The Paradise Affair

by Bill Pronzini

  Sabina went to the shutter-free window, the others at her heels. “Checked them how? By turning this bolt knob”—she put her fingers on it—“or simply giving the handles a tug? That was Mr. Pettibone’s method of checking the windows in the evenings, wasn’t it?”

  “I never paid any attention. But I tell you the bolt on that window was in place when I tested it.”

  “It was not in place when he was shot. The two halves were unbolted then, and had been for some time before and after the shooting.”

  “That is impossible—”

  “No, it isn’t. Unbolted, but held tightly shut by another means from outside.”

  “What means?” Philip Oakes demanded. “What means?”

  John, in Sabina’s place, would have seized the opportunity to indulge his flair for the dramatic and drawn out the explanation, but she had not been born with a theatrical “ham bone.” She believed in being direct and concise. She released the bolt, opened the two halves, and pointed out the mark on the sill. Then she told of the sliver of wood caught atop the one frame, took from her pocket the two wedge-shaped pieces of driftwood, held them up in the palm of her hand.

  “The sliver came from this one,” she said, indicating the mark in the larger, blackened piece, “when it was inserted at the top joining of the two halves. The other piece was inserted at the bottom joining, and both were hidden from view in here by the width of the frames. Together they provided a tight temporary seal, one that passed the handle-tugging test.”

  The explanation had the desired impression on Captain Jacobsen. “Where did you find them?” he asked.

  “In the grass outside,” Sabina said. “Cast away after they were no longer needed.”

  “And when was that?”

  “That I found them? After you left yesterday morning, Captain.”

  “Why were they used in the first place?”

  “To permit surreptitious access in the middle of the night.”

  “By whom? And for what purpose?”

  “By Miss Earlene Thurmond.”

  The secretary said with feigned outrage, “Poppycock! How dare you accuse me!”

  “It couldn’t be anyone else but you,” Sabina said. “I saw you on the beach Sunday, searching among the driftwood cast up by Saturday night’s storm. You picked up something small and dark—this black wedge-shaped piece.”

  “No. I picked up a shell, not a piece of driftwood.”

  Sabina ignored the denial. “It was the storm damage to the shutter that gave you the idea, wasn’t it? That is why you acted when you did. You spent much of your time in this room each day, surely not every minute in the company of Mr. Pettibone. It was easy enough for you to unbolt the window when left alone that day, then to go outside and wedge these pieces into the frames.

  “Late that night you slipped out, removed the wedges, and climbed in here. Mr. Pettibone caught you and locked the door after entering, then opened the drapes to confirm your method of access. In some fashion during the confrontation you managed to gain possession of his pistol and shot him. Afterward you climbed back out through the window, reinserted the driftwood pieces, rushed to the back stairs and up to your room, and threw on a robe to hide the fact that you were fully dressed—a process that took several minutes. That is why you didn’t appear until after Mr. Oakes broke down the door.”

  “You have no proof of any of that.”

  Captain Jacobsen fixed the woman with a stern eye. “You deny these accusations, Miss Thurmond?”

  “Of course I deny them. What possible purpose could I have for such … such chicanery?”

  Sabina said, “The rifling of Mr. Pettibone’s safe.”

  Oakes, who had been staring at Miss Thurmond with an admixture of loathing and awe, emitted a bleat of surprise. “What’s that? Safe? There is no safe in here.”

  “Yes there is, a well hidden one. Your uncle must have had it installed when the house was built, long before you and Miss Thurmond came to live here. Either she discovered it by accident, or he made the mistake of revealing its presence for reasons of his own. In any event she knew about it and was desperate for something locked inside.”

  His eyes roamed the room. “Where the devil is this safe?”

  “Pick up sticks,” Sabina said.

  “What? What?”

  “The safe’s existence and location was what your uncle was trying to convey with his dying words; that is the reason he crawled to where he was found and thrust out his arm—an effort to point, not to rise. He must have spoken as he did, instead of simply naming Miss Thurmond, because whatever she was after in the safe will prove her guilt beyond any doubt. I believe we’ll find that it is still there. She hadn’t enough time to remove it that night, and while she could have done so sometime during the past two days, with all the activity and the fact that the library door can no longer be locked, it would have been an unnecessarily risky undertaking. Neither you nor Cheng knew of the safe, and she didn’t expect that I had discovered it; she could afford to wait until things settled down and she was alone in the house.”

  Earlene Thurmond had nothing more to say, but if her eyes had had claws, they would have torn Sabina’s throat out.

  Oakes said to Sabina, “I still don’t understand the meaning of ‘pick up sticks.’”

  “You told me that your uncle spoke those words with a pause between the last two. If he had lived long enough, there would have been a fourth word. ‘Pick up … sticks … wood.’”

  “Wood? What wood?”

  Sabina went to the fireplace hearth. “The half-dozen sticks of firewood stacked here—stacked loosely, not placed in a container of any kind, and never used because no fire was ever laid on this pristine hearth. I noticed them yesterday but it was not until this morning that I realized that their purpose was not decoration but concealment.”

  As she had done earlier, Oakes and Captain Jacobsen moved the sticks of firewood to the center of the hearth. Access to the safe was a two-foot-square opening camouflaged by a cover snugly fitted into the surrounding bricks; a layer of matching brick-and-mortar had been skillfully affixed to a thin metal plate, thus rendering it undetectable except on close inspection. A finger hole on one end allowed the cover to be lifted and then removed. The safe imbedded beneath was a small Mosler with a combination dial.

  Oakes said, “It can’t be opened without the combination.”

  “I have the combination,” Sabina said. “I found it in the same place Miss Thurmond must have, on a card in the Bible shelved with the Oriental history books.” She produced the envelope on which she’d copied the line of letters and numbers. “RL462618359. That is the combination, coded by the letters RL for right and left rotations and the numbers run together in order: right to 46, left to 26, right to 18, left to 35, right to 9. I unlocked the safe earlier to make sure that was the correct rotation, then locked it again. I did not feel I had the right to look inside without a witness present.”

  She handed the envelope to Oakes, who proceeded to rotate the dial accordingly. The safe opened easily to his upward lift. Inside, along with Gordon Pettibone’s will and a small amount of cash, was what Earlene Thurmond had been after—an envelope containing documented proof that she had embezzled the sum of two thousand dollars during her employment at the Honolulu branch of the Great Orient Import-Export Company, proof that could have sent her to prison if revealed.

  “He was a blackmailer and a sadist!” she cried when confronted with it. Her outrage now was genuine, all pretense at innocence gone. “He forced me to move in here with him, made me work for a pittance, shared my bed at night whenever he felt like it. That’s how he caught me Tuesday night—snuck into my room and found me gone. He once told me where the documents were, to torment me because he believed I’d never be able to open the safe. I would have destroyed the evidence if I’d had time to get it, then left here and gone back to San Francisco. But I’m not sorry he caught me, not sorry he was careless with the pistol and it went
off when I snatched it out of his hand. I’m glad he’s dead. Glad!”

  Not one villain but two, Sabina thought as Captain Jacobsen placed Earlene Thurmond under arrest. Or two and a half, counting Philip Oakes. As John was fond of saying, a pox on criminals of every stripe.

  22

  QUINCANNON

  The rainsquall had been brief, having blown itself out by the time Quincannon reached the Millay ranch. Small comfort—he was bedraggled and damp, his hair, beard, and clothing steaming perceptibly in the afternoon heat. And he was still furious, though an effort of will had tamped the fury down to a controlled simmer.

  He found Grace Millay in the stable, helping one of the paniolos tend to a newborn colt. Her surprise at seeing him might or might not have been genuine. He drew her outside, out of earshot of any of the ranch hands.

  She showed little emotion while he gave her a terse account of what he’d found in the heiau’s burial chamber and what had transpired afterward, but the news of Sam Opaka’s death struck her like a blow. She wavered, then steadied herself against the stable wall with her eyes squeezed shut. It took half a minute for her to regain her equilibrium. When she opened her eyes again, it was as if she had never lost control at all.

  “I did not send him after you,” she said.

  Quincannon reserved judgment as to whether or not she was telling the truth. “If not, then your brother did.”

  “My brother.” She spoke the two words with anger and a measure of disgust. “Yes, Sam would have gone on his orders. He was fiercely loyal to both of us.”

  “Loyal enough to commit mayhem, evidently.”

  “I don’t believe he was trying to kill you.”

  “No? Why?”

  “Native Hawaiians consider a heiau, even the ruins of one, a forbidden place. Sam would never have violated the kapu by taking a life in the burial chamber. To enter it and fire his rifle must have cost him a great deal.”

  “If that’s so, then he wasn’t the one who shot Vereen.”

  Grace Millay shook her head, a gesture of agreement. A vein throbbed in her forehead; the cords in her neck stood out in sharp relief. “It couldn’t have been Sam.”

  “Did you know about the murder before now?”

  “No. What I told you yesterday is the truth—I never saw the man, never knew he existed until you came.”

  “But you did know about the chamber.”

  “Yes. It’s the burial place of the high priest who ordered the heiau built, and of his family. Stanton and I found it when we were children. I am not proud of this, but after my father died, we brought some of the artifacts up here to the house. You must have noticed them in the parlor.”

  “Objects of value?”

  “Not particularly,” she said. “The Polynesians who inhabited this coast were not of the ruling class.”

  Quincannon believed her now. He said, “All right. Where can I find your brother?”

  “He’s not here. He and one of the hands rode out shortly after you left to check on the herd.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “I don’t know, but it shouldn’t be long.”

  The prospect of a wait, however short, was an added scrape on Quincannon’s nerves. Even if Grace Millay were willing to act as a guide, he was not about to demand the use of a horse and go chasing after her brother in unknown territory. His only option was to go with her to the ranch house, where they occupied chairs under the monkeypod tree on the lanai. Neither of them had anything more to say to the other; they sat in brooding silence.

  Time seemed to have slowed to a crawl, but it could not have been more than half an hour before hoofbeats in the ranch yard announced the return of Stanton Millay. By the time he and the paniolo named Keole dismounted their lios at the corral, Quincannon was on his feet and hurrying across the yard, Grace Millay at his heels.

  A scowl warped Millay’s handsome features when he spied Quincannon. He came striding toward him, stopped a few feet away. His bloodshot eyes and sweating face bore witness to the hangover he was suffering, and to an attempt to cure it by taking more okolehao along on his ride.

  “What the hell are you doing back here?” he demanded. “I told you yesterday I don’t want you on my property. Get off and stay off.”

  “Not until I’m good and ready.”

  “Now, goddamn it.” Millay laid his hand on the butt of the sidearm holstered at his belt.

  Quincannon immediately swept the tail of his jacket back, gripped the Navy’s handle. “Draw your weapon, Millay,” he said, cold and hard, “and I swear you’ll regret it.”

  Short, tense standoff. The paniolo, Keole, wanted no part of it; he moved several paces to one side, out of the line of fire. Grace Millay did the opposite. She stepped forward, not quite between Quincannon and her brother, and in one quick movement she jerked the pistol out of his holster and backed off with it.

  Millay made no attempt to regain control of the weapon. All he did was yank off the sweat-stained cowboy hat he wore, slap it hard enough against his thigh to raise a thin puff of dust. His eyes avoided Quincannon’s now. There would be no further trouble from him.

  “We’ll go into the house, the three of us,” his sister said to him.

  “What for? Listen—”

  “No, you listen.” She made a shooing gesture to Keole. Then, when the paniolo was out of earshot, “Sam is dead.”

  “… What?”

  “You heard me. Sam … is … dead!”

  “Oh, Christ. How—?”

  “Not out here. In the house.”

  Millay followed her there without protest; Quincannon followed him. They went into the large front room containing the array of pagan objects. Grace Millay crossed to the mantelpiece, laid the pistol down next to one of the feathered fetishes displayed there. While she was doing that, Millay turned abruptly and faced Quincannon, his bloodshot eyes flashing.

  “You! You killed Sam Opaka—”

  His sister said, “No, he didn’t,” and then stepped in close and fetched him an open-handed, roundhouse slap. The blow had the force of a whip crack, staggering him. “They fought and the tide dragged Sam into the blowhole. A terrible way to die.”

  Quincannon said, “I believed he was trying to kill me. On your orders, Millay.”

  “No! I didn’t tell him to kill you. Only to follow you and scare you off if you…”

  “If I went into the ruins and found the burial chamber—and what you left there.”

  That brought a faint moaning sound out of Millay. He sank heavily into the chair he’d occupied the day before, reached for the decanter on the adjacent table. Grace Millay made a move to take it away from him, but he swung away from her and clutched it tight to his chest the way a child clutches a favorite toy. She watched disgustedly as with both hands he poured okolehao into a glass, then took a long, shuddery swallow.

  Quincannon said to him, “I found Vereen’s body in the heiau. Why did you kill him?”

  “I—”

  “Don’t waste my time denying it. Why?”

  Millay lowered the glass, wiped his free hand across his mouth. His voice, when it came, was low and thick with self-pity. “Self-defense. The bastard gave me no choice. He was angry enough to use his pistol on me when he saw there was no cloak among the artifacts…”

  “Cloak?”

  “Damn nonexistent ‘ahu ‘ula.”

  “You stupid fool!” his sister snapped at him. “What possessed you to claim there was an ‘ahu ‘ula in the ruins?”

  Millay couldn’t look at her. He said nothing.

  “A mahiole, too, I suppose?”

  His chin dipped in a jerky affirmative.

  Quincannon asked, “‘Ahu ‘ula? Mahiole?”

  “Feathered cloaks and helmets,” she said, “made of hundreds of thousands of colored feathers from the mamo and other birds tied into woven nettings. Symbols of the highest rank of the noho ali‘i, the ruling Polynesian chiefs believed to be descended from the gods.”<
br />
  “Valuable?”

  “Very. And extremely rare. No such garments were ever in the heiau here. They were not made for high priests, only chiefs like Kamehameha for spiritual protection.”

  Millay took another swallow of okolehao, his hand so unsteady that his front teeth clicked against the glass and some of the liquid spilled down over his chin. “I was trying to impress a … a woman in San Francisco … I didn’t see any harm in making the claim so far from home.”

  “A whore, you mean,” Grace Millay said in harsh tones, “and you were drunk at the time.”

  “All right, yes, a whore and I was drunk. Those two, Varner and Reno or whatever their names, were there and overheard. They struck up an acquaintance … claimed to be businessmen, sports … asked me questions about the cloak and helmet.”

  “And you told them more lies.”

  “I didn’t think I’d see them again. But then I … I made the mistake of saying I was about to sail for home and they turned up on the steamer.”

  “With a proposition, no doubt,” Quincannon said.

  “Yes, but not right away. After we docked they talked me into staying over in Honolulu for a few days, showing them the … the nightlife.”

  Setting him up, Quincannon thought, while pandering to their vices in a new and exotic locale. No wonder they had seized the opportunity to come to Hawaii. A fatally bad choice for both of them, as it turned out. There was a certain fitting irony in that, he supposed, despite the fact that he had had no hand in their downfall.

  “So then you sent them to Justo Gomez.”

  Another jerky nod. “They said they didn’t like hotels, that they wanted a private place to stay.”

  “And Gomez not only supplied them with the Hoapili Street bungalow, but with female company.”

  “… I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  His sister muttered something under her breath.

  Quincannon asked, “When did they spring their proposition on you?”

  “Last Saturday, at the bungalow.”

  “What was the game?”

  “I’d give them the cloak and helmet, they’d broker them to a rich collector of antiquities they knew about, and we’d split the proceeds. But I think … now…” A muscle in Millay’s cheek flexed and commenced a nervous fluttering. “Just a lie, a damn ruse. All along they were planning to…”