Paradise Crime Mysteries

by Toby Neal

  It felt wonderful to deactivate the alarm, let the dog in, reset it, and take a shower—knowing she was safe at last.

  She tried to think about why she’d freaked out at Tom’s but her mind wouldn’t go there. She just didn’t know—but it felt like a classic panic attack. She thought over the whole evening and he hadn’t said or done anything really suspicious. He just seemed like a lonely, awkward guy that liked to grow orchids and keep a very clean house and yard. That in itself was strange, for a guy…

  She let herself smile at that as hot water pounded down on her shoulders, loosening the knots of tension that remained from the day. Maybe the panic attack wasn’t about Tom at all. Mary’s still face appeared in her mind, bringing grief like a wave of nausea.

  The shower water had cooled, and she got out, wrapping in a big white towel. The doorbell rang just as she’d climbed into her PJs and pulled her old cotton kimono over them. She went to the door and put her eye to it, then opened it for Stevens. He held out the fawn-spotted orchid to her.

  “This was sitting on your mat. Something nice from the stalker?”

  “No.” Lei took the delicate plant, led the way into the house. “Tom Watanabe gave it to me.” She felt bad again for running out on him, but there was still something off about the guy.

  “How was dinner with Watanabe?”

  “Good food, lousy conversation. How was picking up Reynolds?”

  “Guy’s pissed as hell, says he’s being framed. Almost got to Tase him.” Stevens broke into a grin. “It would have been great but he settled right down when I got my weapon out, alas. He clammed up tight, though, so the interview was a waste of time.”

  “Speaking of waste of time—finishing the storage unit qualified.”

  “Sorry about that. I picked it because I thought it a more likely hiding place.”

  “Yeah, I figured. You hungry?”

  “I know better than to expect anything when I come over, but some water to replace the liquids I lost today would be nice.”

  Lei got a bottle out of the fridge and handed it to him. She was so tired it was hard to think clearly. An awkward silence descended.

  “I told you, you didn’t need to come over. This really has to stop.” Lei pushed her damp hair back with both hands, blew out a breath.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You spending the night. The stalker’s stopped bothering me ever since the truck chase. It’s over, and he never did anything dangerous in the first place. I feel so stupid about putting you and Pono out. It’s really time for it to end.”

  “You said not to make it your fault.” Stevens sighed, rubbed his bottle back and forth across his flat stomach. “It’s not your fault. The stalker might not have attacked, but he could be a real threat.”

  “It’s just...this whole thing. It’s hard because it reminds me how unsafe I am. You know why I have all these locks and the alarm?”

  “I wondered.”

  “Because I was molested when I was a kid. It messed me up.” She’d decided to tell him, but it wasn’t making her feel better. Instead, her stomach clenched.

  “Hell isn’t good enough for scum who do things to kids. I’m sorry that happened to you. I wondered if something did, all your security measures.”

  “My mom had a drug problem. My dad got her hooked before he went to prison for dealing. Her boyfriend was the one who worked me over, and when he broke up with her she overdosed. I was nine.”

  A long pause as he digested this, his eyes blue shadows. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Then he smiled a lopsided smile that twisted her heart.

  “Cheers.” He held his plastic bottle out, she clinked her water glass against it. “Your dead-ass mom tops my drunk-ass mom.”

  They drank, the ironic toast of children of substance abusers. He went on.

  “I told you I had a friend I let down before by not taking a situation like this seriously, and I won’t let it happen again.”

  “Who was she?”

  “My best friend growing up. She had a nasty boyfriend in college. He stalked her after they broke up and she kept telling me about it. I thought she was exaggerating, told her she was making drama. He killed her. That’s when I changed my major to Criminal Justice and joined the force.”

  “I appreciate you telling me that, but I’m not that friend. In fact, I don’t want to just be your friend,” she said. She held his gaze. Dark blue eyes, intense and wary, met hers. She leaned over to kiss him, a tentative brush of the lips.

  “Damn,” he said, reaching over to pull her into his arms. “I don’t want to be your friend either.” He kissed her, pent-up hunger making their teeth click. Lei pulled away eventually, covering her mouth with her hand.

  “Ouch. Smooth move.”

  “You’re right about one thing.” He stood up. “This can’t go on.”

  “Finally.” Lei picked up the empty water bottle and glass, took them to the sink. “Let’s wrap up this investigation and go on a date like two sane adults.”

  “Are you asking me out?”

  “Or we could just sleep together,” she said. He stood speechless, and then reached for her again. She dodged, laughing, leading him to the door. This flirting thing was getting easier. Maybe she’d just needed some practice. She handed him his duffel, discarded by the entrance.

  “See you at the station, Detective Stevens.”

  “Okay, but call me if you need anything. I mean anything.” He wiggled his brows and she laughed. “Sleep well. Keep your phone on.”

  She let him out, locked the door, armed the alarm. I doubt either of us will sleep well, she thought. She leaned against the door, closing her eyes, savoring the faint bruising of her lips, the razor burn of his face still tingling her skin. She sighed and signaled Keiki for their evening lockup routine.

  Across the street he lowered the miniature binoculars he’d been using to observe the house. Her light was finally out. She was in bed. He pictured her there, her lean athletic body curved in sleep, her nipples punctuating the thin fabric of the undershirt she wore to bed.

  Sleeping. Waiting for him, for just the right moment. Soon.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Lei walked up the old fashioned church aisle in her dress blues with her offering, an orchid plant in a turtle-shaped ceramic pot. She set it at the base of a three-foot picture of Mary’s smiling face set on an easel, with a basket of round black pebbles from Punalu`u Beach beside it. Lei picked one up and put it in her pocket.

  She turned and made her way to one of the wooden pews, sliding in to sit beside Pono and his little family. Pono reached out to give her a side hug and Maile, the toddler, dimpled around the finger that plugged her mouth. Statuesque Tiare had her hands full with baby Ikaika, but reached over to pat Lei’s shoulder.

  Lei took the surroundings in, tilting her head to see the arched ribs of the graceful nave, stained glass windows dropping coins of colored light across the polished floor. Massed arrangements of gardenia, Mary’s favorite flower, filled in the air with scent. The church was standing room only for the memorial, filled with police, friends and family. Mary had been well loved, and outrage over her death felt palpable in the hushed tension of voices.

  Lei sat, huddled inside crisp dark uniform armor, with a sense as if the event were a movie in which she had little part. An ukulele and guitar band had already begun playing ‘Amazing Grace’ when Michael Stevens slipped into the pew beside her. He leaned over next to her ear and whispered, “You okay?”

  His warm breath tickling the hair beside her ear was the first thing she’d felt in her own body all morning. She nodded, holding the song sheet, her voice reedy and choked. Jeremy Ito slipped into the pew beside Stevens. He’d brought a digital camera.

  “Got to get shots of all the guests. He may be here, watching.”

  Stevens nodded, and Jeremy took up an unobtrusive post behind a pillar on the side. Lei felt the eye of his lens on her and hated the necessity that put him there,
watching for a killer.

  She didn’t cry through the poems, and speeches, and even the releasing of a dozen white doves outside the church, a heartrending touch Mary’s boyfriend Roland performed in honor of the moment he’d planned for their wedding. She was able to stay in that bubble of disconnect all the way home, but when it was time to change out of her dress blues and go to work, she found herself getting out the emergency vodka bottle and calling in sick.

  She threw back shots standing at the sink until her vision went blurry, then staggered to bed and fell into a black well.

  Lei’s senses slowly booted up, one at a time. She opened her eyes. She was looking up at the familiar net canopy of her bed at home. Her head throbbed.

  Thank God for medication, she thought, lifting herself up enough to throw some extra-strength Advil into her mouth from the side drawer and swish them down with bottled water she’d left out. Keiki lifted her head and watched Lei as she subsided with a groan.

  The door creaked open.

  “Hey, you’re up,” Pono said.

  “Not sure about ‘up.’ I’m still deciding if I’m alive.”

  “Here, Keiki,” Pono called, and the big dog leapt off the bed. “Lieutenant told me to come look in on you when you called in. You forgot to lock your house or turn on the alarm. You look like shit, by the way.”

  “Sssshhhhhhh,” Lei whispered. “I’m waiting for the Advil to work so I can go back to sleep.”

  “Oh no. It’s almost 11 a.m., and I made the call last night. She’s going to be here in only a couple hours.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Your Aunty Rosario.”

  “Oh my God!” Lei sat up too fast and fell back, her head spinning.

  “I’ll get you some coffee.”

  Lei sat up slowly and carefully this time, swinging her legs off the bed. She tottered to the bathroom. One of her old notes was still dangling from the corner of the mirror. She pulled it off and dropped it into the rubbish and brushed her teeth carefully.

  “Now what’s this about Aunty Rosario?” she asked, reaching for the steaming mug of coffee Pono held out to her in the kitchen.

  “I found your phone last night and called her,” Pono said, sitting down. “I told her you been being stalked, your friend was murdered, and you needed some TLC.”

  “I didn’t want her to know,” Lei said, frowning. “She has a lot on her plate and she’ll be upset.”

  “She’s your family. She get one right to know you need her. She told me she was getting someone to cover the restaurant and catching the next plane out.”

  Lei sat back, looked into the milky coffee. Weaker than I usually make it, she thought grumpily. She took another sip.

  “Great,” she muttered. She felt vulnerable, thin in her own skin, brittle somehow. Keiki put her big square head on her leg and it was the only thing that felt good in the world.

  Lei pulled the truck up to the sidewalk outside of the baggage claim. Her aunt waited, a sturdy brown woman in a muumuu with a thick curly braid hanging past her waist. She held a little suitcase, the kind of “overnight bag” they made out of vinyl and cardboard back in the 50s. A big white cooler on wheels also sat on the sidewalk. Aunty dropped the suitcase with a cry at the sight of Lei.

  Lei hurried around the front of the big truck and threw her arms around her aunt. She buried her face in Rosario’s neck, inhaling the smell of talcum powder and pikake perfume that had always meant safety and love.

  “Aunty,” she whispered.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Aunty Rosario stroked the tangled curls back as she searched Lei’s face.

  “We’re making a scene, Aunty. Let’s go already.” Lei slung the little bag into the back passenger seat and hefted the cooler into the bed of the pickup. Keiki wriggled with joy at the sight of the other woman. Aunty fended off slobbery kisses as Lei started up the truck.

  “When you goin’ teach this dog some manners?” Aunty scolded as Keiki nudged her with her big square head, her tongue lolling in a happy grin.

  “She’s actually very well-trained,” Lei said, snapping her fingers. Keiki withdrew her head from between the seats and settled into the backseat with a sigh.

  “So tell me what the hell has been going on,” Aunty said, pinning Lei with her fierce black eyes. “Why I gotta hear from a stranger my baby girl being stalked?”

  “I’m sorry,” Lei said, keeping her eyes on the road. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “What? Who raised you to talk crazy like that? Oh yeah, that crack whore momma of yours. That’s why I should expec’ this kine thing.” She folded her arms and stared out the window. They drove in silence for some minutes, Aunty letting the full weight of her displeasure settle over the cab. Finally Lei put her hand on her aunt’s arm.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’ll call you next time I have a problem, I promise.”

  “That’s what family is for,” Aunty said, slightly mollified. “I guess I should expec’ I gotta teach you that. Now tell me ever’t’ing.”

  “I nevah like talk about it,” Lei said.

  “You stay goin’ to,” Aunty said. “I need fo’ know.”

  Aunty never took her eyes off Lei as she filled her in on what had happened with the stalker and Mary.

  “I want you to come back to San Rafael with me,” her aunt said with a note of finality. “Take some vacation time. Momi and I will take care of you.” Momi Pauhale was her aunt’s longtime partner in the restaurant and like a second aunt to Lei.

  “No,” Lei said. “I have to see this through. I want to catch these guys—the one who killed Mary and the girls, and the one who’s stalking me.”

  “Sometimes you gotta let other people take care of you,” Aunty said, an eerie echo of fifteen years ago when she’d picked up a battered child of nine from Social Services.

  “And sometimes you have to be the one who takes care of business.” Lei pulled into her driveway, going through the motions of opening the house, showing her aunt where to stow her things, giving her the bedroom and getting out the futon for herself.

  Rosario had brought a lot of food from the restaurant in the white cooler, and she put it away, keeping up a stream of gossip about mutual friends and relatives as she thawed some kalbi ribs and warmed up poi rolls for their dinner.

  “Business has been pretty good. I still surprised how many Hawaii people drive for miles to find us. Momi and I are training some new waitresses; we lost Kailani when she went back school. The best one is our new girl Anela Ka`awai. She’s related to the Ka`awais from Kaua`i and she a hard worker. Momi talking about making her assistant manager . . .”

  Lei sat at the little table, and let the words wash over her.

  She squinched her eyes shut, trying to shut out the memory of Mary’s dusky face. Funny how she’d never noticed that little mole by her mouth before.

  “Lei.” Aunty touched her shoulder and she looked up.

  “What?”

  “I brought something. Something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a long time.” She came and sat back down beside Lei. She was holding a thick packet of letters bound with rubber bands. She set them in front of Lei. “From your father.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “What are these, Aunty?” Her heart accelerating, she picked the stack up, slid the rubber band off. She turned over the topmost letter, looking at the return address.

  Wayne Texeira, Federal Correctional Center Lompoc, Lompoc, California.

  Wayne Texeira. Her father—the man whose incarceration had led to such devastation for her and her mother. Her blood seemed to roar in her ears as she shuffled through the letters, postmarked all the way back through the years to the first one, written in 1989.

  I was five years old, she thought. I thought he forgot all about me. She looked at the address they had been sent to:

  Lei Texeira, c/o Rosario Texeira, 300 D. Street, San Rafael, California.

  “He sent them to me. At f
irst I’d lost track of you, couldn’t get them to you. Then, it seemed like it would upset you too much to give them to you.” Aunty got up, banged some pots around. Lei looked at her small, sturdy form, shoulders hunched as she flipped the ribs on the cookie sheet with her back turned.

  “Why now?” Lei turned the packet over in her hands. Her chest felt constricted, that panicky feeling returning. She wanted to get up and run, run, run.

  “I don’t know. It just seemed time, and like maybe you needed something else to think about.”

  “You shouldn’t have kept them from me.” Lei stood, went into the bedroom and got the Glock in its holster, strapped it on. Picked up her backpack, slid the letters into it. Her voice trembled with the effort of self control. “I’m going out. Keep the door locked.”

  Her aunt nodded without turning around.

  Lei hooked the light nylon parka shell off the back of the door and slipped into it to cover her gun, grabbed her keys and went back out to the truck. She drove to a nearby espresso bar and sat at her favorite spot in the corner, where the sun cut a sharp, bright lance across the table. She ordered a coffee of the day, and sipping it out of the thick, white mug, she pulled the letters out of the backpack.

  She arranged them into chronological order. Interesting Aunty never read them, she thought, examining the intact flap of the very first one, dated November of 1989.He had been arrested in October of that year.

  She’d been asleep in her little bed, and still remembered the boom of the front door breaking open, waking her up. Even at five, Lei knew it was smartest to hide, so she’d slid out and crawled under the bed, clutching her favorite stuffed kitty. She remembered her father’s voice, raised in argument, her mom yelling, the glare of the lights, flashing blue and red ...and eventually silence.

  Lei crawled out and went into their bedroom, climbing into the wide bed, still dented with the shape of her father’s body. She’d snuggled into his still-warm pillow beside her weeping mother, a fatalistic sorrow taking up residence in her bones.