5 The Elemental Detective

by Kirsten Weiss

Sarah’s dark brow wrinkled. “There aren’t any heirs. He explained about the insurance – that Mrs. Glasgow won’t be a shareholder.”

  “What about Dennis’s half-brother?” Riga asked.

  Sarah pursed her lips. “I didn’t realize you knew about Kimo.”

  So it wasn’t a complete secret, Riga thought. “They were fairly close, weren’t they? I can’t believe Dennis would have left Kimo out in the cold.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “He didn’t! Dennis left Kimo an annuity. He bought it not long after his father’s death. Dennis knew Kimo wouldn’t accept his father’s money, so it’s sort of like an insurance policy, paying out to Kimo after Dennis died. He was very generous!”

  “I told you Dennis had his financial affairs in order,” Donovan said to Riga. “Sarah, is there anything you want me to know about these files before I go through them?”

  “It’s all in the notes on the first page.”

  “Perfect,” he said.

  “By the way,” Riga said, “do you know where Paul was last night? We tried to get hold of him and couldn’t.”

  “No. I left the hotel at eight o’clock. What Paul did afterward was his own business.” She shot Riga a disapproving look and hurried away across the sand.

  “She’s protective of Paul too,” Riga said.

  “Don’t tell me you think there’s something between the two of them now.”

  “No,” she said. “I think she’s young.”

  “And?”

  “And I don’t know about you, but when I was her age, I wasn’t half as smart as I thought I was.”

  “Hm. When I was her age, I’d just turned around my first casino.”

  “Ah. Right. You actually were as clever as you thought you were.”

  “Though I will grant you that I’ve improved with age.”

  “And you’ve never suffered from false modesty.”

  His brows drew together. “Why would I?”

  She laughed. “No reason at all. Sexy, smart, successful. How did I get so lucky?”

  “I wonder the same thing about myself. It doesn’t sound like Paul has left yet. Shall we try to follow? Dinner and a stakeout?”

  She threaded her arm through his, enjoyed the feel of his warmth pressing against her side. “It’s a date.”

  Chapter 19

  “When I suggested dinner, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.” In the Ferrari, Donovan balanced his paper cup against a bacon cheeseburger, wrapped in oily paper.

  They were parked on a narrow road lined with warehouses. Twenty feet ahead, a streetlamp flickered.

  Riga pressed the binoculars to her eyes, and the lighted window of a cleaning company leapt into view. Their car was at the far end of the block, well away from their quarry. They’d put the top up so it wasn’t quite so obvious two people were seated inside, but they were conspicuous in the Ferrari. When they’d spotted Paul leaving the hotel, they hadn’t had time to get a different car, she thought regretfully. He’d led them south to the town of Kapaa. Thanks to the darkness and Donovan keeping well back, Paul hadn’t spotted them. Yet.

  “Haven’t you heard?” she asked. “Stakeout food is calorie free.”

  Paul crossed in front of the window, motioning emphatically with both hands.

  “I’m not worried about the calories,” he said.

  She put the binoculars down and grinned at him. “No, you certainly don’t need to.” But she should. The older she got, the faster time moved and the slower her metabolism.

  “Is he doing anything interesting?”

  “No.” She handed him the binoculars. “Maybe it really is just a late business meeting.”

  Donovan snorted. “The supplier should be coming to Paul, not the other way around. Hold on.” He leaned forward. “Kimo’s in there.”

  Someone banged on the Ferrari’s window, and she jerked in her seat.

  A broad, dark face scowled at her. He held a baseball bat in one hand, and looked vaguely familiar. Keeping her eyes on the bat, Riga wracked her brain to remember where she’d seen him before.

  She cracked the window. “Yes?”

  “What are you two doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?” she countered.

  “I asked you first.”

  “I don’t think that should matter. We’re just sitting here on the street, minding our own business.”

  “The hell you are. Get outta here.”

  “Haven’t I seen you someplace before?” She snapped her fingers. “I know, you’re—”

  Donovan leaned across her. “Thank you. We’ll be going now.” He started the car and they roared off. “Correct me if I’m wrong, darling, but isn’t surveillance supposed to be covert? After that performance – entertaining as it was – that guy’s sure to remember us.”

  “We’re in a Ferrari. He’d remember us no matter what I said.”

  “And on that note, let’s get a drink.” He made a sharp turn, and they were back on the main road, cruising slowly through town.

  “Was I wrong in thinking I’d seen that guy before?” she asked.

  “He was in Kimo’s restaurant.”

  “Ah, you’re right. That’s where it was.” Having a partner, Riga thought, had its benefits.

  Donovan parked the Ferrari in a lot behind a two-story, tin-roofed building. Blue paint flaked off the aging wooden boards. They walked up the back steps, music and light and laughter gushing from the open windows above.

  Miraculously, a small table near the bar cleared up as they entered, and they found seats in the crush of people. Riga ordered a pineapple martini, Donovan a brandy.

  “Do you remember that lighthouse keeper we met?” she asked. “The one who’d had too much to drink?”

  “Yes, he said he was a friend of the Glasgows.”

  “He seemed torn up over Dennis’s murder, and the lighthouse was where Mana was killed. I’d like to talk to him.”

  One corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Grasping at straws?”

  “At straws, mermaids, menehunes… Anyone who’ll talk to me. To us,” she corrected. “And we should take another look at the Protection Society, find out what they know about the seal killed at the Spouting Hole.”

  “I don’t suppose they can protect every seal that turns up on a Kauai beach.”

  “No, but if I wanted to kill seals, the Society would be a great place to infiltrate. They must be notified somehow when seals come ashore. I wonder where that information is kept and how it’s disseminated.”

  “And the fellow who runs the place, Townsend, knew Dennis.”

  The waitress returned with their drinks.

  Riga stabbed her pineapple wedge with the plastic sword. “Everybody knew Dennis. He was a regular man about town.”

  “So is his brother. It will be interesting to hear his explanation about this late night trip to the cleaners tomorrow.”

  “If he gives you one.”

  “He will if he wants to sell this property.” Donovan set his jaw.

  “What do you think of Dennis’s widow, Deidre?”

  “She’s obviously going through a difficult time.”

  “And she leans a lot on Paul. Too much?”

  “You’re not suggesting there’s something between them?”

  “I have no evidence of it,” she said carefully. But Deidre was too eager to clear Paul’s good name. And Riga saw guilt in the way Deidre avoided her brother-in-law’s gaze as she reached for his touch.

  “If something happened to me,” Donovan said, “I’d hope my family would help you.”

  “Mm.” She plunged the sword into the pineapple. Donovan’s closest family was his cousin, Reuben, who tolerated her rarely and randomly.

  “Have you talked to your niece yet?” he asked.

  “No.” Dammit. She’d been so caught up in the murders she’d forgotten all about Pen. Riga dug her phone out of her purse. “Do you mind?”

  “Go ahead.”

 
She wound her way through the crowd, to the back door, and walked down to the parking lot where the roar from the bar fell to a dull rumble.

  Pen answered on the third ring.

  “Aunt Riga! How’s Hawaii?”

  Riga jammed a finger in one ear. “It’s… great. Brigitte is here.”

  “I told her not to bug you, but you know Brigitte.”

  “How are things on your end? Any problems?”

  “Mom’s being haunted by her teenage boyfriend,” Pen said. “It’s totally gross.”

  “Does she know?”

  Pen snorted. “Puh-leese. Mom doesn’t believe in ghosts.”

  They talked ghost management strategies, then Pen said, “Oh, I got a kind of weird message for you from someone named Sal.”

  Riga tensed. Sal was a shaman who worked with faeries. The relationship between the two women was challenging. If Sal was calling, it couldn’t be good news.

  “What did she want?” Riga asked.

  “She said she’d been trying to call you, but it hadn’t gone through. I didn’t tell her that you’d changed your phone number – I wasn’t sure who you wanted to know about it.”

  The noise from the bar rose, and Riga edged further into the parking lot. “Thanks. I am trying to keep it quiet, but Sal’s okay. Did she say anything else?”

  “She said, and I quote, ‘shit’s getting weird again, kinda like the last time.’ And if you had anything to do with it, to cut it out.”

  Riga mouthed a curse. “And are things getting weird?” she asked lightly.

  A brief silence. Then, “You haven’t been watching the news, have you?”

  “Not on my honeymoon.”

  “Yeah, well, ignorance is bliss,” Pen said.

  “You see that on a t-shirt?”

  “There was a riot in San Francisco yesterday. Two people were killed.”

  Ants crawled up Riga’s spine. She looked up at the clouds obscuring the stars. So the conflicts were spreading. The spell was widening. “What started it?”

  “No one can figure that out.”

  A barstool clattered to the ground beside her. Riga yelped, skittered sideways.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Pen asked.

  In the bar above, a woman screamed. A man tumbled from the open window and landed on the stairs. People poured out the door, down the steps, and he disappeared in a sea of feet.

  “Nothing,” Riga said. “I gotta go. Keep your head down.”

  She jammed the phone in her pocket and started toward the steps, knowing she’d never get through that crowd, up the stairs, but Donovan was inside and –

  A hand grasped her wrist and she spun around. Looked down.

  The little man adjusted his fishing hat, and tsked. “Bad dream. That’s no place for you, sorceress.”

  Riga pinched herself. No, not a dream. She angled her wrist free. “My husband is in there, Menehune.”

  His face creased with pleasure. “Yes, and he wants you to stay here.”

  “How do you know what he wants?” she argued, knowing the menehune was right. Donovan wouldn’t want her in that mess.

  “Your husband has beautiful dreams. Powerful dreams. That’s why he has such strong mana.”

  Three men struggled against the open window. Two fell out and into the crowd below.

  “I have to help him,” she said, starting forward.

  “No.”

  Her feet anchored to the pavement. She struggled to lift them, failed. Riga twisted toward the menehune.

  He was gone.

  “Let me go!” she shouted to no one.

  And then it ended. The flow of people from the restaurant stopped. In the parking lot, the crowd dissipated, faces filled with shock and confusion.

  The spell released her, and she was running, across the lot, up the stairs, into the empty bar. Tables and chairs were overturned. Spilled drinks pooled on the floorboards, drowning broken glass and paper umbrellas. Donovan stood behind the bar, his hand on a waitress’s shoulder. An elderly couple huddled beside him. Two other waitresses clutched a beefy man wearing a manager tag on his Hawaiian shirt.

  Riga’s legs wobbled. “Donovan!”

  He turned to her, and smiled. “I knew you’d have the sense to stay in the parking lot. We’re okay.” He said something in a low voice to the waitress, and she nodded her head, blue eyes wide.

  Unsteadily, Riga walked to the bar. “What happened in here?”

  “One minute I was having a drink, thinking about that damned leiomano, and the next minute, the bar exploded. I started grabbing waitresses and putting them behind the bar.”

  “And me,” the old woman chirped up. She adjusted her muumuu, an orange and red bird of paradise pattern.

  Her husband rubbed his head. An angry mark swelled on his temple, and he sagged against the counter. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “I’ll call an ambulance.” One of the waitresses hurried away.

  Riga raised her brows, her mouth dry. “You grabbed the waitresses.”

  “There were several nearby, and behind the bar seemed the safest place,” Donovan said.

  “You saved our lives.” The old woman’s voice quavered.

  “No,” Donovan said, “if your husband hadn’t been sucker punched… Riga? Are you all right?”

  Riga sank onto the single barstool that remained upright.

  Swiftly, Donovan came around the bar. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”

  “No. But I saw our menehune friend. And did you know there was a riot in San Francisco yesterday? I thought whatever the necromancer was doing was limited to this island, but the conflicts are spreading.”

  “Pen wasn’t involved, was she?”

  “No. Pen’s fine. I’m just…” Confused, relieved, terrified. “Glad you’re okay. Can we get out of here?” Before the police come, she added silently.

  “Of course.”

  “Sir.” The restaurant manager held out his hand. “Next time you’re here, drinks are on me.”

  Hurry, hurry, hurry, Riga thought as the two men shook hands. The cops had to be on their way, and she did not want another encounter. Then the old man insisted on shaking hands. And one of the waitresses gave him a hug. Riga wanted to scream.

  Finally, they were trotting down the restaurant stairs, getting into the Ferrari.

  “You say a menehune was here?” He started the car, and pulled out of the driveway, into the street.

  A siren wailed in the distance.

  “Not a menehune. The menehune.” She looked behind her. Two police cars were pulling into the parking lot they’d just left. That had been close. “The one who keeps offering me candy, though he didn’t offer me any tonight. He stopped me from going back inside.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “He said you would be. At the risk of sounding egotistical, I thought the menehune was appearing to me because of my magic. But I think he’s here because of you.”

  “Now you’re just feeding my ego.”

  “When you were attacked by something and suddenly let go – he was on the beach. He told me that you dreamed powerful dreams, that you had big energy. He stopped me from returning inside because it was what you wanted.”

  “For some reason Hawaiians love Vegas. Maybe he’s a fan of the casino.”

  “Donovan—”

  “If he’s interested in me, I’m as much in the dark as you are as to why.”

  “Have you been to the islands before?”

  “Yes, but not to this island. And we didn’t sense any magic on the other islands. Or did you?”

  “No. I mean, yes, there’s magic everywhere, but nothing on the other island that involved us, nothing personal.” She turned in her seat. “Grabbing waitresses? Really?”

  “You know what brawls are like. The best thing you can do is get out of the way.”

  She gave him a look.

  “The waitresses were in danger. And portable.”

  Riga laughed. “And the elderly
couple?”

  “Ah. The man got knocked down. I think someone kicked him in the head. They needed help.”

  “My hero.”

  “Occasionally.”

  Chapter 20

  They drove along the dark highway, Riga’s jaw lit by the phone she held to her ear. If Sal was concerned enough to try to track her down through Pen, the faery shaman deserved a call.

  “This is Sal.”

  “It’s Riga. Pen said you tried to call me.”

  “Is this your new number? What – are you so high and mighty now you get a private number?”

  “Sal…” The car rounded a tight bend, and she grabbed the door handle for balance.

  “Sorry.” Donovan eased off the accelerator.

  “Shit,” Sal said. “Everything’s out of balance. Have you felt it?”

  “I’ve seen it. Pen told me about the riot in San Francisco. And Donovan and I just escaped a bar fight. What have you sensed?”

  “Water. All I see is water rising, churning. I’ve heard there’s a whirlpool somewhere in the Pacific, but the news isn’t reporting it.”

  “Then where did you hear it?”

  Sal made an exasperated sound. “From our Network. Or I should say ‘My Network?’ When are you going to join?”

  Metaphysical practitioners tended to stick together, and in the Internet age the network had become overwhelming. Riga avoided it. “I’m not a joiner. Besides, why join when I’ve got you to fill me in?”

  “Now you’re just pissing me off.”

  “We’re tracking someone in Kauai who’s been ritually killing mermaids. A necromancer. I can’t see how it would reach as far as San Francisco, but it might be the cause of the water problems.”

  “You make it sound like a plumbing issue.”

  “Well?” Riga asked. “Could the spell extend that far?”

  There was a long pause. “Yeah. If they’ve been murdered in a magical ritual, that might piss off a sea goddess. And goddess energy can go big, especially when combined with elemental energies.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah.” Another pause. “You need help out there?”

  “She asks with obvious reluctance.” Riga smiled crookedly.

  “Can you blame me?”

  “No. I’ll keep you posted, Sal.” Riga hung up.

  Donovan chanced a quick look at her. “What have you got?”