Bet Your Bones

by Jeanne Matthews

  “Varian was Kay’s maiden name?”

  “I guess so. I didn’t give it a thought at the time. All I knew was that her brother had married Pat’s mom. Varian must have adopted Pat. I’m sure Pat welcomed the name change.”

  Dinah’s thoughts reeled. Patrick Varian was Avery Wilhite’s nephew. He was the Rick whose funeral Kay had attended. He was the sharp-as-a-tack archaeology professor who’d come to the Big Island for some mysterious client and been murdered.

  And Avery hadn’t acknowledged knowing him. How odd was that? She harked back to her first conversation with Avery after she’d been accosted by Eleanor. Avery had blithered about not being able to keep sisters-in-law or nephews in line. It was like herding cats. Had Avery hired his nephew to validate the opinion of Xander’s archaeologist? Adjunct professors were poorly paid. Avery could have gotten Rick’s services cheap and Rick might have jumped at the opportunity to earn some extra money. Kay had said he was conscientious. Had he been too conscientious for Avery’s liking?

  Steve said, “I’d never have associated Pat with archaeology. As I recall him, he was always acting the clown, probably trying to deflect the teasing that came his way.”

  She’d almost forgotten about Steve. Her thoughts were in ferment. “At Xander’s party in Honolulu, I remember Avery saying his wife couldn’t be there because there had been a death in the family. It must have been Rick Varian. Why didn’t he say so? And then at Raif’s memorial service, Kay spoke about the death of her brother’s son and Avery cut her off.”

  “Avery cuts people off all the time. Have you noticed that he likes the sound of his own voice?”

  “But Kay seemed genuinely to care about the boy. Why did Avery keep the fact that Varian was his nephew a secret?”

  “Who knows? Absent-mindedness. Maybe he didn’t want to inflict his family’s troubles on others.”

  “No. Avery loves to gossip too much. He had to have a reason for dodging the subject.”

  “I’m not following you. Why should he volunteer to you or to anyone else that the unfortunate man who was bludgeoned and stuffed into a steam vent was his nephew by marriage?”

  “Because it’s titillating. Because he had special knowledge of Varian that nobody else had. It would have been such a natural thing for him to volunteer and totally in character. As for not telling me, I’m inconsequential. I’m a nobody. If he’s hiding it from me, he’s hiding it from everybody and that’s suspicious in the extreme.”

  “You’re letting one fact send you off on a tangent. Maybe he told the police. And even if he didn’t, failing to confess that a corpse was your nephew isn’t a felony in any jurisdiction that I know of.”

  “Maybe so, but something’s hinky. I don’t know how you can blow off the fact that Varian was an archaeologist. According to the newspaper report, he had come to the Big Island to evaluate a burial site on private property. A Native Hawaiian woman claims that Uwahi is a burial site. Hello?”

  “But why would Avery have hired another archaeologist when we already had a clean report?”

  “All right, all right. Are you absolutely sure that Jarvis or his lawyers didn’t hire Varian? Or Eleanor and her lawyers?”

  “No, I can’t be sure. They wouldn’t be obligated to disclose their experts to me if they didn’t want to.” He picked up another armful of papers and piled them on his desk. “Avery came to me a couple of weeks ago and asked about the legal ramifications if some bones or artifacts were discovered on the property after the closing. I told him the problem would belong to Jarvis. The contract was clear that any warranties we made would terminate at the time of closing. The thing about Uwahi was, it had to close yesterday or else. Politics were involved. The timing was crucial. If anybody balked, it could have been months or a year before we had another viable offer.”

  “So if Varian discovered something, it would be in Avery’s interest to keep him quiet until after the closing.”

  “What of it? It was in everyone’s interest for the deal to close—Xander’s, Claude Ann’s, and mine.”

  “Be that as it may. Avery said that archaeologists spoke gibberish. ‘Articulation.’ That was the example he gave. Did your archaeologist, the one Xander hired to evaluate Uwahi, say anything about articulation?”

  “I don’t think so. Does it mean something besides clear speaking?”

  “In archaeological jargon, it refers to a find of two or more bones in their original configuration. Rick may have found the king’s bones.”

  “Where are you going with this? Are you thinking Avery killed his nephew because he found something Avery didn’t want him to find? Because, I mean, Avery? That’s surreal. I’ve known him for years. He’s a pussycat.”

  “People aren’t always the way they seem.”

  “Avery is. He can sometimes get worked up if things don’t go his way. But overall, he’s the dullest, most domesticated man I’ve ever met.”

  “You said that the closing date was crucial. If Varian had found bones and he wanted to announce his find right away, before the closing took place, that would have gotten Avery worked up.”

  Steve kicked another box of documents against the wall. “None of us would have felt happy about that.”

  “But who,” she mused, “would have felt the most unhappy? Xander, perhaps. But Xander says that Avery lost his shirt in Bernie Madoff’s bogus hedge fund. He needed the deal to close as badly as Xander did.”

  “Avery’s broke? Judas Priest, he was never short of cash when I went to him with some new expense. He must’ve borrowed big-time.”

  “Just like Xander,” she said. “He bet the ranch. He was all in.”

  “Avery Wilhite, killer and archvillain.” Steve went behind his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a half-smoked joint. “I can’t see it. You walked in that door convinced that I killed Varian. In twenty minutes time, you’ve talked yourself into believing that it was Avery. But if Varian was murdered because of something he found at Uwahi, you’re back to square one on Raif’s murder. Raif had zero to do with Uwahi.”

  Stymied, Dinah was considering whether to throw in the towel and get stoned when a loud knock sounded at the door. Shave-and-a-haircut.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “Consulting with your attorney?” Jon’s tone was accusatory.

  “Thanks so much for asking, but I haven’t engaged one yet. The police released me without pressing charges, as I’m sure you must have heard through the grapevine.”

  “I thought you’d call me.”

  “I did call you. Your answering machine bid me to have a nice day.”

  “You should have called my cell. I’ve been on non-stop suicide watch.”

  Dinah noticed his bloodshot eyes and dropped the sarcasm. “I thought you were spending today with Lyssa.”

  “I had to get away. Her emoting began to sound less like grief and more like…”

  “Guilt?” suggested Steve.

  “A performance.”

  Steve laughed. “Mind what you say, brah. Dinah’s on a prosecutorial tear. In five minutes, she’ll have you doubting your own innocence.” He motioned Jon toward the stairs. “Let’s all go upstairs and kick back for a while. Come on, Dinah. There’s safety in numbers.”

  Caution to the wind, she followed the smell of pakalolo up the stairs.

  Steve’s living quarters weren’t spick-and-span, but the floor was passable and the chairs free of clutter. She and Jon declined to smoke and Steve brought out a cold six-pack of Big Bang Pale Ale and three clean pilsners. They sat down at the kitchen table like old friends.

  After the first few sips of beer, Jon said, “Thinking about death and murder all the time eats you up inside. Lyssa seesaws between anger and agony. It’s hard to watch.”

  Dinah recalled the bitter look on Lyssa’s face when she s
aw Langford pull Raif’s phone out of her purse. “Lyssa probably thinks that I killed Raif.”

  “We’re all looking at each other sideways,” said Jon. “Lyssa doesn’t trust Dad or Claude Ann. Dad’s on tenterhooks because he thinks either Lyssa shot him or I shot him. We’re a mutual circle of suspects.”

  “Cheer up, brah. We don’t know who killed Raif, but Dinah thinks she knows who killed that archaeologist, Patrick Varian. Go ahead, Dinah. Fill him in.”

  “First, I should fill you both in on why Jon’s mother killed herself.”

  “Say what?” Steve jerked his chin back.

  The eyebrow on Jon’s good side spiked up. “Have you held a séance without inviting me?”

  “Leilani was in love with Louis Sykes. Your mother has known it from the beginning, Steve. They were having an affair. After your father’s drowning accident, someone telephoned Leilani and told her that Louis had been cheating on her with another woman. I think the person who made that call was the same person who called Sara to tell her that Louis was dead.”

  “Avery,” said Steve. “I’ve always known that. But why did my mother not tell me about the affair?”

  “She didn’t want you to think less of your father. She didn’t want to blame a dead woman. She didn’t want to hurt Xander. Unfortunately, Eleanor fixed her blame on the wrong man and her hatred of Xander has festered for all these years.”

  “Jesus, when I think how much mental energy we’ve squandered on the suicide question.” Jon rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “And all because of a love triangle.”

  “Actually,” said Dinah, “it was more of a quadrangle. Avery was in love with Leilani and jealous of both Xander and Louis. When he called Leilani, he probably described Louis’ carryings-on to Leilani in a way that inflicted maximum pain and humiliation. Maybe he suggested that she should have an affair with him now that Louis was dead. Maybe Leilani believed that he had murdered Louis. She was furious and, of course, grief-stricken at the same time. I don’t suppose you’ll ever know whether her suicide was because she couldn’t bear living without Louis, or whether in her mind she was punishing Louis or Avery or both.”

  Steve finished his Big Bang and opened another. “How could Xander not have known that his wife was having it on with one of his best friends?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dinah. “There’s a peptide that instills trust. Maybe he has a lot of it.”

  Jon smiled his lopsided smile. “Oxytocin.”

  Steve shook his head. “Like I said before, when I was young I wondered if my father’s death was an accident and then I heard the story about the woman who tried to save him. Now I’m wondering all over again.”

  Dinah said, “At first, I thought Xander had tumbled to what was going on between Leilani and Louis and murdered his rival. But Xander was lecturing at Stanford when Louis died. He called Sara when he got back to San Francisco. It was she who told him about Leilani’s suicide.”

  Steve extinguished his joint. “Avery could have killed my father and paid the woman to lie, or it could have been an accident and he called Leilani to rub it in. And to gloat.”

  “Unless he confesses,” said Jon, “we’ll never know.”

  “Maybe he’ll go down for another murder. Dinah, tell Jon what you found out about good old Ave’s relationship to Pat Shirley, a/k/a Rick Varian.”

  Dinah summarized the family connection. “All along I’ve been thinking that Raif’s murder stemmed from his gambling habit or his womanizing. But what if he had managed to interject himself somehow in the Uwahi deal?”

  “But how?” asked Steve. “He couldn’t have known anything that wasn’t said in general conversation. And we were fairly economical with what we said.”

  “Raif and Varian were schoolmates. Varian could have called him when he came to the Big Island and, over a friendly game of cards, mentioned that he’d found bones on property his Uncle Avery had asked him to evaluate.” Dinah was thinking out loud. “Maybe Avery ordered his nephew to deep-six his find and when Varian’s scruples got in the way, Avery killed him. Raif was desperate. Lyssa was beginning to suspect that he was only interested in her money. If she tightened the purse strings and if Tess couldn’t or wouldn’t pony up the cash to cover his debts, Raif had no place else to go. Xander was tapped out. When the body in the steam vent was identified as Varian, Raif saw his chance. He threatened to go to the police or to Paul Jarvis unless Avery bought him off.”

  “That’s a lot of could-haves and maybes,” said Jon. “And Avery as a killer? Come on.”

  “My thought exactly,” said Steve. “But it makes a certain amount of sense. Even if there was no evidence to link Avery to Varian’s murder, the investigation would have delayed the closing and Jarvis was adamant that he would walk if the sale didn’t close on time.”

  Dinah had another timing question. “Jon, when did you tell Eleanor that Xander was getting ready to sell Uwahi?”

  “A few weeks ago. I knew that Uwahi was special to her, that it had been in the family for generations. I thought she deserved a chance to go and commune with her ancestors before the spirit of the place was destroyed. I’m sure Dad considers my talking to her a betrayal.”

  Steve frowned. “Damn right it was a betrayal. Of me, too. Eleanor could have thrown a monkey wrench into the deal and left me without a nickel for all the work I’ve put in.”

  “It wasn’t my intention for her to mobilize an army of protesters. At least, I didn’t tell her that Jarvis was the buyer. If she’d suspected that a gambling casino was being contemplated for Uwahi, she’d have stormed the governor’s office.”

  “Your display of friendship is duly noted, brah.”

  “I owed her, Steve.”

  “For what? Hounding your father for failing to keep your mother alive?”

  Dinah intervened “Stop it. We were talking about murder. About the possibility that Avery committed both murders. He acted as if Eleanor’s protests were a trivial problem, more of an intrafamily spat than a threat to Uwahi. But she had rattled him. Soon after her first protest, he must have called his nephew over from Oahu to do some additional bone hunting on the QT.”

  “That’s the part that makes no sense.” Steve took away Dinah’s undrunk beer and poured it down the sink. “Buying a second opinion would just be asking for trouble, shooting himself in the foot if the new man turned up something the first archaeologist had missed. Sorry, but it won’t wash. You weave a good story, Dinah, but there’s not a shred of evidence linking Avery to either murder.”

  “Can he be absolutely sure of that?” She took a deep breath and placed her hands on the table palms down as if preparing herself to summon the spirits of the dead. “Maybe we should hold a séance. Spirits sometimes come back to haunt the ones who hurt them. If Avery is the murderer, I have an idea that might smoke him out. Will the two of you help me?”

  Jon’s leery eyes narrowed. “How?”

  She smiled. “Steve bragged that his seductive charms could make impossible things happen. Let’s put him to the test.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  In Hilo, Jon turned off the Bayfront Highway onto Banyan Drive, a shaded avenue lined with huge banyans, each of which had been planted by a famous person whose name appeared on a plaque at the base of the tree. Presidents, movie stars, athletes, adventurers.

  “These old trees have survived some major disasters,” said Jon. “A twenty-five foot wave obliterated the waterfront back in forty-six and Hilo was hit again in sixty by a thirty-five footer. With all the big quakes that’ve been happening around the Pacific lately, we’ve had a number of tsunami warnings.”

  Dinah gazed out at the peaceful shoreline and the blue waters of Hilo Bay sparkling under the noonday sun. The one thing she’d learned about Hawaii was that safety is an illusion. The very ground you walk on is provisi
onal and the gods can drop the trapdoor in the blink of an eye.

  Jon drove past the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel, turned right and parked in the Coconut Island lot facing the water. Coconut Island was an emerald-green, palm-studded islet no larger than a football field and connected to the Big Island by a picturesque stone footbridge.

  “The island’s name is Moku Ola in Hawaiian,” Jon informed her. “In olden times, it was a pu`uhonua, a place of refuge. Anyone who violated kapu could come here, make an offering to the gods, and swim away free and forgiven.”

  Dinah had heard all about pu’uhonua from Lt. Vince Langford, but the refuge he had offered was behind prison walls topped by concertina wire. Setting that aside, forgiveness was very much on her mind. She hoped that Steve was making more headway than she had made in trying to convince his mother to break her silence and open up about Louis and Leilani. “Are you sure Eleanor will come?”

  “She’ll come, but how receptive she’ll be is anyone’s guess.” Jon gave her a jaundiced look. “This idea of yours, this bluff the murderer game. It’s stupid. A cliché out of an old whodunit and dangerous as hell.”

  “We’ll let Langford in on the plot if and when everyone agrees to participate. For heaven’s sakes, I know that it’s iffy. I know that it’s amateur hour. If you have a better idea, then for heaven’s sakes, shoot it to me this instant.”

  “Let the police finish their investigation. You don’t have enough facts to make a valid judgment.”

  “Policemen are not renowned for their patience, Jon. They don’t have enough to book anyone yet, but Raif’s father will keep turning up the heat. Eventually, they will get tired of the aggravation and decide that Claude Ann’s prints on the gun or Raif’s phone in my purse or the fact that Raif was blackmailing Xander is enough evidence to convict and life as we know it will end. My idea is a long, long shot, but I can’t just sit around waiting and hoping.”