It was also nice coming home to Nick.
He stood in the doorway of the bathroom wrapped in a damp towel, with strands of wet hair hanging around his face.
“I have an idea,” he greeted me. “Instead of holing up here in our hotel room, what do you say we put on our bathing suits, go downstairs, and act like tourists for a while? We have some time before our dinner reservation at the Kula Grill, and we can talk there while we watch the sunset. After all, that is one of the main reasons we came to Maui in the first place.”
Fifteen minutes later, we were settling into a pair of comfortable lounge chairs that overlooked the hotel pool. It was actually an entire complex that looked as if it came pretty close to qualifying for water-park status. The huge operation included three pools, one of them just for kids, a half dozen twisting water slides, a bunch of waterfalls, two hot tubs, a smattering of poolside cabanas, and the usual impressive display of palm trees and brilliantly colored flowers surrounding the whole shebang. There was even a bar disguised as a tropical hut, complete with a thatched roof, tiki torches, and a bartender in an aloha shirt.
As soon as we plopped down, a waiter appeared to take our order. I barely had time to slather sunblock all over my pale face and limbs before he reappeared, this time bearing two frosty mai tais.
“This was what I call a long day,” I said with a sigh. I took a sip of the cool, sweet drink and instantly felt refreshed. “And this is what I call good stuff.”
Nick grinned. “There’s definitely something to be said for the Magnum, P.I., lifestyle. You know that old saying: When in Hawaii…”
“The lying-by-the-pool part is great,” I returned. “It’s the investigation part that’s tricky.”
“Sounds like you also had an interesting day.”
“Definitely interesting,” I assured him. “I learned a few things about FloraTech. Mainly that the company has been pretty aggressive about buying people’s land.”
“Not surprising,” Nick commented, “since they obviously need to grow huge quantities of hibiscus in order to produce their wonder medicines.”
“True,” I agreed. “But what bothers me is the way they seem to be going about it. Frankly, it doesn’t sound all that businesslike.”
I told him about my interactions with Makiko Cooper, Wesley Nakoa, and Wesley’s daughter, Lila. “At least I was able to decipher Marnie’s code,” I concluded. “YES refers to landowners who were willing to sell to FloraTech and NO signifies those who weren’t. Some people are matter-of-fact about making a deal with them, but others are really resentful.”
“And Alice Feeley was still undecided at the time of Marnie’s murder,” Nick observed.
“That’s what I figure,” I agreed. “But that could simply mean she hadn’t made a decision yet. Or even that FloraTech hadn’t gotten around to making her an offer.”
Nick frowned thoughtfully. “The question is, is FloraTech actually doing anything wrong? Or do the reactions of people like this Nakoa guy you met up with simply reflect the residents’ feelings about an outsider coming in, especially a big company, and taking possession of something the locals don’t think they have a right to own?”
“I was hoping you’d uncovered something in Marnie’s files that would answer that question,” I replied. “Or maybe some helpful little factoid about the company that would clue us in.” My heart began pounding a little faster as I added hopefully, “Did you?”
“See, that’s the strange thing.” Nick sounded puzzled. “I’m usually pretty good at tracking down information. And frankly, this isn’t my usual thing. But I found a librarian who really knew her stuff, and she turned me on to Edgar.”
“Who’s Edgar?” I asked.
“It’s a what, not a who. Edgar is a service the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission offers. It’s an acronym for the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system—in other words, the government’s way of helping people get information about companies. You can even get it through the Internet. It’s called Edgar Online.”
It sounded simple enough. Why, then, was I hearing such tentativeness in his voice?
“It’s really comprehensive,” he continued. “You can search for information by company name, industry, business, even area code or zip code.”
“It sounds amazing.”
“It is. Which is why it’s so weird that we weren’t able to find out a thing about FloraTech.”
“Really?” My eyebrows shot sky-high.
“Yeah, the librarian was pretty surprised too. So she suggested that I try calling the SEC’s reference branch, since companies that are raising less than one million dollars aren’t required to register. I thought that might be the case with FloraTech. But that turned out to be another dead end.”
It sounded like another language to me. “So what does all that mean?” I asked, impatient with my own lack of knowledge.
“Only that the company doesn’t offer public securities—stocks and bonds—so it isn’t required to file with the SEC. Next I tried Dun and Bradstreet, which the librarian explained is one of the best sources of information about businesses in the entire world. They’ve been around for something like a hundred fifty years, and they collect tons of data about every kind of business you can imagine. But that didn’t pan out either.”
My heart was still pounding hard. But at the same time, I was starting to feel overwhelmed by a tidal wave of defeat.
“I even contacted the Better Business Bureau,” Nick continued. “There was nothing on file on FloraTech.”
My brain was grinding away, trying to come up with a different tack. “Could it be a foreign firm?” I suggested. “Or a division of some larger company?”
“I looked into both those possibilities, but I still came up dry. I’m afraid this company, whatever it is, remains a bit of a mystery.”
“Thanks for trying,” I told him sincerely.
“No problem. It was actually kind of fun, flexing my P.I. muscles.” He paused. “But this librarian who was helping me agreed that it was kind of peculiar that we couldn’t find out anything.”
“Yet its presence on Maui is overwhelming,” I mused, talking more to myself than to Nick. “I feel like I keep running into FloraTech everywhere I go.”
“Or at least everywhere Marnie went,” Nick noted. “Yet the question of whether or not her interest in them was at all related to her murder still remains.”
“What about Bryce Bolt?” I asked. “Did you have better luck delving into his mysterious past?”
“Actually, that looks a lot more promising,” he replied.
“Great!” I exclaimed. “And what professional techniques, what secrets known only to insiders in the private investigation field, did you use?”
He grinned. “I Googled his name on the Internet.”
I just nodded. “That works. At least as a place to start.”
“Exactly. Google led me to a few articles he wrote for a couple of other newspapers before he came to the Maui Dispatch—”
“Which is important,” I interrupted, “because it tells us where he used to work—”
“And will therefore lead us to a bunch of people we can talk to about what he was like—”
“And hopefully tell us why he left.”
“Precisely.” Nick grinned. “You know, Jess, you and I make a pretty good team.”
“I already knew that.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
Nick locked his eyes with mine for what seemed like just a little too long. Even though he and I weren’t exactly on our first date, I could feel my cheeks growing warm as they erupted into what was no doubt a big, embarrassing blush.
“So,” I said gruffly, anxious to change the subject, if not the entire mood, “let’s get in touch with some of Bryce Bolt’s old cronies and see what we can dig up about his past.”
“I’m a step ahead of you,” Nick replied. “I printed out the names of the current editorial staff members at th
e two papers he worked for previously, along with their phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Once again, we have Google to thank. And I made a few calls and sent out a few e-mails, so the wheels are turning.”
“Fantastic,” I replied. “Thanks, Nick.” The moment of tension had passed, and we were back on the case again, playing the roles of Nick and Nora Charles. At least, that was the thought that flitted through my mind until I realized that Nick and Nora were married.
“What about Marnie’s file folders?” I asked. “Did you find out anything unusual about FloraTech or any of the other stories she was working on?”
“Nothing that’s going to lead us to an ‘aha’ moment, I’m afraid. The thickest folder was the one on Hawaii Power and Light. She did a lot of research on a controversial new power plant the company wanted to build. Tons, in fact. Interviews with people who were both for and against it, a detailed history of utilities on all the Hawaiian Islands, even a cost-benefit analysis it looked like she got from someone inside the organization.
“And the folder also contained copies of the final articles, a total of five of them. But are you ready for this? Each one was published in the Dispatch with Holly Gruen’s byline.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. Here, I’ll show you.”
As I pored over the file folder Nick thrust in front of me, my mouth literally dropped open. Sure enough, while the pages and pages of notes stuck inside proved that Marnie had knocked herself out on the Hawaii Power & Light story, the actual articles did, indeed, all begin with the words By Holly Gruen.
Although I finally managed to close my mouth, I couldn’t keep myself from chewing my lip as I pondered what Karen Nelson had told me: that Holly was certain those articles were going to win her the Association of Professional Journalists’ award. From the looks of things, her pal Marnie had done most of the work. Maybe even all of it. In fact, she might have written the actual articles herself.
Yet Holly had been the one to get credit for them.
I filled Nick in on the details, then asked, “What about the FloraTech file? What did you find in there?”
“Marnie had done plenty of research on that story too,” Nick replied. “The same kind of stuff. Interviews with people who both supported and opposed the company opening its headquarters here, a bunch of press releases about the medicinal benefits offered by the hibiscus plant, copies of letters to the editor that had run in the Dispatch, the Maui News, and even the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
“The one thing that really struck me,” he continued, “was how often the governor’s name kept coming up. Apparently Wickham played a huge role in bringing FloraTech here. There were plenty of photos of him with Norman Eldridge, the company’s founder. Formal shots, mostly. A ribbon-cutting ceremony, a few of Eldridge and Governor Wickham posing at a golf outing, that kind of thing. Obviously photo ops. Most of them were cut out of newspapers; a few were actual photos. But there were also a few shots of the two of them together that looked amateurish. From the looks of them, Marnie might have taken them herself.”
“Maybe she was simply trying to expand her credentials to include photojournalism,” I suggested. “The one thing everybody who knew her seems to agree on is that she was incredibly ambitious.”
“I don’t think so.” He paused, as if he was thinking. “They reminded me of the kind of shots I used to take when I was still in the P.I. biz.”
My eyebrows shot way up toward my hairline. “You mean…racy photos?”
“Not at all. More like…incriminating. Or possibly incriminating, to be more accurate. The two of them shaking hands outside what looks like a motel room. Having dinner together in a restaurant. Alone. No aides, no bodyguards, just the two of them. There was even one of them strolling around what looks like a farm.”
“A hibiscus farm?”
“I guess so, given the business FloraTech is in.” Nick frowned. “I can’t imagine why Marnie thought any of that was interesting enough to snap pictures.”
I thought about the other claim I’d heard about Marnie: that her journalistic passion sometimes strayed dangerously close to paranoia. I supposed it was possible that when it came to the controversial biotech firm, she had seen red flags everywhere she looked, finding scandal even where there was none. It was similarly possible that she’d snapped a bunch of photos that, to her, were incriminating but that anybody else would see as the usual politicking.
I was about to share this thought with Nick when someone standing no more than fifty feet away caught my eye.
“Oh, no,” I groaned. “What’s he doing here?”
“Who?” Nick shifted in his lounge chair, craning his neck to see who I was referring to.
“Don’t look!” I hissed. “Maybe he won’t notice us.”
But I’d barely gotten the words out before I realized it was too late. Graham Warner was heading over in our direction. As usual, he was wearing sloppy cutoffs and a T-shirt that looked like it had missed a few appointments at the Laundromat. His scraggly dark-blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail.
“Who is this guy?” Nick said under his breath. “Your surfing instructor?”
“Just someone I happened to strike up a conversation with in the hotel lobby.” I decided to leave out the part about our friendly little chat taking place while Nick and I were in the middle of an argument. I also chose not to mention that the location of our impromptu little rendezvous was the hotel bar.
“Hey, Jessie,” Graham said breezily. “Small world, huh?”
A little too small, I thought. And here I’d been thinking it was just this island that kept shrinking. “Hey, Graham,” I returned without much enthusiasm, hoping he’d take the hint.
He didn’t.
“So this must be that boyfriend you mentioned.” He lowered himself onto the lounge chair next to mine. I had the horrifying thought that he planned on staying awhile.
“Right,” I said. Reluctantly, I added, “Nick, this is Graham Warner. Graham, Nick Burby.”
“Hey, bro.” With great fanfare, Graham rose halfway to his feet and extended his hand, which required him to reach over me. Nick had a wary look in his eyes as he shook hands.
“So, Jess,” Graham said as he sat back down, “has the convention been eating up all your time or have you managed to enjoy the island?”
“I’ve done a bit of sightseeing,” I returned flatly, still doing my best not to encourage him.
“Cool.” Graham nodded more times than was warranted. “Hey, I’m pretty sure I saw you driving around Upcountry earlier today. That was you, wasn’t it? That’s a great area, isn’t it? There’s so much to do. Hiking in Polipoli State Park, touring the Tedeschi winery…”
I was barely listening. I was too busy trying to process what I’d just heard.
Graham knows how I spent the day…and where I went? I thought, my mind racing. The chances that he simply noticed me on one of the roads were remote, given the huge area we were talking about.
Was it possible that he’d been following me, that for the past few days he’d been keeping tabs on my comings and goings?
Even more importantly, I wondered, swallowing hard, if he’s not just some creep who goes around hassling women, then who is he?
I suddenly remembered the eerie feeling I’d gotten as I was leaving Aloha Farm. The feeling I was being watched. At the time I decided I’d just fallen prey to some of that paranoia that had apparently plagued Marnie. Now I wondered if it had been Graham Warner’s deep-set gray eyes that had been peering out at me from behind the dense foliage.
For all I knew, he could even have been the intruder who’d broken into my hotel room to steal Marnie’s tape.
“Look,” Nick said impatiently, “I think it’s time for you to move along, pal. We were having a private conversation here.”
With a little shrug, Graham said, “Hey, I was just trying to be friendly. I know this island pretty well, so I thought I might be of assistance.”
&n
bsp; “Thanks, but we’re managing fine,” Nick insisted.
“Sure, sure.” Graham rose to his feet. And then, casting me what I was certain was a meaningful look, he said, “Catch you later, Jess. And you’ve got my number, if there’s anything you need. I’ll be around.”
Nick followed him with his eyes as he walked away. Then he turned to me, scowling, and said, “Who did you say that guy was, Jess?”
“To tell you the truth,” I replied uneasily, “I’m not really sure.”
Chapter 13
“No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.”
—Christopher Morley
Now this is something I really miss from my days as a P.I.,” Nick commented as we pulled into the parking lot of the Kula Grill later that evening. “I can’t tell you how many nights I spent at fancy restaurants, pretending I was just another discriminating diner when I was actually doing surveillance. You know, checking out whether somebody’s husband was secretly wining and dining his girlfriend, keeping tabs on some guy’s wife to find out if she was really hosting a dinner with clients from out of town…. Of course, the person who hired me paid for my dinner, as well as my time, so I got a lot of good eats.”
“Unfortunately,” I pointed out as I opened the car door, “our client is in no position to reimburse us for our night on the town.” I climbed out of the Jeep, being careful not to let my sundress ride up. It was a bit of a challenge, since I wasn’t in the habit of wearing dresses or skirts or any other garment that didn’t fashionably coordinate with my usual footwear of choice, a pair of chukka boots.
“True. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a nice dinner.” Glancing over at the restaurant, he added, “And Marnie was right. This really is a romantic place. And it’s definitely out of the way.”
I had to agree. The Kula Grill was in an isolated spot at the end of a poorly paved road. The restaurant was a collection of about twenty round tables clustered underneath a green awning, which was attached to a small white building that most likely housed the kitchen. Flowering shrubs surrounded the outdoor dining room, providing lots of privacy. There were also large bouquets of tropical flowers centered on each table. Aside from the tiki torches framing the entrance, the only lighting was the flickering candles on each table. As the hostess showed Nick and me to our table and we wove among the white linen tablecloths, it was so dark that it was difficult to make out the facial features of the patrons.
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