Mele Kalikimaka Murder

by Aimee Gilchrist

  "Mo, Big Steve, and that dude with no name," Alex filled in.

  "And what did they tell us?" I asked, not seeing any way this exercise could hurt.

  "That Mallory was there sometimes, sometimes at a beach near Kalihiwai, but if we wanted to know about her we should ask Squid, because they were better friends," Alex answered immediately.

  "Okay, so what did Squid say?" Georgie asked. "I wasn't there."

  I nodded. "He said that he was friends with Mallory and that she liked to go to the beach, which we already knew, and that she liked to go to Spikers."

  "So we went to Spikers." Alex picked up the thread. "And what did we learn there?"

  "That Mallory had an English boyfriend, and Niall was sort of close, but no banana, that she liked the club, that she drank and danced a lot, that she hung around sometimes with people from Aloha Lagoon, including Keanu Not Reeves and Poncho," Georgie interjected, getting excited.

  "We also learned she was taking surfing lessons, though we have no clue who they were from. We met Eurotrash, otherwise known as Henry or Harry, and Niall, who seemed nice and turned out to maybe be a drug manufacturer, if nothing else, who is now dead. There's no indication either way if he's the one who killed Mallory or if he was responsible for the attack on us." Alex ticked off the names on his fingers. "Also we learned that Squid either can't properly rhyme or can't properly pronounce the name Niall, as it should sound like Neeill, not Nill. So it really rhymes with neither Phil nor Bill."

  "So we went to see Poncho and Keanu and learned nothing except that she was friends with Autumn." I filled in the next part. "So we went to Autumn, who gave me the pictures of the boyfriend, if just pictures of some guy's back can be described as pictures of someone."

  Alex pointed at me. "Then I took the pictures and checked the symbol, saw it was opium, and recognized the flower as one I'd seen at Strangler's Cove."

  "So we all went down there together and got pushed in," Georgie helpfully reminded. "Went to the cops, who sent a copter, who came up with nothing."

  "So we went back, and the drugs were gone, but the body was there," I finished. "So what does all of it mean?"

  The other two stared at me. Georgie opened her mouth and closed it again. Both of them shrugged.

  "Not a clue," Georgie admitted at last.

  "Okay, so we have to decide what we want to do at this point," Alex said. "Do we want to keep trying to figure out who killed Mallory and why? Do we want to mind our own business and stay safe? Or do we want to casually ask a few questions here and there and pretend that we aren't investigating?"

  "Here's what I want." I touched on the heart of the matter for me and for Mallory's family. "I want to know if Mallory knew. If she was involved in the growing of those drugs. The rest of it, I'm sure the police will figure it out. But I'm also pretty sure that they will assume she was involved in the drug thing, whether she was or not. I don't want her parents having that on their mind forever."

  Alex nodded. "So how do we find that out?"

  I shook my head. "No clue. We could go through her things. I've been planning to pack them up to send home to her family. But we have to be careful. I don't want this getting around. It might scare the guests or even tip someone off that we're still asking questions."

  We agreed that early the next morning, when the security staff was distracted with the personnel change, we would go through Mallory's room, despite the continued presence of police tape on her door. If everyone was busy, it would give us the best chance to get in and out unseen. Until then, all we could do was wait.

  * * *

  I woke up extra early in the morning so I could talk to Seth Peterson again. When I got to the offices, Seth was still in the security pen, filling out reports. I would wait to catch him on his way out. Jonah, the night bellman, was busy packing his things up in the break room across from the security offices. There were three employee break rooms around the building, but this one worked the best for the night staff, and they were frequently here. I poured myself a cup of coffee I wouldn't drink and eyed him.

  "I've been thinking of having an employee memorial for Mallory. Were you guys friends?"

  He seemed incredibly startled, and I wasn't sure if it was the question, the context of it, or the fact I'd spoken to him casually at all. It could have been any or all of the above.

  "Not really. She was social, you know, but we weren't friends. She just liked to talk. And she liked to get drunk." He hurriedly added, "Not while she was on the clock though."

  I nodded. "Did you ever hang out with her after the workday?"

  He shook his head. "Nah. I'm working two jobs to pay for college. This is my second job, and from here my uncle flies me up to Honolulu for classes. After that, I go home and sleep for maybe four hours. Then I hit my other job. Then another hour of sleep, then back here. I'm not exactly Mr. Good Times." His mouth twisted wryly.

  "I'm sure all that work will be worth it in the end," I offered sympathetically.

  He blew out a big breath. "I sure hope so. She palled around with Darcy though. You know, from the front desk?"

  Right. Darcy of the terrifying fingernails. "Yes, I know Darcy. Maybe she would have ideas for something to memorialize Mallory. Thanks, Jonah." I started to leave and turned back. "Good luck on your degree. Is it in hospitality?"

  He nodded it was, and I nodded back. "I'll let the corporate offices know when you're ready to look for a job. We like people who aren't afraid to work hard to get what they want."

  He seemed momentarily shocked but then thanked me, quickly agreeing that he would and watching me leave . When I returned to security, Seth was getting ready to leave. I waved awkwardly. "Seth, could we talk for a minute?"

  It was clear he wanted to say no, but either way, I was still his boss. Instead he just nodded wordlessly. I took that for assent. "Can you tell me where you were between noon and six on the day Mallory died?"

  There was no reason in my mind to be vague or circumspect with Seth at this point. I wasn't asking about the poppies—I was asking about Mallory. Maybe they were really one and the same in this context, but nevertheless, I was asking. I was tired of not knowing what was going on. There were so many avenues that led to places we couldn't yet see. Knowing why Mallory was clutching Seth's card when she died wasn't going to solve everything, but it was something I could concentrate on.

  He eyed me for a long moment before speaking. "So you've finally decided to come right out and ask. Sorry, but I'll tell you what I told the detective. I was out of town, on the other side of the island. I have a gas station receipt from around noon. Then an hour later, I arrived at the house of a friend for a barbeque. There were several people there, and all of them spent time with me. I didn't leave until right before opening, since we were all expected to be here. Sorry, but I'm cleared."

  He didn't sound angry. In fact, he seemed almost slightly amused. Probably because he had an alibi. I wanted to keep pushing, to find whatever hole there was in his story, but Detective Ray had cleared him, which meant he was probably clean. But he was lying. About the card and his relationship with Mallory. If he was lying, there had to be a reason. I just had no clue what it could be.

  I watched him grab his bag and head out of the office toward the security staff morning briefing. I went to the front desk, hoping to catch Darcy before she left. I only had about five minutes before I needed to meet Georgie and Alex at Mallory's room, but I really wanted to see Darcy now, since Jonah had tagged her by name. I caught her in the hallway of the employees' only section of the building, where we kept offices and employee break rooms. She also seemed startled to see me. Either I was really scary, or the staff was really jumpy. I suspected Jonah was just easily startled, living his life on maybe five hours of heavily interrupted sleep a day and a boatload of caffeine. I wasn't sure what Darcy's problem was.

  "Darcy, wait."

  She stopped, looking decidedly like she was in a hurry and the last thing she wanted to do rig
ht now was listen to the boss. She even checked her watch, not particularly surreptitiously.

  "I know you're off the clock, but I'm just asking some of the employees who knew her best how you think the resort should memorialize Mallory. Maybe a plaque on the waterfall? Or is that too morbid?"

  Her face suggested it was definitely morbid. In fact, she seemed completely appalled. "I think that would be…terrifying. Couldn't you just plant a tree?"

  I cocked my head. "Mallory did die, Darcy. There's no pretending she didn't. We should at least acknowledge it."

  Darcy's bottom lip trembled. "I know she did. But still. How about something nice that will keep living, you know. Something that will be alive even when she isn't."

  I gathered, from her words and behavior, that she and Mallory had been close. "How friendly were you and Mallory?"

  She shrugged. "We spent some time together. Like I said, she was really busy with you. But we took surfing lessons together."

  Well, that was news. Finally, somebody would know who Mallory had been taking those elusive surfing lessons with. "Where did you take them?"

  "Windrock. With Joel Sugarbaker. He was going to be an Olympic surfer before he got hurt."

  The name meant absolutely nothing to me, so I just nodded encouragingly. At least it was a name I didn't have before and another person I could interview. I glanced at her. "I'm afraid Detective Ray is going to think Mallory was into drugs because there's some suggestion of drugs surrounding her death. I just don't know anything about her personal life, but I don't want her parents to hear that. It's not…it isn't true, is it?"

  She bit her bottom lip, and I knew with a sinking heart that it was at least partially true. Finally, she spoke. "It wasn't true that she was into them. She never took them or sold them or anything. But she did hang around with people who are into drugs. She never took any, I swear. No matter what the cops say."

  I knew that much was true. I worked Mallory far too hard when she'd been alive for me not to notice if her performance was impaired. I was heartened by Darcy's proclamation that Mallory didn't sell them either. I wondered if that covered the question of whether or not she raised them. I nodded.

  "Thanks. That's good to know. How do you know?"

  Darcy appeared startled by the question. "What?"

  "How did you know she wasn't taking any drugs or selling them or whatever?"

  Darcy blinked at me for a good thirty seconds before answering. "Mallory told me that she was tired of all drama with her drug friends, but she wasn't using. I mean, that would have been obvious. And she wasn't happy with the stuff they were doing. She wouldn't have been a part of that."

  I cocked my head. "What kind of drugs were her friends dealing with?"

  Darcy blinked at me some more. "I don't know exactly. Not pot. Something harder. She said it was too much. Not good stuff. Maybe, like, I don't know. Cocaine?"

  I pushed harder. "Did she say what they did? Buying, selling, supplying? Growing?"

  Darcy's lip curled, as though somehow this was the question that offended her. "No, she just said they were getting money from drugs. She didn't say how."

  If Mallory was annoyed by the drugs, why didn't she do something? Maybe she had. Maybe that was why she'd died in the end.

  I nodded. "Thanks for indulging my questions. Have a good day, Darcy."

  She nodded at me and turned away, and I watched her practically run from me, her rubber-soled uniform shoes squealing on the freshly polished floor. Once she was gone, I sighed and returned to the lobby, nonchalantly nodding to Alex before getting on the elevator.

  The fifth floor was silent and barren, as it always was. My room was empty, since I was here, and Mallory's room was empty, since she was dead. The police had requested a guard be here to watch her room, but we didn't have the kind of staff for that at the moment. The agreement was that someone would come by every half hour to make sure all was well. It would be longer because of the shift change, but once their meeting was over, they'd probably send someone here first.

  The elevator dinged, and Alex stepped out. Moments later, the second elevator sounded, and Georgie joined us. With trembling fingers, I used my master key card to open Mallory's room, dreading going inside. Careful to avoid disturbing the tape, we ducked through, closing the door softly behind us.

  Alex handed each of us a pair of rubber gloves from the housekeeping closet and glanced at his watch. "The morning security briefing was about in the middle when I peeked. That means we only have, maybe, seven minutes. No time to play. I'll take this room, Georgie gets the bathroom, and, Charlie, you're in charge of the bedroom."

  Mallory's room was another manager's suite, smaller than mine but still three separate rooms. Mallory's bedroom smelled like her. Her clothes were still in the closet. I again ignored the urge to cry. Now was definitely not the time. The television was on, no sound. Had it been on all this time? Why hadn't the police turned it off when they'd come through? What a waste of resources. I left it on though. I wanted no indication that anyone had been here.

  I sorted through Mallory's dresser drawers, pushing clothes to the side. I even felt underneath each drawer, looking for anything taped beneath. There was nothing. I looked in each bedside table, a search that produced a couple of romance novels, a Gideon Bible, and three pamphlets advertising surfing lessons. Glancing at my watch, I saw there were only two minutes left of Alex's estimated time. Shoot. There was way too much left to check. I was being too slow.

  Dropping to the ground, I checked beneath her bed, thrilled when I realized I could feel something fastened to the wooden bed frame. Paper. I stripped it off, pulling it out, and jumped to my feet. I had no idea what it was, but we could look at it in leisure once we were sure we wouldn't be caught by the security staff. I was one hundred percent certain that Detective Ray wasn't going to look on our snooping with tolerant eyes, considering how pissed he'd been about every other move we'd made to investigate.

  I ran to the living room, staring around wildly. Alex had a pile of papers from her desk in his hands. Georgie was nowhere to be seen. "We're out of time," I hissed, heading for the bathroom.

  As if on cue, Alex's alarm beeped softly. I kind of loved that he'd done that. Set an alarm for our illegal activities. It was so businesslike and yet so bizarre in context. Georgie had her head in the medicine cabinet. "Let's go!"

  She nodded and grabbed a makeup bag she had perched on the edge of the sink. Together, we darted out the door and into the hallway. We froze in horror when the unmistakable ding of the elevator sounded. Cursing, we dove for my suite, tumbling inside and closing the door just as the elevator slid open.

  My heart was going crazy, but Georgie appeared oddly invigorated, laughing hysterically as soon as the door was closed. I glared at her and dumped our finds on the coffee table. "Come on. We don't have time to look at this stuff now. We'll meet back here at lunch."

  We opened the door and came back into the hallway, where Silas was standing, staring at my door in consternation. "Miss. Alex." He glanced at Georgie and raised an eyebrow, giving her only a nod. After the office thing, he probably thought we were the weirdest people on earth. Prone to making loud noises and laughing hysterically for no reason.

  "Morning, Silas," Alex said, nodding back. He led us on to the elevator without another word or a backward glance, clearly not feeling the strain of our near miss. It was only two days until Christmas Eve, and we were getting down to the wire, so I didn't see Alex or Georgie all morning, as work took precedence. It took a million touches to make sure every Freemont resort ran like a well-oiled machine, and Aloha Lagoon had some of the highest standards Freemont had set out, since it was one of the highest-grossing resorts the company owned. We started prepping for the big Christmas Eve show weeks, or even months, in advance, but nevertheless, there were always still things to be done.

  We broke and joined for lunch at the Loco Moco, since we had to eat something before diving into the things we'd found in Ma
llory's room.

  "I talked to a couple of people this morning, and I did find one thing." I dipped a blue corn tortilla chip into Poncho's famous pineapple salsa. "The name of the man who was giving Mallory, and also Darcy, the night clerk, surfing lessons. He's some kind of professional surfer, maybe Olympic or something like that."

  Alex stilled, his hand midreach, chip crushed in his fingers. "Joel Sugarbaker?"

  I pointed to him. "Yeah, that's the guy. Do you know him?"

  He shook his head. "No. He didn't live in AL But he is the one who washed up on the beach three days before Mallory died."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  After lunch we headed back to my room to take in every detail of what we'd taken from Mallory's room. The balancing of intense resort work and investigation was turning out to be difficult. It was maybe fifteen minutes before someone would start to notice the absence of both Alex and me. We didn't have a lot of time to get this done.

  First we went through the papers that Alex found in the desk. Mostly it was practical everyday stuff. Copies of insurance forms, her rental contract for her subleased apartment in Chicago. The contracts she signed every year to continue her employment with Freemont. All of it amounted to nothing that we couldn't have found through public records or that I didn't already know because Mallory and I worked for the same company. A couple of pages were handwritten notes. A grocery list and a list of potential scuba instructors on the island. It was nothing we could use.

  The paper I'd pulled from under the bed proved to be just as useless, for all the subterfuge she'd used in hiding it. It was merely a page of rentals in AL that she'd shoved into an envelope. She probably hadn't wanted me to know that she was looking for a place, that she was considering staying on with this resort even when I'd moved on. I was a little sad to know that, but it didn't really change anything.

  Georgie finally dumped the contents of the makeup bag on the table, leaving us staring at a mound of mascara and lipstick, as well as a couple of pieces of folded paper. I sorted through the vials and tubes, looking for anything that could be used to conceal something besides under-eye bags, but there was nothing. It was all really just makeup. Georgie grabbed up the papers, and in a second she flipped one out in our direction. "Well, this is interesting."