Yoriko stubbed out her smoked-down cigarette in the ashtray.
This is one smart detective, she was thinking. I don’t know why he’s wasting away as a precinct cop here in Nihonbashi, but I bet he’s got an impressive record.
Yoriko steeled herself. There was no longer any point in hiding anything.
“I see. So it wasn’t Shuhei you were after, Detective Kaga, it was me.”
“I needed to talk to Shuhei as well. I guessed that he had bought the cakes for your husband. I don’t mean to be rude, but your husband is the only person at the restaurant with nothing to do at that time of the afternoon. I needed to talk to Shuhei to figure out when the wasabi-spiked cake was slipped in.”
“Did you manage to figure that out?”
“I think I did.” Kaga nodded. “Shuhei kept the cakes in his bicycle basket before giving them to your husband. Anyone who knew that could switch out a single cake easily enough, given that the back entrance of the restaurant’s in the alley, too.”
Kaga directed a searching stare at Yoriko. “You put the wasabi in, didn’t you?”
“It’s probably a waste of time for me to deny it this late in the game.”
“If you did, we’d be forced to fingerprint you, so we could compare your prints to the third set on the plastic box.”
Yoriko lit a second cigarette and sighed.
“I owe you an apology, Mr. Kaga. You’re right on every count. But surely what I did doesn’t constitute a crime?”
“Of course not,” chimed in Kaga. “More like a practical joke. You wanted to surprise your husband’s girlfriend, to make her nervous?”
Yoriko burst out laughing, and a cloud of white smoke billowed from her mouth. “The amount of research you’ve done, I imagine you know all about that woman, too.”
“Oh, she was easy enough to track down. All I had to do was visit the clubs and bars your husband frequents. In that world, everyone’s prepared to talk. What was the girl’s name? Asami, I think. She works in Ginza and lives on the same floor of the same apartment building as the murder victim.”
“She’s a nasty little hussy. But that fool husband of mine has always had a weakness for women of that sort. Does she have any children?”
“Yes. One. About a year old.”
“Apparently she’s put the word out that my husband’s the father. Any normal man would get in a funk about something like that, but not my idiot husband. No, he’s tickled pink. Any free time and he’s off to her place to coo over the baby. He even gives the girl an allowance. Oh, what a nice fellow he is.”
“What are you getting at?”
“The whole thing’s a lie. The baby’s not his. A while back, I hired a detective to look into the matter. Before she leaves for work, she hands the kid over to a guy who lives in a cheap dive in Ueno. He’s not a babysitter, he’s the real father.”
“Why don’t they live together?”
“Because if they did, she’d no longer be able to squeeze any cash out of my husband. At some point the truth will come out: I’m guessing she’s using the kid to scam as much as she can get out of him.”
“So the wasabi-spiked cake was a sort of warning shot over the enemy’s bow?”
Yoriko broke into a smile.
“You’re a smart man, Detective Kaga, but you’re wide of the mark there.”
“I’m wrong?”
“Yes. It was that stupid husband of mine whom I wanted to eat the spiked snack cake. Remember, the box contained seven with bean paste and three without. He made a point of having Shuhei include some no-bean-paste cakes because my husband doesn’t like the stuff; I knew he’d go for those ones.”
“And you put the wasabi into one of the ones without sweet bean paste?”
Yoriko tapped the ash from her cigarette into the ashtray and nodded.
“The man really needs to wise up. To the fact that the kid’s not his, I mean. Physiologically, he can’t have children.”
Kaga’s hand gave a jerk, and he almost dropped his glass.
“Seriously?”
“Oh, for sure. He went to hospital for tests years ago. But our Taiji won’t come out and tell the hussy what’s what. It’s partly about not wanting to cut ties with a woman who’s grown to depend on him, but more than anything I think he enjoys the thrill of having a secret love child, even though he knows it’s a lie. He likes to present himself as the great extramarital playboy, but in fact he’s a rather timid little man. My guess is that he’s only slept with that woman a couple of times.”
Kaga exhaled loudly.
“And that rubbed you the wrong way?”
“I wasn’t too happy about it. The fellow thought he was doing such a masterful job of pulling the wool over my eyes. That whole wasabi trick was me trying to punish him... Like you said, Detective Kaga, it was childish, a practical joke.”
“The problem is that your husband doesn’t even know he’s been punished! He’s oblivious to the existence of any wasabi-spiked cake. Nor does he know that the cakes he gave his girlfriend ended up in a crime scene.”
“That’s just it, though. How did the cakes get there? I can’t figure it out.”
Kaga gave a wry smile and stroked his stubbly chin.
“I asked Asami about that. She told me that she gave the box of cakes to the victim. Understandably enough, she didn’t tell me who’d given them to her. She just described him as ‘a good customer of the bar she works at.’”
“Why did she give them away?”
“That’s because...” Kaga frowned as if unsure how to say it. “Because she doesn’t actually like them.”
“What!”
“Yes, apparently she dislikes Japanese sweets. The whole business of bean paste or no bean paste is neither here nor there — she never eats Japanese cakes of any kind. When she told your husband that she liked them, she was just trying to be diplomatic after he gave her a box of them. Now she’s in trouble because he brings her the things all the damn time! She was getting so fed up with them that on that day she got rid of them by giving them to a woman in another apartment on the same floor almost immediately after your husband left. When Asami gave her the cakes, they were still in the original bag from the pastry shop; that’s why we didn’t find her fingerprints on the container, or your husband’s prints, or Shuhei’s.”
“She’s really playing my husband for a fool!” Yoriko pressed a hand to her temple. “You’re telling me he hands over the cakes without her even letting him inside? Unbelievable. The thought of having to spend the rest of my life with such an idiot makes my head ache. Oh, and I must tell Shuhei not to buy any more cakes for him.”
“That reminds me, I feel bad about Shuhei. Maybe I was a bit heavy-handed with the boy. Still, he’s a good kid: he never admitted to buying the cakes at your husband’s request.”
“He’s a useful person to have on the Matsuya team. Anybody can learn to cook, but the ability to keep secrets is a real asset in a people-centric business like ours.”
“How about we drink a toast to the young cook in whose hands Matsuya’s future looks secure?”
“Provided my fool of a husband doesn’t bankrupt the business first!”
Yoriko raised a hand to summon the waiter.
3
The Daughter-in-Law of the China Shop
1
“What’s this Iga fish plate doing on the shelf here? The black Bizen ware is supposed to be displayed over here. You got it wrong again. Why do I have to tell you the same thing over and over again? I’m at my wit’s end.”
Suzue grumbled to herself as she rearranged the plates displayed on the store shelves. Naoya just raised his newspaper a little higher in front of his face and pretended not to hear. Having to absorb an earful of complaints after coming home from the office every day was not his idea of fun.