The Samurai's Daughter (30 page)

“But—it's ruined!” Mr. Ikehata's voice cracked as he stared at the
tansu
bottom.

“But the wood-eating insects are very long gone,” I said quickly, mindful of the stress that might lie ahead for Mr. Ishida should we have to ship the
tansu
back to Japan.

“I am very glad you were so kind to open the
tansu
, Miss Rei,” Mr. Ikehata said, looking at me with new eyes—as if I was the smartest person he'd ever met. “Thanks to you, we have been saved from a terrible situation.”

“But as I said, it's clear that the insects are long gone! If you don't believe me, all you need to do is have an insect control company make an inspection. I'll pay for it, if you're that nervous—”

“Let's inspect the other cabinet section,” Mr. Ikehata said. “We cannot risk any damage to the pieces in this house. Mr. Sharp would be—furious. And please, can you put the bottom and drawers back right away?”

I did that as he and Petra quickly unpacked the other
tansu
half. It was the top half, which meant it was less likely to have a false bottom, as it was meant to sit atop the base. Still, I pulled out all the drawers and searched for a false bottom. There was none, but Mr. Ikehata was unconvinced. He tapped at the underside of the piece.

“Listen, there's no hollow sound,” I said. “Whereas on the other piece, there is.”

Mr. Ikehata folded his arms. “I don't feel comfortable about taking this. I'm sorry, because you've traveled so far with it…but that insect infestation…it's too risky.”

“Wouldn't you want your employer to decide?” I asked. “Of course we can send it back to Japan, but if he chose the piece himself, understood its condition, and liked it, wouldn't he be upset to lose it?”

“I don't know,” he said softly. “He will be coming home in the next week or so. I couldn't bear for an insect infestation to take up in the house. Please, can't you put it in storage and leave it for him to decide?”

“I better step in here and say that I don't think we can help you that way,” Petra said. “I just deal with paperwork, and Rei here can't do anything. She doesn't even have a place to live right now.”

I knew there was my parents' house, and I could have schlepped it over, if only someone had been home to let me bring it in. But I wouldn't have dared to leave a $30,000
tansu
to languish for even a few hours in the damp outdoors.

“I think the answer is what Mr. Ikehata suggested: safe storage. I'll make a few calls and see where I can place it. And don't worry: I, as a representative of Ishida Antiques, will take responsibility for the transport, storage, and insurance.” My first crisis; this seemed the most honorable way to handle it.

“Sorry I couldn't do more,” Petra said as she got ready to leave.

“Wait, I'd better get my suitcases out.” I walked to the van with her.

“Didn't I warn you not to do too much?” Petra said, giving me a sympathetic smile as we hefted the suitcases down.

“Yes, you did. First-time jitters, I guess.”

Petra shook her head. “Well, good luck. You seem to need it.”

Back in Charles Sharp's house, Mr. Ikehata pulled up a chair for me at the granite counter in the kitchen. He offered me a cup of tea, a telephone, and the Yellow Pages. I already had a good idea of my first resort—Mary at Hopewell's.

While I dialed, Mr. Ikehata retreated to the hall to begin repacking the pieces. I was glad for the privacy. My conversation with Mary was going to be quite delicate.

She gasped when she heard that I was back in town. “What a surprise! I just saw your mother two days ago and she didn't mention that you were coming home so soon. Wedding plans, I bet.”

“Well, I'm actually here on business,” I said. “I brought over a gorgeous, hundred-fifty-year-old
tansu
chest that I'm hoping to put in storage for one week's time. Can you suggest a very safe, temperature-controlled place where I could do this?”

“Well, why not your parents' house? It's certainly got the room,” Mary said.

“Oh, well, you know how Mom has everything arranged just so. I was thinking of a real storage facility—you know, the kind that charges forty dollars a month or so…if it's safe and controlled.”

“No,” Mary said. You absolutely should not do that for any antique piece—I wouldn't even put my own ten-year-old sofa in
such a place. How big is this
tansu
? Maybe I could find space in our back room.”

I told her about the two five-by-five crates.

“Rei, I'm so sorry—it's just too large. Just go home with them, I know you can convince your parents to take care of it, if it means they get to take care of you in the bargain!”

Mr. Ikehata had come back into the room. I put down the phone and looked at him.

“So far, no leads on storage.”

“It cannot remain here. I was just on the other telephone line to my employer, and he agreed with me. He wants to send it back to Japan.”

I gulped, knowing that the airfreight had already cost three thousand dollars. On the way back, it would be on Mr. Ishida's bill. Meaning my bill, since we were now in business together. And if Charles Sharp decided to extort another valuable antique from Mr. Murano and the honchos at Morita Incorporated, the company might demand that Mr. Ishida refund them the purchase price of the staircase
tansu
. That would be unacceptable.

“Let me make another call,” I said. Again, I dialed Hopewell's and got Mary.

“Mary, what would you say to storing the
tansu
at the auction house if there was a chance you could have it for a sale? It could only sell if it were priced higher than its minimum, of course.”

“What's the minimum?”

“Thirty thousand dollars. The price is based on Tokyo appraisal, of course.”

“Sounds like an important piece,” Mary purred. “Why don't you bring it by for me to see.”

“Well, unfortunately, I have no transportation. Not that it would fit in my mother's SUV.”

“Okay, just tell me the address and I'll send around a van and two big strong guys.”

“Mary, I can't thank you enough,” I said.

“Oh, don't thank me. It sounds as if you've brought us the kind of high-profile piece that will give us a run for our money against Butterfield, at last.”

 

An hour later, I was still waiting for the truck from Hopewell's. It might have been lunchtime in San Francisco, but it was five-thirty in the morning in Japan. I was falling asleep over my fifth cup of tea. Mr. Ikehata had done his best to make me comfortable, serving sandwiches and offering me the newspaper to read. I'd gone through the apartment listings in the back already. Everything well priced was gone by the time I'd put the call through. I made a call, as Petra had suggested, to the UCSF residential housing office, where a sympathetic student told me that having a father who worked there was not enough to qualify for any kind of housing aid.

“Can't you, like, live with your parents?” the girl suggested.

I groaned. “Could you?”

That brought a small laugh. “Hey, what I can do for you maybe is…give you some stuff from the trash.”

“What do you mean?” I shuddered at her choice of words.

“Well, there are people advertising apartment shares with us who withdraw their offers. Not always because the place was filled, but because they decide they want different kinds of tenants. All those people who used to have good jobs with the Internet, because they're more mature—like you—they sometimes have stock or whatever they can sell to pay more for the apartments. It's really hurt the students.”

“I see,” I said. “Well, I don't mean to steal from the students, but if you say you know a few names of people who might have space but have decided against younger renters, I'd be so grateful.”

“Hang on and I'll go find the rejects folder.” I sipped my tea, knowing there was no reason to be excited. If these landlords felt they could make more money by renting to outsiders, they might have repriced their apartments beyond my reach. When the student came back and began reading off details, I scribbled them down, using the paper and pen Mr. Ikehata had brought me. Some of them were single bedrooms, others whole apartments. Thinking of price, I went for the single bedrooms first, no matter what part of town they
were in, and even the ones that were out of town, in suburbs like Alameda and Orinda, which would necessitate my buying a car.

No luck. I began calling the apartment shares. They were gone, for the most part—though I did have a lengthy call with a single man seeking a female between twenty-one and thirty to share his apartment, an offer I declined the minute he started whispering soulfully about his shower built for two.

The last person on my list was a female looking for another female to share an apartment with her and her roommate—, as Marcia corrected me after I'd flubbed my introduction by using that word. I kept going, patiently, because the rent on this apartment was actually affordable: $800 and a third of the utilities.

“We've been burned before, so we're looking for someone who's truly simpatico in terms of gender politics, human rights, and food,” Marcia said. “I hope you don't mind a lot of questions before I invite you to visit. We had a bad experience with a student before.”

“Oh, I'm not a student,” I said. “I have a master's degree, but I'm working now.”

“Good. I'll need to see your last two months of pay stubs—”

“Ah, how about last year's tax return?” I said brightly. “You see, I'm self-employed in the, ah, antiques business.”

“Antiques? I hope we're not talking endangered-species-type antiques like ivory and so on.”

“Oh, no. Just wood. And not rain forest wood, I promise you! Just regular wood from trees in Japan.”

“You work with—Japanese?” There was a silence. I couldn't tell if I'd pleased her by being ethnic, or done something else.

“Yes, I'm a Japanese-American. I'm hoping to start a business selling pieces that my partner in Tokyo will export to me.”

“You mean—you're from Japan?”

“Yes, I have worked there the last four years. But I sound American, I know, because I was born and raised here.”

“Aha. Just a minute. Let me talk to my roommate, Nicole.” Marcia got off, and I heard the sound of mumbling and a sharp “No!” in the background.

“Hey, it's me. I'm back. And I've gotta be up front with you, Rei. Nicole and I think you wouldn't get along well with us. We had a Japanese student roommate before, and she was psycho, and the worst part was, she didn't want to leave! We had to get a lawyer to help us evict her. I don't know if you'd be like this, but, well, it's probably not worth the risk. So thanks for calling, but—”

“Just a second,” I said, my mind whirling. “Don't hang up. Please. This old roommate of yours…was her name Manami Okada?”

“Yes! Do you know her?”

“I do. She moved to my parents' house after you. But she didn't stay more than a month.”

“Really.” Marcia laughed heartily. “Do you eat, like, normal food? I eat mostly frozen dinners and snack foods, and Manami was always retching at the sight of it. She was into home cooking, she said, though I never saw her do any.”

“Well, there was plenty of home cooking from my mother, which she did eat. She just thought we were weird people—”

“You mean queer,” Marcia said, laughing. “You are queer, right?”

“No, I'm—we're—not. Though we're definitely not homophobes,” I added, blushing because I spotted Mr. Ikehata looking at me curiously.

“Well, my roommate, Nicole, is a lesbian, and whenever she had a date over for the night, Manami would storm around, furious. And twice Nicole woke up in the night and saw Manami standing in the doorway—with my sewing scissors in her hand. It was like a bad movie, and it scared us enough to ask her to leave. It was all too possible she'd want to kill gay people because of her conservative politics.”

“Conservative politics? You mean, she joined Pat Robertson's party, or just that she supports the current Republican governor?” Even though I disliked Manami, I was beginning to get annoyed with Marcia and her PC attitudes.

“No, she's Japanese conservative! She believes Hawaii is destined to be a Japanese country, and that Japan is better than any other country in the world. She doesn't believe the Nanking massacre happened—”

“And she refuses to believe comfort women were ever really forced into prostitution.” A deeper woman's voice had come on the line, a voice that I guessed belonged to the other roommate, Nicole. “Manami actually believes the current Japanese emperor is a god. She had a photograph of an older guy in her room that we thought was her father, but it turned out to be the emperor! She made a shrine in front of it where she burns incense. She kept her door closed so we couldn't see it, but every time I smelled the incense burning it gave me the creeps.”

Manami hadn't made a shrine in our house. Well, after getting evicted by Nicole and Marcia, she must have learned that it was smarter to hide her true feelings. I thought back to the conversations we'd had over the dinner table about comfort women and slave labor—how she'd quietly disagreed with some points, but not pushed things. Inside, she must have been seething.

“I—I understand it must have been a hard time. Thank you for telling me. It's been quite—helpful,” I said.

“I'm glad she's not rooming with your parents anymore,” Marcia said. “Hey, Nicole, what do you think of giving Rei a chance? After all, if Manami didn't like her, she's probably cool.”

“Oh, I don't think it would be the right fit,” I said. “Not because of gender or politics, just because…I'm starting to think I had better go home.”

“You mean, back to Tokyo?”

“No, to my house here. I mean, my parents' house.”

 

Mr. Ikehata was kind enough to drive me and my luggage the five-block distance to my parents' house. Normally, I wouldn't have taken a ride with a stranger, but I was in a daze. The jet lag and shock of what I had learned about Manami were vying for room in my head.

Manami had been staying on the same floor as Hugh. She could have gone through his papers to find Rosa's address. On Christmas, aided by the new map I'd given her, and the address, she could easily have gone to the Tenderloin.

I remembered how I'd heard her crying on Christmas night.
Was it because of what she felt she had to do the next day? And was shock over the murder of Rosa the reason that she'd fled my parents' house?

A voice came back—the voice that had spoken in my ear as my bags were being examined in Narita Airport.

“I think I know who did it,” Eric Gan had said. Now I wondered if he'd been in our house on Christmas, looking around. Maybe he had found something in Manami's room that proved she was interested in Rosa—but because he shouldn't have been in our house, he'd never dared to tell anyone.

Except for me—when it was too late, and I was too afraid of him to believe that anything good or honest lay within him.

I shivered. My father had been so worried when Manami had run away. But now, I realized, her abandonment of the house had been the best thing for their safety.

The Christmas decorations were gone, but I felt my spirits rise at the sight of my father's Honda Accord in the driveway. Good. I'd be able to get in from the rain.

Mr. Ikehata helped me get my bags to the front door. “Your parents are home, I hope?”

“It looks like it.” I rapped the door knocker and waited. There was no answer. I turned to Mr. Ikehata and said, “I'm sure they'll be home soon. Please, go ahead back to the house.”

“I can't leave you outside here in the rain, miss.”

I nudged aside the flowerpot to look for the spare key. Of course, it was gone. That left only one option—the milk door. But I didn't want the elegant Mr. Ikehata to see me cramming my bottom through the narrow space.

“There is an unlocked back entrance; I'll use it. Thanks again for the ride, and please know that even though the
tansu
will be at Hopewell's, if Mr. Sharp has a change of heart and wants to take it back, he should just call me.”

“I don't have your full name,” Mr. Ikehata said.

There was no point in lying anymore. I sighed and said, “Rei Shimura. He knows me already.”