The Flower Master (Rei Shimura #3) (27 page)

My mind made up, I plowed on to the next item of business: Mrs. Koda. I could not talk to her at the school, where other people might be listening. Now that I had the list of teachers from the school, it was easy to look up her home telephone number. Her address was in Hiroo, a sedate and expensive neighborhood near the Kayama Kaikan.

It was seven o'clock. I pictured her cooking a small dinner for herself, maybe one fish and some rice and vegetables. I got a little bit hungry thinking about it. As a single person, I rarely went to the trouble of cooking such a meal for myself. Aunt Norie's culinary reign—okayu notwithstanding—had been a memorable one.

"Please forgive me if I am disturbing your evening meal," I said when she answered the telephone.

"I do not eat formal meals alone, Rei-san. But for you to be awake so late is not good! You must rest and recover from your illness."

"I'm recovering nicely, thanks to your concern. I even ran a few miles this morning, and I went out to Zushi to look at Kumamori-san's pottery."

"She is a talented potter as well as an excellent flower arranger. It is rare to be able to handle both the heaviness of clay and the lightness of petals. Her hands are a treasure."

It was on the tip of my tongue to bring up the fact that the Kayama School kept flunking Mari for the teacher's certificate exam. But it wouldn't do to be confrontational over the phone. I reminded myself of my goal, to get an audience with her.

"What is your schedule like?" I asked. "I would like to invite you for tea."

"How kind. I would enjoy it as well. There is a restaurant inside the Kayama Kaikan. Aren't you coming for class tomorrow?"

I hadn't been planning on it. "Actually, my days are so busy, packed with appointments and such, that I'd really like to spend an hour or so with you in the evening. I need to explain about what happened yesterday."

"Oh, with the Kayama ware? Don't worry. Takeo- san explained the situation."

"Mmm, there's a bit more to it." I paused significantly, hoping to arouse her curiosity. She didn't reply. "As you know, my Japanese is not very good. Especially on the telephone. I'd rather be able to explain it in person. I must make sure that there is no longer a terrible misunderstanding between myself and my aunt's most honored teacher."

"Your aunt is worried? Oh, she mustn't be that way." Warmth flowed through the telephone line. "By all means, we must relieve her anxiety. Of course I will be happy to visit with you in my home when you have some free time."

"I'll be there in forty minutes. Thank you for your kindness." I hung up before she could make any kind of protest.

* * *

I would not be late this time. I jogged downhill to Sendagi Station, flitting through groups of blue-collar workers and students. People here were used to my running and didn't break their stride or stare the way they did in Roppongi. The neighbors just called me the "Running Girl," according to Mr. Waka, which was an eccentric, but not particularly cruel, nickname. On the occasions when the young men from Tokyo University 's running club saw me, they gave a quarter bow, shoulders only, so as not to break their stride.

A block ahead I saw a young man with short, spiked blond hair wearing a conservative blue blazer and gray trousers. He was walking with a taller, dark- haired man. From the backs of their heads, I guessed that the pair was Richard Randall and his new friend Enrique. I was pleased, because we'd be able to ride the subway together. To catch up with them, I increased my pace, and when I reached Richard, I playfully grabbed the back of his jacket.

My friend did not turn around but gave a small yelp. In the next moment his companion had slammed me against the station's grimy tiled wall. I stared into the angry face of Che Fujisawa, the environmental activist who had led the protest outside My Magic Forest.

"It's rude to surprise people," Che growled.

"No problemo, I'm sure the young lady meant no harm. My jacket isn't even torn!" Richard jabbered in a bizarre mixture of Spanish and Japanese.

Belatedly I realized that I was in danger of blowing Richard's cover in Che's organization.

"Gomen nasai, gomen nasai!" I apologized, diving forward into a deep bow. Che was standing so close to me that my forehead knocked his jaw. The collision must have hurt him more than me, I thought, judging from the way he moaned and stepped back, clutching his mouth.

"You fool!" Che raged at me in Japanese. "I know you from somewhere. I'm sure of it!"

"She's just a crazy girl who works at the Family Mart," Richard said quickly. "She has a crush on me, the owner says."

"Gomen nasai." I bowed once more and darted off through the ticket wicket, glad I had a prepaid card. I looked over my shoulder and saw Richard searching for coins to pay for his fare at the ticket machine, no doubt causing a delay so that I could make a get-away on an earlier subway train. Richard was martyring himself for my cause. When Che had me up against the wall of the station, he'd seemed ready to beat me up. What he could do to someone smaller and less athletic than myself was too frightening to contemplate.

I'd believed that Richard's connection to Enrique would protect him within the ranks of Stop Killing Flowers, but I was wrong. I needed to get Richard out, and I was annoyed with myself for not grilling Takeo about his own connections with the group. Mrs. Koda might have a sense about whether Takeo felt more loyal toward his family's school or Stop Killing Flowers.

I rode the subway to Hiroo. Once on the street, I obtained the directions to Mrs. Koda's home from a policeman on duty in his box. He told me to look out for the apartment building with flower boxes at every window. It sounded charming, but when I saw the flowers they looked suspiciously fake—red geraniums at every window seemed too much to be true—and the building itself was a dumpy white tower faded to gray by pollution. I never understood why Japanese architects kept designing urban buildings in white. It was a losing battle with grime. In the early 1990s it seemed that a new white building went up in Tokyo every hour. Now the buildings all looked like ghosts with five o'clock shadow.

In a lobby decorated with European-style bouquets of artificial flowers, I found an intercom box and buzzed Mrs. Koda's apartment.

"You are downstairs? I wasn't aware you were coming tonight."

I'd thought that I'd been so clear. "Um, I can leave if it's not convenient."

"Please take the elevator to nine. I'll meet you there."

Outside the elevator doors stretched a hall covered in light green carpet. The pale blue walls were decorated with fluffy clouds and a depiction of the sunrise over Mt. Fuji.

"This is a very interesting building," I said to Mrs. Koda as we walked slowly together to her apartment. When she let me in, I was relieved to see it was a regular white-on-white apartment, clean and comfortable-looking and not excessively flowery. In fact, there weren't any flowers at all.

"I'm pleased to be in the middle of city life. For a long time I was in the suburbs with my husband. I hated that!" she confided.

"I brought something small for you," I said, handing her a nicely wrapped box of strawberries that I'd picked up outside the station. I could not enter anyone's home in Japan empty-handed.

"Oh, you shouldn't have," Mrs. Koda said, refusing it three times before she accepted it. "I'll put these in the refrigerator to enjoy tomorrow. Would you like some tea?"

"No, thank you. I had some at home . . . Really, no, I'm perfectly fine!"

Despite my protestations, she made me a cup of tea, placing it on a flowered cotton napkin atop a coaster set on a lacquered tray. I stared at the precise arrangement of china, textile, and wood, hoping Mrs. Koda wouldn't notice if I didn't touch the tea. She seemed like a nice old lady, but the fact was, I'd been poisoned while drinking tea with her before. I could pour my tea into a potted plant if she briefly left the room. Unfortunately, there were no potted plants.

"Let's sit down," Mrs. Koda said. "I'm sorry my sofa isn't very comfortable."

"Oh, it's soft as a cloud! This new furniture is so much nicer than the old pieces I have at home."

"Is your aunt still staying with you?" Mrs. Koda smiled at me.

Things were going so well in our etiquette match, it was a shame that I was going to have to get down to business. "I've recovered, so she has returned to her own home. My uncle is back from Osaka. He needs her." Plunging ahead, I said, "I should explain about the Kayama ware."

"Takeo informed me that you're writing an article about it. If you'd only said something to Miss Okada and me downstairs, we would have understood right away."

"Were you nervous because all the Kayama ware was missing from the archives?"

Mrs. Koda looked startled. After a beat she said, "Yes."

"Who discovered the loss?" I asked.

"Miss Okada noticed six weeks ago, because she goes into the archives regularly to find containers for display in the reception area. Then she came to me. I discussed it with Takeo, and he didn't have the heart to tell the iemoto about the loss. He'd thought maybe the containers were misplaced and that he could find them."

"I bought my piece of Kayama ware at an antiques store a few blocks away. There's more there, perhaps the rest of the collection. To get it back, the store owner needs proof that they're registered as school property."

"What kind of proof?" Mrs. Koda asked. I noticed that she didn't seem at all concerned about who might have brought the Kayama ware to the store.

"An itemized list. Takeo-san thinks that one doesn't exist."

"Of course there is a list," she soothed. "I make lists of everything. I compiled a list of Kayama ware twenty years ago. Don't worry. I'llII find it for you. Rei-san, thank you for bringing this to my attention. You did the right thing."

"Speaking of missing objects, I found something else." I pulled the Nolvadex tablet wrapped with tissue out of my pocket and held it out to her. "I was worried that you lost this."

She squinted at the tablet, turning it over in her hand. "Where did you find it?"

"In the school office. It's Nolvadex, isn't it?"

"I must have been careless." Mrs. Koda put the tablet down with a click on a side table and refolded her hands. She looked defeated.

"Is it cancer?" I asked.

She gave the slightest nod. "Nobody except for Takeo-san knows."

"That's so hard on you. Everyone at the school cares—they would support you in every way they could."

"They would suggest that I resign," she said. "And then I would have nothing to do. Ikebana is my career. I want to continue as long as I can."

"Do you think that your cancer could have been caused by flower arranging?"

"I don't know." From her wary expression, though, I guessed she had heard the question before.

"Did your mother or aunt have breast cancer?"

She shook her head and stretched her hands out toward me. "How old my hands look now! In the beginning, when I was a young girl arranging flowers from my family's garden, my fingers were so soft and smooth. I did an ikebana demonstration for my future husband, and he always said that he fell in love with my hands."

"What a romantic man. But to get back to our discussion, if you have no family history of breast cancer, it might be an environmental factor that triggered the disease."

"My husband wanted control," she said, continuing her parallel conversation. "He did not allow me to work, although I had a wonderful invitation from Masanobu Kayama, who had taken over the school in the early 1960s from his father. Masanobu-sensei needed me, but my husband insisted that a woman of my station must not work. So I came to the school as a volunteer and worked here during the daytime while my husband was at the office. Only after he died could I become a true employee."

"You've been handling imported flowers for about thirty years?" I asked.

"A bit longer than that. The school became able to afford imported flowers in the late fifties."

Feeling like a member of Stop Killing Flowers, I told her, "Strong pesticides are sprayed on flowers, especially roses and carnations from Colombia. That could have caused your cancer. Of course you should keep teaching flower arranging, but maybe only with organically grown plants."

"It is too late for me." She lightly touched the right side of her chest. "They cut it out. To stop working with flowers would cut out my heart as well."

"I'm terribly sorry about what's happened to you. And of course I'll keep your health private. But don't you think that sharing your illness with others could serve as some kind of warning?"

"Many of my friends who practice ikebana are fine. I'm an isolated case. I just happened to arrange more flowers than I should have. Maybe I did not wash my hands after each session. If people wash their hands, that should be enough. Takeo-san has ordered the staff to hang signs over the classroom sinks that encourage people to wash their hands after flower arranging. And at his suggestion, I live in this apartment with no living flowers."

"How did Takeo-san find out about your illness?" I asked.

"When Takeo-san was a student at Keio University, he had some trouble fitting in, so he came to me often to talk. When I was on vacation from school, undergoing chemotherapy, he came here unannounced. When he saw that I had lost much of my hair, he demanded to know what was happening. I could not keep a secret from the boy."

I began to put the pieces together. It was during the university years that Takeo had become a fervent environmentalist. Perhaps his worries about Mrs. Koda had led him in that direction.

"At that time, Takeo-san helped me make a plan to continue working. He found a wig that matched the hairstyle that I always had so that nobody would guess I was in bad health. He also allowed me to rest in his room whenever I wanted. Whenever anyone asked about my absence, I would say that I was doing a special project for him."

"Were you resting in his office when Sakura died?" I asked.

"Actually, I was at the doctor. But I have had so many absences lately that I couldn't bear to say that. It was just easier to pretend I was in the building."