The Daydreamer Detective Braves the Winter Read online

  The Daydreamer Detective Braves The Winter

  Miso Cozy Mysteries, #2

  S. J. Pajonas

  © 2016, S. J. Pajonas (Stephanie J. Pajonas).

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  Cover design by S. J. Pajonas

  Cover illustration © narak0rn, Depositphotos.com

  Cover illustration © zeber2010, Depositphotos.com

  Cover illustration © emirsimsek, Depositphotos.com

  * * *

  Book design and production, and author photo by S. J. Pajonas (Stephanie J. Pajonas).

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  This book is dedicated to rice. I cannot go a week without rice. It is my lifeblood.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Thank You!

  Acknowledgments

  Check out the first chapter of The Daydreamer Detective Opens A Tea Shop…

  Also in the Miso Cozy Mysteries Series

  Also by S. J. Pajonas

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  In Japanese, the most common way of showing respect to another person’s social standing is with the use of honorific suffixes that are appended on the end of either first or last names. The most common, -san, means either Mr., Ms., or Mrs.

  When you are addressing someone who is higher in the chain of command than yourself (i.e. your boss or high elected officials deserving of respect) you should use the suffix -sama. When addressing friends or schoolmates, it’s popular to use -chan or -ko for girls (sometimes cutting their first name down to one syllable before appending the suffix) and -chan or -kun for boys. For teachers, -sensei is used.

  It’s important to note that you should never use a suffix on your own name. If you’re introducing yourself, do not call yourself David-san or Smith-san. Just David or David Smith will do.

  The town in this novel, Chikata, is completely fictional, though the area I put it in is not. Saitama prefecture is located to the west of Tokyo, and many of the eastern areas are considered to be suburbs of the city. Chikata is located farther out west, nearer to the prefectures of Nagano and Gunma.

  Chapter One

  I wished I could’ve erased the last two months and lived in that moment forever. Izakaya Jūshi exploded with laughter as a big party behind us ordered another round of drinks and settled into a story about ice fishing. I had no idea ice fishing was so funny, but apparently it was a laugh. December had moved into full swing, and with the temperatures falling below freezing into the coming week, the local lake would be crawling with fishers.

  “Do you fish, Mei-chan?” Etsuko lifted her voice from across the table while the men behind us yammered away. Yasahiro, my new boyfriend seated next to me, squeezed my hand under the table.

  I sipped my beer. “No. I like to eat fish, but I don’t like to catch them. It’s not my thing.”

  “Hisashi and I love to fish during the summer. Sometimes he takes off an extra weekend a month to come with me.”

  “Sometimes,” Hisashi said, waggling his head back and forth. “I’m hoping next year that won’t be an issue anymore.”

  Etsuko turned to beam at Hisashi, her face wide with a broad smile. She swiped her bangs to the side and leaned in to rest her chin on Hisashi’s shoulder. “His job has been talking about moving him to this district in the spring. It’s a great opportunity. We’re planning to buy a house together.”

  “Really? That’s fantastic news,” Yasahiro said, lifting his glass so we can toast to Hisashi.

  “Yeah. There are a lot of new roads and unmapped areas around here. We have a lot of work to do on bolstering the satellite mapping system.”

  Hisashi worked for a popular GPS mapping company. Because of Japan’s erratic house numbering system, extensive train system, and roadway infrastructure, the mapping companies were always hard at work updating to make everything easier for their subscribers. He worked in the Chiba office, to the east of Tokyo, but had been hoping to move for the last couple of years. When he came to visit Etsuko the first weekend of every month, it took him almost three hours to travel to Chikata. But he came as regular as clockwork because he loved her.

  “I’m so happy about this. It’s about time. Maybe we can finally get married,” Etsuko said, and Hisashi smiled at her before kissing her forehead. I got the feeling this was something they’d both wanted for a long time because neither of them made a fuss about her mentioning marriage.

  Etsuko had lived in Chikata all her life. She and Hisashi were high school sweethearts, dated through college, and had been apart for the last three years. Etsuko worked at Izakaya Jūshi Sunday through Thursday with her family but thought about moving to Chiba with him. Her family, though, wanted her here. So the two came up with this arrangement. They talked on the phone every night, he came to visit her the first weekend every month, and she traveled to him the third weekend. The routine worked for them.

  I, on the other hand, could only spend a few days without seeing Yasahiro before I got the itch to see him so badly I couldn’t sit still. I loved being close to him, talking to him, confiding in him, even though our physical relationship hadn’t progressed any further than hand holding and cheek kissing since I was in the hospital. Yasahiro was careful with me, taking baby steps knowing that I felt betrayed and vulnerable when my former boyfriend, Tama, tried to kill me. And these were the only kind of dates we’d had since then, too — double or group dates. We only had alone time at his restaurant, Sawayaka, between lunch and dinner shifts. It wasn’t very intimate, but I took what I could get. Yasahiro was busy with work, and I was unemployed, so I did my best to bend to his schedule.

  “I’m super happy for the two of you.” I raised my glass to Etsuko and Hisashi, and Yasahiro rested his hand on my knee.

  “I’m happy for you and Yasahiro. I’m always glad to see the two of you when you come in here.” Etsuko winked at me, and I stopped a blush by drinking more beer. “It’s too bad Hisa-kun is only here once a month. I wish we could hang out together more.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t around the last time you were in town, Hisashi-san.”

  He waved me off. “Don’t worry about it. Etsuko told me you were in the hospital. I’m glad you’re better.”

  “Me too.”

  Etsuko reached into her bag and pulled out a phone that lit up and rang with an incoming call. She held her finger up in the air as she glanced at the screen. “Just a moment. I’m going to take this outside.” She jumped up from the table and headed out the front door, pressing the pink, owl-embossed phone to her ear. A little owl
charm dangled from the case as she walked away. I returned my focus to the table, but Yasahiro and Hisashi were now talking about baseball, one subject I couldn’t hack. Baseball bored the heck out of me. I glanced down at my beer, but my attention was drawn to Etsuko’s phone sitting on the table. Huh?

  Movement outside caught my eye so I stared at Etsuko talking on her phone. She must’ve had two phones? Her face turned from happy into a frown, her eyebrows pulled together. And although it was only eight degrees outside, she wasn’t clutching her arms around herself to keep warm. Making chopping motions with her hand and raising her voice to whomever was on the other side of the conversation, she paced back and forth. I strained my hearing, hoping to catch a word or two, but the men next to us were too loud to hear anything. Etsuko finished off her conversation but didn’t re-enter the izakaya right away. She stayed on her phone for a while, typing out something, her fingers and thumbs flying across the touchscreen.

  When she turned towards the door, I returned my attention to the table. I didn’t want her to think I was spying on her.

  She sat down and sighed, sipping on her beer before rubbing her hands together to warm them.

  “Everything okay?” I whispered, not wanting to draw attention to her if she didn’t want to mention it. The guys were too involved in their baseball conversation to notice, though.

  She returned her smile to her face, less bright than it used to be. “Fine. Everything’s fine. Are they talking about baseball again?” She rolled her eyes. “Hey, did you watch this week’s episode of I Love Tokyo Legend? It was so good!”

  Etsuko and I had a fondness for detective shows on Asahi TV and this was our new favorite.

  The door to the izakaya swung open before I could answer her and in came Kumi and Goro. Kumi and Etsuko had known each other since high school, so they were all a big group of friends that I’d only recently become a member of since I’d moved back home. I waved them over and Kumi sat down next to me and Goro next to Etsuko.

  “We were just about to talk about I Love Tokyo Legend,” Etsuko squealed to Kumi.

  Goro rolled his eyes. “Switch places with me Etsuko, so I don’t have to talk about these shows.” Goro, the police officer, couldn’t stand detective shows. He watched them and all he could do was pick out the errors and exclaim, “That’s not how it’s done!” Kumi had banned him from watching.

  “Fine, but don’t get Hisa-kun riled up about the Lions. You know he’s a diehard Swallows fan, and I’m the one that has to hear about it forever if you continue to bash his team.”

  “I cannot make any promises,” Goro said, switching seats.

  I smiled at my new group of friends, placing my hand on Yasahiro’s knee under the table and squeezing. He smiled at me before I got sucked into gossiping about TV. I may not have had much in life, but at least I had some girlfriends to gossip with.

  Etsuko took another look at her phone as the screen lit up with a message. She frowned before turning it off and dropping it into her purse.

  “Let’s order another round of drinks first.” She raised her hand to catch her brother’s eye, and then we descended into a serious discussion of ghosts and local legends and whether we believed them or not.

  I totally believed, but that’s just the kind of person I was.

  Chapter Two

  If it were up to me, I’d never leave bed during the winter. The house was ice cold when I emerged from my cocoon of blankets and padded out into the main room to switch on the space heater and sit under the kotatsu. I could see my breath fog in the frigid air as I approached the space heater.

  December in Japan was not supposed to be this cold.

  “Mei-chan, don’t turn on the heater!” Mom called from the kitchen, and I groaned in response. I hoped she’d be gone so I could bask in some warmth.

  I bypassed the living room and joined Mom in the moderately warmer kitchen. She was making rice and sweet omelets, basically the only food we had left for the next week or so.

  “Here,” Mom said, handing me a hot cup of coffee. I sipped on the bitter liquid and cringed.

  “Are we really out of sugar?” I coughed a few times and slurped some more, hoping I would get used to no milk and no sugar.

  “Yes, and I don’t get paid for my cooking classes until next week.” Mom, dressed from head to toe in hand knit items, looked toasty warm. I should’ve learned to knit. We had plenty of yarn and not enough sweaters. “I’m also taking on a few shifts at the elementary school and helping set up the deli kitchen at Midori Sankaku. I’m hoping we’ll be more solvent by January.” She flipped the egg in her rectangular pan, turned the heat off, and set the pan down to cool.

  “I wish I could find work that easily.” Since getting fired from my job in Tokyo at the beginning of October, I hadn’t been able to find a job yet. But I had been applying for part time contract work and sent out several resumes. So far, though, zilch.

  Thankfully, my brand-new boyfriend owned his own restaurant, or I’d starve. Mom got meals at her own jobs, but our kitchen at home was pretty bare. We had eaten the stores of leftover sweet potatoes, the ones that didn’t burn in the barn fire in November, and we were down to rice and canned goods until the new year.

  “Don’t worry, Mei-chan. We’ll make it through. This is the worst month, but between the free meals and the hot baths at Kutsuro Matsu, we should be fine.” Thank goodness we had friends that also owned a bathhouse and I could stay there all day if I wanted. “But…”

  Mom bit her lip and turned from me to spoon out rice and add an egg on top.

  “But, what?” I steeled myself for the worse and shivered. As soon as I ate breakfast, I was going back to my room to fetch my comforter.

  “We need to cut back on expenses. So, no more space heater, mobile phone, or internet.”

  I nearly dropped my coffee cup.

  “Are you serious? It’s the middle of winter! And I’m trying to get a job. If they can’t reach me via phone or email, then I might as well not exist at all.” I set my cup down on the island because my hands shook too much.

  I knew we didn’t have much in the way of money, but I didn’t think it was this bad. Mom had spent a lot of money on hospital bills then the savings were depleted by the end of November. The rest of her money was tied up in investments. I couldn’t go without my phone. Sure. Plenty of people didn’t use a mobile phone or internet but not when they were actively looking for a new job.

  Mom took my hands in hers. “You’ll look for a job in the spring, or you can help me here. I hope we’ll receive the insurance money for the barn by February, and it should more than cover a new barn, a tractor, and everything else we lost. I wish we could get the money right now, but they have to do an investigation because of the arson, and everything is tied up in the courts now because of Tama-chan.”

  I take a deep, freezing breath and try to steady my hands enough to pick up my coffee. Damned Tama. “Your mother loved you so much, always bragging about you to everyone. On and on and on about your talent and how successful you’d be. It made me sick.” I remembered him standing over me with the gas can, and I died a little more inside.

  “In the meantime, Yasahiro-san has free WiFi at Sawayaka, Kumi and Chiyo have it at the bathhouse, and you can go to Akiko-chan’s too if you need internet access.” Mom grimaced as she mentioned Akiko, and I didn’t blame her. I hadn’t spoken to Akiko in weeks.

  Mom took our bowls of food and headed to the kotatsu in the living area. “We can use the kotatsu while I’m home,” she called over her shoulder.

  “Be right there.” I held my hot cup of coffee between both hands and stared out the window to where the barn once stood.

  At the end of October, my life nearly came to an end when my ex-boyfriend, and brother to my best friend, Akiko, burned down the barn with Akiko and me in it. We were lucky to get out alive but everything in the barn was destroyed, including my very limited supply of paints and canvases. I had just gotten back into painting af
ter giving it up for so many years. Now everything was gone. All the sweet potatoes, squash, cabbage, root vegetables, and seeds we stored in the barn that we were supposed to sell or live on, gone. The tractor Mom used every year to prepare the fields for planting was a desiccated and burnt-out hunk of metal sitting in a pile of charred timber.

  I squinted my eyes at the corpse of a barn and tried to remember what life had been like two months ago. I was newly unemployed and poor. I couldn’t pay my bills, and I had been evicted from my Tokyo apartment. I was living at home with Mom, became a farm girl again, and learned to live on traditional Japanese food, which I did with the help of my new boyfriend, Yasahiro, and his “slow food haute cuisine” restaurant, Sawayaka. My relationship with him was so new that I had only kissed him once before he had to save me from being murdered and then sit by me in the hospital for weeks. We were very good at holding hands so far, and that was about it.

  How was I going to tell him Mom and I were too poor to pay my phone bill? Every time something like this happened, I wanted to lie and say nothing was wrong. I didn’t want to call attention to how poor we were. But it wasn’t even our fault this time around. Instead, our destitution was Tama’s fault. He was the one who killed his own father and tried to kill me and his own sister by burning down our only source of income. I wished everyone had listened to me when I suspected he killed his father. Maybe I wouldn’t have been stuck in this mess.