Sorry I took so long to send this chapter but I was busy and it was a lot of writing. From this chapter onwards all of the story written by me and Kaede Tsukino was pasted from where we wrote it and published on the same day.
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Ai was yielding to find more evidence that showed who committed the crime. She wasn't as lucky as Conan or even the dumb kids who tried to solve murders. What Ai was doing wasn't looking for blood, broken vases or people admitting they did it. She was going to the little girls room otherwise called the bathroom.
'That should do...' Finishing up her business, Ai was about to exit the stall when she heard voices from the other side.
"Really... For a murder to occur here, this place must be curse." A female staff member said.
"I agree. Business was bad as it was when that reporter put up that nasty review. Now this place is officially doomed. No one's going to want to come here anymore."
"Maybe I should quit before it goes out of business."
"Me too. If anything, I bet it was the young mistress who did. Must have been tired looking after the place."
"No, it has to be Kaben-san. Don't you remember the rumors about her family's business failing because of that reporter. She probably did to get revenge. Just like her name, she lives for revenge."
"Whoever did it. I just hope they catch the perpetrator. I don't want to walk around knowing there's a murder among us."
Nothing too new, Ai already knew most of it when she went looking around for information with Conan and the others, but what caught her interest was the next part.
"With a detective here, it shouldn't take too long to find the culprit."
"I wouldn't bet on it. I heard he brings his kid around everywhere with him even when he questions the staff. He even brought his kid to the murder scene!"
"What! What kind of father brings his own child to a murder scene!"
"I know, right?"
A detective carrying a kid with him. Sounds a lot like that shoddy detective Sleeping Kogoro although in his case the real one solving the cases is Conan Edogawa. The fact that Yoru's father was bringing his own child to a murder scene was very suspicious. No parent would actually do such a thing even regular adults wouldn't do that. Ai grew suspicious... very suspicious.
Ai was looking at two options of what she could do. The first thing on her mind was either going to Conan to tell him about the suspicious thing she saw or not tell him but still keep an eye on the father to see if he really was using his son to solve the mysteries for him. The second idea that came to her mind was not caring if a father had a genius son who solved mysteries for him and just solved the mystery she had right now.
Moving onto the next interviewee, Yoru and his father question Ayame Sakurai.
"Honestly, Sakura and I were so terrified when we saw the corpse. I wasn't sure if he was even alive at the time until Sakura checked his pulse. He was so cold and lifeless."
Based on what Ayame said, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary about it. It matched up with Sakura's story.
"I understand. That must have been a frightening experience for you." Yoru's father felt sympathetic for Ayame. Although he's never really fished up a corpse, he knew that it was not a pretty sight. He'd probably scream out in terror if he saw one.
"Ne, what kind of flower arrangements did you do?" Yoru asked.
"You're curious?"
"Yeah, I want to see what they look like! Can we see them!"
"If you'd like, I'll show you them, but they haven't been put in the shop just yet with all that's happened so far. I believe I left them in the green house."
"Take us there! I want to see them! I want to see!" Yoru childishly whined.
"Yoru, stop this! What are doing! This is no way to behave!" Yoru's father scolded his son for his out of character actions.
"Hehe... It's okay. I don't mind." Ayame assured Yoru's father. "It makes me delighted to see a child so interested in my works."
After finally coming into an agreement, Yoru's father concedes to his son's selfish request. Ayame guides Yoru and his father to the green house as promised.
"Since when were you interested in flowers?" Yoru's father whispered to Yoru.
"Never. There's something I want to look at first. You keep her busy while I'm gone." Yoru says before leaving his father with Ayame.
"Hey, wait!" Yoru's father accidentally yelled out to his son forgetting about Ayame's presence.
"Excuse me? Am I walking too much? It's only a few feet ahead." Ayame wasn't sure if she did anything to offend Yoru's father.
"N-No, nothing like that." Yoru's father denied. "I-I was just..."
While his father keeps Ayame busy, Yoru scans the area for something until he comes across the storage shed. Fortunately, it was unlocked. Without further adieu, Yoru opens up the storage shed and finds the trolley Ayame used to haul the equipment and flowers. On the trolley, he found a green tarp over a rectangular box. Based on the size, it didn't look like it'd be that difficult to a corpse under it. Checking to make sure, Yoru lifts up the tarp a little to see a rectangular cedar under it. Oddly, enough the cedar was upside down. Yoru lifts up the cedar a little to check for something.
'No bloodstains...'
Back when the corpse was found, the back of the head was clearly bleeding. So if this was used, there should be bloodstains here unless they were already cleaned up, but that wouldn't matter in a lithium test.
What did matter was who was the one cleaning the blood. No one could look at blood on the floor without wondering who's blood was spilled. The only thing that looks identical to blood on the floor is cranberry juice spilled on a white carpet. What people didn't know was that when you clean blood you leave your fingerprints on the sponge used to clean off the blood.
Yoru was thinking about the lithium test and how he could help.
After asking his father to check the trolley for any traces of blood, the lithium test came out clean which was strange. The back of the victim's head was bleeding profoundly when they found the body. If the trolley had been used to carry the victim, there should have been a reaction. Even if it was covered, there should been something in that shed that should have had some reaction to the test.
Speaking of which, why did the victim tightly clench onto those flower petals? Was it merely to locate the real scene of the crime? If so, after further investigation, it should have been easy to find the scene based on the body shape imprint left on the flowers. For what reason was it so important to hold onto those flowers? He's pretty much got everything down except for that one key point.
Meanwhile as Yoru was contemplating on the matter, at the same time, Conan and the others were going over the results of their investigation.
"Conan, have you found out who it is?" Ayumi asked her bespectacled friend/ crush.
"Almost, just need to figure out one more thing to tie things up."
"I bet it was that flower arranger guy! He was being bashed on by that reporter so he probably wanted to kill him! He even said so himself that he wanted kill him!" Mitsuhiko voiced his opinion.
"No, it's got to be that Hana woman! She owns the place so she should know all the secret locations like the back of her hand and easily find a way to hide the body. Plus that reporter guy even almost put her family's botanical garden out of business once."
"No way. If she did that, she would have known that it'd be bad for the business if someone was killed here."
"What do you think Haibara?" Genta asked Ai.
"In my opinion, the most suspicious would be Sayuri Kaben. Her behavior is the most odd among them. And probably like her name, she lives for revenge..."
Wait! Name! Both Yoru and Conan finally found the last piece of the puzzle they needed.
'So that's what it was...' Now everything flew into place.
'It was so obvious that it was a dead give away.' Like Yoru, Conan understood what was going on.
Although he found the answer to the case, Yoru decided to leave this to Conan. This was a perfect chance to confirm his suspicions on Conan.
"So pretty." Ayumi commented one of the lovely flower arrangements in Sakura Hanafuda's room.
"She has a lot of flowers in her room." Ai added.
On top of her drawer, Conan found a framed picture of Sakura Hanafuda, Ayame Sakurai, Renge Seika, and Sayuri Kaben when they were kids. It was just as Renge Seika said. They had known each other since childhood.
Meanwhile, Yoru was digging through the bookshelf where he found an old photo album containing various of pictures most of which were from Sakura Hanafuda's childhood when she played with Ayame Sakurai, Renge Seika, and Sayuri Kaben.
"Look at this." Mitsuhiko noticed that Yoru was looking over Sakura Hanafuda's old photo albums. "There are a bunch of pictures of them in here."
"Wow, there's a lot of them when they were kids." Genta joined in.
"This must be an old childhood album." Ai inferred.
Next up was Ayame Sakurai's room. Just like Sakura Hanafuda's room, they found numerous amounts of flowers there except most of them being irises. However there was one thing off, Conan noticed was that one vase had less flowers than the others.
Atop a drawer was a small ring box. It looked kind of big for one ring. So Yoru opened it as his detective instincts were telling him to. Inside, he found a pair of wedding rings. One was in perfect condition not a single scratch on it while the other was rusted and scratched up. Yoru remembered hearing about Ayame's late husband who passed away. That ring must have belonged to him.
The question was how did it get like this. While Ayame's ring was in mint condition, the husband's ring was far from it. A large contrast between the two.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Detective Boys found an old photo album. Like Sakura's, Ayame's had several pictures from when she was a child and played at Sakura's home. Not just that, but there were also pictures of when her family's business was still running before it went under as well as pictures of her wedding.
"Wow, she's so pretty~" Ayumi found Ayame's wedding dress really pretty and blushed at the thought of holding a wedding ceremony with Conan. "How nice..."
"Let me see." Conan popped in between Ayumi and Ai. What was this?! Interesting. A grin forms on Conan's face. This photo album was a very big help. Now he solved one part of the mystery that he couldn't solve before. 'So that's what it was...'
Conan or Yoru had to take the photo album with them. Did Yoru put up a fight with Conan or who would take the photo album as evidence? It looked like Yoru was looking for some other piece of evidence, outside. Ai spied him leaving the room before anyone else.
' What is he looking for?' she thought.
Ai said nothing to the other detectives when she walked out the door to follow Yoru. It stayed that way even when she wasn't in the room. Ayumi was still lost in her mind about what she would look like older and wearing that dress, Ai didn't see any sign of Sakura in the hall, and Conan was fixated on what was in the photo album.
After checking Ayame Sakurai's room was Renge Seika's room. No surprise they found tons of flower arrangements made by him. Seeing all the beautiful arrangements, he really was the heir to a famous flower arranging school. The irises were especially beautiful.
The first thing Conan inspects is Renge's childhood photo album. Like the others, he found many pictures from his childhood. He did notice one thing. A lot of the pictures contained Ayame in them. While they also included Sakura Hanafuda and Sayuri Kaben, nearly each picture had Ayame in them. Conan found this very interesting.
Then they checked Sayuri Kaben's room. Passing through the flowery scenery, Conan checks Sayuri's photo album where he found old pictures from her childhood. Some of them included mainly pictures of her and Ayame. Conan took note of this.
After looking through the suspects' rooms, Conan was able to finally tie up the loose ends of this mystery. All that was left was to reveal who the true culprit was.
