“Do you want a coffee?” I called out to Charlie.
“Nah,” he said, voice muffled through the wood and sheets, and I didn’t want to picture what else he had going on in there. “Sleep. Then surf.”
“OK,” I said and returned to the detective. “He’s in bed, then hitting the beach.”
“I’ll need to get a statement from him before I leave.”
I nodded and crossed to the Nespresso machine, priming it for my second cup.
“I guess you want mine,” I said, adding milk to the frother.
“It would help. Start at the beginning, please.”
This required aspirin, so I took a detour to the medicine cabinet, downed four tablets, and then chased them with coffee and leftover donuts from the Coffee Cube. I slid the container across the bench to Danvers - rather hospitable of me, I thought - but he declined the chocolatey offering. I shrugged and hauled it back on my side of the bench; all the more for Animal.
It was at this point that things got tricky.
Medicated, caffeinated, and chocolate-ated, I stared across the lounge and out to sea. Corporate espionage. The Rikas. Rope. Which was more than just rope now and firmly in the murdering category.
My eyes met Danvers’ across the bench.
I wasn’t sure what would come out of my mouth or if, in fact, anything would. I was caught between a rock and a hard place, and the hard place had blue eyes and blond hair and wore a detective’s badge.
The rock was a Rika.
“I spent the morning checking the addresses you gave me,” I started. “The squatters’ place on Stratford Drive. The theft of electronic equipment from Sunrise Place. And a drive-by of Shimmering Sands. You saw me at the Watanabe’s.” I gave him a glare for keeping the list of stolen electronic equipment from me. “And I’m pretty sure you know I went to the laundromat.” He said nothing. “That left Mikey.”
I finished my coffee and contemplated making another. At least the headache was subsiding.
“The Taipa Tavern,” Danvers said, startling me. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been staring down the coffee machine.
“What about it?”
“I was told they had a drinking match last night.”
He’d been following up on me.
“Darren Rika and a redhead who drank a couple of beers and passed out.”
I winced.
He leaned forward. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?”
“I can handle four beers, Detective.”
“I’m not talking about the beers. Darren Rika is a known gang member. And the Taipa Tavern is a good twenty minutes away from the police station. If you’d required backup, I wouldn’t have been able to get there in time.”
I blinked at him. Was that concern I heard in the low, gravelly growl of his voice?
I shook my head. It was more likely professional courtesy. I was on a case he’d given me; he’d feel responsible if something happened to me.
“First off,” I said. “I’m a local. I know my way around the TT. Second, Darren Rika is the brother of my best friend. I practically grew up with his baby sister and am considered one of the family.”
Danvers narrowed his eyes at me. Perhaps aligning myself with a known gang member’s family wasn’t the brightest idea.
I soldiered on.
“Thirdly, from the police station to Taipa it would have taken you less than ten minutes. Unless of course you were tied up and couldn’t extricate yourself quickly.” I paused. He said nothing. It’s hard to catch a fly who’s fussy about what he eats. But that just made Suzy impossible to picture in this analogy. “At that time of night,” I went on, “without traffic on the road and your beacons flashing, you could probably have made it in about five minutes flat. I think I could have handled myself for all of five minutes, Detective. Besides, I had backup. I had Charlie with me.”
“The surfer.”
“Nothing wrong with hanging ten,” I muttered.
Danvers remained silent; just stared at me.
“Darren didn’t suspect a thing,” I finally offered.
The detective let out a slow burst of air as if he was physically letting the issue go along with the last of his breath. I usually felt a measure of amusement at making people frustrated with me. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling right now.
“Tell me what you found out,” he said quietly.
It all boiled down to this: Tell Danvers about Mikey’s exchange on the wharf where a body was found and thereby drop a possible innocent in it. Or cover for the Rikas.
I felt like I might be about to make the biggest mistake of my life. I felt like I was definitely about to test my friendship with Tia. I felt like this was the moment I’d later be able to trace everything back to that would go wrong in my life.
Danvers waited silently. I could hear Charlie showering, the pipes rattling in the walls as the water flowed from the old part of the house to the new ensuite bathroom. Waves crashed up onto the beach. A bird called out. Doug scratched at something. A bee buzzed as it lazily flew past the kitchen window.
Corporate espionage. A drug deal. And murder by rope.
I couldn’t protect Mikey if he’d done this. I didn’t want to protect Darren if he’d ordered the hit on the stiff.
And I really didn’t want to lose Tia’s friendship. But the scales had tipped; my livelihood versus my best friend’s brothers. In all good conscience, I couldn’t lie to the detective. A man had died. Stolen trade secrets were one thing. Murder was another kettle of fish.
“They were waiting on Mikey,” I said, and watched Danvers’ nostrils flare as he inhaled sharply. “He was making an exchange with someone on a boat. But a couple of Darren’s guys were worried that someone else had beaten them to it.”
“To what? The exchange?”
I shrugged. “Not sure. But Darren did say that whoever had beaten them to it didn’t know what they’d taken.” What they don’t know won’t hurt ‘em, that’s what he’d said.
Silence met my words and then Detective Danvers slowly leaned back against the bench, arms crossed over his chest, eyes distant.
I’d well and truly put Darren Rika in it. Of course, Danvers would think that whatever the Rikas had taken was likely to be the stolen corporate info from Big Wig. What that had to do with a drug exchange, I didn’t know. But maybe he did.
For now, I was done with this mess. My friendship with Tia aside, I had to keep living in Doubtless Bay. Most of what I did helped the locals. Finding a lost heirloom. Tracking a cheating husband. Following up on an insurance claim. It was low key stuff. And where I could, I made sure that what I did didn’t ruin families.
Well, unless they were stepping out on their other half.
But this…this was different. This was murder and drugs and the Rikas. This was gang related, and even in Doubtless Bay, we had problems with gangs. Kaitaia was only half an hour away. And Kaitaia was Gang Central.
I scrubbed a hand over the back of my neck wondering why my nape wasn’t prickling. Even Gran was absent.
I’d just plucked up the courage to tell Danvers he was on his own when he started talking.
And not just talking, but opening up. I’d wanted to know what he knew. I’d questioned why he’d kept me in the dark. I’d surmised that he wanted me to prove myself, but I thought this was less to do with results and more to do with honesty.
I’d told him about the Rikas. He told me about Big Wig.
“Rupert Carmichael runs an engineering company,” he said. “They manufacture various machines used in at least a dozen different fields. He’s provided us with a list of those machines and the names of the companies he contracts to. But he’s unable to tell us what has been stolen and whose business it affects.”
“Is that normal?” I asked.
“It’s highly sensitive information, apparently, and what he has provided is enough to prove that something was taken and that it could cost his business millions of dollars.”
“That makes finding it tricky,” I said.
Danvers snorted softly. “What we do know is he’s worth a pretty penny. And he has friends in high places. Like the Police Commissioner and the Minister of Police.”
“They’re breathing down your neck,” I concluded.
He offered me a small smile. It didn’t reach his eyes, but it did smooth out some of the frown lines that had taken up residence there since I’d last seen him.
“They can’t breathe down your neck,” he said quietly.
I stared at him. He held my gaze steadily.
He wanted me to do what he couldn’t. To go places and ask questions he was unable to go and ask. He wanted me to keep working for him, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a part of this.
I shook my head and pushed up from the bench, taking the empty coffee cups to the sink.
“Corporate espionage,” I said aloud. “A drug deal. And murder by rope.”
I turned to face him.
“What’s the commonality?”
He shrugged. “What does your…gut say?”
There was something about this man that made me think he could see right through me. It was a ridiculous thought, but Alex Danvers was not the sort of man, I believed, to take chances. Yet something about this case was making him want to take a chance on me.
I wrapped a hand around the back of my neck.
“Nothing,” I said, staring out to sea. “I’ve got nothing.”
Except a strong feeling that this was going to rock the community and break up a perfectly good friendship.
Where on God’s green earth was I going to get donuts like Tia’s if the Coffee Cube became enemy territory?
Chapter 11
Is It A Plethora Of Girlfriends Or A Gaggle, Like Geese?
The coffee was making me jittery, but it was the slightly crossed eyes of the property manager for the Shimmering Sands Apartments that really made my hair stand on end. He was whip-thin and taller than me, with hollow cheeks and dark brows. I wasn’t sure which eye I was meant to look at, so I concentrated on the bump in his nose instead.
“You’re booked out to when?” I asked.
The bump shifted alarmingly as his nostrils flared.
“We are a five-star resort, Miss. We’re booked out months in advance.”
“My aunt only requires a small room for the weekend,” I told him.
“We have nothing.”
I glanced around the reception area. A plush leather sofa sat next to a fern. Paintings of Northland beaches adorned the beige walls, the frames almost bigger than the artist’s work. I wasn’t sure which was more important to the owners of the Shimmering Sands; the images, the artists, or the framework.
“You guys are popular, huh?” I said, wandering across the small space and staring out the window into the well-manicured gardens.
“We have a solid five-star rating on Trip Advisor.”
“How many apartments do you have?”
“Six. We’re exclusive.”
I’d been to the Shimmering Sands before, of course. The previous owners had been friends of my grandmother’s. But the new owners lived out of town, down in Auckland or Wellington, I wasn’t sure which. The property manager wasn’t a local either, which decided it for me. Flashing my license and demanding to see the security surveillance wouldn’t work. Nor would my winning smile or Double Ds.
I turned back toward him.
“So, nothing for months?”
“No.” He screwed up his lips a little and then offered a rather halfhearted, “Sorry.”
“There’s only a couple of cars in the carpark,” I told him. “Are you sure you’re booked out?”
He narrowed his eyes at me and then started shifting bits and pieces - a stapler, a pen, a notebook - around on his desk, naively believing he could intimidate me into leaving.
Or ignore me.
“The resort is booked out completely,” he said.
Resort. I almost snorted. A resort was Carrington Estate on the KariKari Peninsula. Complete with tennis courts and swimming pools and an eighteen-hole golf course. What the Shimmering Sands was was not a resort.
Sure, the decor was luxurious. The apartments well appointed. There was a pool. But six apartments overlooking Cable Bay beach was not an eighteen-hole golf course.
Which begged the question, why was Big Wig still staying here?
According to Danvers, who had opened up like a morning glory bloom right at dawn, Big Wig was still in town. Ostensibly to reclaim what had been stolen. I’d bet Doug’s favourite chew toy that Danvers didn’t believe that.
And neither did I. So, here I was at the Shimmering Sands Apartments, pretending Aunt Sadie required a weekend of luxury overlooking the pristine shores of Cable Bay.
Aunt Sadie required a lot of things but luxurious weekends a few kilometres away wasn’t one of them.
“So, nothing you can do for me?” I asked the beanpole with ocular issues.
“Like I said, we’re a very exclusive destination.”
His eyes trailed over my jean-shorts and Animal t-shirt and landed on my well-worn Nikes.
I smiled. It could have cut glass.
“Thank you for your help,” I murmured, and walked out of the reception area.
The cars in the carpark were Range Rovers. A matching pair. The apartment keys on the back wall of the reception area had all been present bar two; neighbouring apartments if the numbers meant anything. The manager’s diary had been open on his desk, beside the stapler and pen and notebook. Dark lines had marked out four apartments for the next six weeks. The two apartments belonging to the Range Rovers had not been similarly marked.
Big Wig had booked the entire Shimmering Sands for himself and one other.
And he was still here.
I paused on the front path and crouched down to tie my shoelace. With sleight of hand, I photographed the license plates of the two Range Rovers. Tucking my cell phone into the back of my pocket, I stepped off the front path onto lush green lawn and started whistling.
I found the gardener pruning some roses.
Tufts of white hair sprang out from behind liver-spotted ears the size of Dumbo’s. A streak of zinc ran down his nose. Sun-kissed wrinkles spread out in a fan from each eye. Dark skin stretched taut over muscular arms. He must have been about ninety.
Or he’d spent too long in the oven and was a burnt roast away for catching fire.
“Those are icebergs, aren’t they?” I said.
He unfurled like a long-necked turtle. Wrinkled face and snowy-tipped head stretched up to greet me. A smile spread across his withered cheeks.
“Summer O’Dare, as I live and breathe.”
“Hey, Mr Henare. How’s it hanging?”
“Oh, you know…just another day at the plant.”
“Life’s a garden, eh?” I offered. “Dig it!”
He cackled delightedly.
Then cast a nervous look toward the reception area.
“I didn’t know you were still working here,” I said, drawing his attention back to me.
“Grandfathered,” he said, dusting his hands off on his jeans. “When the Jacobsons sold the place, they sold me with it.” He reached out and touched one of the roses. I could smell its sweet scent as if it was a physical thing. “I made this garden. I planted every single flower or bush or tree. It’s a full-time job, but what else am I going to do?”
I smiled sadly. Mrs Henare had died ten years ago. I’d always got the impression that Mr Henare was waiting for his invitation to the party. Mrs Henare had been a laugh a minute. If there was a heaven, she would be up there banging on bongo drums and dancing the Macarena.
I looked around the Shimmering Sands garden at the riot of colour; a party all of its own making. “It’s beautiful,” I said. What else was there to say?
The old man shook himself and looked up at me. “What brings you to the Shimmering Sands, Summer? N
ot like you need a holiday by the beach.”
“Nah, just curious. You know there’s a police investigation going on?”
He nodded; eyes darting over to the Range Rovers. “Heard something like that,” he murmured.
“Yeah, just the other day. Don’t suppose you saw anything out of the ordinary?”
He started to shake his head and then stopped.
“There was one thing, now that you mention it. The night before the cops came. I make sure the sprinklers come on after sundown in summer. You know how it is; if you water plants in the heat of the sun, they can burn. It’s always best to do it at the end of the day.”
“You don’t have a timer?”
“Don’t believe in that sort of thing.” I thought, perhaps, that it was more to do with automation replacing him. Idle hands and all that. Mr Henare kept himself busy because the alternative was too painful a place to be.
I wondered if I’d ever love someone the way Mr Henare loved his dear departed Molly. I wondered if someone would ever love me like that.
“What did you see, Mr Henare?” I asked.
“A van,” he said. “Skulking around by the back fence.”
“Not on the property or by the gate?”
“Nah. Just parked there. Lights out, engine running.”
“Is that why it stood out?”
He shook his head.
“Not at the time. Just thought it was one of those freedom campers.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Footprints in amongst the dahlias.”
“How dare they!”
“I know, right?” I laughed. Mr Henare may not have actually been ninety, but he was well past the age of teenager-talk.
“Word,” I said, offering my fist up for him to bump.
He grinned up at me.
“So, this van,” I said. “Get a colour or make?”
“It was white; I know that much. One of those big ones.”
“Big ones? Volkswagen Transporter?”
He looked confused.
“Hyundai iLoad?”
“What’s that then?”
“LDV V80?”
“You’re talking but I ain’t hearing ya.”
Chasing Summer Page 9