Vacations Can Be Murder: The Second Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  He took my hand across the table. "I'm glad Brad and Stacy eloped, too."

  Dessert consisted of something white and sticky and sweet enough to please even me.

  Drake drove back to the hotel by way of the small boat harbor. A sultry tropic breeze caressed my neck while we stood for a few moments on the pier. Lights across the harbor shot wavy ribbons of silver and gold out over the dark water.

  Small sailboats rocked gently in their slips, mooring lines creaking rhythmically. The barges and cargo vessels were dark hulks, lacking activity, lit only by sodium vapor lights lining the dock’s walkways.

  In general, the area was quiet this time of night, although we caught fragments of rock music from a club somewhere in the distance. He put his arm around my shoulders and I leaned into the comfort of it.

  This time, he rode the elevator with me to the seventh floor. I handed him my door key, and he graciously unlocked it. His kiss was warm, making my insides feel the way hot fudge looks when it slides off the ice cream and forms a puddle in the dish. He broke away before I was quite ready.

  "I'll call you tomorrow. Maybe we can take a ride up into the mountains?"

  I ran my fingers down the right side of his face, and nodded. I stepped into my room and the door clicked firmly between us. This was best. I'd already opened up to him more than I usually do. Must be the tropical air.

  I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and fell into a pleasant saki-laden sleep, the faint scent of Drake's aftershave clinging to my hair.

  The ringing of the phone was harsh and sudden, and I bounded up off the pillow before I had regained consciousness. My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my limbs, and it took me several seconds to figure out where I was. The flashing red light led me to the offensive instrument.

  "Hello?" My throat was thick with sleep, and only the last part of the word came out.

  "Charlie, it's Drake."

  "Drake, what is it?" My fingers reached for the lamp, almost knocking its oversized shade off. The sudden light made my eyes slam back shut. My fingers groped around on the nightstand for my travel alarm. Three o'clock. Ugh.

  "...been arrested on suspicion of murder."

  I dragged myself back to the voice inside the receiver. "Wait, Drake, what?"

  "Mack! Mack has been arrested for the murder."

  Chapter 5

  "When did this happen?" My brain cells were finally beginning minimal function.

  "Around midnight, I guess."

  At midnight, he had been kissing me at my door.

  "Mack said the police came to his house late, and took him downtown. They just now let him use the phone. Like he was a menace to society, or something. Charlie, this is ridiculous. I've got to help him."

  I struggled to think. There wasn't much we could do in the middle of the night, and I told him so. I suggested that he meet me here at the hotel at six, and we'd go to the station together. Surely, someone would be there so we could post bond by seven or so. I could tell he was anxious to do something right away, but he grudgingly agreed.

  I set the travel alarm for five-thirty, and fell back on my pillow, wondering how I manage to get so entangled in other people's problems. I only wanted a vacation...

  The alarm rang so quickly, I thought I had mistakenly set the time wrong. But, no. It really was five-thirty. I toyed with the idea of pretending I didn't live here anymore, but gave it up.

  Whether or not I got involved in Mack Garvey's problems, I did want to see Drake again. As irritating as it was to think of Akito and Mack and their little squabble, I could appreciate Drake's loyalty to his friend.

  He was waiting for me in the lobby, and I suggested that we find some coffee before we tackled the forces in blue. I reasonably pointed out that it was unlikely that we'd get much action at the station before seven, and I don't function at all well in the mornings without fuel. Besides, having breakfast would give him a chance to fill me in on whatever I better know before going up against Akito again.

  Outside, the sky was pearl gray, the sun not fully up yet. Banks of low dark clouds squatted on the horizon. It was impossible to tell whether they would later move toward us, or away. Rust colored mud puddles lined the uncurbed streets, the remains of showers that had moved through sometime during the night. The streets were quiet, traffic at a minimum in the pre-dawn. The street lights began to shut off, one by one, as we left the main drag and wound our way among the side streets.

  A round woman in a purple flowered mumu stood in her front yard an called to a little dog who was paying not the slightest attention as he trotted away from her.

  At the next house, a sleepy-looking man with tousled hair padded out to the sidewalk in his rubber flip-flops. He gazed around, perhaps searching for his morning paper. We passed before he found it.

  Drake took me to a tan cinderblock structure called the Tip Top Bakery and Café. Paint flaked from the 50s style building, leaving chips on the sidewalk and surrounding shrubbery like dirty snow. Drake turned into the parking lot slowly, guiding the truck between potholes. He assured me that it was much less scary than it looked. I had to take his word for it—nothing else was open.

  There were only three cars in the lot at this hour. Drake pulled his mini-pickup in beside them. They were obviously all locals, not a red tourist convertible in sight.

  There was a hulking old Plymouth Barracuda beside me. Its door frame was intact, but not much else was. Ragged bands of rust outlined the doors and the car's top. In its advanced stage of leprosy, parts could begin falling off at any time. I opened my door carefully to avoid touching it. It was probably contagious, and I didn't want to take chances with Drake's truck.

  Inside, the cafe was one large room, divided into a small section and a large one. The small side held a couple of bakery cases and a shelf unit, empty now except for one loaf of bread apparently left from yesterday. Heavenly smells from the kitchen indicated that the shelves would soon be refilled.

  A long counter with a dozen short stools facing it ran the length of the back wall. Two of the stools were occupied by men in work clothes. Each man had a cup of coffee, a donut, and an open newspaper in front of him.

  The remaining large section of the room was filled with formica tables in assorted sizes. Either they catered to big families here, or the banquet business was pretty hot. Several of the tables were set to accommodate ten or twelve people.

  We took a booth near the windows, three booths away from the only other patrons in the place. The vinyl seat was cracked in a pattern like a broken windshield. The backs of my legs were glad I hadn't worn shorts. Drake recommended the macadamia nut pancakes and coffee and that sounded good to me.

  "Okay," I began, "what evidence do they have against Mack?"

  He sighed. "Because there were no footprints around the body, and it was nowhere near the hiking trail, they conclude that the man was dropped from a helicopter."

  "That's not evidence! That's what my eighth grade math teacher used to call a WEG, a Wild-Eyed Guess. No way they can hold him on that."

  "There's more. They found blood in the ship."

  "Mack's helicopter? Have they matched the type to the victim? Did Mack have any explanation for it?"

  "I don't know," he said miserably. "We only got to speak for a minute last night. He couldn't really tell me anything."

  I reached out to touch the back of his hand. Clearly, he was upset about the mess Mack was in, and I wasn't helping much. All I could do was try to reassure him that it would all work out.

  "Tell me more about Mack."

  "He's been in his own business here about five years. I've worked for him three. I think he's a pretty straightforward guy. Competition here is fierce, and Mack is a scrapper. But I know he's honest, and he works hard for what he's got. He learned to fly in Vietnam, and has been at it ever since. He's flown all over the world."

  "What about his personal life?"

  "Single, no kids. I think there was a brief marriage years
ago, but he never talks about it. A helicopter pilot's nomad life doesn't lend itself to lasting relationships."

  Drake's eyes focused briefly on a spot out in the middle of the room, then he busied himself putting sugar in his coffee. He didn't elaborate, and I didn't ask.

  "Mack's got his problems, but basically he's a good guy to work for. He gave me a job during an especially bad time in my life, and he's always been fair with me."

  The pancakes arrived then, and we devoted our attention to them. They were heavenly—slightly crisp on the surface with generous bits of macadamia nuts inside. I smothered mine with pink guava jam.

  “How did you get into flying helicopters?” I asked Drake. Our initial hunger had been satisfied and we’d both paused between bites.

  “Vietnam, like most everyone,” he replied. “After that, I put in quite a few years in South America, the Gulf of Mexico, the Rockies.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “I’ve lost a lot of friends over the years.” He chewed slowly, remembering long-gone faces.

  “Have you had a lot of close calls yourself?” I pictured scenes of violent fiery crashes like in the movies.

  He shrugged. “I guess I’m more cautious than most. I check every aircraft I get into; I preflight them as though each flight were the first. I’ve caught a lot of potential mechanical failures that way. But it’s hard to catch them all. I’ve had six engine failures over the years.”

  My hand stopped midway to my coffee cup.

  “Yes, I’m still here to tell about it,” he chuckled. He patted my hand. “A helicopter’s a bit different than an airplane. We execute a procedure called autorotation. As long as we have a reasonably flat open space it’s not difficult to make a safe landing. And you can bet I practice it with every new aircraft I get into.”

  He spoke offhandedly enough that I felt at ease. Obviously, he knew what he was doing. The conversation turned back to Mack and his problems while we finished the last of our coffee.

  The sun was fully up when we emerged from the Tip Top. Traffic rushed by, cars in a big hurry to carry their owners to work. Drake guided his truck down Akahi Street, made two or three short turns and pulled in at the police station. The yellowed cinderblock structure looked just the same as the last time I’d visited—was it really less than twenty-four hours ago?—but there were very few cars in the lot and no women waiting on the front steps.

  An hour later, we had Mack out on bond, and were seated in his office. Although I had only met him briefly two days before, he looked ten years older than I remembered. The fluorescent office lighting cast a harsh glare on his face, accentuating an underlying grayness in his skin. The furrows between his brows had grown deeper and the outer corners of the brown eyes drooped downward in resignation.

  The man was worried.

  He was clearly in no shape to fly tours, so Drake offered to take the first one of the day. Melanie would rearrange the rest of the day's schedule.

  Drake left to preflight the aircraft, and I decided I better get to know everything I could about Mack Garvey. Naturally, my first question was whether he even wanted my help. I wanted to think that I could easily walk out, and spend the rest of my week guilt free on the beach, but I still seem to have a soft spot for a guy who's getting an unfair shake.

  "Drake seems to have a lot of faith in you," he told me wearily. "And it's a safe bet that Akito won't be looking to clear me. He's already puffed up thinking he's solved the case."

  "But, Mack, without evidence they won't get a conviction. A decent lawyer would have you off in no time."

  "Yeah. That sounds good in theory, but there are a few things you don't understand about life in the islands. There's a good-old-boy system here that rivals anything I've ever seen. If your last name isn't Fujimoto or Nakamura or ... well you get the idea, then you ain't in.

  “A white boy like me, a haole, is a foreigner. Doesn't matter that I've been here ten years, I'm still the newcomer. Finding an attorney that would really go to bat for me will be tough. Drake told me a little about your background. I'd really appreciate anything you could do for me. I'll be glad to pay you, reimburse your expenses, whatever."

  "I'm doing this as a favor to Drake," I told him, trying to ignore his obvious prejudices. "Although you might rather hire yourself a local investigator, someone who knows the situation here better than I do."

  He sighed deeply. "That's about the same as hiring a local attorney. There's only one PI firm here on the island, and the guy is in really tight with Akito. No way he'd save my skin.

  "Besides that, Charlie, no matter what the verdict, just going to trial will cost me my business. Word gets around. I'll lose all the contacts I've carefully built, those who send customers my way. I can't afford not to be out there flying."

  His voice cracked, and I stared down at my fingers. The poor guy really was desperate.

  "Okay, then, let's get down to business. Tell me everything the police have. Then tell me everything you know that the police don't know yet." I had the distinct feeling there was more to this story than Drake comprehended.

  Mack buzzed Melanie on the intercom, and asked her to bring us coffee. He closed his door softly behind her after she brought the two cups. I stirred two lumps of sugar into mine, giving him a few moments to put his thoughts together.

  "The police believe the body was dropped from a helicopter, because of the remote location. It was too far inland to have washed up from the sea. The Kalalau hiking trail does go up that valley, but the body was way off the trail, several hundred yards, in fact. Apparently, the guy died as a result of a blow to the back of the head. Seems to me, if he had wandered off the trail, and fallen off one of those rugged peaks, there would have been bruises and scrapes all over the body. But they said there was only the one injury.

  “The terrain was too rugged for a landing, but they figure a helicopter could fly in there and hover a few feet off the ground, and drop a body out." He paused, staring at the wall.

  "I guess the other incriminating thing they have that ties me in is the blood they found in my aircraft."

  "What can you tell me about that?"

  "Same thing I told them. On my last flight Friday, the day before the body was found, a little girl sitting in the back seat had a gusher of a nosebleed. Her mother managed to get it stopped, so it didn't become a medical emergency, but she did leave a pretty good sized spot on my carpet. It was the end of the day, and my mechanic wasn't around, so I cleaned it up the best I could. I figured I'd get him out there in the morning with some of that super cleaner he has, to work on it some more. By the next morning, it had slipped my mind."

  "Any chance of finding the girl and her mother to verify that?"

  "I doubt it." His shoulders sagged. "I had Melanie look back over Friday's manifest. The woman's name was Linda Smith, from Los Angeles. They were a walk-in, so we didn't get their hotel. By now, there's a good chance they've left the island.

  “Well, there are always DNA tests, Mack. It can be proven that it wasn’t Page’s blood,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, but I can’t afford to let it go that far. Like I said, even the hint of involvement in this could put me out of business.”

  I jotted some notes in a little spiral I always carry with me, and tried to imagine a possible sequence of events that would tie in with what Mack was telling me.

  "Mack, wouldn't it be physically impossible for one man to fly a helicopter, and push a body out the door? I mean, you have to keep your hands and feet on the controls at all times, don't you?"

  "Exactly. That's what I tried to tell Akito." He stood up abruptly, and paced to the far side of the room. "That's the frustrating thing. They just wouldn't listen to me."

  "So, how do they think you might have accomplished the deed?"

  "With the help of my mechanic, Joe Esposito. We had scheduled maintenance at the hangar that evening. Joe was supposed to change a tail rotor blade that had developed some hairline cracks in the l
aminate, and then I was to come out and start the aircraft, so we could track the blades."

  "So you were both at the hangar that night?"

  "Well, that's the thing. I never did see Joe. I finished my last flight, and left the ship parked at the hangar. I grabbed a box of chicken at Kentucky Fried, and came to the office to do some FAA paperwork. Normally, Joe would do the work, then call me either here or at home to let me know when he was ready for me."

  "But he didn't call?"

  "Drake called about ten o'clock. Teased me about burning the midnight oil, and told me I was wearing myself too thin. He suggested that I go on home. He could come out early the next morning and do the tracking before the first flight. Truth is, I was beat. I'd just done three days in a row, seven flights a day. It didn't take much to convince me. I tried to phone Joe at the hangar and let him know the plan. When there was no answer, I went on home."

  "Have the police talked to Joe?"

  "I don't know."

  "Okay, Mack, now I need to know the rest. You knew Gilbert Page, didn't you?"

  He stared out the window, toward the airport. I could hear rotor blades in the distance. He was struggling to decide how much he should tell.

  "Mack," I said, trying to keep my voice gentle, "you might as well tell me all of it. You can bet the police will find out, anyway. I can't help you if you withhold information."

  He came back to his chair, and flopped heavily into it. He ran his fingers through his hair, then leaned his chin against his entwined fingers. His eyes closed for a moment, while he took a deep breath.

  "Yes, I knew Gilbert Page." His voice had a ragged weariness to it.