by Carol Snow
When Albert came around the corner again, he didn’t have a pot of coffee. And he wasn’t smiling.
“There’s a message on the answering machine,” he said. “From the police.”
Mary and I both sat up abruptly.
“They want Miss Shea to call them,” he said. “They said it’s important.”
Chapter 16
“We found Michael James,” Detective McGuinn said.
“Is he . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. The image that flashed in my mind was so grisly, it made me dizzy. I sat down on a stinky green chair, afraid I would fall over.
“We’d like you to come down to the station,” he said.
Tiara, dressed in a buttercup-yellow halter dress, climbed out of a taxi just as I pulled up. Out of respect for her missing boyfriend, she wore flats instead of heels, and her glossy black hair was held back chastely in a clip—a rhinestone clip, but still. She pulled a tissue out of a big yellow bag dotted with metal studs and dabbed her eyes.
“They said that they found him,” she whispered. “They didn’t say he was dead, but . . .”
“I know.” I took a deep breath. “And it’s going to be hard to hold it together, but just so you know—people will be asking us questions. Not just the police.” I did a quick scan of the parking lot but didn’t see anyone hiding out with a camera. “Our pictures were in the paper today.”
“Really?” She spun her head to look at me, sounding more pleased than was appropriate under the circumstances. “How did I look?”
“You looked—fine.” Actually, she looked gorgeous, but that didn’t matter right now. “Did the police say anything else about Jimmy?”
“No. Just that I needed to come down here.” Her gaze grew distant for a moment. “Jane?”
“Yes?” I said, feeling a momentary bond: after all, we were going through the exact same thing.
“Did you save a copy of that newspaper? I’d really like to see it.”
The entire station went quiet when we walked in the door. Detective McGuinn came over to greet us. “Ladies.”
“You said you found Jimmy.” I couldn’t bear the suspense any longer. My eyes swept the room, searching for Jimmy, but of course he wasn’t there. A fresh wave of pain washed over me. In a dark, stupid corner of my brain, I’d been harboring a fantasy: Jimmy would be here, looking cold and confused but alive. And Tiara would see him and say, No, no, there’s been a terrible mistake. That’s not my boyfriend. I’ve never seen this man before.
The detective scratched his cheek, considering. “Did I say we found him? What I should have said, I guess, was that Michael James found us.”
I stared at him. “Do you mean . . .”
“He’s alive?” Tiara gasped.
The officer looked across the room. “I have Michael James waiting in the interrogation room. Not that we’re interrogating him,” he explained. “Just—that’s our only other room.”
“Alive,” I said for confirmation.
“Very much alive,” he said.
I put my hand on my chest. “Thank God.”
Something inside me lifted, lightened. There’d be no happy reunion, I realized, immediately abandoning my two-different-Jimmys fantasy. And I wasn’t going to sit around hoping that Jimmy would choose me over Tiara. But at least now I could go home and hate him with a clear conscience.
Tiara covered her mouth with her hands and began to sob.
“There, there,” the officer said, folding her in a loose hug.
“I thought,” she sobbed, “I’d never”—sob—“see him”—sob—“again.” She gasped and blubbered some more.
Around the room, the other officers, along with a guy being booked for drunk driving, watched with expressions of misty sympathy, like they were witnessing the last ten minutes of a Hall-mark Hall of Fame special.
“Can we just get this over with?” I asked. The mistiness evaporated.
“Of course,” the officer said, releasing Tiara.
When you learn to scuba dive, the first thing they teach you is, never hold your breath. I didn’t even realize I’d stopped breathing until we entered the room and my chest began to hurt. I gulped air. And then I looked around. The interrogation room was small and rectangular, dominated by a long table. I scanned every inch of the room, even glancing under the table, but Jimmy wasn’t there—just another police officer sitting in a plastic chair and a tall guy with dark hair who was talking to himself. He looked upset by whatever he was saying. Then I realized: oh, a cell phone. He had one of those little earpieces that always throw me. Was he talking to Jimmy? Was Jimmy in the hospital—in the ICU, perhaps? The thought of Jimmy injured, Jimmy in pain, made me tremble despite all that had happened.
I’d wait till Jimmy made a full recovery, and then I’d start to hate him.
The guy with the earpiece frowned at us. “Don’t know,” he said into the air. “Complete mess . . . Unbelievable.” He spoke quickly, in clipped tones. No sooner had he turned off his phone than it rang again. “Yeah?”
Tiara entered the room behind me, mewing like an injured kitten.
The officer cleared his throat. The guy on the phone scowled and held up a finger as if to say, One minute. He was in his thirties, I’d guess, long and lean with square shoulders, dressed in khaki shorts and a black polo shirt. His dark hair was cut conservatively. His eyes were sharp and brown. Most of all, he looked really, really annoyed.
Finally, he pulled the receiver out of his ear, stuck it in his pocket, and folded his arms across his chest.
The detective motioned to the seated policeman. “This is Sergeant Hosozawa,” the detective said. “He works out of the Wailuki station.”
Sergeant Hosozawa rose out of his chair, his bearing erect and vaguely military. His black hair was so short his scalp showed through, and his mocha-colored skin was acne-scarred. His eyes were so dark it was almost impossible to tell the pupil from the iris. Just being in the same room made me suck in my stomach and stand straighter.
The sergeant held an arm out toward the tall man in the black polo shirt. “Ladies, I’d like you to meet Michael James.”
Chapter 17
“That’s not Jimmy,” I said as steadily as I could. Tiara began to wail. The detective helped her into a chair.
“Have you ever seen this man before?” the sergeant asked us.
“No,” I said. Tiara made a gulping, gagging sound and shook her head.
The tall guy tapped his foot. “Can I go now?”
The sergeant ignored his question. “I take it you don’t know these women, Mr. James.”
“No.”
“It’s a different Michael James,” I told the detective evenly, doing my best to keep the “duh” out of my voice.
The officer cleared his throat. “Mr. James, can you tell us where you work?”
Before he could answer, his cell phone rang, the tone like a cat’s purr. Michael James pulled the phone out of his pocket and checked the screen.
“I gotta get this.” He stuck the bud back in his ear and pushed a button on the phone. “Hey . . . Yeah, I know—I just talked to him.” He grimaced. “My mother just about had a heart attack.” His eyes popped wider. “You’re kidding me. When? How much? . . . Oh, my God.” He ran a hand through his short hair.
“Mr. James owns his own business,” the sergeant said. “Scuba gear.”
“Just like Jimmy,” I said.
The sergeant cleared his throat. “Mr. James is thirty-four years old. His scuba company is located in Laguna Beach,” the sergeant said. “I think you know what it’s called.”
No. It couldn’t be. “Oh my God.” I put a hand on the table to steady myself.
“What?” Tiara squeaked.
“Jimmies,” I said, not making any attempt to keep the “duh” out of my voice.
She looked at Michael James, still talking on his phone, and said, “His company has the same name as Jimmy’s?” (I think I actually heard someone in the room s
ay, “Duh,” but maybe it was just my imagination.)
The sergeant crossed his arms and pulled his shoulders up even higher. “Mr. James watched the news last night. He was kind of surprised to find out he was dead. Even more surprised to find that his American Express miles had been cashed in to pay for a room at the Hyatt.”
Michael James pulled the piece out of his ear. “Actually, I was more surprised to find out I was dead.” He shoved the phone back in his pocket and looked from Tiara to me. “Does either one of you know anything about a really expensive ring bought in a jewelry shop at the Hyatt a few nights ago?”
I instinctively covered the diamond with my right hand. I had tried to yank the ring off this morning—it seemed absurd to wear it at this point—but it was so tight I couldn’t get it off.
“No,” Tiara said. I didn’t say anything.
“I just talked to my assistant,” Michael James said.
“Ana?” I asked, hoping he’d say no, hoping that Ana really worked for Jimmy, that something he’d told me was true.
“Yeah.” He blinked. “How did you know that?”
We locked eyes. Something like dread spread over his face.
“This isn’t just about credit cards, is it?” he asked. I shook my head.
“What’s this about a ring?” the sergeant asked him.
“Someone used my American Express to buy a diamond ring at the Hyatt a few days ago,” Michael said. “The same card was used at the ABC Store in Whaler’s Village.” (My muffin, I thought. My anklet.)
“And my frequent-flier miles are gone,” he continued. “Used for two first-class tickets.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “I was going to use those for a dive trip to Australia.”
I held out my left hand. “This is the ring,” I mumbled, my head down.
Tiara swung around to look at me. “But you said you and Jimmy had been engaged a long time!”
I shook my head and blushed with shame.
“So when did he propose?” she demanded.
“I—he—” I looked at the faces around me and then back at the floor. “He never actually proposed. I found the ring later. In his luggage. After he disappeared.”
The room was silent for a moment. “So he may have bought the ring for me!” Tiara burst out happily.
“He didn’t buy the ring for anybody!” Michael James said. “I bought the ring.”
I pulled on the ring. It hurt. “You can have it back.”
“Thanks so much,” Michael muttered.
The sergeant spoke. “Before Mr. James—the other Mr. James, Jimmy—disappeared, did anything strange happen? Anything to indicate maybe he knew he was in trouble?”
I stopped pulling on my finger. The restaurant: of course. “We were out to dinner. They turned down Jimmy’s credit card.”
“How did he seem after that?”
I considered. “Upset. Distracted.”
“So he might have guessed he was in trouble,” Detective McGuinn said.
“Do you still have his personal effects?” Sergeant Hosozawa asked me. “His wallet, his license?”
“Yeah, they’re in my condo.”
“Would you mind if we took a look around?” He said this casually, but I felt like I’d been punched in my gut. If I said no, he’d look around anyway, but he’d need a few hours to get a search warrant. Allegedly disappeared.
“Of course not,” I said cooperatively. I had nothing to do with this.
“Oh, and Ms. Shea?”
“Yes?”
“We’re still going to need that ring back.”
“I feel bad,” Tiara said when she walked into my condo. I’d driven back with two police cruisers in tow: Michael rode with Sergeant Hosozawa, while Tiara hitched a ride with Detective McGuinn. (“Can I try on your handcuffs?” I heard her say before she shut the car door.)
I was feeling bad, too. Well—obviously. But just when I thought I couldn’t sink any lower, I was hit with a new wave of humiliation. Having finally seen the Hyatt, the Maui Hi seemed even sadder than before. It made me feel shabby by association. Any fool could see which woman Jimmy preferred. Tiara was the five-star lover. I was the budget girl. I put the ho in HoJo.
Tiara sat down on one of the rattan chairs with the orange cushions, perching on the edge to minimize skin-to-fabric contact.
“The green ones are cleaner,” I said. “And they don’t, you know. Smell.”
“Oh!” She popped up and moved over to a green chair. I remained standing, as if I were hosting an impromptu neighborhood get-together. Sergeant Hosozawa dug through Jimmy’s duffel bag, emptying the contents onto the nasty brown carpet and running his fingers over every edge to check for hidden pockets. His latex gloves made me think of the kind of yearly doctor appointments that I dread for weeks beforehand.
Detective McGuinn, meanwhile, opened drawer after drawer even though I’d told him that Jimmy had never unpacked. He ignored me, digging uninterrupted through my bathing suits, T-shirts, and sensible cotton underwear.
“Can I get anyone coffee?” I chirped, disappointed when the police said no.
Michael stood outside the door, talking to himself again, like a well-groomed schizophrenic. With nothing left to do, I settled onto a green chair, noting almost subconsciously that it actually smelled just as bad as the orange ones.
“Jimmy didn’t invite me to Maui,” Tiara muttered, picking at her fingernails.
“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right.
“He didn’t invite me. I kept expecting him to. I mean, your boyfriend tells you he’s coming to Maui and doesn’t even ask you to come with? I kept saying stuff like ‘We could make love in the ocean,’ and ‘I could lick piña coladas off your—’ Well, you know. But he didn’t pick up on it.”
“Perhaps you were too subtle,” I said, thinking, Pina coladas? Wouldn’t that be awfully cold and, you know, sticky?
“So, anyways,” she continued, “I’d just been reading this article in Cosmo about how guys really like it when a girl takes the initiation.” (I didn’t correct her. I think I get points for that.) “So I bought my own plane ticket and checked into the Hyatt. I wasn’t even going to tell him. I was just going to wait for him in the room—naked, you know.”
“With a piña colada,” I said.
“Or Jet Puff. You know the marshmallow spread? One time we—you probably don’t want to hear about it.”
“Not so much,” I said. “So . . . when did Jimmy find out you were here?”
“He called me from the airport. Said he’d just landed and was missing me and wishing I was in Maui with him. I was so excited, I just couldn’t keep the secret, so I said, ‘Baby, I have a big surprise for you.’ ” She sniffled. “We called each other baby.”
“What did he say when you told him you were here?” I couldn’t believe I cared. I didn’t want to care.
“He was, like, totally bummed—saying, ‘You’re putting me on, right? Tell me you’re putting me on.’ ”
“Really?” I sounded too pleased, I realized, making an effort to lower the timbre of my voice. “I mean—you must have been hurt.”
“Well—yeah! I mean, especially considering that the last time we’d been together we didn’t leave my room for, like, eighteen hours. My mother was all, ‘Are you guys going to stay in there all day or are you going to come out for something to eat?’ ”
“Your mother was there?”
She shrugged. “A lot of people my age live at home. It’s not like she was in the bedroom with us. She totally respects my boundaries.”
“Did someone say something about coffee?” Michael James, off the phone at last, entered the room.
“Yes!” I hopped out of my chair. “It’s Kona coffee—pretty good, actually.”
He followed me over to the coffeemaker. “And, if you have any painkillers—aspirin, Aleve. Morphine.”
“Headache?”
“Mm.”
I started the coffeemaker and then went into the ba
throom, but the detective had taken my cosmetics bag into the main room.
“Um, Detective—have you seen a bottle of Aleve?”
He tilted his head to a spot next to the bed. “On the floor over there. Between the diaphragm and the condoms.”
“Thanks ever so much.” I snatched up the bottle and crossed the room to Michael.
“You’re pretty prepared.” We both knew he wasn’t talking about the Aleve.
“Yeah, well, I don’t like surprises. By planning ahead, I can make sure nothing goes wrong.”
He snorted with laughter and then rubbed his head, as if the strain had worsened his agony. He popped open the bottle and swallowed a couple of tablets dry.
“I guess this is stressful for you, too,” I said, just as his cell phone rang. He checked the number and stuck the phone into his pocket.
“Probably not as bad as it’s been for you, but, well—yeah. I’ve spent half the morning answering calls from people who want to know if I’m really dead and the other half calling people to let them know ahead of time that I’m not dead.”
I poured his coffee into a blue mug with white hibiscus flowers. “What do you say, exactly? ‘Just calling to tell you I’m not dead?’ ”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“I’m sorry about upsetting your mother.” I handed him the mug. “Milk or sugar?”
“Thanks—black is good.” He took a careful sip of the coffee, which was lukewarm at best. “My mother said you were nice about it.” A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “And she’s really looking forward to our wedding.”
Could I sink any lower? And then I remembered: “Oh. By the way, she needs to know if you’re going to your father’s birthday party.”
“Oh, crud.” His eyes widened. “I completely forgot about it. When is it?”
“She didn’t say,” I answered stiffly. What was I—his secretary? But then I thought about his mother and how upset she’d been. “It’s got to be pretty soon, though. You were supposed to let her know by last week—the caterer needs a head count.”