“I don’t know.” Robert shook his head. “Too many variables. Why not just pilot Orochimaru back to port, recover the necklace, and be done with it?”
Jack had his theory. He looked at Maiko, giving her a chance to explain.
“I do not know what was in her mind,” Maiko answered. “I was not privileged to all the information. Possibly it was concern there would be questions asked about the missing crew.”
Robert scrunched his face the way he always did when he wasn’t satisfied with what he was hearing. Jack had seen the expression way too many times not to know what was going on in his friend’s mind.
“I think she was allowing for a low percentage of error,” he said. “Given Madam Takahashi was committing murder, I don’t imagine she’s opposed to outright thievery. But if she was to legally salvage the necklace with no one to dispute it, there would be no viable accusation of theft.”
Robert gave a nod of agreement. “Especially if the lone survivor was secretly on her payroll and he swore the sinking was an accident.”
They were on the same page. Jack added, “And that she learned about the tragic misfortune from him.”
“That’s a lot of supposition,” Kazuko said. “But it’s as good an answer as any.” She faced Maiko. “Has Madam Takahashi sent her people out in a boat to look for the Orochimaru? We didn’t see any vessels in the area the day we recovered your brother’s body.”
Jack realized he hadn’t asked that question when he first heard Maiko’s story. At the time, he was more interested in getting Robert and Kazuko into his room to hear what she had to say. He was glad they were getting around to asking if the salvage operation had begun.
Although he should have been the one to bring it up.
Maiko dropped her gaze to her hands. “Madam Takahashi was preparing to do that when she learned of my brother’s death from the police.”
“And from our inquires, I’ll wager,” Robert added.
“I’m afraid so.”
Robert let her answer hang. Jack figured he regretted probing into her brother’s background. He gave him a moment.
“The diamond,” Robert said. “Madam Takahashi’s plan, it’s all quite interesting, but why come to us with all this?”
“I thought . . . it’s—” She kept her gaze directed at her hands.
Jack saw no reason to press the issue. Maiko obviously mourned the loss of her brother and struggled to control her emotions. It was not difficult to see that’s what motivated her to expose Madam Takahashi’s scheme. He was sure Robert did not need to see her reason carved into granite.
“One thing’s for certain,” he said. “If Orochimaru sunk in the middle of the Kalohi Channel, it would take sophisticated detection equipment and a deep-diving submersible to locate it. Does Madam Takahashi have those kinds of resources available to her?”
Maiko met his gaze with teary eyes. “She certainly could acquire them if needed. But the plan was for my brother to kill everyone aboard and then sail Mr. Horiguchi’s yacht into shallow water. The transmitter was moving in the direction of Lanai when it unexpectedly quit transmitting.”
“Then it’s possible that’s where the boat is.”
Robert looked Jack in the face. “I assume you think we’re going looking for it?”
He smiled. “Aren’t we?”
CHAPTER 24
Light showed in the gap under Robert and Kazuko’s door when Jack walked past their room at 6:45 that morning. Either they were up early, or like him, had never gone back to sleep.
He fought a yawn and headed downstairs to the Pioneer Bar and Grill for coffee and breakfast. The morning was warm and muggy, the way it is in Hawaii after a heavy rain, and with no trade winds blowing to clear the skies. There was even a chance of more rain showers. The dreary weather added a dose of gloom to his mood.
But he had the answers he looked for. Thanks to Maiko.
He’d scooted her out the door and into the hallway at a few minutes after four to scurry back to whichever hotel or condo she was staying in. She had taken a big chance coming there. He was all too aware of that. And he wanted to believe she would be all right. But in the back of his mind he knew that might not be the case.
He respected Robert’s analytical mind. At times, his habit of over-thinking was annoying. But more often than not, his systematic approach worked out for the best. He’d warm to the idea of spending a few days looking for the Orochimaru . . . eventually, when he was ready.
There just wasn’t a lot of time.
Not now.
Madam Takahashi was looking for the boat too. She wanted that necklace back. And she wasn’t receptive to interference.
She’d already made that perfectly clear.
He still ached from the beating. And those three thugs of hers had only gotten started on him. It was doubtful they would have qualms about hitting a pretty young lady, or doing worse.
He felt Maiko was inherently a nice person.
That she had suddenly turned brave, exposing her case-hardened mistress’s crimes because it was the correct thing to do. And because she had finally gotten her fill of being a kept whore whose only goal in life was to survive each day manipulated and used seemed proof of that.
One thing was certain, her brother’s death had pushed her over the edge.
And where was the Orochimaru?
With so much occupying his thoughts he didn’t notice the activity under the banyan tree until he saw the groups of onlookers staring in that direction.
There were police there, and yellow barricade tape keeping knots of sightseers back.
He’d heard the sirens when he was in the shower, and had only given it a passing thought. A voice in the back of his mind urged him to cross the street and find out what all the police activity was about. Morbid curiosity, nothing more.
But then he knew.
Through a gap in the crowd, he saw the spill of black hair, the jade-colored dress, and the long delicate legs sprawled at odd angles in the gravel.
Bloodied and broken.
He glanced around for the black Yukon and Madam Takahashi’s three thugs, knowing they were long gone.
Hoping they weren’t.
“I can’t believe it,” a man a few feet to his right said. He stumbled back as if refusing to stand closer and swung around, his face registering shock. “I found her body on the way to work. The poor girl’s fingers were cut off—looked like she’d been stabbed to death . . . or gutted, more like it.”
Jack felt numb all over, an image of Maiko’s long slender fingers and impeccably manicured nails still clear in his mind. He recalled how she tried to keep her hands from shaking when she talked to them in his room scarcely more than a couple of hours earlier.
Perhaps a realization of what was to come.
Bile rose and lodged in his throat.
His conversation with Maiko had unknowingly been death-throes time. Turn his ear and listen to the condemned woman’s final words. Only she hadn’t known she was as good as dead.
Maybe she had.
He couldn’t help feeling miserable about it. The only way to not be depressed was to not give a shit.
He couldn’t do that.
CHAPTER 25
Jack watched the police do their job. He pictured her getting cut, the way he almost had. Blood spilling onto her jade-colored dress. The final glare of insolence in her eyes an instant before the lights went out.
What happened to her—it was all wrong.
It should have been him lying there.
The morbid vision locked inside his head. He swallowed hard, ridding himself of an imaginary lump, and faced the witness. “You talked to the police, right?”
“I . . . I called them. They took my statement, and they . . . they asked me to stick around. It’s truly awful what someone did to her. I couldn’t bring myself to wait over there.”
The man was having trouble getting the words out. Jack understood why. He stared at the grisly scene acro
ss the street. His gaze hardened into cold shock that he felt would be forever imbedded in his mind.
A jolt of mortality hit him square in the gut making him want to rethink the scheme he had in mind. But she’d come to him hoping to avenge her brother. And a couple of hours later, she lay dead in the mud under a historic banyan tree behind a hundred-year-old courthouse.
There had to be some perverted symbolism to it, he thought. But he had no idea what it would be.
The police were doing all the right things: collecting evidence and searching for witnesses. Everything he’d do if he was in their shoes.
Only they were bound by rules that went with the turf.
He wasn’t.
He’d drop a dime anonymously and tell the detective who did this to her: three large Japanese men possibly driving a shiny, black Yukon with dark tinted windows. He wanted it to be enough. Reality was, the cops would likely file the information away after it led nowhere.
But he will have done what honest, law-abiding citizens do.
Not that doing so would allow him to forget.
“Maiko?” Robert asked.
Jack hadn’t heard his friend approach. He kept his voice low, and said, “Maiko had enough of being that bitch’s concubine and they killed her for it.”
“Are you all right?”
“No I’m not all right,” he said, looking at Robert. “I’m not all right at all.”
“We were afraid this would happen,” Kazuko said. “Takahashi’s thugs must have been waiting for her when she left this morning.”
Jack wished he had a drink. A stiff belt of whiskey to wash away the blur fogging his thoughts. A strong breeze blew in off the water, helping to clear his head.
The salt air wasn’t enough.
He fought a wave of guilt and turned his gaze on his friends. “For some reason I feel like it’s my fault.”
“You’re not serious.” Robert gripped Jack’s arm. “Maiko knew how dangerous it was for her to come here. You can’t blame yourself for her murder.”
“Can’t I?”
“Not even a little. If you’d forced her to come, maybe. But not like this. It was her own choice.”
“Really? If I’d been content to go about our business and not get involved, she’d likely still be alive.”
“For how long?”
“They cut her fingers off.” Jack struggled with the image.
Robert paused as though weighing his words. “You need to understand how it is with women in her position. They accept each day as it’s dealt to them. In her mind the world was corrupt and insensitive. Her only goal in life was to grab what she could along the way and make the best of it.”
“Until they killed her.”
“And if they hadn’t, she likely would have been content to go on living her corrupt lifestyle until something happened or she became so repulsed by the arrangement she did whatever she could to tear her perverse world down around her. In this case, the death of her brother pushed her over the edge. Had you not come along, she would’ve found some other way to avenge her brother and end up just as dead.”
Jack understood what his friend was trying to do. But it was like hearing himself talk. Explaining away the pain of the situation. Still, knowing she’d gotten her fill of being a kept whore, and that it was her brother’s death that pushed her over the edge, didn’t make her death easy to accept . . . inevitable or otherwise.
And not without some measure of guilt on his part.
He exhaled with an exasperated huff. “You’re not telling me anything I haven’t told myself.”
Robert’s gaze did not waver. “Well then?”
Jack nodded at the Pioneer Bar and Grill. “Let’s get some coffee and talk about this.”
CHAPTER 26
Jack selected a table as far inside the restaurant as he could get. He didn’t want to watch Maiko’s defiled body wheeled away.
It was enough having seen her lying bloodied and broken on the ground.
“I’m thinking we should find someplace else to stay,” he said when their server walked away with their order.
Robert’s brow furrowed. “You haven’t had enough?”
“Enough?”
“Murder, Jack. They’ve upped the ante.”
The onshore breeze was shaving away a bit of the humidity and keeping the temperature down a few degrees. It had stopped raining, for now, but the storm was going nowhere. Jack looked at the water, allowing the wind to wash over him.
There was a comfortable lift to the cool air.
Not like out on the street with Maiko’s death staring him in the face.
He didn’t actually believe his friend’s attitude had changed from what it was when they parted company earlier that morning. Apparently, Maiko’s death had only served to strengthen a deep-seated resolve he’d harbored to not get involved. One hastily set aside in the excitement of lost treasure.
Big surprise.
Jack couldn’t let her die for nothing.
“And Maiko?” he asked.
“What about Maiko?”
“She came to us, remember? And died doing what she thought was right. I don’t think that’s something we can ignore.”
“Hold onto your ass a minute.” Robert flattened his forearms on the table and leaned forward. “What about the police or Coast Guard? Madam Takahashi is their problem. Or did you just forget about them?”
“Not at all. I just don’t think we ought to be so quick to cut and run.”
“You mean you still want to go looking for that necklace after what’s happened?”
“At least we should give the notion some thought.”
“These assholes kill people, Jack. Remember that.”
“Okay, it’s never stopped us before. We just have to be careful and cover our sixes.”
“They’ll be watching us, you know?”
He listened to a couple of myna birds squabble over a scrap of toast.
“Of course they will,” he said. “And we’ll be keeping an eye on them. At least on the water they can only come at us from one direction, the ocean.”
Robert fell silent in the din of the room. The server brought coffee in a white plastic carafe. He watched while she filled their cups. When she walked away, his gaze followed her to the next table.
Jack fought an urge to say more.
To build a case.
Robert looked at Kazuko, and said, “You’ve been quiet. What’s your take on this?”
“I don’t like it one bit,” she said. “You know that.”
“So you think we should just go home and forget we ever heard of Madam Takahashi and that necklace?”
“You really think it’s worth dying for?”
“Pardon me,” said Jack, unable to sit back and listen. “I don’t plan on any of us dying.”
Kazuko’s expression hardened. “I doubt Maiko did either.”
“That’s not fair,” Robert said. He took her hand in his and held it with his thumb stroking the backs of her fingers. “Maiko was stupid for coming here when she did. And she knew she was being stupid. I don’t think she cared what happened to her at that point. She’d had enough of Madam Takahashi, and maybe she didn’t know any other way out.”
“Fair?” She pulled her hand out of his grasp. “I don’t care if you think it’s fair or not. I say we forget about that necklace and go home.”
“Oahu?” Jack asked. “Kaneohe Bay?”
“Of course.” Kazuko’s gaze remained firm. “That’s where we live, isn’t it?”
“That’s the problem,” Jack said. “What if you aren’t safe in your own home? The bastards who killed Maiko know she talked to us. Cutting off a person’s fingers does that. So they know she told us about the diamond, everything. That makes us a liability. Do you want to jump terrified every time you hear someone behind you, every shadow that moves, the wind at night, every creak the house makes?”
Kazuko stared into her coffee. “You think they’ll come a
fter us?”
She looked tired. So did Robert. Their eyes were red and puffy. He doubted he looked any more alert.
He nodded. “I’d say there is a very good chance they will.”
“And if we stay here?” Kazuko asked.
“At least we’ll be on a level playing field.”
She looked at Robert. “And you agree?”
“I don’t disagree,” he said. “As long as we play the cards right.”
“And we’ll play ‘em right,” Jack added.
She was undecided. Her silence was a dead giveaway. He would give her all the time she needed to make up her mind.
His was made up.
“Maybe we should just go to the mainland until this blows over,” she said. “I know a wonderful place in South Dakota we can go to.”
“That’s certainly an option,” he said. “But don’t forget we’re still flies in the ointment, so to speak. Madam Takahashi will want us dead.”
“Even if we’re thousands of miles away from here?”
“I believe she’ll do what she feels she has to do to protect her assets and see that she doesn’t end up in prison.”
Robert spoke up. “I, for one, don’t want to have to keep looking over my shoulder to see who’s behind me.”
Kazuko slowly shook her head from side to side. “Me either.”
“Maybe none of us will have to if we find the Black Star of Africa before that bitch and her thugs do,” Jack said. “That’s a mighty big bargaining chip.”
“What do you suggest?” asked Kazuko. “We can’t stay here.”
“We can check into another hotel,” Robert said. “But I don’t believe that’ll do any good.”
Jack understood the implication. Takahashi had connections.
The kind that gets a person killed.
“That’s my thinking,” Jack said. He was glad they were in agreement that moving out of the Pioneer Inn was safer than waiting for Madam Takahashi’s goons to break into their rooms and slit their throats. “After breakfast, we grab our things and move aboard Fast Times. We’ll be safe there, at least for a few days. We can anchor off Sugar Beach until we come up with something better.”
Shipwreck Page 8
