The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino [2]
Before her current job, Yasuko had worked in a nightclub in Kinshicho. Yonazawa had been a regular there and Sayoko had been the club’s mama—though Yasuko hadn’t known they were married until just before Sayoko quit.
“She wants to go from being the mama at a bar to the good wife at a lunch shop,” Yonazawa had told her. “Can you believe it? Some people never fail to surprise me.” Rumors had begun to fly at the club, but according to Sayoko, it had been the couple’s long-held dream to run a place of their own. She had only been working at the club to save up for that.
After Benten-tei opened, Yasuko had made a habit of dropping in now and then to see how the two were doing. Business was apparently good—good enough that, a year later, they asked her if she’d be interested in helping out. It had become too much for the two of them to handle on their own.
“You can’t go on in that shady business forever, Yasuko,” Sayoko had told her. “Besides, Misato’s getting bigger. You wouldn’t want her developing a complex because her mom’s a nightclub hostess. Of course,” she’d added, “it’s none of my business.”
Misato was Yasuko’s only daughter. There was no father in her life after Yasuko’s last divorce, five years ago. Yasuko hadn’t needed Sayoko to tell her she couldn’t go on as she was. Besides her daughter’s welfare, there was her own age to consider. It was far from clear how long she could have kept her job even if she wanted it.
It only took her a day to come to a decision, and the club didn’t even try to hold on to her. They had just wished her well, and that was all. Apparently she hadn’t been the only one concerned about her future there.
She had moved into her current apartment in the spring a year ago, which coincided with Misato entering junior high school. Her old place was too far from her new job. And, unlike the club, getting to her new work on time meant getting up by six and being on her bicycle by six thirty. Her green bicycle.
“That high school teacher come again today?” Sayoko asked her during a break.
“Doesn’t he come every day?” Yasuko replied, catching Sayoko sharing a grin with her husband. “What? What’s that for?”
“Oh nothing, nothing. We were just saying the other day how we thought he might fancy you.”
“Whaaat?” Yasuko leaned back from the table, a cup of tea in her hand.
“You were off yesterday, weren’t you? Well, guess what? He didn’t come in yesterday. Don’t you think it’s strange that he should come every day, except for the days when you’re not here?”
“I think it’s a coincidence.”
“Well, we think maybe it’s not.” Sayoko glanced again at her husband.
Yonazawa nodded, still grinning. “It’s been going on for a while now,” he said with a nod at his wife. “ ‘Every day that Yasuko’s out, he doesn’t come here for his lunch,’ she says. I’d wondered about it myself, to tell the truth, and when he didn’t show yesterday, that kind of confirmed it for me.”
“But I don’t have any set vacations, other than the days the whole shop is closed. It’s not like I’m out every Monday or something obvious like that.”
“Which makes it even more suspicious!” Sayoko concluded, a twinkle in her eye. “He lives next door to you, doesn’t he? He must see you leave for work. That’s how he knows.”
Yasuko shook her head. “But I’ve never met him on my way out, not even once.”
“Maybe he’s watching you from someplace. A window, maybe?”
“I don’t think he can see my door from his window.”
“In any case, if he is interested, he’ll say something sooner or later,” Yonazawa said. “As far as we’re concerned, we have a regular customer thanks to you, so it’s good news for us. Looks like your training in Kinshicho paid off.”
Yasuko gave a wry smile and drank down the rest of her tea, thinking about the high school teacher.
His name was Ishigami. She had gone to his apartment the night she moved in to introduce herself. That’s when she’d learned he was a teacher. He was a heavyset man, with a