. Hugh wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of it, and Mr. Ota had more serious matters on his agenda. I also knew the price was
astronomical for a cheap pine box not even 150 years old.

“If you give me a line-by-line reading of what it says, I’ll sign now.”

Mr. Ishida began, and the joy in his voice as he went through the dry words was apparent. Not even the knocking of a customer at the door would make him hurry.

As I pulled out a ballpoint pen to sign the document, he shook his head.

“Don’t you have a
hanko
?” He was talking about my personal name stamp. A
hanko
was considered more secure than a handwritten signature; it also had its roots in hundreds of years of tradition.

“Of course.” I dug around in my bag and found the slim, capped stick with my name carved out of rubber. My father had given it to me as a good-luck present for my new life in Japan.

“Ambition. An auspicious
kanji
to celebrate the start of a new career,” Mr. Ishida said, surveying the first character in my surname.

I blushed and merely said, “
Okage samade
”;
because of you
, the ritual way to show gratitude toward others for your own success. I’d been running around like a lunatic while Mr. Ishida and Taro Ikeda had spent time analyzing my purchase. I’d have to find a way for them to be credited.

Outside St. Luke’s, a thick crowd of reporters greeted me. After a bath at Karen’s and a run through her closet, I was a new woman wearing a white leather
trench coat over a cream-colored stretch satin evening dress she had borrowed from a magazine shoot. “Don’t even think of staining this outfit!” my friend warned while I swore up and down nothing would happen. Now I tugged the skimpy coat over my thighs and refused the shouted questions about my accident at Minami-Senju Station and hurried into the warmth of the hospital.

“A vegetarian who wears leather. How refreshing,” Hugh said when I arrived at his bedside.

As I slipped off the coat, he stared at the sleek evening dress. “Whose is it? This isn’t your usual.”

“Karen’s. Well, it really is on loan from
Classy
.” I was glad he was focusing on my clothes. I had decided not to tell him about the motorcycle attacker, because I had a feeling if he knew he wouldn’t let me out of his sight.

“What I mean is—” he sighed at the language gap that remained between us—“who designed the dress? It’s not your usual tomboy or missionary drag. Come closer so I can have a good look.”

“It’s an Hervé Léger.” I suddenly felt very naked.

“You look like a kinky bridesmaid.” His face didn’t tell me whether it was a success or a disaster. “All those straps and cut-out patches.”

“Karen said that because it’s expensive and French that makes it all right, but I don’t know—”

“It depends on what you’re doing, and with whom.” He slipped his hand into the bodice, and I shivered as his fingers glided over my bare skin.

“Someone’s taking me to the black-and-white party at TAC.”

“This is a game you’re playing with me, right?” Hugh asked, pulling his hand away. “A jealousy thing.”

“No, this is just a man I met who’s got a lead for me about the American—”

“Who’s the guy?”

“Joe Roncolotta.”

Hugh was silent for a minute. When he spoke, he sounded cranky. “Since when have you been pals with the czar of the
gaijin
business establishment?”

“I called him up a few weeks ago. We’ve had dinner once. He’s helping me.”

“Given his age and girth, I suppose he’s harmless enough. But he can’t give you anything on the American that I don’t have.”

“What do you mean?” I lounged precariously on the bed, afraid to wrinkle the dress by sitting.

“The deal I made with Nakamura last night was rather simple. After I promised not to report him to Sendai, he agreed to abandon his plans for the sale of the Eterna battery. He will also tell Captain Okuhara we entered the house with his permission. Finally, he’s delivered what we needed all along: Setsuko’s father’s letters.”

“Are they real?” I asked, thinking of Mr. Ishida’s handwriting expert.

“They’re in their original envelopes, all postmarked from Texas over a period of twenty-five years. Kind of hard to fake that, I think. These were the valuables Setsuko was keeping in the safe.”

“He knew about her father?”

“Sure. It turned out to be one of the things that
made her an attractive marriage candidate.” He smiled wryly. “So much for my chauvinist’s theory that beauty was her sole asset.”

“How did Mr. Nakamura know we would want the letters?” I was uncomfortable with the idea of him as an ally.

“It turns out one of my friends at work has been something of a double agent—”

“Hikari. She was his mistress,” I said.

“You knew?”

“Remember the black teddy? I recognized the smell of Hikari’s deodorant. Obviously you didn’t notice.”

“I never got close enough to sniff.” He looked at me with awe before continuing. “Nakamura said his gangster pal Mr. Fukujima knew about the thing with Hikari and casually gossiped about it. The news made its way to Keiko, who sensed Setsuko finally had the grounds for a decent divorce settlement. Keiko used the threat of telling Setsuko about Hikari to blackmail Nakamura.”

“Did he pay?” Blackmail was a crime, but I couldn’t help savoring the thought of the arrogant executive under a woman’s command. Breaking Hugh’s ankle and sending me over the pedestrian bridge was another issue, of course.

“A half-million yen was the first installment. It explains his abuse of the company credit card.”

“But now that Setsuko’s dead, there’s no need for blackmail. He can do whatever he wants with Hikari, so why would he help you?”

“He suspects Keiko was behind the death but
doesn’t know what to do about it without revealing his
yakuza
ties. So when I called Hikari, desperate for her help, the two of them hatched the idea of our breaking in and doing the work for him. He even moved the photo album to a prominent place, hoping we’d take it.”

“It sounds like you think he’s innocent,” I said, disappointment mixing with relief that I wouldn’t be prosecuted for burglary.

“Relatively innocent,” Hugh said. “When he was away from us on New Year’s Eve and told vague lies about his and Setsuko’s whereabouts, it was because he was in a closet making an hour-long telephone call to Hikari. I went through my cellular phone bill today, and it all checked out.”

“Ah. The missing telephone you were grumbling about on New Year’s morning!”

“Bull’s eye, Miss Shimura.” With a flick of his hand he tipped me off balance so I rolled against his body. I was stunned to feel his arousal and the strength of my reaction.

“Are Setsuko’s father’s letters still here?” I said, rising to preserve Karen’s dress and my willpower. Hugh gestured toward the briefcase I’d seen Mr. Nakamura carry in yesterday. I opened it and looked down on a sheaf of old letters, many of the envelopes patchworked yellow and green with mildew.

“It looks like the father wrote to her every six to eight weeks. Recently there was a gap of four months before he began writing again on a word processor. He said his arthritis had gotten to him.”

“You’ve read them all?”

“There’s not much to do during the daytime when no one comes except Winnie.”

I picked up one of the older-looking handwritten letters by the edges, the way I’d learned in my museum internship. It was dated October 11, 1975.

“He seemed to think she was raising Mariko herself,” I said.

“Almost every letter is a variation on this, talk of money sent and pleas for photographs and school reports.”

“And was Setsuko a nurse?” I asked.

“Not according to her husband. I think she believed calling herself that satisfied her dad, who comes off in the letters as a rather sentimental fellow. She mentions a husband abandoning her, seeming even more the innocent victim.”

I read on, speeding through some bland references
to the beautiful fall weather in Texas and down to the signature, which was simply “Father.” I refolded it and placed it back in its envelope.

“His name appears nowhere in the letters. I expect he didn’t really want her to know,” Hugh said.

“Do you mind if I take a few of these with me? Maybe some of the later typed ones?” I asked.

“No chance. Unless, perhaps, you’d be willing to perform a very loving service.” He shifted the blankets and winked at me.

“Well, then, I’m going.” I pulled the coat over me, hiding the letter I had in the pocket.