The next day, Ririko walked around the hotel, her gaze sweeping over every face she passed-
The man checking in at the front desk, the middle-aged woman with a newspaper spread open by the pool, the attendant pushing a cleaning cart down the hallway...
She scrutinized practically everyone who crossed her path. Every one of them looked suspicious, yet she couldn't find anything solid on any of them.
Jeremiah and Dick both said they had leads, but the entire morning had passed without anyone being brought before her. Her necklace was still somewhere she knew nothing about.
She followed the edge of the pool toward the hotel's rear garden. As she passed a cluster of bushes, something out of place caught the corner of her eye.
She stopped and parted the drooping branches. There was the Scarface Puppet, leaning crookedly against the base of the bushes.
She grabbed the puppet by one leg and dragged him out of the bushes. "What's this ugly little thing doing here?"
She figured he must have been so ugly that the old man had finally abandoned him here.
She thought it over. Hideous as this puppet was, he was still worth a hundred thousand. He couldn't compare to her necklace, but he would count as compensation for her emotional distress.
Carrying the puppet, she walked into the laundry room.
She stuffed the Scarface Puppet into a front-loading washing machine, took a bag of detergent from the shelf beside it, and poured in nearly half the bag. Then she shut the door and pressed the wash-and-dry button.
The washing machine began filling with water, and the drum slowly turned.
She left the laundry room and headed briskly toward the restaurant, oblivious to the muffled thuds coming from inside the washing machine...
Ririko finished her