I held out my watch. "This needs a new battery, please." If I was thrifty, I'd have taken it back to the jewelry store where I'd gotten the watch fixed last time, when I'd gone shopping with Keanu on the island of Oahu. But there was no time for that now. "Are you the owner?"
He nodded proudly and patted his chest. "Liko is my name, and jewelry is my game." He squinted down at the watch and then placed it on the glass-topped counter. "I need to get a different tool. Be right back." He shuffled into the back room, his gait reminding me of Tim Conway from the comical old Carol Burnett reruns I used to love to watch as a child. What a cute old man.
I glanced at the tray of diamond rings inside the polished case and drew a deep breath. It was silly to even think about this now. We'd only been dating for a few months and neither one of us was ready for marriage. Still, a part of me longed for that security someday, along with the house and a little white picket fence. Maybe even—
A sudden crash from the next room jolted me out of my thoughts. Alarmed, I ran behind the counter and into the adjoining back area. Liko was flat on his back, attempting to raise himself into a sitting position.
"Are you all right?" I helped the man to his feet.
Liko looked slightly embarrassed as he nodded. "The eyesight isn't what it used to be, I'm afraid." He pointed at the step stool lying on its side. "I didn't even see the stool until I went flying over it." He smiled wryly and adjusted his glasses on his face.
I laughed, relieved that he was okay, and started to follow him out of the room. I gazed up idly at the steel shelving propped against the wall. There were several small bottles of jewelry cleaner and some unidentifiable boxes. A large white container stood out from the rest. The word Cyanide was printed on it in large black letters.
I continued to stare at the container, fascinated.
"Miss?" Liko was standing in the doorway, watching me with a puzzled expression.
"Sorry." Distracted, I walked back into the storefront and tried to process what I had just seen. Liko opened the watch while I struggled to pose my question in a nonchalant manner. "I was wondering why a jeweler would need cyanide."
Ugh. Way to be subtle, Care.
He stared up at me, a frown further deepening the lines in his forehead. "I keep forgetting to get rid of that. EPA regulations are tough these days. We aren't allowed to use it anymore."
I thought I understood. "Because cyanide is poison?"
Liko nodded as he closed my watch back up. "I've always used it for bombing procedures on gold jewelry. If used correctly with hydrogen peroxide, it produces a very shiny finish to the pieces. Back when I was in my prime, I bought a lot of secondhand jewelry in all sorts of condition. Of course, they had to be cleaned before I could attempt to sell them, and that was often the best way to go about it."
"Isn't such a procedure dangerous?"
He nodded. "Of course. You have to take precautions. With my eyesight the way it is now, I haven't done it in quite a while. Like I said, we technically aren't supposed to use the stuff anymore and could be fined. I heard about one fellow who gave himself a fatal heart attack a few years ago. He forgot to turn off an overhead fan during the cleaning process and ended up inhaling the stuff."
I shuddered inwardly. "That's awful."
Liko handed the watch over the counter to me. "Here you are, miss. That will be fifteen dollars."
I handed him a twenty. His story had been an interesting one but nothing to do with Randolph's fatal encounter. Still, nagging thoughts continued to peck away at my brain. During my snooping, I had come across a previous reference to a jewelry store somewhere, and tried to remember the source.
Recognition suddenly dawned like a bright light at the end of a tunnel. With horror, I brought a hand to my mouth, and a cold shard of fear settled into the center of my spine as I grabbed the counter in front for support. I couldn't be positive of course, but there was a good chance that Liko had just given me my answer.
"Miss?" Liko waved my change and a receipt at me. "You don't look very well. Is everything okay?"
I forced my head to bob up and down like a puppet's. "Fine," I managed to cough out. "Thanks for your help."
As soon as I was on the path back to town, I glanced down at my watch. Six twenty. Jeff had undoubtedly left to pick me up already and would be thoroughly pissed, but I didn't care. There was no way I could go to rehearsal now. I drew out my phone and texted him.
I can't make it tonight. Sick. So sorry for the inconvenience.
I still hadn't heard from Keanu but knew that he'd message me when he saw my earlier text, so I didn't bother to send another. I scrolled through my contacts for Detective Ray's number. He'd probably think I was crazy—the girl at the Loco Moco really has gone loco—but I had to let him know about my theory. I could almost picture the good detective frowning at the phone in distaste, his face as red as the Hawaiian shirt he wore. It didn't matter anymore. I was willing to take that chance.
The call went directly to his voicemail, and I cursed under my breath. How come there was never a cop around when you needed one? Never mind. I'd go back to my apartment and wait for Keanu, tell him my theory, and then maybe we'd drive over to the station together in search of Ray.
My message to Jeff had not exactly been a lie. The conclusion I had drawn was enough to make me sick. Still, I prayed that I was wrong. The one thing I hadn't figured out for certain yet was the motive for Randolph's death, but suspected it was money related. I continued to walk on at a furious and brisk pace and barely noticed the sky overhead. It was a glorious hue of red, yellow and orange as the sun began its rapid descent. I usually enjoyed the scent of gardenias coming from a nearby garden but all I could smell now was fear—my own, specifically.
I ran up the steps of the front porch and inserted my key into the lock. I slammed and locked the door behind me then blew out a long breath. I was safe for now. I'd go text Keanu again—no, I'd call him. The meeting had to be winding down, and I really needed to hear his voice. Then I'd call the police station. Maybe someone would be willing to provide me with Ray's home phone number. I couldn't just sit here and wait.
"Ben?" I called. He always came out to greet me. Maybe he was asleep on my bed. I sat down on the couch and noticed that one of the crates with Randolph's items was sitting on top of my coffee table, next to the paper with Wendy's phone number that I had forgotten to take with me. Strange. I was certain that I'd placed both crates underneath the table before leaving this morning. As I pulled out my phone, I heard a muffled meow from the bedroom.
"Come here, boy." I absently checked for new messages and waited for Benny to make an appearance. Then I realized that I was not alone in the room.
"Hi, Carrie," a male voice spoke softly.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose at attention, and cold fear washed over me. Swallowing hard, I forced myself to look up. There was a man standing in the doorway of my bedroom, smiling at me. He held Benny in one hand and a sharp kitchen knife in the other.
My theory had been correct, but that didn't exactly make me want to jump for joy. Paralyzed, I continued to sit there in numbed silence.
"I've been waiting for you," he said reproachfully. "It was very rude of you to be so late. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Still in shock, I stared into his angry eyes—eyes that had never given me a reason to be afraid—until now.
"Well?" he asked.
My voice came out in a feeble whisper. "I'm sorry, Jeff."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
"How…how did you get in?" I finally managed to say.
Jeff gripped Benny around the throat with his hand, and the cat hissed. "When I got your text, I was already waiting outside and got suspicious. I rang the bell, but there was no answer. You really shouldn't leave a spare key underneath the mat, Carrie. Some psycho could wander in at any moment."
I never left my key under the mat. Tad had planned to stop over earlier today to take some measurements, but it wa
s obvious now that he'd never made it. In silence, I cursed the hand that fate had dealt me.
Jeff nodded toward the crates. "As soon as I saw Wendy's number and these goodies, I knew you were on to me. I'm surprised she remembered anything from the night of my show. That slut was drunk out of her mind."
I stared at Benny and the knife that was so precariously close to him, then struggled to breathe normally. "Can you put him down, please?"
"Hand me your phone first," Jeff ordered. "Then I'll let the pretty kitty go."
I obediently handed over the phone, and Jeff released his hold on Benny, but not the knife. Benny let out a cry of what might have been relief and scampered off in the direction of my bedroom.
Jeff wasted no time in crushing the phone underneath his foot and gestured at me with the knife. "Sit."
Having no choice, I lowered myself to the couch, and he joined me, placing the blade about an inch away from my throat.
"I don't want to hurt you, Carrie," he said, "but there doesn't seem to be any other way around it. You're too nosy for your own good. It's really going to be the death of you."
He smiled, pleased with his joke, while I cringed and berated myself. If only I had never texted Keanu. He would have come straight to the apartment after his meeting, but instead he'd be waiting for me at the theater around ten o'clock, a place that I would likely never see again. Wait a second. What about the cast? They would be waiting for us and surely be suspicious when we didn't arrive.
"We'll be late for rehearsal." I spoke with optimism and tried to stand.
Jeff reached over and yanked my head back by the hair so that I landed heavily against the cushions of the couch. "Already taken care of," he said. "I sent a text to the stage manager and asked him to get in touch with everyone. I told him we'll reschedule it for tomorrow night. The only difference, of course, is that you won't be there."
Sweat trickled down the small of my back. "You don't want another death on your conscience. Aren't Sean's and Randolph's enough?"
Jeff loosened his grip on my hair, but that didn't matter because the knife was too close to my throat for comfort. Unless help arrived quickly in some shape or form, I was confident he'd cut me up into tiny pieces.
"Well, Carrie." He sounded impressed. "It appears that you might be a better detective than singer. Then again, your singing is about as bad as it can get."
Ouch. Way to hit a girl when she's down.
"How did you make the connection?" Jeff asked, his hot, sour breath against my face, causing nausea to stir in the pit of my stomach. I tried to remain still, afraid any motion might set him off further.
"I don't have all the details," I confessed. "The program from your play said that you were going into the family jewelry business. I wondered if you could have gotten cyanide to poison Randolph from there."
"A very good assumption," he said, "and you'd be correct." Jeff's eyes shifted to the crate on the coffee table. "You were asking Howie an awful lot of questions about Wendy yesterday, so that put me on my guard. Where did you get these crates and the playbill from?"
I didn't answer right away.
He tugged at my hair, and I whimpered in pain. "I asked you a question, Carrie."
I struggled to keep my voice calm. "His daughter gave them to me."
Jeff's eyebrows rose. "I knew he had a kid, but why would she give you anything? You're not exactly Nancy Drew, although you seem to think so."
The pain seared through my head. "Please loosen your grip. I'm not going to run, I promise. She…she used to work at the Loco Moco. She has no idea that you are connected. She thinks Belinda is the killer."
Jeff laughed and relaxed his grip. "Good. That's the way it should be. That whore was only interested in his money anyway. I didn't want to kill Randy, but he gave me no choice."
"Why?" I turned my head to look him straight in the face. "Was it because he knew that you killed Sean Tyler?"
Okay, I'd admit. I was winging it a bit with my guess, but why else would he want Randolph dead, except to shut him up? Or perhaps he had been blackmailing Jeff for some reason, but Randolph made more money. What did Jeff have that Randy wanted?
Like a sledgehammer, the truth hit me between the eyeballs, and I remembered what Howie had said the first day we met. "Randolph wanted the Hana Hou, didn't he?"
"Congratulations. You've just won your supersleuth-of-the-year award." Jeff's face brightened. "Maybe I should do a mystery next season. What do you think? Agatha Christie, perhaps? We'll give Rose a white wig, and she can play Miss Marple since you won't be around to star in it. You'll be six feet under by tomorrow."
Not a cheerful thought. "He was blackmailing you?"
"As you know, we all went to school together." Jeff studied the plaque that hung on my wall, Cats Make a House a Home. Tad had given it to me as a housewarming gift. "Howie and I were roommates and always got along well. We were also both theater majors. Randy was a communications major and such a prickly little type. Even then he thought he was too good for anyone. Smart, though. He knew how to work the whole media thing back then, before Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and all that other crap. He had a knack for getting people to listen to what he had to say."
I pretended to be interested, but my eyes kept darting around the room while he talked, trying to plan an escape route. Where had Benny wandered off to?
Jeff scowled. "He hung around the theater, writing reviews for the school's newspaper. How that jerk loved to put everyone down. He never cared for me—I guess my disdain for him must have shown. Anyhow, I'd written and directed a musical for my senior project and gave Howie one of the leads so that he could get credit for his own project. Randy offered to get us some extra publicity with a couple of local newspapers, and it was too good to pass up. Of course, he wanted a part in exchange for it. That man always had to have an angle. He was a Kardashian wannabe from that time period—no talent for acting but still wanted all the fame and glory that went with it."
"The girl I chose for the female lead was named Wendy Ritzer," he continued. "She was gorgeous. Oh, we all knew that she was easy, but that was part of the appeal. When she came to the auditions, I couldn't even concentrate. She was like you."
"What?" I managed to squeak out in horror.
He chuckled at my response. "I don't mean that you're easy, Carrie. Like you, she had no singing talent."
"Oh, okay." I didn't know if I should be insulted or relieved.
Jeff went on. "On a positive note, her beauty was perfect for the part of Jessica in my show. She had a magnificent stage presence, like you. After the tryouts, she stopped me and hinted that she'd do anything for a part. She was a theater major and wanted to use it on her résumé. So I let my hormones decide for me. Typical college boy, right?"
Ew.
"Wendy had a boyfriend," Jeff said. "His name, as you know, was Sean Tyler. I didn't know of him but figured she had to have a guy—or ten. I didn't care—I just wanted to score with her." He paused. "She was my first, if you know what I mean."
Yikes. No more please.
Jeff placed a cold hand at the base of my neck, and I flinched. "The show ran for one night only, and we had a full house. My professor was very pleased, and I knew that Howie and I were both getting A's. We had a cast party backstage afterward to celebrate, and everyone got blitzed." He chuckled. "Finally it was just me and Wendy, and she made good on her promise."
His grip tightened on my throat, and panic, like bile, rose in the back of it. There was no doubt in my mind that Jeff was going to kill me. He had no choice—I knew too much.
"We were in the dressing room, right in the middle of the act—pardon the stage pun—when Sean walked in on us. Of course, he went nuts. Wendy was bombed out of her mind, and when he smacked her across the face, she went lights out. The guy started punching me, and I was no match for him, so I grabbed the first thing I could lay my hands on, which happened to be a baseball bat that we used as one of the props. One whack across the s
kull, and he was dead." Jeff smiled, as if he found this part mildly amusing.
I tried to appeal to his sane side, but doubted that he had one. "It was self-defense. You should have called the police and explained."
Jeff crossed his legs casually, as if we were having a heart-to-heart chat. Good. If he relaxed a little, maybe I stood a better chance of getting away from him.
"I guess I was afraid the police might see right through my facade," Jeff explained as he lowered the knife to my chest. "You see, after he was dead, I realized that I'd enjoyed the kill way too much. I knew Sean wouldn't be my last."
His cold smile sickened me. I glanced over his shoulder, and my eyes focused on the vase of flowers Keanu had brought. Unfortunately, it was too far away to reach. Even if I did manage to get away from Jeff, what about Benny? I couldn't leave him here with this psycho.
The wall clock ticked away in the silent room. Only about ten minutes had passed since Jeff had announced his arrival, but it felt more like ten hours. I had to make a move soon, before it was too late. "What happened after that?" I asked.
"Before I even had a chance to lock the theater doors, guess who walked backstage?" He didn't wait for my response. "Yep, good old Randy. Seems he'd forgotten something. I figured I was done for, but after I explained what happened, to my surprise he couldn't have been more helpful. He played lookout while I put Sean's body in my trunk, and we carried Wendy outside. I hoped that she'd black the whole thing out. When I ran into her a couple of days later, she acted like nothing had happened, so I figured that was a good sign. After Randy and I took off with Sean's body, I dug a grave in the middle of the night, off a nearby bike trail, while Randy played lookout. I thanked him profusely for his help and told him if he ever needed something, just say the word."
"Guess he said the word, huh?" I managed to choke out.
Jeff shook his head in disgust. "I should have known. At first it wasn't a big deal. I'd get a note that simply said Word with an amount printed next to it. Over time, he's gotten worse. Last year when he found out through Howie that I wanted investors, he told me he'd take a fifty percent share of the theater, at no cost to him, of course."
Aloha Lagoon Mysteries Boxed Set Volume III (Books 7-9) Page 57