Laura stood up. “Its time to go. Im going to prove to you Im not really bossy.”
“How are you going to ever convince me you're not bossy?
“By letting you choose.” She reached up, pulled his head down and kissed him. “I leave it all up to you. You can decide. Your place or mine.”
***
“You should have seen the look on Hanks face when Pat told him hed killed Clayton.” Sid was telling the story with great relish as he sat in Kays office. “Emil and Corky were both there, and they both had an „I told you so look on their faces.”
Kay grimaced. “I hope they dont rub it in too much. After all, Hank did just what he was supposed to do. The evidence was overwhelming. In spite of that, he gave us all sorts of help and information he didnt have to.”
“Hank grumbled some when he found out. I think hes probably going to be tougher on himself than either Corky or Emil would be.”
“Any idea what Emils going to ask for?”
“Emil and I stepped outside while Corky and Hank were looking over Pats confession and while a stenographer was typing it out. Emils willing to go along with just about anything. He wants to set up a conference with one of the judges, it will probably be Lisa Raines, to work out a plea.”
“Insanity?”
“We might be able to do it. It wont be easy, what with buying a silencer, and mailing the gun ahead, and coming over here, and all the other evidence of premeditation. Lauras scouring the records for cases where the pleas been accepted in the face of clear indications of premeditation.”
Kay looked somber. “I doubt Lisa will go for it.”
“Pats psychologically prepared for a long prison sentence. Hes willing to settle for just about anything rather than going through a trial. He wouldnt be easy to defend, since hes not eager to defend himself. My guess is hell get seven in an open prison. Probably in Kulani over on the Big Island. How do you think Hank will react to something like that?”
“Im sure hell have no objections. After having heard the whole story, hes inclined to think Clayton got his just desserts.”
“What did Corky have to say, by the way?”
“About the case? Nothing. She does want to borrow our copy of Joy of Sex, though, especially if its dog-eared.”
***
“Now, you listen to me for a change,” Leilani was telling Laura. “You just latch on to Ken Cole. Any man who can turn out a nice kid like Sarah is worth his weight in gold. The two of you could have some really lovely children.”
Laura laughed. “Were a long way from deciding to marry, Leilani, never mind even thinking about raising a family.”
“Thats what I mean,” Leilani said, the disapproval clear in her voice. “You know as well as I do hes head over heels in love with you. Ill bet hes already proposed to you. Well, you listen to me for a change. Dont play hard to get. You say „yes and set the date.”
Craig and Qual, who couldnt help but hear the mounting volume of Leilanis exhortations, came out to join the discussion.
“The problem is he wants to be near Sarah,” Laura protested, “and I dont want to move to Oahu.”
“Its a wifes place to follow her husband,” Leilani said emphatically.
“Boo!” said Craig.
“Im inclined to side with Leilani,” Qual said, “but not for the same reasons. Wed hate to lose you, Laura, but if youre in love with Ken, it just makes good sense for the two of you to be on the same island with Sarah. Its pretty obvious those two love each other and need each other.”
Laura looked unhappy. “Weve been wrestling over this problem for the past week. Kens willing to stay on Elima, and to go over there on weekends, but I know the arrangement wouldn't work out. It isnt what either he or Sarah would want, but then, I just dont want to quit here. I really enjoy the work. You people are just too darn nice to leave behind.” She smiled, and added, “See, its your fault. You should have been mean to me.”
All four of them turned toward the office door as it burst open and Sid, Kay and Ken came storming in.
“Hey, folks,” Sid shouted. “Great news. Tell „em Ken!”
“Ruth just called. She says Diamond Auto Parts is opening up a branch in Napua. Guess which one of their vice presidents is going to come over here and manage it!”
Laura dove into Kens arms. Craig picked up a spiral bound transcript from Leilanis desk and flung it into the air. The binding broke and the papers cascaded over the office and its occupants.
END
THE BODY FROM THE THIRD FLOOR
Chapter 1
“ It must be stuck up there,” the short, bald businessman with the name label on his shirt remarked irritably. “Hawaii may have nice weather, but I've never seen any place have so many problems with machinery. I'd be out of business in a month if I ran my motel in Binghamton the way they run this place.”
Two young Filipinas, who had been chatting behind him, stopped and looked up at the panel above the elevator door to see number three glowing on the signal panel. The tall, lean man with the deep tan caught their attention. Impatiently, he rammed his index finger against the elevator button. As though simply speaking his thoughts aloud, he said. “It's working. It was hung up on four, now it's hung up on three. It's probably some kids fiddling with the buttons.”
“ The other one's starting down, finally,” the businessman nodded toward the panel over the adjacent elevator's door on the left where the number nine then eight had just flashed on and off.
Joining the group was a young Japanese couple, so wrapped up in their private world they took no notice of the glitch in technology annoying the others waiting in front of the elevator. A pale blonde woman accompanied by a solemn six-year old girl came up, as the number three flickered out to be replaced by a two and then a one.
The group moved forward, the doors opened, a man in shorts, sandals and a flowery sports shirt looked out without seeing them. The wooden knife-handle indicated all too clearly what was pinning his shirt securely to his chest. Blood was still oozing out from around the edge of the buried weapon. Freed from the opening doors, he fell forward with a crash.
*** Leilani Pak was pleased with herself, with her job, and with the people she worked for and ruled. A large native-Hawaiian woman, who invariably dressed in colorful muumuus, Leilani had just gone through what most women would have considered a major crisis. A breast biopsy had revealed a malignant growth, but minor surgery and a short series of radiation treatments had seemingly produced a complete cure. Leilani had regarded the whole procedure as an annoyance, something which interfered with her main task in life, which was the overseeing of the personal lives of the attorneys in the firm of Smith, Chu, Yoshinobu and Correa.
The most junior of the partners, Laura Correa, had been a recent tribulation. As Leilani told her patient husband, John Pak, the first year of Laura's presence in the officea year just recently completedhad caused Leilani more than one anxious moment. “She was acting just like some high school cheerleader trying to date as many different men as possible, and here she's going to be twenty-five next month. She was just lucky she found a nice man like Ken Cole. I just hope they'll be getting married soon.”
Leilani had long ago realized Quality Smith, the forty-five-year-old senior member of the firm who had established the business some ten years previously, had no interest in women. Qual and his house partner, Craig Thomas, lived less than a block away from the firm, so Craig was a frequent visitor at the office. What prejudices Leilani had had crumbled under the assault of Craig's genial, outgoing personality.
Leilani had gone to work for Qual on the first day he had opened his law office in Napua, the major town on the island of Elima. The business, which included only criminal defense, had grown so rapidly a second attorney soon became necessary, and Sidney Chu joined the firm shortly after its founding. Ten months later, Keiko “Kay” Yoshinobu's name was added to the frosted glass on the outer office door.
Kay and Sid, a handsome
Chinese in his early thirties, had probably given Leilani her most serious moments of anxiety. Kay, a tall, slender, lovely Japanese, frequently mistaken for a Polynesian beauty of tourist brochure fame, had carried on a flint and steel relationship with Sid for a number of years. Leilani took credit for the resolving of the couple's differences, and she had cried happily at their wedding.
Today, Leilani was working with a representative of the company which had just installed a new and powerful computer system for the firm. “ You'll think you died and went to heaven when you get to working with these computers and this program,” the rep said while loading programs into the machine. “There'll be a terminal in each office, and anyone can tap into and modify any of the information in the system, which will include payables, receivables, letters, data bases, spreadsheets. You name it.”
Leilani wrinkled her forehead. “But won't it make for a lot of confusion? Suppose I decide to straighten out a bookkeeping error. Won't that cause problems for the bookkeeper in the annex?”
“ That's no problem at all. There's so much memory in this thing that whenever additional data is introduced, the previous text is dumped into storage. The new text is dated and includes the terminal of origin plus the ID of whoever entered it, which is what comes up into active memory. And it's flagged along with all the changes, signaling to the primary operator, in this case the bookkeeper, that it's a new text. You and her can then fight it out as to which data should be in the current version.”
The phone interrupted. The rep held up his hand and pointed to a red button on the keypad of the computer, indicating Leilani should depress it before answering the phone. “ What did that do?” Leilani said after hanging up the phone. “The conversation's been recorded. If you want to erase it, hold down the erase and the red button again. Otherwise, enter the ID number of whoever should get the message and press the red button, which will put a flashing light on their screen. They can pick up the phone, press their red button and rerun the conversation. Go ahead.”
Leilani punched in all the buttons identifying the attorneys, while holding down the red button. The rep gave her a questioning look.
Leilani smiled. “I always let all of them know when someone wants to be defended in a murder case.”
*** Detective Sergeant Corky Honda of the Napua PD had been driving within a block of the Nikko Arms when the call came through. It brought her to the scene of the killing, minutes before the patrolman arrived.
Sergeant Honda was an attractive, dark-haired woman of Portuguese extraction. Having now worked in Napua's homicide division for some three years, she had no problems handling the crowd gathering around the scene or in fending off the Elima Chronicle reporter, who somehow must have gotten word of the incident at almost the same time the sergeant had.
The condominium's security man had probably made the best of a bad situation, but Corky was not overwhelmed by his performance. She felt he was far too sketchy in his description of what happened, even though he had been sitting at his desk only sixty or seventy feet away from the elevators.
A small, dark-skinned Puerto Rican in an ill-fitting uniform, he was still clearly rattled by the incident. “I heard a couple of screams, and looked up,” he told her. “I saw a bunch a people standing around the elevator, but I couldn't figure out what happen. I thought maybe someone might a got caught in the door or something. Me and a couple of other people came rushing over. I had to roll him over,” he added apologetically. “I didn't do nothing else, cuz he was dead. I knew that for sure, just looking at him. That's when I called 911.” He gestured toward the cellphone clipped to his belt.
By the time Hank DeMello arrived, Corky had sorted out most of the stories. DeMello, Elima's one homicide lieutenant, was tall, with black hair showing gray at the temples, and with signs of a paunch which didn't seriously mar his otherwise athletic build. Corky and Hank had long ago established a satisfactory working relationship with each other, despite Hank's sexist views left over from a previous generation. Hank, who had originally bridled at the prospect of working with a woman detective, had come to appreciate Corky's quick mind, which he told her was surprising, “in a female.”
While Hank's ingenuous chauvinism had at first upset Corky, it was something which she eventually convinced herself was genetic and irreversible. “Hell, Hank, if you'd been born retarded, I'd have accepted that. So maybe I shouldn't complain because you've got your head on crooked where women are concerned.”
Hank had answered the charge by pointing out he was happily married, to a woman who was also happy with the marriage, had two nice kids, and had a lot of respect for women, and what was wrong with telling a woman she had beautiful eyes the first time he met her. Corky had simply shrugged her shoulders and shook her head at this defense of his values.
Today, Corky and Hank stood in the lobby of the Nikko Arms, while she filled him in on the details of the death. “No one saw the actual knifing,” Corky told him, “but there are plenty of witnesses to his dying.”
“Got a list of them?” Hank asked, as he watched the scene-of-crime personnel working behind the area roped off by Corky and the patrolman.
Corky took out her notepad. “Better than that. I've got them sitting in the manager's officesix of them.”
“Where's the manager?” “ Out at the shipping platform behind the building,” Corky said with a grin.“It would take more than a killing to keep him from supervising the unloading of the furniture he had coming in today.”
“So there were six people waiting at the elevator when the doors opened?” “ Actually, there were two more. A young Japanese couple. I think they were tourists. Probably honeymooners. They scuttled away just as I got here and before I could stop them.” Reading from her notes, she said, “Laurence Quincy. He's a motel owner from New York, attending a convention over at the Malalani. Wayne Harlan…”
Hank interrupted. “The real estate man?”
Corky nodded. “ I know him. He's program director for the Napua Chamber of Commerce. I spoke to him yesterday, in fact. He wanted me to give a talk to his group some time next month. Should be a good witness.”
Corky grinned at the seeming implication Harlan's taste in speakers qualified him as a good witness, but decided to go back to her list rather than mentioning the possibility. “Lilly Villanueva and Sandy Rodriguez,” she continued. “They were together. They both work for the Nikko Arms, and were on their way to the eighth floor to pick up some cleaning equipment. I know Sandy. She was in the same class as my kid sister all through school. The last two are Margaret Bowan, who lives on the fifth floor, and her six-yearold, who was probably the one least upset by what happened. When I left them, the kid was talking a blue streak about how the man fell flat on his face right out of the elevator. That impressed her.”
“Hell!” Hank said. “That would have impressed me.”
Chapter 2
“ Wayne Harlan's at his office,” Qual said to the other three attorneys who had gathered in the firm's conference room. “But then you know that already, thanks to Leilani and to our new communications system.
“ I've met him,” Sid said,“but I don't remember much about him. I know he's in real estate, and he's had his picture in the Chronicle a few times. I probably wouldn't recognize him except for that. Seems like he's usually giving some high school kid a Chamber of Commerce award or something similar.”
“ I know him fairly well,” Qual said. “He came to me shortly after I arrived in Napua. He'd gotten a reckless driving ticket he figured he didn't deserve. I wasn't too happy with the defense I gave him. Evidently he didn't think it was so bad, otherwise he wouldn't be coming to us. I've checked with homicide. The murder he's talking about happened at the Nikko Arms just over an hour ago. Wayne has a condominium there. The desk sergeant said Hank and Corky are still out on it, so I'll get back to them for details as soon as they're finished. Any suggestions about Wayne?”
“Nothing, except we should hear his story before w
e decide anything,” Kay said, then laughed. “That's great advice, since I don't see how anyone could disagree with it.”
“I can,” Sid said. “Let's get the scoop from Hank first. He's much more likely to give us all the details if we don't have a client defend.” “ From what I've seen of Hank,” Laura said, “he'll give us just about any kind of information we want, providing he's allowed to do a certain amount of grumbling before he does.”
Qual nodded. “That's one of the real advantages of having good rapport with the police, and of working in a small community. There are a lot of things we can do informally here we'd never get away with if we were operating out of Honolulu.”
“ Amen,” Laura said. Since she was the partner who had most recently been exposed to the rigidity and formality of the relationships between Honolulu law firms and the city's PD, she was especially appreciative of the relationship they had with the local police.
Craig was coming into the office, reading his grocery list as he entered. “Uchima's having a big sale on artichokes, Qual. How many shall I get?”
All four attorneys laughed at the question, and only then did Craig look up.
“It's sure nice to have you around, Craig,” Kay said. “You bring us all back to what's important in the world.” Still puzzled by the reaction, Craig asked, “Don't you people realize today is Saturday? What's everyone doing around here so late in the day? There are more important things to do than to hang around a grubby office on a beautiful weekend.”
“We were all going to be broken-in on the new computer-network system that's being installed,” Qual explained, “but a murder has interfered?”
“Murder? Is it anyone I know?”
“Anton Figueroa. Do you know him?”
Craig's eyes widened. “I sure did.”
*** Corky was pleased to see Hank had decided to start with the interrogation of Margaret Bowan. She knew most officers on the force would have yielded to the impatient businessman's demand to be first so he could get to lunch, or they would have given priority to Wayne Harlan. Wayne had not asked to be at the head of the line, but his position in the community might well have influenced another officer's decision. Not Hank's, however, the invitation to be a speaker at the Chamber of Commerce notwithstanding. A woman with a child, who might soon become restless, deserved first place as far as he was concerned.
The Yoshinobu Mysteries: Volume 2 Page 17