Free Strawberry Yellow by Naomi Hirahara Page B

his scientific secrets.” Mas thenremembered that Minnie had mentioned that Shug had just purchased a new computer, which apparently had replaced the stolen one.
    “She’d been following my dad. He hadn’t been going to his consulting office—he’d been going to Linus Verdorben’s place in Castroville. Strange place next to his father’s old body shop and closed-up gas station. Verdorben has some fields over there, too. The Masao test plants. Laila said she got hold of a strawberry plant—took one up to UC Davis to have some friends do some tests. The day she died . . .” Billy’s voice wavered, “she was supposed to show me the results. She said it was important. I told her I didn’t want to hear it—my dad’s funeral was the next day, for God’s sake. I just took off in the middle of our fight. Went to the liquor store to get some beer and drank for a while. Then I felt a need to go to the Stem House. Just for old times’ sake. Dad always said his best years were in that house.”
    “We have some good time,” Mas agreed.
    Billy lifted his chin up and Mas noticed that his eyes were still bloodshot. “He always spoke highly of you, by the way. Always did.”
    Mas pressed his lips together. He wasn’t here to fish for compliments, just to uncover the truth.
    On the desk was an Everbears mug, from which Billy took out a pencil to play with. “So I never found out what Laila wanted to tell me. I’ve been going through her things, her papers. The police have her computer. And then I found her cell phone in her car. That’s when I heard these threatening calls on her voice mail.”
    Mas shivered. It was as if the temperature dropped.
    “It was a man’s voice. Saying that he would hurt her if she stayed in Watsonville. I don’t know why she didn’t tell me or report it at the time. But she did save the messages; she must have taken the threats seriously.” Billy held the sharp end of the pencil out, like a miniature saber. “I dropped off Laila’s phone at the sheriff’s office this morning. They’ll be checking her records. They will get this sonofabitch.”
    Mas didn’t care much one way or the other. Maybe that’s why Billy was spilling his guts to him, because Mas really didn’t have any strong opinions when it came to Laila Smith.
    “Nobody understands, you know. My kids. My family. Her family. Her friends. But we had a special connection.”
    Oh, yah , Mas said to himself. In his seventy-odd years of living, he knew all about so-called “connections.” They usually led old men down a path of destruction. Billy must have read Mas’s facial expression, because he shook his head.
    “No, it wasn’t like that. I mean, yes, she was gorgeous. And young. But it was much more than that. She was so, so—alive and curious. Open about life. It was starting to rub off on me, too. We talked about going to Latin America, Chile. See how other cultures dealt with food production. Maybe write a book together.”
    Book? Kuru-kuru-pa , thought Mas. There was no doubt that Billy had lost his mind.
    “I was going to tackle the science part of it; she, the political side. Our party politics didn’t match, but we were both committed to getting the best food to the most people. Really. It’s really her passion that got her killed.”
    Billy’s eyes took on a glassy sheen and Mas, embarrassed by any sign of emotion, looked down. He noticed somethingelse sticking out from the mug on Billy’s desk. A white plastic knife with the words, “Masao,” clearly written in Shug’s hand. “ A-ra —” he couldn’t help to exclaim. This was a marker from the missing strawberry plants next to the Stem House. The ones that Shug had bred and named after Mas.
    Billy frowned and followed Mas’s gaze. “It’s not what you think,” he tried to explain. “I mean, yes, I took them that night when I left the Stem House. But it’s only because they were my father’s. I wanted something of his.”
    Mas was