PRAISE FOR THE MAS ARAI NOVELS

  BLOOD HINA

  A Hot Picks Selection

  by the Hawaii State Public Library System

  “Edgar-winner Hirahara once again provides a sensitive insider’s view of the Japanese-American subculture in her fourth Mas Arai mystery.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Written with heart and depth, and starring an Everyman for our time.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Mas Arai is a true original and one of my favorite characters in crime fiction. I love spending time in his world and I’m thrilled that he’s back—and at the top of his grumpy game.”

  —S.J. ROZAN,

  Edgar-winning author of The Shanghai Moon

  “Naomi Hirahara has done it again! It’s wonderful to see reluctant detective Mas Arai back in action.”

  —LISA SEE, New York Times bestselling author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

  “Blood Hina is even better than Hirahara’s Edgar Award–winning Snakeskin Shamisen.”

  —DENISE HAMILTON,

  author of the Eve Diamond series

  SNAKESKIN SHAMISEN

  Winner of the 2007 Edgar Allan Poe Award

  for Best Paperback Original

  “Hirahara’s complex and compassionate portrait of a contemporary American subculture enhances her mystery, and vice versa.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Hirahara’s well-plotted, wholesome whodunit offers a unique look at L.A.’s Japanese-American community, with enough twists and local flavor to keep you guessing till the end.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “In an age in which too many books are merely echoes of previous books, Naomi Hirahara has the distinction of writing a mystery series that is unlike any other. As her latest novel, Snakeskin Shamisen, proves, she is truly one of a kind. . . . Mas Arai is one of the freshest, most realistic and fascinating characters in the mystery genre. Every book featuring him is a joy to read.”

  —DAVID J. MONTGOMERY, Chicago Sun-Times

  “A shrewd sense of character and a formidable narrative engine.”

  —DICK ADLER, Chicago Tribune

  “Hirahara has created in Arai a protagonist who arguably is one of the most unique characters in contemporary mystery fiction. . . . A haunting and compelling work.”

  —JOE HARTLAUB, Bookreporter.com

  “The cadence of the book is all music and past rhythm; what will be in store for Mas next? I can’t wait.”

  —SARAH WEINMAN, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

  “A winning series.”

  —Seattle Times

  GASA-GASA GIRL

  “What makes this series unique is its flawed and honorable protagonist. . . . A fascinating insight into a complex and admirable man.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “Endearing, quietly dignified Mas, supported by a cast of spirited New Yorkers, as well as the distinctive Japanese-flavored prose, makes this a memorable read.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[Hirahara] brings heart and elegance to a nifty whodunit.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Compelling grasp of the Japanese American subculture . . . absolutely fascinating.”

  —Asian American Press

  SUMMER OF THE BIG BACHI

  A Publishers Weekly “Best Books of 2004” pick

  Named one of “The Ten Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2004” by the Chicago Tribune

  “Hirahara has a keen eye for the telling detail and an assured sense of character.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “An intriguing mystery [whose] plot and characters are as fresh as a newly mown lawn . . . A unique voice in a genre cluttered with copycats.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “A seamless and shyly powerful first novel. . . . Peppered with pungent cultural details, crisp prose and credible, fresh descriptions . . . this perfectly balanced gem deserves a wide readership.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  Learn more about author Naomi Hirahara at www.naomihirahara.com.

  More Mas Arai Mysteries by Naomi Hirahara

  Summer of the Big Bachi

  Gasa-Gasa Girl

  Snakeskin Shamisen

  Blood Hina

  Copyright © 2013 by Naomi Hirahara

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Prospect Park Books

  969 S. Raymond Avenue

  Pasadena, California 91105

  prospectparkbooks.com

  Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution cbsd.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file with Library of Congress

  For reference only:

  Hirahara, Naomi

  Strawberry yellow / Naomi Hirahara.

  ISBN 978-1-938849-03-9

  1. Novelists—Fiction. 2. Mysteries—Fiction. 3. Japanese-American—Fiction. 4. California—Fiction. I. Title.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Designed by Amy Inouye, Future Studio

  prospectparkbooks.com

  DEDICATED TO THE REAL WATSONVILLE

  Author’s note: Watsonville is a real place with real farms and real homes. Mas Arai’s Watsonville, on the other hand, exists in a parallel universe, where the truth ends and the imagination begins. I hope that you enjoy your visit to Mas’s Watsonville in these pages, but if you have an opportunity, go to the real one. It’s a wonderful place.

  We’re trapped like rats in a wired cage,

  To fret and fume with impotent rage

  —ANONYMOUS,

  excerpt of a poem written in the Poston War Relocation Center

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Shug Arai didn’t have any shoulders, or at least it looked like he didn’t have any. So when Mas Arai peered into the satin-lined casket to gaze at the body of his second cousin, one of the few relatives that he had in the United States, he was startled to see that someone—most likely the country mortician—had completely stuffed the top of Shug’s suit jacket à la Jack LaLanne. “Mah—okashii,” Mas’s late wife, Chizuko, would have exclaimed under her breath if she were there at the viewing at the Watsonville mortuary. Funny looking. She would have been right. Even as a young man, Shug had been stooped over, bicep-free. But whatever was missing from his frame was in his brain. Shug was about the smartest man that Mas had known in both Hiroshima and California.

  “I wanted the casket lined with strawberries, but the family wouldn’t hear of it.” A rough-hewn voice boomed behind Mas. “In fact, I thought he should be buried in his strawberry plot.”

  The familiar voice belonged to a familiar face. Rectangular like a television set, piercing eyes and thick lips. Deep lines were on the forehead and the hair had thinned out and become the texture and color of fishing line. But Mas still could make the ID. “Oily?” he asked.

  “Fifty years later, and I still can pick you out from across the room. Glad you were able to make it.” Oily grabbed Mas’s head and hugged it to his chest like a pigskin football. Mas normally wouldn’t have tolerated such behavior, but he was back in his birthplace and the town where he spent his early adult years. He’d allow Oily one hug for old time’s sake. But only one.

  “Everyone will be here tomorrow. Everyone. Be a mini-reunion of our time in the Stem House. How long did you live in the house, anyway?”

  “Three year. But not straight through. I’zu go ova to Texas, pickin’ tomatoes. And San Francisco, schoolboy, before they kick me out.”

  “Then you made your way to L.A. You diversified, just like Shug. The rest of us homebodies, we just stayed here.”

  Mas couldn’t put himself in the same category as Shug. Mas was a no-good gardener in L.A., while Shug was a famous breeder, the father of new strawberry varieties, informally referred to as Dr. Ichigo, or Dr. Strawberry. Shug was wanted in places, like France and Chile, just for his horticultural expertise. After he circled the world a few times, he had plopped back here in Watsonville, California.

  “I was surprised, too, that he decided to retire here. But he told me he had some unfinished business in Watsonville.”

  Mas scratched the back of his right ear. Unfinished business.

  Oily nodded. “Who knows what that meant? Maybe he knew that strawberry yellows was going to hit Watsonville again.”

  “Ya-ro?”

  “Yeah, yellows. A disease as mean as you can get. Stunts the growth of the fruit, for one thing, and also the leaves start curling up, get spotty and yellow. Worst yet, it spreads all over the place—not only to the second generation, but back even to the mothers. Nasty business. Practically wiped out strawberries in California in the twenties. And now it’s t
aken up here again.”

  Oily was obviously still involved with strawberries, but Mas had heard that he was no longer with Sugarberry, one of the town’s oldest cooperatives.

  “You’zu not wiz Sugarberry no more?”

  Oily shook his head. “Everbears, the new kid in town. You know what these young people are into these days. Organic. But also high-tech. It’s run by a guy who made his millions on the Internet. He’s from around here, Monterey. Wanted to retire as a gentlemen farmer, or should I say boy farmer. He’s only thirty.”

  Mas raised his eyebrows. Thirty didn’t make this CEO a boy, but a baby.

  “Hey, this company has potential. Really. Even Billy has come on board.”

  Billy was Shug’s only son. There had been some talk—Mas couldn’t remember how he heard—that the two hadn’t been getting along, especially when Billy had taken a job with a new strawberry . . . outfit, the outfit apparently being Everbears.

  “Billy’s doing good. Coming up with a new variety to fight strawberry yellow. Daddy was doing the same, too, or so I heard.”

  “Shug’s no-finish bizness?”

  “Don’t know if that’s what he was referring to, but he wasn’t able to finish it, for near that I could tell . . .” Both Oily and Mas glanced back at the casket. Next to it on an easel was a blown-up photo of Shug, probably taken in the 1990s, mounted on foam core. Typeset on the bottom of the image: Shigeo “Shug” Arai, 1929–2004.

  Oily turned back toward Mas. “Anyway, the whole gang, well at least the ones who are still alive, can’t wait to see you. Remember Evelyn? She had a mean crush on you back then. Some of us joked that she was the reason you ran away to Los Angeles.”

  Mas bit down on the right side of his dentures so hard that the left side almost became dislodged.

  “Yep, she was excited to hear about you coming. She lost Hank a couple of years ago. You haven’t remarried, have you?”

  Mas shook his head, his ears burning while he thought of Genessee Howard. Mas’s best friend Haruo referred to Genessee as Mas’s lady friend, but it hadn’t even gone that far—no, not with his three-year-old grandson Takeo bursting into rooms at the most inopportune times.

  “Howsu Minnie?” Mas changed the subject and asked about Shug’s widow.

  “You can ask her yourself. Family will be coming in a few minutes,” Oily reported.

  “Oh, I gotsu go.” Mas tapped his Casio watch. He’d made it a point to attend the visitation an hour earlier just to avoid contact with old relatives and friends. “Gotsu some things to do,” he lied.

  Oily looked disappointed. “Well, we’ll all see you tomorrow at the Buddhist church. Food in the gym afterwards. You won’t leave without seeing everyone, right?”

  Mas nodded. He took care not to slip on dead leaves on the mortuary’s walkway as he returned to the Ford truck. He was staying at a nearby discount motel. Haruo, who continued to see a counselor in Little Tokyo for his gambling addiction, often spoke of something called “space.” Although Mas thought counseling was purely hocus pocus, he sure found that he needed some space these days. And this solo visit to Watsonville, even though it was under very sad circumstances, had come at the perfect time.

  When he went to his room, there was no crying, no arguing, in fact no sounds at all, aside from the hum of the mildewed wall air conditioner. Dozing off on the flimsy mattress was pure heaven; that is, until he heard a rapping on the door.

  Mas shook his head out of its wooziness and approached the door. “Whozu dat?”

  “Billy. Shug’s son.”

  Mas pulled back the drapes and sure enough, there was the tall, thin frame of Billy Arai. He was in the plus side of middle age, and Mas could clearly see that he was taking his old man’s posture. Mas sensed through the cheap glass window that Billy wasn’t in his right mind tonight. But out of respect for the dead Shug, he opened the motel door.

  Billy’s clothing had the sour tang of beer. He was wearing a red polo shirt with “Everbears Strawberries” stitched over his heart. The last time Mas had seen Billy, he’d been a college student, with long, shaggy hair that the young people had at the time. Billy’s hair was now cropped short, at least in the back.

  “Oily told me you were staying here,” Billy said. “I’m going over to the house, and I thought you might want to come.”

  “Now?” It was edging toward midnight. “Anyway, thought the house all close up.”

  “But not the greenhouses. The greenhouses are still ours.”

  Mas felt a pang of nostalgia. Although the Stem House was only a few blocks away from the motel, he had avoided passing by. He couldn’t stand seeing it uninhabited, abandoned. The house deserved a truckload of people and children running through its rooms. To see it boarded up, essentially dead, would be painful, yet Mas was curious. He wouldn’t have gone on his own accord, but now, being pushed by Billy, he found himself motivated. He grabbed the keys to his old truck and followed Billy to the motel parking lot. The full moon was bright white, like a policeman’s interrogation lamp.

  “I drive,” Mas insisted. He wasn’t about to have Billy get behind the wheel.

  “Okay,” Billy relented. “Just wait a minute.” He went over to a large pickup truck, a new model, and pulled out a six-pack of beer from the passenger’s side.

  Shug’s son wasn’t taking his father’s death well. Not at all. It had been a heart attack, that’s what Oily had told Mas a week ago over the phone. Minnie had been away down south in Santa Maria to babysit their grandchildren, and Billy was the one who was supposed to check in on his father. Mas heard that Shug died alone.

  Billy didn’t have to tell Mas how to get to the Stem House. It was second nature to travel on the familiar dirt road. There was a cluster of small houses, farmworkers’ temporary housing, and then looming, like a dark giant creature curled up and taking a rest in the fields, was the Stem House. Mas pulled into the dirt driveway and parked next to a couple of glass greenhouses.

  Mas still didn’t know how the Stem House was lost. Nobody really talked about it, and Mas, being a second cousin, didn’t feel it was his business to ask.

  Billy offered Mas a beer but he shook his head. At least one of them had to be sober-minded. Mas resented that it had to be him instead of Billy.

  The silhouette of the Stem House was the same, but the details were all wrong. The wood siding was decayed and falling off, like the scales of a sick fish. The windows were nailed shut like the closed eyes of a corpse; the boarded-up door was the silenced mouth. All its grand furnishings had long since been fleeced, probably sold at pawn shops.

  Mas felt almost like crying, not just about the house, but about the past and the memory of those who had once brought so much life to its rooms. Was this their fate, too? To rot, to be forgotten or avoided?

  Billy averted his eyes from the house, as if it pained him to see it in such condition. He took out a small flashlight connected to his keychain and aimed it toward a patch of dirt next to the greenhouse.

  In contrast to the dilapidated house, the plot was full of new growth. Mas saw five rows of strawberry plants, all carefully labeled with something white and thin stuck in the ground.

  Billy bent down and Mas did the same.

  “These are my father’s test plants.” The flashlight revealed small red strawberries about the size of a quarter. “And you see what he calls these—”

  Mas took out the white plastic knife that was stuck in the ground and read the writing in Shug’s careful script. “Masao,” he said out loud, amazed. “Datsu my name.”

  Billy nodded. “He named this variety after you. This is his special one, the one that was supposed to take the industry by storm. He told Oily once that he owed you one.” Billy then fell silent, as if he wanted to hear the reason why. But Mas could not offer one.

  “Yah, well, your daddy and me got along.”

  “Must have been more than get along. My dad always said you two were thick as thieves.”

  Mas remembered when he first met Shug outside the same greenhouse. He was dropped off by a family friend who had picked him up from the port in San Francisco.

  “Arai.” Mas introduced himself, awkwardly sticking out his hand. He was told by his family in Hiroshima that’s what the Americans did. Mas had been born in Watsonville, but he had spent most of his young life in Japan.