Mele Kalikimaka Murder

by Aimee Gilchrist

  He nodded. "I know about Jared. You and Georgie told me."

  I stared at him. "She told you?"

  He nodded again. "Sure. At the beginning. After you told me about it. I called her on it, and she confirmed what she'd done and then told me why."

  I was completely befuddled by the fact she'd admitted to a man that, at the time, she barely knew. I was also really surprised he'd called her on it. I remembered his cold attitude toward her that day, but I hadn't made the connection at the time. "Did she tell you about the wedding? When it was? When she gave me the video?"

  He flinched. "Oh man. It was Christmas, wasn't it?"

  I nodded. "Jared worked the Christmas card department of a well-known card company. He thought it would be great for business." If bitterness showed through, I was sorry for it, but he hadn't broken my heart. However, he'd ruined my favorite holiday forever. "I was all for it. I loved everything about Christmas. Back then."

  Alex shook his head. "Jeez, what a douche."

  I nodded. "Truth."

  He sighed. "Look, I get where you're coming from. Truly, I do. But we need to replace your negative holiday feelings with positive ones, and the guests will be better off for it. So how can we make your Kalikimaka more Mele?"

  I had to laugh at that. "I have no clue. Especially considering what's going on right now. I can't believe all the poppies were gone!"

  He ran a hand through his hair. "No. Although I'm sure Ray was telling the truth. Look, when you finish what you're doing, let's grab Georgie and drive over." He saw my expression of horror. "We're not going down there. I just want to climb up the hill and take a look. Nothing closer. Maybe we'll see something they didn't, since we've seen it before."

  There was a long list of ways I didn't want to do that, but he was right. We were in a better position to scope it out than the police had been, since we'd seen every poppy in its full-color glory before being invited to take a swim by our friends at the cove. I nodded, closing my email.

  "Okay, let's go."

  Maybe the poppies and Mallory's murder didn't relate to each other at all. Maybe it was all a coincidence. However, I wasn't a big fan of leaving anything to chance. If there was a relationship between these things, I wanted to know it. And I wanted her parents to at least know why she had to die, even if we could never figure who had done it.

  I was a bit nervous how all of us, scraped up and sprained, would manage to get up the mountain, but we figured it out. It was slow going, and I couldn't help but feel the entire time that we were just sitting up there in the open, asking to be a target. However, since the people in charge of growing in the cove had already taken their drugs, there seemed no reason they'd still be around. I was pretty certain that the drugs that would come from those opium poppies were the reason Mallory had lost her life, though I couldn't seem to make any connection between the two events. We still had no proof of who Mallory's boyfriend was or what, if anything, he had to do with her murder.

  We reached the top of the hill and paused to recover before moving forward and reluctantly peering off the side, all of us clearly hesitant. I scanned the rows of brutally chopped plants and shivered, keeping my eyes away from the whirlpool. That was something I could go forever without seeing again.

  "Well, all these broken stalks weren't here last time," Georgie said mulishly.

  "Uh, guys. That wasn't here last time either."

  From Alex's tone of voice, I really didn't even want to look. But I followed the line of his pointing finger anyway, seeing what he did. The single pale, lifeless man, wearing his swim trunks, facedown on the shore, just inches from the ocean.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  We no longer had cell phones. All three of them had been either lost or destroyed in our murder attempt. We had to climb down the hill as fast as our injured feet would carry us and head to the beach next door and hope there was someone out there who had a phone. Luckily, there were several people hanging out on the warm sand, but I had no clue if surfers were normally inclined to bring their phones to catch some waves. We could only hope they did, or it would just be faster to drive down to the police station than to drive into Aloha Lagoon looking for a phone.

  Alex honed in on the same three guys we'd seen before. Mo, Big Steve, and the guy whose name Alex didn't know. We'd been to this beach three times, and two of those times, these three guys had been here. I would have loved if that meant something to the case, but it didn't. After six months in Hawaii, as far as I could tell, these people never went home. It was some kind of law people in Hawaii were contractually obligated to spend 75 percent of their lives standing on the beach. This just happened to be these guys' favorite place to stand.

  They watched us approach, not particularly curiously. No Name was smoking a cigarette, which struck me as really odd on a beach, though it probably actually wasn't. Mo and Big Steve couldn't have looked more bored if we were Jehovah's Witnesses. They barely glanced up from their perusal of the waves. Didn't look like anything but waves to me, but I had absolutely no doubt they were able to make a lot out of them, like when and where they wanted to drop the boards they were leaning against.

  Mo and Big Steve looked like Jack Sprat and his wife—Mo's impressively large girth a foil for Big Steve's skeletal frame. When they realized we weren't going away, they finally sighed in unison, including No Name, and turned our way.

  "Hey, do any of you guys have a phone we can borrow?" Georgie purred, and when they noticed her, their demeanor underwent a major change. In her barely there shorts and microscopic, slightly transparent tank top, there wasn't much chance of any man ignoring her.

  They scrambled around, each pulling a phone from a pocket or bag. She reached Big Steve first, plucking the phone from his limp fingers and flashing him a smile before stepping back to our side. They watched with undisguised lust as Alex dialed 9-1-1. We'd stepped far enough away that they couldn't hear our conversation, but they'd know soon enough, no question. Detective Ray told Alex he'd be there in ten minutes and to stay away from the cove. Like there was any chance of us going over there again.

  Alex brought the phone back to Big Steve, and I followed. Big Steve grabbed at it, never taking his eyes off my sister. His Adam's apple bobbed like a buoy every time he swallowed. His buggy eyes were about popping out of his head with Georgie nearby, and if he got anymore worked up, we'd need to call for him to have medical assistance as well. I felt sorry for him. But he was young. Hopefully, he'd grow into all that…protrudingness.

  "Hey, have you guys noticed anything weird around here today?" Alex was all casualness. He was great at making people feel comfortable. As good as Georgie was at making them uncomfortable.

  All three shook their heads. Then Mo spoke up. "Oh, I saw a helicopter off the mountain this morning."

  We already knew about that one.

  Big Steve turned to him, and in his squeaky voice said, "Nuh-uh. I would have seen that."

  Mo nodded so enthusiastically his hair was all over his face. "Yes, huh. I saw it. Like six AM. It was there for maybe ten minutes. Never landed. I mean, I don't think there's anywhere around here it could land except right where we're standing. But it just flew away."

  "Anything else?" Alex encouraged.

  Everyone shrugged in unison, looking a little disappointed. They probably thought Georgie was going to leave. All heads turned when a police cruiser pulled up to the beach, lights and siren running. The van from the coroner's office was close behind.

  Detective Ray stepped out, and his eyes immediately snapped in our direction. He pointed at all three of us. "You three. Here. Now."

  We glanced at each other, and I felt suspiciously like I used to when Georgie and I got in trouble with our mom. And that feeling gave me a highly inappropriate urge to giggle. It must have shown on my face, because Alex raised an eyebrow, and Georgie snorted. We managed to compose ourselves, and I felt bad. There were a million ways this entire situation wasn't remotely funny, but I guess we had to find o
ur amusement where we could when people kept dying and we had no answers, only more questions.

  Sufficiently sobered, I glanced at Alex. "I'm sorry I got you into this."

  He shook his head. "You didn't drag me. I came on my own, because you don't deserve to have to do this alone."

  I pulled in a shaky breath, concentrating on crossing the beach to Detective Ray. Alex was too lethal. He was kind, funny, smart, scorching hot, and I was fairly convinced his kisses should have been a controlled substance. Every single time he proved again what he was really made of, it became harder for me to remember that my life was a transitory one. There was nowhere I stayed for more than a few months. Including Hawaii.

  Detective Ray watched us approach, mouth a thin line of disapproval. "I told you to stay out of it."

  "We didn't do anything but hike up to the mountain and look over the side," Alex interjected. "You can check us. We have no equipment. We don't even have a phone. We had to borrow one to call you. We just wanted to see how different it was with the flowers gone, that's all. You certainly can't blame us for wanting to see with our own eyes that what almost killed us yesterday is gone today."

  Detective Ray's scowl certainly said he could blame us. Rick's helicopter flew by, ruffling all our hair and clothing. It was probably the only way they could really get the body out, though it certainly wasn't what he was normally paid to do. Rick Dawson owned and ran Rick's Air Paradise helicopter tours and normally raked in the dough hauling tourists to look at the jungles, waterfalls, and volcanoes dotting the island. He was one the sponsors of the luau in return for the advertising he'd get. In a little burg like AL, however, there were not a ton of helicopter pilots around for the police to call on.

  "Do you know the victim this time?"

  There was something very telling about the question, as though Detective Ray viewed us as the Jessica Fletchers of Aloha Lagoon, with dead friends and neighbors trailing in our wake.

  I shook my head. "I don't think so. But it was so far down. I can't really say. It was just a man. I think. Though since the body is facedown in the sand…honestly, I guess it could be a woman with short hair who likes swim trunks and going topless."

  Ray pointed again, making sure to stare each of us in the eye. "Don't. Go. Anywhere."

  Where would we go? Even if we ran, the only place any of us had to go was the resort. Like he couldn't find us there? Even if I had committed murder, I wouldn't walk away from such a labor-intensive and important time of year. I would have rather stayed and taken my chances with getting caught than risk anything going wrong with one of my resorts. Which was probably why I would make a terrible murderer.

  We spent two hours baking in the sun while Rick and search and rescue volunteers brought the body up and the cops down, and Detective Ray interviewed everyone on the beach. Most of the time we didn't speak. Georgie seemed to have fallen into the same kind of depression that had surfaced the other night when I'd pushed about Marty Gentry, and I wondered if downtime made her think of whatever the problem was between them.

  After hour two began to drift away, I started to get twitchy. We needed to get back to the resort in time for dinner, which was barely an hour away. Someone needed to host, and what if something was going wrong right now? There were trustworthy people at the resort, of course, but it was my job to make sure that everything went flawlessly, and the only other person I trusted implicitly was sitting next to me right there, listlessly twirling a stick between his fingers. If something wasn't perfect, I wouldn't have time to fix it before dinner.

  I was starting to freak out by the time Detective Ray came back to us. "Okay, you three come with me."

  I thought it was odd he kept calling us "you three" like we didn't have identities outside of a unit, even though I knew he and Alex were actually friends. Or they used to be. I wasn't sure how kindly Alex would take to be suspected of murder, even by an old friend like Ray, maybe less so than another situation or a less familiar accuser.

  The beach was filled with curious onlookers, and a single officer—I thought his name was Manuel Apodoca and that he had a pregnant wife—was holding back the crowd with his presence. All three of the guys from earlier were still around, along with all their friends and anyone else in the neighborhood who'd gotten curious and hoofed it over to the beach. Detective Ray led us to the back of the coroner's van, where no one could see us, and Dr. Yoshida glanced up at us before pulling the sheet up off the victim's face.

  "Do any of you know this man?" she asked in her soft voice.

  We all three cocked our heads to the side and stared. He probably hadn't been dead too long. He didn't look too dead. Mostly like he was resting. He was blond, attractive, and his face was friendly and open—the kind of person who was probably a salesman or marketer. I'd honestly figured he'd drowned when I saw him from the cliff, but it was clear this close that the only accident he'd had was falling onto a bullet with his temple.

  "He looks familiar," I said at last, though I couldn't place him.

  "Really familiar," Alex agreed.

  I glanced at Georgie, and she'd gone completely white. She raised a trembling hand to her mouth. "Don't you recognize him, you guys? It's the man from the club. Harry or Henry? Maybe Ned? You know, Eurotrash's brother."

  I stared at him and then back at her.

  Alex finally spoke. "Niall. Yes. Good Lord. What's he doing here?"

  My stomach twisted. "I told him to visit Aloha Lagoon before he left Hawaii. What if this is my fault?"

  Detective Ray stared into my eyes. "What is your association with this man?"

  I shook my head uselessly. How could this happen?

  "We don't have much of one. We met him the other night at a club called Spikers in Kapa'a. He told us he'd just gotten here from Ireland and that his brother, Henry, I think, was a permanent resident of Kauai. He seemed really excited to be in Hawaii." To my horror, my voice broke on the last sentence.

  Alex's hand moved to the small of my back, rubbing softly in comfort. I let him. It wasn't even because I was weak like I'd been when we'd found Mallory's body. I was just comforted by him. By his touch and his presence, which was what told me more than anything that I needed to separate myself from him.

  "And that was the first time you two had met him as well?" Detective Ray asked Alex and Georgie. Both of them nodded in unison. "So you don't know their last name?"

  "Aside from the fact they're from Ireland, so the name is probably Irish, we don't even have a guess," Georgie offered.

  Ray sighed and signaled to Dr. Yoshida to cover the body. As she moved to tuck the body in tighter so she could zip the bag, she moved him up slightly, and I caught a glimpse of something on the skin of his shirtless back.

  "Wait!"

  Every eye behind the van turned my way. I stepped forward. "Could you…could you move him so I can see his back?"

  Dr. Yoshida glanced at Detective Ray, and he shrugged. She pulled the body so I could see the mark I'd noticed fleetingly on his shoulder. The tattoo of the Chinese word for opium stared back at me. My voice sounded dead when I said, "Actually, in a manner of speaking, we do know who this man is."

  * * *

  Of all the people I'd pegged to be Mallory's British boyfriend, I certainly wouldn't have picked silly, boyish Niall, with his horrible dance moves. Was it possible he'd been the one to kill her? I couldn't even picture it. Though I had picture proof he was her mysterious boy toy from the beaches. Had he lied about just flying into town, or had he really been gone and just returned? He'd certainly lied about not knowing Mallory. Actually, in retrospect, he most certainly hadn't told me he didn't know Mallory. I'd asked if he did, and he'd vaguely responded that he'd just flown into town. Hardly a denial.

  Of all the people in the world I would have pictured as a grower of opium, even a small operation, he wouldn't have even made the list. And if he was part of the opium growing group, was Eurotrash as well? How would the police even find him, since we had no name t
o give them beyond Henry or Harry—none of us could remember for sure which it was—and the vague description that he was blond and one of the girls at the club called him Eurotrash. Detective Ray had mentioned that Niall had no passport on him, and if he'd never committed a crime, he wouldn't have fingerprints on file.

  It wasn't much to go on.

  I couldn't concentrate well during the dinner rush back at the resort. I moved from table to table, sometimes with Alex and sometimes without, greeting guests, being friendly, taking Alex's words to heart, and trying my very, very best to be in the proper spirit that people expected for the holiday. I didn't want to be the reason people remembered they didn't have a great time that one Christmas in Aloha Lagoon. I could never be Phillip, but I didn't need to be a jerk either. I'd let Jared sour me completely to a holiday that I'd once loved. He didn't deserve that kind of a presence in my life. I was determined to become jolly if it killed me.

  When everyone had moved on to other evening activities, including the show with hula dancers and fire-eaters out on Ramada Pier and a hula-dancing class near the waterfall, Alex, Georgie, and I rejoined each other in the lobby.

  "Look, we need to talk about what we know. Lay all of it out," Georgie said. "I'm starting to get confused."

  Alex's mouth twisted in wry amusement. "Just starting? I'm well into being confused by this point."

  She laughed. "Okay, point conceded. So does anyone think Eurotrash is involved in the drugs or even the murders? Should we go back to the club and find him?"

  Alex shook his head. "Absolutely not. If he is involved, we certainly don't want to draw attention to ourselves. At this point, they could still think it was an accident that we stumbled on the drugs. If we seem like we know something, maybe they'll try to attack us again, and when they expect us, they're bound to be much better prepared for us. We don't need that."

  Georgie blew out a slow breath. "Right. Okay, let's think. Maybe it will tell us something. Who's the first we talked to about Mallory?"