Bungo Tatei wants to kill himself and have his friend Joji Narukawa accused of actually murdering him, in order to avenge his girlfriend Ami's death, caused more or less by Narukawa. Though, Conan and co stop him from doing so, and explain him the truth.
Sonoko takes Ran and Conan to a marple forest in Gumna to imitate a scene from a popular tv-drama for her new romantic plan involving Makoto. She wants to tied up a red handkerchief, so she can meet up with Makoto there. But unfortunately they discover that other fans of the drama has gotten the same idea and tied up red handkerchiefs themselves. They then meet a man claimed to have inspired the drama by having found a red handkerchief tied to a tree in the same forest and told the writer who used it in the drama. He tells them that he has been asked by a fan to find the original red handkerchief and asks Ran and Sonoko to leave a message in the guestbook at the inn, where the fan is staying. He tells them to sign it Hozumi in katakana. After Ran, Sonoko and Conan follows his request, they decides to go back to the forest, but there they find Hozumi murdered.
The culprit is Tatsuzo Watanuki. It turns out that he once murdered someone and buried the body under a tree. He marked the spot by tying a red handkerchief up in the tree. The red color would hide it from passerbys since people normally visited the mountian during autumn, where the leaves would be red. But that handkerchief ended up inspiring the drama and as a result of it's popularity, fans visited the mountain and tied red handkerchiefs up, making it impossible for Watanuki to find the original tree. So he found Hozumi and paid him to point out that tree. But once the two men met, Hozumi had already found the bones and tried to blackmail Watanuki, which got him killed. Conan then explains that it wouldn't hard to find the original handkerchief. The tv-station wouldn't film the drama near it and risk having two handkerchiefs caught on camera, and at the same time the original handkerchief was the inspiration, so they wouldn't take it down. Makoto turns up unexpectedly to rescue Sonoko and Conan by beating up all of Watanuki's crooks, just as Ran.
People
Hozumi
Victim (stabbed)
Assistant director
Isamu Okuma
25 years old
Akagi Inn guest
Tatsuzo Watanuki
63 years old
Akagi Inn guest
Hans Berkeley
41 years old
Akagi Inn guest
Trivia
The title for each chapter are worded as the following in Case Closed:
