"Not what we expected?" Tsuneo held the phone to his ear, casting a brief, sidelong glance at the "dog-headed" boy detective sitting nearby.
"Here's the situation…" Inspector Megure's voice crackled over the line as he began to explain the truth unearthed during the interrogation.
As it turned out, the motive was the oldest one in the book: greed.
The man in the suit had been a subordinate at Mr. Takakura's company. However, Mr. Takakura was notorious for being an overbearingly harsh boss. Unable to withstand the relentless pressure, the man had eventually resigned and retreated to his home. He had only returned to his former employer's doorstep because his savings had dried up. The more he brooded on his poverty, the more his resentment festered, until his thoughts spiraled down a dark, narrow alley of desperation.
"According to his confession, when you first knocked on the door with Conan, he was right in the middle of ransacking the house for valuables," Megure explained simply.
"Wait. So you're saying he had only just broken into the Takakura residence at that time?" Tsuneo reached out and picked up the piece of paper covered in scribbles from the table.
Something felt off. This was the same paper Professor Agasa had picked up two days ago.
"Exactly. Because the front gate was open and the front door was unlocked, he decided to take a desperate risk and step outside to deal with you personally," Megure noted. Even the police realized that this had been a stroke of sheer luck—they had stumbled into an active home invasion and robbery.
If the "handyman" hadn't returned shortly after, there was no telling what might have happened inside that villa.
"Well, all's well that ends well, right? I assume we're done?" Tsuneo said, his finger already hovering over the end-call button.
"Ahem! Wait!"
"The statement—"
Before the Inspector (affectionately nicknamed 'The Orange' for his round build) could finish his sentence, the line went dead.
The statement can wait, Tsuneo thought. I'll let it pile up with the others.
Because Tsuneo's arrival as a "repairman" had been so sudden, the man in the suit hadn't been able to construct a convincing lie, making it easy for a certain famous brat detective to sniff out the inconsistency.
However, the fact that the entire incident had nothing to do with the paper Professor Agasa found was a twist no one saw coming. Even Tsuneo had tacitly assumed the red and blue marks were a desperate SOS drawn by Mrs. Takakura.
"Heh… heh heh… I guess it really was just a prank after all," Conan said, letting out a dry, forced laugh as he felt the weight of everyone's judgmental stares.
In truth, he had noticed something while he was on the second floor of the Takakura house. That small room had no windows, and its condition didn't look like a place where someone had been held captive for long…
"Well, Tsuneo's business cards are scattered all over Beika Town anyway. It wouldn't be surprising if some kid saw one and decided to doodle a copy," Haibara said, picking up her magazine again and flipping a page.
These two "geniuses" had spent so much time overanalyzing the situation that they'd managed to confuse themselves. Still, hitting the mark by accident and stopping a robbery was a good outcome.
"In Beika Town, nothing ever appears without a reason," Tsuneo muttered. He crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it into the trash can.
Some brat's random scribbles had somehow saved Mrs. Takakura and her son.
Then again… Tsuneo thought with a sigh, it seems another one of my clients nearly met a grisly end.
The following day.
On the way home from school, the three younger members of the Detective Boys—Genta, Mitsuhiko, and Ayumi—were practically vibrating with excitement.
"Tomorrow we go camping! And the day after, too!" they cheered in unison.
"Yes, yes, we know. And now every passerby on the street knows, too," Haibara said, shooting them a deadpan look.
She had told the others not to give the kids the news too early; they probably wouldn't get a wink of sleep tonight.
"I remember the site for this trip is in the mountains near Nishitama City, right?" Conan asked, shifting his backpack as he turned to look at the others.
He didn't mind the occasional outing, but Tsuneo and the Professor had recently invented a rather... "unique" method for choosing their destinations.
"Mhm. They wrote dozens of locations on cards and put them into a lottery machine," Haibara explained as they walked.
"A lottery machine?" Conan hadn't heard of the Professor building one of those lately.
"They stayed up all night making it. The machine spat out dozens of cards and kept only the very last one—that became our destination," Haibara said, detailing the logic behind the duo's selection process.
Essentially, they discarded almost everything they drew. As for the very first card the machine spat out, Tsuneo had vowed not to step foot near that location for at least the next two months.
"Where was the first card pointing to?" Conan asked.
The three kids leaned in, their faces full of curiosity.
"Gunma Prefecture," Haibara replied, shaking her head.
There was, indeed, a very "difficult" police officer stationed in that area.
"Heh… I'm starting to believe in the accuracy of that machine," Conan muttered. Even the great "Detective Conan" got a headache whenever he had to deal with Officer Misao Yamamura.
"Speaking of Nishitama City, it's been in the news a lot lately, hasn't it?" Mitsuhiko added, always the one to keep up with current events.
The tallest twin-tower skyscraper in all of Japan was nearing completion there.
"The opening ceremony is next week," Haibara noted, having seen the same report in her magazine.
"What was it called again…?" Genta squeezed his eyes shut, thinking hard. "The Tokiwa Group? Was that the name of the company?"
"Yeah. I heard they're a massive conglomerate focusing on computer software. You can see their influence in almost every tech-related industry," Mitsuhiko nodded.
While they might not be as overall dominant as the Suzuki Financial Group, in the specialized field of computer science, they were second to none.
"Software…" The word made Conan's mind drift toward a certain software engineer who had died at the Haido City Hotel.
No one could truly say what the Black Organization's ultimate goal was. The software Suguru Itakura had been working on—the pursuit of so-called "immortality"—felt like trying to upload and download human data itself.
"Software, and drugs," Haibara added quietly, looking at the pensive Conan.
If one branch of their research was already fully functional, they wouldn't need to spread their resources across two different fronts. Now that she—the head of their drug research—had escaped, it was hard to say where the Organization would focus its next move.
Of course, there was one person who likely knew more. A certain guy who had essentially become partners with "Noah's Ark."
"That guy is completely immune to both threats and persuasion," Conan grumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets.
"Hey, do you guys get the feeling those two are always acting weird?" Mitsuhiko whispered, looking at Conan and Haibara, who had drifted several meters ahead while deep in conversation.
"Totally. Those two are super suspicious," Genta agreed, nodding vigorously.
"They're always whispering behind our backs. If you try to get close, they change the subject so awkwardly. But it doesn't really look like 'elementary school romance' either."
"Now that you mention it, Conan always uses that weird voice too…" Ayumi recalled the specific tone Conan used whenever he talked to adults, shaking her head. Even kids in kindergarten didn't act that "cute" anymore.
"Are-re?" and "Look at that!"—he sounded like a toddler who hadn't grown up.
"But he acts totally normal when he's talking to Tsuneo-niisan. He even complains and talks back to him constantly," Genta pointed out, ever loyal to his fellow "foodie" leader.
"That's probably just because Tsuneo-niisan is so friendly," Mitsuhiko argued. He didn't want to categorize Conan as a rude kid just yet.
"But the other day, I heard Conan grit his teeth and call him 'Tsuneo' directly without the 'Niisan' part…"
They all paused.
"Yeah… he must just be way too friendly."
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