SailorStar9: With Chapter 85 uploaded, this is Chapter 86 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 do not own Sailor Moon or Detective Conan, I only own this plotline and the pairing.
Pairing: Established!Furuya Rei/Mizuno Ami
Chapter 86: The Secret of the Celebrity Couple
Time passes...
After Mouri and Conan were about to leave after returning a plump lady's cat, they heard a horrified scream.
"That came from downstairs." Conan was on alert.
"Is something wrong?" Mouri asked the three people standing in front of an opened door.
"The apartment's been ransacked and there's blood on the floor." Hayashi Yoshie, the apartment's caretaker replied.
"You all stay here." Mouri instructed. "I'll go check things out. It's no use." he and Conan found the stabbed Maehara Seiichi lying on the living room floor and felt for a pulse. "He's dead. Could you call the police?"
"Where did the other woman go?" Conan noticed Hori Maiko was missing.
"Saki!" Hori cried out from the bedroom.
Both Mouri and Conan ran towards the bedroom door to see Hori standing in front of a pile of clothes, with Maehara Saki buried within.
"Saki!" Hori flung open the wardrobe to pull Saki out. "Saki, open your eyes."
"Ojou-san, stand back." Mouri advised. "She's gone." he felt no pulse.
After Megure's team was called in...
"You thought something seemed wrong from the entryway." Megure addressed the three suspects. "Just as you were about to call the police, he came running up."
"The kid and I entered the apartment to check things out and found a dead man in the living room." Mouri explained.
"Then, you found the dead woman in the bedroom and called the police." Megure concluded. "Why did all of you come to this apartment?"
"I came because they asked me to unlock the door to this apartment." Hayashi replied.
"I was hired asked to pick up a package, so I came to get it." Matsuda Takumi answered.
"I had plans to go shopping with Saki." Hori stated. "She didn't show up on time, so I came to get her."
"Inspector Megure." Takagi voiced. "All the neighbors are out, so we haven't been able to collect any useful eyewitness information. We did discover that all the cash cards and valuables were missing."
"Based on the ransacked state of the room, it's likely that this was a robbery." Mouri declared.
"Who are the victims?" Megure inquired.
"The man in the living room is Maehara Seiichi-san, thirty-two years old." Takagi replied. "He was a day trader who invested in stocks. He was stabbed multiple times in the chest with a sharp blade. Mizuno-san's initial diagnosis was that he died of blood loss. He seems to have made a lot of money from stocks recently and transferred several million yen into his bank account. We've already confirmed this information with his brokerage company."
"Was the culprit after that money?" Mouri guessed.
"Most likely." Megure agreed. "What about the woman in the bedroom?"
"She was Seiichi-san's wife, Maehara Saki-san, twenty-nine years old." Takagi responded. "She was a housewife. Mizuno-san's preliminary diagnosis suggests that she was smothered to death."
"When did they die?" Megure asked.
"Mizuno-san puts Seiichi's time of death to be around 11:00am." Takagi answered. "And his wife Saki-san died about one and a half hours later at 12:30pm."
"Inspector Megure." Chiba came in. "The building's security camera captured a suspicious figure though to be the culprit, entering the exiting the building around 11:00am. These are the photos of the individual." he handed Megure a stack of photographs.
"We can't see their faces under that disguise." Megure complained. "Does anyone recognize this person?" he showed the three suspects the photos. "I see." he noted when all three shook their heads.
"There's also something else that caught my attention." Chiba spoke. "The camera in the emergency staircase was broken."
"That was broken two days ago." Hayashi supplied. "It was a nasty prank."
"In any case, it's almost certain that this person who involved in the murder of the Maehara couple." Megure concluded. "Call for an emergency deployment and do everything you can to find them."
"Inspector Megure." Chiba returned with a trash bag in hand. "Forensics found this."
"This is..." Megure gaped when Chiba revealed the murder weapon and assorted accessories in the bag.
"There's blood on it." Chiba stated. "I think we can assume it was used to commit the crime."
"Detective Chiba, where did you find this?" Conan asked.
"In this apartment's dumpster." Chiba replied.
"You're lying." Hori exclaimed in disbelief after Megure informed her. "i refuse to believe that."
"Calm down." Megure chided. "According to the detectives canvassing the area, they were able to confirm that the clothes worn during the murder were purchased by Saki-san at a nearby hardware store."
"Saki will never do something like that." Hori insisted.
"I understand how you feel, but the hairs collected from inside the knit hat matched Saki-san's." Chiba revealed.
"In other words, this was all a sham." Megure declared. "A premeditated murder using the security cameras carried out by the late Saki-san."
"This explains why the camera on the emergency stairs was broken." Takagi added.
"After disguising herself as the robber and leaving the building, she threw away the evidence in the dumpster." Megure remarked. "In order to return to the apartment, she needed a path unmonitored by security cameras."
"Then, how was she suffocated?" Takagi wondered.
"There wasn't anything particularly strange about it." Megure answered. "She probably pretended to be a victim but accidentally killed herself. She bound her own legs and arms and entered the closet, but the clothes were so heavy she became unable to breathe."
"You were called here by her so you would discover the crime." Mouri informed Matsuda.
Conan went back to Saki's crime scene for a more thorough inspection. Realizing something did not add up, he hurried over to the drawers and pulled them out and finding all of them void of clothes.
"Inspector Megure." Chiba returned from the forensics' report. "According to forensics, Maehara Saki's fingerprints were found on the bands used to bind her."
"Any other fingerprints?" Megure asked.
"Not on the bands." Chiba responded. "Hori Mariko-san's fingerprints were found on the tape, though."
"They probably got there when she tried to take off the tape when she found her." Mouri reasoned. "It's clear now that she tied herself up."
Just then, Conan acted and tranquilized Mouri. "This case isn't over yet." he took on Mouri's voice. It's strange: Detective Chiba found the weapon used in this case in the apartment's dumpster. Would a culprit throw away such damning evidence in a place so easily discovered? It's Saturday, the garbage won't be collected until next Monday. The weapon would've been left in the dumpster for two whole days. That's when it occurred to me that she may have meant to store it there temporarily and throw it away elsewhere later."
"It was found before she could move it and her crime was exposed." Takagi reasoned.
"The natural conclusion to that line of reasoning is that she had an accomplice." Conan revealed. "She must have wanted to destroy the evidence as soon as possible. However, in her scenario, she was trapped in the closet. If she was spotted disposing the evidence someplace far away, it would've contradicted her scenario. That's why she needed an accomplice to dispose of the evidence for her. There was probably some trouble between Saki-san and her accomplice. That's why the evidence remained there. Saki-san was murdered by her accomplice. Take a look at the tape that was covering Saki-san's mouth. There are several lipstick marks on it. It's because Saki-san struggled when her accomplice put the tape on her mouth. If she had put it on herself, there would've only be one mark. Furthermore, look closely at the closet. There are too many clothes relative to the volume of the closet. The expensive suits would've become wrinkled, ruining them. There are even items such as t-shirts that would normally be kept in drawers. You can tell from looking at the t-shirts and other clothes that they're dirty and creased. Clothes previously worn or stored in the chest of drawers were crammed onto the rack. In other words, her accomplice camouflaged the crime scene to make it look like an accident. Maiko-san, why did you ignore my commands to stop and run to Saki-san? Are you sure it wasn't because you had to be the first one to discover her body? In order to disguise the reason your fingerprints were on a piece of evidence, you had to be the first discoverer. Could you show us the contents of your bag? Saki-san must've hidden her valuables somewhere. However, as you can tell from the fact that the evidence was discarded in the dumpster, she couldn't have hidden them far. Since the police haven't found them yet, it's likely her accomplice took them with them."
Hori sighed and handed her bag over to Takagi who found the missing cash cards and two tubes of branded lipstick. "I took the emergency staircase to Saki's apartment." she confessed, relating how she had entered the apartment to see Saki tying her hands up with elastic bands. She entered the house to see the dead Seiichi in the living room. Saki continued to pressure Hori to help her as she tied up her ankles. Decision made, Hori acted and forcibly taped Saki's mouth with a strip of tape and smothered her under a pile of clothes. Pulling out the other clothes from the drawers, she buried Saki underneath. "I knew the deliveryman was coming soon, so I hurried out of the apartment. I didn't have time to move the evidence from the dumpster. She said she'd share the insurance money, but more than anything, Saki helped me since high school. I was afraid: I thought I'd have to do as she said for the rest of my life. I just wanted to break her spell over me."
Later that evening...
Kumada Rei looked on in disdain as she watched the guards of the Shinjuku Granbell Hotel drag a flailing Tsukino Usagi away from the premises. The former Mars Senshi had been given the heads-up from Ami that Usagi had turned into a boyfriend snatcher. That was why she anticipated the pig-tailed blond would sneak into the four-star hotel where the Kumada Cooperation was hosting their annual gala and create a commotion. What she had not expected was for Usagi to burst into the celebration hall and loudly declare that Yuuichirou had been sleeping with her and that he had promised her he would divorce Rei and be with her.
SailorStar9: Any OOC-ness is regretted. *Sighs* Don't you just hate plot bunnies sometimes? Read and review.
