Right from the Gecko

by Cynthia Baxter

  Handling each item as if it were made of very breakable glass, I packed them into the carton I’d found in the kitchen. As I surveyed them, a wave of despondency rushed over me.

  How sad, I thought, that the most important aspect of this woman’s life, her career as a reporter, could be reduced to a cardboard box of things that meant practically nothing to anybody else.

  When I’d finished, I did a final check, opening each drawer one last time to make sure I’d gotten everything. In the bottom drawer, pushed way toward the back, I found a badly wrinkled electric bill dated seven months earlier. I tossed that into the box too, since printed on top was Marnie’s home address. I suspected that checking out her apartment was going to end up on my to-do list.

  I carried the carton toward the door, discovering that, while it wasn’t heavy, it was fairly awkward. Even so, I made a point of stopping at the receptionist’s desk.

  “Excuse me,” I said politely. “It’s Karen, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” she replied pleasantly. “What can I do for you?”

  “I don’t suppose you have a phone number for Holly Gruen, do you? The reporter who used to work here?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” She clicked a few keys on her keyboard, then peered at her computer screen. “I can jot down her cell phone number for you. Will that do?”

  “Perfect,” I told her, already knowing who was next on my list of people to contact.

  As she handed me a Post-it with a local phone number written on it, Karen glanced around nervously, as if checking to see if anyone was listening. I automatically did the same. At the moment, Bryce Bolt was hunched over his keyboard, typing away madly. Richard Carrera, the only other person in the office, was talking on the phone.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” she said in a soft voice, “but I thought I heard you asking questions about Marnie.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And now it sounds like you’re planning on calling Holly. Is that also to talk about Marnie?”

  “I thought I might do that.”

  Karen hesitated for a few moments, then looked around the office one more time. “Maybe you and I should walk out to your car together,” she suggested.

  “Sure. I could use the help.” I tried not to let on how intrigued I was.

  Standing abruptly, she said in a voice that was slightly too loud, “Here, let me help you with that box.” Then, with a flourish, she opened the door of the office so I could pass through it, box and all.

  Once we were outside in the parking lot, she led me to the corner of the building. It afforded some shade, thanks to the overhanging roof. It also afforded a place to sit, courtesy of a yard-high ledge around what was supposed to be an area for planting flowers. Instead, it contained nothing but a few scraggly weeds and an empty Mountain Dew can.

  “Since you don’t know Holly, I thought it might be useful for you to be aware of a few things before you ask her about Marnie,” Karen began. “I don’t usually like to talk about people behind their back, but this is kind of a special situation, don’t you think?”

  “It definitely is,” I agreed.

  “Mint?” she offered, reaching into her pants pocket and pulling out a metal box of Altoids. “They’re wintergreen.”

  “No, thanks.”

  She nodded, then picked out a tiny mint and popped it into her mouth. “When it came to Marnie, Holly was a little bit…strange.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “At first, it was little things, the kind of things the guys in the office probably wouldn’t have noticed. But I did. Peggy too. We used to talk about it all the time.”

  “Little things like what?” I prompted.

  “Well, you know the way Marnie wore her hair, right? Kind of spiky-looking? The way she put gel in it or whatever to make it come to points?”

  “What about it?”

  Karen sighed. “After Holly had been working here for a few weeks, one Monday morning she came in wearing her hair the exact same way.”

  “Maybe she thought it was cute,” I suggested. “Or that it would be flattering.”

  Eyeing me warily, Karen said, “I think you’ll have a better idea of what I’m talking about after you’ve met Holly. It’s just that…it wasn’t really a good look for her.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to reserve judgment.

  “Then there were the clothes. Again, it was the same kind of thing.”

  “The same how?”

  “Holly started imitating Marnie. Marnie dressed kind of crazy sometimes. And she could carry it off, since she weighed about a hundred pounds and she had this pixie thing going for her. She’d show up in one of those short flouncy skirts, or maybe one of those little sweaters—shrugs, I think they’re called—and she’d look great. But then, a few days later, Holly would show up in the same style garment.”

  “They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” I remarked.

  Karen shook her head. “I think it was more than that. It was almost like Holly wanted to be Marnie. And there were other things besides the clothes. Like she’d order whatever Marnie was having for lunch. And she started using the same expressions Marnie used. And then she began keeping track of wherever Marnie went and who she went with.”

  Maybe Holly was just lonely, I thought. But the fact that her behavior had made Karen so uncomfortable made me wonder if it could be explained away so easily.

  “Of course,” she continued, “that was only up until a few months ago, when Marnie won that award. As soon as that happened, everything changed.”

  “Changed how?” I asked.

  Karen stuck her hand into her pants pocket and began jiggling the box of Altoids. I didn’t think she was even aware of what she was doing. “Holly got kind of…mean. It was clear she’d idolized Marnie, but Holly was also a very competitive person. She was sure she was going to get that award, and she wasn’t at all happy about the fact that Marnie won it.”

  “How do you know Holly thought she’d get it?”

  “I overheard her talking to someone on her cell phone about it right before they announced the winners,” she replied. “I couldn’t tell who it was. Her mother, maybe. But she sounded all excited about it, as if she was sure she was a shoo-in. See, she’d just done a big article on a new plant Hawaii Power and Light was trying to build. It never happened, since there was such a strong public outcry. But she’d done a great job of covering the story. Even Mr. Carrera thought so.”

  “But then Marnie won the award instead.”

  “Exactly. And after that, everything was different. It was like Holly froze Marnie out completely. She wouldn’t even talk to her unless she absolutely had to. You know, about job-related things. But it wasn’t just Marnie. She began acting oddly toward all of us. She became…withdrawn. Sulking all the time, not saying much, that kind of thing.”

  With a shrug, she added, “And then, a few weeks later, Holly just upped and quit. Completely out of the blue. I sure didn’t see it coming. I don’t think any of us did.”

  Glancing back at the building, Karen said, “I should get back. The phone’s probably been ringing off the hook. Mr. Carrera will have a fit.”

  “Thank you, Karen. For filling me in, I mean.”

  She grimaced. “Well, if you were going to go looking for Holly, I figured you should know that Marnie wasn’t exactly at the top of her A-list. At least, not anymore.”

  Once the cardboard box was settled beside me on the front seat of the Jeep, I checked the Post-it Karen had handed me, the one with Holly Gruen’s cell phone number. When I’d first gotten it, I couldn’t wait to call her. Now, after what I’d learned, I felt as if I was treading in dangerous waters.

  Yet there was no way I could walk away. Not when I hadn’t learned anything that convinced me I wasn’t in the same danger Marnie had been. I had no choice but to keep going.

  Still, I wasn’t very encouraged when a sullen female voice answered, “Hello?”
/>
  “I’m trying to reach Holly Gruen.”

  “Speaking,” she replied. Then, sounding wary, she added, “Who’s this?”

  “My name is Jessica Popper. I understand you used to work at the Maui Dispatch.” I hesitated before saying, “I was a friend of Marnie Burton’s, and I was wondering if you and I could get together.”

  There was a long silence at the other end of the line. I was about to ask if she was still there when I heard, “What for?”

  I was desperately trying to come up with an answer when my eyes lit on the box of Marnie’s personal possessions. “I, uh, have something I’d like to give you, something that belonged to her. It’s, uh, an award. She won it for”—I grabbed a three-inch square of marble with an engraved gold-colored metal plaque affixed to one side—“for her coverage of the Maui Special Olympics.”

  As soon as I got the words out, I kicked myself for latching on to the first thing I found. An award, of all things. “Anyway,” I went on quickly, “I thought you might like to have something to remember her by. And since you were both reporters, I figured this award would be fitting.”

  “Yeah, I remember when she got that,” Holly admitted grudgingly. “Even though that paperweight thing they gave her is kind of hokey, she was pretty excited about it.”

  “I’d really like you to have it,” I replied. “I’m sure she would too. When can we meet?”

  “I’m kind of busy,” Holly said, still showing about as much animation as a tree slug. “I’m also pretty upset about what happened to Marnie. I’m not exactly in the mood for socializing.”

  “Me either,” I assured her. “But I’m not asking for much time. Fifteen minutes. Ten, even. I just have a feeling that Marnie would have liked it if everybody she worked with got something that meant a lot to her.

  “Besides,” I added, “maybe it would make us both feel better. You know, just to talk.”

  It took five more minutes of cajoling before she finally agreed to meet me at a coffee shop in Lahaina the following afternoon at two. I seemed to remember that a particularly intriguing conference session on hyper-lipidemia—a potentially dangerous elevation of lipids like cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood—was scheduled around then, but now that I’d managed to pin Holly down, I wasn’t about to let her go.

  “The Bean Scene is a pretty out-of-the-way place,” she assured me as her parting words. “Nobody’s likely to see us there.”

  As I hung up, I wondered if her interest in privacy was simply a result of her reporter’s instincts. At any rate, I hoped that the following day she’d be more open with me than she’d been on the phone.

  “Oh, no,” I breathed, glancing at my watch as I put the car in gear. It was after six—well past the time I’d sworn I’d meet Nick.

  After racing back to the Royal Banyan and parking the Jeep in the garage, I dashed up two flights of stairs to the hotel. Any thoughts I’d had of getting gussied up for my evening out with my special guy had already flown out the window.

  As I sprinted across the lobby’s tiled floor, thankful for the traction my rubber-soled sandals provided, I flashed back to the painful memory of our last trip to Maui. Then I’d also let Nick down, big-time. Funny how a marriage proposal gone bad will do that, especially one that’s made on an isolated stretch of beach at sunset, beneath swaying palms and a sky streaked with pink, orange, and lavender.

  What happened the last time Nick and I were here wasn’t Hawaii’s fault. Nick’s either. It was me that was the problem. The moment I found out the reason Nick had become flustered and tongue-tied wasn’t that he was about to confess he’d lost his credit card or left the snorkeling gear at the beach or some other similarly harmless catastrophe, I was swamped with a wave of anxiety unlike any I’d ever experienced before. And that included the time I’d held a sealed envelope from the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in my hands, knowing that opening it would tell me whether or not I was about to embark on my lifelong dream of becoming a veterinarian. By comparison, that experience was the proverbial piece of cake.

  As I stared at the engagement ring Nick had whipped out of his pocket, as red-faced as if he’d spent the entire day in the sun without wearing any sunblock, an intense rushing noise rose up inside my head. It felt as if I’d just leaped into twenty feet of turbulent ocean waves. The whole beach started to spin—really, really fast—and I felt as if the soft white beach had turned into quicksand that was greedily sucking me downward.

  Even the hopeful look on Nick’s face and the bright anticipation in his hazel eyes hadn’t been enough to bring me back.

  Getting my mouth to work had been an iffy proposition. But somehow, for better or for worse, I’d managed to do it.

  “I—I’m sorry, Nick,” I muttered. “I can’t do this.” I stood up and began running blindly, so desperate to get away that I didn’t even look back to see the expression on his face.

  Not exactly my finest moment.

  The trip had gone downhill from there. Fortunately, we had only two days left. Nick spent most of the remaining hours snorkeling—alone—while I took long walks on the beach—also alone—or wandered around shops and pretended I was actually looking at the coral necklaces and splashy aloha shirts instead of berating myself for being such a commitmentphobe. Of course, part of me was also congratulating myself on having escaped giving up my independence.

  The two of us had flown home in silence, sitting side by side and making only the minimum of polite conversation. The fact that our relationship was over was understood. When we got back home, we divided up the CDs and all the other possessions we’d acquired as a couple, agreeing that Nick would keep Leilani, the Jackson’s chameleon we’d shanghaied and brought home from Maui in a sock.

  And then we’d gone our separate ways.

  My heart sank when I reached the hotel pool area and saw that the Polynesian dance show was already under way. A small, low stage was set up at one end, with the blue-green Pacific Ocean and orange-streaked sky of the Maui sunset serving as a backdrop. Five middle-aged men wearing matching aloha shirts and playing ukuleles, Hawaiian guitars, and drums stood off to one side.

  But the focus was the dancers. Three angry-looking Maori—or else some local men who’d taken a few dance lessons and were unusually good sports—were stamping their feet and grunting furiously as they did a sort of war dance. At least, that was what I assumed it was. I couldn’t imagine painting one’s face with all those elaborate designs for anything short of a bloody, no-holds-barred battle.

  The entire seating area was packed solid. Hundreds of plastic chairs were crammed around the pool, and each and every one appeared to be occupied by a tourist juggling a digital camera and a plastic cup containing a brightly colored beverage. Some of them sat so close to the edge of the pool that I desperately hoped a couple of those Maori warriors had some life-saving training—especially since it looked as if all the regular lifeguards had gone home for the day.

  I was agonizing over how I’d ever find Nick in this crowd when I noticed a bunch of orange parrots and hot pink hibiscus in the front row, over by the diving board. It took me only a moment to realize that wasn’t just any jungle scene. It was Nick’s chest.

  I hurried over, crouching down as I wove among the seats in an attempt to minimize my obstruction of the angry-yet-agile performers.

  “Nick?” I called in a hoarse whisper.

  As he glanced up, I braced myself for a tirade. Instead, he simply cast me a look that was somewhere between scathing and woeful. Frankly, I would have preferred the tirade.

  I sank into the seat that he’d graciously saved for me, no doubt having to fight off hordes of tourists at least as angry as those Maori on stage.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I lost track of the time—”

  “This is yours,” he grumbled, handing me a plastic cup. In it was a watered-down mai tai, at least if its pale color was any indication. “I saved it for you. Why don’t we just watch the
show?”

  “Good idea.”

  I glanced at the stage and saw that the Maori were gone. Instead, two large, muscular hunks wearing nothing but loincloths and excellent tans were twirling flaming batons. I had to admit, they put those Miss America contestants to shame. Drums pounded with such a powerful, primitive beat that I hoped they weren’t getting ready to sacrifice somebody.

  I watched in silence, meanwhile gulping down half my mai tai. I was determined to show Nick what a party girl I could be once I set my mind to it. At first, I was pretty tense. Not only was Nick emitting anger rays; watching two young men toss around incendiary devices without any extinguishers in sight was a bit unnerving.

  But slowly but surely I could feel myself relaxing. Maybe it was the exquisite sunset, maybe it was the balmy air…or maybe it was just the rum in my watery mai tai kicking in. At any rate, I whooped and hollered with the best of them when the emcee, a pretty, dark-haired woman wearing a traditional hula costume, commanded, “Give it up for the Samoan fire dancers!”

  “Not bad,” I commented, leaning over to Nick. “I wonder if you could do that.”

  His response was to mutter, “This was supposed to be a chance for us to do something really fun together. But you couldn’t even get here on time. I didn’t even know if you were going to make it.”

  So much for aloha spirit. “I’m here now,” I offered feebly.

  “Right. But between working on my third mai tai and suffering from severe jet lag, I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

  “Maybe we can get you some coffee.”

  I scanned the pool area desperately, wondering if all the waiters had carpooled home with the lifeguards. At the moment, it looked as if the only hotel staff members who hadn’t punched out for the day were the gy-rating, half-dressed members of the Polynesian dance troupe.

  “Thanks, I’m all right,” Nick insisted, not sounding all right at all.

  I’d always believed that nobody was supposed to have a bad time in paradise. But it seemed like it was all I ever managed to do.