"Watanabe-san, the victim collapsed immediately after eating your chocolate, correct?"
"Y-Yes..."
Yoshimi recalled the scene from earlier. After she gave the chocolate to Katsuhiko, he unwrapped it and took only a single bite. Before he could even finish chewing, he let out a pained scream and collapsed stiffly to the ground, no longer breathing.
"In that case, this seems like a straightforward murder case, Inspector."
"??"
Who said that?
Ritsu turned around in confusion and saw a middle-aged man standing at the entrance. He had a neatly groomed mustache, slicked-back hair, and a lean build about the same height as Ritsu.
"Dad! Why are you here?!" Ran immediately answered Ritsu's question.
'So this uncle is the girl's father? The two of them don't really look alike.'
Kogoro awkwardly looked away with half-lidded eyes. There was no way he wanted to tell his daughter the truth.
Last night, after hearing that she had plans to go out with that detective brat, he mistakenly assumed they were secretly dating and decided to tail them. Who would've thought a murder case would happen while following them around?
But a murder case was no problem. With Kogoro here, even homicide cases could be solved with ease!
Completely ignoring Ran's questioning, Kogoro pointed dramatically at the grief-stricken Yoshimi sitting on the sofa and shouted,
"Inspector, she's the killer! You poisoned the chocolate and murdered the victim, didn't you?!
The motive is simple, it must be some kind of love triangle! As long as you investigate the leftover chocolate the victim ate, the truth will come out!"
"N-No, that's not true! It wasn't me, really! Inspector, please believe me!"
Watching Yoshimi burst into tears while clutching her face, Ritsu shot an exasperated glance at the unreliable Kogoro. He was about to speak when someone beat him to it.
"She's probably not the culprit." Shinichi spoke up. One hand in his pocket, he assumed a thoughtful pose and continued his analysis.
"Everyone ate the same food earlier. If she had hidden poison in the chocolate, that would've been way too obvious. It'd basically be committing murder right in front of the police."
"What would a snot-nosed brat like you know?! Crimes of passion are driven by impulse!"
"I think Kudo-san is correct."
As soon as Ritsu spoke, everyone's attention shifted toward him. Ritsu held up the cigarette butt sealed in an evidence bag and explained,
"The victim, Minagawa-san, didn't just eat Watanabe-san's chocolate. He also smoked a cigarette. We still can't confirm whether the cigarette contained poison, so it's too early to draw conclusions."
"The cigarette?" Sonoko immediately pointed toward Naomichi Kimura, who was sweating nervously nearby.
"I saw it! When Minagawa-san went outside, Kimura-san handed him the cigarette!"
Toshihide Wakamatsu, dressed in a tight red sleeveless shirt, looked shocked. "Naomichi? Was it really you?"
Hayasaka frowned coldly. "A simple test will reveal whether the cigarette butt contains poison. If you've done something wrong, you should confess honestly."
Naomichi knew there was no way to hide it anymore. There were both physical evidence and witnesses. Escaping legal punishment was impossible.
Unwilling and resentful, he glanced toward Kaoru Sekiya beside him before gritting his teeth and confessing, "Yes, that's right. I killed him!"
Years of pent-up hatred exploded out of him as he shouted toward everyone in the room.
"I've hated him for a long time! That bastard Katsuhiko always looked down on me! And... he even hurt Kaoru! I could never forgive him for that, so I killed him!"
Shinichi shrugged. Looks like this case was solved pretty easily. But just as he thought the case was over, Ritsu cautiously asked one more question.
"What exactly did you do to the cigarette? For example, was the poison you used lily of the valley?"
"Lily of the valley? What's that?"
Naomichi recalled the poisoning process and answered. "I coated the cigarette filter with ammonium hydroxide."
Ammonium hydroxide? That was impossible.
The victim's symptoms looked nothing like ammonium hydroxide poisoning. More importantly—
Ritsu looked toward the evidence bag in his hand. The cigarette butt and the cigarette itself had been separated, meaning the victim never came into contact with the poisoned portion at all.
Which meant the man before him was not the killer.
"Wait a second!" Shinichi had clearly realized the same thing.
"Inspector Onizawa, you noticed it too, didn't you? Kimura-san isn't the killer!"
"...Heh, yeah." Ritsu stared at the evidence inside the bag.
"It seems the victim had a habit of removing the cigarette filter before smoking, meaning he never touched the poisoned section. Furthermore, the victim's symptoms don't match that of ammonium hydroxide poisoning.
So Kimura-san, you are not the killer. At most, this counts as attempted murder."
"I-I'm not the killer?" Naomichi looked stunned. Fear suddenly crept into him.
If it wasn't him, then who else could've poisoned the victim? Yoshimi clearly wasn't capable of it. Could it have been Kaoru?!
Thinking of that possibility, Naomichi hurriedly shouted, "I remembered wrong! I poisoned the cigarette itself! The poison was that lily of the valley thing you mentioned!"
Ritsu and the others all stared at him with speechless half-lidded expressions. Was this guy seriously treating them like idiots?
"Oh? Then tell me the symptoms of lily of the valley poisoning. If you can, I'll believe you," Ritsu said with amusement.
That completely stumped Naomichi. He didn't even know lily of the valley was poisonous, much less its symptoms. He stammered for a long while without managing to say anything coherent.
Hayasaka's face darkened as she warned him, "Obstructing a police investigation will add to your sentence. If you don't want to spend even longer in prison, keep your mouth shut."
"But if he's not the culprit, then who is?" Ran asked in confusion.
Kogoro once again turned his suspicious gaze toward Yoshimi and muttered quietly:
"I still think it's Watanabe-san. Maybe she planned some kind of lovers' suicide after being rejected, so she didn't care whether the police found out or not."
Kogoro's deduction was indeed possible. After all, there was a saying, the most dangerous place was often the safest place.
Perhaps Yoshimi had taken advantage of that very idea.
Both Ritsu and Shinichi fell into deep thought when a childish voice suddenly came from the kitchen behind them.
"Mom, my cavity hurts so much!"
The two of them turned around at the same time, only to discover the victim's mother, Kumiko, dressed in a kimono, washing coffee cups.
At a time like this, she was washing coffee cups? Her son had died from poisoning.
Ritsu stepped forward, intending to question the suspect he had completely overlooked, but suddenly the Shinichi beside him smacked his own forehead excitedly and shouted,
"I know who the killer is!"
In an instant, everyone in the living room turned toward him.
Even Kumiko, who had been washing the dishes, paused for two whole seconds after hearing those words.