The Black Thumb

by Frankie Bow

  “Of course.” I hoped he wouldn’t ask me what I was reading at the moment—a lightweight and undemanding murder mystery.

  “Me too. People say reading books is a waste of time, but I disagree. Reading fiction has been shown to increase empathy and improve theory of mind. Very valuable in my line of work.”

  Something on Medeiros’ person buzzed, probably a phone or a pager. He had been stalling, I realized, keeping me in conversation while he was waiting for this message.

  “Excuse me.” He stood up and stepped out of my office. I took the opportunity to brew myself a cup of coffee as I waited. My espresso machine had been expensive, but as far as impact on my quality of life, it was one of the best decisions I’d ever made. I’ve never regretted it. I wish I could say the same thing about my literature degree.

  Detective Medeiros came back in looking discouraged. Whoever had just called hadn’t delivered good news. That much I could tell.

  “Would you like some coffee?” I asked.

  “No time. If you wanna make one phone call, you can do it now.”

  “A phone call? Why?”

  “Amalia Barda, you’re under arrest. For the murder of Melanie Polewski.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DONNIE PICKED UP ON the second ring. The lunchtime clamor of Donnie’s Drive-Inn made it hard for him to hear me, so I had to shout. I hoped Rodge wasn’t in his office next door. He’d be able to hear every word.

  “Hi, Donnie. Hey, sorry to bother you during the lunch rush.”

  “It’s fine. What’s going on?”

  “You have a lawyer, right?”

  “What?”

  “Your lawyer.”

  “Did you say lawyer?”

  “Greg. Right? Do you have his number?”

  “Greg is my lawyer.”

  “Yes. May I have his number? I don’t know his last name so I can’t look him up.”

  “You have an IP question?”

  “Oh. Greg is an intellectual property lawyer. Shoot.” I glanced up at Detective Medeiros. “Donnie, I need to find a criminal lawyer.”

  “Did you say a criminal lawyer?”

  “Yes. Do you know anyone?”

  “Is this for your research?”

  “No. This is for me. I—I think I’m getting arrested. I mean I am getting arrested.”

  “Did you say arrested? Where are you?”

  “I’m in my office with Detective Ka`imi Medeiros from the Mahina Police Department. But I think we’ll be leaving for the police station soon. I don’t know. Sorry, I’ve never done this before.”

  “Let me talk to him, Molly. Please.”

  I handed the phone to Medeiros.

  “Eh, Donnie. Howzit. Yeah. Uh-huh. Fifteen, twenty minutes max. Nah, no need. Yeah, okay. No problem, man.”

  Medeiros handed the phone back to me, but Donnie had already hung up.

  “So what happens now?” I asked.

  “Donnie’s gonna have a lawyer meet you down at the station. Could take a while. You might wanna bring something to read.”

  I pulled an unread journal from my stack of mail and followed him out. The windowless hallway of my office building was so dimly lit we couldn’t see the stairway at the far end; we had to make our way toward the glowing EXIT sign in near darkness.

  In an effort to save energy, our administration had ordered half the fluorescent tubes removed from the classrooms and office buildings. It was impossible to tell whether this measure had actually saved our campus much money. The ongoing enlargement of the climate-controlled, brightly-lit Student Retention Office complex seemed to have complicated the calculations.

  Fortunately, we didn’t encounter any of my students or colleagues on our way out. Mahina State wasn’t offering many summer classes, and most of our students couldn’t afford the higher summer tuition anyway.

  We stepped out into the nearly-empty parking lot. The sky was still grey from the morning rain, and steam curled from the asphalt. Medeiros’ police cruiser was parked right next to the red curb.

  He opened the door for me and handed me into the back seat. The interior smelled of stale smoke and sour body odors, and the vinyl seat was cool to the touch. I felt more curious than afraid. This was an absurd misunderstanding, and I was certain it would be cleared up quickly.

  I kept quiet until Medeiros had pulled out of the parking lot and was driving down the road to the police station.

  “I’m guessing Melanie’s parents had something to do with this,” I said through the metal grill, to the back of Detective Medeiros’ head. “They don’t like me. You’ve heard of helicopter parents, right? Always hovering and interfering? Well, Mister and Mrs. Polewski are like the Boeing Apaches of helicopter parents. You know Melanie and I were in grad school together? Right, of course you do. In our first year, Melanie was going to get kicked out for cheating in our history of theory class, and then her parents came in with guns blazing, so she was able to stay in the program. I think Melanie told her parents I was the one who had reported her. That wasn’t even true.”

  “The parents are deceased.”

  “They are? She never told me.”

  “Was a few years ago.”

  “Oh.”

  The narrow road wound through one of Mahina’s older and less prosperous neighborhoods. Rusty cars in various stages of dismemberment littered overgrown front yards. Foliage engulfed the metal-roofed bungalows that had originally housed plantation workers.

  There were no more plantation workers on the island. The last working sugar plantation had long since gone under.

  “I can’t believe how vigorous the plants are here,” I said. “Back home I could never get anything to grow. But here, turn your back for a minute and next thing you know your mango tree is three hundred feet tall and dropping rotten fruit into your neighbor’s yard. Oh, that reminds me. Did you ever check Melanie’s glass of iced tea? To see if it had been poisoned or anything?”

  “Nothing wrong with the tea.”

  “And you’ve apparently ruled out suicide. Or so I assume, since here I am under arrest.”

  This time Medeiros said nothing.

  “But Detective? Here’s what I don’t understand. I was sitting downstairs. We were all in the back garden, together. So. If I was down there with everyone else when Melanie landed, how could I have pushed her off the balcony?”

  Witchcraft, perhaps? Was the plan to toss me into the Hanakoa River to see if I floated?

  “Never Mirandize you yet, did I? Professor Barda, you got the right to remain silent.”

  I watched the verdant front yards of Mahina roll by as Medeiros recited my rights.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE YOUNG WOMAN SMOOTHED her beige blazer over her imposing bosom and stood up to greet us as we entered the station. On high heels she was even taller than Detective Medeiros. Her long black hair was streaked with gold highlights and pulled back into a sleek knot. It took a few moments before I realized why she looked familiar.

  “Honey!”

  I’m not in the habit of greeting my former students with casual endearments; the young woman Donnie had sent to serve as my legal counsel was actually named Honey Akiona. At one time Honey had been enrolled in my Intro to Business Management course, where she had frequently crossed swords (figuratively speaking) with the confident and profoundly uninformed Davison Gonsalves. My future stepson, I reflected gloomily. Why couldn’t I be stepmom to someone like Honey Akiona?

  “Oh sure, she could be making a lot more managing patent portfolios,” I would tell people. “She graduated at the top of her class. But she’s always had such a keen sense of social justice. In fact, she’s thinking of going into environmental law.”

  Instead, I’d probably be having conversations along the lines of, “Oh, Davison? His new neck tattoo went septic, so he’s taking the semester off. Good thing he’s still on our health insurance. No, he hasn’t picked a major yet.”

  “Eh, Professor,” Honey executed a perfect,
firm handshake, then turned to Detective Medeiros: “She get O.R., yeah?”

  “Just a minute.”

  He went over and conferred with a woman behind the counter. She picked up the phone and talked to someone, hung up, and said something to Medeiros. He nodded and headed back in our direction.

  “Yeah, she get own recognizance,” he said to Honey. “Established relationship with Donnie Gonsalves, low flight risk.”

  Of course I was a low flight risk. I had a tenure-track position at the university, I owned my house, and I had no criminal record. But as long as they were going to release me without my having to pay bail, I was going to keep my mouth shut and not say anything that might make anyone change their mind. If Donnie Gonsalves was my get out of jail (for now) free card, so be it.

  Honey Akiona led me over to the counter, where someone plopped a stack of paperwork down in front of me. Detective Medeiros disappeared into the back, his work apparently done for now.

  “Honey, I wasn’t expecting you to be my attorney. I mean, that’s great. How did you get through law school so fast? It seems like you just graduated.”

  “I did an accelerated program. Same coursework, just less time to do it. Did Medeiros read you your rights?”

  “Yes.” I signed one form and flipped over to the next.

  “And did you say anything to him?”

  “Nothing substantial. I’m sure I didn’t say anything incriminating. I mean, how could I? I’m not guilty.”

  Honey snorted. She must hear that from every one of her clients, I realized. But the difference was, I really wasn’t guilty. Why couldn’t she see it? Why couldn’t any of these people see how absurd it was, the idea that I had somehow telepathically thrown Melanie Polewski out of the bedroom window at the exact same time I was sitting out in the garden, in full view of half a dozen witnesses?

  It hit me then. I really was in trouble.

  I finished signing and Honey brought the stack of completed forms over to what I assume was the correct window. Not knowing what else to do, I followed her over. It was the right thing to do, it turned out. I still needed to be fingerprinted.

  “Need a ride?” Honey asked when I was done.

  “Yes, thank you. My car’s still on campus.”

  I followed Honey out to the parking lot. The rain escalated from sprinkles to a downpour, so we walked a little faster. I had given up on carrying an umbrella in Mahina, as it rained so often I’d be stuck hauling around a wet umbrella all day.

  I buckled myself into the passenger seat. Honey shifted into reverse and glided noiselessly out of the parking spot. The car was spotless, and deodorized with something that smelled of birthday cake and volatile organic compounds.

  “Is this a hybrid?” I asked. “It’s so quiet.”

  “Electric. Never have to stop at the gas station. Never needs the oil changed. Saves my time and saves the environment.”

  “Thank you for coming down to get me.”

  “Thank your fiancé. He’s paying. So why don’t you tell me your side of this story?”

  I recounted the events of that horrible afternoon in the shadow of the Brewster House.

  “And it looked like she died instantly from the fall,” I concluded.

  “Melanie didn’t die from the fall.”

  “She didn’t?”

  “EMTs found pronounced angioedema.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means Melanie Palooskey—”

  “Pole-ess-key.”

  “What?”

  “It’s pronounced Pole-ess-key.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s spelled Palooskey.”

  “She always pronounced it Pole-ess-key.”

  “If you say so, Professor. Anyway, she died from anaphylaxis. An allergic reaction. She was already dead by the time she landed.”

  “Melanie did seem like she was allergic to everything. So the police think I deliberately triggered her allergies or something? You know, I did everything I could to accommodate her. In fact, I don’t have anything to eat at home right now except gluten-free muffin mix and some mushy papayas. I really need to throw those out. They’re starting to attract fruit flies.”

  “It wasn’t your food. The problem was your shoes.”

  I looked down at my feet.

  “Not the ones you’re wearing. The green plastic ones.”

  “Green plastic shoes?”

  Honey nodded.

  “I don’t have green plastic ...oh wait. I didn’t have any gardening shoes so I bought those at the last minute for the Garden Society meeting.”

  “Police found ‘em outside your house.” Honey said. “Took ‘em as evidence.”

  “My shoes? How were those shoes supposed to have killed her? With a massive blow to her fashion sensibilities?”

  “Melanie Polewski had a severe latex allergy.”

  “The shoes had latex in them?”

  “Yeah. I know it sounds kinda iffy,” Honey said, “but they’re under a lot of pressure to do something. Shiroma’s coming up for re-election, remember.”

  “I see. After the cockfight murders, and then the karaoke murders—”

  “Exactly. Not that our prosecuting attorney would ever do anything for political reasons.”

  “But how do they explain Melanie being on the top floor of the house?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Melanie even made me throw away the roll of tape from my first aid kit. Can you ask them to check Mrs. Masterman’s house for allergens? Maybe there was something inside there that triggered a reaction.”

  “They claim they checked the house already. Top to bottom. First thing they did when they saw the cause of death.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “Normally, you can expect an arraignment hearing within a week, but I requested a delay. Gives us a little more time. At the arraignment, you can plead guilty, not guilty, no contest, or you can enter an Alford plea, which means you don’t admit guilt but you do admit they could prove you’re guilty. At this point I would advise you to plead not guilty.”

  “Of course. I’m not guilty.”

  Honey pulled into the parking space next to my T-Bird. The car’s windshield wipers were on the slow setting, not quite keeping up with the rain.

  “You know, Professor, criminal defense is interesting. Ninety percent of your clients are guilty of the charges, and the other ten percent did something even worse but never got caught yet. And they all say they’re innocent.”

  “But I am innocent.”

  “Of course you are, Professor.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I HESITATED WITH MY hand on the door handle, indicating my willingness to step out into the rain if Honey had somewhere to be. Local etiquette dictated that when someone dropped you off while it was raining, it was acceptable to stay in their car until the rain let up. I wasn’t keen to get drenched again so soon after my canoe-paddling adventure. On the other hand, I didn’t want to keep Honey from speeding off to do whatever lawyers did to get their clients off the hook.

  “So you still got the T-Bird, ah, Professor? What kinda mileage you getting on that thing?”

  I settled back into the passenger seat, relieved. Honey had tacitly invited me to wait out the rain by continuing the conversation. The downpour was so heavy by this time I could barely see the old music portables next to the parking lot.

  “The mileage isn’t great. But I live downtown, only a couple of miles from campus. So I don’t use much gas.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to tell the environmentally-aware Honey I was driving a car that got eleven miles to the gallon. Or that my exhaust had been pouring blue smoke lately, portending an expensive ring-and-valve job in my future. I had been putting off taking it into Miyashiro Motors. Earl Miyashiro, my well-intentioned but literal-minded mechanic, kept nagging me to ditch my Squarebird and trade it in for something more practical. Unfortunately, Earl was the on
ly mechanic on the island would go anywhere near my car. Otherwise, I’d take my business to someone less judgmental.

  “Professor. Remember how you always told us in class, back up your claims with evidence?”

  “Of course. I think you guys got sick of hearing me say it.”

  “Well, it’s what we gotta do now. Doesn’t matter if you’re innocent or what. What matters is if you got the evidence to back up what you say. The best thing would be to find another explanation for what killed Melanie. Something more believable than you did it. Anything you could tell me about her could help.”

  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Oh. Suppose someone had copied over Melanie’s files before Pat brought her computer down to the police station. Hypothetically speaking, would I be allowed to share those files with my lawyer?”

  “Yeah. Get ‘em to me as soon as you can. They gotta give ‘em to me anyways, but I wanna get my hands on the original. Just in case there’s any ‘accidental’ omissions.”

  She pulled a business card out of her jacquard fabric briefcase and handed it to me. Honey’s briefcase was from the same designer as Melanie’s luggage, but instead of a hot pink logo pattern, Honey had chosen a more sober black-on-black.

  “You should read ‘em yourself first.”

  “Read her private files?”

  “You knew Melanie better than anyone else involved with this case. If there’s anything in there that could help you, you’d be the one to recognize it.”

  “Can I email you the files?”

  “Sure, but drop ‘em off in person too. Print ‘em out if you can.”

  The rain had diminished to a fine drizzle. The former music building, which even in its heyday had been nothing more than a flimsy portable adjoining the lower parking lot, looked dismal. Its brown siding was ragged along the bottom, corroded by black mold.

  I stepped out of Honey’s car, let myself into the Thunderbird, and rested my head on the back of the seat. When I opened my eyes, Honey’s car was gone.

  I didn’t have the energy to drive home. Not yet. I gripped the oversized steering wheel and inhaled the Thunderbird’s old-car smell. None of this seemed real.