Case File #1: Skeletons in the Closet
Part 2

July
Day 1
9:27 AM

"A supposedly haunted construction site all the way out here in Meguro?" Houshou "Monk" Takigawa gave a yawn as he stretched, relieving the muscles cramped from the drive. He proceeded to chuckle as he pulled his arms up in the air. "Leave it to Naru to accept a case like this."

"I find it to be rather strange," the redheaded woman emerging from the second black van commented as she surveyed the site in evident distaste. "Why Naru would want to investigate something as unrefined as this is beyond me."

"What's so strange about it?" Osamu Yasuhara inquired, coming around from the other side. "Naru only takes cases he's interested in – you know that."

"Yes, but did it have to be out here in this abominable heat?" she whined. "This humidity's going to ruin my hair!"

"Your hair?" The monk looked at her incredulously. "There are men who keep getting hurt around here and all you can think about is your –"

WHACK!

"That'll teach you to underestimate a woman's sense of self-preservation," Ayako Matsuzaki huffed, slinging her purse over her shoulder.

Mai laughed nervously as Takigawa rubbed his head gingerly; she could clearly hear his muttered curses directed at the shrine maiden. No matter how irritating it tended to be though, it was still a welcome distraction.

It had only been yesterday that the team had gathered, the current absence of Masako and John being the only slight dent in Naru's intended schedule. Mr. Otanashi's directions and hotel bookings had come in the fax the evening prior, and everything seemed to be going smoothly, all things considered.

Until they all finally got a look at the construction site, that is.

Mai had seen construction sites all over the place since she was a little kid. Given that she'd grown up Tokyo, it was pretty hard not to come across the inevitable scaffolds, metal supports, trucks, and sweaty workers. Even so, the mess that the two vans belonging to SPR pulled into that morning were not at all what she'd expected: cables were splayed in all directions, the electricians and their apprentices looking awkwardly at the mess they clearly hadn't created; carpenters frowned at the mess of wood and nails on the semi-finished parts of the building, and the man they took to be the foreman – an older man with a tanned and weatherworn face sporting an old grey work shirt and torn up jeans – was currently getting swamped by workers demanding accountability.

Overall, the place was in chaos.

"I wonder how we'll be able to set up our equipment with all the havoc," Mai said aloud, and cast an imploring look over to her boss, who was currently surveying the situation wearing his usual unreadable mask over his face. The only emotion she could even somewhat trace was the mild irritation she thought she saw sparking in his eyes before they settled down in their usual stormy countenance.

"I wonder how we're going to get anything done," Takigawa groaned as he stepped up next to the brunette, still rubbing the place where Ayako's purse had landed. "Equipment setup aside, with all the work going on here and the obvious confusion, it'll take forever to get things straight! And if we have to exorcise anything – argh!"

Mai could understand his feelings in this matter – she knew for a fact that Monk was still having problems with his back since the events at the Yoshimi Inn. He kept mum about it, but it was no secret that he had a large bottle of over-the-counter painkillers – arthritis strength acetaminophen, from what she could deduce – stashed away in his belongings (Ayako's discovery of the fact was still ringing in Mai's ears). Just the idea of scaling even a portion of this mammoth, unfinished complex was enough to even make her wince!

"Before we worry about that, we need to find out where they'd like us to set up base." Naru spoke just barely loud enough for them to hear over the din of the construction site. "After that, we'll take care of the equipment. Yasuhara –"

The aforementioned college student looked over Mai's head curiously. "Yeah?"

"Once we're set up, I want you to get a hold of all the information you can at the local public library. It's three blocks away from here and things don't look like they'll be settling down soon, so take as long as you need."

"Sure thing." He gave a smart salute behind the narcissist's back, earning a few giggles from Mai. It was nice having him along for the ride – in another month or so, Yasu would be stuck hitting the books again and out of the picture until the next break in semesters.

'And so will I…' Mai groaned inwardly. 'I'm so glad Yasu helped me out with all my summer homework before we took this case…'

"You guys must be from that psychic research center Kazehiro was telling me about." The brunette snapped out of her thoughts to see the foreman walking up to them and waving. Behind him, she could see several of the workers casting glances in their direction and muttering amongst themselves before venturing off to their respectable work areas.

That usually happened on cases that involved a lot of people, she'd noticed.

The foreman gave them each an appraising look before stopping in front of Lin and extending a hand.

"You must be Mr. Kazuya Shibuya, I take it."

Lin looked down at the weathered man without expression. Not even a breath had passed before someone cleared their throat and said without emotion, "I'm Kazuya Shibuya."

The foreman blinked incredulously in Naru's direction, then laughed nervously. "Oh, sorry about that. Kazehiro mentioned you were young – I guess I didn't really expect this. Please, forgive me."

As he bowed apologetically, Mai couldn't help but feel sympathy for him. It was common for people to mistaken Naru as an assistant, but she got the feeling that the older man really couldn't handle any more mishaps at the moment.

"I'm Umehito Sendo, the foreman on this jobsite," he said after straightening out. "I'm afraid you'll have to forgive me for the mess around here as well – we got to the site about three hours ago so that we could get things straightened out before you arrived and found this place in even worse shape than what you're seeing now, and we're still coming across all sorts of complications." He looked back over to the group that had yet to disperse and frowned. "The men I just got done talking to are the carpenters we hired for the project. They said a lot of their equipment was either missing or broken, and they can't find much of their materials."

"Is this a common occurrence?" Naru inquired.

Sendo chuckled nervously and scratched a bit of his head from under the bright yellow hardhat he wore. "Well, if this were any other job site, I'd say 'no' automatically. We're pretty thorough about closing up the jobsite at the end of the day, so it's pretty rare that we have any problems. But this site takes the cake: every day since we started construction, it's been one weird occurrence after another. If it isn't an accident or equipment turning up in the wrong places, it's rooms that keep springing up where there aren't any and a whole bunch of other stuff that I've lost track of."

He shook his head and gave them a lopsided grin. "But right now you guys probably want to know where you can set up and start gathering information. I talked to Kazehiro after he got back from your office a couple days ago, and we decided it would be best to let you guys use the trailer he's currently holed up in. He and Old Hawkeye already moved out everything they need, so it's yours to use for as long as necessary."

"'Old Hawkeye'?" Mai raised an eyebrow. Sendo looked over to her and grinned, his weather-beaten and wrinkled face twisting up with amusement.

"That's the nickname we gave to Kazehiro's secretary. He's actually a pretty nice guy, but he's as sharp as they come. But he isn't what you're here for." He laughed and turned around, motioning for them to follow him as he proceeded to walk towards the center of the jobsite. "Before we get you settled in, I want to give you guys a quick tour of where you'll be investigating and point out the places we've had the most problems with. I'll also have to go over a few safety details just to keep the company covered – you know, the usual. And if there's anything else you want to know, feel free to ask."

"He seems awfully receptive about all this," Mai heard Takigawa muse from behind her. "Too receptive, if you ask me."

"The one time we don't have the management criticizing us, and you complain?" Ayako hissed.

"Well, excuse me," the monk retorted under his breath. He continued to argue with the self-styled shrine maiden, but this time Mai chose to tune them out and instead attempted to listen as Umehito Sendo showed them around.

From what she gathered just by listening to him, the foreman not only enjoyed what he did for a living, but he took pride in looking after his workers. And it sounded like Mr. Otonashi was almost as involved with everything that went on as Sendo was. The fact that they were going out of their way to make sure SPR could operate while they could still get things done and in the safest way possible was admirable.

'Even though it's a big company with so many people, it looks like they're really willing to work things out for everyone in the best way possible.' Mai felt herself smile a bit. 'It's a nice feeling, knowing that you have someone to back you up…'

"Hey, kid!" Sendo suddenly barked, causing a majority of the team to jump back in surprise and Mai to snap out of her musings. Monk and Ayako were stunned out of their increasingly vehement argument. "Get the hell out of here! This isn't a playground!"

Mai's eyes flitted in the direction that the foreman was yelling in and was surprised to see a figure scrambling over a pile of metal support beams and jumping over the fence that separated the site from the main road.

"Young idiots… they're gonna get themselves hurt," she heard him mutter irritably. Mai looked over to find the older man shaking his head and motioning for them to continue. He sighed heavily. "Sorry about that, everyone. With all this weird stuff happening and the incident reports that we keep having turned in, the last thing I need is one of the local kids getting injured on the worksite before we have any answers."

"I can see why," Monk sympathized, putting his hands behind his head. "An average citizen getting hurt while all this is happening would only make it even more of a nightmare. Especially if it happened to be a kid."

Sendo cocked an eyebrow as he turned in the bassist's direction. "You sound like you're speaking from experience."

"Well, yeah." Monk laughed sheepishly. "When I was a kid, I used to sneak out with my friends to goof off around at local construction sites near our school. The workers didn't seem to mind, but their bosses sure weren't happy about it. Funnily enough, my first-ever job was on a construction site after I moved out of the shrine."

"No way!" Mai looked at him in shock.

"Way," he affirmed with a grin. "C'mon, Mai, do you honestly think the band I'm in just up and became popular overnight? We worked all through high school just to scrape up acts, and we had to support ourselves by doing whatever work we could find. After we started getting solid performance bookings, though, I gave up the construction job."

"Well, if you ever feel the urge to pick up a wrench and sledgehammer again, come and see us," Sendo said with a caustic laugh. "The way things are now, we need all the help we can get!"

"Why do you say that?" Mai asked.

Sendo shook his head. "I don't know if Kazehiro told you, but with all these unexplained accidents happening, we've had several of our workers request a leave of absence. There's a small housing project going on over in Aobadai, and I've been seeing a lot transfer requests to that site and even the one in Jiyūgaoka landing on my desk lately." He let out another long and heavy sigh. "Truthfully, I don't blame them. In all my years working for Tomei Construction, I've never had to deal with this kind of thing, and Kazehiro doesn't know what to do, either. We've lost a lot of good workers, and as a result we've fallen behind schedule; at this rate, we'll never get this project finished. I ordinarily wouldn't have pushed so hard for a few days' site shutdown, but given the circumstances, it's the only real solution Kazehiro and I could come up with. Once the main office finds out, though… I don't even wanna think about it."

Mai frowned a bit to herself as they continued the tour of the worksite. From the way everything sounded, this was one case that had a lot more at stake than the people being attacked. The Yoshimis had the inn and their family to worry about, but Tomei Construction Company was dealing with a great deal more. It was all so complicated, but the one thing that held this and all other cases together was that it still boiled down to innocent, hardworking people getting hurt.

And these were people who had to stay on schedule in order to keep the main office from asking too many questions…

A/N: Special thanks to Torublossom and Tbonechick2011 for your reviews – feedback is wonderful! Until the next chapter! ^_^