Cecilia’s offhand comment about Laila put Mas in a bad mood. For as much as he thought Laila’s involvement with Billy was wrong, Billy himself was more to blame. He was the married one; he was the one who had broken his vows. If anyone could be blamed for Billy’s marital woes, it would have to be Billy.
All Mas knew was that he didn’t want to be played as a chump. He didn’t know exactly what Billy’s game was, but it clearly wasn’t a game with any set of rules. Back in his room, Mas didn’t bother to turn on the light. He sat in the darkness at the minuscule desk, feeling his knees almost touch the wall. Rosa’s words had soaked in, more than he’d wanted to let on at the time. Your people killed Laila, she’d said. Was there any truth to her accusations? And what about Billy? He’d taken Mas into the Stem House after having a fight with Laila, and he’d conveniently kept all these secrets from Mas and maybe from the police. This all had to stop. Now.
Outside Mas heard the sound of high heels against the vinyl walkway. The stride was quick; this one was in a hurry. During his stay at the motel, he’d often heard the slow, unsure steps of a drunken trucker or the sliding of children’s tennis shoes. This sound was different. Mas lifted the edge of the plastic curtain. It was Cecilia, in a tight animal-print dress and shiny black pumps. Not studying clothes, that’s for sure. As she darted up the staircase that went up to the fourth floor, he wondered who she’d dressed up for. There was a pool up there, wasn’t that what the desk clerk had said? Cecilia, however, did not look like she was going for a late-night swim either. Perhaps she was on her way to one of those private parties.
Whatever it was, Mas knew he wasn’t invited, which was more than fine by him. He just feared being disturbed by the syncopated beat of electronic music or perhaps yelling and laughter by young men and women. Thankfully, however, all he heard was the hum of the wall heater, which lulled him blissfully to sleep.
The next morning, Mas called Minnie and found out that Billy had gone to work—his first day back since Laila was found dead. Whether he liked it or not, Mas’s next destination had to be Everbears. He couldn’t just sit there as suspicions dangled like overripe fruit. They had to be picked before they dropped and destroyed anything that was potentially good.
As Mas drove south on Highway 1 to Everbears, he felt like he wasn’t in Watsonville anymore. It turned out to be more than a feeling, for he soon passed a sign that said, “Welcome to Moss Landing.” With its oceanfront location and humble pier, Moss Landing was a sleepy former port town. Mas was surprised that a strawberry distributor would be located in such a place, but maybe Everbears wasn’t your typical farm co-op.
Instead of a nondescript prefabricated building, Everbears occupied a converted warehouse clad in aluminum siding. A tangled metal sculpture, apparently in the form of a strawberry, was a clue that it was not co-op business as usual in this place. Across the street was a fenced empty lot with a sign declaring the property was the future location of Forever Resort. A resort? In Moss Landing? Resorts were for Hawaii, not for Pajaro Valley.
The Everbears’ signature logo, a white strawberry flower that would eventually turn into a juicy piece of red fruit, was everywhere on this one block, even on the sign for Forever Resort.
Inside, a large white paper globe hung from the lobby ceiling to light the room. It looked like a Japanese lantern from a summer festival, quite a difference from the harsh, bare fluorescent bulbs at the Sugarberry offices. The floors were made of bamboo. Mas detected a scent of something musky emanating from a pot on the receptionist’s desk.
While the receptionist was finishing up a phone call, Mas took a look at a framed magazine article on the wall. “High-Tech Whiz Sets His Next Sights on Berries,” the headline read. Within the story was a photograph of a pasty-faced young man with long, stringy hair.
As Mas continued to wait, Oily walked into the lobby. He was wearing a polo shirt and khaki pants. “Mas, what are you doing here? Thought you were spying on Sugarberry.”
Minnie must have told him, Mas figured. “Lookin’ for Billy.”
Oily smiled, but somehow it looked to Mas like there was no genuine feeling behind it. “Sure thing. I’ll take you to his office.”
They went through a door in back of the receptionist area and walked down a narrow hall that also had a stylish bamboo floor. They finally came to a door with a sign that said “Research and Development.”
“He’s in there,” Oily said, turning as if to leave.
“How about you?” Mas had expected Oily to come with him.
“I can see that this is family business. Best if I leave it to you two to hash it out.”
Mas opened the door and found himself in a white room, one side lined with desks. On the other were industrial refrigerators and a table with a microscope and blender. On the wall between the two sides was a long whiteboard covered with writing arranged in charts that looked like family trees.
Billy was sitting at one of the desks, speaking to someone whose back was turned to Mas. As soon as Mas walked in, Billy rose from his chair. “Mas.”
Shug’s son did brief introductions. “This is the owner of Everbears, Clay Gorman. Clay, this is Mas Arai. My father’s relative. He’s in town for the funeral.”
Clay Gorman was wearing a long-sleeve gray t-shirt. He looked like the delivery boy instead of the boss. Clay didn’t bother to extend his hand, so Mas didn’t offer his. Instead, he slightly bowed his head, as if Mas was straight from Japan.
“So we’re on the same page on this, right, Billy?” Clay said, completing his conversation. Mas narrowed his eyes. The skinny neck and shoulders, Mas had seen those before. The mourner at Shug’s funeral who was right in front of Mas at the incense line.
Clay awkwardly bowed again and left the room.
“Sorry, he’s got some social issues,” Billy explained. “Lived in Tokyo for a while and is crazy about things Japanese, anime, go.”
Mas nodded. Oh, the boy was one of those. Likes to talk to computers and robots more than human beings. Mas continued to take in everything in the room. On Billy’s desk sat about a hundred strawberries on a white cutting board, all cut in half. Each berry was tagged with a number and name. “Whatchu doin’?”
Billy quickly blocked Mas’s view of the board of strawberries. Strange.
“I thought you were working at Sugarberry.”
“I was,” Mas said. “Been meeting some omoshiroi people. Like dis woman Rosa.” Mas didn’t like her, but he could honestly say that she was interesting.
“Rosa Ibarra?” Billy’s face turned dark. “I think she was the one who hurt Laila.”
Mas shuffled in his workboots. Yet she was saying precisely the same thing about Billy.
Billy folded his arms. “Sometimes I thought that she was in love with Laila. Ever since we’ve been together, Rosa made it her mission to go after me and my family.”
“She say you and Laila kenka,” Mas said, and then realizing that Billy might not understand, he repeated himself in English. “You fight.”
“Yeah, we fought. Especially recently.”
“You fight dat night.” The night Laila was killed.
Billy sat back at his desk, clearing the way for Mas to see his severed strawberries. “She told me she’d seen my father before he died. He accused her of stealing his computer, of attempting to get his scientific secrets.” Mas then remembered that Minnie had mentioned that Shug had just purchased a new computer, which apparently had replaced the stolen one.
“She’d been following my dad. He hadn’t been going to his consulting office—he’d been going to Linus Verdorben’s place in Castroville. Strange place next to his father’s old body shop and closed-up gas station. Verdorben has some fields over there, too. The Masao test plants. Laila said she got hold of a strawberry plant—took one up to UC Davis to have some friends do some tests. The day she died . . .” Billy’s voice wavered, “she was supposed to show me the results. She said it was important. I told her I didn’t want to hear it—my dad’s funeral was the next day, for God’s sake. I just took off in the middle of our fight. Went to the liquor store to get some beer and drank for a while. Then I felt a need to go to the Stem House. Just for old times’ sake. Dad always said his best years were in that house.”
“We have some good time,” Mas agreed.
Billy lifted his chin up and Mas noticed that his eyes were still bloodshot. “He always spoke highly of you, by the way. Always did.”
Mas pressed his lips together. He wasn’t here to fish for compliments, just to uncover the truth.
On the desk was an Everbears mug, from which Billy took out a pencil to play with. “So I never found out what Laila wanted to tell me. I’ve been going through her things, her papers. The police have her computer. And then I found her cell phone in her car. That’s when I heard these threatening calls on her voice mail.”
Mas shivered. It was as if the temperature dropped.
“It was a man’s voice. Saying that he would hurt her if she stayed in Watsonville. I don’t know why she didn’t tell me or report it at the time. But she did save the messages; she must have taken the threats seriously.” Billy held the sharp end of the pencil out, like a miniature saber. “I dropped off Laila’s phone at the sheriff’s office this morning. They’ll be checking her records. They will get this sonofabitch.”
Mas didn’t care much one way or the other. Maybe that’s why Billy was spilling his guts to him, because Mas really didn’t have any strong opinions when it came to Laila Smith.
“Nobody understands, you know. My kids. My family. Her family. Her friends. But we had a special connection.”
Oh, yah, Mas said to himself. In his seventy-odd years of living, he knew all about so-called “connections.” They usually led old men down a path of destruction. Billy must have read Mas’s facial expression, because he shook his head.
“No, it wasn’t like that. I mean, yes, she was gorgeous. And young. But it was much more than that. She was so, so—alive and curious. Open about life. It was starting to rub off on me, too. We talked about going to Latin America, Chile. See how other cultures dealt with food production. Maybe write a book together.”
Book? Kuru-kuru-pa, thought Mas. There was no doubt that Billy had lost his mind.
“I was going to tackle the science part of it; she, the political side. Our party politics didn’t match, but we were both committed to getting the best food to the most people. Really. It’s really her passion that got her killed.”
Billy’s eyes took on a glassy sheen and Mas, embarrassed by any sign of emotion, looked down. He noticed something else sticking out from the mug on Billy’s desk. A white plastic knife with the words, “Masao,” clearly written in Shug’s hand. “A-ra—” he couldn’t help to exclaim. This was a marker from the missing strawberry plants next to the Stem House. The ones that Shug had bred and named after Mas.
Billy frowned and followed Mas’s gaze. “It’s not what you think,” he tried to explain. “I mean, yes, I took them that night when I left the Stem House. But it’s only because they were my father’s. I wanted something of his.”
Mas was unconvinced.
“I was curious. I mean, Laila was talking like these plants were revolutionary. I don’t know who the parents were for these plants—yet.” Billy gestured toward the chart on the whiteboard. “Every variety has a family tree, an initial mother and father.”
He pointed to the sliced strawberries tagged on the cutting board—apparently those were the Masaos. “Anyway, just by doing a special taste test, these don’t seem to be anything special. I mean, they’re sweet, very sweet, but the meat doesn’t hold up.”
Mas let out a deep breath. He was disappointed to hear that his namesake was just like him. Totally unspectacular.
Billy wasn’t completely finished. “There’s something about this strawberry, though. You can’t tell by just looking at them.”
Masao felt a little sick. What did Shug try to hide, and did Laila discover his secret? Who made the threatening calls to Laila? Perhaps there was a connection between Shug’s death and Laila’s. Maybe finding out what happened to Laila would provide new information about Shug.
Mas’s head felt like it was spinning. “I needsu to go,” he told Billy. He stumbled out of the laboratory and finally into the lobby, where he saw a familiar-looking teenager talking with Oily.
“Okay, I’ll check on that, too. Maybe the server’s been compromised,” the teenager said, and Mas immediately recognized the voice. It was the same one that had challenged him at Shug’s house. The owner of the Impala hardtop.
Mas scurried out of the lobby and got into the Ford. What was a no-good teenager doing at the Everbears headquarters, talking to Oily? Didn’t make any sense. He decided to learn more.
Mas moved the truck to the other side of the street next to a strawberry stand. As he waited, he drained the last bit of coffee and threw the crumpled disposable cup onto the passenger side floor. It was probably ten minutes before the boy got into his Impala and left.
Mas followed, staying at least one car length away, which was difficult as the cars became fewer and fewer on the country road. He was about three car lengths back when the Impala slowed and then came to a complete stop. It then backed up suddenly until the Impala’s rear bumper almost touched Mas’s truck, forcing Mas to brake. The boy leapt out and stalked over to Mas’s side window. “Okay, so what the hell do you want?”
Mas sat frozen behind the 1970 dashboard, which he had installed some years ago.
“C’mon, this pile of junk, I can see it a mile away. I know you were following me since Everbears.” The boy was wearing old-fashioned thick-framed glasses, the kind that Shug used to wear.
Mas rolled up the window as far it would go, about an inch from the top of the window frame. He attempted to shift to reverse, but another pickup truck had come from behind and was honking its horn.
“Pull over,” the bespectacled boy ordered before running back to his car. They both moved their vehicles to a dirt embankment next to a strawberry field.
Grasping onto a crowbar from behind his seat, Mas was ready for anything that would come. He came out first.
The teenager, seeing Mas with his weapon, began to laugh. “Cool it, old man. I’m not going to do anything to you. I just wanted to know why you were following me.” He put his hands in his hoodie sweatshirt. “I’ve seen you at Mister Shug’s house. You a relative? You kind of look alike. Around the eyes.”
Mas didn’t know if the teenager was insulting him or not, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Heezu cousin. Of cousin.”
The boy’s face softened. “Uh, sorry then, man. We all went to the funeral. Even my brother and he doesn’t like to get out of the house much. My great-grandpops used to work for Mister Shug’s old man. That was a long time ago.”
The boy handed him a business card. Victor Duran, DuranDuran Recovery, it read. You Lose It, We Find It. Mas had one of his own, ORIENTAL LANDSCAPING, but he doubted it would hold any water with this Duran boy.
“It’s my brother’s and my company. He’s an information security expert. Went to Cal State Monterey and worked at Clay’s high-tech company before it got bought out. Got downsized, so we decided to go out on our own. I’m the people person, so I meet with the clients.”
People person? Mas shuddered to think what the brother was like.
“So why you following me?”
“Tryin’ find truth. About Shug dyin’.”
The boy’s face, which was dark, turned a shade of olive green. “Who you talking to, the cops?”
Mas shook his head. Yes, he had been talking to Robin, but she was officially off the case. “Minnie ask me to help.” And Billy had, too, in his roundabout way.
“How’s she doing, by the way? Haven’t talked to her in a couple days.”
“Lotsu goin’ on.”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking of Mister Shug. I saw him getting the newspaper the day he died. He always called me Ichi—that was his nickname for me. You know, for Number One. Said that I was smart. Not too many people have called me smart.” Victor’s face grew tender for a moment. Mas was surprised.
“I was going out for a morning appointment. Wish I’d been around. Maybe I could have done something, but I don’t know what.”
“Your brotha home?’
“Yeah, but he’s kind of useless with stuff like that. Just stays in his room with his computer. Our bisabuelito, great-grandpops, even has to bring him food; he won’t eat otherwise. But Mister Shug was worried about something. All about the announcements of the new varietals next week.”
Shug was right; this Ichi was smart.
“Yeah, about a week ago, he actually hired me. I mean, I usually don’t do work for Sugarberry, since, you know, Everbears is one of their competitors. But Mister Shug is almost like family. And it was personal. His laptop was stolen from his house. He had a computer Lo-Jack on it, but he said he didn’t want to involve the police.
“So we said that we would handle it. At first the thief didn’t turn on the computer. It’s like they knew that Mister Shug had some kind of tracker on it. But then it was turned on for about an hour. Enough to see that Mister Shug had wiped clean the hard drive. Through the tracker we located the computer out by Moss Landing harbor. I’m sure it was eventually tossed in the water.”
He pushed up his glasses, which were starting to droop down his nose. “One thing they didn’t know was that something else was on. A webcam. My brother was just able to download the saved image.”
Mas straightened his back in anticipation.
“I can’t say anything, okay. I can’t get involved, you know, for professional reasons. But I can show you.” Victor went into the Impala’s trunk and took out a laptop. Opening it, he clicked a few keys and rubbed a mouse pad. Bringing it over to Mas, he said, “This is what my brother got.”
The image was a bit dark, but Mas could make it out.
A face—boxy and framed by thinning gray hair. Oily Takei.
During his lifetime, Oily Takei had gone through three marriages, which didn’t surprise Mas in the least. During the short time Mas lived at the Stem House, he’d witnessed the Casanova in action. He usually started things off with some undivided attention, some compliments, and then flowers. Next came picnic lunches with onigiri that Shug’s mother had made, along with some teriyaki chicken. Then before you know it, the girl was hanging on Oily’s arm, a nice new brooch on her dress collar. After a month or two, the whole cycle would repeat itself, much like planting new crops on the same piece of land.
Oily was smart enough not to practice his romantic moves on the girls living in the Stem House. They weren’t going anywhere for a while, and he couldn’t deal with bumping into a former lover in the hallway on his way to the bathroom. But it was obvious, at least to Mas, that Oily had long carried a torch for Minnie.
Minnie, with her cat-eye glasses, was not Oily’s type, and Oily, being all brawn and little brain, was not Minnie’s, but perhaps that was the attraction. She was a flavor that he could not easily try, and Oily was all about new flavors.
One day they all went down the coast to go clam digging at Pismo Beach. They brought shovels and pails, rolled up their pant legs, and went to work at low tide.
The clams clanged as they tossed them in their pails, and at one point, Oily called Minnie over to his.
“Look,” he said.
The curiosity was a clam with a fat siphon extended like an excited chinko.
“Oily.” Minnie turned bright red. It was obvious that he wanted to stir things up with her. Shug then made a joke and all of them laughed. Minnie’s honor was immediately restored.
Shug at that point had been playing it cool. But once it was clear that Oily had his sights set on Minnie, Shug finally moved in, drooping shoulders and all, and he prevailed. Their wedding had been simple, Mas gathered. By the wedding day, he’d moved to Los Angeles and contact, unfortunately, became more sporadic. Now with funerals, the gang had more opportunities to be reunited.
Mas wondered if he really knew anything about Oily as he was now. Some things most likely hadn’t changed since their teenage days. Oily was no friend of loyalty; in fact, he’d been the first to leave Sugarberry for Everbears. And more recently, according to the Duran boy, he had recruited Billy to work for the competition. And as with his work, Oily liked to keep his options open in his personal life. After Wife Number Three left him, he must have been lonely. With Shug out of the way, the path to Minnie was free and clear.
“Can’t say anything to him,” Victor said. “He’s our main contact at Everbears. You know, our bread and butter.”
“You’zu in a bad situation,” Mas said.
Victor nodded. “My bisabuelito thinks we should take this direct to Mister Oily. My brother says let sleeping dogs lie. As for me, I don’t want to think the worst of Mister Oily. He wouldn’t do anything against Mister Shug, would he?”
Mas honestly didn’t know. Oily talked a good game, but from personal experience, Mas knew that his old friend had a tendency to flip-flop allegiances. Victor, looking at his vibrating cell phone, said he had to get going.
Mas wasn’t quite finished with him. “One more thing—you’zu help Shug with sumptin else?”
Victor frowned, his thick eyebrows now dark slashes above his glasses.
“Minnie findsu it.”
The teen sighed. “It’s not illegal or nothing. My friend was getting rid of one of his guns. Shug said that he needed it. For protection. He had this feeling that somebody was out to get him.”
“Mister Jabami,” said the caretaker, picking up her purse as she walked from Ats’ bed to Jimi, who was standing in the bedroom doorway. “I hate to say this, but I need my money tomorrow.”
Jimi nodded, embarrassed that he’d had to ask her to wait on her payment for a week. He was expecting that the money from this week’s harvest would have come through by now, but that was before the yellows. The second mortgage on the house and the loans on the farm equipment all had been pressing down on him, squeezing him, causing him sleepless nights.
He knew that he probably should have spoken to their children, but they had their own lives in faraway places. No, it was his responsibility to figure this out. And he had. The mortgage insurance policy would take care of the farm and the house, and that’s all that really mattered. The children wouldn’t sell the property, he knew. Most likely, it would be the divorced daughter in Texas who would come out and move in. Her children were almost all grown.
Sometimes in the middle of the night when the moon was full, Jimi would walk the perimeter of his house alongside his strawberry fields. He’d check their leaves, touch the berries, and talk to his fruit. Gambare, he’d encourage them. Hang in there. The winter had lasted too long this season, but he’d ask them to persevere. Then he’d come through his gates into the front yard, where the lemon tree gave shelter to his sisters. Sometimes he’d imagine them as babies, their fat thighs and skinny eyes. Even though they were newborns, in his mind they would be dancing, laughing, saying full sentences to one another. They were free and would remain free, as long as the Jabamis had their land.
So the morphine tablets, purchased from a drug dealer by the Pajaro River, were there for Ats. She was close to death anyway, so no one would suspect. Figuring out his own demise was a bit tougher, but Shug had helped immensely. Jimi had everything in place. But then this new Arai had come into town. Once he was gone, the plan could proceed. This Arai just needed an extra push out the door.