Trouble in Tahiti

by Hayford Peirce

  I’d found them in his office behind the front desk. They looked strained and tense when they saw me, but not because of the brief scene we’d played out at their pool ten days earlier. The next morning, in fact, they’d greeted me on the terrace as equably as if I’d been invited over for a game of croquet. Of course, for them it probably was.

  “What do you think?” asked Bob in a flat voice.

  “That’s what I came to ask you. Could this be a hoax, as her husband seems to think, or is it for real?”

  Susan’s tongue darted out to lick her lips, and she shook her head slowly, as if bewildered. “That’s…that’s what we’ve just been talking about. It’s so…unbelievable! It must be a hoax. Things like that just don’t…don’t happen to your friends.”

  “How well do you know her?” I asked in a neutral voice.

  Bob shrugged. “Oh, comme-çi, comme-ça. We met her and her husband years ago, back when he used to come down here more often. She comes by for lunch or dinner at the hotel now and then, usually with visiting firemen. Once in a while we have a drink together and maybe dinner. How often would you say, Susan?”

  “Oh, maybe every six or eight months we’ll go to her house, or she’ll come to ours. Maybe once a year.”

  “Hrmph.” I wanted to ask if Danielle Payton had been a member of their swinging set, but I was no longer a cop on an official job, and there was no sense in antagonizing half the population of the island before I’d even got started.

  I leaned over the desk and gave him my best earnest cop look. “Bob. What do you think? Is it a hoax or is it real? Take your time.”

  He stared down at the glossy wood and with his fingertips pushed paperclips around on its surface, frowning. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Danielle…between you and I , I don’t think Danielle is all that stable. She’s not…crazy…or anything like that. It’s just…well, if someone asked me which of the people I know might pretend to be kidnapped, she’s the only one I would think of.” He held up a hand. “But even so…if we were in L.A., I’d say of course she was kidnapped. But down here…as Susan says—it’s just so unreal.…”

  “That’s not much help,” I said. “Yeah, I know: it’s an impossible question. What were your plans for last night?”

  “Plans?” Bob looked bewildered. “Oh! With Danielle. Let me think. It was what, Susan? A couple of weeks ago? We ran into her at a cocktail party someplace and got talking about Maine lobsters. I said I was trying out a supplier in the States who was going to fly some down, and the first shipment was going to be this weekend. We asked her to come by and have some with us, but she said she was busy on Saturday and Sunday, so Monday was the first day she could.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I saw some lobsters in a tank when I walked past the kitchen. So you had a lobster dinner for her last night and she didn’t show up. Tamara says she was the sort of woman who hated no-shows. Didn’t you think that was unusual, her not arriving?”

  “We certainly did,” said Susan. “When she wasn’t here by eight we called her home, and then again at nine. No answer.” She shrugged Gallically.

  I nodded glumly and returned to the terrace.

  * * * *

  There were two servants at Tamara’s home, a middle-aged Tahitian couple who lived a mile down the road and came to work on a motor scooter. When none of the Paytons were in residence they moved into the guesthouse and stayed on full-time. As soon as Danielle Payton flew in to set up shop, they returned to their own house.

  “Mommy doesn’t like to have servants around,” said Tamara. “She says she doesn’t need the status of having live-in help, only Frenchwomen who were peasants back in France want to make their lives miserable by having servants underfoot, now that they can afford them in Tahiti.”

  “Spoken like a true snob,” I said, but to myself. Out loud I said, “I can understand that. Not much privacy.” I looked around again. We were in a corner of a living room that was as homey-feeling as Candlestick Park. The Payton residence was yet another one of bamboo walls and pandanus roofing, built Tahitian-style with a number of independent buildings. We were sitting in an enormous central structure that sported a thirty-foot ceiling and that was nothing more than your average dining room, living room, and ballroom. You could have tucked three San Francisco Victorian apartment buildings into it easily. I half-expected to catch a glimpse of condors roosting in the rafters. The kitchen, bedrooms, offices, and whatnot were all separate buildings connected to the main house by pandanus-covered walkways. Most of those buildings were little more than droopy roofs supported by coconut posts, so privacy from servants would be at a minimum.

  We walked down to the retaining wall that kept the lawn from falling onto the beach and into the lagoon, beyond which Moorea was a dark blue mass on the horizon. We continued on around the property. There were three or four acres of neat lawn and coconut trees, with a tennis court and swimming pool flanked by their own bamboo and pandanus out-buildings hidden discreetly by bougainvillea and hibiscus. I tried to imagine what a spread like this would be worth on the California real estate market and quickly gave up. I couldn’t count that high.

  “Bob West said they called here last night about eight when your mother hadn’t arrived for dinner.”

  “I’m sure they did.” Tamara Payton scowled at a fallen coconut as if it had personally offended her. “The phone’s in the living room and by eight o’clock I was dead to the world. I never sleep on that overnight flight from L.A. It’s a wonder I heard it ring the next morning—this morning—when.…” She shoved the intrusive coconut under a bush with the side of her foot.

  We returned to the house, where I tried talking to the Tahitian couple again. They were simple, good-hearted people and clearly willing, but spoke only broken French and were unable to be of any help. The last they had seen of Danielle Payton was eight days ago, October 4th. Or was it seven days ago, September 20th? In any case, it was a Monday. Or maybe Thursday? They knew now that something was wrong, but only because we were questioning them. They were obviously troubled. Tamara did her best to reassure them, and sent them out to gather limes and make a cold citronade.

  “So your mother got in her car and drove off one morning and that’s the last they’ve seen of her,” I said. “Then where’s the car?” I made an entry in my notebook. “Is that the only phone?” I asked, pointing to the one on a table of monkey-pod wood.

  “There’s one in my mother’s room, out behind the house.”

  “Okay. Let’s split up the labors a little. I have some calls to make. You know the house better than I do, so you start by looking for your mother’s passport and license number of her car. And anything at all that might be even the smallest bit unusual or out of place. If you find the passport, keep on looking through the rest of the house.” I smiled at her as hopefully as I could.

  She nodded soberly and disappeared into the shrubbery outside.

  I walked over to the phone. All I’d really wanted was a little privacy.

  I called the Chinese girl who’d stood me up on the waterfront a couple of weeks before, and the Tahitian girl I’d taken dancing. I called everybody whose number was in my address book. None of them had ever heard of Danielle Payton.

  I sat looking at the phone for a long moment.

  Finally I sighed and called Hinano at the bank.

  Her voice came over the wire tiny, remote, and frosty, as if she were talking down to me from the peak of an Alp.

  But policemen, even ex-policemen, have thick skins. I persisted. “Look, we’ll have lunch together in a day or so and clear up all these silly misunderstandings,” I wheedled. “In the meantime, this is very important. I’ll tell you why when I see you. At the moment it’s not my secret, okay?”

  “Well.…” she said reluctantly. “But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I laughed. “Neither do I , most of the time. All I want to know is this: do you know an American woman named Danielle Payton? I know she’s a f
riend of the Wests.”

  “Danielle? Of course. Why?” Her voice was normally curious now, with a healthy dose of womanly suspicion in it.

  I had begun to sweat. Where was the citronade?

  “I’ll explain when I see you. What I really want to know is this: is she someone that ever goes, or used to go, to those…parties the West have…on Saturday afternoons?”

  There was a moment’s silence. “So!” her voice hissed. “That’s why you call me—so I’ll tell you if you can take her out and fuck her!”

  “Don’t hang up!” I yelled, just in time probably. “That’s not the reason! Not at all! I told you, this is important!”

  “Oh,” she said in a small voice. People in Tahiti apparently grow up yelling at each other. After a while I’d learned that unless you scream they don’t take you seriously.

  “Listen, Hinano,” I cajoled. “I really do need your help. And so do some other people. Please. Please try and tell me who she came with to these parties, or who her particular friends were. That’s all I want to know.”

  By the time I’d hung up and managed to mop my brow I’d had to promise to meet her for lunch the following day to explain my strange behavior. But in exchange I had the name of two of the guys and dolls that were Danielle’s special swinging friends: Yves, a guy in the administration, and Chatoune, a doll in a drugstore.

  I gulped the icy citronade the maid carried in and hoped for her own sake that Tamara hadn’t been listening in on the other phone.

  CHAPTER 10

  Yves Courtet was a chubby little Frenchman with oily skin, strong glasses, and a squint. Thick black hair crawled up his neck and down his arms and onto his fingers. The thought of him naked made me shudder. I wonder what he did to get himself invited to high-grade swings—maybe he was an Arab and brought his four beautiful wives.

  He was also an middle-echelon fonctionnaire in the Affaires Administratives and had not been pleased to hear from me. “Out of the question,” he had said firmly over the phone. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and no desire to learn.”

  I was exasperated by the conversation. “I can be extremely discreet, Monsieur Courtet.” I paused significantly. “Or I can be equally indiscreet.” There was a silence while he mulled over this none too cryptic statement.

  “Very well,” he said shortly. “Meet me for lunch at the Vaima.” He hung up abruptly.

  Lunch in Tahiti is normally at 11:30 or 12. Courtet arrived at 12:35 to show me that he couldn’t be pushed around. We stared at each other over the table, neither of us liking what we saw. We looked over the menus in icy silence and gave the orders.

  I decided to run a bluff past him. “I remember seeing you at the Wests’ two weeks ago,” I said with a smirk. “You may recall I didn’t stay long. Was Mrs. Payton there too? I didn’t see her.”

  “No.” He scowled at me. “You say Hinano gave you my name? I’ll have to have a word with her.”

  “A word is all it better be,” I advised. “Or I’ll break your arm.”

  He twisted his napkin in rage. It had been a long time since anyone had talked to him like that. “Look,” I said placatingly, “I’m not here to bully you just because I want to. I’m here because your friend Mrs. Payton appears to have disappeared and may conceivably be in very serious trouble. Her daughter, Miss Payton, has asked me to see if I can locate her.”

  “Why me?” he asked sullenly.

  “I have to start somewhere,” I said. “According to Hinano you’re a close friend of—”

  “That’s a lie!” he hissed venomously. “That Hinano slut has always hated me! This is her way of.…” His voice trailed off.

  “Unless she’s just plain lying, why would she say that?”

  He broke some bread and rolled the crumbs around in his fingers. “Maybe because we did arrive together a couple of times,” he admitted reluctantly. “I live a kilometer or two past Danielle’s house, and sometimes I would pick her up and drive her to the Wests’. But it was nothing more than that. I never saw her except…well, at the Wests’. I tell you, all of those people—”

  “Look, friend,” I said soothingly, “your private life is your own. It’s of absolutely no interest to me. All I want to do is find Danielle Payton.” He nodded in weary resignation. “All right,” I went on, “what would your reaction be if someone told you she had dropped out of sight for two weeks? Quick!”

  “A lover,” he said without hesitation.

  “Anyone in particular?” He shook his head. “What sort of lovers was she partial to?”

  He shrugged. “As I said, I never saw her outside our…little parties. I believe that she led another…emotional life quite separate from…from our activities.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He sipped his wine. He had relaxed a little and was growing expansive. “Well, I never knew her to bring anyone to any of the parties or to talk about her outside friends. And some of the people one…sees at the Wests’ enjoy…each other’s company outside of such meetings. Others are more like…myself and Danielle Payton. One might meet occasionally at such a party perhaps every six months or so, and then seen none of the other people until the next time.” He began to chew his steak with gusto.

  “What would you say if I told you she’d been kidnapped?”

  He set down his fork and stared at me. “In Tahiti? I’d say bof!” I nodded. Bof is a fine, all-purpose French sound indicative of disgust, incredulity, or disparagement.

  I swirled water in my glass. “Suppose someone told you she was just pretending to be kidnapped, in order to play a nasty joke on her husband?”

  “Ah.…” He laid a finger alongside his nose and nodded slyly. “Yes. That sounds the sort of trick she’d enjoy playing. We all knew how much she detested her husband, although not why. And she had a very peculiar sense of humor. I remember once that at one of our—”

  He also remembered to whom he was talking, and choked off the flow of reminiscences.

  “So you don’t know who her lover might be—if she had one?”

  “No idea. She didn’t discriminate. I’ve seen her with Frenchmen, Tahitians, Chinese, Americans, even a black man once. And of course she enjoyed girls, but only at…that is, I don’t think she would take one as a full-time lover.”

  “What about a girl named Chatoune? She appears to be a friend of Mrs. Payton’s.”

  He nodded. “Only casually, I would have thought, at our parties. She works in a drugstore.”

  “I know. I’m going to see her later on.”

  He sighed. “You will be discreet, won’t you? Our—”

  “Of course,” I said, dropping some money on the table. “I’ve already forgotten your name.”

  A brief flicker of a sour smile crossed his face. He beckoned me closer. “I would say that Danielle’s closest friend is probably Marie-France. Her husband’s Jackie Laurent, the doctor.”

  “Marie-France Laurent. Where would I find her?”

  “She’s a schoolteacher, so you’ll probably have to wait till this evening. They’re in the phone book.”

  I reached over to shake his hand. “Many thanks. I can count on you to keep what I’ve said confidential?”

  He nodded officiously.

  I waited until I was around the corner before I wiped my hand on my trousers.

  * * * *

  Drugstores in Tahiti, I discovered, were just what their names said: they sold drugs. No stereo sets, cigarettes, greeting cards, garden hoses, snow tires, light sockets, or school supplies. Just medicine. When I entered the pharmacie where Chatoune Tchen worked I felt as if I were stepping back into the nineteenth century. Or course, visitors from other countries may find it odd that in a West Coast drugstore you need a bloodhound to track down the man dispensing the pills.…

  There were two attractive girls behind the counter, a small blonde and a larger Chinese. “Miss Tchen?” I addressed the Chinese, who I now saw was actually part Tahitian, in that she was taller and d
arker than the pure Chinese. She nodded. “I’m a friend of Hinano and of Danielle Payton,” I said soberly. “It’s quite urgent that I talk to you for a moment. It’s to help Danielle.”

  Her eyes widened. “Danielle is in trouble?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out. It could be rather important.”

  She looked at me through large black unfathomable eyes. “Let me talk to the patron.” She swung around to a room in the rear. She had an erect carriage, glossy black hair that hung down to her waist, and a fine derrière that wiggled enticingly. If Danielle Payton preferred Chatoune’s company to that of Yves Courtet, she was not alone.

  We walked over to the Vaima shopping center and upstairs to an ice cream place called Bananas. I ordered chocolate ice cream for her and espresso for myself.

  “This is a somewhat delicate situation,” I began tentatively, and told her about Danielle Payton’s disappearance.

  “Why come to me?” she asked, with genuine curiosity.

  “Hinano said that you appeared to be friends. I’m—”

  She laughed. “Oh, that Hinano! Now I know who you are, you’re that policeman she brought to the orgy, and who left her standing there!” She laughed some more, and I went so far as to smile. She obviously didn’t have the same reticence about her sex life as Yves Courtet.

  “Were you there?” I asked.

  “No, I’d like to have seen it. People told me about it.”

  “You’re obviously not…distressed by this conversation?”

  “Why should I be? I enjoy orgies. I don’t tell that to everyone I meet, but then I don’t hide it either. What I like is my own business.”

  “Very wise,” I muttered, taken aback by her frankness. “So you’re friendly with Danielle Payton?”

  “Of course. She’s a very lively woman, high-spirited, full of fun. Any party with Danielle is always amusing.”