Death In Paradise

by Carolyn G. Hart

  I felt dreadfully alone when I curved around the bluff. I reached the stairs leading up to the kitchen area and edged up the steps. No torches flared on this lanai. I slipped quietly up the passageway, alert for any sound or movement. I darted into the garden, sought refuge in the deep shadow of a koa tree. I paused, smelling the sweet fragrance of its pollen, and looked around the shadowy garden. The only movement was the rustle of the shrubbery in the breeze.

  I stepped cautiously on the crushed-shell path, moved around a thicket of bamboo. Lester Mackey’s quarters were straight ahead. His lanai was softly lit. I saw a dark shape in a chair. A cigarette glowed. The acrid smell overlay the sweet scents of the garden.

  I reached his lanai. Mackey was slumped in a wicker chair. Beside him on a small table was a half-full whiskey tumbler and a pint bottle. I didn’t wait for an invitation. I pulled a wicker chair close to him.

  The moon spilled out from behind a cloud. The silvery light smoothed out the anxious lines in his face, made him look young, and I knew I had a glimpse of him as he’d appeared when he and Belle first met.

  “You go back a long way with Belle.” My tone was easy, friendly.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” His tone was guarded.

  “You were her driver in ’Nam?”

  He stubbed out his cigarette. “I don’t talk about ’Nam.”

  A cloud slid over the moon. It was suddenly dark, but not a comfortable dark.

  I pressed. “Why not?”

  He splashed more whiskey in his glass. “Are you a fool, lady?”

  “Were you wounded?”

  He took a deep drink, held the glass. “I don’t talk about ’Nam.”

  “What did you hate? The Vietcong?”

  “I’d take the Vietcong over—” He stopped abruptly.

  “What happened to you?” Something ugly, something dark, and he carried the scar within him.

  He drank again, emptying the glass. “You writing a book?” The words were ever so faintly slurred.

  “Not right now.” Equivocal. Deliberately so.

  “Everybody thinks you are.” He picked up the pint, emptied it into the glass.

  “People can think what they want to.” I hoped it worried the hell out of them.

  “A book about CeeCee’s kidnapping.” There was no mistaking the tension in his voice.

  “Richard came here to talk to you about what happened to CeeCee.” I spoke with utter authority.

  Once again Mackey was rigidly still, just as he’d stood in the shadows at dinner. But he wasn’t going to escape me.

  “There’s more to what happened at the lake than has ever been revealed.” God, how I wished his face were clear again in the moonlight. “Richard told you what Johnnie Rodriguez said.”

  The evening breeze rustled the shrubbery.

  “No, he didn’t.” His denial was swift, harsh. “He asked me if I saw anybody that night at the lake when I found CeeCee’s car. That’s all.”

  So Richard indeed talked to Mackey before he died. It was like winning the pot at poker. I’d come all this way, wondering, hoping, uncertain. Now I knew. Richard had faced this man with the knowledge he’d gained from Johnnie Rodriguez. Whatever had happened existed in the recesses of this man’s mind.

  I was close, so damned close. “What did you tell Richard?”

  “I saw nobody.” But Mackey pressed his hands over his face for a long moment. When his hands dropped, he gave a ragged sigh.

  He was lying to me. I was sure of it. I wanted to grab his thin shoulders, shake them, demand the truth.

  “But Richard told you he’d talked to Johnnie Rodriguez, didn’t he?” I demanded.

  “No. He didn’t say anything about that.” The answer again was swift. And such a lie. Richard came to Kauai because of what he’d learned from Johnnie Rodriguez. Lester Mackey and Johnnie Rodriguez were together that evening between six and seven o’clock, the time when CeeCee Burke disappeared.

  I’ve asked thousands of questions, listened to thousands of answers—from cops and crooks, from politicians and movie stars, from ordinary people and not-so-ordinary people. I’ve been lied to a lot. I won’t say I can always spot a liar, but I knew Lester Mackey was lying.

  “You said you found CeeCee’s car. What really happened, Mr. Mackey?” I punched on the flashlight.

  The beam caught him for an instant, sharp as a pinned butterfly, his pale blue eyes squinting in protest, his thin face strained and wary, a trace of tears on his lined cheeks. All right, dammit. He still grieved for CeeCee. Or too much whiskey made him tearful. But he was a liar and I was going to know the truth. I kept the beam on his face. “You and Johnnie Rodriguez hung out together.”

  He crooked his arm in front of his face, shielded his eyes. “He worked for me.”

  I lowered the light, just a little. “Johnnie’s mother didn’t like it. Why?”

  He made no answer. His eyes fell.

  “Was Johnnie handsome?” I asked gently.

  “It wasn’t anybody’s business.” But he didn’t look at me.

  “No. I don’t suppose it was. You and Johnnie. Except that night it’s my business. It’s everybody’s business. You and Johnnie together. What did you see? What do you know? It was still early—six o’clock, wasn’t it?—when you said you found CeeCee’s car. What did you and Johnnie do between six and seven? Where were you, Mr. Mackey?”

  “We were getting stuff ready for the party. Just like we always told everybody.” His voice was blustery, but thin. He frowned. “Johnnie’s mother. You talked to her? And to Johnnie?”

  The night air was cool, but his second question was even more chilling.

  “Oh, no. No, I didn’t talk to Johnnie.”

  “Why not? He’ll tell you. Same as I have.” But he watched me so closely.

  “I’d talk to Johnnie if I could, Mr. Mackey. Johnnie knew something about the kidnapping. I know that. But I can’t talk to Johnnie.” I waited, stared at him. “Johnnie’s dead, Mr. Mackey. They say”—I spoke quite clearly—“that Johnnie was drunk and fell off his pier. He drowned.”

  “When?” Mackey’s voice was deep in his throat.

  “A couple of weeks after Richard fell from the trail here.”

  The breeze rustled in the trees, a forlorn and lonely sound.

  “Johnnie’s dead. Richard’s dead. Tell me what you know, Mr. Mackey. For God’s sake, tell me!” It was a demand and a plea.

  “Johnnie…I never thought…” He pushed to his feet, turned away.

  “Mr. Mackey—”

  But he kept on going.

  As I watched, he entered his quarters and the louvered shutters closed. The sound of the bolt was loud. And final.

  I walked slowly along the path, reaching the garden in front of the house. It was late enough now that the house lay quiet, the dining room empty, only an occasional light left on in the string of lovely rooms. I walked softly, noiseless in my sneakers.

  Sibilant whispers sounded over the silken rustle of the wind-stirred shrubbery. I stopped, listened. Why should anyone whisper? Whispers indicate stealth. Whispers also indicate private conversations. I hesitated. But I was not simply a guest enjoying a holiday weekend. So I stepped even more lightly and cautiously came around a bend in the path.

  There were no lights here, but in the silver glow of the moon I saw a man and a woman standing close together in a heavy shadow near a clump of ti shrubs. Body language shouts. Both leaned forward, their bodies as tense and hostile as boxers squared off in a match. She spoke, her whisper a whistling hiss. He kept shaking his head, bullish, impervious, dismissive.

  I wished I knew the geography of the garden better. Did the path continue past these shrubs, curving back into the main part of the garden? Or was this a quiet dead end, a carefully chosen spot for this angry encounter?

  There was no way I could approach any closer without being seen. And I wanted very much to know who these combatants were. I carefully retraced my steps until I found a multi-
trunked jacaranda. I slipped between trunks and settled down to wait.

  It wasn’t long. Hurried footsteps sounded. Keith Scanlon passed so close to me I could have reached out and touched him.

  I wondered what Belle Ericcson would have thought had she seen her husband’s face in the moonlight. There was no trace of the evening’s genial host. He stared straight ahead, his face furrowed in a tight frown.

  I stayed hidden. But no one else came around the curve. I waited a moment, but there was no sound, no telltale crunch of footsteps. I moved quickly. The path did indeed skirt the ti shrubs, leading back to the central part of the garden.

  I reached the tiled walkway near the dining room. I saw no one. I had no idea who had quarreled with Keith Scanlon. But I could be sure of one fact. It wasn’t his wife.

  Keith Scanlon had been a welcoming host, though somewhat ill at ease. I’d wondered why. Now I really wondered. I’d observed an impassioned encounter. What was the cause? And with whom did Keith Scanlon have such an intimate, angry relationship? What made it necessary for this clandestine meeting? Was the woman he met one of the family? That would be very interesting indeed.

  Click. Click.

  I stopped by the open archway to the game room.

  There was no mistaking the huge figure of Stan Dugan bent over the pool table. He moved the cue with swift accuracy, caroming a ball into a side pocket.

  I came up beside him.

  He flicked me a cool glance. He chalked his cue, aimed, another ball rolled into a corner pocket. The unsparing light above the pool table revealed every aspect of his blunt-featured face: the deep-socketed eyes, the hawkish nose, the seamed skin, the determined mouth.

  “All right. You’ve made it clear. You’re a tough son of a bitch.” I gave him a level look and tossed a question that I hoped might surprise him. “Is that why CeeCee fell in love with you?”

  The last ball rolled silently into a pocket.

  Dugan placed the cue in the rack, his face stern. I thought his reserve was going to hold, that I was up against a bedrock suspicion I couldn’t disarm. Then a fleeting smile touched his lips. “I never asked her.” He leaned against the pool table, folded his arms. “She never said.”

  “You loved her?” A bald question, but I asked because I had to know.

  A hot, angry light flickered for a moment in his cold eyes, then it was gone. “What the hell difference does it make to you, lady?”

  I’d touched him on the raw. Maybe that told me what I needed to know. “Mr. Dugan, stop fighting me. We’re on the same side. I want to know who killed CeeCee. So do you. That’s why you came here, isn’t it?”

  His big hands balled into fists, then, slowly, he loosed them. “That’s why I came, Mrs. Collins. But how about you? Are you here looking for a killer? Or looking for a way to make big bucks, write a book that will put you on easy street forever?”

  “I’m looking for facts that will lead me to a killer. If I can get those facts by pretending to be writing a book, yes, I’ll pretend.” My voice was harsh. “I will do whatever I have to do, Mr. Dugan, but I am going to find out the truth. And I want you to help me.”

  We stared at each other.

  I know what Dugan saw, an older woman with dark hair touched with silver and dark eyes that have seen much and remembered much in almost a half century of delving for facts.

  I saw a big, powerful, arrogant, bereft young man.

  Perhaps bereft.

  But beneath my entreaty to him throbbed my own suspicions. I know how the face of love can be marred by jealousy, by unfaithfulness, by so many twisted emotions. I was seeking his help, but remembering all the while that so often the truth of murder can be found in the darkness of a lover’s heart.

  I would look at Stan Dugan just as closely as I would look at every inhabitant of this house. But now I smiled at him, held out my hand.

  His huge hand briefly gripped mine. “All right. What do you want from me?”

  “Tell me about the family.” Yes, I’d begun to learn about them, but I needed to know more, so much more.

  His gaze swung toward a gallery of photographs on the wall near the wet bar. He walked over to the bar, got down a couple of glasses. “Nightcap?”

  I followed him. “Sure.”

  “Whiskey? Beer?”

  “Club soda’s fine.”

  He fixed himself a stiff Scotch with a dash of club soda, poured soda for me. As he handed me my glass, he looked again at the gallery.

  “Mama Belle at the top,” he observed. “Three Burkes to her right, three Gallaghers to her left. As for Keith, there’s one of him in a bottom row of candid shots. But it’s always the lead dog that sets the pace.”

  “And?” I prompted.

  “Funny. Belle kind of likes me. So the rest of the clan treats me nicely even though they’d be horrified if they had to take me to lunch at the country club.”

  “You don’t like them.” The club soda was tart and refreshing.

  Dugan rolled the whiskey in his mouth. “Not a matter of liking them. They don’t matter.”

  His arrogance was chilling.

  “Only Belle matters in this family. Quite a woman. Sure, she was born on third base, but she’s a hell of a player. So was CeeCee. The rest of them? Also-rans.”

  “They don’t matter?” The soda didn’t wash away the odd taste in my mouth.

  “Not to me. Anders worries more about animals than people. He agonizes over the plight of the lowland gorilla. Inner-city kids—so who gives a damn? Strange priorities. Joss worships at the throne of his almighty self, but CeeCee liked him.”

  “What about the Gallaghers?” They’d been young when their father married Belle: Gretchen not quite ten, Megan eleven, Wheeler the oldest at seventeen.

  “Ah, yes.” His tone was sardonic. “The Gallaghers. Kind of like winning the sweeps when your old man marries a very rich woman. And one thing you have to say about Belle, she’s generous. I’d say the Gallaghers lucked out. Even if it rubs Gretchen raw.”

  I looked up at a riot of red curls and freckled skin and bright hazel eyes. “Gretchen doesn’t like money?”

  “Oh, Gretchen loves money well enough.” Dugan’s grin was wry. “Actually, Mrs. Collins, I’ve not met too many people who don’t like money. Last one might have been a nun. Nope, Gretchen keeps her greedy little paw extended for Belle’s largesse. But she’s never forgiven Belle for her dad’s death. Belle was throwing a party that night, insisted he get the hell home for it. And the car went through the guardrails into the Potomac. CeeCee told me all about it. ’Course the fact that Gallagher was drunker than a Tammany politician on election night seems to go right over Gretchen’s little red head. Small item of personal responsibility. But Gretchen welcomes those checks from home just the same. Now”—he leaned against the bar, sipped at his drink—“there’s one Gallagher who’s willing to go the distance by herself.”

  I nodded. “Megan.”

  “But something’s bubbling behind that pretty face. Something not very pretty.” The ice tinkled in his glass.

  Megan had taken me by surprise at dinner. I wouldn’t dismiss her again as simply a pretty face.

  “How about Wheeler?”

  Dugan’s smile was derisive. “TFB, courtesy of Belle.”

  I looked at him inquiringly. “TFB?”

  “Trust fund baby. The Burkes, of course, are both TFB and TGR.”

  “TGR?” I’m always willing to learn.

  “Third generation rich. That, Mrs. Collins, says it all. But TFB status is plenty good enough for Wheeler. He’s high maintenance and he expects Belle to pick up the bills.” Dugan downed the rest of his drink. “The only one worth a damn was CeeCee.”

  “Interesting,” I said quietly.

  Dugan’s gaze was thoughtful. “Funny you should show up with the idea somebody in the family was behind the kidnapping. I’ve thought so for a long time.”

  I hadn’t expected this. “For God’s sake, what do you know?�
� I tried to keep calm. Did he have facts, something that would lead me to a specific person?

  He gave me a bleak stare. “I’m not a criminal lawyer, Mrs. Collins. But I know some. And they have contacts nobody else can tap. Not the cops, not the feds. After CeeCee’s body was found, I asked them to scrape around. Word gets out on the street. You know what they came up with?”

  I waited, my eyes never leaving his blunt, aggressive face.

  “Nothing.” The word was light as silk. It floated between us like a strand from a spider’s web. “Nothing.” He kneaded his cheek with a huge fist. “I hired a private detective. Toby Karim. No great brains, but Toby can sniff around better than a hound after coons. Will it surprise you when I tell you that Toby found nothing?” Dugan leaned forward, his massive face predatory. “You know what that tells me?”

  “No, Mr. Dugan. What does it tell you?”

  “That there wasn’t anything to find in the bars or coke houses or gambling joints. This wasn’t a kidnapping planned by small-time—or big-time—crooks. This wasn’t planned by an outsider.”

  He folded his arms tight. His cold, angry eyes challenged me.

  I needed to remember that this man was a master of expression, that he knew when to frown and when to smile and when to soften—or harden—his voice as he leaned close to the jury box.

  “Did the police explore this possibility?”

  “Oh, yeah. They looked at everything. But somebody was clever, Mrs. Collins. Somebody was very, very clever.”

  He looked up at the gallery of photographs. The expression on his face was an interesting compound of suspicion, dislike, and ruthlessness.

  Light has good connotations. It can spell warmth, safety, relief.

  The light at the end of the tunnel.

  Let your light so shine before men…

  Light of my life.

  But the light spilling out in a great golden swath from the open doorway to my suite scared the hell out of me.