by Kay Hadashi
“I have no idea why. The only explanation I got was that it was from a family of a patient that I took care of a while back but the patient died, and they thought it might cheer me up.”
“Did it?”
“I don’t mean to sound coldhearted, but I don’t often shed tears over losing patients that come in through the ER as trauma patients and I never have a conversation with them. It’s different when I get to know the patient and family ahead of time. I feel a sense of loss with them. But a drunk driver that wraps his car around a telephone pole, brought to the hospital already dead, only CPR keeping his blood flowing? Sorry. We all did our very best to bring him back but that guy’s injuries were just too severe. Of all the visits that I have to make with a family, those are the toughest, to give heartbreaking news to people I don’t know.”
“How often do you have to do that?” Nakatani asked.
“Too often. You know how many serious auto accidents we have on Maui. Add that to all the serious industrial accidents, and anyone else with serious chest or abdominal injuries. That many.”
“Why you?”
“Because I’m Maui’s chest surgeon and our best trained trauma surgeon, maybe in all of Hawaii. I trained specifically to take care of trauma, chest, and vascular patients. If something serious happens on Maui, it’s on me to pull someone’s butt back to life. I’m not always able to do that.”
“Tough way to earn a living.”
“It takes a toll after a while,” she said quietly.
“How do you know it’s the same bear?” he asked. “Pretty standard teddy bear from what I saw.”
“Maybe because of the little bowtie. Odd thing for a teddy to wear a plaid bowtie.”
“Maybe so. How did the couple get it from you?”
“They didn’t exactly get it directly from me.” Melanie sighed, wondering again how to proceed. “Okay, this is the weird part. Ever since I brought that bear home from the hospital, we’ve had one incident after another of bad luck. First, my daughter stubbed her toe on a table leg while playing with the bear. Then my father-in-law caught a cold. Then the baby got colicky when we put the bear in his bassinet one night. Then Thérèse stubbed her other little toe, again while playing with the bear.”
“A little coincidental, don’t you think? Trying to blame a child’s toy for things like that is a stretch.”
“Plus, Josh and I have been at each other’s throats ever since, about one thing or another, things that have never mattered before. And Dottie hasn’t been doing very well. I figured it was the teddy bear. I didn’t have the heart to throw it away, so being superstitious, I brought it over here one day to leave behind.”
“And somehow the couple found it?”
“I was sitting on that bench over there with the baby, just sort of taking a time-out from family dynamics at home. That’s when the couple came by and we chatted for a while. I told you about that already. I hung around for a few more minutes after they left. When I took the baby home, I left the teddy bear behind, figuring some kid on vacation would find it.”
“What about the bad luck? You weren’t concerned you might be handing off bad luck to an unsuspecting kid?”
“Detective, I might be superstitious, but my weird little quirks don’t transfer to other people. I figured some kid would play with it for a day or two, leave it at the beach, and go home. I didn’t care what happened to it as long as it didn’t come home with me.”
“Well, I need to find out how many of those bears there are on this island. It might’ve been the same one as yours, maybe not. One thing is for sure. The two bodies in the boat seem to have suffered their own bad luck with the bear. Any specific identifying marks on it?”
“You mean unusual scars, tattoos, or body piercings? No. But one of the cats did get a hold of it one day and tugged one of the ears loose.” They both watched as Thérèse begged her father to go home. Melanie waved and said she would catch up with them. “Anything else, Detective? My family seems to be abandoning me.”
“Only that I’d like to adopt her.”
“You can have the entire group. Her, the baby, the husband, and the in-laws. On second thought, I’ll keep the kids.”
“Having a rough spell?” he asked.
She swept the hair from her face that had blown across. “Grandparents don’t make good nannies, and the ones at home right now don’t even make good grandparents. Even though I’ve been trying to fire them for several months, I can’t send them away because I think Dottie might be having some mental changes. I’ve been trying to get the whole group in for physicals, but that’s like pulling teeth from a bull. Really, home life lately has been like a bullfight, but with several bulls at once, and I’m the idiot in the middle of the bullring waving a red cape around antagonizing all of them.”
“What’s the problem with finding a nanny? Seems like there should be plenty of unemployed young women on Maui wanting a decent job.”
“I think we’ve interviewed all of them. The problem is finding someone who knows something about childcare, doesn’t have a police record, knows how to drive in a straight line, and doesn’t lead some sort of bizarre alternative nighttime lifestyle.”
“That’s asking a lot for Maui. What about someone who grew up in a family with a younger brother, no police record, only parking tickets but a lot of them, and has funky dreadlocks but stays home in the evening?”
“You know someone? Because right now, I’d take someone without visible infectious diseases.”
“I have a niece on Oahu. Still only seventeen, if that matters. She looks a little weird, but the last I heard, she’s responsible and looking for a job.”
“Not in high school?” Melanie asked.
“She, uh, well…” Nakatani shifted uneasily. “…sort of dropped out.”
“That’s one strike against her. What do you mean, she looks a little weird?”
“Doing the counterculture dreadlock thing.”
“Not so bad. Has she had a job?”
“Clerk at some store at the mall, at least until they thought she was a little too weird-looking.”
“Nobody can get fired for having dreads, Detective. You should know that.”
“It sounded more like she was politely asked to leave, with the promise the shop owner would provide a reference.”
Melanie could see Josh having a hard time with holding Thérèse’s hand and holding Chance in his carrier. “Okay, fine. Have her give me a call one evening this week on my cellular. What’s her first name?”
“Georgianne.”
They parted ways, but Melanie stopped. “Detective, if my children grow up to be counterculture malcontents, you’re in a lot of trouble.”
Chapter Four
Monday was a clinic day for Melanie, and a late start for a change. It gave her an extra hour to be at home in the morning, which also meant she could take Thérèse to preschool for a change.
“Momma, can we get another Bignose?” Thérèse asked as Melanie drove her to preschool.
“Bignose was kind of a troublemaker, remember? Maybe next weekend we can all go to the mall and look for somebody else?”
“Another tedly bear?”
“Teddy. You haven’t got any new friends in a while. I guess it’s time.” Melanie had only a few minutes to bring up what was really on her mind. “Sweetie, were you using your magic with Bignose?”
“Bignose gottem his own magic. Bad kind magic.”
“What kind of bad magic?”
“He stumped my toes. Made you and Daddy fight. Chance made bad poo-poo.”
“It was kind of smelly for a day or two. I think he’s okay now, though. I think all the bad things stopped happening when Bignose went away, right?”
Thérèse winced with one eye. “Think so. Momma?”
Melanie pulled into a parking space at the preschool. “Yes?”
“Do I gotta have magic?”
“I wish you didn’t. Why?”
“I no
like it. Sometimes it’s fun, but sometimes it makes trouble.”
Melanie unbuckled the girl from her car seat. “From what I’ve seen, it makes a lot more trouble than fun.”
As soon as Thérèse was out of the car, she bolted for the front door of the preschool center, not even waving goodbye. Melanie got back into the car and left.
“Melanie Kato: surgeon, mayor, mother, and taxi driver.”
***
Just as Melanie got a few minutes to eat her lunch in the quiet of her office, the desk phone’s intercom chimed.
“Doctor, you have a visitor,” the receptionist said on the intercom.
“The next patient is already here?”
“No. A Detective Nakatani is here and would like to speak with you.”
Melanie looked at the time and saw she had twenty minutes to eat and talk with the detective about whatever he wanted.
“I have time. Send him in.” A moment later, there was a knock at her door and he came in. “I thought cops don’t like hospitals?”
“I’ve never seen you in your natural habitat, Mayor. Or should I call you Doctor Kato here?”
“I wish you’d call me Melanie. I imagine you’re here about the dead couple from yesterday. I hope you don’t mind if I eat while we talk?”
He waved her to keep eating her cold noodle salad. “I’ve just come from the resort where I have a team going through the room collecting evidence, and officers interviewing potential witnesses. The resort was able to confirm their identities as Allen Steinhoefler and Millicent Gubler-Steinhoefler, both of Ames, Iowa. One piece of matching luggage each, no rental car, took the shuttle from the airport. They’d been here for four days and had never signed up for surf or scuba lessons, never attended any guest classes, never attended any resort amenities, free or otherwise.”
“They told me they just got here about a day ago.”
“The receptionist I spoke to is the same one that checked them in four days ago.”
“Whatever. Maybe I heard wrong,” Melanie said.
“According to the maid I talked to…”
“Housekeeper,” Melanie said.
“According to the housekeeper I talked to, four towels had been used each day, implying they took two showers each day. Also, there was evidence of several episodes of intercourse, at least twice a day on each day of their stay. We found stray hairs consistent in color and length of the victims in the bed. They ate breakfast in the hotel café each morning putting it on their tab, but ate elsewhere for all their other meals. Other than bottles of water, they rarely took anything from the minibar, and replaced the resort bottles with ones from the supermarket. Also, they never left a tip for the housekeepers.”
“Cheapskates,” Melanie said. “I was a housekeeper at the same hotel as a teenager, and always knew guests wouldn’t leave a tip if they were stealing from the minibar.”
“Guests do that, try and replace items from the minibar with something cheaper?” he asked.
“All the time. They want something cold to take to the beach, and on the way back to the room, they buy a cheap replacement thinking they’ll get away with swapping it in. But the resort puts little stickers on everything in the minibar. If the housekeepers find a replacement, they still charge the guests for what they took. Most hotels try to use off-brands, products that can’t be easily found in local supermarkets to prevent that sort of thing. I think people figure they’ve spent a lot of money on plane tickets to get here, and a ton more on the room, so they deserve free stuff from the resort. The management expects them to take the hand lotion or spare rolls of toilet paper, but booze and chips from the minibar add up.”
“People take the toilet paper?”
“Old trick hotels use to cheat the cheaters: Take the expensive double-ply stuff out of the wrapper and put that on the hanger, and wrap a cheap roll of single-ply in the expensive wrapper. And don’t ask what goes in those little bottles of hand lotion.”
“Diabolical.” Nakatani went back to reviewing his notes. “What we haven’t found is any motive for murder. The room hadn’t been ransacked, no signs of a fight, no traces of blood, no weapons, nothing at all. It was as if they checked in, made love twice a day, ate breakfast, and did nothing else. Except for one thing: money, and a lot of it. As a housekeeper, did you ever see large amounts of cash in guest rooms?”
“A five-dollar bill on the table as a tip was generous. Otherwise, people put their valuables in the room safe or left them with the receptionist to put in the hotel safe. The housekeepers have no access to the hotel safe, and they’re required to have two housekeepers check the room safes together, and only after guests have checked out of a room. Once they confirm the room safe is empty, they call reception and let them know. Management is very picky about that.”
“What we found wasn’t tip money. In the room safe, we found four bundles of cash, five thousand dollars each. Three bundles were all hundreds wrapped in food storage wrap, the way drug traffickers do. The other bundle was in mixed currency, from fives all the way to hundreds, new and used bills, and secured with multiple rubber bands, the way small-time pushers would handle it.”
“Great, we have pushers working out of the resorts now.”
“Maybe not. So far, we’ve found no evidence of drugs in the room. Or weapons. No evidence of anything they might’ve been peddling. If they had sold something, or were simply working as fences, they were out of stock of anything worthwhile. In all appearances, they were simply a couple taking a trip they’d won, kept to a tight budget, and somehow had come upon twelve thousand dollars in cash. Then yesterday, they went for a walk, only to die in that rowboat.”
“Has the coroner done the autopsy yet?” she asked.
“Only the external examination. He’s still matching evidence collected in the boat and the room to that of the victims.”
“You said there was evidence of several episodes of them making love? Does that mean condoms in the waste basket?” Melanie asked.
“Apparently, they practiced safe sex. The housekeeper said there were two condoms in the bathroom wastebasket each day, but nothing in the bed.”
“Were they wrapped in tissue together or separately?”
“What difference does that make?” he asked.
“A lot. You’d be surprised at what the housekeepers learn about guests.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, if they were wrapped together, it was the same man both times. If they were wrapped separately, and one was stuffed down to the bottom of the basket as though it was being hidden, then it might’ve been two different men.”
“Come on. They were on their honeymoon!”
“They told me second honeymoon. Hang around guest rooms at a busy resort for a while. You’ll see some pretty crazy stuff going on.”
“Worse than toenail clippings in the bed?” he asked.
“Like threesomes on so-called honeymoons. Clumps of animal fur in the bed, and no other signs of pets.”
“That’s not so incriminating. I can think of half a dozen explanations for that.”
“Detective, I found a tooth in a drinking glass once, and it wasn’t human.”
“That’s just plain wrong,” he said.
“Have you verified they really won the trip to Maui on a game show? When I met game show winners in the past staying there, they were always stuck in the cheapest rooms. But this couple said they were in one of the luxury suites in the newest tower. That just doesn’t make sense to me.”
He made some notes on his pad. “I still have to verify the game show bit.”
“Detective, you don’t need to come and report to me on every murder investigation, even if I’m somehow involved.”
“Not here to give a report. In fact, I’m here to ask a few more questions about that teddy bear. I just got through talking with your receptionist about who brought the teddy and what he said. I’d like to hear more from you about it. Why do you suppose that patient’s family gave
you a stuffed toy?”
“Like I told you yesterday, I suspect they won’t pay their bill for my surgeon’s fee and giving me a gift is their way of not feeling guilty about it.”
“Have you billed them yet?” he asked.
“Yet? I only provided service a week ago. As far as I know, the funeral hasn’t been held yet. It takes weeks, sometimes months for their insurance to pay before my private billing service sends out a bill for whatever remains to the service recipient or family. If the surgery is elective and the patient is self-pay, they get billed about a month after service, which is usually paid in installments. Sometimes I know up front that my part of their hospitalization will be pro bono, so those bills just sort of get lost by my billing service. Otherwise, I have nothing to do with billing. Most of the time, I have no idea if a patient has paid his bill. The service manages all that and makes deposits into my bank account.”
“But specifically why a teddy bear?”
Melanie put away her empty Tupperware. “I have no idea. Maybe because it’s cute. Maybe they found out I have two small children that might fawn over the thing. I gave up long ago trying to figure out why people do the things they do.”
“You weren’t concerned about taking it home with you?”
“A stuffed animal toy? I gave it a sniff. It smelled clean. It looked like it was new. There wasn’t anything funky about it, like a powder or slimy residue. But yes, I did consider just tossing it away.”
“It might’ve been best if you had. You were pretty close to hitting the nail on the head with powdery residue.”
She checked the time when she saw a light blink on her desk phone, a signal telling her a patient was waiting. “How so?”
“First things first. You’re telling me you know nothing about the bear, who gave it to you, where it came from, or anything about how it was made?”
“It was a cute little bear with a bowtie that seemed to rile up my household for a few days. No, I don’t want it back because things are just beginning to settle again. Some of them, anyway. Otherwise, your evidence, your investigation, your problem.” Melanie put on her white lab coat and got her stethoscope. “If you don’t mind, I have a patient waiting for me.”