I
“Are you shitting us?” Maki shot threateningly at Sendoh.
“No, I’m not shitting you,” said Sendoh. “I was here all along. Why would I lie?”
“I can think of a dozen—”
“Guys, guys, guys,” said Ayako, stepping in between Maki and Sendoh before things could get any more acrimonious. “The important thing is nothing bad happened to Sendoh.”
“But Ayako,” said Maki feebly. “I’m glad nothing bad happened to Sendoh. But something needs to be done about Sendoh’s compulsive lying. He’s been the cause of all our troubles since the very first day.”
“Me?” Sendoh gaped at Maki incredulously. “The cause of all your troubles? I cannot believe you just said that. Let’s not forget that it was your stupid flashlight that started all of this.”
That was the closest the Ryonan team had ever seen Sendoh come to losing it.
“Hey,” said Maki indignantly. “Don’t drag Red Passion into this. Oops.”
Maki covered his mouth hastily, but the damage had been done.
“Red Passion?” Jin raised an eyebrow. “I thought that was just a joke. Red passion, red flashlight. I didn’t think you were actually crushing on Miss Kimura. Although I guess that would explain the flowers and the chocolates.”
Red Passion was the name of a brand of bikini that Maki’s math teacher, Miss Kimura, had once been seen in.
“Yes, yes,” Kiyota put in eagerly. “I remember the flowers and chocolates vividly. Maki nearly broke my neck when I tried looking inside that bag he got at practice.”
“You’re both idiots.” Maki was red in the face. “Those were from the head of my fan club, who is a third-year student like me, and not Miss Kimura.”
“Are you prevaricating, Maki?” said Sendoh slyly. “Because in my book that’s a whole lot worse than lying. Especially if you’re trying to cover up an illicit affair with your teacher.”
Maki grabbed Sendoh by the collar, and shook him violently.
“I am not going out with my math teacher,” he said vehemently. Then he choked up imperceptibly. “No one wants to go out with me for who I truly am. They’re only interested in my perfect body and washboard abs.”
“That’s enough,” said Ayako, extricating Sendoh from Maki’s tearful self-exaltation. “Now let’s settle this once and for all. What were you up to, Sendoh?”
Sendoh raised an eyebrow.
“What was I up to? I wasn’t up to anything. I hung around outside for a bit, and looked at the koi in the pond.”
“What were you up to, Sendoh?” said Kogure.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Kogure smiled.
“Ah, but you do. You see, you’re the one who took Mrs. Marilyn’s pocket watch from the Principal’s office.”
Gasps all around. Sendoh? A thief? But he always seemed so insouciant and guileless. And besides, hadn’t he always been in sight until this morning? And hadn’t the pocket watch turned up a long time before?
“How could he have done it?” said Uozumi. “And more importantly, when would he have got the chance?”
“Remember when Sendoh said he was going on a tour of the campus all by himself?” said Ayako. “I’m pretty sure that’s when he nicked it.”
“Hang on a minute,” said Jin. “That was way before I told you about the pocket watch.”
“Sendoh obviously had prior knowledge of its existence.”
“But how?”
Ayako smiled like a detective who has solved a difficult mystery, and she rounded on Sendoh as if to put him under arrest.
“Because you had an accomplice on the inside, didn’t you Sendoh?” she said. “Someone who went to Kainan High School, and was intimately familiar with its stories.”
“But who could that be?” said Maki.
“Coach Takato, of course.”
More gasps.
“Coach… Now, Ayako,” said Maki sternly. “I have to ask you not to cast aspersions on our coach. We may be a rival team, but I think our coach is entitled to a certain amount of respect.”
“I’m not aspersing anyone,” said Ayako. “Ask Coach Takato yourself. So far Sendoh has had the means to perpetrate this crime—”
“Cut it out,” said Koshino angrily. “If anyone is being aspersed, it’s Sendoh.”
Sendoh had been pale and unnaturally silent the whole time.
“Sendoh is not a thief,” Koshino went on.
“Now, now,” said Maki. “Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Sendoh did in fact steal the pocket watch. What good would it do him?”
“I’m getting to that,” said Ayako. “Sendoh disappeared this morning, purportedly to go on a ‘morning walk’. We need to go back a bit further in time. Follow me.”
Ayako led them down to the cafeteria.
“We ate breakfast here this morning. And then Sendoh had to leave on account of a ‘hangover’. Who should he pick to escort him back to the gym but Kaede?”
Suspicious looks were cast at Kaede.
“That’s good, isn’t it?” said Takenori. “They’re finally putting aside their differences and becoming friends. Kaede can learn a thing or two about friendship and teamwork from Sendoh.”
“That’s not important right now,” said Ayako impatiently. “When we went back to the gym, we saw Sendoh and Kaede looking intently at something inside Sendoh’s backpack. Remember?”
“Yup.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe.”
“H’m.”
“That was the pocket watch.”
“Hold on,” said Mitsui as his Friday-the-Thirteenth hysteria died down and his memories came rushing back to him. “But wasn’t Kogure the one who had the pocket watch when he went missing?”
“You’re right, Mitsui,” said Kogure. “That is precisely what led me to the conclusion that Sendoh was the one who had been in possession of the watch from the beginning.”
“How’s that?”
“I’m getting there. Let’s go back to when Sendoh was chloroformed at the dormitory.”
“What’s this nonsense about chloroform?”
Coach Takato strode into the cafeteria, interrupting Kogure and Ayako’s big reveal.
Ayako smiled at him.
“We’re talking about the chloroform with which you knocked Sendoh out.”
Coach Takato was taken aback.
“Oh gosh,” said Takenori suddenly. “I just remembered a strange shadow under the gym window last night. It looked like a person, but I was too tired to register it. It’s all coming back to me now. It was you, wasn’t it, Coach Takato?”
Coach Takato inhaled deeply.
“Yes it was me,” he said. “It was me all along. And Sendoh.”
“And Kaede,” Sendoh eagerly put in.
“Everything would have gone perfectly if it hadn’t been for Sendoh’s frivolousness.”
“Frivolousness?” Sendoh raised an eyebrow. “What did I do?”
“You were the idiot who suggested to Ayako that the skeleton props I used at the dormitory were from the biology lab.”
Sendoh admitted that he had said that.
Gasps of realization.
“Why did you choose Sendoh as your accomplice?” asked Kogure.
“I didn’t choose him,” said Coach Takato. “I could have managed fine by myself, but Sendoh happened to get wind of my plans, and I had no choice but to let him in on them.”
“What about the flashlight?” said Ayako.
“Miyamasu was helping me out from the very beginning.”
“And what were these ‘plans’ of yours?”
Coach Takato sighed.
“Ayako, you have outdone yourself. You should be a detective or something. Kanagawa could really use your skills. Anyway, today happens to be Mrs. Marilyn’s birth centenary. She would have been a hundred today, in other words. The events of the past few days were my way of remembering her.”
Shocked faces.
“Come into my office,” Coach Takato went on. “All of you.”
Once inside, Coach Takato showed them Mrs. Marilyn’s diary, from which all but a few pages had been torn out. On the few pages that remained was, among other things, Mrs. Marilyn’s essay about her life.
“Mrs. Marilyn died in the eighties. There was no massacre in 1987. I made all that up. Mrs. Marilyn was a woman of morbid predilections, and I thought she would have appreciated this little subterfuge had she been alive.”
He smiled.
Everyone else was not a little annoyed at being put through what was, in some cases, the scariest week of their life.
“What about Coach Taoka and Coach Anzai?” said Maki with some effort. He had suddenly developed trust issues.
“They were here at my request. I think they played their parts well.”
“If that’s what you call playing a part,” said Koshino drily.
Coach Takato was benevolent.
“You played your parts pretty well, too.”
II
The wind howled between the gravestones late in the afternoon. Coach Takato was the only one at the graveyard. Clad in black, he walked solemnly up to one particular grave with the confident gait of one who had made that journey multiple times in the past.
The marble headstone of Mrs. Marilyn’s grave shimmered in the light of the setting sun. It almost looked tearful.
Beauty in death.
Coach Takato placed a bouquet of white daisies on the grave, and gazed at it one last time. He had determined long ago that this would be his last visit to Mrs. Marilyn’s grave. He would let her rest now.
“Happy Birthday, Mrs. Marilyn,” he said softly. “And goodbye.”
THE END
◄ Chapter 16 ● Nights at Kainan ●
0 comments :
Post a Comment