Goro pulled up to the apartment building at the intersection of Roppongi Hills and Azabu-Juban, and my jaw hit the floor.
“You own an apartment here with Amanda?” I looked up at the towering monolith of steel and glass as we entered the circle drive and a valet came forward to greet us. This was a whole other level of wealth I wasn’t used to. I thought his apartment in Chikata was the height of impeccable taste and size, but this was ten times more sophisticated. From the backseat of the car, I had a lovely view of the lobby, softly lit, staffed with a concierge and greeter in white gloves. Security cameras kept watch on the front entrance and driveway.
Yasahiro was silent, staring up at the building as the valet opened his door.
“Mr. Suga, it’s good to see you again. We heard about Miss Cheung on the news. Very tragic.”
Yasahiro looked to Goro, and Goro shook his head. He hesitated for a moment before exiting the car.
“Thank you for your condolences.” He turned and helped me from the car. “Please let the manager know we’re here.”
The valet bustled inside as Goro waved to the van full of forensics officers as they followed us into the driveway.
I waited outside while Yasahiro entered the lobby and spoke to someone I assumed was the manager of the property. He wore a proper suit and directed people around as Yasahiro gestured to the lobby, the elevators, and the driveway.
I tried to stay out of the way as each technician grabbed their gear and filed in. All the elevators waited for us, held open by lobby staff who kept their heads bowed and mouths shut.
“Please let me know if you need access to anything else, Mr. Suga.” The manager bowed as we entered and pushed the button for the twenty-eighth floor.
Yasahiro sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Something tells me he won’t be sad to see me sell the place when the time comes.”
Goro’s only answer was to hand out purple nitrile gloves to everyone.
The apartment took up half the floor, a ridiculous amount of space for Japan, but a place like this would cater to foreigners who weren’t used to living in tight quarters. This area of Tokyo was famous for not only the shopping but also the Tokyo American Club and international schools that brought in foreigners from all over the world.
Yasahiro swiped a keycard and opened the main door. I noted the second exit down the hall, closer to the stairwell and the two cameras watching over both ends of the building.
Inside, the view was breathtaking. I stood at the floor to ceiling windows and gaped at the Tokyo skyline. Unless I visited the Tokyo Skytree, I never saw the city like this. The buildings I’d worked in were maybe twenty stories high and you could see a block or two in either direction. But from here…
“You can see Mount Fuji on a clear day,” Yasahiro said, coming up behind me. “Your namesake,” he whispered, his voice low so the men and women unloading their gear around us couldn’t hear. He kept his eyes from me, too, either upset or ashamed or I couldn’t tell what. He had closed up on the ride to Roppongi Hills, sitting with space between us, not touching me at all.
“Why didn’t you live here?” The leather couches, expensive rugs from India, and a high-end kitchen that rivaled his own back in Chikata were now crawling with forensic technicians. “You could’ve opened a restaurant in Roppongi Hills and made a fortune.”
He lowered his eyes to his feet. “No. I didn’t want this. This was what Amanda wanted. That was what she wanted. But then I met your mom, and I spent time in your town, and I wanted that more. I wanted it for me, not for anything else.”
I found Yasahiro so confusing sometimes. He had this drive to succeed, to be the best. Yet, he shunned the things that marked him as being the best, the fancy cars and apartments, the expensive clothing, the famous girlfriend.
“When this is over today, we need to talk,” he whispered, and I lost a liter of blood from my head. My mouth grew dry and my heart raced into a panic. “We need to talk,” are words I never wanted to hear.
He walked away from me, and I pushed down the fear that threatened to break out as tears. Hadn’t I been trusting? Hadn’t I been supportive and kind and…
I sniffed up and took a deep breath. I couldn’t let my doubts carry me away now. I had a job to do.
Letting my anger and frustration propel me through Amanda’s apartment, I focused my attention on various items as I walked through the living space. A crew was dusting down the kitchen, so I stayed away from there. I opened a few cardboard boxes to the right of the leather sofa, and inside were stacks of her new book, the reason she was in Japan in the first place. This was some kind of memoir she wrote about her time growing up outside of New York City, the pressure her mother put her under to be successful, and how she channeled everything into her drive for fame.
I pulled one book from the stack and turned it over to read the text on the back before shuffling through the books and finding the Japanese version instead. Reading English was still difficult for me. It was harder than speaking it. I opened the second box that held copies in Chinese as well. Wow. Most publishers waited to print books in different languages, yet hers had them done at the same time. But when I remembered the websites that followed Amanda and her career, they were all American, French, Chinese, and Japanese, for obvious reasons. I glanced at Yasahiro hovering in the kitchen, but he either wasn’t paying attention to me or he was purposely ignoring me because he didn’t make eye contact.
I decided to get out of sight and headed to the bedroom. Goro was rifling through Amanda’s wardrobe, clothes strewn on every surface from the dresser to the bed to the doors of the closet.
“Wow. You really tore this place apart.” I rested my hands on my hips.
Goro snorted. “Not me. It was like this when I walked in. The woman lived like a pig.”
“No,” I said, disbelief evident in the way I cocked my head. “She struck me as being buttoned-up and rigid.”
“Yeah, well, maybe on the outside.” He gestured to the main room where everything was tidy and neat. She could easily hide the bedroom away from prying eyes. Maybe this was her refuge from the strictness of her life.
“Do me a favor and search the bathroom, okay? There’s someone in there dusting for prints right now.”
The bathroom was big enough for half a dozen people to sit and have dinner in. A woman raised her hand to me as I came in.
“Wait, please, Miss Yamagawa.” I stepped back out, and she took a few more pictures before beckoning me in. “Okay. I’m going to sweep in this area for semen and other bodily fluids. You can look through the items on the counter.”
I was too fascinated by her work to search right away. She sprayed down areas with a chemical in a bottle and then shined a black light on it until she found spots that glowed. Then she took out specimen containers and collected samples with cotton swabs. This was the forensic work I had missed on Etsuko’s apartment when I helped search there.
While she examined the stone tile with a magnifying glass, I picked through Amanda’s personal bath items. She, of course, loved all the expensive creams and makeups. The face wash alone was worth 10,000 yen. I took everything out of her zippered bags and lined them up on the counter so they could be photographed.
In another zippered bag, I found her stash of medications. One thing Americans had over the Japanese was their fondness for pharmaceuticals. I had heard from other people who lived in America for a time that TV commercials were absolutely filled with pharmaceutical ads, that people in America took pills for everything. I didn’t believe the exaggeration until I saw what Amanda had. I dumped them out and found eight prescription bottles and a packet of birth control pills.
The names of the medicines confounded me but I recognized two: Ambien and Xanax, or the generic version of those because both names were printed on the bottles. I opened each, and she had a decent supply, enough to last her trip to Asia. The birth control packet had hormone pills to last her another week. She had been due for her period soon.
I set down the packet and closed my eyes, aware that, once again, I’d forgotten to eat lunch, and a headache was closing in. Wasn’t I due for my period soon? My face heated as I skipped back through the weeks in my head. I wasn’t on birth control because, quite frankly, I never had had the need for them before now. Yasahiro and I used condoms.
“What did you find in here?” Goro asked, coming up behind me and scaring me enough to make me jump and drop Amanda’s birth control pills packet into the sink.
“Oops, sorry. Here. I feel guilty even looking at her stuff.” I handed him all her pills, and he made notes of each. “Looks like she has anxiety and sleeping problems.”
“Hmmm, yes, and this one is for depression, too.” He pointed to a bottle I didn’t recognize. “Interesting.”
“Could be she was depressed about work or her love life or a million other things? Then maybe she lost sleep because of the anti-depressants?”
Goro nodded as he opened her makeup bag and dumped out the contents on the sink top. I cringed as the brushes and eye liners rolled off and hit the floor. No respect.
He didn’t find anything there worth noting, but then reached across me for Amanda’s birth control and held it up between two fingers.
“Right. So either she used it to fix hormonal problems, or she had a steady boyfriend.”
“I’m thinking steady boyfriend, Mister Pretty-Pants from the photos at the precinct.”
“Mister Pretty-Pants? He has a name, you know.”
“Of course he has a name, Mei,” he said, scoffing at me. “I just don’t have it memorized yet.” He reached for the last unopened bag on the sink top and pulled out a bunch of small amber-colored bottles. “What are these?” He sounded out the English, “Fu-ra-nu-ken-ssss.”
“Frankincense.” These were words I knew too. “Peppermint.” I read another bottle. “Lavender.”
“Lemon. Some sort of oils?”
“Essential oils. I had a workmate who was into them.” I opened the lavender one and took a deep breath. “I like them, but the few I had ran out when I was broke, so I never bought another one.”
“Did you know she’s into reiki and alternative medicine? Yoga?” Goro waved me back into the bedroom and next to the bed on the floor was an e-ink tablet like mine for reading books. He picked it up and powered it on, and in the library were several books on essential oils, reiki massage, yoga, meditation, healthy eating and dieting, exercise. Her collection was a self-help reader’s dream.
“Huh.” Amanda had been so cut-throat with me, I figured she lived on meals of raw meat. I imagined her sitting down to a steak that was still moving on the plate and felt a little sick. Sometimes my daydreams did not agree with me.
“What did you find?” Yasahiro asked, entering the bedroom. He frowned at the state of the room. I guessed that, in his head, he was calculating how much it would cost to fix the whole place up and sell. A lot, by my measure. I wanted to slip my arm around him and hug him, but he jammed his hands in his pockets and kept his distance.
Crap. I’m about to get dumped.
I sucked in a quick breath through my nose to quell my rising anger, headache, and numerous other things that occurred in my body. The whole situation made me want to throw up my hands and walk out. But the sooner this mess was over, the sooner I could get back my life. Yasahiro would have no reason to break up with me if we solved this mystery.
“Seems she was into alternative medicine and lots of pharmaceuticals too.” Goro gestured to the pill bottles in the bathroom and handed the e-reader to Yasahiro. He paged through the library and shook his head.
“Well, she liked yoga and macrobiotic food when we were together, but…” He waved to the bathroom, and we all focused on the bottles. “That? No.” He grunted and deflated, his shoulders sinking. “This is such a mess,” he mumbled. “I’m going to wait out on the couch.”
He left before either of us could respond.
“Okay then,” Goro said, rubbing his face. He looked tired, and I wondered how many hours of sleep he had last night.
Kayo passed Yasahiro in the doorway and handed a Prada briefcase to Goro.
“Here’s her computer, but I already checked, and it’s locked.”
“Of course it is. Because nothing would be that simple.”
I stepped back to give Goro space as he tapped his pen against his front teeth and hummed.
“Fine.” He slung the briefcase strap over his shoulder and stuffed his notepad back in his pocket. Opening his phone, he tapped on the screen a few times, while pointing to Kayo and me. “We’re heading back to Chikata. There’s someone I can see. She owes me a favor.”