CONTENTS
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Murder and a Blue Hawaii
Elizabeth Autumn
Copyright © 2017 Elizabeth Autumn
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
All rights reserved.
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CHAPTER ONE
Standing behind a bar at one in the morning was a normal event for me.
Hoping that the loan shark whom I owed money to wouldn’t show up was, unfortunately, also normal.
And tonight was the night that my hopes would be ripped away like a powerful ocean wave—because the slimey Bentley Barber was walking into my bar and there was nothing I could do to stop him.
I wiped a hurricane glass clean and put it away as the loan shark sat down at a table. I didn’t go over to him. If Bentley wanted to say something, he could come to me.
A guy with sandy blond hair walked into Blue Hawaii and slid onto an open seat at the counter. His hair was the color of wet sand, but my itching scalp reminded me of the actual sand that was in my own hair. It was an occupational hazard of working so close to the beach, especially since half the seating comprised of tables strewn across the sand.
Bentley was now sitting at a table, folding a paper napkin into a tiny square while he waited for an opportunity to speak with me.
I wanted to tear my hair out in frustration. He wasn’t supposed to show up for another six months. That’s when I’d have the money ready.
There was no way I could come up with it right now.
That was why dread immediately seeped into my bones when a man with a crooked nose and permanent sneer walked into my bar, months ahead of schedule and without warning.
The sandy-haired guy leaned forward. “Suspicious, isn’t it?”
“What is?” I asked sharply, thinking of Bentley.
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I just meant the sky. It’s too nice of a night, don’t you think?”
I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding in. This was just someone coming for a late night drink. I’d deal with Bentley in a minute. “Oh, yeah. The stars are nice.”
He grinned. “I’m Landon Stone. I’m here for a sales pitch and, apparently, I really need to brush up on my small talk skills.”
A wry smile crossed my face. “I’m Alana Park. What’ll you have?”
“I’ve got to go with the namesake of the bar,” said Landon, turning sideways to stargaze. His eyes darted around as he took everything in, but his mouth rested easy. I’d bet he was one of those people who coasted through life, not just because of his… suspiciously innocent face, but because he had the smarts to back it up.
Ugh. Some people had it all.
“Coming right up,” I said, grabbing a bottle of rum.
“Excuse me,” said a familiar voice as I made Landon’s drink.
I kept my eyes on the pineapple juice I was pouring. “What do you want?”
Bentley tapped his fingers on the counter. No doubt leaving dirty fingerprints. “My timeline has been moved up. I need you to follow through with your end of the deal by the end of the week.”
“I have six more months,” I said firmly.
I should have seen this coming. Of course Bentley would try to cut corners and move up the timeline. I had just been hoping that he wouldn’t.
“I’m giving you a week. That’s pretty generous. I could demand you pay me tonight,” said Bentley.
“Generous isn’t the word I’d use.” I sighed. “I’ll do what I can.”
Bentley left without ordering anything and I slid Landon his Blue Hawaii.
He sipped it thoughtfully. “This is excellent.”
I gave him a small smile. “It better be.” I wiped the counter clean, noticing the man sitting next to Landon was nursing a mostly full beer. “Micah, there’s no need to drink it all at once.”
Micah Robinson was a middle-aged man wearing a button down shirt and a simple chain around his neck. He came to Blue Hawaii often enough to be a regular, but he usually stopped by after work. Coming here after midnight was new for him.
Micah was staring in the direction that Bentley Barber left with a curled lip. Looking at me, he broke into an easy smile.
“I’m waiting for a friend to show up,” he said, raising his glass to me.
I winked. “At one in the morning? You’ve got a nice friend.”
Micah laughed. “He’s an insomniac on vacation and I’m a night owl. We were made for each other. Oh, there he is. Evan!”
Evan was about the same age as Micah and even had on a similar outfit. His dour face and tense shoulders didn’t strike me as a guy excited to see his friend, but I wrote it off as being cranky from lack of sleep. Besides, once Evan got settled and half a beer was in his system, he lightened up.
As Micah and Evan dove into a deep conversation in low tones, Landon turned his attention to me. “So, why do you owe your life to that guy who dropped by?”
My eyes widened in shock.
He rubbed his head sheepishly. “Sorry. I meant to have a better lead-in to that. Again, my conversation skills are not all there tonight.”
Great. An eavesdropper. Landon was astute, concerned, and good-looking. I was in trouble in more ways than one. Good thing he wouldn’t be here next week to see me in pieces after Bentley tore me apart for not coming through with the money.
I folded my arms. “I don’t owe him my life. Just my livelihood.”
I inhaled the thick salty air. Normally I enjoyed it, but tonight it was suffocating.
“What about your livelihood? What do you sell?” I asked.
“Kitchen supplies. Knives, cutting boards. Things like that. I’m here to convince a local restaurant to buy my company’s wares.” Landon sighed. “The meeting is at eight tomorrow morning. Or, this morning. Whatever it is.”
“You should be asleep, not hanging out here!” I almost pulled his drink away from him. I hated seeing people waste their potential.
Landon yawned. “I can’t sleep. All I keep thinking about is the small talk. I’ve got the sales talk down. But this client is known for spending an hour chatting before discussing sharp objects.”
“So?”
“So, she’s big into astronomy. I know nothing about stars. I couldn’t pick out the Big Dipper if it was right in front of me.”
“It’s shaped like a ladle,” I said.
“If I could play connect-the-dots with stars, I could randomly pick any of them to draw a ladle with.”
“You have to look in the right place,” I said. “You’ve got to find the seven stars that make that shape. You’ll know it when you see it.”
Landon blinked and then quickly s
tarted typing on his phone. “And what about other constellations? Do you know anything about them?”
“Last call,” I called out to the remaining people in the bar. To Landon, I said, “Just be interested in the subject. I’m sure she’d be happy to teach you about stars. You can impress her with your curiosity.”
A woman in her early twenties and dressed like a pirate suddenly rushed into the bar. “Excuse me,” she said, flagging me down. “Have you seen a pirate hat?”
“Let me check.” I pulled out a box of lost items. There was a large white shirt, a sewing kit, a couple phone cases, and a black hat with a red sash tied around it.
“My name’s on the inside. Madison Walker.”
I pulled the black hat out of the box, finding her name written inside. I handed Madison her hat.
“That’s quite a statement you’re making.” I gestured to the noose around her neck.
“I lost a bet.” Madison wrinkled her reddened and peeling nose. “I wanted a parrot on my shoulder, but no. I get a noose. My friends and I are here now that classes are out for the summer. I organized a pirate convention to celebrate. It was all going well until they assigned me to the gallows. Now I get to walk around with a noose.”
“Better than walking the plank,” I said.
“Totally. Could you imagine walking on planks for the rest of the trip? I’m terrible at cross-country skiing. Strapping wooden planks to my shoes has got to be worse.” Madison tipped her hat to me. “Thanks for this!”
She bounced off as I shook my head, hiding a laugh.
The rest of the night went smoothly. I closed up the bar when everyone had left, then decided to take a quick walk by the ocean to clear my head. Bentley’s sudden visit was disheartening. How was I going to come up with ten thousand dollars?
When I originally bought Blue Hawaii, I’d gone to Bentley to borrow money. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. I’d pay him off and I’d get a bar out of it.
I was starting to see the flaws in that plan.
I had been saving up and was almost at the full amount to pay off my debt. I’d definitely have it in six months. But now I needed ten thousand dollars by the end of the week and I didn’t think it was possible.
I could sell my fifteen-year-old truck. That might make a dent in my debt.
Maybe.
That would leave me without transportation, though. I could make do without it, but I liked the independence of being able to come and go without having to rely on the bus schedule or my own feet.
I held my shoes in my hand as my feet dipped into the water’s edge. I kept walking, deep in thought, for a few minutes until I almost bumped into a guy standing by himself, staring at the stars.
“Landon!” I exclaimed.
He turned, his forehead crinkling. Landon pointed to the sky. “I give up. It’s impossible to find anything up there.”
I studied the sky. Pointing to a set of stars, I said, “There it is. The Big Dipper is higher in the sky during the summer. It moves, depending on what time of year it is.”
“The ladle moves! You’ve got to be kidding. No wonder I could never find it. It’s been running away from me.”
I grinned. “If you follow it… There! The Little Dipper.”
Landon rubbed his forehead. “Nope. I’m not cut out for stargazing.”
“You see that bright star?”
“No… okay, wait. Yeah, I see it.”
“Now, connect the dots,” I said mischievously. “The two outer stars of the dippers point to Polaris.”
“Polaris? Now you’ve lost me.” Landon groaned. “At least the meeting is in the morning and I won’t have to show my ineptitude. You can’t see stars in daylight. I’ll take your advice. Maybe tomorrow night I’ll have better luck. What else have I got?”
I glanced at him. “I don’t know. You’ve got…”
My words trailed off as my gaze settled on an odd piece of debris floating in the ocean. I suddenly gasped, recognizing the object. “A body!”
Landon’s eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t realize you were so attracted to me. I mean, I do all right in the looks department, but it’s dark out. Wait until you see me in my full glory. Then you’ll change your mind, for sure. The sun brings out all my flaws.”
I guided his chin to the direction of the body bobbing in the small waves. “No, look!”
Without hesitation, I jumped into the water. Landon followed me a few seconds later. Together, we pulled the body onto the sand.
“Isn’t that…?” Landon covered his mouth, turning away and dry heaving.
In the moonlight, the body’s face was covered in shadows. But his crooked nose and sneer were still clearly in tact.
Bentley Barber stared blankly at the stars as I looked in horror at his corpse.
A noose was tied around his neck. I yanked the rope off of him, but it was of no use. He wasn’t going to take another breath.
Ever.
CHAPTER TWO
The police arrived on the scene shortly after I discovered the body. My phone had been damaged from my dive into the ocean, but Landon’s had survived the plunge.
A quick call to the authorities lead to Bentley being covered up and taken away in no time.
I wasn’t actually sure how long it took. It might have been minutes or hours—my heart was beating so fast that it seemed to have sped up time itself.
A mustached man came by to take our statements as my heart was slowly returning to a normal pace.
“Moonlight fishing, hmm?” asked Detective Henry Chang. “Alana, you caught a big one.”
“Beginner’s luck,” I said, my mouth opening into a smile when I saw who it was.
Detective Chang was just Henry to me, on normal days.
Days when I didn’t find a corpse floating in the salty water.
He was my best friend Maya’s boyfriend, as well as a good friend of mine. Henry was one of the most laid-back people I’d ever met. It took a lot to get a rise out of him.
“Did he flop like a fish?” Henry asked out of the corner of his mouth.
Landon stared at him, unsure what to make of the jovial detective.
Henry’s inappropriate brand of humor in serious situations was something that I’d long been used to. He and Maya had been dating for a few years now. Her structured sensibilities and his desire to mix things up made for a surprisingly peaceful union.
As for me, I was as far from a committed relationship as you could get. Getting dates was easy enough—it was keeping them that I struggled with.
Distracted is what Maya called me. I liked to think of it as not settling. There were so many people in the world and I lived on an island. What if my soulmate lived on the mainland? Or on another continent?
I inwardly cringed at the word soulmate.
Maya and Henry were soulmates, if such a thing existed. It worked for plenty of people. It just wasn’t a term that resonated with me.
I wasn’t sure why I was so cynical about love. I think it was simply the fact that my life was a mess. I needed to be in better financial standing. I should probably work on not misplacing items so easily. The list could go on for forever.
Now would be the exact wrong time to meet a guy.
So why was Landon’s face popping into my mind?
I shook my head. He was standing next to me, of course I would be thinking of him. His sandy hair perfectly framed his face and his eyes were like looking at the stars.
“Why are you shaking your head?” asked Landon curiously.
To get you out of it.
“Sand,” I said. “My head’s itchy from it.”
Nice. That’s a definite mood-killer. Okay, I can continue like nothing happened. I’m not thinking of how his wet shirt is clinging to his chest. Not at all.
Landon smiled. “You want any help with that?”
Yes. Absolutely.
“No, I’m good,” I said.
I could have had his fingers running through my hair! Al
ana, this was your chance!
I shook my head again. “That’s the last of it.” I looked at him. “So, Landon. How are you adjusting to Hawaii? Anything I can help you with?”
Landon smiled. “I’m from Las Vegas. Heat I’m used to. But this humidity is something else.”
“I like to think of it as a warm pillow that hugs you all day,” I said.
“Not a pillow that’s smothering you?” Landon asked wryly.
I shuddered. Smothering was the last thing I wanted to think of right now.
Landon’s smile faltered. “I didn’t mean that—it came out all wrong.”
I put a hand on his arm. “I know.”
His blue eyes lingered on my hand as a woman wearing a navy blouse and tan slacks frantically marched over to us. Maya Rodriguez quickly spoke to Detective Chang before coming over to Landon and I.
Maya was a serious, confident person. She liked facts and schedules. Small talk slowly killed her and her blunt manner of speaking had gotten her into trouble more times than I could count.
Maya’s parents had been in the hospitality business Maya’s whole life. Maya grew up playing hide-and-go-seek in hotel lobbies. They had always envisioned owning their own hotel one day.
Her parents were in the process of building Sandy Turtle when they met their untimely demise. Maya jumped right in and took over, taking Sandy Turtle, a mid-range hotel, to great success.
My bar wasn’t a part of Sandy Turtle, but since it was right in between the hotel and the beach, Maya and I often promoted each other’s business. Plus, it was great working steps from my best friend.
Maya joined us, brushing back her curly, dark brown hair that fell to her shoulders. She wore an emerald pendant necklace and a confused expression.
“A guest told the front desk agent and she alerted me right away,” said Maya. “What happened?”
“I’d like to pretend that I’m a treasure hunter who stumbled across a body instead of a chest filled with gold,” I said. “You came here in the middle of the night just to see if I’m okay? I’m touched.”
I hugged Maya, who stiffly hugged me back.
“Well, a dead body did wash up on shore inches away from my hotel.” Maya’s face softened. “But are you all right?”
Murder and a Blue Hawaii (A Blue Hawaii Mystery Book 1) Page 1
