I moved closer to Fanny’s chair. “I think you should get in the habit of telling the truth.”
“Why would I lie?” Her fingertips played with each pearl in her necklace, like they were rosary beads.
Her indignant reply was almost laughable.
“By now the cops have Kalua’s appointment book. I’m sure they’ll be here soon asking the same questions I am, starting with your relationship with Hank Kalua—only they might not be so nice.”
“You’re being nice?” Her eyes narrowed with indignation. She got up and grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the table. She lit a Camel, took a quickly glanced at Billy, then took a drag on the cigarette. “Why would the cops be interested in who I invite into my bed?”
Fanny returned to the chair and sat, avoiding my gaze.
I carried a chair from the kitchen table and placed it in front of her. I set one foot on the seat. “Miss Chandler, your name is in the appointment book of a man found murdered just a few hours ago.”
The cigarette shook in her hand. “You don’t think…”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. Detective Tanaka…now, he matters.”
With Laura’s hankie twisted in one hand, Fanny took a long drag of her cigarette and let out a plume of smoke that blew past my shoulder. “Okay…Mr. Kalua stopped by…a few times. But I didn’t kill him.”
I didn’t know whether she did or not. “Was he here tonight?”
“No.” She answered a little too quickly and forcefully. I was starting to doubt everything she said.
“When did you last see him?”
She closed her eyes as if searching through her memory, or perhaps coming up with the most plausible scenario. “I…a couple of days ago. Why don’t you check that appointment book?”
Billy rose and began to wheeze. He paced the room as if he had something important to say. He stopped beside me. “I’m just a kid…”
Fanny reached for Billy’s hand, but he pulled it away. “Billy, you’re not a kid.”
He handed her the ashtray from the table. “Okay, then, I’m just George Putnam’s secretary. It doesn’t matter whether I knew about your affair with Mr. Kalua, but I’m pretty sure you kept your relationship with Hank a secret from Miss Earhart and Mr. Putnam and from everyone working on this flight.”
“Billy…Mr. Donovan, I’m a nice girl.”
Maybe she was a good girl. Maybe she was a heartbreaker. I didn’t care how many hearts she’d broken. I only cared about Billy’s.
Fanny walked to the kitchen and reached into the cupboard. She returned with a bottle of scotch and a glass.
Billy’s eyes glistened. His wheezing continued as he retreated to the couch, where Laura handed him a stick of gum for his asthma.
Fanny sat and poured herself a drink. She set the bottle beside her and took a sip. “I shouldn’t’ve become involved with”—she glanced at Billy again—“with someone connected to Amelia’s flight, but no one like Mr. Kalua ever showed an interest in me. I’m just a damn grease monkey.”
“It happens.” Laura took on an understanding expression.
Fanny took another swallow. “You know something about that, Miss Wilson?”
“Not personally.” Laura’s face flushed a moment. “But some of my actress friends were…involved with married men.”
I thought back to my two years in Florida away from Laura. There had been women, especially the first few months after the move when I was still feeling sorry for myself, but she’d convinced me she hadn’t seen anyone else while I was gone.
I shook off my doubts and focused on Fanny. “How’d you and Mr. Kalua become involved?”
Fanny sighed. “He met me at the pier and took me to lunch. It sounds corny, but there were sparks right away. You believe in love at first sight, don’t you, Mr. Donovan?”
I believed in love at first sight, but I wasn’t buying what Fanny was selling, not yet, anyway. “You called him and asked him to meet you at the hangar tonight, didn’t you, Miss Chandler?”
“No…no. I broke things off with Hank. I grew tired of sneaking around and”—she crushed out the cigarette and kept her eyes on the ashtray—“and lying to people I really care about…like Amelia and George.”
“He’s twice your age and you’ve barely known him a month! It doesn’t make sense.” Laura waved her hand, obviously disapproving of Fanny’s cavalier relationships with men.
“Maybe not to you, but love doesn’t always make sense.” Fanny finished her drink. “Right away, Hank made me feel special for the first time in my life. He was swell to me and bought me expensive gifts.” She touched the pearls around her neck. “I…I didn’t ask him to.”
Of course not. I scooted my chair closer, hoping to make Fanny uncomfortable and break through her exterior. “Was he coming to the hangar this evening to talk to you about your relationship?”
Fanny clenched both fists as she sat. “I have no idea why he came to the hangar. I was as surprised as anyone to see him there.”
I didn’t believe that for a minute. “Of course, when you saw him, he was dead. That must’ve been a surprise.”
She glared like she wanted to slap my face. I recognized the expression, mostly from my gumshoe days. Sometimes the look hurt more than the sting of a smack.
“I’d like to know this. Were you hoping he’d leave his wife for you? Or were you using romance to further your career, so you can become the next Amelia Earhart?”
Fanny’s hand shook as she took another sip. “Amelia once mentioned how nice you and Laura are. You’re not very nice, Mr. Donovan.”
“I’m not nice to people who hide the truth.”
She covered her neck with one hand. “You think I’d use…that I became involved with a married man to further my career?”
“Like my wife said, it happens.” I pushed harder. “You’re jealous of Amelia, aren’t you? You think you’re as good a pilot. You think—”
“I am a better pilot, damn it!” Fanny shouted. “Amelia has had more breaks than me, that’s all.”
Billy’s mouth dropped open. “She’s always been so wonderful to you.”
Fanny’s eyes narrowed. “Then why are you, Amelia, and George living in a fancy hotel, while I’ve been in this dump for six weeks?”
Laura raised her voice enough to wake the neighbors. “Amelia began to fly when you were a kid and so was aviation. She’s given lessons longer than you’ve flown. Be patient and you might become famous for more than sleeping with men to further your career.”
Fanny swallowed the rest of her drink like she couldn’t wait for another.
For a moment, I felt sorry for the young woman, but I couldn’t let her see that. “You decided to make your own breaks by getting involved with one of the men financing the flight across the Pacific, but when he didn’t replace Amelia with you, you shot him.”
Fanny raised her hand and tried to slap me, but I held her wrist.
Her eyes glistened again. “I do work hard, Miss Wilson. Sure, Amelia’s success stung some, but she deserves everything she’s accomplished. She’s a swell person and a fearless pilot.”
“I don’t think you believe that.”
“I don’t give a damn whether you do or not. Sure, plenty of us women thought Amelia got some advantages because she married George. We work just as hard, but…” She yanked her hand away from my grip with surprising strength.
Fanny gazed past Laura. Her eyes pleaded with Billy. “Gumdrop, you know me. I didn’t shoot Hank.”
Gumdrop?
Billy didn’t blink. “I thought I knew you, but I was wrong, wasn’t I?”
A tear slid down Fanny’s cheek. “I’m not the girl you think I am.”
She faced me, her lip trembling, looking more believable than anytime since she let us in. “Hank was having second thoughts about Amelia. He did talk about replacing her with someone else. Maybe someone not so famous, who’d generate less preflight publicity. Nobody’d ever heard of Lindbergh unti
l he crossed the Atlantic. Anyway, he thought if some nobody failed, it would just be unsuccessful attempt number eleven until someone finally succeeded.”
Fanny was suggesting Kalua had considered pulling the plug on his group’s financial support. If that was true, Amelia might’ve had a motive to murder Hank. I couldn’t imagine anyone believing that slice of baloney, except maybe a cop. “But Amelia brought press from papers all across America. Aviation will get quite a boost with Amelia Earhart as the pilot.”
“Not if she doesn’t make it.”
I wasn’t sure whether she was telling the truth or not. “Kalua wanted someone less famous…someone like you, I suppose.”
Fanny shrugged. “As a matter of fact, he did. Hank suggested I’d make the perfect person to attempt the crossing.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Were you two standing when he made that suggestion?” When she didn’t reply, I glanced toward the bedroom.
This time she slapped my face.
I ignored the sting like it hadn’t happened. “He was just stringing you along.”
She wiped a tear from her eye with Laura’s hankie.
I turned to Billy, who was staring blankly across the room. “Did Kalua say any of this to Amelia or George?”
“What?”
I repeated the question.
“I’m George’s personal secretary. I’d have known if he had.”
Fanny handed Laura the hankie. “You all need to leave.”
I wasn’t through. I peered out the window, hoping to get all the important questions answered in case the cops showed up. “Miss Chandler, do you own a gun?”
Fanny faced me with red eyes. A trembling hand went to her face. “What?”
“Gun, a pistol, a piece, a roscoe.”
She stepped toward the kitchen. “I keep it in the cupboard.”
I grabbed her arm and stopped her. “I’ll get it.”
Fanny sank back into the chair. “It’s in a box behind the coffee.”
I opened the cupboard and stared at what might be the murder weapon. I took out a pen from the inside pocket of my jacket and slipped it into the barrel of the revolver. I lifted it enough to confirm the gun was loaded. I had no idea what type of gun killed Kalua. The cops probably didn’t either, yet, but they would.
Fanny covered her mouth with a trembling hand. “I keep it for protection. A gal can’t be too careful.”
I put the gun back and closed the drawer. “Where did you get it?”
She stared at her hands, which began to tremble. “You probably have a good idea. You seem to know everything about me.”
Not everything, but I knew her better now than when I left the hangar a few hours earlier. “Hank Kalua gave it to you, didn’t he?”
Fanny nodded.
Laura shook her head. “Oh, Fanny.”
Things didn’t look good for Fanny, but she’d answered every question without clamming up. She lied plenty, but I still didn’t know whether she killed her lover or not.
I checked my watch. It was after midnight. I didn’t want us to be here when the cops arrived. “How fast did you realize Kalua wasn’t going to leave his wife?”
“He never said, but a girl knows, right, Miss Wilson?”
Laura held up both hands. “Don’t ask me.”
“Here’s what I think.”
Fanny’s eyes widened as I spelled it out.
“You put the screws to your boyfriend, Hank Kalua, two ways when it became obvious he wasn’t going to replace Amelia with you or make you the next Mrs. Kalua. So you suggested the two of you have a talk, alone. You invited him to the hangar, knowing Amelia would be going over a last-minute checklist with her plane. When he showed up, you shot him with the gun he gave you. You hurried to your car, but before you could drive away, George appeared and saw you so you got out as if you’d just arrived.”
“If I did what you say, why would I keep a murder weapon in my drawer? I only used it once, two weeks ago at a firing range Hank took me to.” Fanny paced the room, muttering to herself.
She froze as if an idea popped into her head. “You should talk to his brother!”
I intended to, but I didn’t want Fanny to know that. “Why?”
“They fought constantly. Hank was patriarch of a large ohana.”
“Ohana?”
“An extended family.” She poured herself another drink. “Hank and his family were concerned about the friends his brother, Ihe, kept.”
“What friends?”
“The Royalists.”
I played dumb like I didn’t know anything about them. “Who are the Royalists?”
“Islanders who want the monarchy back. They blame the United States and local leaders like Hank, who made his fortune associating with American business interests, for helping overthrow the monarchy. Ihe and the Royalists are…fanatics.”
Fanatics? Fanatical enough to kill someone who opposed their political plans and smart enough to try to frame Amelia Earhart? “And they just happened to shoot him in the hangar next to Amelia’s plane.”
Fanny nodded. “Sure, and make it appear Amelia shot him so the flight would never happen.”
I wasn’t sure how to separate the lies from the truth, but she’d given us enough to check on. I grabbed my hat from the table.
“That’s it?” Laura tugged me aside and spoke softly. “Jake, she’s lying.”
“Maybe.”
Fanny’s mouth dropped open as if the only person in the room who understood her had betrayed her. “I didn’t kill Hank Kalua.”
It was hard believing someone who’d spent the last half hour dodging the truth. “Miss Chandler, I suggest you get your story straight before the police arrive.” I checked the time again. “Which could be any minute.”
“There’s no story, Mr. Donovan.” Fanny opened the door. As we walked out, she leaned against the doorframe, showing some cleavage. “I have nothing to hide.”
Chapter 11
How I Became a Detective and Why I Stopped
I felt sorry for Billy, who walked with his head down when we left Fanny Chandler’s apartment. I’d never have guessed there was a romantic relationship between Putnam’s personal secretary and Amelia’s mechanic.
Fanny had shattered Billy’s heart. I knew a thing or two about broken hearts. Laura broke mine more than once, but things eventually worked out for us.
As we headed back to the Oldsmobile without speaking, I thought about the gun Fanny kept in her kitchen drawer, her double life as mechanic and femme fatale, her affair with a married Honolulu businessman twice her age, and her relationship with Billy, at least five years younger. She’d given me plenty of reasons to suspect she killed Kalua and tried to frame Amelia for the murder.
Fanny’s lies and deceit made her appear as guilty as a little girl denying she’d shown her panties to the neighbor boy, but she wasn’t the first dame with secret lovers. It was hard to picture her putting a couple of slugs into an important Honolulu businessman. However, my experience told me no one looked the part.
I’d worked cases with plenty of unlikely suspects: housewives, jockeys, and librarians who blew friends’ or lovers’ brains out. I also knew thick-necked bouncers who couldn’t stand the sight of blood. These days one couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad by looking at them. Stockbrokers looked like, and these days often were, hobos. Plenty of bankers wore frayed cuffs and ate at soup kitchens, and I’d just seen a female mechanic transformed into the girl next door.
Would someone who murdered a lover and tried to frame Amelia Earhart act so obviously guilty? Like a lot of women these days, Fanny smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey, but that didn’t make her a killer. She was a dame who’d made mistakes in life and plenty of slipups in Hawaii the cops wouldn’t ignore.
She’d entertained Kalua and at least one other man, Billy, in her apartment. She kept a gun, which might be the murder weapon, in her kitchen. She admitted being jealous of Amelia with little prodding and y
et…
I glanced back to her front door. If Fanny didn’t shoot Kalua, who did? Kalua’s brother, Ihe, and the Royalists might have been motivated to kill Kalua. Until I visited their hangout, I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t shake the image of a group of old guys longing for the good old days.
The killer shot Kalua in the back and put a second bullet in his head for good measure then disappeared without being seen or leaving any evidence behind. That didn’t sound like someone’s brother or a woman scorned. Even with one missed shot, the murder seemed like the work of a pro.
We reached the Olds. Billy smoothed his suit coat and straightened his tie before slipping into the backseat.
Laura gazed at me over the top of the car. “Why would Fanny think I’ve had experience with married men?”
“You’ve slept with a married man, sweetheart…for the past week.”
With a smirk, Laura climbed into the front seat, and I sat behind the wheel. I handed Laura her gun and she slipped it into her purse.
Billy’s gloomy mood vanished. He didn’t look like a kid whose heart had been handed to him on a platter. “We should call the cops and let them get the truth from Miss Chandler, but I wouldn’t rule out the Royalists either. What do you think, Mr. Donovan?”
The kid’s reaction didn’t surprise me. It was his way of dealing with the pain of rejection.
“The cops will be here soon enough. We’ll stick around to see if she leaves before that happens. I’d like to find out where she was going when she got all dolled up.”
Laura shot me a look of disapproval. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought that up, for Billy’s sake.
He met my gaze in the rearview mirror. “You think she was telling the truth, Mr. Donovan?”
Some of what the woman said might have been on the up-and-up, but she also told plenty of whoppers. The challenge was to separate fact from fiction.
Laura hadn’t shared her feelings about Fanny, but I had a good idea what they were.
“What do you think, sweetheart?”
“I hope so.” Laura stifled a yawn. “Because if Fanny didn’t do it, it means the killer’s still out there, trying to stop Amelia’s flight across the Pacific. Her life would still be in danger.”
Wings in the Dark Page 9
