Mai Tais and Murder

by J. C. Long

  “I’m so sorry,” I said quickly. “We didn’t realize. We must not have been here when they made that announcement. I’m sorry for your loss,” I added. “I know it can seem a little barbaric, all these people swarming over your belongings right after a loss.”

  “The lawyer said this was a good idea, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of everything, so I only agreed to sell the things in the living room and kitchen. This is—was—my grandmother’s room. She died a week ago from a heart attack.”

  “That’s awful,” said Grace sympathetically, digging into her purse and offering a tissue, as it looked like the woman was about to start crying again. “You were clearly close.”

  “After my father died a year ago, my grandmother was all that I had. Now I don’t have anyone.” I saw her swallow back the beginning of a sob, wiping her hands beneath her eyes quickly to prevent any tears from falling.

  “I don’t know how you can bear it, two losses so close together. You’re very strong, Ms.—I’m sorry, I don’t think I got your name?”

  “I’m Lana. Lana Brighton.”

  “I’m Grace Park, and this is my friend Gabe Maxfield. I’d like to be honest with you, if that’s all right? We work for a company called Paradise Investigations.”

  “The private detectives my grandma hired?”

  “Well, we work with the private detective your grandmother hired,” I said, hope flowering in my chest. “We were hoping you could discuss the case with us. You see, our partner recently passed away, and we’re trying to consolidate as much information as we can about the cases she was working on.”

  “I don’t know anything about it, really. Grandma couldn’t get over my dad’s death. He died in a car accident, but she was convinced that he was murdered by his boss or something.”

  My eyes widened at that, and I gave Grace a meaningful look. She nodded her understanding. Lana seemed oblivious to us and kept talking.

  “I tried to convince her she was being silly, but she just wouldn’t let it go. About a month ago, she told me she had hired a private detective to look into the case. Until the very end, she wouldn’t let it go.”

  “Can you tell us your grandmother’s name?”

  “Miriam Brighton.”

  “You said she was convinced your father’s boss murdered him, right? Where did your father work?”

  Lana thought for a moment. “I think it was called DLC Construction.”

  “Do you—” Grace started, but I grabbed her hand, pulling her behind me out the door.

  “Thank you very much for your time and candor. We’ll see ourselves out.”

  Grace struggled against me the whole way down the stairs, finally pulling free once we were out of the door. “What was that all about?”

  “I was there today,” I said impatiently, speed walking to my car.

  “Where?” Grace asked, hurrying to keep up.

  “DLC Construction. That’s Delgado’s company.”

  “Where are we going now?” Grace demanded, bracing herself on the door of the car as I sped away from the curb in front of Miriam Brighton’s house.

  “To your office. We need to find the file on Miriam Brighton and see what it has.”

  “We don’t know that there is a file,” Grace argued. “It was probably the file that got stolen from you.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know why I was so certain, but I was. “That file was marked Delgado. Even if it was all of the information she collected, there has to be some record of Miriam Brighton, right? Especially if you got paid by her.”

  “You’re right, but I wouldn’t begin to know where to look.”

  “Well then, call Peter and have him meet us there.”

  Grace face-palmed lightly. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Because I’m smarter and prettier than you are,” I said, smirking.

  As Grace talked to Peter, I debated whether or not to call Maka. He said he wanted updates, but he also told me to be careful, and I didn’t know if he would consider continuing an investigation independent of the police being careful. Considering what had happened the last few times I’d done so, I didn’t think he would approve. I decided it would be beg forgiveness than to ask permission. If we discovered anything, I could tell him. If we didn’t, then I wouldn’t need to.

  About five minutes out from the office, Grace got a text message. “It’s Peter. He’s at the office waiting for us. He’s started looking for the file.”

  “Good. Hopefully he finds it before we get there.” I didn’t say it out loud, but I didn’t look forward to returning to that place. I didn’t think anyone would be able to blame me, after discovering the body of a murdered woman. I’d already met Peter there once, and that was enough. I wish I’d known about Miriam Brighton then and could have been spared all of this extra trouble.

  “We don’t even know that there’s going to be a file there,” Grace said suddenly. It sounded like something she’d been mulling over for a while before speaking. “Someone tore her office up; they probably took the file that day.”

  “Not if they were only looking for things specifically marked Delgado. Whoever they were, they might not have known the name of the person who hired her. If that’s the case, then there’s hope the file is still in there.”

  “Well, we won’t know until we get there.” Grace drummed her fingers impatiently on the door.

  When we pulled up in front of Paradise Investigations, Grace basically leapt out of the car before it had even stopped. I hadn’t seen her this determined since her professor told her that she had no chance of passing the class. She’d proven him wrong. When she got like this, she could accomplish damn near anything. I didn’t fully understand what her relationship with Carrie was like—but Grace was motivated to find her killer, and I felt sorry for anyone who tried to get in her way.

  Inside the front office, Peter had dragged out several cardboard boxes and was going through one, discarding files one by one.

  “Grab a box,” he said, gesturing to the small pile of them.

  “Hello to you, too,” Grace muttered, squatting down over the nearest box. “It’s not like I just got out of prison or anything.”

  “Jail,” I corrected, sliding my own box toward me and tossing the lid aside.

  “Do you really want to argue semantics with me on this right now?”

  “No, no, you’re right. Either place is terrible,” I said placatingly before Grace could get worked up. None of us would be able to accomplish anything if she got started in on a rant.

  I started digging through the box, reading the file names and discarding them quickly. With every file I put aside, my uneasiness grew. Please be here, I silently prayed. Please be here.

  It was boring work, and my back soon ached from sitting on the floor with no support. I dragged my box to the sofa and sat with my back against it, which felt a little better. I just managed to get comfortable when my phone vibrated on the floor over where I had been sitting.

  “Son of a bitch.” I got up once more, retrieved the offending device, and sat back down.

  The vibrating came from a message from Maka.

  At the bank where the withdrawals were made. Accessing the ATM camera footage now. Hope to have an ID soon.

  That’s great! I typed back. Me and Grace are with her secretary at their office looking through files for anything useful. I’ll let you know if we find anything.

  “Found it!” Peter held a manila file folder up triumphantly. “Brighton, Miriam.”

  “Great job, Peter,” Grace cried. “Let me see that.” She took the folder and opened it. “Jesus, there’s almost nothing in here. Looks like it’s just the initial interview notes. Listen to this: ‘Client believes that the death of her son, Laurence Brighton was not an accident as previously reported. She claims that her son was a former employee of DLC Construction, and that he’d recently quit. According to the client, he was in possession of evidence of illicit activities that would be damni
ng to the company owner, Manuel Delgado. As to the nature of this evidence, she did not elaborate. It is her belief that Delgado or agents working on his orders staged the murder of her son to look like an accident in order to keep him from approaching the police with this information. She is requesting that evidence of this be found and taken to the police.’”

  “That matches what the granddaughter told us,” I said, glancing over Grace’s shoulder at the paper. “Look at the date of the consultation: two months ago. She’d been working on this for a while.”

  “She must not have found anything, then,” Peter said, climbing to his feet and dusting off his pants.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked, cocking my head at him.

  “If she had, it would have been taken to the police, right?”

  “Someone murdered her over that file,” Grace argued. “And almost murdered Gabe, too.”

  “Twice,” I interjected.

  “They wouldn’t have done that if they didn’t think she stumbled onto anything. They were intent on stealing that file.”

  “And now that they have the film, too, there’s no hope of proving it, huh?”

  Grace blinked in surprise. “You knew about the camera roll?”

  “Yeah. Gabe has kept me filled in on what he’s found, since you sent him my way to find out more about Carrie’s death.”

  “That was smart thinking on his part,” Grace said, though her voice sounded strange. I didn’t ponder it too much, though, because my phone rang.

  “Sorry, guys. Just a sec.” I turned my back on them, answering Maka’s call. “Hey, Maka. Get an ID?”

  “We did,” Maka said, voice thick with urgency. “Gabe, where are you?”

  “I told you, we’re—”

  “If you’re still with Peter, get out of there! He’s the one who withdrew the money. It’s Peter.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Hang up the phone, Gabe,” Peter said behind me, his voice frigid. I turned around slowly, stopping in my tracks when I saw that in his hand he had a gun. “I said hang up the damn phone!”

  I clicked end, holding out the phone to show him that I’d done as he asked. This was the second time today that I’d had a gun pointed at me, and I had to say I didn’t like it now any more than I had the first time.

  There was something different about the situations, though. The first time the man holding the gun looked more than willing to pull the trigger. Calm, collected, a man who’d definitely killed before. Peter, on the other hand, looked nervous, frantic, like the world around him was falling apart. He was stressing out in a situation that had gotten beyond him.

  “What’s going on, Peter?” Grace asked, stepping back so she was standing beside me.

  “Shut up!” Peter shouted, and we both flinched. “Turn your phones off and toss them on the floor!”

  Grace looked like she was about to give him sass, so I elbowed her hard, doing as he asked with my cell phone and glaring at her until she did, as well. I was not about to get shot because of Grace’s fiery temper.

  “Did you kill Carrie?” Grace asked after she’d tossed her own phone aside. “Peter, look at me. Did you kill Carrie?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that!” he shouted, pacing the floor in front of us. I kept my eyes on his gun as he walked, waiting for him to lower his guard so I could take it. “She didn’t have to die! She wasn’t supposed to be here!”

  “You were the person withdrawing the money,” I said, keeping my words neutral, my tone soothing. I made it an observation, not an accusation.

  “I was approached by a man who said he’d pay me money for information. First he just wanted to know who was trailing his boss. He paid me seven thousand dollars to find out. I knew it would be flagged by the bank if I had it put into my account. A business account, though, it wouldn’t be noticed. I had a third business card issued in my name, and withdrew the ATM limit of one thousand dollars a day.”

  “The second time?”

  “He said he’d pay me fourteen thousand dollars to bring him whatever files Carrie had on his boss, Delgado. Before all the money could clear, though, Carrie started getting suspicious, so the last seven thousand I transferred to a friend’s account, giving them a thousand dollar cut. When the money cleared, I started looking for the file. For some reason, Carrie came back to the office. She…she found me searching. She was furious. We got into a fight, and I…I killed her.”

  “She came back because of the money,” I told him. “She had an alert set up so she could catch Grace stealing the money. When the money transfer happened, she got a text message and rushed back here. If you hadn’t transferred the money that way, she might not have ever come back here.”

  “Why did you do it, Peter?” Grace asked. She didn’t sound angry; she sounded sad, disappointed.

  “Why?” Peter shouted, rounding on Grace, leveling the gun at her. “Why? Do you know what it’s like to be drowning in debt? With what I made here, I couldn’t even start to get out of the hole. If I’d paid every bill I’d have used my whole paycheck and still not have been caught up every month!”

  “If you were having money problems, why didn’t you say anything?”

  Peter laughed bitterly. “I did! I asked Carrie for more money, just a couple hundred more a month, that’s all I needed. You know what she told me? ‘You’re well compensated here, and we can’t afford to pay you any more than we already do.’ Can you believe that?”

  “Well then, why didn’t you come to me? I could have—”

  “You could have what? Loaned me thirty dollars? Everyone knows you’re not the one with money, Grace, so don’t kid yourself. I did what I had to do. Everything would have been fine if Carrie hadn’t come back when she wasn’t supposed to!”

  “Would it?” I asked, trying to keep him talking, praying that Maka and Benet were on their way. “The file wasn’t here, so you wouldn’t have been able to give it to them, even if Carrie hadn’t come back. What would have happened then, Peter? Do you think a man like Delgado, a man willing to kill for information, would have just let that slide? Use your head. Everything hit the fan, and you’re a loose end now. Even if you get away with all this, Delgado is probably going to have you killed so you can’t come back to haunt him later.”

  “Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!” Peter screamed, nearly in hysterics. He was fast approaching a breakdown, and I didn’t know if that would be good or bad. I had to try something, though.

  “Why didn’t you go to Carrie’s house and look for the files after you didn’t find them in the office?” I asked, all the while telling myself, Just keep him talking. Just keep him talking. “Wouldn’t that have been easier? Why get the hired help involved?”

  Peter scowled. “That wasn’t my idea. The house, though, it made sense, right? The police arrested Grace, thinking she did it. If I ransacked Carrie’s house, they would know Grace wasn’t guilty, and that would have just fucked up the plan. If the police got the files, it would have fucked everything up, too, but that was for the guy with the money to figure out. And then, somehow, Gabe got to the house just hours before the police did and managed to get his hands on the files. I was happy, the boss was happy, and the plan kept working.”

  “The plan,” Grace derided. “What’s the next step in the plan, Peter? Where do you go from here now that Gabe and I both know?”

  “The plan? The plan now is to kill your little friend here and pin it on you. My story will go something like this: I showed up right after you shot him, we wrestled for the gun, and then, to save my own life, I shot you dead. The police will believe me, you know. They already suspect you anyway.”

  Peter raised the gun, pointing it at my head. I felt like I was going to throw up. Part of me wanted, like earlier, to close my eyes, but I didn’t want to give up or surrender to death, not at the hands of this man.

  “Tell me about the camera roll,” I said quickly. “I still don’t understand how you knew where I
’d go to develop it.”

  Peter snorted. “If you wanted Grace’s advice, that’s where she’d tell you to go. I told Delgado’s people they just needed to stake it out.”

  “But how did you know when we’d be there?” I pressed, straining my ears to catch the sound of police sirens. They were coming, right? They had to be. Maka knew where we were and knew Peter was here, so they would get there. They had to. “I didn’t know until today, and yet the guy was ready for me, and the shop was empty.”

  Peter waved the hand holding the gun dismissively. “That was easy. I cloned Grace and Carrie’s phones a long time ago—it’s how I figured out which of them was working the Delgado case. I monitored the texts, and when she told you where to go, I got there first. The shop girl, whatever her name was, she was a cute girl, so it wasn’t too hard to distract her for a little while. Convinced her to take me to the stockroom for a little fun.”

  Grace scowled. “So you’re a rapist and a murderer?”

  “What? Dear god, no. It was one hundred percent consensual. Despite what you may think of me, I’m not a monster.”

  “That’s debatable,” I said.

  Peter turned on me, growling through gritted teeth. “What did you just say?”

  I spoke much slower than necessary, knowing he would pick up the perceived slight. “I said that’s debatable. You’re a monster, no matter how you try to justify it to yourself.”

  “You stupid son of a bitch!” Peter hit me across the left side of my head with the gun. Luckily for me, it was a glancing blow; he obviously didn’t have much experience with a gun. It still hurt like hell, though.

  Grace took her chance, grabbing for the gun in Peter’s hand. The two struggled, pulling it this way and that, and I feared it would go off at any moment. Where the hell is Maka? If the police didn’t get there soon, the situation was going to spiral even further out of control than it already had, and someone was going to end up dead.