Kauai Temptations

by Terry Ambrose

  I headed further north on the Kuhio Highway, watching the line of cars snake in the opposite direction. Getting back was going to be awful, but it was too late to change direction. I forged ahead to the other side of Kapa'a.

  The last time I’d been at Kari’s apartment there had only been a few cars in the lot. It was the same this trip and it was easy to find Morah’s end unit. It was still marked with yellow tape. Even if the place hadn’t been a toxic mess, I had no intention of giving Najar the upper hand. This was me being good. See, Najar? I’m not in your way.

  I was, however, intrigued at what Najar had said about the blown-out windows. From my position of legal and physical safety, which was about 20 feet from the apartment, I studied the front of the unit. Najar had said the windows were blown out by the force of the explosion. The sidewalks around me had obviously been freshly swept, but there were still small shards of glass embedded in the surrounding lawn and flowerbeds. Leaves of the ginger and hibiscus plants nearby almost appeared to have been shredded, as though flying glass shards had ripped through them. For the most part, all of the big chunks had been cleared away. The doorway itself was covered over by a sheet of plywood on which someone had spray painted the words “Keep Out.” Like that was necessary.

  The slider door for the apartment opposite Morah’s was open, the vertical blinds in the window performing a slow hula in the breeze. When I walked around the back of the building, I saw each unit had a slider, most of which were closed. Two of them were open, the third, which was Kari’s, and fifth. Morah’s slider had also been boarded over. All around me, randomly distributed speckles of glass glinted in the sun.

  I walked back to the main courtyard, then turned left and headed for Kari’s apartment, taking one last look at what resembled glinting diamonds on the ground. Just like the other day, the drapes fluttered and music drifted through the window. I knocked and heard her singsong voice.

  “Just a sec.”

  It was barely a minute later when Kari opened the door. She smiled. “Hey, McKenna. Come on in.”

  “Thanks. Nice breeze today.”

  “It’s a lifesaver. These places get so hot. They can be an oven.” Kari had exchanged this morning’s red top for one in bright green. Her tight beige capris seemed like the perfect fashion complement if she were trying to attract a man’s attention.

  Without asking, she filled a glass of water, which she placed on the table in front of the same seat I’d been at the other day. I immediately noticed there were still two surfboards learning against the wall in the corner. “I just got done talking with Lu Tawana.” Overhead, the ceiling fan created a gentle downward breeze.

  “Oh, man,” she said, “that must have been a thrill.”

  “She’s toned down. But before we get into that, I was walking around here a bit and noticed something.”

  “What, about us needing twelve maintenance guys to do a full makeover?”

  I gave a polite laugh. “Besides that. The sliding glass door on Morah’s unit was blown out by the explosion, yah?”

  She blinked. “So?”

  “These units don’t have air conditioning, do they?”

  She pointed overhead at the ceiling fan, then at the window. “The AC units are decrepit. Nobody uses them. Fans keep the electric bill down.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, air in one of these places could easily run you a couple of hundred bucks.” She pointed upwards with her thumb. “Three to four is more like it.”

  “Wow. I’d never be able to use mine. So did Morah keep her place open as much as you do?”

  “Everyone does. It’s not so great for security, but it helps drop the temps at night.”

  “So anyone could cut right through the screen and get into one of these places?” Her eyes widened, as if she’d realized something important. “Come with me.” She stood and walked toward her bedroom, shaking her head as she laughed. “Come on, silly. I’m not going to seduce you. I want to show you something.”

  I stood to follow her, feeling foolish at where my mind had been going. Kari’s bedroom was about the same size as the living room. There was enough space for a queen-sized bed, a small dresser, a set of shelves, an end table and a lamp. “Ignore the closet, it’s a mess.”

  Needless to say, her warning was all I needed. I peeked and she smacked me on the arm. “I told you not to look.”

  Yup, it was mess. My arm smarted, but she’d been kind. The hit was more of a love tap than anything else. This girl might have a messy closet, but she was still hot. “Sorry,” I said.

  “Men!” She turned and walked to the screen door, where she pointed at the latch. “Open it.”

  I pushed up on the lock mechanism, but it didn’t move. Fine, she kept it unlatched. Got me. I pulled and, sure enough, the door slid open. “So?”

  “Now lock it.”

  What was this, Door Opening 101? I slid the screen door closed. Because the latch was already in the unlocked position, I pushed down on the mechanism. Nothing. I slid the screen open again, then inspected the latch while jimmying it up and down.

  “It’s corroded. You can’t lock it. Your landlord should spray this with something to eliminate the corrosion—but it might be too far gone.”

  “They’re all like that. Every tenant has complained, even Morah. Her slider was the same way.”

  My jaw fell open. “So anyone could have walked right into Morah’s apartment? At any time?” She nodded, her jaw set. I pointed at the door. “But Detective Najar told me the place was locked up tight.”

  She shook her head. “Never. If Morah was here, her sliders, both of them, were open. The only reason she closed them when she left was to keep the rain out. The landlord got really pissed once because she left them open during a rainstorm. So, if it was going to rain, she’d close them down a bit, but otherwise they were open. Same thing that night.”

  “Are you positive?”

  “Absolutely. No question.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  She bit at her lip, then grimaced. She glanced over her shoulder toward the living room. Ah, more guilt. Something in the other room. “The surfboard.” I blurted. “You have Morah’s board.”

  “I went in and got it late in the afternoon. We were going to go out the next day. She’d asked me to grab her board in the afternoon because she thought she might be out late.”

  “So that means, if you could get in, so could anyone else.”

  “All they had to do was close the place up when they left.”

  “Before the explosion,” I said. “Did you tell this to the police?”

  “It’s been nagging at me for days, but I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong. You know? When you mentioned the slider, it all clicked.”

  I grabbed her by the shoulders. “This is important. You need to call Detective Najar and tell him. He’s starting to believe Morah was murdered. I’ll bet this will convince him.”

  She nodded. “Okay, anything else?”

  “Did you try to sleep with Kong?”

  “What? Are you nuts? Is this coming from Lu?”

  “She saw you and him. Here. Being very, um, friendly.”

  “Oh. Yeah, we were friendly.” She leaned forward. “Very friendly, but we weren’t doing what Lu thinks. He told me he was going to propose to Morah. He knew how spooked she was by commitments, so he came by to ask me how to keep her from running away. He was trying to figure out if she’d bolt when he popped the question. Lu must have been coming around to see Morah—one of the few times she did. She must have seen us hug when he left. Why can’t people just ask their questions instead of letting their imaginations run away?”

  I thought about me sitting at Kari’s dinette table a few minutes ago. About other similar assumptions I’d made in the past. I forced a laugh. “You know what happens when you ass-ume.”

  She stuck her hands in the pockets of her capris. “Are you one of those, too?”

  I put my hand on my chest. “Me? No. Y
es. Maybe, well, every now and—ah, hell yeah, guilty as charged.”

  She rolled those blue eyes again. “You are really screwed up, huh?”

  I shrugged.

  “A woman? She broke your heart?”

  I felt the heat in my neck. The room was suddenly hot and humid. Stuffy. I pulled Antoine’s folded up picture from my pocket. “This is the guy who went to the spa with Morah. Right?”

  Kari’s lips parted in a smile. She said, “You are screwed up. You need therapy. Yeah, I told you about him before—when we compared photos. What about him?”

  “Was he here the night she was killed?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure. I didn’t see him. But I didn’t see Lu when she was spying on me and Kong either.”

  I felt deflated. Lu had seemed like such a good source, but now, her story was falling apart. “You know,” I said, “I don’t think I can trust anything Lu told me. Maybe she really is crazy.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  As far as I was concerned, Lu might be crazy, but she was not a suspect in her sister’s murder. Neither was Kari for that matter. According to Najar, Kong Lam couldn’t have done it either, unless he was a magician because he’d been in Honolulu. My only remaining suspect was Antoine Figland, so I needed a plan to deal with him. In a way, it was good that traffic out of Kapa’a was a bear because it gave me time to think. The quaint little town is filled with colorful storefronts, everything from bright pinks to turquoise, all topped off, almost literally, by an overhead spiderweb of power lines. In typical tourist-trap fashion, the shopping opportunities range from island chic to casual, gourmet food to burgers. There’s even one of our island staples, an ABC Store. As a result of all that “island cool,” it takes a long time to get in and out of the town.

  In distance, it was only a couple of miles from those cute stores and restaurants at the Coconut Marketplace, but the drive seemed excruciating. It was on the long straight stretch of road in front of the Coconut Marketplace that I began to understand what it feels like to be slowly passed through the belly of a snake. We’d inch forward, then stop. Move, stop. The good news was that by the time I got to the exiting part of the snake and traffic was at full speed again, the whole experience had given me my plan for dealing with Antoine.

  Antoine’s office was in downtown Lihue. Like a lot of small businesses in this area, he’d located in an old house. From the outside, it resembled many of the others with its ocean-blue sidewalls accented by white trim and the small front lanai that was up a couple of steps from the parking lot. There were no cars parked in front, but there were two on the side of the building. I surmised that people who worked here had a key to a back entrance.

  I parked, then took the two short steps up to the lanai. The wooden front door had six glass panels in the top half. I tried the handle, but it was locked. Damn. It was Saturday. He was an attorney. Didn’t they work 80-hour weeks? Even if he was in, he probably wouldn’t see clients until Monday. I couldn’t wait until then. I rapped on one of the glass panels and waited, determined to deal with Antoine much like the Kauai traffic was dealing with me, slowly but surely whittle away at his defenses. I’d confront him with something he couldn’t deny—the trip to the Marriott.

  There was still no answer, so I stood there like a true moron not knowing what to do next. I knocked again. Same action. Same result. I was about ready to give up when I saw a movement inside. It was a geeky guy dropping off files on the front desk. I rapped on the door even harder.

  The man peered at me, seeming almost unsure of what to do next. He could have chosen to ignore me, which would be the big-city, lawyerly thing to do—not that I would know about big-city lawyers. Instead, he came to the door, opened it and I found myself face-to-face with Antoine Figland.

  He was shorter than I thought he’d be. Based on the fact that he’d bedded nearly every available woman on the island, at least according to his reputation. I’d expected him to be a fine example of male superiority, but instead of being 6’2” and cowboy handsome, he was just another schmuck like me. Nothing special. Maybe an inch taller.

  He said, “We’re closed today, can you come back Monday?” In addition to his nothing-special height attribute, he also had bad skin. This was a case where photos did him more justice than he deserved. How did a guy who looked like this get all the girls? No accounting for taste, I guess. His white shirt was open at the collar, almost looking like he’d slept in it. It amazed me that this guy could get a date, let alone get laid.

  “You’re Antoine Figland, right?”

  He nodded as he made a subtle move to block the door.

  “My name is McKenna. I’m working on a story about the death of Morah Wilkerson. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

  “I’m catching up on paperwork. Call our office to make an appointment, I’m sure Sophie can get you in this week.”

  “I’m under a deadline and there might be some nice exposure in this for you.”

  “Who are you working for?”

  “Honolulu Star-Advertiser.”

  He grimaced and made a show of trying to look sheepish, but the guy was an attorney; I expected him to relish free publicity. Then, there were a few more faces—you know, the “I don’t like this” face and the, “this really sucks” equivalent. I suppose he might have been playing up the reluctant interviewee role, just as I was playing interviewer. When he’d finished exposing me to what might have been the full range of his acting skills, he opened the door enough to let me enter and stepped to one side. “Come on in.”

  “Thanks. This won’t take long.” Bingo. Had him. After someone takes the bait on a lie, the process of reeling them in is much like that used by a fisherman. Antoine was hooked on the idea of great exposure. All I needed to do was to go slowly. If I got too anxious, I could blow my chance and Najar would want payback.

  He locked the door, but not until he’d stuck his head out to see if anyone else was nearby. Unsure of whether he’d checked outside to see if I’d come with a retinue or if he was just plain paranoid, I said, “I’m alone.” My next move was to get away from the door so it would be harder to send me packing. “Can we sit down?”

  I admired his next facial expression, which seemed to convey an air of innocence. Then, he nodded and we walked past a desk for “Receptionist.” I wondered if the nameplate was for the benefit of whoever worked the desk or the clients. Before I could carry that line of thought any further, we were at the door to his office. Inside, I glanced around and thought, so this is where the lady killer works. He had the requisite cluttered desk with stacks of papers, folders, and other lawyer paraphernalia. It was almost enough to conceal his notebook computer. To one side, a small fan blew air toward the chair in which he sat. He put me in one of the two chairs facing the desk, which was on the opposite side of the fan. The chair was a stiff-backed, heavy office model designed more to impress than be used. I caught sight of a few degrees he’d hung and wondered how those might look on a jail cell wall.

  He didn’t waste any time in getting to the point. “What about Morah?”

  “You used to date her, yah?”

  “Sometime back. I thought you said this was about her death.”

  “When did you find out she died?”

  “It was all over the papers. Besides, my brother-in-law, Detective Najar, told me.”

  So he was a name dropper, huh? He probably expected to scare me off with his little tidbit. “I know, you’re married to his sister. He told me. When’s the last time you saw Morah?”

  He made a big deal about looking around the room. “It’s been a few years. What’s this got to do with her death?”

  His flat-out lie pissed me off. “There’s a theory going around that Morah’s death wasn’t accidental.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Did you cheat on Detective Najar’s sister with Morah? And while we’re at it, you can tell me what you know about Morah’s ex-boyfriend Stan Jones.
He mysteriously disappeared and I’m wondering if you had something to do with that.”

  “How dare you! I’m calling the police if you don’t leave right now.”

  I hate it when my mouth gets in front of my brain; it invariably leads to a train wreck. I slouched as much as I could in my chair. He was going to have to drag me out now. “Go ahead. Call him—if you want your brother-in-law to know what I know about your little weekend escapade with Morah at the Marriott. You’ve been positively identified by several people, including employees at the hotel.”

  The last of the color drained from his face and he shook his head. For an attorney, I thought he’d make a lousy poker player. He waved his hands and began to ramble. “It was a mistake. I hadn’t seen Morah in ages. When she called, I should have told her no. But she was so, so tempting. Things have been rough between me and my wife. Morah was a way to feel better again. It was just a weekend.”

  “Did you know she paid for the weekend with stolen checks and a fake ID?”

  That seemed to shock his lawyer-DNA back to life. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Did you know Morah was going to get married?”

  “I want to know who you are. How do you know all this? You said you were a reporter. Are you a cop?”

  “Nope. Just a guy working on a story about a girl who got murdered after she became involved in identity theft.”

  “This is over.” He stood.

  “Yeah, is it ever. Once the word gets out about how you spent the weekend at a posh resort with a girl who was passing fake checks all over town, you’re toast. Burnt toast.”

  “That’s a lie. She didn’t do that, I’d have known.”

  Known? How? “What’s that mean?”

  “She said she won a radio contest or some stupid thing. I don’t need to scam legitimate businesses.”

  “So you thought she won the weekend in a contest? You didn’t ask questions?”