Vacations Can Be Murder: The Second Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  Susan Turner was leaning against the duty sergeant's desk when we walked in. She wore a white halter-top sundress. The back was completely bare, and there were enough cutouts along her ribcage that the little remaining fabric was merely a formality. The skirt consisted of two rows of ruffles, and hit her about six inches above the knee.

  Her long blond hair was loose this time, brushing the middle of her bare back in soft curls. She had a large red hibiscus tucked behind her right ear. A red bangle bracelet decorated her left arm, and red pumps with four inch heels completed the ensemble.

  "I don't see why I can't go back to California now," she pressed. "I've got a business to run. Things just don't go right without the boss there."

  The duty officer sat back, implacable. His dusky face, smooth as coffee laced with cream, didn't budge.

  "Akito's orders," was all he said. His eyes dropped to her cleavage.

  Susan turned slightly just then, and caught sight of me. A funny look came over her face, like a kid who's been caught earnestly telling a whopping lie. She didn't know I'd visited California, but somehow she knew that I knew she was full of shit.

  I didn't say a word.

  Susan flashed one final look of irritation toward the officer at the desk, then turned abruptly. Her short skirt flounced upward, giving the men one nice leg shot. A cloud of Emeraude descended chokingly when she passed. It took a full minute for the air to become breatheable after she walked out.

  Officer Akito wasn't in, and wouldn't be the rest of the day, I was informed. I told the sergeant on duty briefly why I had come, and he took a few notes. I wasn't convinced he really gave a damn, one way or the other, but at least I had done my civic duty.

  Drake took my hand as we walked down the steps.

  "You need a break,” he said. “How about coming out to my place?"

  "To see your etchings?" I teased.

  "Well, I'm fresh out of etchings right now, but I can cook a pretty decent steak."

  "Sounds good to me." I leaned over for another quick sample of his mouth.

  We drove back to the hotel to pick up his truck, and leave the rental. It was nice to be chauffeured. As a driver, I’d been so intent on the traffic I hadn't had a chance to do much sightseeing here.

  The ocean reflected the deep blue sky, and I enjoyed the glimpses I got now and then as we traveled highway 56 toward Kapaa, the island's largest town. Fields of sugar cane surrounded us, like disorderly corn stalks, fallen out of their ranks and hanging around in clumps.

  As we neared the Wailua River, I could see a long stretch of coastline—palm trees in the foreground, the brilliant blue water laced with white foam, the distant mountains hazy in the humid air. A few people stretched out on towels or lounge chairs on the sand, while half a dozen local boys on boogie boards braved the churning surf.

  Just beyond the river, we turned inland. Groves of coconut palms flanked the road on the right, while the other side boasted flowering plumeria trees in showy clusters of brilliant white, yellow and pink. The road began to climb and the area became residential. A couple of turns brought us again into open fields with few houses. Drake guided the truck into a narrow lane.

  He called his house a cottage. He had built it himself right after his divorce. He shyly told me I was the first woman he'd brought here.

  It was a tiny place, cozy and remarkably homey for a bachelor's house. It sat on a large lot, an acre or so, I'd guess, and was nestled among mango, banana, and papaya trees. A Norfolk pine at the back of the house must have stood at least sixty feet tall. Beyond the trees, I glimpsed the top of the immense Waialeale crater. Today, again, the crest was obscured by a topping of wispy cloud.

  The cottage was rectangular, one short end being the front. That entire side was taken up with windows facing out over the valley. The Hawaiian style roof rose steeply to a high peak. The exterior was painted pale gray with white trim. A deck railing of white circled the perimeter.

  Inside, everything was neat and compact. There was a good-sized living room which took full advantage of the view from the large picture windows. The small kitchen featured built-in appliances, including a stacked washer/dryer. A pineapple, left to ripen on the counter, filled the air with sweet perfume.

  The bedroom and bath were small, too, but neatly arranged with places built in for everything. The bed was covered with a blue and white quilt, obviously hand made.

  Helicopter memorabilia decorated the walls, and Drake spent some time taking me around to view each item. He had artifacts from a couple of stints in South America, a deadly-looking spear gun from some remote south Pacific island, and pictures of himself flying various aircraft in locations ranging from the ice-white wilderness of Alaska to the scene of a fourteen car pileup on a lonely stretch of Nevada highway.

  "This is the most tame my life has ever been," he told me. "Going to work each morning, and coming home every night is a real luxury in this profession."

  I sensed a hint of regret in his voice, and wondered if that had been the problem in his marriage. It must be hard to keep a relationship going when you can't be together much. And yet, they had stuck it out a long time. I had to admire that—me, whose only long-term relationship has been living with my dog for ten years.

  He poured two glasses of white wine, and we took them out to the deck which circled the house on three sides. The Wailua Valley stretched out before us. Acres of ranch land lay all around. Cattle, horses, and goats grazed in neatly fenced pastures. I couldn’t remember ever seeing this much green in my life. Like most tourists, I'd had no idea that Hawaii didn't consist entirely of lava cliffs, sandy beaches, and palm trees.

  The sky was clear and a light warm breeze swept over us. I thought of the chill April winds we'd had at home for the past month. This felt like heaven.

  The wine coursed through my body, and I began to feel completely relaxed for the first time in days. No matter how much I'd tried to convince myself that I was on vacation, and Mack's problems were not mine, anytime I'm on a case, I begin to take it personally. It's just me.

  Drake reached out and stroked my cheek with the back of his index finger.

  "You needed an afternoon off," he said.

  The sun was setting behind the extinct crater, as we cooked a couple of steaks on the hibachi. I watched in silence as he expertly blended ingredients for a Caesar salad.

  "Just because a guy lives alone doesn't mean he has to subsist on fast food," he said, catching my fascinated stare.

  I didn't want to admit to him that I'm basically a microwave person myself. It's just so much easier when cooking for one.

  He spread a cloth out on his small table, and lit a candle for the middle. A romantic man of many talents. I had never met anyone quite like him.

  After dinner, he put on soft music and we talked a lot, stopping to dance together in the living room whenever a good song came on. When he offered the use of a spare toothbrush if I'd stay the night, I accepted.

  Chapter 11

  I awakened to a gentle nudging.

  "Come on," Drake murmured into my neck. "This is my last morning off this week, and we're going to use it to good advantage."

  After last night's marathon, I marveled at the man's stamina, but it turned out he had something else in mind. By the time I'd finished a revitalizing five minutes under the hot shower, and slipped back into my jeans and t-shirt, I could hear him rummaging around outside. I went to investigate. He was digging through a crowded storage room at the back of the house.

  "I've got an extra helmet in here somewhere," he muttered, poking his head up over a dusty cardboard box. A quick movement on the doorjamb caught my attention, and I jumped back, drawing in a sharp breath that was just short of a shriek.

  "Only a gecko," Drake assured me.

  The small brown lizard-thing slithered up the side of the house, away from me. I took a couple of quick breaths, and faked a smile, not wanting to be too much of a sissy. Drake was back up to his elbows in a cardboar
d box, paying no attention to the pounding sound my heart was making.

  I didn't offer to help him. I knew the small, crowded, dusty place was harboring a wealth of bugs, lizards, and other creepy unmentionables. It took a couple of minutes for my pulse to settle down.

  In the meantime, Drake emerged with two helmets in hand.

  I looked past the store room, and saw a gleaming black Honda motorcycle parked beside the house. It was one of those big touring bikes built for two. Would the many facets of this man never cease to amaze me?

  "I even dusted off the cobwebs for you," he said, extending the helmet.

  I took the headgear from him and surreptitiously peeked inside. All clear. I tried it on for size. Pretty close.

  "You've been so busy spending your vacation helping my friend," he said, "that I want to treat you to a morning away from it all."

  "I thought that's what last night was for," I told him.

  "Umm, so it was. Well, you need to get a look at some of the island, too."

  He started the bike, and let it warm up while he went back to lock the front door.

  "Climb on," he invited, once he was seated. Each of the helmets was rigged with a small microphone, so we could converse over the noise of the engine.

  I'd forgotten how much fun it is to get out on the road like this. My motorcycle days had been confined to a few weeks back in high school when I dated a wild guy with a Harley. It had been right after my parents died, and I guess I did some pretty crazy things. Looking back, it's probably amazing I made it through that time alive.

  Drake rode with the caution that naturally comes with middle age, although he fully enjoyed the power of the machine and its closeness to the road. His expert handling of the bike through traffic soon reassured me.

  We headed north, toward Hanalei. High clouds dotted the sky in puffs, none threatening. Today, the ocean was a deep gray-blue, the surf higher than I'd seen before. The same local boys on their boogie boards dotted the water around Wailua, but apparently it was too rough for the tourists to handle. All the vehicles along the small beach were local trucks or rusted out island cars—no rentals.

  Traffic was a heavy slow-moving stream as we approached Kapaa. There was no alternative but to get in line, and adjust to the leisurely pace.

  We passed little strip shopping centers filled with small touristy clothing shops. I wondered how many of them could survive. There was a McDonalds on our left, then a Safeway—little familiarities in an atmosphere that was otherwise exotic to me.

  Occasionally, a driver in the endless line would pause, waving through some poor soul who wanted to join us from a side street. This driver courtesy was one more foreign idea to me. I commented on it to Drake.

  “Hey, this is life in the fast lane here,” he replied.

  There was a certain appeal to the unhurried pace, the idea that life could exist without blaring horns and the one-finger salute from other drivers. Whether I could really ever settle into it, I wasn’t sure.

  We passed most of the commercial buildings, and within a few minutes, left the thickest of the populated area behind.

  On the open road, I breathed deeply of the fishy sea air. Soon, the road curved inland enough that we only had occasional glimpses of the water. We cruised past small housing developments, with tiny yards where people had set up stands to sell flower leis, and the bananas, papayas, and coconuts which grew beside the houses. When we weren't talking on the intercom, FM radio played.

  Drake pointed out historic sites along the way, dating back to the mid-eighteen hundreds when the missionaries came. At Princeville, a modern resort community, he stopped at a small market. We bought sandwiches and sodas for a picnic lunch. He tucked the bag inside his light jacket, and we headed north once more.

  The highway became narrow, as it wound down into the Hanalei Valley. A brilliant green patchwork of taro fields covered the valley floor, and we crossed several one-lane bridges before passing through Hanalei.

  "Lumahai Beach is one of our better known," Drake told me, "the one where the movie South Pacific was filmed."

  I remembered it from the helicopter tour. Drake guided the Honda off to the side, and parked under the trees to have our sandwiches. The water was turquoise in the protected bay, darkening beyond the reef to a rich, deep blue. The sand was choppy with footprints, although we saw no one.

  "I feel guilty, taking time off for sightseeing when Mack is still under suspicion," I told Drake.

  He lifted the tab on his soda can. It fizzed briefly, releasing pressure. "Look, you're on vacation here. You are already doing Mack a huge favor, putting in this much time on the case. You can afford one morning to relax."

  "I know, but I tend to get restless when something's unsolved. I feel like I need to be working."

  "What do you have so far? Who are your suspects?"

  "I guess Catherine Page tops my list. She admitted to me the other day that she hated Gil with a passion. I've seen women like her before, Drake. They live with an abusive man for years, letting themselves get pushed around and pushed around. Then, something gives. They just can't take it anymore. Usually, they'll just divorce the guy, leaving him wondering what went wrong. Because the woman hasn't been allowed to voice a complaint for years, and because the men are absolutely blind to their own behavior, the husband usually has no idea why she left."

  "So, why wouldn't Catherine have simply left Gil?"

  "Hard to say, but I'd guess the reason had to do with her son, and money. She might not have been forceful enough to push for her rights under California's community property laws, and she felt that she'd never get a fair shake. It's a pretty sure bet that Gil could and would have hired the toughest attorney he could find.

  "Also, I got the distinct impression that she and Joe Esposito know each other. Catherine wouldn't have had the nerve to deliver the fatal blow personally, but she could have paid someone to do it. Someone with a hot temper."

  "But, Joe?"

  "How well do you know him, Drake? Maybe I'm wrong."

  "I guess I really don't know him that well," he admitted. "When I started working for Mack three years ago, Joe was already his mechanic. He keeps pretty much to himself. Most of the Portuguese here do. They hang around together, but don't mix much with others. I think he likes the cock fights on Saturday nights—I've heard him mention that a couple of times. Heck, I don't even know whether he has a family."

  "Well, I don't know. I'm still looking for some evidence. At this point, all I have are suspicions."

  A flicker of a thought crossed my mind—something Mack had said yesterday.

  "Drake, remember when Mack said he left the hangar after the argument with Page?"

  "Yeah."

  "He said Joe's truck wasn't in the parking lot. He said his car and Gil's were the only two out there. If Gil was killed at the hangar, then what happened to his car?"

  My mind tried to reconstruct the rest of the conversation, to find some kind of thread I could grasp.

  "Mack looked pretty distraught yesterday," Drake said. "Maybe he's got things mixed up. I like Mack, and I sure want to think he's innocent."

  "But, you have some doubt?"

  He carefully folded the plastic wrap from his sandwich into a tiny square and stared at it, squeezing it between his fingers before answering.

  "Drake?"

  "Remember the morning I took the first flight for Mack? The morning after he'd been arrested?"

  I nodded, and waited to see what he was getting at.

  "When I entered my flight time in the aircraft logbook, I rechecked the math back over the previous week. It's force of habit with me, since the maintenance schedule is based on the number of hours flown. I've always made it a habit to recheck the hours every week or two."

  Something about this was making him uncomfortable, but I let him take his time.

  "Anyway, the figures Mack had written in for Friday looked to me like they might have been changed. A number that had been wr
itten in as a three, had been changed to a two." He paused, and I watched him wrestle with the problem.

  "What does that mean, Drake?"

  "Well it could be innocent, Charlie. I mean, we all have done it, where we write something down wrong, and then scratch in the correct figure over it."

  "But, this just happened to be Friday night, right?"

  "Right."

  "And, what would it mean if the two was really supposed to be a three?"

  "It would mean that the aircraft was flown an hour longer than the record shows it was. An hour would have easily been enough time to fly to the Hanakapiai and back."

  Chapter 12

  I felt badly for Drake, having to voice suspicions against his friend. I thought of the financial statements I'd seen on Mack's desk the day before. It worried me, too, that I might eventually have to present evidence against Mack. That kind of situation had never happened to me before, and I wasn't sure how I'd handle it.

  The matter of the argument at the maintenance hangar bothered me still. Mack had lied by omission, when he hadn't told me about it until I questioned him. Then, when he did finally admit it, his version and Joe's were so different.

  Who was lying, and why?

  I stared out at the water, and rubbed my aching temples. I was supposed to be on Mack's side. I hated doubting him.

  Drake moved around behind me, and began to massage my shoulders. It felt good, a reassurance that someone had confidence in me.

  "Come on," he said, patting my behind. "Let's ride the rest of the way to the end of the road."

  We remounted the motorcycle, and he plugged my headphone into the intercom system once again. We passed a few scattered businesses along the road, mostly unimposing little real estate offices and boogie board rental shops, but one caught my eye. Boat rentals. Their sign announced that they had daily and weekly rates.