SailorStar9: With Chapter 32 uploaded, this is Chapter 33 of this fic. (Sighs) Guys and girls, is it too hard for you to leave a review, instead of just putting this fic up on your favorited list and story alerts?
Disclaimers: I own absolutely nothing, except this plot and the pairing.
Pairing: Developing!Furuya Rei/Mizuno Ami
Chapter 33: Kogoro in the Bar, Part One
Time passes...
My name's Mouri Kogoro, a detective. Mouri was lounging at the bar counter in the Blue Parrot bar. My job is to find people's faults. Most detectives have their own secret watering hole for when they need to heal their work-weary hearts. This bar is filled with youngsters loudly laying billiards and darts is unfortunately, not my preferred watering hole. But my client happens to be the bartender here, so I must be here as well.
"Here you go, detective." Fukui Yuzuki presented Mouri a green drink. "Why don't you give this a try?"
Her name is Fukui Yuzuki, 26. Mouri continued his mental monologue. She's the bartender here. And she's probably fallen in love with me. Giving me this faint green gimlet on the house is proof of her feelings. She must see that famous detective, Philip Marlowe, in me. "This is just green tea." he spat out the sip he took.
"I'm sorry." Fukui apologized. "I thought you wouldn't be able to work if you're drunk."
Let's start this over again. Mouri pondered. My name's Mouri Kogoro, a detective. My client is the bartender of this billiard bar. Here, my heart is soothed by lending my ear to this bar's off-beat jazz rhythms...
"Hey, oji-san." Conan called out.
And this brat's voice. Mouri continued his thoughts. "Why are you here?" he turned to Conan.
"Because Ran-nee-chan told me to hurry up and get you." Conan whined. "Dinner's getting cold."
"Like I told her, I'm here for a job." Mouri retorted.
"Which she said was probably just your excuse to have a drink." Conan added.
"You called me to solve a difficult case." Mouri turned back to Fukui.
"What kind of case?" Conan wondered.
"I've heard a weird sound while working." Fukui explained. "A 'pop', like a cork being pulled from a champagne bottle. There you go." she added, hearing Kogure Monpei open a champagne bottle. "That sound."
"Maybe it really was someone pulling a cork from a champagne bottle." Mouri suggested.
"But I heard it when nobody had a champagne bottle." Fukui pointed out.
"Maybe a customer secretly brought a bottle in?" Conan guessed. "And wine bottles have corks too."
"I thought the same thing, so I made sure to pay attention to all of the customers." Fukui replied. "But none of them were drinking champagne or wine. And after I heard the 'pop', I also thought I heard something falling. So, I looked around when cleaning up after the bar closes, but I couldn't find any corks lying around. But there was an odd scent."
"Don't tell me you can smell gunpowder, like something had exploded?" Mouri gaped.
"Nothing like that." Fukui assured. "I could smell yuzu. It was very faint, but my name even has 'yuzu' in it, so it's a smell I've always been quick to recognize. We don't use yuzu in this bar, so I thought it was strange and decided to contact you, Mouri-san."
"Maybe a customer had split a cocktail with a similar citrus fruit?" Mouri wondered. "You know, gimlets use lime juice, and there's cocktails like screwdrivers and white ladies."
"I was sure it was yuzu, though." Fukui was certain.
"Have you heard that sound more than once?" Conan asked.
"Two or three times, all on separate days." Fukui confirmed.
"Were there any customers that were always here when you heard it?" Conan inquired.
"There were." Fukui replied. "Those four at the table behind you right now were always here at the time."
At the other table...
"I'm going to take it." Kogure readied the polaroid camera. "Boss, this roll of film's full up." he blinked.
"Don't worry." Usuda Chikafumi replied. "It's fine. I've got two or three spare rolls somewhere. And we have plenty of extras now, too."
"Here, Kogure-kun." Kishiura Mika pulled out a tube of new film from her bag.
"But boss, don't you think analogue cameras are too much work these days?" Hatsumura Kensaku wondered.
"I hate all that digital stuff." Usuda scoffed. "You remember that guys from our department? That useless geek who always boasted that he was good with digital stuff."
"You mean Yoshikuwa-kun?" Kishiura echoed.
"That kind of people get lost in their digital world and lose their grip on reality." Usuda snorted. "They become shut-ins and end up hanging themselves. Speaking of which, wouldn't you close to him, Kishiura-kun? If you're feeling lonely because you don't have a boyfriend, I could do something about that."
"I'll be fine." Kishiura assured.
"Come on, give it a try." Usuda prodded. "We'd be perfect for..."
"Oh yeah, boss." Hatsumura cut in. "I bought that billiard cue you asked for. It's a top of the range cue with an ebony base. I found it somewhere selling it at a discount."
"This is the best gift I could hope for." Usuda took the present. "This is my birthday present, right?"
"I got that personal darts set you wanted, too." Kogure piped in. "You usually see darts with plastic tips everywhere, so these fully metal darts were pretty hard to find."
"That so?" Usuda picked out the middle dart from the case. "You guys aren't useless, after all. Kogure, you know why I wanted steel-tipped darts?" he pulled his arm back and pretended to throw the dart at Kogure, frightening him. "Plastic ones just don't scare people like this. Looks like a billiard table opened up." he noted. "I feel like trying out this new cue you gave me."
At the bar counter...
"Hurry up home and tell Ran this." Mouri instructed. "Kogoro-oji-san is working on a difficult case, so he won't be back for a while. Yuzuki-chan give me another gimlet."
"But would you be able to work if you're drinking?" Fukui complained. "I want to put the solution on my blog when you figure it out."
"Don't worry." Mouri downed another glass of liquor. "I've just about solved it already. The culprit probably split some ponzu made with yuzu. Which means, there's yuzu and pon."
At the other table...
"In the end, the boss passed out." Kishiura sighed at her utterly drunk superior.
"He just keeps drinking, even though he can't hold his liquor." Hatsumura shook his head. "Still, it really stings. That billiard cue costs me 100,000 yen."
"The darts I bought cost 60,000 yen together with the case." Kogure added.
"You got off lightly, Kishiura." Hatsumura remarked. "You just had to get five or six rolls of film."
"I told you, he made me buy that poster of an idol on an online auction for a birthday present." Kishiura reminded. "It's signed, so it cost me 30,000 yen."
"Mind if I take a look?" Kogure requested.
"Just don't damage it." Kishiura cautioned. "I'll be taking the blame if you do."
"It's Okino Yoko." Kogure unrolled the poster.
"Should we have one last round of drinks before we go?" Hatsumura suggested. "You were diluting and mixing up the whiskey and didn't end up drinking that much."
"How about another bottle of champagne, to finish like we started?" Kogure suggested.
"Excuse me." Kishiura called out. "A bottle of champagne, please."
"And three glasses, too." Hatsumura added.
"Kogure-kun, can you help?" Kishiura handed the champagne bottle over.
"Leave it to me." Kogure replied and managed to pop the cork off after a while.
"You idiot." Hatsumura rebuked, the outpouring champagne was spilling onto the table. "It's getting on the poster. The side of the poster is wet."
"Excuse me, three hand towels, please." Kishiura requested.
At the bar counter...
"How about the sound of opening those hand towel packets?" Conan wondered, seeing the three office workers hurriedly wipe the table. "Could that have been the sound you heard?"
"I think the sound of the cork from before was closer." Fukui was certain.
At the other table...
"The boss got soaked too." Kishiura realized.
"What's that?" Hatsumura noticed a prick hole on the back of Usuda's neck. "There's a round, red mark on his neck."
"The boss isn't breathing." Kogure realized.
"Boss!" Kishiura exclaimed in horror when Usuda fell off his chair and collapsed on the ground.
"What happened?" Mouri hurried over.
"Our boss won't wake up." Kishiura replied. "Like he's dead."
"He doesn't just look dead." Mouri felt for a pulse. "He really is dead."
Afterwards...
"I'll need to perform a proper autopsy to determine the cause of death." Ami informed Megure. "But my initial prognosis suggests that the cause of death was suffocation by a neurotoxin."
"Poison?" Megure echoed.
"From the back of his neck." Ami shifted Usuda's head. "It would seem that he was stabbed by something sharp, like an awl, that has been coated with poison. As to the exact type of poison, I'll have to send a sample to Tox."
"But, wouldn't you yell out and make a scene if you're stabbed like that?" Megure wondered.
"I believe he died in his sleep." Mouri cut in. "The victim was dead drunk at the time."
"You again?" Megure sighed. "Don't tell me you happened to be at yet another murder scene?"
"I just happened to be here." Mouri chuckled.
"I called him here." Fukui cut in. "There was a mystery I wanted him to solve. I've been hearing a 'pop' sound while working here. It's the sound of a cork being pulled from a champagne bottle. However, there aren't any customers with champagne when it happens and I didn't find a cork while cleaning up after closing. But I could smell the scent of yuzu."
"How much is she paying you for this?" Megure deathpanned.
"She said she'd clear my tab." Mouri chuckled nervously.
"You still have to pay for the gimlets you drank tonight." Fukui insisted.
"Those three were drinking with the victim, right?" Megure continued his questioning.
"I questioned each of them before you arrived." Mouri confirmed. "From the right, they are Kishiura Mika-san, 30. Hatsumura Kensaku-san, 31. And Kogure Monpei-san, 28. They all worked at the same company as the murdered Usuda-san, their boss. Apparently, they were here tonight to celebrate his birthday."
"So, one of these three resented and poisoned their supervisor." Megure noted.
"Wait a minute." Kishiura protested.
"We just came here to celebrate his birthday." Hatsumura remarked.
"You all planned this together, didn't you?" Mouri accused. "You were glancing around at me and talking amongst yourselves."
"We don't have any reason to kill him." Kogure reminded.
"But, after your boss passed out, you got talking." Conan piped in. "You all said he forced you to get really expensive presents and you were fed up with him."
"You heard all that, boy?" Kishiura stammered.
"I've got good hearing." Conan beamed. "I also heard him making fun of a guy named Yoshikuwa, who committed suicide and that you and Yoshikuwa were lovers."
"Is that true?" Megure asked.
"He's right." Kishiura confirmed. "But if you're bringing that up, Hatsumura-san was his senior at university and he joined the company with Kogure-kun together."
"If we hated him enough to kill him, we wouldn't have played billiards and darts with him in the first place." Kogure protested.
"We each took turns playing him until he passed out." Hatsumura explained.
"Did their boss really play games with those three?" Conan turned to Fukui.
"You went home several times, so you didn't see what happened." Fukui recalled. "Their boss was making a lot of trouble. That dartboard here was designed for soft darts, but he tried to use the steel-tipped darts he was given and ended up arguing with the other customers. Those three had to step in and managed to cool him off. It seemed that they told him to wait at the table until he sobered up. The three of them played billiards and darts amongst them for a while, winner-stays-on."
"Then, while two of them were playing the other one of the three was alone with their drunken boss." Conan concluded.
"In other words, all three of you were alone with your boss at some point." Megure stated. "We'll need to perform body searches and check your belongings. A billiard cue?" Hatsumura was searched first. "It does look expensive."
"It was supposed to be 160,000 yen, but I got it because it was reduced to 100,000 yen." Hatsumura explained. Just like that kid overheard, I was annoyed since I never intended for something so expensive to be a present. Do you really think I'll kill him for something like that?"
"If you stuck a poisoned needle to the tip of the cue with some tape, you'd even be able to stab him from a distance." Mouri pointed out.
"If I'd done something that weird, someone would've seen it." Hatsumura pointed out.
"After their boss passed out, he put it straight back in its case." Fukui confirmed.
"So, these are the dart tips that caused the argument." Megure opened Kogure's gift.
"I didn't buy them to cause an argument." Kogure was instantly on the defensive. "The boss told me to buy steel-tipped darts. My late grandfather left me an antique dartboard, so I gave it to my boss and he told me to buy darts to go with it. I don't even play darts."
"You got quite a fright when your boss feigned throwing a dart at you." Mouri recalled.
"That was really scary..." Kogure muttered.
"Couldn't you have stuck poison on the end of one of the darts and thrown it at him to stab him?" Mouri accused.
"I just told you, I'm not good with darts." Kogure insisted. "Even if I wanted to, it'd be simpler and easier to just stab him with them from up close. If you suspect me, just check the tips of those darts and you'll see."
"You got him some rolls of film and a poster?" Kishiura was left as Megure inspected her belongings. "It does seem you got off easy compared to the other two."
"That poster was signed, it cost me 30,000 yen." Kishiura retorted. "My desk's next to his, so I had to listen to him always telling me how much he wanted it and I had to buy it for him."
"What's this?" Mouri exclaimed, as Megure unrolled the poster. "It's a poster of Yoko-chan and it's the elusive western bikini shot and you got it wet. The pretty lady's pretty soaked because of you."
"The champagne spilled out when Kogure-kun pulled out the cork." Kishiura explained.
"You seem to have taken a lot of photos, too." Megure observed. "Did your boss like photos?"
"They were for his blog." Kishiura replied.
"We're the ones who had to choose and upload them." Hatsumura added.
"The boss was hopeless with anything digital." Kogure shrugged.
"Who was in charge of mixing up and diluting the whiskey?" Megure asked.
"It was me..." Kishiura answered.
"We'll have to check this out, too." Megure pulled out the ice pick from the ice bucket. "The ice pick is sharp and pointed too, just like the tips of the darts. It's very close to the shape of the murder weapon."
SailorStar9: Any OOC-ness is regretted. *Sighs* Don't you just hate plot bunnies sometimes? Read and review.
