Right from the Gecko

by Cynthia Baxter

  I suddenly had another idea. “What about the person who found her on the beach?” I asked. “Do you know who it was and whether the police consider that person a suspect?”

  Mr. Carrera shook his head. “I can’t imagine they’d suspect Alice. She’s not the type to give anybody any serious trouble.”

  “‘Alice’?” I repeated. He’d already given me more information than I’d hoped for.

  “Alice Feeley. Kind of a burned-out hippie who moved here from California ages ago. Wild hair, funny clothes, occasionally does a little ranting and raving. Nobody really knows how she gets by, but she’s a regular on the beaches after hours. She uses one of those metal detectors to find valuables that poor unsuspecting tourists lose in the sand. Jewelry, mostly, but also money. Probably picks up cans too and brings them back to the market for the deposit. She may be eccentric, but she’s perfectly harmless.”

  Perhaps she’s harmless, I thought, but she might be able to tell me something that nobody else can, some detail or even an impression she got when she discovered a young woman’s body washed up on the beach—something even the police weren’t aware of that would help identify the killer. I made a mental note to try to track her down.

  I also decided to try out the theory that had been haunting me ever since my conference packet was stolen from my hotel room.

  “Mr. Carrera,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact, “I can’t help wondering if maybe the reason Marnie was killed had something to do with one of the stories she was working on.”

  His bushy eyebrows flew upward. “Why would you think that?” He was back to sounding guarded again, and his teeth were clenched together more tightly than ever. “The police are convinced she was strangled by a man she was seen coming out of a bar with, and I’m afraid they’re probably right. As sad as it is, young women get killed by strangers like that all the time. In fact, that’s the story we’re running with in the next edition.”

  “But what if there’s more to it?” I insisted. “What if her murder was the result of her being in the newspaper business? Like maybe she was investigating something that somehow got her into trouble…?”

  Mr. Carrera made a strange hiccuping noise that I had to assume was his version of a laugh. “I think you’ve read too many novels, Ms. Popper. And to be fair, that theory might make sense if Marnie worked at some big-city newspaper. But here on Maui, the biggest stories we get are tourists having their cameras stolen off the backseat of their unlocked rental cars and the occasional entrepreneur getting caught growing pot in his backyard.”

  I just nodded, since pretending to agree seemed like the most graceful way of getting out of what had somehow become an uncomfortable moment.

  Mr. Carrera also seemed happy to move on. “Since you were a friend of Marnie’s,” he said, “I suppose you’ve been in contact with her family.”

  “Actually, I haven’t,” I replied, smiling ruefully. “Even Marnie wasn’t in contact with her family. It seems they didn’t agree with her decision to move so far away from home just for her career. According to her, her parents pretty much cut her off. So I’m leaving it up to the police to take care of that end of things.”

  “Probably wise,” he agreed, nodding. “Since her parents might not be around for a while, then maybe you’d do me a favor. Would you be willing to fill a couple of boxes with her personal possessions and move them out of here? I’ve already taken care of her files and all her work-related stuff. But when it comes to the rest, like the mug she always drank her coffee out of and all the other junk she stashed in her desk that we always used to tease her about, I don’t think any of us could stomach it.”

  I tried not to look too surprised. “I would have thought the police would take her possessions as possible evidence. They have been here, haven’t they?”

  “Sure. That homicide detective you mentioned you’d spoken to, Paleka, came by first thing this morning. He’s the same guy who called me last night, asking me to come in and identify the…identify Marnie.” He swallowed hard, then took a deep breath before continuing. “He asked the usual questions and looked through her desk, but Detective Paleka wasn’t all that interested in what he found there. Especially since he seems pretty sold on the idea that Marnie was killed by the guy she was seen with coming out of that bar near the airport. The one they’re still working on identifying.”

  “I’d be happy to clean out Marnie’s desk,” I told Mr. Carrera, pleased that I’d be getting the opportunity to look through the personal items Marnie had left behind. While my main concern was that there might be someone out there who thought I had Marnie’s tape, I was also trying to find everything I could about someone who died just hours after I met her. My hope was that this little cleanup job would tell me a little more about her life. Maybe even her death.

  “Thanks.” He sounded relieved. “You’ll find some cartons in the kitchen, way in back. If you need any help, just ask Karen.”

  “I will. By the way,” I couldn’t resist asking, “did you ever meet Marnie’s boyfriend, Mr. Carrera?”

  He looked surprised. “I didn’t even know she had one. I figured all that girl ever did was work. I’d come in here at seven in the morning and she’d be working. I’d come in at eleven at night to pick up something I forgot and she’d be working. How any guy would ever put up with that is beyond me.”

  I wasn’t about to admit that I was a little curious about Marnie’s social life myself. But that would have to wait until later.

  At the moment, I was much more concerned with the fact that my interview with Marnie’s boss was coming to a close. He glanced at his watch, the sides of his mouth twitching downward.

  I decided to go for broke.

  Desperately hoping he couldn’t hear how loudly my heart was pounding, I said, “Mr. Carrera, one of the things I wanted to ask you about was a tape Marnie recently made. I can’t help wondering if it had anything to do with her murder.”

  “A tape?” The hardness I’d perceived on Mr. Carrera’s face when I first walked into his office returned, fast and furious. His eyes blazing with suspicion, he insisted, “I don’t know anything about a tape.” I noticed he was suddenly enunciating quite clearly. “Why don’t you tell me what you know?”

  I began to feel extremely uncomfortable. And the fact that I’d come here to find out what he knew, not to tell him what I knew, was only partly responsible. From the way he reacted, I got the distinct feeling he knew exactly what tape I was talking about. “Nothing, really. It was just something she mentioned.”

  “Tell me what she said,” he insisted.

  Instead, I plastered on an innocent-looking smile. “My mistake,” I said with a shrug. “When Marnie and I last spoke, she said something about a tape, that’s all. I thought it might have meant something, but I was obviously wrong. For all I know, she was referring to the latest Green Day CD.” I laughed, trying to make light of a subject I wished I hadn’t brought up in the first place.

  I told myself I was probably misinterpreting his reaction. After all, I hardly knew the man, and he certainly didn’t seem to be someone who openly displayed his emotions. It was possible that he had some policy about his reporters not taping interviews, or…or maybe as the managing editor, he insisted upon being made aware of every tape his staff members made. Who knew how things worked in the newspaper business?

  “Well, I know you’re busy, so I guess I’ll get started cleaning out Marnie’s desk,” I announced abruptly, popping out of my seat like a jack-in-the-box. “Thanks for your time.”

  I hightailed it out of there, wondering if perhaps in addition to changing his mood, the mention of Marnie’s tape had also prompted Mr. Carrera to change his mind about electing me to go through Marnie’s personal things. But I wasn’t about to let him rescind his offer.

  I wasn’t about to linger at the Dispatch’s offices any longer than I had to either. Not when I got the feeling that even though I’d only been on Maui for a little over twenty-four h
ours, I already seemed to be making myself pretty darned unpopular.

  I found a lot more than a stack of abandoned cardboard boxes in the newspaper office’s small kitchen. I also found Marnie’s counterpart, Bryce Bolt, downing a couple of donuts and a cup of black coffee he’d poured into a ceramic mug. The fact that he hadn’t bothered to sit down while doing so may have explained why he had such a lean, muscular frame despite his obvious weakness for dough fried in grease and saturated in sugar.

  “Bryce, right?” I greeted him. Actually, I felt pretty confident about holding my own with reporters, even though they were in the habit of being the ones asking the questions. Thanks to my penchant for getting involved in murder investigations, I’d gotten to know a newspaper reporter on Long Island—strictly on a professional basis, of course—named Forrester Sloan. Even though he had a tendency to be cocky, the fact that I’d outshone him a few times when it came to getting the scoop had won his respect, enough that on more than one occasion he’d actually suggested that I follow in his journalistic footsteps.

  “You found me.” Bryce looked me up and down in a way that was all too familiar. For a minute there, I thought I really was talking to Forrester. He too was an incredible flirt. With me, anyway. As much as I hated to admit it, there was definitely chemistry—however minimal—between Forrester and me.

  But chemistry is one thing. Biology is something else altogether—and with Bryce, I got the feeling his interest in me was determined by something much more basic, not to mention more base. He was clearly trying to decide whether or not this particular female was worth his time.

  I guess I measured up to his standards, because he cocked his head and grinned. “Which means this must be my lucky day.”

  “Too bad we can’t say the same for Marnie Burton,” I replied curtly.

  His engaging grin was gone in a flash.

  “I was a friend of Marnie’s,” I said, figuring that even though I disliked the guy on sight, I owed him an explanation. Especially since Mr. Carrera’s claim that Bryce had worked closely with Marnie made me anxious to pump him for as much information as I could. “I came by today to see if anybody here at the paper had any inside information on the horrible thing that happened last night. I was just talking to Mr. Carrera.”

  “Really?” Now that Bryce realized I hadn’t followed him into the kitchen to admire his charms, he was suddenly standoffish. “And was Dickie-boy helpful?”

  I raised my eyebrows. If this guy’s rude enough to say insulting things about his boss to a complete stranger, I thought, he should at least have the grace to do it out of earshot.

  “I think it’s still too early for anyone to know much more than what was already in the paper this morning,” I replied politely.

  “Right. I saw that piece in the Star-Bulletin. I applied there too.” Smirking, Bryce added, “I guess those guys on Oahu are just too dense to recognize real talent when they see it.”

  I made a point of not responding. Especially since being sincere about my reaction to Marnie’s colleague would have demanded that at least some of the coffee in his mug end up on his head.

  “So you must be freakin’ out,” he went on coolly. “Having one of your friends end up in Kahului Bay like that and all.”

  Whether he was going out of his way to be offensive or if this was just his personality, I couldn’t tell. But this guy made Forrester Sloan look like Mr. Rogers.

  “I guess I’m still in shock,” I finally replied. I glanced around, adding, “Although now that I’m here, I’m finding it kind of a surreal experience, seeing Marnie’s office and meeting some of the people she worked with day in and day out. But who knows? Maybe being in the middle of her work environment like this will help me come to grips with her murder.”

  “I suppose you’re looking for ‘closure,’” Bryce sneered, meanwhile making that annoying quotations gesture in the air with two fingers of each hand. “To be honest, I’m not the best person to help you with that. Marnie and I were both reporters, but that’s where our connection ends. Even though we worked in the same place, I never got to know her all that well. For one thing, I never felt there was a lot of potential for a warm, fuzzy relationship between the two of us, given her personality. For another thing, I’ve only been here at the Dispatch a few months.” He paused to stuff a large part of his second donut into his mouth, chewing and swallowing it with amazing speed.

  “I didn’t realize you’d been here such a short time,” I commented. “Was there someone you replaced, someone who might have known Marnie longer than you did?”

  He looked annoyed, perhaps because he preferred being the one who asked all the questions. “My predecessor’s name was Holly Gruen. But for all I know, she’s left Maui by now.”

  His answer surprised me. “Why would she have left the island?”

  He shrugged. “She just didn’t seem to fit in here. On Maui, I mean. She was too…tense. Not that I knew her that well either,” he added quickly. “She was gone by the time I started. But she used to stop in at the office every once in a while.”

  “To visit, you mean?”

  “Look, I never paid that much attention to either Holly or Marnie, okay?” Bryce insisted impatiently. “But there is one thing I can tell you about Marnie. She was a real know-it-all. A lot of people found her extremely irritating.”

  Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, I thought with annoyance. Still, thanks to her boss’s comments, I knew Bryce wasn’t alone in that perception.

  “Maybe that was just a front,” I suggested. “To convince people she was on top of things. After all, she was pretty ambitious.”

  “No kidding,” he replied with a contemptuous snort. “She thought she was the next Woodward and Bernstein. Y’know, those guys who uncovered the Watergate scandal during the seventies?”

  “Yes, I think I’ve heard of them,” I replied. And I managed not to sound the least bit sarcastic.

  “Trouble was, most of the stuff she came up with was out of Fantasyland.”

  “Meaning…?”

  Bryce made an annoying boy-was-that-a-dumb-question face. “Meaning she saw scandal and intrigue and corruption everywhere she looked. Dickie-boy would send her out to cover…I don’t know, the Girl Scout jamboree, and she’d come back convinced that the leader was embezzling the cookie money.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “I mean, it’s one thing to sniff out news. But Marnie was pretty wacky, the way she was always convinced she’d just uncovered the hottest story of the century.”

  “Maybe she was just passionate about what she did.”

  “More like desperate to make a name for herself. She was ambitious, all right.” Glancing around, he lowered his voice conspiratorially before adding, “In fact, our little punk-haired friend wasn’t above kissing up to Dickie-boy to get the big stories. Or at least the stories she was sure were gonna turn out to be big.”

  “Like FloraTech?”

  He looked startled. “How did you know about that?”

  I shrugged. “I just remember her mentioning that it was something she was working on.”

  He looked satisfied with my answer. “Okay, then, perfect example. Here’s this really positive thing that’s happening on Maui—an innovative new company, bringing in high-tech jobs in the biomedical field—and good old Marnie had to go and find something negative about it.”

  “Which was…?”

  Bryce snorted again. “That it was ruining the ambience of our tropical paradise or something. Like we’re still living in the days of grass huts and outrigger canoes! I mean, get real! There is such a thing as progress, y’know? We are in the twenty-first century. Isn’t it time to get with the program? Instead, she wants to pit people against each other about whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

  “I guess controversy sells newspapers,” I offered.

  “Right,” he grumbled. “And makes a name for the people who stir it up.”

  O-kay, I thought. I think I’ve had ab
out enough of Bryce Bolt.

  And I hadn’t even learned very much, aside from the fact that he had clearly disliked Marnie. Whether his reaction to her was rooted in sexism, professional jealousy, or something much more personal, I couldn’t say.

  “I’m curious, Bryce,” I said, casually bringing up a question that had just occurred to me. “What were you doing before you came to the Maui Dispatch?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You sure ask a lot of questions. What do you think you are, a reporter?”

  “Actually, I’m a veterinarian,” I told him with a big smile. “But I’m interested in everything and anything that has to do with Marnie’s life, including the people she worked with.”

  Still eyeing me warily, he replied, “I worked for a couple of papers on the mainland.”

  I noticed he didn’t volunteer their names, or even the cities he’d lived in, which made me wonder if there was a story there.

  But Bryce was already heading out of the kitchen, brushing powdered sugar and cinnamon off his fingertips. I grabbed an empty cardboard carton and made a beeline for Marnie’s desk.

  Chapter 4

  “An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.”

  —Martin Buber

  I quickly got busy cleaning out Marnie’s desk, starting with the drawers. And I immediately learned that our eager young reporter had been prepared for everything.

  Almost everything, I thought regretfully. Too bad she didn’t consider carrying a can of Mace in her purse standard operating procedure.

  But she’d thought of just about everything else. In addition to a coffee mug, her desk was crammed with tissues, Tampax, a large tube of sunblock, a hairbrush and comb, several packs of chewing gum, half a dozen protein bars, Advil and Tylenol, Band-Aids, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a flashlight, several books of matches, and, for some reason, a pair of socks. She also kept a sweater and a pair of dressy shoes in the bottom drawer.