Vacations Can Be Murder: The Second Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  She wadded the Kleenex into a ball, which she rhythmically squeezed in her palm like a grip strengthener.

  “Now I'm opening my own club. Gil was helping with the financing."

  I pulled out my little notebook, and jotted down the name she gave me. Workout Heaven. Hmm, a complete contradiction in terms, in my mind. She wanted to tell me all about the equipment they had, and offered me a free month membership.

  "Sure," I said, "although I don't get to San Francisco too often."

  I couldn't admit to her that I don't exercise because I really hate it. My brother, Ron, tells me that attitude will catch up with me one day, probably soon, now that I've hit the big three-oh.

  "Tell me more about you and Gil," I prompted.

  "We were sleeping together within the first two weeks after we met. His wife is an iceberg. She drinks a lot, which is really terrible for your body, you know. She dotes on that kid, Jason, while she treats Gil like dirt. She nagged at Gil all the time—Jason needs this, Jason needs that. You know what Jason's latest thing is? Race cars. He wanted Daddy to just up and buy him one of those fancy ones, so he could join the circuit. Can you believe it? Do you know how much those things cost?"

  I had some idea. After all, I grew up in the same hometown as the Unsers. It makes us all think we're experts.

  "Oh, yeah," she continued. "Catherine thought Gil should just, like, write out a check. They had a terrible fight about it on the phone Friday night."

  She gave a wistful look at the connecting door, closed now.

  "You overheard the argument?"

  "He was in the other room when the phone rang. We had just come in from dinner, about eight o'clock I guess, and I came in here to take off my shoes. Gil listened for awhile, and then I guess he just couldn't take it anymore. He let go with both barrels, and really let her have it.

  "I kind of went to a corner. I've never heard Gil lose it like that. I mean, he was really screaming. He told her if Jason didn't get off his ass and finish college and get a job, he'd never see a penny. He even went so far as to say that he was changing his will as soon as he got back to California. He would cut Jason off until he saw some effort on the kid's part."

  "Pretty strong words," I observed. "Do you think Catherine might kill for her son?"

  No hesitation. "I sure do. She may look like a helpless little thing, but she's as protective as a mama grizzly."

  "What about Gil's dealings with Mack Garvey? Any trouble there?"

  She had spread the crumpled tissue out now, flattening it against her tan leg with the palms of her hands.

  "I only met Mack Garvey once. He seemed okay. But, Gil never talked about his business deals with me. They could have had problems, but I didn't know about them."

  "What happened after the phone call?"

  "Gil went out. He didn't invite me, so I turned on one of those pay-per-view movies on the TV. It wasn't very good, and I drifted off to sleep before it was over. At some point, I switched off the set with the remote, I guess. I was pretty tired."

  "Weren't you worried about Gil when he didn't come back?"

  "I didn't know he wasn't back at first. See, sometimes he preferred to sleep alone."

  "Is that why you had two rooms?"

  "That, and for phone calls. We'd know, by which phone was ringing, who the call was for. No slip-ups that way. And, Gil was a real workaholic. If he had business on his mind, he liked to bring his briefcase and all his paperwork into bed with him. He'd work on stuff until he couldn't keep his eyes open, then fall asleep with the whole mess stacked all around him. Sometimes, he'd wake up at five in the morning, pick up his pen, and start in, right where he'd left off."

  He sounded like a thrilling bed partner to me.

  "If he was in the mood for sex, he came to my room," she continued. "I didn't especially like it that way, him always calling the shots, but I learned early on not to complain."

  I remembered the maid's description of Gil's violent temper.

  Susan was obviously no Einstein, but she was pretty and energetic, and I had to wonder why she would stick with a guy like that. Maybe everyone has a price.

  Maybe hers was a week in Hawaii now and then, and shopping trips to expensive boutiques.

  "Anyway," she continued, "that morning I woke up early, and the connecting door was still closed, like I'd left it. I went down to exercise. When I came back, he was gone, but I didn't think too much about it. I went down to the pool, and figured he'd find me there. It wasn't unusual for him to go off by himself all day. I always played it by ear."

  "Well, Susan, thanks for your help."

  "Glad to. Charlie, I loved Gil."

  Her voice cracked a little at this point. "I don't know anything about his business deals, but if Catherine Page had anything to do with this, I want to see her pay."

  Chapter 7

  There was still one person I'd like to see today if possible. The mechanic, Joe Esposito. Mack had said that the police would probably be questioning him.

  I needed to know what he told them.

  First, though, a quick stop in my room was in order. I'd had a brainstorm of an idea. I really needed to talk to Jason Page. After the two versions of the story I'd just heard from Catherine and Susan, I felt Mack could see my justification in seeing Jason face to face.

  It's too easy to hide one's true character over the phone. If I can look a guy in the eye, I can pick up a wealth of information behind the words.

  I phoned down to the concierge, and asked if he could check some flight times for me. I told him I'd like to leave early the next morning, and return the same night or the morning after.

  His voice oozed helpfulness, in hopes of a big tip, I'm sure. He assured me he would have the information before the afternoon was out.

  I hung up the phone, and my tired muscles turned longingly toward the bed. It stretched out warm, welcome promises of comfort to me, but it was still only three o'clock. If I stopped now, I might never get back up.

  I had to try to find Joe Esposito.

  Since Mack had cancelled the whole day's tours, I figured one of two things would happen. Mack might want Joe to use the extra time for some preventive maintenance, and therefore, he might be around the hangar. Or, Mack might have given Joe the day off, in which case tracking him down might be a real trick.

  I wasn't exactly sure where the maintenance hangar was, but figured it had to be at the airport somewhere. It wasn't that big a place. If I drove around long enough, I could surely find it.

  Once again, my snappy red convertible and I hit the road together. Up Rice Street, turn right, past the acres of tall sugar cane, eventually following the curved road past the helipads. I began scanning the area, driving as slowly as traffic would allow, hoping to spot the maintenance hangars.

  Actually, it didn't turn out to be difficult at all. Just past the helipads sat a collection of buildings, ranging from the old to the decrepit, surrounded by a rust-brown chain link fence.

  A white car with the words Kauai Police on the side, blue lights flashing on top, sat outside one of the buildings. It gave me a pretty good idea which place I was after.

  I parked the tourist-mobile in the only empty space I could find, between a red pickup truck and a once-yellow Nissan station wagon that was more rust than paint. The pickup was hiked up about four extra feet off the ground by oversized tires which stuck way out on both sides, making the vehicle look like a gigantic roller skate.

  I followed the perimeter of the chain link fence until I found a gate.

  It was firmly closed, with a heavy-duty looking doorknob, and there was a three-sided guard house just inside. The guard was nowhere to be seen, having apparently been lured by the excitement inside the strip of yellow crime scene tape surrounding the hangar. I did a sneaky little glance-around.

  No one was near enough to be paying any attention to me. I wrapped my fingers around the hefty doorknob. It turned surprisingly smoothly. Shame, shame, guard person. I suppose t
he recent lull in terrorist activity had made him lackadaisical.

  Not one to question a good thing, I stepped through quickly, and pushed the gate closed behind me. Lest I be caught lurking around the unguarded guard house, I walked quickly toward the hangar.

  The building looked like an oversized World War II Quonset hut that had stood rusting to this spot since the day the Japs flew by. It had once been painted khaki green, now oxidized out to the flat gray color of lichen. The whole building looked like a great beached sperm whale.

  Rust ate away at every seam in the corrugated metal. In places, it formed only a thin line, while in many spots it had already eaten through, leaving ragged gaps several inches big. I mentally gathered all my fingers and toes in close to my body, trying to remember when I'd had my last tetanus shot.

  The double wide doors gaped fully open, and the nose of the helicopter peeked out at me, like an errant puppy sent to its kennel. The noise of wind and machinery outside made it impossible for me to hear anything of what was going on inside until I was practically touching the building. Voices came through, but distance blurred the words, making them indistinguishable.

  Akito would not be pleased to see me, and I wished for the chance to spend a few minutes as a mouse in the corner before making my presence known. I tried to achieve this by slipping around the edge of the open door, and standing very still with my back to the wall to scope out the situation.

  The hangar was dark and relatively cool in comparison with the bright sun outside. I slipped my sunglasses into my purse, and let my eyes adjust to the dim interior.

  The helicopter sat in front of me and to my right. I could see dark blue pant legs with black policeman shoes on the far side of the ship. Its rear door stood open on that side, and I couldn't see an upper torso to go with the legs. Presumably, the officer was examining something inside.

  A long workbench, littered with tools and mechanical looking things, stretched the length of the end wall on my left. Two red tool cabinets, the kind with wheels and about two dozen drawers each, stood against the back wall. Pegboard lined a large section of the wall over the workbench, which was hung with an assortment of belts, hoses, and metal things, like the automotive department of Wal-Mart. The air smelled of that garagey combination of grease, dust, and solvent,

  Most of the activity, I noticed, centered in the rear corner of the hangar, to my left. Akito stood there, along with a short dark-complected man I didn't know. He wore navy blue shorts and a matching shirt with the tails hanging out. There was some kind of embroidered patch on his sleeve, and I assumed he was Joe, the mechanic.

  The conversation looked pretty intense, but I couldn't catch the words. An aircraft part, a shaft of metal about two feet long, capped with a round connection at each end, lay on the floor near them. I didn't see anyone else around. I wanted to talk to Joe, but debated the wisdom of butting in around Akito.

  About that time, the other officer came around the nose of the helicopter, and spotted me. Thankfully, it was not the same man I'd had the verbal exchange with at the station. He gave me a quizzical look, but didn't say anything. His movement caught Akito's eye.

  "Hey! What's she doing here?" Akito's voice cut through the air, echoing off the high metal roof.

  "I'm working for Mack Garvey," I told him, walking toward them. "I need to talk to his mechanic."

  "How'd you get in here? Where's your airport security badge?"

  I shrugged. "The gate was open, and no one stopped me." I hadn't seen any airport guard hanging around the crime scene tape, but what did I care if his butt was in the sling?

  Akito didn't look any too happy about that. In fact, he looked like he wanted to kick somebody's ass; he just wasn't sure which one to start with.

  Instead, he turned to the other officer. "We almost done here?" he growled.

  The other man was a rather heavy-set local boy of about thirty-five. He handed Akito a plastic baggie with a bit of dust in it.

  Vacuumings, I supposed, from the helicopter interior.

  Akito pointed to the metal object on the floor I had noticed earlier. "Wrap this, and take it in, too."

  While the officer went out to the car to get something to wrap it in, I bent down to take a look at the object, careful not to touch it. I had no idea what the thing was, except that presumably it went somewhere on a helicopter. It looked like pretty solid metal, though. There was a good unmistakable blood stain near one end of it.

  About ten feet away, a large spot on the greasy floor looked a bit murkier than the rest. Blood?

  Looked to me like there was reason to believe we had our location and murder weapon.

  I watched the young officer drape some plastic wrap over the metal object to protect fingerprints. He picked it up, and balanced one end against his leg while he neatly twisted the plastic around the opposite end. He repeated the procedure with the second end. His hands worked confidently. His last job had probably been as a sandwich wrapper at the deli.

  "Heavy, huh?" I had noticed his biceps working to maneuver the long metal shaft.

  Now that it was wrapped, he held it out to me. It weighed a good twenty pounds. More than I had expected, for sure. It would take a pretty good swing to heft this thing into the air and knock someone in the back of the head with it.

  I handed it back to him before Akito caught me.

  He was making one final snoop over the long workbench before taking his leave. Static crackled from his hand-held radio, and he murmured some response to it.

  "We through here?" he asked his partner.

  The other man held up the weapon and his other baggies in response.

  "Okay, Esposito, you can go on working. I guess we're finished." He gave me a dark look, then motioned his partner. He didn’t speak to me and I was glad I didn't have to talk him into letting me stay awhile.

  The mechanic had turned back to his workbench, ignoring me completely. In profile, I could see that his nose had been broken, probably more than once. The light from the florescent fixture over the bench played up the deep pits in his pockmarked face. His hair was about shoulder length, pulled back into a snarled rubber band.

  "Are you Joe Esposito?" I asked, peeking around his shoulder.

  He squirted some white grease out of a tube, like a shot of toothpaste, and rubbed it carefully with his index finger around the edge of a piece that might have been a small bearing of some sort. He fitted the greased part inside another, then wiped his finger against a filthy rag on the counter. The rag looked as if it could stand on its own.

  "Hello?" I watched his face to see if a light came on. Nothing. "Look, Mack hired me to find out why he's accused of a murder he didn't commit. I'd just like to ask a couple of questions. Is that okay?"

  I began to wonder if the man was deaf, but he finally turned to look at me. He had droop-cornered dark eyes that some women might find attractive in the bedroom. Here, the effect was anything but sexy. I stepped back half a pace.

  "You work for Mack, don't you?" I asked. "Don't you care whether he goes to jail or not?"

  He shrugged. Apparently, the prospect of jail wasn't the worst thing he could think of. His stubborn silence was really beginning to irritate me, though. I could feel my hands starting to clench up.

  "Listen, jerk, even if you don't give a damn about Mack, don't you care whether you have a job next week?" I can't help it. Obliquity in others tends to bring out strong reactions in me.

  He spun on me so quickly, I thought he was going to grab me by my shirt collar. I jumped back about twelve inches.

  "Look, lady, you don't know nothin'. You a stranger here, and you come buttin' you nose in where you know nothin'. Mack, he so far in debt, I don't know if my next paycheck gonna bounce anyway."

  He jabbed the greasy index finger toward my nose. "For all I know, maybe he did kill that guy. He sure sounded like he might. But it really piss me off when the cops think I help him, cause I didn't. I got nothin' to do with this."

  His
brown skin had a dangerous red undertone to it. I was tempted to back my way out the door, but something he said had just sunk in.

  "Wait a minute," I ventured cautiously. "You say Mack sounded like he wanted to kill the guy? Did they have a fight?"

  He puffed a sharp breath out his nose. "Right here in this hangar Friday night."

  He gathered up a couple of screwdrivers and several wrenches from the workbench, and carried them to the red tool chests. I followed at his heels, like a kid wanting candy.

  "So, you were here? You heard them?" Mack had told me that Joe never showed Friday night. He said he had gone back to the office and had chicken for dinner.

  He never mentioned Gil Page being here.

  Joe made another trip to the workbench. He picked through small items on the bench, sorting out nuts, bolts, fuses, and screws before he answered. He put each of the items into special drawers in a little cabinet.

  "I work til 'bout nine-thirty, ten Friday night, then I take a break for dinner. I gotta finish some work on the ship, then Mack gonna come later, and we do tracking. I get back from my dinner break, walk up to the door, hear Mack and this other guy screaming at each other. Sounds like they ready to tear each other apart. I don't wanna be in the middle. I drive around awhile, come back 'bout half hour later. They both gone, I figure okay, I do my work."

  "They were gone when you came back? What about that ... that metal thing the police took away? Was that here?"

  "Police find that on the floor under the workbench. It's usually on the shelf over there. Old spare hydraulic servo."

  "And you told the police about the fight, I suppose."

  He didn't respond. He pulled a key ring off his belt and locked the red cabinets.

  "Did they tell you they think you helped Mack dump the body?"

  "I told you, I got nothin' to do with this."

  He grabbed a baseball cap from where it hung on a nail, and pulled it on. "Better get outta here," he said, "I'm locking up."