by Toby Neal
“Seems like you didn’t care much for Danielle,” Lei said.
“I was neutral on Danielle herself. It was Frankie’s marriage I didn’t like,” Selzmann said. “I thought he deserved someone who understood him. He married Danielle in an idealistic phase.”
“So you said you’ve known him even longer than you’ve been having an affair.”
“I’ve known him since college. And after my divorce, we reconnected.”
“You realize this gives you motive.” Lei smiled, not a friendly expression.
“Barbara, this is why I advised you not to even engage with these people.” The lawyer patted Selzmann’s arm again.
Selzmann never broke eye contact with Lei as she lifted a slender, toned arm. The diamond tennis bracelet sparkled. “Really? I killed her? I heard she drowned ninety feet deep off Molokini. I’ve never scuba dived in my life. Ask anyone. And besides, Frankie was leaving her. We were going to get married eventually. There was no need for drama.”
Selzmann’s eyes reminded Lei of pictures she’d seen of glaciers: opaque and cold as blue topaz. The woman stood and picked up a tiny gold purse. “I’ve more than cooperated with this ridiculousness. My assistant will provide you with a printout of my schedule the day Danielle died, and you can verify all my activities. As you say, I’ve got nothing to hide.” Her gaze raked Lei contemptuously, from Lei’s frazzled, haphazard bun held up by a pencil, to the scuffed athletic shoes on her feet. “Good luck with your investigation. I hope you catch Danielle’s killer.”
Lei took a few deep breaths, suppressing her urge to rip the blonde’s hair out by the roots as Barbara Selzmann swept out with the lawyer in tow. Being judged by the likes of that woman made her want to kick ass, even as her womanly side cringed in embarrassment at her own lack of grooming. She stood, smoothing down her rumpled shirt as Bunuelos turned off the recording equipment.
“Selzmann seems pretty confident she’s going to be the next Mrs. Phillips,” Bunuelos commented.
Lei nodded. “I wonder if ‘Frankie’ knew they were getting married,” she said. “Bring him in. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Lei went to the women’s room. She combed her hair and captured it in a tidy twist with bobby pins, teasing a few curls out around her face. She put on a swipe of lipstick to combat the exhausted-looking pallor left over from another bad night’s sleep. Advertising how stressed out she was wouldn’t help their case.
Frank Phillips had cleaned up for the interview, too. Freshly shaved, dressed in a long-sleeve cotton shirt and chinos, he smelled of spicy cologne and defensiveness. His lawyer, a leathery-looking woman with ripped arms and a no-nonsense shag haircut, introduced herself, shaking Lei’s hand with an overly strong grip.
“Davida Fuller. My client is fully cooperating and eager to see his wife’s murderer brought to justice.” A chunky turquoise necklace enhanced the woman’s eyes.
“How nice.” Lei flashed her teeth. They all sat down at the steel table. “Perhaps he could begin that cooperation by telling us more about his relationship with Barbara Selzmann.”
Phillips fiddled with the pearl cuff links on his dress shirt. Lei couldn’t remember seeing actual cuff links in Hawaii before, except at weddings. “Lani and I were not happily married. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love and respect her.”
Lei snorted. “Just tell us about Ms. Selzmann and how she fits into that love and respect.”
Gerry Bunuelos smiled, getting eye contact with Phillips. “Hey, I get it. You weren’t sleeping with Danielle. Barbara, your friend from college, comes back into your life, divorced. One thing leads to another…”
“That’s exactly it.” Phillips leaned gratefully toward Bunuelos. “Lani and I did nothing but fight. We’d only been married a year when I realized I’d made a mistake. She was really married to that job of hers, not me. Ate, breathed, slept ocean science and conservation. She married me for financial stability. I’m sure she’d deny it, but before we got together, she’d barely been getting by on her UH salary as a first-year professor. Rented a room in a house with some students. Her biological clock was ticking, quite frankly, because she told me she wanted to start a family right away. I was overjoyed at first. I’d always wanted kids. Anyway, we tried and tried.” For the first time that Lei had seen, real emotion clouded the man’s dark eyes. “We got pregnant four times. The babies never made it past four months.”
This echo of Lei’s own secret agony set up a throb deep inside her, in that place that had once been filled and now, she feared, would always remain empty. Once again she felt a kinship with Danielle—a mirroring of pain, dedication, and ultimate loss.
She reached down to pinch her own leg, hard, through the fabric of her pants. She was here now. Danielle wasn’t. This was a case, nothing more. Danielle was just another body on a slab that deserved justice.
“So it seems like not being able to have a child hit you guys hard,” Bunuelos said sympathetically.
“It did. And finally we stopped trying, stopped sleeping together. She got deeper and deeper into her activism, busting people for the DLNR and agitating with the environmental nuts on the island.”
“So you turned to other arms for comfort?” Lei said.
Phillips hung his head. “I’m ashamed of it now.”
“But why didn’t you just divorce?” Bunuelos asked. “That’s what I’d do.”
Lei suppressed a smile. She happened to know that Gerry was a Catholic with five kids and a wife he adored at home. He’d sooner cut off his own arm than leave them.
“We talked about it often. We just hadn’t gotten around to finalizing things.”
Davida Fuller spoke up. “Do you have any specific questions for my client?”
“Yes,” Lei said. “How did you upload your data and sneak out of your office in the afternoons? I have a tech guy working on it, so we’ll know in a day or two. You might as well tell us.”
Phillips lifted his head and his dark eyes blazed briefly with rage. Then he clenched his fists and looked down. “I did that to be with Barbara. My secretary is very loyal to both myself and Lani. I didn’t want her to know about the affair. So I did the work at other times and then uploaded it remotely on days when I met Barbara.”
“So you were with Barbara the day Danielle was killed,” Lei stated.
“Yes.” His cheek twitched, a tic-like movement.
“So things were in the works for a divorce?” Bunuelos persisted. “If we check with your attorney, she’ll verify that?”
“That’s protected information,” Fuller said quickly. “I’d need a warrant to release that.”
Lei inclined her head. “We’ll obtain one. We’d also like a copy of both of your wills.”
“Those are kept at my estate lawyer’s,” Phillips said. “And they’re of no interest, I can tell you right now. Lani and I inherited from each other.”
“Will you save us time and give written permission to review those documents?” Lei pushed a pad and pen over to Phillips.
Fuller turned to Lei, her collagen-enhanced lips pulled tight. “In light of your attitude, I’m advising my client against any further cooperation. You can get warrants for those documents, too.” Fuller rose, straightening a narrow tunic top over leggings, an outfit that was all about classy comfort. Lei mentally noted that this was a defense attorney who bore watching, new as Fuller was to the small legal scene on Maui. “Come on, Frank. We’re done here.”
Bunuelos got up and opened the door for them courteously. “Thanks so much for your time. We’ll be in touch.”
Lei remained sitting and collected her small tape recorder, pad, and pen slowly. She finally rose and shut off the wall-mounted video recorder. “He’s hiding something.”
“Not surprising.” Gerry joined her as they exited the interview room. “He knows that affair looks bad.”
“I don’t care what the captain says,” Lei said. “I want to see those financials. Let’s see if Miller has been pic
ked up, and if not, I’m going over to Ching’s office.”
She was coming to care, very much, who had killed Danielle Phillips. There were just too many things she had in common with the victim to stay objective.
Truman Ching was a short, rotund Chinese man with a bald head encircled by a gray tonsure of hair and trifocal glasses that made his shrewd dark eyes sparkle, hinting at secrets and laughter.
“I hear my dear client Lani Phillips is no more.” He shook Lei’s hand with a soft, dry one. “Make yourselves comfortable. Jenna, bring them some water, please,” he directed his assistant.
“Thank you, Mr. Ching,” Lei said as Bunuelos shook the little man’s hand. He led them into a luxuriously appointed office. A long mango-wood desk gleamed in the light of a green-shaded lamp, and stacks of papers were held down with beautiful chunks of mineral.
“What a nice collection.” Lei leaned close to look at a specimen.
“Oh, yes. I once hoped to be a geologist, but not much call for it here on Maui, and I inherited my father’s business.” Ching gestured to a couch and chairs around a matching coffee table decorated with a big branch of black coral, glass fish artfully poised in its branches.
Lei examined it. “Is this coral from Maui?”
“It is. From the bad old days when there was no regulation of the reefs.” Ching picked up a file from his desk. “My father was an avid diver. He got that off Lanai forty years ago.”
The coral was a large, glossy, delicately branching fan; the glass fish miniature works of art themselves. “I’ve never seen an intact piece of coral this big before outside of a museum,” Lei said.
“Lani Phillips told me that’s where it should be. But I’m sentimental. I plan to donate it on my death, and until then, I enjoy looking at it every day. Now, I understand you want to see the Phillipses’ financial portfolio? While I entirely understand the reasons, I must insist on a warrant to release such confidential and sensitive information.”
“Of course,” Lei said. They’d been busy on the phone for a couple of hours since the morning interviews, getting warrants for the estate lawyer, divorce lawyer, and financial planner faxed in. She handed over the paper, and Ching reviewed it briefly, setting it on his desk.
“Seems to be in order. Here is their file. Why don’t you have a seat? It will be easier if I explain what these documents are and what they contain.” Jenna, a young woman whose stocky stature and thick glasses indicated a relationship to Ching, brought in two chilled Perriers on a tray. Ching lifted a summary sheet off the top of the file and handed the rest to the young woman. “Please make copies of this file.”
Jenna inclined her head and took the file, leaving silently. Lei chugged her Perrier, enjoying the chill tickle of the bubbles at the back of her throat. Ching was a classy guy. She liked his attitude.
“Now. They had life insurance on each other. Danielle’s was lower, with five hundred thousand as a death benefit. That sounds like a lot, but actually isn’t when you consider how young she was and her future earning potential. If she’d got tenure with UH, she’d have had a solid income. Frank always made considerably more than she did as a CPA, and he carried a million on his life.” Ching showed them the figures. “They had retirement accounts, too. Nothing exciting. Frank was mostly contributing to them. Danielle had a little from her UH pay that went into the state system.”
Lei took the summary sheet, feeling disappointed. There was no clear financial motive here. Though five hundred thousand seemed like a lot, she knew Ching was right—that figure was actually low for life insurance. “Were there any other assets?”
“Only Lani’s land,” Ching said. “She inherited a nice big chunk of land from the Hawaiian branch of her family. A rancher leases grazing rights on it to keep the taxes paid, as far as I know. But it was part of their portfolio, and worth quite a lot if it got developed.”
Lei’s pulse picked up. “Where was it located?”
“Out by Makena, which is a desirable growth area. It wasn’t developed because there was no available water. But I heard recently that some developers drilled a new well nearby. There’s a nice artesian source under the land that they know about now. Development is possible, so the parcel has likely tripled in value.”
Jenna returned and Ching leafed through the file and pulled out a tax map. “Here’s the location and the tax number of the parcel.”
“Who gets this land now that she’s gone?” Lei asked.
Ching shrugged. “That’s a matter for their lawyer, Shawn Shimoda.”
Lei remembered the frosty Japanese lawyer too well from other cases. She wasn’t eager to be in the same room with him again. “I thought he was a defense attorney.”
“Everyone has to diversify on Maui,” Ching said. “Good luck.”
Shimoda was not nearly as cordial as Ching. After they had a hostile interaction with his receptionist, the tall, well-groomed Japanese lawyer reluctantly allowed them a brief audience in his heavily air-conditioned inner sanctum. He gave no sign that he recognized Lei, though he’d deposed her as a hostile witness for a case a few years before.
“Here’s a copy of the will.” He’d spent an inordinate amount of time studying the warrant and now reluctantly handed over the multipage document. Lei scanned it, and the meaning was obscured in legalese.
“Can you explain this to us?” She held it up.
“I charge three fifty an hour,” Shimoda said. “Would you like to make an appointment?”
“You can charge the court. You are under court order with this subpoena.” Lei locked eyes with the attorney.
“I hate dealing with you assholes,” Shimoda hissed, his eyes narrowed.
“You won’t deal with an asshole? Neither will I.” Lei spun on a heel and yanked the door open so hard it banged into the wall, leaving a dent. She made herself head for the door.
“I’ll send MPD a bill for damages to my office,” Shimoda called after them.
“Yeah, you do that,” Lei called back over her shoulder. “And good luck collecting.”
“Take a chill pill.” Bunuelos pushed the elevator button. “I should have talked to him. You two obviously don’t get along.”
“What a prick,” Lei said, once in the elevator. “I’m losing it. I need lunch.” Her stomach growled loudly, confirming this.
“It’s about time. I was ready to eat my arm hours ago. It’s past two p.m.”
They went to Koho’s, a restaurant in the Queen Ka’ahumanu Mall notable for dim lighting, high booths, and inexpensive local food. While waiting for a plate of chicken katsu, Lei scanned the document again. “I just really can’t understand this thing.”
“Let me see if we can get some help. My cousin’s an estate lawyer.” Bunuelos took out his phone. “I’ll see if he wants to join us. He works nearby.”
“We’ll have to have him sign a confidentiality agreement,” Lei warned, and he nodded.
Sal Bautista was as wiry as his cousin, but older. A few threads of silver brightened hair in a style that had gone out in the 1970s, which he wore with a bright purple nylon shirt and a thick gold chain.
“I’m e-mailing you a copy of our confidentiality agreement.” Lei worked her phone.
“Of course.” Sal removed reading glasses from a pocket and put them on. Lei dug into her chicken dish as he skimmed the document. “Looks pretty straightforward. The husband inherits from the deceased, and if he’d died, she’d have inherited. Except for this land trust.”
“What’s the deal with that?” Lei’s interest sharpened.
“Well, there’s an exclusion clause. It looks like Danielle inherited it with a condition. She had to pass it on to any offspring she might have to ‘keep it in the family.’ It only went to the husband if she died without issue.”
Lei went absolutely still as she absorbed this.
If Phillips had known she was pregnant by another man, the land would provide a powerful motive for murder. She and Bunuelos exchanged a look.
“No. Like I said, straightforward except for that land addendum.”
“Is there anything about the value of the land?” Lei asked.
“No. You’ll have to talk to a real estate broker.” He slurped some more.
Lei threw a twenty down on the table. “Thanks, Sal. Gerry, can you look into that? I want to swing by Ma`alaea Harbor and see if I can get any confirmation on our case.” She waggled her brows, not wanting to discuss the case any further in front of Gerry’s cousin. “We can meet back at the station if we hear that they brought in Miller, or when I’m done, whichever comes first.”
“Sounds good.”
She picked up the copy of the will. “Thanks again, Sal. Your saimin’s on me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Lei was relieved to be heading to the harbor by herself. Much as she liked Gerry, she didn’t quite have the comfort level with him that she did with Pono. Work with Pono had an ease and give-and-take rhythm of purpose that came from years of sharing cases. She drove down the straight freeway that bisected the middle of the figure-eight shape of Maui, toward the windiest harbor in the world.
Ma’alaea was quiet with the morning crowd of whale watchers and other boats out to sea. She parked her Tacoma at the utilitarian half-moon of harbor and took out a clipboard and pen, along with a photo of Danielle that she’d laminated at the office.
It was a full-body shot, much as Lei imagined Danielle must have looked as she got in the UH Zodiac and took it out toward Molokini. Danielle wore her long brown hair in a careless knot at the back of her neck, and a bright bikini peeked out from under her tank top. She wore nylon running shorts with it. Her tanned, athletic body was eye-catching and her smile memorable.
A lot of people were likely to know her down here. Lei took a pull of water from the bottle in her cup holder and hopped out of the truck. Gusts of wind tugged at the MPD ball cap she tugged low on her brow. The coconut palms surrounding the harbor swayed gracefully, their fronds rattling.