The Milburn Big Box Set

by Nancy McGovern

  “That’s kind but there’s no need—”

  “I insist,” Degas said. “You’ve already shown me more kindness than I could have believed possible. It’s the least I could do.”

  “Actually,” Nora said, “I’ve got a few questions. Answering them, now that’s the least you could do.”

  *****

  Chapter 7

  The Sister

  “What do you want to know?” Degas asked with a sigh.

  “Why does… why did Akamai hate Haku so much?” Nora asked. “I thought at first that Akamai is a teenager.”

  “He does look young for his age, doesn’t he?” Degas laughed. “He’s 24. But as far as maturity goes, Akamai is no better than a teenage lout. He’s got no job and he loafs about with his friends and his “gang”. I know Chief Kahane has been pushing for him to join the police force, but that’s the last thing we need here on the island.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Nora said. “I thought Akamai was a teenager at first, and perhaps just rebelling or going through an angry phase. But he’s 24, and he hates his older brother. Why?”

  “Akamai is a psycho, that’s why,” Degas said. “There’s no reason for it. He’s just always hated Haku. Even when we were young, I remember Akamai was always a brat. He wasn’t so bad then, I suppose. But I guess it just carried on. Remember I told you I had an accident with the Suzuki in the ocean? Akamai wasn’t with us that day, but he was the one who tattled to his father. I didn’t get any punishment from mine, but apparently Chief Kahane gave a paddling to Haku.”

  “Haku was his stepson,” Nora said. “But Akamai looks exactly like him.”

  “That’s true.” Degas nodded. “Haku’s father died of an illness when Haku was only three years old, and his mother married Chief Kahane after. I’m not a big fan of the chief, and I think it’s obvious that he’s spoiled Akamai over the years, but I don’t think he was bad to Haku either.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised,” Elly said, standing up. “You’d be surprised if you knew the whole truth, Degas.”

  “What?” Degas looked at her.

  “Akamai hated Haku,” Elly said. “Chief Kahane did too. But at least he got better at hiding it as time went by.”

  “Why?” Nora asked. “Was it just a case of… bad parenting?”

  Elly sighed. “It was… we were…” She shook her head. “This was a long, long time ago. I don’t like to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Then you don’t have to.” Degas put a hand on her shoulder. “I won’t let anyone force you into saying anything you don’t want to, Elly. I know how raw you must feel. It’s been… rough.”

  Elly gave him a grateful smile, and it suddenly clicked for Nora, why she’d felt so weird about her. When Elly had spoken of Haku, she’d talked as if she were reciting memorized lines about why she loved him. But then, when she looked at Degas, there was something in her eyes, there was something about the way she talked to him.

  Elly had a crush on Degas! It was so obvious. Even as she grieved for Haku, part of her longed to be with Degas, it was clear.

  Nora looked away, assessing the two from the corner of her eye. Yes, the more she looked, the more she saw. It was in the way Elly’s face lit up with an interior glow when she looked at Degas, it was in the way she subtly shifted her body to be closer to him, or how her eyes rested on his lips for just a second before looking away. Elly was very clearly in love with Degas!

  But did Degas know it? Would Degas have done anything about it if he had known it? Nora was reasonably sure that Degas liked Simone. Even now, as he consoled Elly, he’d occasionally raise his head to make eye contact with Simone, almost as if he were reassuring himself of her presence. Was it all an act?

  “Why do you want to know anyway?” Elly asked, peering at Nora suspiciously.

  “What?” Nora blinked, looking at her.

  “Why do you want to know?” Elly asked. “Are you a journalist or something?”

  “Actually, Nora’s a detective,” Simone said. “A pretty famous one in our neck of the woods. She’s caught at least three different murderers, and it’s not even her real job.”

  “I’m not…” Nora demurred, but Simone shut her up with a look.

  “Sometimes, people are talented in weird ways,” Simone said. “Some people can juggle fire, some people can bend spoons with their mind. Nora, I think, can talk to people, and talk to people, and eventually figure out why a sequence of events unfolded the way it did. It’s not like she magically finds clues, little scraps of fabric or a half hidden fingerprint. What she does is talk, and you’ll be surprised how often, just by comparing five different versions of the same story, she comes to find out the truth.”

  Nora blushed. It felt like excessive praise to her, personally. But Simone was looking at her as proudly as she sometimes looked at her son Will when he’d just completed a painting.

  “I’m a single mother,” Simone said. “But I’m happy and at peace, mostly thanks to Nora’s efforts at finding out the truth. It’s cliché, but it’s right, the truth does set you free. If you really want to find out what happened to Haku, there’s no better person than her.”

  “Simone, please,” Nora protested.

  “You’re… you’re a single mother?” Degas looked like she’d smacked him between the eyes.

  Simone nodded. “Will just turned 8 this year,” she said. “I’ve been raising him on my own for a while now. Luckily his grandparents are around.”

  “That must be tough,” Elly said.

  “It’s easier than living a lie,” Simone said. “Anyway, that’s not the point. Nora can’t help it, I think. She asks questions. She always does. I think it’d be tremendously helpful to you if you answered them.”

  “All right,” Elly said. “You’ve convinced me. I guess… I guess getting an outsider’s perspective on this might be smart, after all.”

  “So what happened?” Nora asked. “Why did Akamai hate Haku so much?”

  “Akamai had a twin,” Elly said. “A sister named Alana.”

  “Oh.” The words that Elly and Akamai had thrown at each other suddenly began to make more sense. But Nora didn’t want to interrupt. She waited patiently for Elly to continue. Elly looked at Degas, almost as if she were taking his permission, and he gave her a reassuring nod.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “It happened when we were sixteen,” Elly said. “This was after Degas left the island. Degas, are you sure you want to hear this?”

  “I knew Alana died,” Degas said. “But Haku never told me how. He never talked about her at all, and I didn’t want to pry.”

  “The overturned car on the beach,” Elly said. “Have you ladies seen it?”

  “Seen it?” Nora said. “We’re practically living beside it.”

  “Oh, you’re living in the yellow cottage by the beach a few miles from here?” Elly said. “Anyway, whenever you see it, remember that Degas here caused it. He somehow wedged the car between two rocks at low tide, and it tipped over on its side. Over time, the tide flipped it over totally, wedging it hard between the rocks. It’s a local landmark.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t alone that day,” Degas teased. “You and Haku kept encouraging me to drive it faster, take sharper turns. Remember?”

  “We were young and wild.” Elly nodded. “To be fair, the island is really boring, and back then we didn’t have the internet, and our parents didn’t allow us to watch more than an hour of TV each day. So like any bored young kids, we overturned that car. How old were we, Degas? Twelve?”

  “Probably.” Degas laughed. “I left the island two years later, right? I was 14 when I left. So yeah, 12.”

  “Your parents were very irresponsible, letting you drive at 12,” Simone said disapprovingly.

  “My parents had left me in the company of a tutor who liked to sleep every afternoon,” Degas said. “I sneaked the keys from their hiding place and drove the car out to the beach, but
Haku and Elly urged me to.”

  Simone gave Nora a look that Nora easily deciphered - clearly Degas’ easy words didn’t change Simone’s opinion of his parents.

  “We three were best friends back then,” Elly said. “After Degas left the island, it was just me and Haku. When we were 15, Haku confessed his love to me. We… we started dating.” Elly choked back a sob, but then broke down completely when Degas stroked her hair. “Oh, Haku!”

  “This is too hard on her,” Degas said, his voice grim. “Let it go, Elly.”

  “No. I’m going to tell it all now, while I have the strength.” Elly waited for her sobs to subside, waited till she was sure she was back in control. Then, with a determined face, she continued, “I think Haku’s mother was sick that day. She had a fever. At any rate, Haku was a little irritated that he had to babysit his little sister. She was 11, old enough to be left alone, Haku thought. She thought so too. So we went to the beach, and Haku and I went for a long walk while Alana stayed behind. She was playing in the overturned car. It was low tide then, so the waters weren’t even touching the car when we left her.”

  There was a look of horror on Degas’ face. “You mean… that car… my car...”

  “I don’t know if she got trapped in the car, or slipped and hit herself, or just got swept out in the ocean’s currents,” Elly said. “All I know is, when we returned, Alana was nowhere to be found. At first, we weren’t even worried. We thought she’d just walked back home. But then… the hours ticked by, and she was nowhere to be found.” A single tear fell down Elly’s cheek. “Haku was never the same again. He blamed himself. He blamed himself for not being there.”

  “That must have been hard on him,” Nora murmured.

  “It was,” Elly said. “The problem was his family blamed him too.”

  “They… they did?” Degas looked extremely sad. “Poor Haku. I never realized.”

  “His stepfather didn’t hit him, or say anything,” Elly said. “But Haku said things were never the same between him and Chief Kahane again. I think the parents were quite devastated by the loss. They both became silent and withdrawn. As for Akamai, he became outright violent and hateful towards Haku. He acted like Haku had drowned her himself.”

  Nora didn’t know what to say. A twin’s death. She couldn’t imagine how hard that would be on Akamai. Naturally, he would have wanted someone to hate, someone to blame, but it wasn’t Haku’s fault, not really. Was it?

  “As for Haku, he broke up with me over it,” Elly said. “He went into a deep depression, too. It took him years and years to come out of it. He started to do drugs. It was a downward spiral.”

  “What shook him out of it?” Nora asked.

  “Elly did,” Degas said. “I know this - Haku admitted his drug use to me, and he told me how his love for Elly helped him clean up his act.”

  Nora looked at Elly, but she shook her head and buried her head in her hands again.

  “You should be happy,” Degas said. “He did it because he loved you. He said he would have died if he hadn’t gotten back with you. He said that the day he proposed to you, if you’d refused, he’d made plans to… well… let’s not talk about that.”

  “Yes. Let’s not. Because he died. He died anyway,” Elly said, her voice breaking. “That’s the horrible thing about life. He tried so hard to get clean and then he died anyway.”

  But the question was who or what had killed him?

  *****

  Chapter 8

  Breakfast

  They woke up late the next morning. Degas’ mansion was huge enough that he had four separate guest bedrooms. The girls, seeing how upset Elly was, opted to sleep in one room instead, and dragged his extra mattresses on the carpet. Nora wondered if Elly wanted them there or if she would have preferred some privacy. At any rate, she didn’t complain, though she did look a little forlorn once Degas left.

  Nora kept playing the story of Haku’s tragic past over and over in her mind. It must have torn him apart, to feel responsible for his sister’s death. As for Elly, she hadn’t shown any regret, although she too had been with Haku at the time. What was it about Elly? Why did she react so… strangely? Even when Degas had been praising her about how Haku had cleaned up his act because he was engaged to her, Elly had seemed uncomfortable instead of proud. In fact, she’d seemed unhappy to remember. Of course, that might be because she was grieving. Yet… yet Nora wondered whether that was the case. Something was off. She just couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

  As for Akamai, Nora shuddered when she remembered the evil gleam in his eye as he promised to exact vengeance on those who smeared his name. All in all, she felt glad that they were in Degas’ house, instead of alone at the cottage. There was no telling what Akamai might do.

  They were woken up at 9 am, when Tom and some of his crew came to the house to talk to Degas. “Look, Degas, we really appreciate you as a client, but the thing is, we need more money,” Tom said.

  “What’s this about now?” Degas asked angrily.

  “My crew’s spooked,” Tom said. “They found a dead man on site, there’s rumors that a vicious killer snake is on the loose and nobody’s bothered to even look for it—”

  “Chief Kahane put up a task force last night,” Degas said, “They didn’t find the snake, but they’re sure to.”

  “The point is, the work is risky and the pay isn’t enough,” Tom said. “We need a raise.”

  Degas grumbled into his coffee, “Out,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Out!” Degas shouted. Standing up, he looked quite a sight in his thick silk robe and matching pajamas. His hair was rumpled all over, and his unshaven face looked ragged. “Get out! I’ve got enough troubles on my hands without you lot arguing for a raise. If you don’t do the job I’ve paid you to do, let me tell you I’ll use all my considerable resources to rain down on you and your reputation. Got it?”

  “You paid us to do a job, you didn’t pay us to work at a murder scene,” Tom said.

  “The reason there’s a murder scene is because you useless louts didn’t install those cameras on time!” Degas yelled.

  “What? I’ve got messages from Haku telling us you wanted them installed yesterday, and my crew came right on time,” Tom said, looking bewildered as well as angry.

  “What?” Degas calmed down a little. “Haku messaged you?”

  “Yes. After the parrot’s death, he told us—”

  “Yes, well, I wanted you to install those cameras three weeks ago when we moved the animals into their enclosures,” Degas said angrily. “You never did that.”

  “Because I was never asked to,” Tom said impassively. “I keep a record of every single email I receive, Mr. Christiansen, and you can check them yourself. We weren’t asked to do that.”

  “But…” Degas looked flummoxed. “Why would Haku do that? Why would he ask you not to install the cameras?”

  “I don’t know.” Tom shrugged. “I just know that I and my men do our job well. We need that raise, Mr. Christiansen. Or we will have to drop this contract. As for ruining our reputation, I’d like to think we’re made of stronger stuff than bowing to your pressure like that.”

  “Right. Of course.” Degas looked lost in thought. “I guess… I guess I’ll give you the raise. But only after you’ve finished your work.”

  “Works fine.” Tom shook hands with him and stood up. “Good day.”

  “Good day,” Degas said.

  “Whew,” Simone said, watching Tom leave. “Tough character.”

  “Actually, I’d like to go talk to him,” Nora said, rushing after him.

  “What got into your friend?” Degas asked Simone.

  Simone shrugged. “I just let her do what she likes.”

  “Are Tina and Elly still asleep? I was thinking of making some eggs for breakfast.”

  “You can cook?” Simone looked impressed. “I thought you were one of those rich spoilt brats who clap their hands and expect a three cour
se meal to be placed in front of them.”

  Degas clapped his hands, looked around disappointed, and said, “Well, that didn’t work. Guess I’ll just have to cook those eggs myself.”

  “I’ll help.” Simone smiled, and walked up beside him.

  “Great. Let’s see.” Degas peered into the fridge, “Alright, Lady Simone. What would you prefer for breakfast, a baked florentine omelet, or an Indian style egg chaat?”

  “Both sound intriguing,” she said.

  “Well, then let’s make both.” Degas smiled. “Let’s see, there’s…” He counted off his fingers, “Five of us. So that means, we’ll use 10 eggs. I have an even dozen, so your first task is to whisk them all together, then divide them into two portions.” He handed her the cardboard carton, and made a shooing motion. “Go on, get started. The whisk is in that drawer, and the mixing bowl is in that cabinet, second to the right.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, curious.

  “Start cutting the veggies and fruits,” Degas said.

  Soon, the two were working side by side in a rhythm. After the events of the last day, working this way was soothing. Degas felt like he could forget the unpleasantness and pretend that his life was this simple. That he awoke everyday to make breakfast for friends, and share a meal with people he liked.

  “When did you learn to cook?” she asked, as he sliced the scallions and chopped the basil.

  “Not at home,” Degas said. “But I had to learn when I first decided to go on a long camping trip by myself. This was when I was about 22. My parents…” He sighed. “They didn’t make it. A plane crash took them away too early.”

  “I’m sorry,” Simone said. “That must have been tough.”

  “I’ll be honest with you. It wasn’t. Not really. I hardly ever saw them. I think I grieved more when one of my nannies died,” Degas said. “Look, I’m not saying that as a way to get sympathy. It’s just the way it was. They were my parents, and I saw them maybe one day a year, if that. It’s hard to get emotionally attached in one day.”