The Scent of Waikiki

by Terry Ambrose

  “Is that when you started packing and moved out?” Chance asked.

  “It took some time for me to realize I’d been set up, but yes, that’s when I got mad and moved out.”

  From Naomi’s expression, it was obvious she wasn’t nervous. She didn’t fidget, nor did she disengage eye contact. I licked my lips and looked over at Chance. He seemed to be processing the news, so I continued.

  “Then you didn’t know she was dead when you got back?”

  “No. I thought perhaps she’d gone to bed. Her lights were out. The slider was open. There was no sign of activity.”

  “The lights were out?” I looked at Chance, who was growing red in the face. I didn’t know what was bothering him, but his reaction was unusual. “If somebody visiting Angela pushed her off the balcony, they turned the lights off on the way out.”

  “Who was there that night?” Chance asked.

  “My client hasn’t made the time to talk to me yet, so I’m regarding this as one of those official ‘gray areas’ where I can do whatever I please. Let me pull my notes. I’d hate to misspeak.”

  We waited while she opened the notepad she’d laid on the table. She flipped immediately to the last page, then went forward one and pointed at a note with a time. “The boyfriend was the first observed subject. Arrived at seven-fifty-eight PM.”

  I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Is that Joseph?”

  “Yes. Sato. Bad character. Did some time for minor assault. Seems to have tried to turn his life around since his release. The two of them had quite an argument. It started around eight, then he left around eight-thirty.”

  “Do you know what the argument was about?”

  Chance’s sudden engagement in the discussion caught me off guard. I didn’t know what had been bugging him, but I was glad he’d mentally returned.

  “Of course.”

  “Would it be a good guess to assume you were watching Angela because Skye suspected her of stealing a box of Primal perfume?”

  Naomi reached inside the pocket of her skinny jeans and pried out a tube of chapstick. She applied a coat, then smacked her lips together and put the tube on the table, standing it on end. “I hate air conditioning. It dries my skin out like you wouldn’t believe.” With a dramatic pause, punctuated by a sigh, she said, “That would be an excellent guess.”

  “We’ve heard Joseph left with a box. Did you see that?”

  She shook her head. “No. I couldn’t tell what was going on inside the condo. What I can tell you is when he left, he was not happy, but Angela was still alive.”

  “What happened after that?” I asked.

  “Things were quiet for awhile. The neighbor, that old busybody next door, was out on her lānai several times. I saw her hanging out right inside her slider door during the first argument. I have a photo of her if you’d like to see it. It’s classic for someone whose life is confined to a very small circle.”

  She picked up her phone and showed us a photo of Emily. I felt a pang of sympathy for her, as I did anyone faced with her situation. How long would it be before I found myself clinging to a world not much larger than four walls? Would Benni tire of me then?

  “That’s Emily,” Chance said. “Nice old lady, but seems to have some mental lapses.”

  Naomi nodded. “I had that impression. Nothing concrete, but a couple of times since I’ve been watching Angela’s place, the old lady went out on her lānai to do something and seemed to get lost.”

  Her comment reminded me of Emily’s description—a man across the way. “Naomi? How were you dressed when you were watching? And where did you watch from?”

  She frowned, the skin between her wide-set eyebrows wrinkling ever so slightly. “I wore what I always do on surveillance. Baseball cap, T-shirt, jeans. Why?”

  “Was your hair up?”

  Naomi laughed and fingered the massive array of curls with her left hand. “Oh. I get it. She said she saw a man. I don’t look anything like this when I’m on a job. Blend in, that’s my motto.”

  Chance tilted his head to one side and watched Naomi with raised eyebrows. “You said it was quiet after Joseph left. How long?”

  “Until I left, which was just before ten.”

  “That’s when Skye called you? Around ten?”

  “It was nine-forty-three when she called. She said it was urgent and I should meet her in her office right away. So I grabbed the pizza I’d ordered and left. I figured I could always zap it in the microwave up in her office.”

  One little mystery was solved. Now we knew what had happened to the pizza. “So you took your pizza to Skye’s for this meeting?”

  “Yes. I busted my butt to get there, took the elevators up, and the doors were locked. I figured she might have closed up for security reasons, so I tried calling. She didn’t answer. I cooled my heels outside the doors until about ten-thirty, then I tried calling again.”

  “Did you continue to wait?” Chance asked.

  Naomi shook her head. “No. I was so ticked off at her I left cold pizza outside her door with the box open.”

  Chance and I both chuckled. “Cruel,” I said.

  “I’m impulsive.” She cocked her head to one side and gave us a sly smile. “Anyway, after that, I went back to the condo. Things looked quiet, so I walked over to Lulu’s on Kalākaua and got a late bite to eat.”

  “Love that place,” I said. “Wish I could afford to go there more often.”

  Naomi shrugged. “I was still ticked off at Skye. I figured she was paying, so I wasn’t going to worry about the cost.”

  “What time did you get back?” Chance asked.

  “Midnight.” Suddenly, she bit her lower lip and rubbed her fist against her chest. “If I’d have done something different—not been gone as long or told Skye she’d have to wait for morning—that girl would still be alive.”

  Chance reached out and put a consoling hand on Naomi’s arm. “It’s not your fault someone killed her. You probably couldn’t have stopped it.”

  “I’ll never know that for sure. And that’s going to haunt me. So what else do you need from me? I’d like to see whoever did this go to jail for a long, long time.”

  CHAPTER 43

  I pursed my lips and gazed at Naomi. “You really want to help?”

  “You bet I do. If Skye killed that girl, she needs to pay for her crime. But I’m still working for her, so I feel I have an obligation to clear her name.”

  “If it wasn’t her,” I said pointedly.

  “Exactly. I want the truth. There was another guy who showed up a couple of times during my surveillance.”

  “How long had you been watching Angela?” I asked.

  Naomi chuckled and glanced through her notes. “I started watching Angela on the fifth of May. That was four days before she stole the perfume. Skye thought Angela was becoming unstable, so she had me set up shop to keep an eye on her. Anyway, the other guy’s name was Stephen Brantley.”

  Chance and I exchanged a glance and a quick shrug. I tilted my head toward Naomi and said, “If you want to bring her into this, go ahead.”

  “He’s a server at Club Mystique,” Chance said. “He supposedly wanted to work for Skye and had applied there several times, but was always rejected. She never told you about him?” He looked straight at Naomi with a narrowed gaze.

  “No.” Naomi thrust out her lower lip and shook her head. “I was never involved in employment decisions. My job was to protect the brand.”

  “She wouldn’t have had you do a background check on him?” I asked.

  “I ran background checks for Skye on several possible employees, but never on a Stephen Brantley. Do you know where he lives?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” Chance countered.

  “What?” My mouth dropped and I stared at him.

  Naomi snickered as she let her gaze bounce back and forth between the two of us. “Do you two always work this well together?”

  Chance cleared his
throat. “Sorry, McKenna. I didn’t want to make things harder for you.” He winced, then added another, “Sorry.”

  “No worries. I get it.”

  “Shall we go check out the apartment?” Chance asked.

  “Let’s,” Naomi said as she stood.

  “Wait a minute,” I stammered and looked at Naomi. This woman worked for Skye. Giving her a morsel of information was one thing, letting her go with us was something else altogether.

  Chance stood also and gazed down at me. “Let’s face it, McKenna, we’ve been chasing our tails and need a break. Maybe Naomi will see something we don’t.”

  And then I got it. The kid liked her. She was a professional private investigator. Which meant she had a license, and he might be able to work a deal that would eventually help him get his own. I swallowed hard, suddenly being hit by the real possibility I might no longer be Chance’s mentor.

  I stood, smiled, and swallowed my embarrassment. “One car or two?”

  We took separate cars and arrived at Stephen Brantley’s home, a fourplex near the Wilhelmina Rise, only a short time later. The house itself was fairly common—low-incline roof, wood siding in need of a coat of paint, and single-pane windows past their prime. A cinder block wall painted white bordered the property and looked like it had been better maintained than the house.

  There was a long driveway on the southwest side in which a tenant had parked a ridiculous looking gray Toyota pickup with oversize wheels and tires. The owner probably thought it had some redeeming qualities, which I failed to see.

  Stephen’s apartment was located upstairs on the northeast side of the building. After a little dickering over who would go in, we decided this was going to be a group effort. A B-and-E for three. Wonderful. At least I’d have company in jail if this went sideways. At the door, Chance did the honors by first knocking, then picking the lock. We were inside and out of view in less than two minutes.

  To be sure we left as little proof of our presence as possible, we all donned latex gloves once we were inside. And once the search began, it was obvious Stephen was a very neat person overall. I say overall because the corner he used as an office was the proverbial rats' nest of miscellanea.

  “Look at this,” Chance said while holding up a photo of Skye, which had been doctored with a red marker. “A circle around her face—think she was his target?”

  “This guy is giving me the creeps,” Naomi said as she studied the picture. “You think he was a stalker?”

  I watched the two of them pour over Stephen’s desk from a short distance away. There was a cardboard box at my feet, which I opened. Inside was a five-by-eight spiral-bound notebook. The pages were filled with what looked like formulas and chemistry-type stuff. I supposed all this gibberish would make sense to someone like the Surfing Professor. I opened a second notepad, and my breath caught as I stared at the first page. Looking up at Chance and Naomi, I said, “Stephen wanted revenge.”

  Chance stopped rummaging through papers and peered at me. “Because he didn’t get a job? Or because he felt harassed? That seems pretty over-the-top.”

  “It seemed over-the-top when we were talking about a job, but this was because she ruined his dream.”

  I held out the notepad, which Chance took from me and held so he and Naomi could both read.

  Naomi’s mouth opened as her eyes flicked over the page. “This guy did affirmations? I am a world-class perfumer. I am a—are you kidding me?”

  Chance handed the notebook back to me and watched Naomi’s face as he spoke. ““Lots of successful people use affirmations. Take McKenna, for instance. Every morning he writes ‘I will not be grumpy today’ on the beach outside his apartment.”

  “Watch out, buddy, I’ll write one for you.”

  “Wait,” Naomi said. “You really do write that everyday?”

  We both looked at her. Simultaneously, we said, “No.”

  Naomi rolled her eyes. “Do yourselves a favor. Don’t try taking this show on the road.”

  “Stephen was always fascinated by scents according to his college chemistry professor. That is true,” Chance said.

  “I’m telling you, this is all about revenge. Plus he wanted to make a bundle of money while he was at it. Look at this.” I held out the other notepad. “It’s filled with what look like research notes. You see the name Primal scattered throughout. He was trying to reverse engineer the formula.”

  Chance drifted away while I was talking and moved the mouse of the computer. The screen lit up to reveal Stephen’s email account. He seemed to find something of interest and opened an email.

  “Stephen was trying to get information on how to mass produce his formula. Here’s the artwork for his label.” He glanced at Naomi. “Do you know what the real label looks like? This has the name Island Passions; It’s not an exact duplicate of Skye’s, but it looks close.”

  Naomi studied Stephen’s notes, then the image on the screen. “I’d have to be looking at what Skye sent me. I haven’t seen the final product, so I can’t say for sure. You’d probably have to ask a branding professional to be positive.”

  Her response struck me as odd. She’d told us earlier she’d been hired by Skye to deal with brand infringement. And yet she didn’t know it when she saw it?

  My pulse sped up slightly. What if…I pulled out my phone and dialed Grace’s number. She answered right away. “Grace, you said you expected to get a bottle of Primal in that sales kit. Do you know what the bottles look like?”

  “Of course. I’ve followed that every step of the way. Why?”

  “Because I’m wondering what exactly we’ve stumbled across. It looks like we found someone who wanted to replicate the perfume. Do you have any idea why he’d want to do that?”

  “Money,” she said immediately. She hesitated for a moment and continued. “Primal is one of the most anticipated new releases this year. If he had a knockoff, it could have been worth millions. It’s not illegal to reverse engineer the product, but it would be to use the company’s tangible assets.”

  “What’s that mean in English?”

  Grace’s laugh came through the speaker. Another moment of silence followed. “It means he makes the same product, but he can’t sell it as the same product without the company’s approval. Have you got a photo of the packaging you can send me?”

  I looked up at Chance, who was my resource for all things high tech. He glanced at the computer screen and grimaced. “I don’t want to send it from Stephen’s account. But we could send her a screenshot.” He pulled out his phone, took a photo, and sent it to Grace.

  There was a chiming sound on the other end of the line. I turned my back on Chance and Naomi as Grace’s voice became increasingly animated. “There are some very minor differences—the name is Island Passions, not Passion, and the logo is slightly modified. Most people wouldn’t notice, so for them this would look identical to the original. If I worked for the company, I’d recommend a suit for brand infringement. It might be upheld; it might not. Where are you, anyway? How’d you get this photo?”

  “That might not be something we should be talking about,” I said. “Let’s just leave it at that. Thanks, Grace. I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”

  I turned to face Chance and his prospective ticket to a private investigator’s license. “Grace says—oh crap.”

  Naomi held a gun on Chance. It was one of those small jobs, the kind you can hide easily. I was no gun expert, but I suspected it would still do plenty of damage.

  “I knew it,” I muttered.

  “You did? Why didn’t you say something?” Chance hissed.

  “Well, I didn’t know it know it.”

  “Shut up, McKenna. Or when we get out of here I’ll shoot you myself.”

  “Knock it off, you two,” Naomi shook her head. “And here I really liked you guys, too. You’re just getting a little too close to a huge problem. I hate to do this, but I’m going to need to take those notes and that computer dri
ve.”

  Chance regarded Naomi with a cool dispassion I’d seen before. “You said earlier that Skye keeps you on to deal with cases of brand infringement. What exactly do you do?”

  He edged closer to Naomi, but she backed away and leveled the pistol barrel at his chest.

  “Take a step backwards, please. We don’t want this to get messy.”

  “Do what she says, Chance. We’ve found what we need. This puts us one step closer to solving Angela’s murder.”

  “What are you going to do with the notes and the drive?” Chance asked.

  “I’ll take them to my employer. She’ll turn them over to a lab. They’ll make a threat assessment and determine the next course of action.”

  “And what about Angela’s murder?” Chance maintained eye contact with Naomi. “You’re going to cover up this whole thing, aren’t you?”

  “My job is to protect my client from industrial threats. And I am paid very well for what I do.”

  “Have you ever killed for her?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Did you really go to meet Skye the night Angela died? Or was that just a story to trick us?”

  “I wasn’t lying about that. My job does not include helping my client commit a felony. If she murdered Angela, I won’t be part of a cover-up.” She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a pair of zip ties. “Gentlemen, it’s time for you both to take a timeout while I do a little tidying up.”

  CHAPTER 44

  We sat on the floor with our hands zip-tied behind our backs and Chance glaring at the front door. After assuring us that any attempt on our parts to discredit the Island Passion brand would be met with swift legal action, Naomi made her exit. We were screwed. Naomi had taken the proof of what Stephen had done with her and left us with nothing but aching wrists and bruised egos.

  “I could have taken her, McKenna.” Chance grumbled.

  “I know, buddy, but she looked like she actually knew how to use that gun. It’s one thing taking down some punks who think they’re hot stuff and don’t know how to shoot. But she’s probably a crack shot.”