SailorStar9: With Chapter 43 uploaded, this is Chapter 44 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: Established!Furuya Rei/Mizuno Ami
Chapter 44: The Romance Novel with the Unexpected Conclusion, Part Two
In Mary's and Sera's room...
"It's Takagi." Takagi knocked on the door. "There's something I wanted to confirm with you."
"The caps for the shampoo and conditioner are missing?" Sera echoed, after Takagi informed them. "The ones from the victim's rooms?"
"They're the amenities that came with the bathroom." Takagi explained. "We couldn't find them in the drain, either."
"We only entered the main entrance." Conan spoke up.
"Then, you weren't the ones who knocked over the table?" Takagi blinked. "Most of the room was undisturbed, but somehow, just the table is knocked over. A can of beer that we believe was sitting on top of it has fallen on top of the victim's suitcase. The victim's clothes inside the suitcase are covered in beer."
"What kind of suitcase was it?" Conan asked.
"It was pretty big." Takagi gestured. "There wasn't much inside it, though."
"What was inside the suitcase?" Sera inquired.
"In addition to clothes, we found makeup, a tablet, and a backpack." Takagi answered. "There was an old postcard in one of the backpack's inside pockets, too. It was postmarked twenty years ago. The sender was Hiura-sensei. It says 'What a cute story. When I write a story like this, maybe I'll name the heroine after you.' But it's addressed to Ota Jun, not Minazuki Chiaki."
"Ota Jun?" Ran echoed. "That's the name of the heroine from Hiura-sensei's 'The Phone, the Ocean and I'. One day, the heroine finds an old scratched up cell phone on the beach." she recounted the novel's plotline. "Strangely enough, the phone is a new, unreleased model she was planning to buy the following week. While she was looking at the phone, she receives an email asking how old is she."
"Sounds dangerous." Sonoko noted.
"Thinking the same thing, the heroine responds 'I won't tell you my personal information, idiot.' She receives the response, 'You started talking like that in high school. That brings back memories.' The sender correctly guesses a bunch of other things, too, like the results of that day's soccer or baseball games. Someone is sending her messages from a time transference device using her future phone." she gushed. "It's basically a time machine. When the heroine learns the world becomes a mess a few years in the future, she begins changing the future little by little to prevent it. Anyway, the heroine asks the person, 'Who are you? What is your relationship with me?' But they always answer, 'The phone, the ocean, and I.'
"What the heck?" Sonoko twitched. "What does that mean?"
"The heroine thought it was gibberish at first, but she finally figured it out recently." Ran explained. "She responds to the sender 'The phone, the ocean, and I.' The answer is finally going to be revealed in next week's final chapter."
"He's a bold write, though." Takagi mused. "He doesn't have any time left, but he invited the editors watching him into his room for lunch to win them over. If I were in his situation, I would probably shave my head in desperation and ask for more time. Of course, he already has a shaved head."
"Did the writer already go back to his room?" Conan pressed.
"Since he's a suspect, we're having him wait in front of his room until forensics is finished." Takagi related.
"Then, they should still be in his hand." Sera concluded.
In front of Hiura's room...
"Give me a break." the novelist protested. "How long are you going to keep searching my room? You won't find anything. The body was found in her room directly below this one, and she was killed around 3:30 pm. I was in this room at that time, and I even have people vouching for me."
"From 3:00 to around 4:30, I was eating in Hiura-sensei's room." the editor confirmed. "He was taking a bath at the time and didn't eat with us, but there's no way he could have gotten out of this room. We were eating at the table facing the entrance."
"But if he had a rope, he could climb down from the balcony to the room below." Megure reasoned.
"Don't be ridiculous." Hiura chuckled. "This is the 30th floor. I'm not 007; a simple author like myself could never pull that off. Besides, you can the balcony from the table, too. If you want to take away more of my personal time, you'll have to tell me how I got out of here when the crime was committed and how I got back up."
"There was no need for you to leave or return." Sera cut in. "You invited the victim to this room and killed her here."
"What are you talking about?" Hiura demanded. "The editors would have noticed Minazuki-kun coming to this room. They recognize her face."
"But there are lots of people bringing delivery food." Conan pointed out. "I think anyone would have been fooled if Minazuki-san disguised herself as a delivery person and changed her hairstyle."
"Everyone left once we paid them." the editor stated.
"Then, what about the wine on top of that desk?" Conan pointed to the decanter on the table. "If you ordered a decanter, it wouldn't be strange for the delivery person to enter the room."
"Now that you mention it, Hiura-sensei asked the person who delivered the wine to pour it into a decanter." the editor recalled. "It was a bellhop wearing glasses with her hair tied back."
"Did you see that bellhop leave the room?" Megure's suspicions were peaked.
"We were too busy eating." the editor stammered.
"That's what he wanted." Sera declared. "If you had been waiting outside, you would've checked how many people entered and how many left. Hiura-sensei might have tried to escape disguised as a delivery person. But once he invited you into the room, you stopped checking as diligently. No matter who entered, you just had to make sure Hiura-sensei didn't leave. That's why it didn't bother you that the bellhop brought the wine entered the room and never came back. While the editors were eating in the living room, he told the victim to go to the bathroom and killed her there. He probably chose the bathroom since she would take off her bellhop clothes herself. The body was wearing a bathrobe which would be easy to put on someone."
"But why did the victim disguise herself as a bellhop?" Megure wondered. "She's his assistant. She could have stopped by without hesitation."
"Because they're suspected of being lovers." Sera replied. "If the editors saw her enter, who knows what the magazines would write next? He asked her to do it."
"Tell me one thing." Hiura challenged. "How did I move the body from this room to the one below? I left this room around 5:30 pm, thirty minutes before the bellboy discovered the body downstairs."
"We're ready now." Conan made his call. "Do it, Detective Takagi."
"Inspector Megure." one of the forensics officers spoke up. "Something just fell on the balcony from the floor above."
"This is..." Megure slid open the window. "A suitcase?"
"Inspector." Takagi called from the floor above. "Open the suitcase."
"Two bags of rice?" Megure opened the suitcase to reveal two bags of rice weighing 30 kilograms each.
"Each bag is thirty kilograms." Sera supplied. "All together, that's sixty kilograms. That's roughly the weight of one person."
"Did he put the body into a suitcase?" Megure realized.
"Climbing down with a rope would be scary." Sera nodded. "But passing a rope through the handle of a suitcase containing the body and lowering it is easy. You can swing the suitcase onto the balcony below. If you don't tie the rope to the handle, you can pull it back up by one of the ends."
"Which means the suitcase in the victim's room..." Megure frowned.
"He brought it to move the body." Sera nodded. "The backpack inside the suitcase was probably her actual luggage. He removed the contents and stuffed her inside the suitcase. in other words, Hiura-sensei strangled the victim in the bathroom after inviting her into his room, stuffed her inside the suitcase naked and waited for the editors to finish and leave, and lowered the suitcase containing her body to the room below from the balcony. Then, he handed out the finished manuscripts to the waiting editors, and said he would think about how to finish his book while buying cigarettes around 5:30. He entered the victim's room using the room key he stole from her, dressed her in a bathrobe and placed her body near the entrance. The bellboy instructed to deliver the champagne to her room at exactly 6:00 discovered her body for him. He spilled beer inside the suitcase to cover the wetness and smell. He hastily stuffed the body inside the suitcase before her hair had dried. It was probably wet and smelled like shampoo."
"Why didn't he dry her hair before putting her into the suitcase?" Megure wondered. "Surely he had the time..."
"Of course, he wouldn't dry it." Conan stated. "The editors would've thought it strange if they heard the sound of the hair dryer."
"Hiura-sensei took the caps off the bottles in the victim's room for the same reason." Sera added. "You had to replace the caps the victim washed down the drain after she used yours. After all, there's no reason for you to use shampoo. So, you may still have them: the shampoo and conditioner caps, assuming you didn't throw them away on your way here. Even if you did, a bellhop's uniform was found inside a paper bag in the garbage can in the elevator hall on the floor below."
"How did it get there?" Megure was puzzled. "His hands were empty when he left his room."
"He was wearing them underneath the clothes his wearing now." Sera replied. "He took them off at the landing, put them in a bag and threw them away before the body was discovered. You should find sweat, skin, and fingerprints from the victim and Hiura-san on the bellboy's uniform."
"I just couldn't throw them away." Hiura admitted, dropping the bottle caps onto the carpet. "I was worried someone might be watching. I tried to get away with it by sending the threatening fax, but I'm not a mystery writer, after all."
"But why?" the editor asked. "She was a talented assistant; you said she revived your career."
"That's right." Hiura agreed. "Without her, I can't write another line."
"Then, why?" the editor tried to think of a reason. "Was she actually your lover and demanding you get divorced?"
"It was the opposite" Hiura sighed. "No matter how many times I approached her, she would always say it would upset my wife. She took a bath because I said she smelled. She came to my room to discuss my novel, the final scene of 'The Phone, The Ocean, and I'. She came up with most of the story. It was based on an old fan letter. You can't even call it my work. While cleaning, I discovered an old fan letter from a grade school student. I decided to write a novel based on the included story, using Ota Jun, the name of my sender, as the name of my heroine. it began when I told her about the letter. She asked me to let her choose the title. She would meretriciously revise my writing. She made the novel spectacular, but I didn't understand why she worked so hard on it. Every time I asked, she would smile and say I'll understand eventually. Then, a weekly magazine accused us of being lovers. That was when I became certain: this woman intended to steal my family, my status, my honor and my money from me and destroy me completely."
"But why would she do that?" the editor was taken aback.
"Who knows?" Hiura snorted. "I used to be quite a playboy when I was younger. I must have done something to make her hate me. Honestly, I'm glad you caught me." he admitted, after Megure slapped handcuffs on him. "Though I meant to reveal the meaning of 'The Phone, the Ocean, and I' in the final scene, I killed her before I could ask her what it meant."
"It means 'I love you.'" Conan spoke, having deciphered the code. "If you translate the words 'telephone', 'sea' and 'I' into English and read them backwards, you get 'I sea tel'. Maybe, the heroine's husband or boyfriend was sending her messages from the future on the phone."
"There's no way a child's explanation could be..." Hiura gasped.
"It can't be helped." Conan shrugged. "After all, it was a child who originally came up with the code. Similarly, if you look at Minazuki Chiaki, 'Minazuki' is another word for the sixth month, or 'June'. The 'aki' from Chiaki is 'Autumn'. If you read them backwards, you get Autumn June, or Ota Jun."
"Then, was she..." Hiura was shocked to find that he had murdered the fan who had sent him the postcard.
"Ota Jun was her pen name." Sera realized the same thing. "Once you learned the meaning of 'The Phone, The Ocean, and I', you would realize that, too. Maybe she wanted you to make her childhood dream come true in the best way possible."
Later that night...
"Jane Eyre?" Amuro noted amusedly, Ami was curled on her living room sofa, engrossed in the 'Jane Eyre' novel.
"I certainly don't see you with a book." Ami retorted.
"Really?" Amuro smirked, holding up a hardcover book as he placed two bowls of cream mitsumame on the coffee table.
"The Red Badge of Courage?" Ami quirked a brow at the war novel the blond had chosen.
SailorStar9: Any OOC-ness is regretted. *Sighs* Don't you just hate plot bunnies sometimes? Read and review.
