“All right, let’s do some investigating of our own,” said Kobayashi, his face serious as he placed a hand on the operating lever of his wheelchair.
“Where should we go?” asked Hinata.
“First, the kennel, to see if we can find out who’s able to rewrite the records there. Where is it?”
Hinata pointed to the door with the doghouse symbol on it, then hurried over with Chris. He pushed it open and called out, “Hello…”
Liz looked up and smiled. “Hi, Hinata! Hi, Chris! Did you come to hang out?”
“Actually, I wanted to ask you something… Is it all right if my friends come in, too?”
Kobayashi and Mayuka peered around the side of the doorway. Liz held out her hands in a welcoming gesture.
“Of course it’s all right! I can tell from their faces that they love dogs, too.”
Kobayashi wheeled his chair inside and held out his hand for Liz to shake. “Hello. My name is Kobayashi. You can tell a dog lover from their face, huh? Well, I’m a former trainer. I was helping to raise police dogs.”
Liz took his hand and gave it a hearty shake, saying that he was more than welcome. She flashed Mayuka a smile, too. “I wonder how they train police dogs in Japan. I’d love to hear more!”
Hinata stood to the side. Suddenly, there was a tug at his wrist, and he nearly stumbled. Just like the night before, Chris was straining toward the area to the left behind the counter.
Whoa! Hinata held his ground and pulled on the leash. Chris turned back and whined, then glanced at Kobayashi, who was speaking with Liz, and whined again. He seemed determined to make his way into the storage area.
A thought occurred to Hinata: Was Chris trying to tell him something?
As Liz and Kobayashi passionately discussed the topic of police dogs, Hinata loosened his grip on Chris’s leash.
“Where are you going, Hinata?” Mayuka asked. He turned and shushed her with a finger to his lips, then followed Chris’s lead.
Chris headed into the storage room again, sniffed at the cardboard boxes along the wall, and barked. Once again, he looked very pleased with himself.
“Aren’t these just boxes of dog food? Are you hungry, Chris?” Mayuka asked, baffled by the dog’s satisfied expression.
I guess she’s right, Hinata thought, disappointed. It seems like he’s just been lured here by the smell of fancy dog food.
“So what next…?” Kobayashi asked once they’d left.
Two security guards had entered the kennel to search it, and the four of them had been politely kicked out.
In the end, they hadn’t found out who’d changed the kennel’s records. Dan, who worked the night shift, was fast asleep in his cabin and couldn’t be reached.
Liz was furious. “That kid’s got a real lazy streak, I swear. I’m always having to scold him!” But she was able to tell them that records entered into the kennel’s computer could be manipulated by the core computer system. “On a ship this large, for better or worse, the central computer controls everything,” she added, with a look somewhere between apology and resignation.
Hinata walked toward the elevator lobby, deep in thought. “Come to think of it, there’s another thing we need to look into. We still don’t know who drugged the pomegranate juice…”
“You’re right!” Kobayashi said, slamming a fist against his palm. His wheelchair came to a stop. His was the kind that required you to keep pushing the control stick forward in order to move. “Someone must have slipped drugs into the juice while Chihori was taking it from the restaurant to our room. If we can just find out who…”
“…You don’t think it was Chihori, do you?” Mayuka said out of nowhere.
Hinata considered this. “I…don’t think so… Chihori would have had more than enough time to do it, but she’s also the first person you would suspect. Both the captain and Mr. Soga blamed her immediately, remember?”
“I agree with you there,” said Kobayashi. “And she has no motive. Unless she’s being threatened or blackmailed by someone…”
The trio stared at one another for a minute, until Mayuka finally said, “And I like her, too!”
Hinata and Kobayashi agreed. Even Chris barked to show his support.
✦ ✦ ✦
They stopped at the restaurant on their way back to the cabin.
If they could just find out who had handed the pomegranate juice to Chihori the night before… But the attendant standing in front of the restaurant made it clear that would not be happening.
“We were in a terrible rush last night, between cleaning up the dinner party and preparing dishes for our regular orders. Also, there are over a hundred staff members working here. It’s simply not possible to know exactly who took each individual order and who prepared it.”
The trio (plus dog) plodded back to their room.
“Once Chihori comes back with Mito, we’ll have to ask her for more details again.”
Outside of the elevators on the fourth deck, there were three large decorative plants in big pots. When the group got off the elevator, they noticed someone moving around behind the plants, muttering.
What are they up to…? Hinata peered through the leaves.
It was a pudgy man with glasses and a jacket that was too small for him. Hinata thought he’d seen him somewhere before.
He was crouched down at the base of one of the tall plants, examining it very closely. He was also wearing cotton gloves and carrying a small plastic box.
“Mary? Mary…?” he was muttering. Suddenly, his gaze rose to meet Hinata’s.
The man leaped to his feet as if he’d been struck and quickly scurried back down the hallway.
“What was that all about? Such a strange man…,” Mayuka said, puzzled. “And who’s ‘Mary’?”
At that point, Hinata remembered where he’d seen the man before. He was the guest who had looked at Soga’s bodyguards with concern in the hallway that morning.
“I think he’s a guest staying on this deck…,” he said. “But that’s a good question: Who is Mary?”
Warily, the group continued down the hall until they reached Mito’s room. Kobayashi was taking the key card out of his pocket when Chris suddenly huffed.
“What’s the matter?”
Chris was staring at the underside of a rolling tray that had been left to one side of their door. It was a supply cart piled with towels and sheets. A black shape moved in the shadows beneath it.
“Uh-oh…”
Before Hinata could get a better grip on his leash, Chris belted out a screech.
“Yiiiipe!!”
The leash slipped from Hinata’s fingers, and in a split second, Chris was racing back to the elevators.
“Chris?!” Hinata turned to run after him but was interrupted by a pair of earsplitting screams.
“Eeyaaaaah!!”
“Aaaaah!!”
It was Mayuka and Kobayashi. Mayuka was clinging to the young man and burying her face in his chest, while Kobayashi had squeezed his eyes shut and was holding on to Mayuka for all he was worth.