CHAPTER TEN
They found Alina Arturo sitting at a patio table under an umbrella with a female officer sitting beside her.
Jessie estimated that the housekeeper was in her mid-thirties.
Her brown hair was tied back in a bun and she was wearing jeans and a work shirt that made sense considering why she was here today.
Her elbows were propped on the table and her head was resting in her hands.
“Alina?” Jessie said gently, walking over and taking one of the empty chairs as Sam took the other.
The woman looked up. Her eyes were red but had a distant glassy look that Jessie found was common in people in shock.
“Yes?”
Jessie introduced Sam and herself before easing into the questions. "We know this is a difficult time and that you've already spoken to some officers, but we were hoping to ask you a few things. We think they might help us catch the person who did this. Is that okay?"
Alina nodded limply.
“So you came over to help prep for a dinner party tonight?”
Alina nodded again.
“Was there any special reason for the party or was it just a hangout?”
Alina sat up straighter and kind of shook herself into a more alert state.
“The Tanakas and a group of their friends do a rotating dinner party every month,” she explained, “so they end up hosting about two of them a year. I remember they did one back in March. I helped prep for that one too.”
Sam looked like he wanted to ask something but hesitated briefly, seeming to defer to Jessie. She nodded that he should go ahead.
"Did Yuki mention having a dispute with anyone recently?" he asked. "Maybe someone is making derogatory remarks about her ethnicity or immigration status?"
Alina shook her head.
“No, but we didn’t really talk about that kind of thing. We were friendly, but I wouldn’t say we were friends. I do know that she was working to get her citizenship. She was excited to learn about American History, just like she was curious about mine.”
“What do you mean?” Jessie asked.
“She was just very intrigued by Western culture in general,” Alina explained.
“In fact, she asked me to help her learn Spanish. I said I would if she taught me Japanese. We would exchange vocabulary words every time I came over. It was a little game we played. She loved languages. I think that’s why she had her job. ”
“What did she do?” Jessie asked, realizing that hadn’t come up in the quick and dirty dossier that Jamil had provided on the way over.
“She was a translator,” Alina said. “She worked for the Japanese Consulate General and would help government officials when they came to Los Angeles. That’s how she met Mr. Tanaka, actually.”
“How exactly?” Jessie asked.
"She said they ended up seated next to each other on a flight back to the U.S.
from Tokyo. He's a third-generation American and had never been to Japan, so he was there doing a family heritage tour. She said they talked the whole way back and by the time they arrived here, they were basically half in love. I was really happy for him. I worked for him for a couple of years before he met her and he was such a workaholic that I worried about his health. After she came into his life, he reined it in. He never would have taken the time for things like dinner parties before her.”
“I have an uncomfortable question to ask,” Jessie said. “It’s looking likely that Yuki was killed on Friday night. That leaves all of yesterday for David to have communicated with Yuki but the police never got a call. Wouldn’t he have gotten worried if he couldn’t reach her that whole time?”
"You'd have to ask him," Alina said, "but I wouldn't read too much into it.
I said that Mr. Tanaka had reined in his workaholic lifestyle once he met Yuki, but compared to a normal person, he still worked like crazy.
He might have just been so focused on his work stuff that he forgot.
Also, I was here on Friday until about 4 P.M., and I remember Mrs. Tanaka saying that she was going to a Korean spa for the day on Saturday, yesterday.
So he might not have wanted to bother her while she was relaxing.
But those are just guesses. As I said, you should talk to him. "
“We will,” Sam assured her.
“Alina,” Jessie said, “we’re going to recommend you go to the hospital to get checked out after this, but before that, I have two last questions for you.”
“Okay.”
“First, you told the officers earlier that the front door was unlocked when you arrived. Was that unusual?”
“Yes,” she said. “If they weren’t home, I always had to use a key to get in. And you probably already know this, but there was a home invasion in the neighborhood recently. I specifically mentioned it to Mrs. Tanaka and she thanked me and said they’d be extra careful about locking up.”
“Thank you,” Jessie said. “Lastly, you mentioned that you finished up at four on Friday. Are you sure that the door was locked when you left?”
Alina nodded.
“Mrs. Tanaka walked me to the door, even helped me carry some of my cleaning supplies. I heard the door lock after she closed it.
“Okay, “Jessie said. “Now that was potentially as little as two hours prior to her death. Did she seem normal to you? Any signs of worry?”
She genuinely wanted to know, but was also interested in seeing Alina’s reaction. While her instinct told her the housekeeper wasn’t responsible for this, they had to follow all potential leads, which is why they’d be getting her GPS location data.
“No,” Alina said, shaking her head vigorously as tears came to her eyes. “She seemed fine. Knowing that she was killed just a little while after I left? It’s just too terrible to think about.”
Jessie looked over at the officer sitting beside the housekeeper and indicated that it was okay to go to the hospital now. What she didn’t say to Alina was that there were far more terrible things to think about than the fact that her boss died just hours after they said goodbye.
There was the very real possibility that whoever killed Yuki Tanaka on Friday night and Maria Cain on Saturday night wasn’t done. If the pattern held, that meant there might be another victim tonight.