“She was talking to a chappie on the beach a minute ago. All in pink tonight, looking sensational. Careful one of these young buckos doesn’t take her away from you, Xan.”
“I’d have to kill anyone who tried.” He smiled at Dinah, touched Jon and Avery on the shoulder, and headed back into the crowd.
Jon said, “Dinah and I haven’t been to the bar, Avery. We’ll get something to drink and catch up with you in a few minutes.”
“Do that. Love to hear more about your research.”
Dinah glimpsed a flash of pink on the lanai. “Jon, I’ll join you at the bar in a few minutes.” She moved outside and saw Claude Ann idling barefoot down the beach toward the water. Dinah took off her shoes and went after her.
“Claudy, wait up.”
Claude Ann turned around and planted her hands on her hips. “You just can’t keep your nose out of my personal affairs, can you? Where do you get off raggin’ on Xander about what he does or doesn’t tell me?”
“I wasn’t ragging on him, Claudy. I just thought you ought to know that Eleanor was his former sister-in-law.”
“Well, now I know so big whoop. Like there aren’t a few polecats in the Pelerin clan? Like you don’t have kinfolks you’d rather not display in the family album? Xan’s all psyched out now, afraid I’ll think he was tryin’ to deceive me.”
“I’m sorry, Claudy. I’ll apologize to him if it will make him feel any better. Or you. I’ll leave if you want me to.”
“No, I don’t want you to leave.” She walked back to Dinah and put her arms around her. “I’m the one who should apologize to you, Di. Eleanor ambushed you with her crazy talk and you were worried about me. Everything you’ve ever done is because you were worried about me. I just want you to know that you don’t have to worry so much anymore. Xan’s gonna take care of me like I was the greatest treasure in the world.”
Dinah felt the urge to knock wood. As none was handy, she crossed her fingers and hugged Claude Ann tight. “Xander’s looking for you. What are you doing out here?”
“I’m thinking about how lucky I am. I’m counting my blessings and savorin’ this perfect moment.” She laughed. “I’m going back to the room for my camera. I want to take pictures so I’ll remember all of this when I’m old. Tell Xan to hold his horses. I’ll be back in a jiff.”
Dinah envied Claude Ann the ability to distill so many volatile ingredients into a perfect moment. She wished she could do the same. It would be nice to leave the worrying to Xander and spend the evening talking with Jon about the gods and goddesses of Hawaii. She felt an odd affinity for Jon—a scientist with a penchant for myth. Lighten up, she told herself. Forget about the gun. And the stupid superstition about Pele’s tears. And the menace of Eleanor.
On her way back to the party, she passed Phoebe on the lanai. She was wearing a slinky, floor-length blue dress with a mandarin collar and a contentious expression.
“I’ll tell her as soon as I see her. I have no intention of keeping my feelings for Hank a secret from Claude Ann or anyone else.”
Hank was the Pluto of the problems orbiting Dinah’s head just now. “Take your time, Phoebe. She’s in the middle of a perfect moment. Tomorrow will be soon enough.”
“I’ll tell her when I’m good and ready and I’m sure she’ll deal with it much better than you.”
Phoebe flounced off into the crowd and Dinah looked around for Jon. He stood at the end of the bar sipping Scotch. She joined him and ordered a glass of white wine.
He said, “You don’t look as though you’re having a good time. Something the matter?”
“I keep thinking Eleanor’s going to storm the place and all hell will break loose.”
“She wouldn’t cause a scene at a party for the bride. She’s a sentimental old soul.”
“And I’m the Queen of Romania.”
Raif swaggered up to the bar and slapped Jon on the back. “Look what the cat dragged in. Or is the laid-back attire a sign of mutiny?” He held out his glass to the bartender. “More of the same, Jimbo.”
The bartender poured him a generous slug of Jack Daniels and topped up the glass with Coke.
“Lyssa’s worried about you, Jonny. We both are. Good to see you out and about.”
“How’s it going, Raif?” Jon was stiff and aloof, as if he didn’t much care how it was going for Raif. “Still chasing the perfect corner?”
“That’s my motto.” Raif put out his hands as if gripping the wheel of his car. “Accelerate into the turn, full throttle to the last second, brake hard, and gun it on the straightaway. How about you? Anything hot going on outside of the volcano?”
“Same old, same old.” Jon’s voice was bland, but there was something akin to revulsion in his eyes.
“You need to rev it up, Jonny. Coasting’s for losers.” Raif arched an eyebrow and kinked his lip. “You’re looking hot tonight, Miss Dinah.”
“Thanks.” She injected the word with as much sarcasm as a single syllable could hold.
“Say, who’s the chick in blue over there? Is she the other bridesmaid?”
“Phoebe Marshall.”
“I’d better go introduce myself.”
He swaggered off and Dinah said, “I wouldn’t want to disillusion Lyssa, but I think Raif is as fast off the track as he is on it.”
The observation evoked a sardonic grin from Jon. “It’s obvious to everyone but Lyssa. Maybe it’s obvious to her and she’s too stubborn or too proud to admit it.”
A big man with a sandy-blond mane like a Viking’s, a full beard, and a gap-toothed grin sauntered up to the bar and gave Jon a shoulder-bumping half-hug. “I wasn’t sure if you’d grace us with your presence, buddy.”
“Steve.” Jon’s lopsided smile showed real affection. “You’re the one who’s hard to find lately. Howzit, brah?”
“I’ve been working twenty-four-seven on your dad’s Uwahi deal. We’re counting down the days ’til it’s over now.”
“Steve, meet Dinah Pelerin, Claude Ann’s maid of honor. Dinah, this is Steve Sykes, the S in SAX Associates and the mastermind of all their slick legal gimmicks and angles.”
Steve laughed. “Pleasure to meet you, Dinah. Jon and I went to school together like you and Claude Ann. We’re best buds—makamakas. I let him dis me, but you should know he’s an inveterate liar.”
Dinah liked Steve’s grin and the twinkle in his Nordic blue eyes. “So you’re not a slick finagler?”
“I am a slick finagler. I grease the skids with my seductive charm and legal acumen and make impossible things happen.”
“Like Uwahi?” asked Jon.
“No. Uwahi’s a piece of cake. Everybody wants it.”
“Except Eleanor Kalolo,” said Dinah.
“Maybe she’ll learn to love it when she sees how many jobs it brings to the island and how much revenue it generates.” Steve picked a bottle of beer out of a cooler beside the bar and twisted the cap. “It’s prosperity versus preservation.”
Dinah quoted the old song. “Pave paradise, put up a parking lot.”
“Not all of it,” said Steve. “Just a few hundred acres. Anyway, it’s a make-or-break sale for Xan. Environmental impact studies don’t come cheap. Habitat analysis, marine analysis, ornithological radar, plus you’ve got your social and cultural impact analyses.”
“Isn’t the actual developer normally responsible for all that?” Dinah asked.
“This deal’s a one-off. A lot of high-level haggling and state politics in play.”
Jon tossed off his Scotch and set the empty glass on the bar. “So long as Dad hasn’t mortgaged Wahilani, I don’t give a rat’s.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it, brah.”
Jon’s leery eyes turned hard as drill bits. “Are you saying he did borrow against my place?”
“I don’t know. He took out a big loan on Xanadu. I’d call that betting the ranch.” Steve’s attention strayed. “Speaking of betting, isn’t that George Knack over by the door?”
“That can’t be good,” said Jon. “I’d better give him the heave-ho before Dad sees him or there’ll be a brawl.” He started across the room toward a heavyset man with a black pompadour who seemed to be auditing the room from behind thick, black hornrims.
“Who’s George Knack and why would there be a brawl?”
“He’s a bookie. He runs an illegal betting parlor in Pahoa on the Big Island. Xander’s locked horns with him before over Raif’s gambling, but he won’t do anything to rock the boat tonight. Not with Paul Jarvis and his wife here.”
It was then that they heard the scream. It gathered like a wave, a long crescendo of female terror that climaxed in a crack of anguish.
Dinah’s heart lurched. “Someone’s being murdered.”
The music stopped and the crowd hushed. Everyone looked around wildly.
“It sounds like it’s coming from the beach,” said Steve.
Dinah’s fear surged. Where was Claude Ann? She left her wine and bounded out onto the lanai. The screaming continued, louder and more desperate. She peered up and down the beach. The outside lights were mostly at foot level, designed to spawn romance not clarity, and the moon was no bigger than a toenail shaving.
Steve’s voice was right behind her. “Maybe it’s just kids raising hell.”
“I can’t see anything. Where’s it coming from?”
Xander’s guests began to trickle onto the beach, pointing and murmuring.
“There, coming out of the terrace restaurant,” said someone. “What’s that?”
The terrace lights backlit a dark figure weaving drunkenly.
Xander and Jon materialized out of nowhere at Dinah’s side.
“It’s Claude Ann!” Xander’s voice broke and he started running down the beach.
Dinah doffed her shoes and ran after him, her feet sinking in the sand with every step. She felt as if she were running in slow motion. Jon and Steve passed her, but she dug deeper and caught up in time to see Claude Ann, drenched in blood, stagger into Xander’s arms and collapse a few yards from the edge of the terrace.
Jon bent down and removed a crumpled piece of paper from her hand. He held it under the green LED light from his wristwatch for Dinah to read. It said GO HOME. In blood.
Chapter Fourteen
Dinah dropped to her knees in the sand. “Is she dead?”
“Call nine-one-one,” shouted Xander. “Somebody call an ambulance.”
A hundred voices babbled into cell phones.
“Open your eyes, baby.” Xander’s voice was gravelly, despairing. “Open your eyes.”
Claude Ann moaned.
Alive. Dinah drew in a lungful of air. Had she been shot? Stabbed? From the amount of blood, it looked as though she’d been disemboweled.
Two men and a woman, obviously hotel employees, tried to herd the crowd back into the ballroom. “Let’s clear a path for the EMTs, people. They’ll come through this way. Please move back inside.”
Dinah held her ground.
Lyssa touched Xander on the shoulder. “Is she all right, Daddy?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He raked his hair out of his face, leaving a smear of blood across his forehead. “Jon?”
“I’m here, Dad.”
“Find out who did this. Follow the trail of blood. She must have run through the lobby to come out the terrace door.”
Jon started across the terrace.
“Marywave! Where’s Marywave?” Phoebe’s flutey voice brought Dinah to her feet.
“Claudy sent her to the movies with the sitter. She might be back any minute. Please, Phoebe, go make sure she doesn’t see or hear any of this.”
“Call me the instant you know something?”
“Yes, yes. I promise.”
Phoebe hurried away down the beach and the EMTs hurried out of the hotel through the terrace restaurant door along with the same two policemen who’d shooed Dinah away from the demonstration the previous night. The cops pushed everyone away from Claude Ann. As Xander stepped back, Dinah heard Wilhite’s voice, high-pitched and querulous.
“Christ on a crutch, man. I thought you said you had it under control.”
***
Dinah rode in the ambulance with Claude Ann and Xander to Queens Medical Center and en route, it became clear that, in spite of all the blood, Claude Ann wasn’t at death’s door. She was dazed and scared, but she was aware of her surroundings and talking.
“I hurt like hell.”
Xander held onto her hand as if to a lifeline. “What happened, darling? Who did this to you?”
“Didn’t see.”
When they reached the hospital, the medics had whisked Claude Ann into Emergency. Xander had paced up and down the waiting room while she was being examined, but when she was moved to Radiology, he was allowed to go with her. Dinah installed herself in an uncomfortable chair across from a hulking boy with a hand-held video game that whirred and sputtered and made explosive little spitting noises. Untold numbers of games and three cups of vending machine coffee later, a sumo-sized cop approached her and identified himself as Sergeant Kama. He held a notepad in one baseball mitt of a hand and a pair of tiny, half-moon eyeglasses in the other. He said, “The blood’s not human.”
His words couldn’t have been more mystifying if he were speaking in Swahili. “Not human?”
“It was animal. Pig, we think. We’re having it analyzed.”
Dinah was processing this information when a Japanese doctor in a white coat appeared. “Your friend has no puncture wounds of any kind,” he said, glancing at his chart. “She has a broken left wrist, a bruised left shoulder, and a lump on her head. The lump’s probably not serious, but we’ll keep her overnight for observation to be sure there’s no intracranial hematoma or bleeding. We’ve given her a mild tranquilizer and an analgesic for pain. Her fiancé is with her now, but I’m not going to authorize any more visitors tonight.”
Sgt. Kama put on his glasses and made a note of the doctor’s diagnosis. “The bucket must’ve clipped her on the head and wrist when it fell off the closet shelf.”
“The bucket.” Dinah was flabbergasted all over again. “Her closet was booby-trapped with a bucket of blood?”
“Looks that way. The handle of the loaded bucket was tied to the handle of the closet door and when she pulled the door open, the bucket toppled over on her. When will she be awake and able to talk to the police, doc?”
“Tomorrow morning. Come early. I understand that she and her fiancé are flying to Hilo as soon as she’s discharged.” The doctor excused himself and moved off to confer with another group awaiting news from the ER.
As Dinah’s relief increased, so did her outrage. “But why? Why would anyone douse Claude Ann with a bucket of blood?”
“I was hoping you could tell us. The maids cleaned her suite at one o’clock this afternoon. Who else had access to her suite?”
“I’m not sure. Her daughter Marywave and I were in the room around three-thirty.”
“Did you look inside the closet when you were there, Miss?”
“No. Marywave had her own key card. She would’ve gone back to the room when she left the swimming pool, probably with the sitter, Tiffany. And Dream Weddings was to have delivered our dresses sometime this afternoon. A porter probably took them up to the room.” Dinah had been obsessing about the gun since the first scream. Xander’s reticence be damned, it had to come out now. “Late this afternoon, Claude Ann noticed that something had been stolen.”
“Dinah!” Phoebe and Raif Reid filed into the room.
“You never called. I couldn�
�t stand it. How is she?” Phoebe was breathless.
“A broken wrist and a knock on the head,” said Dinah. “They’re keeping her overnight to make sure there’s no internal bleeding. Otherwise, she’s just bunged up and sore. How’s Marywave?”
“All she knows is that her suite’s been damaged and she can’t spend the night there. Housekeeping put a rollaway in my room. She’s there now with the sitter.”
Raif had lost the cocky sneer. He introduced himself and Phoebe to Sergeant Kama. “The trail of blood leads from the door of Claude Ann’s room down the stairs and across the lobby. She must have been terrified.”
Kama said, “The receptionist says she tried to stop her, but the lady kept running ’til she got to Mr. Garst. Did either of you go into Ms. Kemper’s room at any time during the day?”
“No,” said Phoebe, looking frightened.
“Not I,” said Raif.
Kama pointed his pen at Dinah. “You were about to tell me about something that was stolen.”
“Claude Ann called Xander and me to her room shortly after five. She was very upset. Someone had stolen her gun. A vintage Beretta.”
Kama scrawled a note on his pad. “When was the last time she saw the gun?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her.”
“A gun?” Raif hooted. “What the hell was she doing with a gun? That must’ve blown old Xan’s mind.”
It was possible that in other venues, among people who had no connection with his father-in-law, Raif wouldn’t stand out as the most obnoxious person in the room. But just now, Dinah couldn’t think of anyone who came close. She said, “Claude Ann would’ve opened her closet when she was dressing for the party. The trap must have been rigged while the party was going on. Her camera must have been in the closet. That’s what she went back for.”
Phoebe shook her head. “It just breaks my heart. Her perfect wedding sabotaged and all her beautiful clothes ruined. I don’t understand how anyone could be so mean.”
Mentally, Dinah ticked off the people who might have been so mean. Eleanor Kalolo was certainly high on the list of possible meanies. But her hatred was concentrated on Xander. It didn’t make sense that she would target Claude Ann. Marywave was gung ho to go home, but she wouldn’t hurt her mother and, anyway, she couldn’t have pulled off the stunt without an accomplice. Lyssa didn’t like Claude Ann. She probably wouldn’t like any woman her own age who came along and usurped her father’s love. Maybe she thought Claude Ann was going to usurp her inheritance, as well. But the crudeness of the prank didn’t fit Lyssa’s passive-aggressive style. Dinah cast a sidelong look at Raif, he of the insolent gibes and the bad-boy swagger. Would he do something this mean? Or Jon who disapproved of the marriage without saying why? Did the same person who rigged the trap steal the gun or did two people visit Claude Ann’s closet for different reasons?
Bet Your Bones Page 10