Bet Your Bones

by Jeanne Matthews

  Fujita stood next to the front door in his sock feet. Dinah had never encountered such a polite cop. He jotted a lengthy note on his notepad, which had alphabetical tabs.

  Langford waited for him to stop writing. “Other than Knack or the people Reid played poker with, is there anyone else who might have a grudge against him? Anyone who felt strongly enough to murder him?”

  Lyssa blew her nose. “Raif played poker, Officer. It was recreational. There are illegal games going on all over Hawaii—illegal card games, illegal video slots, illegal bookmaking, and cockfighting, too. My God, even Bingo’s illegal here. People want to gamble. This state’s stupid law was made to be broken. As for the money, Raif was a professional race car driver and I have money of my own. He would have told me if he had gambling debts. We could have paid them. Whatever the reason he was murdered, it had nothing to do with his gambling.”

  “There’s some logic to that,” said Langford. “Wouldn’t make much sense to kill a man before he’s paid his debt. But these private games, you never know. Somebody could’ve gotten his ego bruised or owed your husband and didn’t want to pay. Did Mr. Reid tell you about any big wins he’d had lately?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll dig around and see if we can find out who else might have been playing poker in Pahoa today. Meanwhile, we’ll need statements from all of you regarding your whereabouts between eleven-thirty and four and the names of any witnesses who can corroborate it. We’ll want to obtain fingerprints, but that can wait until tomorrow.”

  “From us?” Lyssa’s eyes riveted on her father. “Why do we have to be fingerprinted?”

  “A formality,” said Fujita. He shifted from one socked foot to another, as if he’d found some glass shards Dinah’s cleanup had missed. “To rule out those who didn’t handle the weapon.”

  “Let’s begin with you, Mrs. Reid.” Langford rubbed his palms together in a manner that Dinah saw as almost sadistic. “Where did you go when you left the airplane?”

  “Phoebe and I went to a day spa. Peacequest, in Pahoa.”

  “Peacequest.” The name seemed to surprise Langford. “Were you in the same room?”

  “No. We opted for different treatments.”

  “I had the seaweed facial and the salt glow,” said Phoebe.

  “Thank you.” Langford didn’t ask Lyssa about her treatment. He turned to Jon. “And you, Mr. Garst? Where were you?”

  “I drove here from the airport with Ms. Pelerin. We got here about twelve-thirty and I showed her around. When the quake struck a little after one, I left. I intended to go to the Observatory, but I changed my mind and drove down the Chain of Craters Road to Holei.”

  “And why was that, sir?”

  “To look for damage. I sat on the cliffs for a while, thinking.”

  “Thinking.” Langford’s eyes glinted.

  “That’s right.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. Alone.”

  Dinah massaged her temples. What was it about these Garsts that moved them to do so much of their thinking alone on clifftops?

  Marywave allowed as how she and her mother had gone to the beauty parlor to have their hair done for the wedding. “I got a princess updo. Mama got a Grecian goddess.”

  Dinah hadn’t even noticed their hair. Marywave’s looked sleek and carefully arranged. She couldn’t tell any difference between Claude Ann’s regular style and the Grecian goddess.

  Claude Ann provided the name of the salon, Nani’s Cliptomania on Kalanianaole Street. “When Nani finished with me, I left Marywave there and went shopping in the Prince Kuhio Plaza.”

  “Which shops did you visit?”

  “Macy’s and maybe another boutique or two. I don’t recall the names.”

  “Make any purchases?”

  “No. When I was through shopping, I went back to Nani’s and picked up Marywave.”

  Langford swiveled around to face Dinah. “What about you?”

  “I was here. I tried to find the keys to Xander’s Wrangler to go for a drive, but I couldn’t. Anyhow, Jon told me the battery was probably dead.”

  “Hmm. And Mr. Xander Garst, where did you spend the afternoon?”

  “I drove to my house in Kapoho. Ms. Kemper and I are to be married—were to be married—tomorrow morning. I was making sure everything was ready for us to move in.”

  “Kapoho. That’s what, eight, ten miles from Pahoa? Maybe ten or twelve to Kalapana?”

  “Thereabouts.” Xander fixed him with a stony look.

  Fujita turned to the W tab in his notepad. “You said that you flew to Hilo with Mr. Avery Wilhite. Where can we reach him?”

  “Christ!” Xander raked his forelock out of his eyes. “He’s probably at the Kilauea Lodge right now. We were supposed to meet there for dinner and a pre-wedding party. We should be there now. I’ll call the lodge and explain.”

  “You’re free to go if you’d rather explain in person,” said Langford. “We’re finished here for now.”

  Fujita passed out cards with his and Langford’s contact numbers. “We’ll be back in the morning with our forensics people to collect everyone’s fingerprints.”

  As the detectives prepared to leave, so did everyone else.

  Lyssa clutched Jon’s hand. “Will you come with me while I phone Raif’s parents?”

  “You know I will.”

  “You, too, Phoebe. I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’d like you to stay with me for a while.”

  Lyssa was the first out the door, followed by her two comforters, Jon and Phoebe.

  Xander whispered something in Claude Ann’s ear. She whispered in Marywave’s ear and the three of them left without so much as a backward glance at Dinah.

  Langford stood on the lanai and watched everyone troop off into the gathering gloom while the exceptionally polite Fujita sat down and put on his shoes.

  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, thought Dinah. “Lieutenant, if it’s not classified information, what kind of gun was used in the shooting?”

  His jaw jutted as he appeared to take her measure. “I don’t see that it matters. It was an old Beretta. Until it landed near that skylight, somebody had taken real good care of it.”

  Dinah made a superhuman effort to return Langford’s stare without shrieking. She thanked him, said good-bye, and went back inside. Shell-shocked, she sat down at the kitchen table to think. The framed photograph of Xander and Leilani was still there, but the article about the death that marred the conference in California was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Did Claude Ann think the Hawaii police wouldn’t communicate with the Honolulu police and find out about the missing gun? Jon was back at the door before Dinah had conjured up anything close to a rational reason for her lie. “Dad and Claude Ann have gone to the lodge for dinner. Will you come?”

  “What about Lyssa?”

  “After she talked to Raif’s mother, she took a sleeping pill. She’d rather be unconscious.”

  “What about Phoebe and Marywave?”

  “Phoebe volunteered to stay with Marywave. They’ve ordered in a pizza. I haven’t eaten all day and I’m starved. How about you?”

  Dinah wasn’t hungry, but she didn’t want to be alone and she was in a swivet to speak to Claude Ann about the gun. She grabbed her purse and followed him to the car.

  “What do you think Raif was doing out on that lava field, Jon?”

  “He may have gone to meet someone on the sly.”

  “A woman, you mean?”

  “Lyssa would never believe it but, as you’ve guessed, Raif played around.”

  “But he would’ve met a lover at the No-Tell Motel, not in the middle of a lava field.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t a tourist. Hawaii, or at least this corner o
f it, is like a small town. Everybody knows everybody. Maybe they planned to make love in the back seat of the car.”

  “The ‘Vette he rented didn’t have a back seat.”

  “I don’t know, Dinah. It was probably connected to his gambling. Like Langford said, maybe somebody owed him and chose not to pay.”

  Dinah wished. But how likely was it that another somebody in this corner of the island had a grandfather who willed him an Italian gun? “Who died in California back in eight-nine?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “There was an article about a death at an earth sciences conference behind a picture of your mom and dad.”

  “I’d forgotten I had it. It was Steve’s dad.”

  “Louis Sykes?”

  “That’s right. He got tanked and drowned in the hotel swimming pool.”

  “Why would someone take it?”

  “Why would you take the picture apart to snoop?” He let out a prodigious sigh. “Sorry, but I’ve got more pressing things to think about than a death that happened over twenty years ago.”

  “Right.”

  He drove to the front door of a rustic lodge lit up like Christmas. The parking lot overflowed with traffic and the raucous sound of Bavarian polka music spilled out into the night. Dinah flashed him a quizzical look. “This is where you come after a death in the family?”

  “The Kilauea’s a busy place, but the back room’s reserved for us. Go on in and I’ll try to find a place to park.”

  She had a yeasty feeling in the pit of her stomach, a feeling that several members of the wedding were lying their heads off. Claude Ann’s lie about the gun was the most bothersome. She had no conceivable motive to murder Raif, but the world was too full of nuts for cops to be finicky about motive. If Claude Ann’s Beretta was the murder weapon, if her fingerprints were found on it, if Hank didn’t come forward and confess to having stolen it—well, the fallout didn’t bear thinking on. Xander’s reaction to the murder had seemed labored and unnatural, and to say that Lyssa had looked at him askance was putting it mildly. Jon’s alibi, not to mention his scientific detachment and his defensive attitude, hadn’t gone over with Detective Langford. It pained Dinah to acknowledge any similarity between herself and a sourpuss like Langford, but his barefaced disbelief mirrored her own exactly.

  She climbed the steps and entered the noisy dining room. On one side of the room was a cheerful fire blazing in a big stone fireplace. A roisterous group milled around the sofa and coffee table in front of the fire, toasting each other with ornate beer steins. Some wore green paper Bavarian hats with feather flourishes. Others wore pointy alpine hats with colorful braid bands. The men wore lederhosen and suspenders. The women wore dirndls. An accordion player in full Tyrolian garb strolled among the tables. The rest of the band—a trombone, a tuba, a trumpet, and a zither—occupied a makeshift stage in the far corner and played as if to raise the roof. A couple polkaed somewhat drunkenly in front of the stage.

  Dinah cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted at a harried looking waitress carrying a tray full of drinks. “Where is the Xander Garst party?”

  “You’ll have to ask the hostess. It’s Volksfest night.” She balanced her heavily loaded tray against her mid-section and plunged off into the hurly-burly.

  Dinah stood at the vacant hostess station and scoped out the crowd. At the rear of the room, she spotted Avery Wilhite in a neon-blue shirt with electric yellow lines squiggling across it like sea snakes. At least, he wore long pants. He waved to her and she threaded her way between the tables until she reached him.

  “Hell of a thing,” he said, taking her hand and patting it as if she were the bereaved. “Shocking. Unbelievable. Guns everywhere. Jon with you?”

  “He’ll be in as soon as he finds a parking space.”

  “Most of the guests have been sent home, but Steve and I stayed. What are friends for? Go on in. Go, go.” He pointed at a door with a Private sign. “Jon and I will round up a waiter.”

  She opened the door and went inside. The first thing she noticed when she closed the door was the tomb-like quiet. The second thing was the odor of stale grease and cigar smoke. The room was windowless and mirrorless and the walls had been padded with a quilted, maroon fabric that muffled sound and collected odors. The murky lighting brought to mind stories of the yellow fogs of Victorian London. On the side of the room opposite the door, Claude Ann and Xander sat on a maroon velveteen banquette gabbing with a very large man who made sweeping gestures with a fat cigar.

  In the center of the room was a rectangular table. At the far end, Steve Sykes sat with three men she’d never seen before. Steve looked up and showed her a smile and she realized how long it had been since she’d seen one. It was magnetic. She had to hold herself back from running toward him.

  He stood up. “We keep meeting in the scariest circumstances. How’s Lyssa?”

  “I don’t know what she must feel. I hope I never do.”

  He introduced her to the other men at the table. They were all Xander’s co-workers from the U.S.G.S. They asked her to pass on their condolences to Lyssa, but they seemed ill at ease. Obviously, murder wasn’t the attraction that had brought them to the lodge this evening and it had put the quietus on their revelry. They must have felt obliged to stay on a decent length of time to show solidarity with their colleague.

  Steve walked her away from the table. “Those are the oldtimers who’ve worked with Xander for years. They were at Lyssa’s wedding, although I doubt they knew Raif except in connection with her. They’re friends of Avery’s, too, going back to the time he worked for the Survey.”

  “Avery’s a volcanologist, too?”

  “He was some variety of geologist before he began dabbling in real estate and started his own acquisition business. He knows the older U.S.G.S. crowd anyhow.”

  “Who’s that talking with Xander and Claude Ann?”

  “Paul Jarvis. Uwahi closes day after tomorrow and Paul was invited to the party and the wedding. Xander and Avery called off the party and notified most of the guests not to show, but they wanted Paul here to reassure him that what happened to Raif was unrelated to business and all systems are still go with Uwahi.”

  The door opened and Avery and Jon walked in to the rollicking strains of Beer Barrel Polka. When the door closed, it was quiet again.

  “The bar’s back in the main dining room,” said Steve. “Would you like something before dinner?”

  “I had a hit of Jon’s Scotch earlier. I’ll coast.” The word reminded her of Raif, who said that coasting was for losers. “Maybe a glass of red wine. You choose.”

  Steve left and she sat down with the oldtimers and listened as they talked shop. One of them talked about doing a flyover of Mauna Loa with thermal imaging cameras. Another expounded on a paper he’d submitted for publication, something about convection and vertical pipes of molten material venting where the earth’s crust was thinnest. He nattered on, seemingly forgetful of the fact that Raif had been fallen through said thin crust mere hours ago.

  Jon and Avery pulled up a couple of chairs and joined the group. There was another round of condolences.

  Avery tut-tutted about the proliferation of illegal gambling in the state and the fast and loose tendencies of young people these days. “All want instant gratification, caution to the wind, no appreciation of the consequences. Poor boy probably done in by a sore loser. Too few sensible ones like Steve and Jon. And Dinah, of course. Not enough self-discipline.”

  Jarvis’ cigar smoke was gassing the room and causing Dinah’s eyes to burn. Xander and Claude Ann appeared unfazed by the smoke or by grief. Raif was a rotter and Lyssa might be the only one who would truly mourn his passing, but surely the murder of one’s daughter’s husband, however unlovable, should be cause for more consternation.

 
She had to separate Claude Ann from Xander and pin her down for a serious powwow. Excusing herself from the table, she forged across the room to the banquette. Xander was in the middle of a spiel about property taxes. He and Jarvis stood and Xander introduced her to Jarvis.

  “Pleasure,” said Jarvis, pumping her hand.

  “Likewise. Sorry to interrupt, but I need to speak with you, Claude Ann. In private.”

  Claude Ann smiled at Jarvis. “I’ll be back in a jiffy, y’all. Dinah, throw your purse down there next to mine. I think we can trust Paul and Xan to guard our valuables.” She took Dinah’s arm and walked her toward a pair of tub chairs in the far corner of the room. “What’s up?”

  “The gun that killed Raif was a Beretta. An old one.”

  “Mine?”

  “It would be a remarkable coincidence if it weren’t.”

  “But that means that Hank is here, on this island, and he really did kill Raif.”

  “Not necessarily. You noticed the gun was missing in the late afternoon. You must have gone into your closet after that to dress for the party. It had to have been taken sometime before Hank rigged his bucket of blood. Where did you keep it and when did you last see it?”

  “Sheesh, I don’t know. I kept it under the cosmetic tray in my train case. Yesterday I just got fed up with Eleanor harassin’ us. I thought if she came back, I’d show her the gun and scare her off, only it was gone.”

  A tall, thirtyish woman with a good figure came into the room carrying a drink. The piercing sounds of the zither accompanied her and died when the door flew shut.

  “That’s Frieda Jarvis,” said Claude Ann. “I have to go and be gracious. I’ll talk to you later.” She rushed off, leaving Dinah none the wiser.

  Dinah sat down in one of the tub chairs to wait for Steve. As she did, Avery left the table of oldtimers and joined her.

  “Kay, I said, what’s the world coming to? First an assault and battery and now Raif dead. Terrible. Jon says the police haven’t caught Kemper yet. Let’s hope they get Raif’s killer fast.”