The Scent of Waikiki

by Terry Ambrose

  The tab for solving Grace’s case was heading toward the stratosphere. So infatuated was I with Benni’s off-the-shoulder, floral-print dress that I wasn’t about to mention it would have been far cheaper for Chance to simply give Grace the money she’d lost.

  Right now, we were sipping frosty umbrella drinks and waiting for Stephen to bring us a bottle of Chardonnay. Benni, Lexie, and Chance had been ogling the menu while I spent my time trying to decipher what would be gluten-free. When Stephen returned, he and Chance did the wine dance. Chance gave the nod, and Stephen then poured. Add another couple of zeros to the bill.

  I waited until Stephen was filling my glass to ask him the mundane. “Stephen, what are the options for someone with Celiac disease?”

  “The chef can accommodate most choices, sir. May I suggest the Seven Spice ‘Ahi. It’s one of our specialties.”

  I could see that from the price—not three figures, but getting close. With a quick, decisive nod, I said, “Sounds delightful. I love ‘Ahi.”

  Stephen left us to work on our drinks while he went off to, presumably, recalculate his tip, which was rapidly approaching what I made in a week. I looked at Chance. “You said you wanted to make a big impression, buddy.”

  “No worries, McKenna.” He raised his glass, the one with the frosty umbrella drink. “To good friends. May you and Benni have a long and happy life together.”

  We all clinked glasses, at which point I thought it would be appropriate for a toast to our host. I raised my glass. All eyes were on me. And I froze.

  I hadn’t prepared anything.

  Toasts weren’t my thing.

  I was a burger-and-beer kind of guy, not someone who ran in high society.

  “May the Aloha spirit be a part of our lives forever,” Benni said.

  Turning sideways, I smiled and winked at her. “What she said.” Once again, I’d probably lost my title as Mr. Smooth, but Benni’s dress was all the excuse I needed to get tongue-tied. I added, “So how’s this one going to go, Chance?”

  “Low-key, McKenna. At least for now. The guy could be a source, but we don’t want to alarm him.”

  When Stephen returned with the hors d’oeuvres, we all made the appropriate appreciation noises. Stephen was justifiably pleased that we were pleased. It seemed a good time to do a little quizzing.

  “Stunning display,” I said.

  “Thank you, sir. Our chef does a magnificent job. We’ve won numerous awards, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  As he laid out four small plates, I glanced up at him. “Does the staff ever get to eat here?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “Only to sample. My goal is to be able to do what you are doing tonight. Celebrate with friends here.”

  “You must be working two jobs, then,” I said.

  “No, sir, Just this one. But I’m working on a much better career.”

  It certainly wasn’t going to be selling perfume door-to-door. I picked up my glass and raised it to sip my piña colada. “What field do you want to get into?”

  “I have a degree in chemistry, sir. I am especially fond of dealing with scents.”

  Thank goodness I hadn’t taken that sip, or I might have choked. At least part of Joseph’s story had been true. I smiled and looked at Chance. “Did you hear that? Stephen’s a chemist who likes to work with scents.”

  Stephen moved on and put Chance’s plate before him, then started to backpedal. “I’ve never actually worked as a chemist.”

  “Fascinating,” Chance said.

  I gave Stephen a little nod, wondering if his involvement with Angela might be more than Joseph had disclosed. At that point we let Stephen go to work his other tables. The restaurant was packed. The atmosphere was strictly tropical, a stunning variety of green palms, colorful flowers, and ferns galore. The hors d’oeuvres were equally stunning and for the first few minutes, none of us said a word.

  It was Lexie who finally broke the silence. She looked at Chance and said, “You should offer him a job, babe.”

  “Doing what?” I asked. “Serving breakfast?”

  “No!” Lexie laughed. “Chance could tell him he owns a perfume company. He could say he’s looking for help and would like to interview him.”

  “It’s best to keep it simple,” I said. “If we start weaving a lie off the cuff like that, he’ll probably see right through it. We might blow the whole deal.”

  “McKenna’s right, Lex. We need to keep this simple.”

  “Here he comes,” Benni said. “I have a solution.” She winked at Lexie, then smiled at Stephen as he approached carrying a large plate with a minuscule piece of Ono and a few veggies.

  “The Ono, ma’am. Grilled, as you asked.” Stephen gushed as he set the plate in front of her. “One of my favorites. I think you’ll find the flavor to be particularly delicate.”

  Benni gazed up at Stephen and flashed him a smile. “Exquisite. Stephen, may I ask you a question?”

  “Of course, ma’am.” He maintained eye contact with her as he straightened up and extended a hand toward his assistant.

  I felt Benni’s hand clasp mine, and she said, “We’re getting married soon. I want the day to be perfect. I’m having a little trouble deciding which perfume would be the best.”

  With Lexie’s plate in hand, Stephen went to the other side of the table. As he set it down, he did another little intro about the food, then he straightened and looked back at Benni. “There are so many delightful fragrances, ma’am. It’s such a personal choice.”

  Benni let go of my hand and fingered the gold chain she wore around her neck. “Since you have technical training and an interest in scents, I wondered if you had any suggestions. I’d like something…alluring.” Her fingers slid down her throat to just below her neck where she let them linger.

  “I see,” Stephen said, then glanced at his assistant.

  “I’m looking for something new,” Benni said. “Maybe something that’s not on the market yet.”

  Lexie leaned forward and said, “I heard about one called Primal, Benni. Have you heard of it, Stephen?”

  With my plate in his hand, our waiter stopped dead in his tracks. His jaw tightened, and then he shook his head. As he laid my plate down, I said, “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  “I apologize for my lapse, sir. A friend of mine died today.” He took the last plate from his assistant and dismissed him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Were you close?”

  “We’d only known each other for a few months.” He set Chance’s plate in front of him and shook his head. “She was in a rather abusive relationship. That’s what brought us together.”

  Benni frowned and gazed up at him. “Was it sudden?”

  “Yes, ma’am. She fell from her apartment lānai.”

  There was a collective gasp around the table, then Lexie said, “Oh, my God. How awful. No wonder you’re upset.”

  Given that he’d just lost a friend to a tragic death, I felt Stephen was doing an admirable job of finishing up the delivery of our orders. If Chance and I hadn’t decided to ask him a slew of questions about his relationship with Angela, I would have simply let him grieve. But Chance was putting out a bunch of money for this dinner and though I felt sorry for Stephen, and it might sound cold, we needed to get some answers.

  “Could it have been an accident?” I asked.

  Stephen shook his head. He looked increasingly shaky—his color had drained, and his lower lip trembled. “I’m not sure. The truth is, I wouldn’t put it past her boyfriend to have pushed her.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Excuse me, I’m out of line.”

  “No worries,” Chance said.

  “We’re so sorry,” Lexie added.

  Benni echoed Lexie’s condolences, then asked, “Did she work here, too?”

  “No, ma’am. She worked for Island Passion.”

  A cloak of silence came down over the table. After a few seconds, I asked, “The company that makes Primal?”


  “What was your friend’s name?” Chance asked.

  Stephen glanced off to one side and sniffled. “Angela Keating.”

  CHAPTER 15

  After Stephen dropped the bomb about Angela, he excused himself to deal with other tables. Our conversation, though we tried to avoid the subject, kept coming back to Angela’s death. While Chance and I had only met her for the first time the day before, the passing of someone in Chance’s and Lexie’s generation hit us all hard.

  We were finishing our entrees when the evening’s music started. Arthur and Dani were one of the hot local acts. Arthur was a weathered man who played a phenomenal slack key guitar, and who had been playing here for years. But, like so many artists who get caught in a rut, he’d been ready to quit. Then he met Dani.

  An attractive twenty-something woman who’d been down on her luck. As a favor to a friend, Arthur had agreed to let Dani sing one song with him. She had a voice like an angel, but had never sung professionally. While their meeting may have been serendipitous, the results were anything but. Their collaboration created a vibrant, aloha-filled atmosphere that drew crowds regularly.

  Despite their influence, our collective mood remained subdued for one reason. We all knew what was coming. During the middle of the third song, I couldn’t take it anymore. I leaned across the table to face Chance. He looked at me, sadness in his eyes. The girls pretended not to notice what was going on, but they couldn’t miss our conversation.

  “What do you want to do about Stephen, Chance?”

  He sighed, scanned the restaurant, then looked at me. “We need to ask him more questions. Angela’s death is just way too coincidental. She fell? Not likely. Maybe the real reason she broke up with Joseph is she was dating some other guy altogether.”

  “Could be. But something’s off and I’m sure there’s a connection.”

  Benni sighed and shook her head. “You never believe in coincidence, do you, McKenna?”

  Closing my eyes, I thought back to a time when I might have been a believer. “I don’t remember the last time I saw a true, verifiable, coincidence.”

  “Verifiable?” Benni snorted, then shook her head. “McKenna, a girl fell from her balcony. Just because you two talked to her yesterday doesn’t make this a murder.”

  Lexie stopped pretending to listen to the music and chimed in. “Benni’s right. You guys are seeing boogeymen everywhere.”

  “Exactly,” I said. One of the first lessons I’d learned as a skip tracer was the importance of cause-and-effect. Call it Newton’s Third Law or boogeymen, the result was the same. My stomach tightened at the mere thought of murder. “I don’t like this anymore than you do, Benni. The last thing I want to do is go rooting around in some dead girl’s dirty laundry. But these things just seem to fall into my lap.” I glanced across the table. “And his.”

  “Tell you what, Benni.” Chance reached out and touched her arm. “Tomorrow morning McKenna and I can go to the apartment, look around a little, and satisfy our curiosity. We’ll talk it over and if we find anything unusual, I’ll take it from there. How’s that sound?”

  Benni took a deep breath and looked across the table at Lexie, who held her gaze. These two were like sisters. They seemed to sense the other’s moods and thoughts. Chance and I had joked on occasion how they communicated on some telepathic level. The truth was, they had similar values, goals, and feelings.

  Chance, on the other hand, was more like me. He liked the thrill of the chase and finding clues. But he took things one step further and enjoyed tracking down bad guys. What we’d discovered was that having the girls to temper our hunter mentalities kept Chance and I from doing something really stupid—like getting killed.

  “I’m not okay with this,” Benni said. “But I know how you two are. Neither of you will sleep until you figure this out. Besides, I guess I am kind of responsible since I pushed McKenna into helping Grace.”

  Lexie leaned forward, adjusting one of the spaghetti straps on her dress in the process. “Boys and their toys, Benni.”

  Her comment might have triggered an escalation of male denigrations, but Stephen chose that moment to show up and ask if we needed anything else. Other than divine intervention to assure us Angela Keating’s death was an accident? Not likely.

  Chance flagged Stephen with a crooking of his finger. He stood, whispered something in his ear, and the two of them started to walk away. Chance motioned for me to follow with a tilting of his head. I excused myself from the table, thankful for the opportunity to stand and stretch, but also realizing I needed a restroom.

  As we passed through the restaurant, I gazed around. Every table was full and there was a large crowd waiting. I didn’t even attempt to count how many were in the lobby; most of them had apparently jockeyed for position to see the duo on stage.

  Stephen led us down a hallway and to a door marked with a small male stick figure and the word Kane beneath it. Oh, thank goodness. Salvation. To my surprise, we were the only ones here.

  As if sensing my unease, Stephen said, “It should be empty until Arthur and Dani take a break.”

  With marble counters, gleaming fixtures, and cloth hand towels stacked in baskets woven out of Ti leaves, the place evoked a feeling of elegance and calm.

  Chance pulled out his wallet and held up a fifty-dollar bill. “I have a few questions for you.”

  Our waiter-turned-snitch acquiesced and leaned against the wall. “What do you want to know?”

  I figured Chance could handle the business end of things while I dealt with my own pressing issue. When I returned to the conversation, Chance was asking about Angela Keating.

  “Earlier you said she was in a relationship with an abusive man. What do you know about them?”

  Stephen’s jaw tightened as he stared at Chance. “What’s it to you?”

  “It doesn’t matter what it is to me, it’s fifty bucks to you. Are you going to answer my questions?”

  I suppressed a smile. Nice. The kid was getting really good at these mini-interrogations.

  “There’s not much I can tell you. I met Angela when I went to Island Passion for a job. She told me they didn’t have any openings, but would keep my application on file. I figured if I was going to get a job there I needed to learn everything I could about the company. The job market here is brutal. You know how it is.”

  Not really. I hadn’t looked for a job in years. Chance probably never would.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Research. It gets you on the inside track.”

  Stephen folded his arms over his chest and gazed between us. “Exactly. Anyway, I invited her to lunch. She said yes and we had a good time. We were just friends. That’s all.”

  Just like that? Angela the ice princess made nice with a guy who walked in and wanted a job? Not likely.

  “So you weren’t interested in her romantically?” Chance asked.

  “No. She wasn’t my type.”

  I immediately shot back. “What is your type, Stephen?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, are you gay?”

  “No. Whatever gave you that idea?” He stopped and snickered. “You’ve been talking to the boyfriend. Angela probably lied to him so he wouldn’t get jealous. It was one of the reasons I wouldn’t have gotten involved with her.”

  “What were some of the others?” I asked.

  Stephen shrugged. “I don’t know. She struck me as one of those people who didn’t know what she wanted in life.”

  “And you knew what you wanted,” I said. “An information source.”

  There was a slight edge in his voice when he answered. “It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “We’re not criticizing,” Chance said. “Everybody needs an angle.”

  Stephen didn’t seem to like the implication, but he also recognized who held the money and shrugged off the comment. “She seemed to need emotional support, so I asked her about her boyfriend. She’d mentioned him a couple of times during
lunch. He’s a real piece of work.”

  “Did you see her again after that lunch?” Chance asked.

  “It turned into a regular thing. We became friends. One time, she showed up with this bruise.” He pointed at his left cheek and shook his head. “I told her she should leave the guy. She said she couldn’t.”

  “Did you ask why?” I asked.

  “No. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it. It’s funny because that’s the day she told me how much she liked having a male friend she could hang out with and not have to worry about the guy getting jealous when anybody looked at her.”

  I scrutinized Stephen’s face. He looked so sincere. But, really? A fairytale friendship? It was time to get serious. “Is that how you got the bottle of Primal? She gave it to you out of friendship?”

  “Who told you I had a bottle?” He shook his head and frowned, then his mouth opened. “Oh, I get it. What else did he tell you?”

  The first thought that popped into my head was, why would I tell you? Chance and I exchanged a glance. It didn’t take telepathic powers for me to see he, just like me, felt no urge whatsoever to divulge what we’d learned. Instead, I wanted to put the heat on this guy and use his own information against him.

  “He told us you had a big interest in Primal.”

  Chance nodded in agreement, then leaned closer to Stephen.

  “No. That’s wrong,” Stephen said. “I don’t know anything about a missing shipment.”

  I glared at him, feeling a little twinge of satisfaction in the back of my mind. We hadn’t said a word about a missing shipment. But he knew about it. This guy was telling us only half of what he knew. If that.

  “How many bottles were in this shipment?” Chance asked.

  “I don’t know. Angela probably knew. She worked there.”

  “If I find out you’re lying to me, Stephen, I’ll be very unhappy,” Chance said.