She reached for a sliver of driftwood. With swift strokes, she made neat Xes in the smooth golden sand, her face carefully blank. “I was almost ten. Pigtails and braces and knobby knees. And here came Belle, gorgeous and…and overpowering. It was all pretty exciting. I mean, Belle’s a big deal, you know. Famous and rich and beautiful.” Her voice sounded faintly puzzled, perhaps recalling the child trying to fit an unknown quantity into her life.
“How long were they married?”
“Two years.” She scraped the stick across the sand, making it smooth again. She drew a gravestone.
“I understand you blame Belle for your father’s death.”
Her hazel eyes flicked toward me. “And who suggested that to you?”
Normally I avoid creating trouble. But now I welcomed it. Raw emotion often reveals truth.
“Stan Dugan.” A huge wave crashed, flinging a massive tree limb shoreward.
“Dear old Stan. Always has a kind word for everybody.” She managed a tight smile, but her eyes were agate-hard. “It’s too bad CeeCee didn’t live long enough to marry him. He’s such an arrogant asshole, I’d have loved to see what happened when she started screwing around on him.”
I looked at her in surprise. “Why would she do that?”
Gretchen laughed. It wasn’t an attractive sound. She rolled onto her knees and began to gather up the remnants of our picnic. “Because my departed stepsister was a high-class slut. Or maybe that’s uncharitable. Let’s just say she had a high-level sexual appetite which she indulged with a variety of young men. And not so young men.” She turned to look at me, her eyes mocking. “Will you put that in your book?”
I lifted the blanket and shook it. “I’m not writing a book.” I didn’t say it with passion. I began to see the object of our afternoon trip. Yes, Gretchen probably wanted to get away from Ahiahi, but more than that, she wanted to give me her version of CeeCee Burke. So it was okay with me if she continued to think a true-crime book was my raison d’être.
Gretchen picked up the basket. I followed her across the sand. She unlocked the car, stowed the basket. I tossed in the blanket.
As we drove off, Gretchen said briskly, “Right, Henrie O. You’re not writing a book. Of course not. And Belle’s having us here because she loves us. Yeah. And it snows here every July.”
“Why do you come if you hate it so much?”
We turned north again and left Hanalei, the road twisting and turning. We came around a sharp curve and Gretchen pulled up beside a stone wall. As we got out of the car, she said bitterly, “Have you ever tried to withstand Belle? It would be easier to push back the tide. Oh, no, I have to come. And it isn’t remembering CeeCee that bothers me.”
She walked ahead, leading the way to a muddy, rutted trail that wound down through clumps of pandanus trees, the onshore breeze rustling their drooping fronds. “It’s rough here. Watch your step.”
Suddenly the beach lay clear and perfect below us.
“Nurses’ Beach,” Gretchen announced proudly.
No lovelier beach exists: sparkling white sand, jagged black lava rock, tumultuous, pounding waves, and midnight-blue water stretching out forever. Some say life’s a beach. If so, it should be this beach.
“It’s too rough to go down to the beach today,” Gretchen warned. “People get swept out to sea very easily here when the surf’s up.” She gave a tiny sigh. “But it’s so beautiful.”
Beautiful and dangerous, nature’s favorite combination.
“So there’s something you like in Kauai.”
She grinned. “If I could be a tourist, I’d like it a lot.” Then the bleak and lonely look returned. “But to come here and be stuck up on that mountain with a ghost—I hate it!”
She whirled around and climbed swiftly back up the trail. I followed more slowly.
In the car, I braced as she made a sharp U-turn. “Now we have to go back,” she said glumly. “And tonight will be worst of all. We’ll sit around and talk about CeeCee. It’s so damn spooky.” Abruptly, she gave a peal of laughter.
At my look of surprise, she laughed again, a little wildly. “I’m sorry. But CeeCee would have hooted at the whole idea, this come-and-let’s-talk-about-our-dear-dead-sister bit. Nobody was more down-to-earth than CeeCee. She’d have wanted us to get out and have fun.” The road ran straight
and the car picked up speed. “Although I have to hand it to Belle. She does her best to make it a holiday. But it’s all wrong!”
I waited until we were past Hanalei, then said gently, “Perhaps it will help you if you look at it from Belle’s point of view. She wants to talk about CeeCee as if she were in the next room and might suddenly walk in and smile at everyone.”
We were climbing now. The taro patches in the valley floor glistened like jade in the afternoon sun. A herd of buffalo milled around the far end of the valley, incongruous but charming.
“But CeeCee never will. She never, never, never will.” The car picked up speed, swerved dangerously fast around a curve.
I wondered at the rasp in Gretchen’s voice. Was it anger at the kidnappers? Or at Belle?
“Do you miss CeeCee?”
“Me?” It was a spurt of surprise. She glanced at me, an odd look on her face. “Look, Henrie O, she was my stepsister. I thought she was ancient when Belle and Dad got married. Why, she was almost as old as Wheeler.” A smile slid across her face. “Funny, how little kids think a big teenager’s so old. But they seemed old to me. Then they went off to college while I was growing up. Oh, yeah, I knew CeeCee. But we were never close.”
“CeeCee was Belle’s favorite.” We were already passing the old lava rock church, Saint Sylvester’s. It never takes as long to return as to go.
“You got that right.” But the ache I had detected in Anders’s voice was absent in hers. After all, Belle was her stepmother, not her mother. Gretchen drove a little over the speed limit, pushing the car in front of us. “But Belle’s pretty high on all of us. She always loved the way we teased each other.” As we drove down the coast, she regaled me with
some of the more entertaining episodes. “Funny, Belle’s private as hell about some things, but she liked the way the press touted us as the Hi-Jink Kids. That’s all over. Ever since CeeCee died.”
“No more jokes? Not even from Joss?” I welcomed the soft current of air through the open window. Hawaii definitely has a sports car climate.
Gretchen grinned and her face was pretty when it lighted up. “Joss always came up with the wildest scenarios.” She slowed for a traffic light by the Kukui Grove shopping center. “But now that he gets to display his talent in Hollywood, he doesn’t have to find a private stage.”
She drove fast through the outskirts of Lihue.
“Tell me about Lester.”
That caught her by surprise. She gave me a startled look. “What about Lester?”
“How does he fit in?”
She turned north out of Hanapepe. “Oh, Lester’s wonderful.” Perhaps for the first time that afternoon, I heard genuine softness in her voice. “Lester—hell, he loves all of us, even the late-come Gallaghers. Equal-opportunity foster pop, that’s Lester.”
I remembered the shine of tears on his stubbled cheeks the night before. “He loved CeeCee?”
“Oh, yes. Maybe it was harder on him than anyone. After CeeCee disappeared, God, he looked awful.”
We reached the end of the cane road and she punched the intercom to signal we were coming up the mountain.
“And now you’re all scattered.”
“Yes. But that’s better. You can’t stay home forever. Even Belle has to realize that. Though I don’t know if we would ever have gotten free except—” She broke off.
“How often do you see each other?”
“Twice a year. Christmas and now.”
“Does anyone seem especially changed? Different?”
The sports car sped up the narrow road. “Of course, we’ve all changed.” Her voice was disdainful. “Noth
ing’s been the same since the lake.”
The car jolted to a stop, and the bronze gate began to open.
As we walked into the fairyland garden, she gave me a scathing look. “What else would you expect? Why do you ask?”
“I wondered if it were someone here who’s making you uncomfortable. Perhaps it isn’t remembering CeeCee that upsets you.” Was Gretchen one of those people—they used to call them sensitives—who subconsciously react to the psychic emanations of those around them? Was Gretchen’s irritability a reflection of a killer’s hidden anger?
I felt the danger here at Ahiahi, the emanations of menace and hostility. Perhaps I had a stripe of the sensitive, too. But I had hard knowledge, the poster and Richard’s daybook, my missing briefcase, and, last night, the hoary bat with a broken neck and a splash of bright red blood.
The shade from a coral tree dissected Gretchen’s face, but couldn’t hide the hard angle of her jaw. “I’m not upset,” she said sharply. She whirled away, pausing only long enough to slip out of her shoes. She grabbed them up and ran barefoot down the garden walkway.
Ahiahi drowsed in the afternoon sun. Black clouds bulked to the north. Only the click of the gardeners’ shears and the drone of a blower sounded against the distant roar of the falls.
When I reached my room, I entered warily. I looked in the bath, the closet. Yes, I checked the bedspread, but it lay smooth and tight over the pillows. I stepped out on the lanai. The silvery ribbons of the falls splashed down the cliff face, sending up lacy sprays from the pools below. A gentle breeze rustled the monkeypod and kukui trees. The susurration of leaves and the trill of birds and the rumble of plummeting
water created a lulling song of enchantment.
But I could not afford to be enchanted.
“Richard.”
I said his name softly, more a plea than an evocation.
A memory flashed in my mind, as bright and crisply delineated as a glossy black-and-white photo. We stood in the shadow of the Cathedral in the Zócalo Plaza in Mexico City, waiting for a minor government official who’d promised to bring proof of the president’s involvement in the assassination attempt on the opposition party’s candidate. I’d met our informant at a cocktail party the week before and set up this clandestine appointment. Richard was intrigued, but skeptical. “We’ll listen, Henrie O. But then we’ll dig. It always comes down to this: Who wins? Who loses? Who’s afraid? Who’s angry? Who’s lying? And why?”
The memory was so sharp and distinct I could smell coal from a vendor’s brazier and hear the bray of a donkey carrying firewood. And almost reach out and clasp Richard’s warm and living hand.
Then the memory was gone. But the words glittered in my mind like polished crystals: Who’s lying? And why?
The huge living-dining area was shadowy. I found a panel of light switches beside a bamboo-framed mirror. I flicked them on one by one. Pools of light dispelled the gloom, but the immense room remained daunting. This huge expanse needed people, talking, laughing, moving about. Quiet and untenanted, it had the lonely air of a deserted stage set.
A stage for Belle, of course. I’d not even glimpsed her today. Was she providing me time and space to seek out Richard? Was she simply absorbed in her family? Or was she avoiding me?
I would see her at dinner. But this was the evening devoted to memories of CeeCee, not an appropriate time for me to talk at length with my hostess. I could not suspect her of engineering the gathering to evade me. This evening had been scheduled long before I ever knew I would be at Ahiahi. If I were simply a guest, I’d have dinner in my room, afford this troubled family the privacy to recall CeeCee. But I was not simply a guest.
I would join them in this room tonight as they gathered, amid the cool and soothing Japanese screens, overseen by a blue terra-cotta laughing Chinese judge and an elegant cast bronze sea lion, to bring up the spirit of the dead.
Was that why this huge and eclectically decorated room was making me so uncomfortable? I felt edgy and nervous, as if danger lurked near. Was this an atavistic response, like that of a suddenly tense tiger poised to step upon seemingly innocent brush masking a hunter’s pit?
It was quiet, so quiet. To me, a foreboding, forbidding quiet. With the sudden change that can mark a mountaintop, a thick cloud abruptly settled over the canyon. I could no longer see the falls, but I could hear their constant roar, a menacing sound in a world hidden by gray mist. The milky fog wreathed ever closer until I could see only a few feet across the lanai, not even distinguishing the Chinese vases on their pedestals.
And—I jerked around. Then smiled in relief. A small green lizard flickered up the wall near me. But my smile faded. I still found the atmosphere oppressive. As if I were observed by unfriendly eyes.
I moved swiftly, eager to complete my task and leave this room behind. My thongs slapped against the planked floor.
When Stan Dugan and I had talked, he looked at the gallery of photographs above the wet bar and said that somebody’d been very, very clever.
I wanted to look again at the photographs. Faces do tell tales. Even formal studio photographs reveal much of the subject. But this gallery included a mélange of informal photos. It was these I particularly wanted to see. The candid shots, a hundred or more, were mounted within a six-footlong frame that was, in effect, a time line of Belle’s married life. They began when CeeCee, Anders, and Joss were little schoolchildren. They wore uniforms and stood stiffly in front of a low building with a humpy, treeless brown mountain in the background. CeeCee looked inquisitive, her fine-featured face alert. Joss smiled, his rosy cheeks plump and appealing. Anders had turned away, one shoulder higher than the other, his narrow face drawn in a frown.
There were so many photos: of a radiant Belle and a remote Oliver Burke hand in hand in a Japanese garden; of Belle in fatigues hurrying down a plane ramp; of Belle and the children each holding a wriggling Dalmatian puppy; of CeeCee on a pony; of Belle and Oliver in evening dress; of Joss and Anders fencing; of a teenaged CeeCee at Trevi Fountain; of Belle and her children on the steps of the Capitol; of Belle in the exuberant embrace of a red-faced and ebullient Quentin Gallagher at their wedding.
Now the gallery included shots of the Gallagher children: Gretchen—as she’d said—with pigtails and knobby knees and a lost look; of Megan graceful and poised at a birthday party; of Wheeler kicking a soccer ball, and of all the children—growing up now—at dances and hay rides, deb parties and barbecues. And at the lake, Keith Scanlon gunning a speedboat, Wheeler lazing in a hammock, CeeCee and Joss elegant in all white as they played croquet.
It was like overhearing soft voices tell intimate secrets as I studied the faces, captured in unguarded moments.
Belle rarely revealed her inner self, usually maintaining a reserve, presenting a public face even in private moments. It is the response developed by most politicians: a quick smile and a pleasant mien so often exhibited they become automatic. But occasionally the photographer captured her in an
open moment, her intelligent face quizzical or amused or affectionate.
CeeCee’s expressive, open face revealed that she came at life head-on, like a swimmer breasting a wave, welcoming the foam and the sparkle of sunlight and the struggle.
Anders was always at a little distance—half-turned or looking away or frowning—never quite in sync with the others. But there was one picture of Anders hand in hand with Peggy, and there was a private, special warmth in his smile.
Joss performed. Always. Only once had the camera pictured him without an FDR-bright smile. The shot was a little out of focus. He stood at the end of a pier, looking out across a choppy expanse of water, his face a study in isolation.
Gretchen was alternately vivacious and sullen, sometimes delirious with excitement, sometimes drooping with despair.
Wheeler’s heavy-lidded eyes and slow smile exuded sexuality, no matter the occasion. It was no surprise that he was often pictured with eager girls standing close.
Mega
n was always perfectly dressed with a perfect smile. Every picture was suitable for a magazine.
Keith Scanlon usually managed a smile, but he never looked quite comfortable, more like a visitor than a family member.
There were no photographs of Belle’s secretary, Elise. Elise had been with Belle for a number of years now. At the lake, it was Elise who had handed Belle the fateful envelope with its terrible message.
But, of course, this was a family record.
These were superior photographs, sharp and distinct, artfully composed and cropped, and, more importantly, filmed with care and thought and love. An excellent photographer’s work is distinctive. I would have wagered my plane ticket back to the mainland that most of these photographs had been made by the same person. And I felt confident I knew who had held the camera, watched these lives unfold, catching ephemeral moments forever with eyes of love. What was it Gretchen called Lester Mackey? Equal opportunity foster pop. That was nice. Very nice.
But what did he know of the evening that CeeCee Burke was kidnapped?
I turned off the lights. The room once again shrank into obscurity, the photographs becoming dim blotches.
I stopped occasionally to listen. I still had a sense of another presence, watchful and wary, just as I had while I surveyed the photos. Then I shrugged. I stepped out onto the walkway. The entrance to Belle’s study glowed through the fog. I hesitated, then headed that way. I didn’t deliberately walk quietly. But thongs make little noise. Elise sat at Belle’s desk, her face bleak and hard, staring out toward the foggy lanai, her thoughts clearly unpleasant. Obviously, she had no idea anyone was near.
Ordinarily, I would have slipped away, left her alone. But these were not ordinary times, not for me. Richard came here to die, and this young woman had been with Belle for years. Something was troubling her. It might be entirely personal, but it might reflect something of this family, and whatever I could learn about any of them could be helpful to me. I stepped into the office.
Her head jerked toward me. A cold and icy anger glittered in her eyes.
Death In Paradise Page 16
