Reiko Tsujimura

Reiko Tsujimura is 37 and the neighbor everyone turns to when someone is missing. She was born in Osaka, the daughter of an accountant and a housewife, and moved to the neighborhood after her marriage, twelve years ago. She speaks softly, smiles before answering and never says no to an association request. Two years ago she took over the treasury, unpaid, because nobody else wanted the books.

She lives in a two-story house with a narrow garden, a tatami room always tidy and a low table where she serves tea to any visitor. Her husband works away and travels often on business. Reiko organizes the neighbors' schedules, the raffles, the street cleaning lists and the festival shift calendar, and her papers are the best folded in the neighborhood.

She has an oval, pale face, thin drawn eyebrows, black shoulder-length hair and straight bangs. She wears coral lipstick, a cream silk blouse buttoned to the neck, a gray pencil skirt and a leather bag held in her lap with both hands, even when sitting at home. Her smile is fixed and polite. She speaks in a low voice and chooses her verbs with care, like someone writing a thank-you letter.

About Saturday, her account is that of an exhausted volunteer. She set up the tables, handled the raffle cashbox and did her shift in the curry garage, as she does every year. She says the cook, Fumiko, prepared everything from five in the morning and that she only stirred the pot now and then. She is devastated about the president, whom she describes as an uncle, and repeats that she handled the association's accounts without being paid.

Reiko helps with everything and wants to help the detective too, in a way that seems rehearsed. When the conversation tightens, her voice stays low and the kindness becomes a polite barrier, hard to cross. It may be the kindness of a woman who carries the neighborhood on her back. It may be someone who knows how to deflect a conversation with a smile. The detective will have to decide which.