Death In The Family 2
On the other side of Touto Tower, down the street of Acchikamo, the second group of Kogoro’s angels were huddled in a corner of a grocery store. The trio of Velma, Yuko, and Rukia were doing rock-paper-scissors in order to decide who was going to enter the strange store right across from where they were at.
“ jan-ken-”
“ jan-ken-”
“ GU!”
Yuko and Rukia were rendered speechless when Velma just dropped her balled fist while smiling with confidence. The bespectacled girl then looked down at their hands when she realized the other two were silent. Her face went through several different emotions when she saw that her rock was matched by two papers. Her face then settled on a resigned expression, finally giving up after a hundred rounds of janken.
“I guess I’ll go there now…” Velma said sullenly. She pulled out the contents of her bag, then passed the mini-microphones, earbuds and the laptop connected to all of those audio equipment to the two winners, while she herself slipped a hidden microphone inside her jumper and put her earbud disguised as a hearing aid on her right ear.
After that, Velma stiffly walked out of the grocery store.
The manager and artist duo watched with morbid fascination as the ditzy foreigner went out and entered the weirdly decorated shop called Haydes. It looked like something that wouldn’t be out of place during halloween, but completely alien during other times. There’s even red paint decoration that was painted like dripping blood.
The ever-confident brunette was feeling a bit nervous this time. Although she didn’t feel anything when Kogoro briefed them about the danger, she started feeling the pressure once she was right in front of the possible place Conan was being kept.
While Velma was equipped with self defense tools like pepper spray and a secondhand stun gun she bought from an antique shop, the possibility of facing a dangerous assassin from the Black Organization was getting her legs slightly trembling. Not only from fear, but also from excitement!
After all, amongst all of the women in Kogoro Mouri’s harem, Velma was the one most interested in solving mysteries.
‘You can do this, Velma!’ She pumped herself up, then stepped into Haydes.
***
“Welcome home, goshujin-sama!"
That halted Velma right on the door. In front of her was not a goth-themed room, filled with skeletons. Instead, it was a bright room filled with pink, white, hearts, flowers and frills!
[Velma- san, please respond quickly!]
She could hear Rukia’s voice from her ‘hearing aid’.
“W-what is this place, if I may ask?” Velma stuttered, trying hard to rein in her impulsive side. To their credit, the two women dressed in maid uniforms did not lose their smiles. The shorter one on Velma’s right answered the question.
“This is Haydes maid cafe, goshujin-sama. Would you like to take a seat first?” Asked the redhead.
“N- I mean, yes please!” The quirky girl followed the redhead maid to her designated table.
The short maid then presented Velma with the cafe’s menu. “You can look through the menu first, goshujin-sama.”
Velma opened the menu, and her eyes just glazed over!
‘I could not read any of these item names!’
The reason was not her bad eyesight, but the fact that the entire menu was written in hiragana!
Velma was not stupid; she immediately noticed the foreign words that was usually written in katakana, like parfait, rice, or pudding; but the rest of the menu might as well be in latin.
Seeing the customer’s confusion, the redhead maid came to her aid. “Would you like to know our best combo, goshujin-sama?”
Velma slowly looked at the maid, and asked, “Could you…”
“ Hai, desu!”
The maid coughed into her fist before she started speaking.
“We have our most popular items on the menu, Pomegranate Pistachio Crostini for the appetizer, Fuwa-Fuwa Omurice for the main course, and Strawberry Cheesecake for the dessert. For the drink, we recommend the Tangerine Iced Coffee. And…”
The maid obviously loved to talk, as she rambled on without giving her customer the chance to interrupt. Velma could only sit and listen to the fifteen minute abrupt lecture from the energetic employee.
“-and that’s the last one!” The maid stopped, but then noticed her surroundings were empty! When she looked around, she noticed that the customer she was passionately explaining the menu to before was talking with another maid on a different table. The lone maid deflated like an empty balloon.
“Damn it, I did it again!”
***
Rukia and Yuko were watching from a bench outside of the maid cafe.
Yuko was the one with Velma’s laptop on her lap, while Rukia held a microphone while closely listening to their harem sister’s conversation.
From the words of the workers there, the maid cafe opened just a week ago! They were hired by the owner to manage the place, and were generally free to run the place however they wanted to as long as they made the owner money.
In fact, the person was not even there most of the time!
Not only that, the only one who had seen the face of the owner of the cafe was the head maid, Mitsuko-san. According to her, the owner was a famous announcer that did not want to be disturbed by the masses, and preferred to be lowkey most of the time.
The three amateur private detectives all felt that this place was suspicious, but they carried on listening.
Then, the chirping maid from before chimed in. She introduced herself as Minami, and said that although she had never seen the owner with her own eyes, she had coincidentally heard a conversation the owner had on the phone.
According to Minami, the owner got the place a month ago basically for free from a distinguished member of the entertainment industry for a favor she had done in the past.
Again, the detective girls all felt that this place was getting more and more suspicious.
But because they did not get any more information, they could only relay the information to Kogoro.
They just hoped that the follow-up work that they had to do didn’t end up on a deadend, and Kogoro could make something out of the whole mess.
~To Be Continued~
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A/N: More thunderstorm, less internet. Less internet, less chapter. So please pray for less thunderstorm!
Thank you to my patrons Dragon_knight240, phil, XOL, anime addict, omar amurrio and to all the loyal readers of KMPE!
Chapter 54 is up on my patréon, so if you want, you can go check it out under the username segalengko69 .
Once again, thank you!
segalengko69
