Chapter Text
Clue
Conan sat in the front of Kogoro’s rental car and read his copy of The Sign of the Four, occasionally glancing out of the window. They were on their way back from a client that had wanted the great sleeping detective to find an heirloom that the man´s wife had lost. The client's mansion had been a two-hour drive from Tokyo, and because Ran was on a school trip until Sunday, Kogoro had been forced to take Conan with him. The boy had found the heirloom - a tacky necklace - in thirty minutes. The daughter-in-law had hidden it to force the owner of the house to give her husband a credit. It had been a case so easy and typical that Conan was almost insulted on Kogoro's behalf. He hadn't even had to use his dart watch because the older detective had easily deducted the culprit after Conan had told him where he had found the necklace while "playing".
They were in and out of there in under an hour. The client had been a grumpy old man and wanted them gone as soon as possible. He hadn't even offered them anything to drink and now, still more than an hour away from Tokyo, Conan was starting to get thirsty. Kogoro also wasn't in the best of moods as the "high reward" the man had lured the detective with out to the middle of nowhere was barely enough to cover the costs of the rental car.
It was growing dark outside and black clouds gathered on the horizon.
Soon there wasn't enough light for Conan to read anymore, so he put his book into his backpack and looked outside, trying to make out anything in the fast-approaching dusk. After another ten minutes, there was a loud bang from the front of the car and dark smoke rose from the hood. After a few more meters the vehicle came to a standstill, the motor rattling precariously. Kogoro muttered some things under his breath that would have been very inappropriate to say if Conan had been a real child.
The older man left the car and tried to open the hood. He almost burned his fingers so he used the sleeve of his suit to touch the hot metal.
He cursed some more and Conan climbed out of the car to stand beside Kogoro.
Even he, with absolutely no experience with mechanics, could see that the motor was shot and they wouldn't be able to start the car on their own. Kogoro seemed to have come to the same conclusion and took out his cell phone.
He cursed again.
"No reception," he muttered, looking down the street with a frown.
They were in the middle of some narrow mountain road and the next city was half an hour by car away if Conan remembered correctly.
"I think we just passed a mansion a few minutes back, maybe we can use their phone," he suggested tiredly.
Kogoro looked back the way they had come from thoughtfully.
"Okay, you stay here and I'll go and ask them."
"You really want to leave me here alone? In the dark? It is going to rain soon, and who knows how long you will be gone?"
Conan was a bit irritated at how irresponsible the detective was, but as it was the norm, he didn't think much of it. He just really didn't want to wait alone in the car and even Kogoro seemed to recognize that it was a bad idea.
"Well then, grab your bag, brat, and come. The sooner we can call for help, the sooner we can get home."
Conan didn't lose any more time and grabbed his bag and his jacket before following Kogoro back down the street.
Conan had seen the mansion just a few minutes before their car broke down, so he had hoped they would be able to find it again before it began to rain, but after they were walking just a few minutes, a downpour that made the mountain road slippery had started.
Now he hoped they would be able to find the house at all with their constricted vision.
They were walking for about fifteen minutes, both of them entirely drenched by now, when Conan saw lights shimmering through the trees. It took them a few more minutes to find the entry of the driveway, but finally, they stood in front of a big western-style mansion.
Standing right in front of it, it looked even larger. It was just two stories and the attic but still pretty imposing. The European style, with its hard edges and gothic stuck, made it look quite spooky. The only thing missing was thunder and lightning and this could have been the beginning of a horror movie.
Not finding a bell to ring, Kogoro knocked the old door knocker that looked like the head of a barking dog.
It took a while, but just as Kogoro was about to knock again a man opened the door, Kogoro almost hit him in the face with his raised fist.
The man wore a black tailcoat and looked how you would imagine a traditional English butler to look. His gray hair was slicked back and he had an annoyed expression on his face.
"What do you want?" he asked rudely, but his voice still held a sophisticated tone.
Kogoro frowned before hastily putting down his still raised hand.
"Our car broke down a few hundred meters down the road and we just wanted to ask if we could use your phone for a moment to call for help," Kogoro asked politely. Conan noted that the butler was only a few centimeters smaller than the detective, and even though he had gray hair, he seemed only a few years older than his temporary guardian. He was wringing his hands behind his back, and on second glance, Conan could see that he was not only annoyed but more so nervous.
He mustered the two of them skeptically before nodding reluctantly.
"You can use the phone in the parlor. Please follow me."
He opened the door wider to let them in. Right behind him was a small platform where coats and shoes were hanging. A few stairs lowered into a big foyer. Conan could see five doors and a staircase leading upstairs.
"Please leave your wet jackets with me and wear some slippers," the man said, staring at them the whole time they were taking off their wet clothes.
Kogoro had just been wearing his usual suit, so he was wet to the bone, and while Conan had had an extra jacket, the rain had been too strong, so he was also drenched. Before they could finish, one of the five doors opened and a young woman entered the foyer. She had short black hair and wore a floor-length black dress that accentuated her curvy body. As soon as Kogoro saw her, he stood up taller to impress the pretty woman.
She looked around, apparently searching for something. When she saw them, her face lit up, and she ran towards them. Once she had climbed the two steps to the platform, she slung her arms around a stunned Conan.
"Conan-kun! How nice to see you again! How are you?"
Her voice was a bit shrill and she had sunken on her knees to cling to the mini detective. He felt her breath against his ear, and suddenly he heard her whisper in a distinctly manly voice.
"Please call me Yuna Sanada."
It took him a second to recognize the voice as that of the famous phantom thief Kaitou KID. Conan frowned for a second before putting on his most childish face.
"Yuna-san! What are you doing here?"
If KID was telling him who he was, something had to be seriously wrong in this house.
The thief was not as bad as Conan’s usual criminals and while they did work together sometimes, it was still highly suspicious of the moonlight magician to just tell a detective who he was posing as. If he hadn't said anything, Conan would have taken much longer to discover that something was not right, and he might not have noticed the disguised thief at all. Even if it pained him to admit it, KID was good at what he did, and if Conan wasn't expecting him to be there, he had a hard time recognizing him.
KID let him go a bit and stood up again but still had his hand on Conan's shoulder.
"Oh, I am here with a friend. He is a friend of the owner of this lovely house. Oh my, you are completely wet, Conan-kun. What happened?"
"Our car broke down and it is raining outside."
A few other people came out the same room as the young woman, probably having gotten curious about "Yuna’s" loud voice.
"Who do have here? Sanada-san, do you know these people?" a big man with a booming voice asked. Behind him was a tall gaunt man, an older woman in a traditional Japanese kimono, a strict looking woman that was about the age of the first man and another elderly woman in a bright pink suit.
The group came to the front door and "Yuna" smiled at them.
"This is Conan Edogawa. He and his little group of friends are detectives and helped me once to find something I lost. And this is his guardian, the great sleeping detective, Kogoro Mori!"
She even made a dramatic hand gesture as she introduced Kogoro. Conan couldn't help rolling his eyes as the older detective preened at being recognized.
It turned out that the man with the booming voice was the owner of this mansion and a big fan of the sleeping detective. The older woman in the kimono turned out to be his mother, the pink suited one was a friend of hers, and the strict looking woman was his wife. The gaunt man introduced himself as Keisuke Yoshida, the physician of the owner, a certain Shingo Nakamura.
Kogoro was immediately pulled into a conversation by Nakamura-san and the others, but Conan was held back by KIDs hand on his shoulder. He looked up at the thief disguised as a woman, but he was watching the group of people.
The owner finally brought Kogoro to the parlor and he used the phone to call for a towing service that would not only help them with the car but also bring them back to Tokyo.
He looked unhappy when he put down the phone.
"They will be here in three hours at the earliest because of the storm."
"Well, that is too bad. By the time you will be back in Tokyo, it is going to be almost morning. Why don't the two of you just stay the night? I would love to hear some stories from the great detective, Mori-san," Nakamura-san suggested. The butler looked even more nervous.
"I don't think that is a good idea. Perhaps one of us could drive them back to Tokyo, and the car can be taken care of tomorrow."
"Nonsense! We will just drink a nice glass of wine and eat a nice dinner. Don't worry, Tanaka, you are always prepared for guests anyways, so a guest room is sure to be ready," Nakamura-san laughed boomingly.
"Conan-kun is still really wet. I'll take him to my room. I should have a sweater that he can wear, "Yuna" said but didn't wait for an answer, he just took Conan's hand and led him up the stairs. Once upstairs, the boy was led into a room down a hall, and KID closed the door behind them.
Once the door was closed, Conan let go of the hand still holding his and spun around to face the thief.
"What the hell is going on here?"
The woman's face lost some of her cheer and if he looked hard enough, Conan could recognize a purely KID expression on her face, even though he had never seen the thief look so weary.
"I have no idea. I am here because Nakamura-san is said to own a big diamond that I wanted to check out. It turns out he sold it almost six months ago, but anyway.
I flirted a bit with a friend of the family, Tarou Shimada. I think he was a friend of Nakamura-sans wife's sister or something like that. He invited me to his weekly dinner with the Nakamuras and at the beginning, everything was okay, but about an hour ago, he went out to go to the toilet, but he never came back.
The butler, Tanaka-san, told us that Shimada-san left to go back to Tokyo, but I can't believe that. He was supposed to be my ride back and now I'm stranded here. Nakamura-san offered me a room for the night, too. But after Shimada disappeared, everyone got really weird."
KID sat down on the bed and watched Conan. He had been really glad when he had seen Conan because this house weirded him out, but now he doubted if it had been the right decision to involve the child detective and give up his identity.
He trusted Conan to solve the mystery and be able to take care of himself, but he was still a detective and could possibly betray him to the police. He was also still a child, and if there was something dangerous going on in this house, he had probably just put Conan in danger.
The little detective looked contemplative and that made him look older than merely six years old. Kaito had noticed before that Conan didn't act like a normal child a lot of the time. With Kaito himself, he was always more mature so much so that he often almost forgot that his favorite critic was only a little boy. Especially because he was the one who had come closest to actually capture Kaitou KID.
Now it seemed Conan was in investigation mode.
"Please tell everything that you know about this house and who is here right now. And then tell me exactly what has happened here tonight."