“I wonder if Nick knew he was Mrs. Sinclair’s son and if there was any connection between the two of them. I guess that’s something we will have to find out for ourselves.”
I walked over and picked up my cell phone. “What’s up, Kit? Who are you going to call?”
“I’m going to call Nadia and see if she’s heard from Nick Lang. Now that we know he’s well and kicking, maybe she’s heard from him, or has some news for us.”
“Are you going to tell her we saw him, or rather that we know where he is?”
“I don’t think so. I just want to see if she’s heard from him or has any news from anyone, especially his employer.”
I already had Nadia’s number in my cell phone directory. I found her name and pressed the talk button. After three rings I heard, “Hello.”
“Hi, Nadia, this is Kit. Any news on Nick yet?”
“Yes, Thanks for calling. I was just getting ready to call the two of you.”
“Why, what’s up?”
“Nick just called. He’s fine and says he needs to stay over for a few more days. He told me not to worry, and that he loves me.”
“Did you happen to tell him about Kat and me being on the Big Island working on a case, and at your request, looking for him?”
“No, I didn’t want him to think I was worried and telling others about my concern.”
“Sounds good. Then Kat and I won’t worry about Nick or you, and will concentrate on the case we were assigned to do. Take care, and hope to see you in a few days.”
I clicked off the phone and asked Kat for the number of the law firm Nick Lang worked for. Kat has always been in charge of keeping all that kind of information. She’s much better at it than I am and always has her notebook with her wherever we go, with all sorts of information in it. You may remember on our Mediterranean cruise she had written down all the conversations we had with each suspect. She’s great at it.
Kat gave me the number and I dialed it. I had a question I wanted to ask about Nick and his work assignment.
“Hello, Brothers Law Firm. How may I help you?”
“Hi, this Kit Jones, a private detective from the Mainland. I’m wondering, can I talk to someone who is connected at the firm with a Mr. Nick Lang?”
“Yes of course. I hope Nick’s okay and not in any kind of trouble. He’s a great guy … hold on please.”
I heard a click, then soothing music played in my ear as I waited. I held it out for Kat to hear.
“I understand you’re looking for Nick Lang? I hope all is well with Nick. He’s a very good employee.”
I fumbled for a second or two and then replied, “Yes, I’m looking for him. Do you know where I can find him?”
“Sorry, I can’t say for sure. He’s on an emergency leave that has something to do with his mother whom he hasn’t seen for a long time. He’s all right, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he’s fine. I was just wondering if he was on a special assignment from your office.”
“I can’t discuss his work, but I can tell you he isn’t due back from his emergency leave until next week sometime. You say you’re a detective. Is there a problem?”
“No, no problem. Sorry to bother you, and many thanks.”
I hung up quickly so there would be no more questions. After sharing the information with Kat, we wondered if Nick Lang or Nick Davis might have been blackmailing his own mother, and was the murderer of Chas Baker.
Chapter 15
I walked over to the fridge and took out a couple of diet cokes, and grabbed the last bag of potato chips. Kat went out to the lanai, deep in thought.
“What are you thinking about, Kat?”
“I’m thinking of Nadia and feeling sorry for her. If her fiancé is our blackmailer and murderer, she’ll be crushed. The way she talks about him you can tell she’s madly in love with him. After the incident of Sue's death on Paul’s Island, can you imagine what this will do to her? She’ll probably try to disappear off of the face of this earth. I want to call her and comfort her, but what we know isn’t solid enough to make any decisions. We’ll just have to pray extra hard for her.”
“You’re right, Kat. It’s much too early for decision making. But at this moment we have only two suspects, and one of them is Nadia’s fiancé who goes by the last names of Lang and Davis. The case against him gets stronger and stronger by the moment. I think I’ll call Mrs. Sinclair tomorrow and see if I can find out why she was being blackmailed. She’s never confided the whole story to us. She’s either afraid, or she’s a very private person. But after all, she did hire us to find out who the blackmailer is, and she should be willing to tell us why, especially since it might help us solve the case.”
“Kit, look over there. I’m pretty sure that’s Gary Smith. Quick, get the camera.”
Looking out from our lanai, I agreed it looked just like him according to the description we had, especially the big red floppy hat with the black band. I quickly went in the room and retrieved the camera. In power focus, I took many pictures of the man we were sure was Gary Smith, the blackmailer of Anita Sinclair – and this time the hat didn’t hide his face.
As I showed them to Kat, she said, “Maybe we should send them to Mrs. Sinclair and see if she recognizes him. And tell her you’ll be calling her tomorrow.”
I sent them right off in an email. We were hoping she would know the person by the pictures we sent, so then we could put all of our energy on the two murders. She wrote back right away saying the man in the picture was no one she knew. We were back to square one again.
Kat questioned the two murders. “Yes, Kat, we have Chas Baker’s murder and also the murder of Nick Lang’s best friend. I’m sure they’re connected in some way, and I wonder what it would take to murder your best friend.”
Chapter 16
I was going to wait to call Mrs. Anita Sinclair the next day, but since she had answered my email so quickly I decided to call her right then. This time I put my cell phone on conference call so Kat could hear the whole conversation. We were hoping she would give us all the information of why she was being blackmailed over the last thirty years or so.
“Hello, Kit.”
“Aloha, Mrs. Sinclair. I guess caller I.D. gives us away. So the name of Gary Smith or his picture is not familiar to you?”
“No, neither he nor Chas Baker helps me in any way. I’ve been thinking about it and feel there must be a third party. The real blackmailer has to be someone I know from my past. Chas Baker and Gary Smith could be involved in the blackmail, but they won’t be the actual blackmailer, because I don't know them. So how would they know me?”
“Good thinking. We’ll check it out and see what we can come up with. Kat and I feel we need more information, so that brings me to the real reason I’m calling you. Could you, or should I say would you, please tell us as much as you can why you’re being blackmailed? Kat and I feel it would help us a lot, especially now that you say you feel there’s a third party.”
There was a long pause, then Mrs. Sinclair said quietly, “My emotions go off and on about confiding to you both why all these years I’ve met the demands of my intruder, for my so-called shady past. Without going into a whole lot of detail, I’ll just say something about why I felt I had to make the payoffs all these years.”
There was another long silence. Kat and I looked at each other and waited for the confession.
“It happened thirty-two years ago. I was an up and coming movie star. The studio was happy with me and my work. I was excited that they had promised me a large amount of money and stardom that would show me to the world, and even have a star on the Hollywood and Vine walkway. All I had to do was bow down to them, which I was willing to do.
“I was young and foolish and excited all at the same time. Night after night for publicity sake I was with a different guy. I did what the heads of the studio wanted me to do. And they wanted me to be seen with someone different every night. They said it was for publicity purposes only. Som
e were stars, some soon to be stars, and some were rich and famous. I had never drunk hard liquor before, so after two or three of those margaritas I could hardly stand up. Everyone laughed and I went along with the laughter. Now, I believe they were laughing at me, not with me. Well, the two of you can probably figure out what happened next.”
This time the pause was longer. I wasn’t sure if she was waiting for me to say something or not.
“One night I got what they called plastered. I don’t remember anything. Years later we heard about the drink men give innocent girls and then have their way with them. When they wake up, the evening has been erased from their minds. I think they call it date rape now. Well, that’s exactly what happened to me. Not too long after that I found out I was pregnant. I delivered a boy. I saw him once and then the doctor took him away for adoption. I was so ashamed, knowing that I would be the laughing stock of Hollywood. Not knowing what the studio would do, I did what I thought was best: I gave up my career.”
Silence again filled the telephone line, but this time we could hear quiet little crying sobs. After a while I asked, “Did you ever report it to the police?”
“No, I was too ashamed.”
“Do you know who the father is, or what the doctor’s name is that took the baby away?”
“The doctor is dead. The first few years that I was paying the price, I thought it might be him. But he died, and the notes kept coming and I kept paying, so I knew it must be someone else. As for the father, I’m not sure. I asked around to some of the people who I knew were at the party that night, but no one wanted to get involved. I’ve thought about it, of course, and feel whoever it was can’t have made it big in the movies, so they came up with the idea of me paying them to be quiet. This way they could have a comfortable life at my expense, and me an uncomfortable one.”
“When did the blackmailing begin?”
“About six months after I got married to Donovan Sinclair. Maybe the blackmailer is not a he, but a she. There were many other starlets there that night who were very jealous of me. Many times I’ve wondered if it could possibly be a woman who’s been enjoying my cash all of these years. Perhaps the guy who raped me told her that we’d had an affair, and somehow she found out I was pregnant and had put my son up for adoption. I’m not sure of course, but maybe we should look at all angles, thinking that the blackmailer could be either a woman or a man.”
Chapter 17
I ended the call, and Kat and I talked about the possibility that a woman could be the culprit taking the payments. We both agreed that our gut feelings were telling us no. We thought maybe a woman could do it for a little while, but later would have second thoughts, especially if she was a mother or had been caught or tempted in the same situation as our client. We felt that more than thirty years was too long for a woman to continue to blackmail.
Now the other thought that our client had about a third party, we both agreed was a very feasible idea. Chas Baker collected the money from the post office, and we were thinking that perhaps the blackmailer paid Chas Baker big bucks. As you probably know, some people would do just about anything for money … even murder.
We also thought that perhaps Gary Smith had been hired by the leader, possibly to carry the money from Chas Baker at the post office to wherever he was, or most likely to a drop-off point. This way he was safe, and no one would know who or where he was in case Baker and Smith were being watched.
My next step was to call Detective Larry Chen. He had said he was an old Hollywood fan. We thought he might remember reading something about Mrs. Anita Sinclair, or Dena Davis as she was known on film, and the parties she went to. We were sure there must have been many magazine articles and pictures of those parties if she was being groomed to be a big star. We felt that maybe Detective Chen could lead us to some Hollywood gossip columnist, and the papers or magazines they wrote many years ago.
We were right. Larry Chen was amazing and truly a movie star buff. He gave us names we had never heard of such as Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. They were both big reporters then who could either make someone into a big star or destroy them. There was also Rona Barrett, newer on the set, but also powerful.
Detective Chen also gave us magazine names like Photoplay, Movie, and others. We thanked him and also were thankful for the genius who invented the computer. We both had our laptops with us, and immediately started looking up Dena Davis and party nights in the fifties she might have attended.
That’s when we realized that our client never did tell us her movie star name. We thought maybe it was a mishap, or perhaps she just wasn’t being completely honest with us and didn’t want us investigating her past life. It was also possible that she had another name, one that she had been born with. We knew studios changed names back then to fit the movie houses’ marquees. If that was the case, we wondered if our client, Mrs. Anita Sinclair, was holding something else back from us.
If her story that she told us was completely true, it was possible she knew who and where her son was. And that the son was Nick Lang, or Nick Davis. And maybe, just maybe his inheritance came from her. Nadia had said her fiancé didn’t have to work as he had come into lots of money, but loved his job with the law firm and what he did there.
Chapter 18
We spent two hours of searching the internet for information on Dena Davis, and believe me we found out a lot about her movie years. We were amazed how much information one can find out when surfing the internet, if one has patience and time. We then decided to clear our heads and go for a ride, just about twenty minutes away from our hotel to a town called Waimea.
We wanted to have lunch somewhere else besides at the hotel. The town actually has two names: the other name is Kamuela. It’s a cowboy town and has the second or third largest cattle ranch in the U.S., called Parker Ranch. Some of you have probably heard of it, and if you need more information, start surfing the internet, and you too will be surprised.
We wandered around the town and did a little shopping, mostly for gifts for family and friends. By the time we got back to the hotel it was late. We searched a little more on the name of Dena Davis, but within an hour we were tired and called it a day, and promptly fell asleep.
We woke up to another beautiful day in Hawaii, ordered breakfast in our room and sat out on the lanai eating and chatting about other things not pertaining to the case. It was nice.
We were interrupted by the hotel phone ringing in our room. Kat got up to answer it. It was Pualani. She said Mr. Smith and Mr. Nick Lang were talking together in the lobby, and Mr. Lang didn’t seem to be too happy.
I heard Kat ask, “How long have they been talking? … Only about ten minutes? … Okay. Thanks, Pualani, I’ll send Kit down. He’s ready to go. I, on the other hand, am not.”
When Kat hung up the phone and told me what the phone call was all about, I headed out the door. I had on my shorts and a tank top, but Kit was still in her sleepwear. She promised to meet me as soon as she got dressed and presentable.
Looking very much like a tourist I found a seat close to where Gary Smith and Nadia’s fiancé, Nick Lang, were sitting. I couldn’t hear much of their conversation, but their body language told me a lot. After about fifteen minutes Smith got up and left, while Nick Lang remained.
I got up from my seat and walked over to Nick Lang, not knowing what I was going to say. He had his hands over his face and when he looked up there was frustration in his eyes. Not a happy look.
“Having some trouble with your friend?”
“Yes, was it that noticeable?”
“A little, but I don’t think anyone else noticed it. Can I help in any way? Need someone to talk to?”
He looked up at me with a puzzled expression on his face, as if to say, Who are you and why are you so interested in me?
I stood there for a moment. He gave no answer. I then sat down beside him hoping he would talk to me, and I’d be able to find out something about him.
“I’m okay, just
some business troubles. I guess I pried too much into his life. His name is Gary Smith. I’d never met him before, but he was an acquaintance of my best friend who was murdered a few weeks ago. I was just trying to find out some information. He probably thought I was accusing him of my friend’s death. But thanks for coming over and talking to me, or rather letting me talk to you. Are you staying here at the hotel?”
“Yes, my wife and I will be here for a few days.”
I didn’t want to say Kat’s name because if Nick Lang then asked me my name, I thought Kit and Kat might be recognizable to him, just in case Nadia had mentioned us to him. So far I have never met another Kit and Kat, that is, except for the Kit Kat candies! I liked Nick Lang and was disappointed when he abruptly got up and left me sitting there alone.
I thought about the body language between him and Gary Smith. I’d seen it many times before, and it most always represented animosity, and someone ready to fight or kill anyone who got in their way.
With that thought in mind, I was now wondering if this could possibly be the way Nick Lang felt at this moment about his friend’s death… Fight or Kill!
Chapter 19
Kat joined me and I told her about the conversation I had just had with Nick Lang. Kat had arrived in the lobby a few minutes before he left, and knew how frustrated I was at not finding out more about Nadia’s fiancé.
We wandered around the hotel grounds. They were very beautiful. After a while we decided to go up to our room and put on our bathing suits. While Kat caught some sun rays, I went into the hot tub, a favorite of mine as some of you may know from our book, High Seas Adventure. I was in for about ten minutes when to my surprise Nick Lang joined me.
“You and our wife look familiar to me. Have I met the two of you before?”
“No, I don’t think so. We have those faces that must be common. Many people have asked the same question.”
PO Box Honolulu, Hawaii Page 4