Unknown Victim by Kay Hadashi (classic books for 11 year olds .TXT) 📕

“Okay, my investigative abilities aren’t very good. How do you determine if he was brought to my porch before or after the time of death?”

“That’s something else I’d like to know,” Detective Kona said. “If he didn’t walk in, he had to be carried. But by whom, from where, and when are the main questions.” He scratched his head while flipping from one page to the next, scanning notes with a fingertip. “What makes no sense at all is why the man was left on your doorstep?”

“Well…” Gina said, sighing. “You know my background, which means you know my training and experience is nothing like yours. But I have to tell you, nothing makes sense about this to me at all.”

Gina watched as he flipped through several pages in his notepad. He found the pages he wanted, and made notes on them. To Gina’s eye, it looked like he was cross-referencing details. He even had a couple of diagrams, drawings of interlocking circles, with related notes jotted inside each.

“What’s with the Venn diagrams?” she asked, still trying to make sense of his doodles.

He shared his pad with her. “It sounds like you’re familiar with them?”

“My understanding is that they’re a way of showing how different sets of data can be related. Each circle gets a list of data, and where they overlap is the shared information, which should answer the question being asked.”

“Very good.”

“You use diagrams to solve cases?” she asked.

“I use them to organize ideas, clues being the data, and the question being asked is the identity of the perpetrator. Once I get clues that are related, it helps focus the investigation.”

“Is this something other investigators do?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of. I’m still trying to develop it as a tool. I doubt it’ll become the be all or end all of crime investigation, but it’s an organizational tool that’s proving to be helpful.”

“Whatever works, I guess.” Gina hadn’t noticed that the sky had gone dark with rain clouds. “What happens now?”

“With?”

“The investigation.”

“Nothing that involves you, Miss Santoro. I’ve probably already told you too much about what I’ve found as it is.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be curious, but I can’t help it, you know?”

“Tell me what’s going on with the estate?” he asked. “Something about rebuilding it?”

Gina explained how she’d been hired on a one-year contract to get the old family farm back to its original condition, so the Tanizawa family could open it as a botanical garden that included historical displays. “They want to keep it authentic to the period of time of the first generation of Japanese that came to Hawaii. The problem is, I know nothing about that.”

“Is that a part of your job? To include that history into your work in the gardens?”

“No, not specifically. My part is to get the vegetable plots and fruit trees growing again, and reconstruct the Japanese garden and koi pond. Pea patches and fruit trees I can deal with. The koi pond and garden will be trickier.”

“Why?” he asked.

“I’m not so familiar with them. I’ve been reading about koi, and I even had a goldfish in a bowl as a kid, but that’s a long way from knowing what needs to be done with a landscape pond.”

“Dig a hole, fill it with water, toss in some fish, and you’ve got a pond. What’s so hard about that?” he asked.

“That’s my feeling. The family wants it brought back to the original size and shape. That means I have to do something of an archeological dig to find the shape and then dig from there. Plus, I have to keep my crew convinced that it’s a good idea to dig a giant hole in the ground using only shovels on sunny days in the tropics.”

Kona chuckled. “Don’t feel too sorry for them. Those guys are used to it. From what I’ve seen, those guys are living the life of Riley on this job rather than doing stoop labor on a farm.”

“They’re doing manual labor, anyway. I’m not sure of the difference between what they’re doing here and stoop labor on a farm might be.”

“Stoop labor is exactly that; bending over to pull weeds, plant seedlings, stake plants. They spend the day bent over, and for the entire day, sunrise to sunset. Here on this project, they’re working in morning hours, and you give them a break in the middle.”

“Felix told me that’s the way it’s done here.”

“Felix Reyes told you that?”

Gina nodded. “You know him?”

“We went to high school together.”

“You make it sound like you have a problem with him,” she said.

“No problem. He’s a good guy to have around. Who else is helping you out?”

“A guy named Gabe. He’s the digger. He was also disappointed that all the digging would be done by hand, instead of with a backhoe or bulldozer. That seemed to be a surprise to him.”

“Who hired him?”

“I think Felix. The crew had already been assembled before I got here. I get the impression the whole group sticks together.”

“Who else is there?” Kona asked.

“A married couple named Flor and Florinda. They’re responsible for getting the fruit trees back in shape and producing fruit again. I thought you talked to the crew yesterday?”

“Only briefly. You know their last name?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know any of their last names, until now when you mentioned Felix Reyes. I still don’t know the first names of a few of them.”

“Who hands out the pay checks?”

“Millie Tanizawa, I guess. That’s something else I’m not involved in. I got the first half of my contract direct deposited in the bank, and when the project is done, I get the second half.”

“You’re not involved in budgeting?”

“Only with the capital budget related to the garden. Tools, plants, those sorts of things. Mille gave me a credit card for that.”

“What about the house?” he asked.

“I’m not responsible for that, other than keeping it clean. There’s a handyman named