Chapter 36

“Honestly, Jaya,” Tamarind said in the morning. “Why are you so tired? I thought you were a good traveler.”

I’d been up for most of the night tossing and turning, thinking about Sanjay, a dead Dutchman, and stolen gold.

How could I have screwed up so badly with Sanjay? In an attempt to calm down enough to sleep, I’d reminded myself it could have been worse. It’s not like I’d stolen a hoard of gold from a foreign power and had to live in exile for the rest of my life. How could Casper Van Asch have gotten away with stealing from the English and then ended up in Japan? Would they have let him into Japan with English coins during a time when they banned all European texts and scientific inventions and, for a time, even banished children who were half European?

But thinking about lost treasures to distract myself from Sanjay wasn’t calming me down; it had the opposite effect. I didn’t know what to do about my mingled guilt and desire over Sanjay and Lane, but I could take action in pursuing the treasure stolen in India and find out what had become of it.

After a few fitful hours of sleep, I’d been woken at dawn by a call from Sébastien, assuring me he would stick with Sanjay at all times. With that assurance, I’d gone back to sleep until Tamarind opened the curtains.

“Ten minutes,” she said. “You have ten minutes to get ready or else you need to absolve me of my bodyguard responsibilities. My stomach is telling me I should have eaten eight hours ago.”

I flung aside the covers. Sleep was a lost cause anyway. “I only need five.”

  

“Oh. My. God.” Tamarind eyed the Zen rock garden beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass windows as a hostess led us to a table in the hotel’s breakfast room. “This is the most perfect thing ever. There’s even fish for breakfast. I’m in heaven, Jaya. Heaven.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, except for all the murderous stuff. I’ll shut up now.”

After breakfast, during which Tamarind pointed out all the seasonal vegetables in the buffet, from matsutake mushrooms to kabocha squash, and I drank copious amounts of coffee, we caught a cab to the small cooking museum.

We were greeted by an elderly ticket-taker who spoke no English. Tamarind spoke enough Japanese to convey that we wished to speak to someone about the diary Akira had found there.

“I’m impressed,” I said to her as we waited for someone to speak to us.

She shrugged. “When you watch enough anime, you pick things up.”

The young woman who greeted us in English had pink hair. She complimented Tamarind on her blue hair. She also asked us our ages and occupations. I was coming to understand that this wasn’t nosy but considered polite in Japan; the idea was that you were getting to know the person you were speaking with. We learned this was her first curator job.

“You are American fans of Akira?” she asked.

“Big fans,” Tamarind said before I could stop her. That hadn’t been part of the plan.

The curator gave us a shy smile. “I was as well.”

She led us to a room that contained glass-covered shelves of antique cookbooks and cooking implements. And along one wall, a curious shelf of playful miniature carvings of wood and ivory. I smiled at the sight of a two-inch wooden carving of a cat sticking its nose into the bowl of an irate cook. What skill it must have taken for an artist to convey the humorous scene so expertly in a small format. Each of the six miniature statues had a hole at the top, as if they’d once been affixed to something. The signage was only in Japanese, so I couldn’t read about the carvings.

“Netsuke,” she said, following my gaze. “These carvings were decorations on clothing, attached to the end of the rope used to tie kimonos.”

“They’re beautiful.” I smiled at the shared sense of humor across time and cultures. I understood why netsuke captured people’s imaginations and would be a high-profile exhibit at the larger museum near my hotel.

“Where is everyone?” Tamarind asked.

“We are only a small museum,” she said. “Except for one room, we don’t have many visitors aside from scholars. It’s unfortunate our netsuke don’t have the same famous history as other collections. People want a story. Such as a collection of netsuke crafted by a great artist but separated over the centuries after the artist was killed for trying to leave the country to see the world. All the pieces have been restored except for one wooden fox. Our netsuke have no such story.”

“They’re still stunning,” I said.

“Akira discovering a magical diary here is our best story.”

“We heard about that,” Tamarind said as she examined a diorama of a medieval Japanese castle and village with the kitchens highlighted. “That’s why we wanted to come see this place for ourselves.”

“Yes, many people came after it was reported he visited our humble museum.”

“How exactly did Akira come to find the diary here?” I asked.

She looked at me strangely.

“Of course my friend and I know it was his kitsune who led him here,” Tamarind said. “Jaya was asking if you were the one to help him.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Akira visited once. I met him, but did not assist him.”

“Once?” I said. I wondered if the egotistical man went around with an entourage of press. How else had the carefully staged photos appeared?

“His assistant, Yako-san, came many times.”

“Why did she want the diary?” I asked. “How did she know what it contained?”

“I’m not allowed to speak of the contents of the diary.”

“Even though Akira is now dead?”

“Hai.” She bowed. “I’m sorry. We signed agreements.”

“Surely you can tell us what was publicly known about the diary before Akira and his assistant acquired it,” I said.

She stiffened. I could tell the curator was trying to remain polite, but it must have been obvious we weren’t simply superfans of Akira. “I’ll take you to the room you wish to see.”

Tamarind raised an eyebrow at me as we followed. “The room?” she whispered.

We were led to a small room packed to the gills with young women. Five of them were crying. Two more were smiling and taking photos of themselves next to the exhibit. An exhibit featuring Akira. One wall of the room contained blowups of the magazine features that had been published that fall with Akira visiting the museum.

The museum curator clicked her tongue. She spoke a few harsh words to one of the crying women and snatched up the bundle of flowers the woman had left in front of the photos. Shaking her head, the curator walked off with the flowers.

“I guess they don’t want to turn this place into a shrine,” Tamarind said.

I pulled my eyes away from one of Akira’s fans who wore foxlike contact lenses and contemplated the enlarged magazine spread Akira had showed us before he died, which showed him and Yoko reading the diary. The Dutch and Japanese writing on the page was visible, so I took a photograph. I needed to have it translated.

Next to the framed magazine spread was a photograph of Akira holding both the closed diary and his spirit ball in his good hand. Yoko stood next to him, her red hair divided into nine fox tails, looking as if it were being tossed by the wind even though it wouldn’t have been possible for wind to blow through the museum. Since she wasn’t truly a kitsune.

“That woman,” Tamarind murmured, “has some amazing hair.” She tucked her own blue hair behind her ear.

“Fake,” the museum employee said, making Tamarind jump. I hadn’t noticed her return to the room either.

“You scared the bejesus out of me,” Tamarind said, her hand on her heart.

“The photo staging was fake.” The curator crossed her arms. “No woman’s hair can achieve this naturally.”

“You didn’t like her,” Tamarind said.

“Yako-san was not good for Akira.” From the wistful look in the curator’s eyes, it was evident she wished she could have been the one by Akira’s side.

I hesitated before speaking, but I was here for information and this woman was clearly a fan. “Have you heard the rumor about Akira not truly being dead?”

I heard Tamarind gasp beside me. I’d forgotten to tell her that crazy idea. Because it was crazy. I hoped.

“You speak of the news this morning?” the curator asked.

“What news?”

“You don’t speak Japanese, do you?”

I shook my head as Tamarind gripped my arm.

“Akira’s body,” the curator said, “has disappeared.”