SailorStar9: With Chapter 18 uploaded, this is Chapter 19 of this fic and I'm officially restarting this. (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?
Pairings: Furuya Rei/Mizuno Ami
Disclaimers: I own absolutely nothing, except this plot and pairing.
Chapter 19: The Beckoning Calico Cat Case, Part 2
"Fumio-kun, what's wrong?" Amuro looked worriedly at his son, the six-year-old was sighing for the fifth time in under half an hour.
"Nothing." Fumio muttered, focusing on his half-written homework.
"Fumio-kun!" Ayumi burst into Cafe Poirot, interrupting the pending father-son talk.
"Yoshida-san..." Fumio gaped as the ever-energetic girl.
"The Detective Boys are visiting Taii-chan next week." Ayumi informed. "You wanna come?"
"Er..." Fumio looked at his father, the older man merely giving him a nod as the go-ahead. "Okay."
"Then, it's decided!" Ayumi beamed and ran off.
"Fumio-kun..." Amuro leaned closer over the counter and looked intently at the boy. "Is there something I should know?"
Fumio bit back another sigh and put down his pencil, "Tou-san, actually..."
The next day...
Amuro had used his lunch break and confronted the school's new teacher, Iwata-sensei, who had been tormenting Fumio about his parentage ever since he started teaching.
Upon further investigation from the PTA, it was discovered that Iwata-sensei had been a child born of a high-ranked Diet Member and his mistress and he had suffered merciless taunting from his schoolmates once his lineage was made known. Even though his father had long been laid to rest, the ruthless bullying Iwata Yuuta endured when he was barely in middle school had curved a shadow in his heart, resulting in him carrying the wound over to his adulthood.
It didn't take long for the Disciplinary Committee to pass judgment: Iwata-sensei was placed on probation and ordered to see a psychologist in regards to his obvious resentment against students with similar parentage as him.
That night...
"Fumio's homeroom teacher gave me a call this afternoon." Ami informed her partner after the parents tucked Fumio into bed. "Thanks for handling this." she gave Amuro a grateful smile.
"Don't mention it." Amuro nuzzled her neck.
"Wrong place, lover." Ami smacked Amuro's wandering hand off her thigh.
"Ah..." Amuro grinned, scooped her into his arms and exited Fumio's room.
"Why do we always end up in this position?" Ami teased, Amuro having deposited her onto her bed.
"Six years, Sprite." Amuro grinned.
"Stop with that old excuse and just kiss me already." Ami pouted.
"As my lady commands." Amuro shifted his body over hers and claimed her lips.
The following week...
"I never thought that old man would be the one to contract us." Mitsuhiko remarked, the group were heading towards Masuko's apartment unit. "The email he sent to the detective agency said we could come today if we wanted to see him, right?"
"Yeah." Conan nodded.
"It's only been a few days then." Genta pointed out.
"I wonder why?" Ayumi mused.
"Maybe he decided to get rid of his cat after all?" Conan suggested.
"He does seem to be allergic to cats." Fumio agreed.
"Allergic to cats?" Ayumi echoed.
"Even though he owns one?" even Mitsuhiko was surprised.
"Well, some people get cats without ever knowing they're allergic to them." Haibara noted, the group exiting the elevator.
"But then, that means he's gonna sell it, right?" Genta asked.
"Twenty million yen is hard to refuse." Mitsuhiko agreed.
Isn't that Masuko-san's flat? Conan wondered, the group stopping a little way before the apartment unit as two men were seen at the door.
"Anyway, please open the door." Masuko's next-door neighbor urged the apartment manager. "I heard a strange noise from in there."
"Masuko-san, it's the caretaker." the manager opened the door with the master key. "Are you okay in there? What's this cat..." he mused as Taii slipped out of the door.
"Has something happened?" Conan ran up, Fumio following suit and picked Taii up.
"This cat doesn't look injured, at all, but there's blood on its paws." Masuko's neighbor informed.
"That's true." Fumio agreed, looking closer at Taii's bloodied paws.
Then, that must mean that Masuko-san... Conan peered through the door creak. It couldn't be! "Masuko-san, if you're okay, please say something!" he shouted through the door creak.
"He might just be sleeping, you know?" the apartment manager reasoned. "The door is locked.
"But his neighbor heard a strange noise, right?" Fumio looked at the other male.
"Yeah," the neighbor replied. "There was this loud thud that sounded like something being hit."
"And there's blood on Masuko-san's cat." Fumio showed Taii's bloodied front paws.
"Something must have happened inside." Conan insisted. "Haibara, quickly call an ambulance."
"Got it." Haibara dug out her cellphone.
"Do any of you have a string or something?" Conan turned to the others. "Also, some sort of tape, and some sort of wire."
"I've got some wool." Ayumi pulled a strip of wool.
"I've got plasters." Genta took out the plaster box from his pocket.
"Wouldn't this be better?" Fumio asked, taking out the roll of scotch tape from his waistbag.
"Here's a paper clip." Mitsuhiko brought out a spare paper clip. "But what are you going to do with these?"
"Unlock the door." Conan replied. "First, you tie the string to the U-shaped bar on the lock, then fix the loop to the bottom of the U with the scotch tape. Then, if you thread some wool through the paper clip and stick it to the inside of the door, you're ready. You just have to shut the door and give the string a big tug..."
"It opened." Genta exclaimed when the door opened.
"Which flat is yours?" Fumio turned to Masuko's neighbor.
"That one over here." the neighbor pointed.
So, it'll be the closest room to his neighbor. Conan hurried up the staircase. Which means to the left. Is it the room at the end? He headed straight for the room at the end and flung the door open, finding an unconscious and injured Masuko on the floor.
"Looks like an accident." Satou surveyed the crime scene with Takagi. "He put the chair on the bed and tried to change the light, but lost his balance and hit himself on the side table. I do the same myself sometimes, but it's hard to balance on a bed, so it can be dangerous."
"Please don't do that." Takagi pleaded. "Your mattress is very expensive, and it's so soft and fluffy."
"How come you know so much about Detective Satou's bed?" Mitsuhiko asked.
"Have you slept in it?" Genta inquired.
"Ah, no..." Takagi stammered.
"I wanna have a sleepover at Detective Satou's house." Ayumi gushed.
Do they even know it isn't that type of sleepover they have in mind? Fumio sweatdropped.
"Gossiping aside, what's the situation?" Haibara brought back the main issue. "What's the guy in this flat doing?"
"He's had surgery." Takagi replied. "But he's still unconscious and in a critical state."
"Anyway, once he's conscious, I'm sure he'll be very thankful to you." Satou noted. "After all, thanks to Conan opening the lock so quickly that he was saved."
"Actually, before that," Conan corrected. "Once he regains his consciousness, I thin he'll tell us who tried to murder him."
"Murder?" Satou echoed.
"So, this isn't an accident?" even Takagi was shocked.
"Just take a look." Fumio pointed to the chair on the bed. "The chair's on top of the bed cover. If you were going to stand a chair on the bed, you would at least pull back the cover, right?"
"Not only that," Conan added. "Look at this, Masuko-san's still wearing one of his slippers." he showed the two detectives the snapshot he had taken beforehand. "If he was going to get on a chair on the bed, don't you think he would have taken off his slippers?"
"That's true." Satou conceded.
"Also, the shattered light on the floor is most likely the old light he took out to change." Fumio pointed to the broken fluorescent light. "But take a look, none of the edges are blackened; it looks very new."
"So, in other words, someone pushed Masuko-san over here in his bedroom, got him seriously injured, and then set up the room afterwards to make it look like an accident." Satou mused. "And there's about an hour between the neighbor hearing the strange noise and the caretaker arriving. There would've been plenty of time to set the place up."
"But, there's apparently only one spare key for the front door, and both the keys were on the living room shelf." Takagi pointed out. "And how would they have set the door's safety lock?"
"That's all been figured out already." Satou beamed. "Right, Conan? If you can open a lock from the outside, then I bet you know how to lock one too."
"Not exactly..." Conan gaped.
"There's someone on the screen!" Genta shouted.
"It's the intercom." Mitsuhiko supplied, seeing Takagi hurry out. "The intercom's set up to record videos of whoever rings the doorbell at the ground floor entrance."
"And here they are." Haibara pointed out. "Three people within the hour before we arrived. The audio gets recorded too, and they all introduced themselves, so we should be able to identify them using Masuko-san's address book."
There's an old car carrier on the table with some wrapping paper. Walking out with Fumio, Conan spotted the items on the table in the living room. So, he really was going to give that calico to someone as a gift. There's tape and fold marks on the wrapping paper and some tears here and there. He gave the unwrapped car carrier a closer look. So did someone unwrap it after it had already been wrapped? There's tape and scissors here.
"The bin is empty, though." Fumio peered into the trash bin, as if following Conan's thoughts. "Then, why can't I find it anywhere?"
"Come to think of it, what did Masuko-san do when you lot rang the intercom at the entrance?" Takagi turned to the kids after gathering Masuko's three visitors.
"We didn't ring it." Genta replied.
"We thought of ringing it." Fumio stated.
"But then one of the residents was going out, so we went in while the door was open." Haibara explained.
"We thought we'd rush in and give him a surprise." Ayumi chimed.
"We had arranged to meet him." Mitsuhiko added.
"And we knew his flat number." Conan noted.
"I see..." Takagi gaped. "In order in which they rang the intercom was Tsuyuguchi-san, followed by Asoh-san, then Urushiya-san, so that fits." he looked at his notebook, having taken down all three suspects' statements. "But that neighbor wasn't sure what time exactly he heard the strange noise, so we can't narrow down our suspects."
"I guess we'll just have to wait for Masuko-san to wake up." Satou sighed.
"No, I don't think we have to wait." Haibara corrected. "See." she gave Conan and Fumio a side-glance, both boys sharing mischievous grins.
"So, those were the three people that came here around the time the neighbor heard the suspicious noise?" Megure asked his two subordinates. "But the door was locked and bolted, wasn't it? Are you sure this was a crime?"
"The crime scene indicated that it wasn't an accident." Takagi reported. "According to Conan and Fumio."
"Are they inside the flat?" Megure asked.
"No, they said there was something they had to buy." Satou replied.
"We're back." as if on cue, the group returned.
"What did you buy?" Satou inquired.
"We bought the thing that disappeared from Masuko-san's flat." Conan held out the carrier bag. "This." he took out the roll of ribbon. "A decorative ribbon. You usually cut off the excess ribbon with scissors after tying up a present."
"Therefore, seeing as there aren't any ribbon in the bin, I guess the ribbon just happened to be the correct length, even though Masuko-san had scissors to cut it." Fumio explained.
"The present itself as a used carrier," Conan took over. "And he had tape there, too, so he must've wrapped it himself instead of having it wrapped at a store."
"But, what does it tell us?" Megure inquired.
"Are you still half asleep?" Haibara retorted. "The fact that it disappeared from the crime scene means that the culprit must have used it for something."
"For example, locking the room to make it look like an accident." Fumio stated.
"In any case, let's try it out and see whether or not that's actually possible." Conan pushed the three officers back into the room. "First up, how the safety lock was latched. We pass the ribbon between the door and the bolt, so it catches on it." he explained, using Genta to conduct the experiment. "Then go outside holding on both ends of the ribbon and close the door. And finally, we only have to pull tight on both ends. All right, Mitsuhiko." he instructed over the Detective badge.
"It worked." all three officers chorused in unison after Mitsuhiko gave Genta the go-head to pull the ribbon.
"Next up, locking the door." Conan continued. "After opening the door and checking that it's bolted, we remove the ribbon, and make a knot in the middle of it." he had Mitsuhiko tie the knot. "Then, we loop the ribbon around the dial to lock the door, so that the knot catches on it, then we pull one end of the ribbon out and close the door. After that, if we pull on it from outside, at an upward angle..."
"The ribbon really locked the door." Takagi was stunned.
"But unlike with the safety lock, you can't pull the ribbon out this time." Megure pointed out, seeing the dangling ribbon caught at the door.
"Pull as hard as you can on the ribbon." Conan instructed over the Detective badge.
"But since the door is closed, the knot's stuck." Mitsuhiko stated, as Genta tugged at the ribbon.
"If only someone could pull out the ribbon from inside and take it somewhere else..." Fumio sighed and gave Ayumi a nod, gesturing for her to let Taii down to the floor.
"Move the ribbon around." Conan instructed the other two boys on the other side of the door.
Walking towards the door and looking at the waving ribbon, Taii jumped and grabbed the dangling ribbon with its paws, before running off with the ribbon in its mouth.
"Follow that cat!" Megure ordered.
"Behind the bookshelf?" Takagi caught up with Taii who had hid behind the bookshelf with its new prize. "That's where the cat hides its treasure, I suppose. I found it." he reported, seeing another ribbon behind the books. "There's a second ribbon that's different from the one we just used. It has a knot too," he pulled out the green ribbon. "So there's no doubt about it."
"The question is who used the ribbon for this trick." Satou noted.
"I think it'd be someone who knows a lot about cats." Takagi reasoned.
"Then, could it be the girl with the glasses?" Ayumi wondered. "Taii-chan was wagging his tail when she was holding him."
"No, unlike dogs, cats wag their tails when they're agitated." Fumio remarked. "From this point alone, Asoh-san doesn't seem to know a lot about cats."
"In that case, maybe he was agitated because she was the one who hurt his owner?" Haibara surmised.
"If that's the case, won't she be more worried about him scratching her?" Fumio asked.
"But the remaining two are Tsuyuguchi-san, who seemed to be very concerned about conserving electricity, and Urushiya-san, who picked up the things that fell from Genta's pockets. Both of those actions seem almost unconscious, like habits they had."
"But, when Kojima-san dropped his plasters, tissues and bottle cap, he only picked up the bottle cap, right?" Conan pointed out.
"Now that you mention it, that's true." Satou agreed. "But why would he do that?"
"Why don't we try it out?" Conan purposely scattered the same items onto the floor.
Taii crawled over, took the bottle cap into his mouth and scrambled back behind the bookshelf.
"I see." Satou realized. "The cat loves bottle caps too."
"I see." Megure mused. "If the cat had taken the bottle cap and brought it to the rest of its treasures, we might have found the ribbon that was used in the trick."
"It seems to have been a non-mediated crime using objects that were lying around." Takagi noted.
"If he wasn't wearing gloves, we should be able to get fingerprints from the ribbon." Satou reasoned.
"Question Urushiya-san again." Megure gave the order.
"Indeed, I was the one who attacked and injured him." Urushiya confessed. "Actually, I came today to borrow some money from him. We had originally planned to meet up tomorrow, but this morning, he called to tell me he had a great present for me. Since I was curious, I couldn't help coming by today. But the present turned out to be a hastily wrapped used cat carrier. And all that was in there was that calico cat. On top of that, he told me he couldn't give it to me yet, with that stupid grin. That cat was just a stray that I rescued from the past."
"Does that mean you're his owner before?" Fumio blinked.
"Yeah, I had it for half a year." Urushiya replied. "While it was still a kitten. I gave it to him when his wife was suffering from losing a pet. Giving it to him turned out to be the right thing to do. Right after that, my books completely stopped selling and I couldn't have cared for a pet cat. But on the other hand, his company started to really take off. Despite that, he had the gall to try and push that stray cat onto me."
"But Taii-chan's an amazing cat, you know." Ayumi protested.
"Male calico cats are a rare breed and rarely ever found." Mitsuhiko stated.
"And they're worth loads." Genta added.
"But I suppose the reason why Masuko-san wanted to give Taii back to you wasn't money." Fumio concluded. "But because he was a lucky Beckoning cat."
SailorStar9: Any OOC-ness is regretted, by the way. *Sighs* Don't you just hate plot bunnies sometimes? Read and review.