𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐋𝐄 𝐒𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐒

file 024 | golden twilight

Kogoro eyed the coin in his hand. "I guess we've got no choice."

"Then, the one who gets heads..."

"Gets to go drive over to the bridge and check it out," Ikumi finished Mogi's thought.

The five detectives flipped their coins and...

"The ones who are going are me, Mouri-san, and Mogi, right?" Senma asked for clarification.

They gave the coins back to Suzume, who took them gingerly. Once the three detectives were in the car, she gave the ones Kogoro and Senma had used a narrowed stare.

Hikaru glanced at her. "You okay?" he murmured.

"Yeah," she replied. "Just have a feeling about Kid and this case..."

She looked down and saw a car parked on the road with a large white X on the roof of the car. Her brows furrowed together.

"Come, let's go back inside," Ikumi said. "Come on, let's go!"

"Oh, okay," Ran said as she followed behind the older woman.

Suzume gave Saguru a glance, which he met evenly with a small smirk.

~ — — — ~

"What? Senma-san died?" Ikumi gasped.

"Yeah, it was rigged so that when you touch the lights of the car, it would explode," Mogi explained after he and Kogoro told them about the car explosion and the car then falling off the bridge.

"Oh, no," Ran said.

"Waiting here is just going to get us killed," Kogoro said. "Let's split up and go check if there is really someone else in this house!"

"Then maybe us four women should form a group," Ikumi said, referring to her, Aki, Ran, and Suzume. "That way we can even go to the restroom together."

As Ikumi went to walk away, Mogi stopped her. "Hey. By the way, where did that brown-haired, fair-skinned young man go?"

"Beats me. Maybe he's feeding the eagle that he brought along with him?"

"I think I'll stick with the guys," Suzume spoke, noticing that Hikaru had tensed at the thought of her not being by his side with the events that had transpired.

Ran nodded and looked at Hikaru. "Look after her," she warned.

Hikaru chuckled and nodded. "Of course."

~ — — — ~

Kogoro opened the door of one of the rooms and turned the light on, illuminating the room to reveal a large piano in the middle of the room.

"Oh. What a fancy thing to find here," Mogi mused as the group of four walked inside.

Kogoro leaned down to look at the piano. "There's a brand new scratch on the piano chord," he noticed, making Suzume raise an eyebrow.

"That was probably made by the claws of the eagle," Mogi said, pressing a key. "It shows that the young man also came and searched this room."

Suzume's eyes flicked to something between the keys. "Oh? There's something between the keys of the piano."

Mogi picked it up and unfolded the piece of paper, gasping when he saw what it was. "This is the secret code that indicates the location of the treasure that he was talking about?"

"But why is it mimeographed on rice paper?" Kogoro wondered.

"Somebody probably printed a whole lot of this when no such things as copy machines existed yet," Mogi guessed. "And, for some reason, distributed it to many people. In other words, the thing he was referring to...the story about the tragedy that occurred here forty years ago as well as the secret code indicating the hidden treasure, are all a bunch of baloney."