Poisoned Latté Case

* Anime
* Manga

The **Poisoned Latté Case** is a murder case that happened at Pot Coffee in Tokyo.

It is the seventh main case in the *Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective* series.

## Overview

Totomaru and Chicory head to Pot Coffee so that she can interview him. There, they encounter Ron who is working at the coffee shop under the name "Kamokyu Chasaku."

Then, three women enter Pot Coffee—Hayami, Tamada, and Julie—and each of them orders a latté. Ron swiftly prepares them and finishes them off with platypus coffee art. Hayami carries the three lattés to their table. Shortly afterward, Julie collapses, and an ambulance and the police is called because Ron recognized that she had been poisoned. Forensics later specify the poison as cyanide; they found a capsule with traces of it in her coffee.

Prior to Julie's death and after Hayami brought the lattés to the table, Julie insisted to take a picture with their group and the coffees. Hayami then left to answer a call from her boss while Julie walked through the shop to take pictures of it. Tamada remained at their table with the lattés. This makes Ron (the one who made the lattés), Hayami (the one who carried them), and Tamada (the one who was left alone with them) suspects in the case.

## History

At the Metropolitan Police Department, Amamiya tells Toto that she has prepared a job for him. The job is not in his box though, it is in the conference room. Toto heads there and finds Chicory Monki, a reporter at Lime Weekly, inside. The editorial department put Chicory in charge of the coming issue's "persons of note" section, and she chose to write about him because she admires him due to his accomplishments, e.g., solving the Metropolitan Serial Drownings Case and the Hand Collector Killer Case.

Toto allows her to shadow him all day, even if that day is spent simply organizing paperwork. Chicory does not mind though and happily gushes about experiencing the work of "a famous detective" firsthand after they leave police HQ. He then suggests to go to Pot Coffee to have some tea and do the interview.

As they are ordering hot cocoa and black iced coffee, the barista says they do not have that because the "black" coffee is just brown sugar. Ron turns out to be the barista and he introduces himself as Kamokyu Chasaku. He explains that he taught the coffee shop owner how to make his special brown sugar latté, and after that the owner said he wanted him to work a shift. He came to make the lattés and teach the other staff. When Toto notes he has a lot of free time, a looming Ron says it is because Toto would not bring him any cases.

Three girls—Hayami, Tamada, and Julie—then enter the coffee shop and are entertained by Ron, as they order three lattés. Meanwhile, Ron arrives with the cocoa and black iced coffee, but Toto complains that his is pure brown sugar. Ron says does Toto think he would do that? He watered it down a little.

Afterward, Ron goes on to serve the three lattés, all with platypuses as the coffee art. Hayami mistakes the platypus art as a "cute duck," to Ron's chagrin. Chicory takes a picture of Toto, then says she is grateful for such a valuable experience, and that she is very interested in the difficult cases and impossible crimes that he solved. Ron grits his teeth, hating that he was off, and did not catch that she was a crime reporter.

After a few moments Ron presents a gigantic bowl-like cup, saying it is a free sample of his brown sugar latté. Toto pulls Ron aside again, asking what he is playing at. Ron says that if Chicory is a crime reporter, she could be a valuable source of information for difficult cases, and that they should maintain a good relationship. All he could do is create a good atmosphere. Thus, Ron tells Chicory that he can make her some special curry. Chicory grumbles at him, though, telling Ron not to make more trouble for Officer Isshiki, as he is wasting Toto's precious time.

After that, Julie drops to the floor, unconscious. Ron rushes over, telling Toto to call an ambulance, and the police. He says that she was poisoned. The ambulance and police arrives, and forensics give their report to Toto, confirming that Julie has indeed been murdered. Meanwhile, Ron has already lain beside the victim, but Chicory demands that Ron moves away, saying that this is Toto's "turf" and that he will solve the case; and she will record every step of his investigation and turn it into a quality article.

Toto begins the interrogations, lining up Ron, Hayami, and Tamada. They can assume the killer is someone who was able to touch the victim's cup, so he asks what the three of them were doing at the time, starting with Ron. Ron first says his latté was perfect, and with a grudge adds Hayami mistook his platypus art for a duck. Otherwise, he gives no further details.

Next is Hayami. She brought the lattés to the table, and Julie offered to take a picture together. Hayami got a call after that from her boss and separated for a while. Julie then said she was going to take some pictures of the coffee shop, and Tamada waited at the table. They later returned to the table, and Julie was the first to grab a cup. She drank the coffee, then collapsed. Ron says that, therefore, the ones who could have put the poison in were him, Hayami, and Tamada.

Toto quickly defends Ron, saying it could not be him. There is no way he could have known who would take which cup, and he would not have a motive for indiscriminate murder. Even if he were trying to kill Julie specifically, it would have been hard to specify that positions of the cups so that she would choose the poisoned one. Chicory is impressed by that, and so is Ron.

Hayami adds that it is not true, and Tamada also remembers something: Instead of choosing the cup closest to her, Julie took the latté from the back of the tray. Both Chicory and Toto wonder about this, with Toto saying there is no way the killer could have controlled the victim's actions to make her choose the one at the back, so Toto suspects a trick.

Ron raises his phone, saying Toto dropped it, but Ron had typed down "The victim's social media and the reporter's photos." Toto takes the hint and asks to see the mentioned photos taken by Chicory. Her photos are mostly of Toto, but she has one of the three lattés before they were served. Next, Toto discovers Julie's Instagram. He finds a picture of the coffee shop, one with the the three girls posing behind the coffee cups, and another with Julie holding the cup she drank from. Ron notices a problem, but Toto feels stuck, not finding a clue. He sits down and starts to sweat while he tries his best to find anything telling in these pictures. Chicory watches him and is surprised to see him behaving so differently than she thought he would.

Ron approaches Toto and offers him a "jumbo-sized hot towel." He says it would be a hit on social media with the logo of Pot Coffee, but Toto points out it would stand out for the wrong reasons. Ron, pushing his hair to the side, replies that this is the key: If you stand out for the wrong reasons, your life will go wrong too.

Toto gathers everyone and states that it was not an indiscriminate murder: Julie was targeted and murdered. The killer knew that Julie would choose the cup at the back of the tray. The answer could be seen in Julie's social media account. In all the pictures, Julie was standing in the center of everyone, where she would stand out the most and where she would look the best. For someone like her, it was inevitable that she would choose the latté that looked the best, without knowing it was poisoned. Hayami remarks that all three lattés look the same, but Totomaru tells her that they only looked the same until a certain moment: The killer used a nail to scratch the two lattés that had no poison. It could be done in a moment without anyone noticing, even in the short time needed to carry the lattés to the table.

The photo in Julie's account provided proof. In contrast to Chicory's picture in which the platypuses are all the same and which was taken when they were still at the counter, in Julie's picture, which was taken when the cups arrived on the table, two platypuses are scratched at the head. Thus, only Hayami could have done it.

She confesses and says that Julie always wanted to be the center of attention, and when Hayami's boyfriend got scouted by a talent agency, Julie stole him from her. Her avowal triggers Kill on Sight, and Ron orders Hayami to smash her head on one of the teapot sculptures in the shop. Hayami goes to the kettle, holding it to smash her head, but Toto can stop her on time by putting a bag of coffee beans between her and the sculpture. In the process, he hits Chicory's recorder and destroys it.

Afterward, Toto apologizes to Chicory, but Chicory does not care about the loss of her recordings as she could see the "true" him and understand who he really is: Toto is amazing not because he is able to solve cases like magic, but because he earnestly devotes himself to everything he does. She has even more respect for him than she did previously.

So does Ron, and he is so happy to share in Toto's excellence that he made more lattés, with the art saying "You did it!", "Got 'em!", and "Reporter connections." Toto immediately stirrs them in so that she would not see.

## References

1. ↑ *Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective* manga; Chapter 14, pages 11-22
2. ↑ *Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective* manga; Chapter 15, pages 5-6
3. ↑ *Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective* manga; Chapter 14, pages 2-25
4. ↑ *Ron Kamonohashi: Deranged Detective* manga; Chapter 15, pages 3-26