A Midsummer's Equation

FORTY-NINE

No matter which way they asked the questions, Narumi’s story remained the same. She’d been with her friends at the bar that night. She was still there when she heard that Mr. Tsukahara had gone missing. After going home, she’d gone to her room and hadn’t come out until the following morning. She hadn’t heard anything about a boiler malfunction.

“So last night was the first time you heard the truth?” Detective Nonogaki asked.

“How many times do I have to tell you? Yes.”

Nonogaki crossed his arms and frowned. “It’s just, I have a hard time believing you didn’t notice anything strange.”

“What can I say? It’s the truth,” Narumi said, looking down at the floor.

She was sitting in a conference room down at the Hari police station, empty save for herself and the detective. She imagined her mother and father in tiny questioning rooms in some other corner of the station, getting the full shakedown, and it made her chest ache.

Her father had told her he’d be turning himself in the night before. When she asked what happened, her father had glumly replied it was an accident. Except when he should have called the police—he’d tried to hide it and only made everything worse.

“I know the police will figure it out sooner or later, and frankly, I can’t go on like this, it’s too painful,” he’d told her. “I’m sorry. They’ll probably arrest your mother, too, but as long as I make it clear that I forced her to help, she’ll get off easy.”

Narumi was shaken and confused. It terrified her to picture her mother and father trying to hide the body. Except, in the middle of that nightmare, a part of her mind was relieved. As long as Tsukahara’s death had been an accident, the fault of an old inn and an old innkeeper, then there was a light in the darkness.

Or was there? Was her father telling her the truth? Had it really been an accident? Was this just another attempt to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes? Narumi didn’t give voice to her doubts. It’d been hard, but she’d decided to take her father’s confession at face value. And if she was being honest, she wanted it to be true.

Setsuko hadn’t said a word the entire time. Narumi didn’t think it was just because her father told her to be quiet. She sensed that Setsuko had her own version of what happened but that she had decided to let her husband handle this his way.

Narumi didn’t ask many questions after hearing her father’s confession. She kept it simple. What would they do with the inn? And with Kyohei? Her father had already figured it all out. For one thing, he said with a lonely laugh, they would definitely be closing down the inn.

She’d barely slept that night. She feared the coming dawn, the daylight that would see her parents being arrested. At the same time, a different worry played through her mind. Would this really be the end of it? The call from her middle school friend, Reiko, still bothered her. What if the police in Tokyo were still investigating, still digging up the past?

“Well, did you?”

Narumi blinked, suddenly aware that Nonogaki was asking her a question. “I’m sorry, did I what?”

“I was asking you if you played any sports when you were younger.”

“Oh, right. I played tennis in middle school.”

“Tennis, okay,” he said, giving her a look-over. “You were a diving instructor too, weren’t you? You’re pretty tough for a girl.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” she said, a little coldly.

Nonogaki slowly tapped his finger on the table. “I just don’t think those two could’ve pulled this off by themselves. Your dad’s got his leg, and your mom’s pretty short, and frankly, she doesn’t look like she has much lifting power. We’re supposed to believe they carried a body down from the fourth floor and tossed it over the seawall? Doesn’t seem very likely. What do you think? You think they could pull it off?”

“That’s what they said, so they must have, yes.”

“Yeah, they did say that,” Nonogaki said, stretching his neck. “But there’s no way. No way at all.”

Narumi shrugged.

Nonogaki rested his elbows on the desk and looked her in the eye. “I can understand why your parents would want to protect their only child. They can live with turning themselves in, but they don’t want to see their baby behind bars.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. You’re going to let your aging folks go to prison while you live a life of ease? That the plan?”

Narumi’s cheeks tightened. “You’re suggesting I helped?”

Nonogaki smiled. “We’re not idiots, you know. All we have to do is get them to try and reenact how they pulled it off, and it’ll be pretty clear their story’s full of holes. They’re protecting someone, and it’s not hard to guess who.”

Narumi shook her head. She felt her face burning. “I didn’t do anything. That’s the truth. If I had helped them, I would tell you. I wouldn’t just stand by while they took the blame!”

Nonogaki shook his head and picked at his ear with his fingertip. Act all you want, you won’t fool me, his look said.

There was an abrupt knock at the door, and it opened slightly. Someone outside called for Detective Nonogaki.

Nonogaki stood, his chair making a loud noise as he pushed it back, and he walked out, a sour look on his face. He slammed the door behind him.

Narumi put a hand to her forehead. She knew they were going to ask her questions, but she hadn’t anticipated becoming a suspect. She imagined that they were grilling her parents now too, trying to get them to admit that she’d helped. But she had to admit that what the detective said made sense. It would’ve been next to impossible for the two of them to manage a grown man’s body.

The door opened again, and Nonogaki came back inside, his expression a little different than it had been a moment before. His brow was still furrowed with consternation, but now his eyes looked a little twitchy, like he was excited.

He sat back down in his chair and began tapping his finger on the table again, only to a much faster rhythm. Finally he stopped and looked up at Narumi. “You said you got to the bar around nine o’clock?”

“Yes,” she replied, returning his gaze.

“And you were there when Mr. Tsukahara died. Are you sure you arrived at nine?” Nonogaki asked again, irritation in his voice.

“Yes, very sure,” Narumi answered, growing bewildered.

“You said that this man, Sawamura, gave your mother a ride home, right? What time did he get back to the bar?”

“He came back a little before ten o’clock. I thought he’d been gone a long time for just having given my mom a ride home, which is when he told me that a guest had gone missing from the inn—why are you asking me this?”

Nonogaki looked like he was about to say something, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered under his breath. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Is it my parents?”

“No, it’s Sawamura. One of the guys went to talk to him, and it sounds like he’s claiming he was the one who helped them get rid of that body.”

“What?” Narumi said, sitting upright in her chair.

“They’re bringing him in for questioning now, but from the sound of it, his story’s a lot tighter than the one your parents have been telling. I think we might just have figured this out,” Nonogaki said, sounding a little relieved. Apparently, Narumi’s interrogation was over.