by Maddy Hunter
I lent a passing glance toward the sky, wondering if Carl had been transported back to Lihue yet. Our rescue chopper had dropped off the medical examiner and some other officials at the crash site, then flown Shelly and me back to the airport, where we were transferred to Wilcox Memorial Hospital. Shelly ended up getting released from the ER so fast that she popped into my cubicle to tell me she could probably still get her nails repaired, so she’d see me around.
I’d learned a few surprising facts about Shelly today. She could deck a horse in three seconds flat. She could shake off adversity like a dog shakes off water. She could ditch a friend in favor of a cheap manicure. I’d known other people like Shelly Valentine, and they all ended up the same way.
They really went places.
Come on, come on, I willed the taxi. I slid to the opposite end of my bench to see around the ambulance that was partially blocking my view, then anxiously watched cars entering the long drive that fronted the hospital. I peeked at my watch, tingly warmth creeping up my throat as each second ticked by. Where was the freaking taxi?
The emergency room door slid open and two paramedics sauntered out, one lighting up a cigarette, the other waving a styrofoam cup in his hand. “It’s a state park,” the guy with the cigarette said. “The trails need to be marked better, and if they’re not, we’re going to be out there hauling more dead bodies to the morgue.”
“They don’t want to disturb the island’s natural beauty by posting signs.”
“Hey, I’m grateful for the work, but my overtime will kill them.”
I spied a car with a roof light turning into the drive and popped up to get a better look.
“Kevin!” A woman in blue scrubs hurried out of the building to join the two paramedics. “What’s this I hear about you taking a hike today? I’ve been telling you to do that for years.”
The guy with the cigarette gave the woman a quick hug before tossing his stub to the ground and crushing it under his foot. “Must be a full moon. There are way too many weird things happening today. Did you hear about the copter crash on Na Pali? One fatality there. We’re heading out to the airport right now for pickup and transport.”
My ears perked up. They were talking about Carl. Oh, God.
“What about the one you just brought in?”
The car with the roof light drew close enough for me to read the writing on the plastic. KAUAI CAB. Yes! My taxi!
“DB on the trail in the state park.”
“Accident?” asked the nurse.
I frantically flagged the cab down. I checked my watch. Thirty-five minutes and counting.
“Not likely,” Kevin responded. “Head bashed in. No ID. What does that sound like to you?”
“The Tourism Board will be doing some fast talking about this one,” the paramedic with the styrofoam cup chimed in. “Nothing stems the flow of tourist dollars like a violent death on a hiking trail.”
I shivered at their conversation, suddenly glad to be leaving the “garden island.”
“You my fare to Nawiliwili?” the cabbie asked, through his open window.
I nodded. “I have less than thirty minutes to catch the boat. Can you get me there in time?”
He grinned with the cool confidence of a man who lives for speed. “Piece of cake.”
As I climbed into the backseat and slammed the door, the nurse’s voice drifted toward me. “Did the CSU close the trail?”
“For a while, but it’s probably open again by now.”
“Which park was it? Polihale?”
“Wailua. The Secret Falls trail.”
The Secret Falls trail? A body had been found by the Secret Falls? But…but that’s where Nana and the gang had been today. Oh, my God! What if the body belonged to someone I knew? What if —
My cabbie peeled away from the curb like a Grand Prix driver on a straightaway; tires screeching, rubber burning. Eh! I toppled onto my side in a tangle of arms and elbows, realizing that the gravitational pull of a nosediving helicopter was small potatoes compared to the g force produced by Hawaiian cab drivers. I forced my head up to read the identification card attached to the dash.
PIERO DONATI.
Donati? I dug my fingers into the back seat, holding on for dear life as we screamed around a corner on two wheels. Thank you, Jesus! There was no way I was going to miss the boat with this guy driving.
He wasn’t Hawaiian.
He was Italian!
We roared into the cruise ship terminal with a full six minutes to spare. I tipped the driver handsomely, dashed through the terminal, flashed my ID at the computer security guy, then ran up the central staircase to deck seven. “Nana?” I yelled as I pounded on her cabin door. “Are you in there?”
Five seconds passed.
Ten.
More pounding. “NANA!”
The door opened a crack. Nana poked her eye into the gap and peered out at me like the mythological Cyclops. “You got anyone with you?”
“No, I’m by myself. Are you all right? I just heard about the —”
“You can come in, then.” She opened the door another few inches, hauled me into the room, then slammed the door shut. “I woulda answered sooner, dear, but I had to clear me a path.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “We got company.”
I looked beyond her and pressed a grateful hand to my chest when I saw who the company was. “Eh! Thank God you’re all here! I was so worried!” I paused. “You are all here, aren’t you?” I squeezed past Nana, maneuvering into the cabin so I could count all their fingers and toes. The Stolees. The Teigs. Lucille. Margi. Bernice. Alice. Tilly. They were bunched shoulder to shoulder on the sofa, on the beds, on the floor. I looked left and right. “Where’s Osmond?”
I heard the resounding whoooosh of a toilet being flushed.
Okay, everyone present and accounted for.
“He’s retaining water,” Bernice nodded toward the bathroom, “so he’s taking pills to get rid of it. He’s become a human fire hydrant.”
“Smokey the Bear should hire him to put out forest fires,” Alice chimed in.
The bathroom door opened and Osmond appeared, adjusting his hearing aids as he stepped out. He regarded all the faces looking up at him and smiled perceptively. “Powerful suction, hunh? You want me to flush it again?”
“Oh, boy, you guys, I was really sweating it,” I confessed as I dropped my shoulder bag to the floor and sank down cross-legged beside it. “Someone discovered a body on the trail to the Secret Falls today, and I was terrified it might be one of you.”
“You always think the worst,” said Bernice. “You’re such an alarmist.”
Life teaches us many lessons. One of the important ones it has taught me is never to take offense at anything Bernice Zwerg says.
“Was it a hiking accident?” Tilly asked.
“I overheard a grisly conversation describing the body, so it doesn’t sound like an accident. Did any of you see anything? Were you anywhere near the trail when it happened?”
“I’m afraid we’re not going to be much help to you, dear,” Nana lamented. “We were on a trail, but it wasn’t exactly the one to the Secret Falls.” Ten sets of eyes telescoped roundly on Bernice.
“What?” she complained. “You didn’t have to follow me. You could have gone the other way. What are you? A bunch of lemmings?”
“We didn’t want you to get lost,” Grace Stolee rationalized.
“Well, don’t go pointing fingers at me,” Bernice sniped. “Margi started it.”
“I did not!” defended Margi.
“Did so!” said Bernice.
“No, suh.”
“Yes, suh.”
I looked from one woman to the other, wondering if it was possible for a Norwegian to win a Mexican standoff.
“All right!” Margi gave in. “Maybe I was partially responsible, but…I couldn’t help it. Once I get started paddling in one direction, it’s hard for me to change course.”
No doubt about it, Mar
gi had all the makings of a great political leader.
“But you headed down the wrong fork of the river,” Dick Teig scoffed. “How come you didn’t go the same way we went yesterday?”
“I thought it was the same way we went yesterday. It looked the same. Trees. Water. More trees. More water. How can you distinguish one way from another if everything looks alike?”
“Yeah,” Dick Stolee agreed. “They could use better landmarks in this place. Signposts. Billboards. A few silos.”
I rolled my eyes. “So did you come across anything on the right fork of the river that you didn’t find on the left?”
Grins. Quiet sniggers. “We did find one thing of interest,” Tilly said, dipping her head toward the opposite end of the room.
I followed her gaze to find a wooden box the size of a church hymnal sitting on the lighted vanity.
“It’s constructed of teak,” she continued. “One of the hardest and most durable woods known to man. Polished exterior. No nails. No hinges. No locks. It’s the hardwood equivalent of a brick.”
I nodded. “You found a wooden brick?”
Tilly smiled. “We found Griffin Ring’s treasure.”
“YOU WHAT?” I leaped to my feet and stumbled over a host of outstretched legs to reach the vanity. I peered down at the box, awestruck. “This is Griffin Ring’s treasure?”
“Tilly thinks so,” said Osmond, “but personally, I think it’s a doorstop.”
It was apple-peel smooth, dark and unblemished, the parallel striations in the wood grain its only decoration. “Can I touch it?” I asked, my hand hovering over the top.
“Go ahead,” said Tilly. “Everyone else has.”
I lifted the box into my hands and shook it slightly, my eyes widening when something rattled inside. “Oh, my God. There’s something in here.”
“Automatic eyebrow pencil,” said Helen.
“Tylenol gelcaps,” guessed Lucille.
“Electronic digital oral thermometer,” said Margi.
“Energizer rechargeable batteries,” theorized Alice.
Bernice shook her head, smirking. “You people are so out of touch. That thing is two hundred and forty years old. If there’s Tylenol in there, no way is it going to be in gelcap form.”
I lifted the box above my head, turning it this way and that. “How are you supposed to get into it?”
“It’s some kind of puzzle box,” Tilly said. “It probably has two pressure points that enable the lid to slide off, but we haven’t found them yet. These kinds of boxes have been quite popular throughout the centuries. People have a great fondness for enigmatic household accessories.”
I shook it again, trying to imagine what was thunking around inside. Could it be the Ring family heirloom Tilly had talked about? A brooch? An antique weapon? A priceless figurine? “How will you get it open if you can’t find the pressure points?”
Tilly nodded toward Nana. “Your grandmother suggested an X-ray.”
“And I’ve offered to take it to the clinic when we get back home and have one of the technicians do it on the QT,” Margi said conspiratorially.
I shrugged. “Why wait until then? You could have it x-rayed downstairs in the infirmary.”
I saw dubious looks being exchanged. Eyebrows being arched. Nana cleared her throat. “We decided we’re not tellin’ no one aboard ship about it, dear. It’s Tilly’s treasure, and we don’t want anyone causin’ her no fuss. We all took an oath a silence. Even Bernice.”
“But we conducted an independent poll and the result was, no one believes her,” Osmond said, which prompted every eye in the cabin to rivet on the wiry-haired gossip.
“What?” Bernice griped at everyone. “Don’t look at me like that! I wouldn’t rat out Tilly.”
“Would so,” said Margi.
“Would not,” said Bernice.
“Yes, suh.”
“No, suh.”
Bernice would probably rat out the pope, but on a more practical level, hadn’t we just had this conversation? “So, where did you find the box?” I tossed out.
“We was readin’ the squiggles on the map wrong from the beginnin’,” Nana explained, as she and everyone else whipped out their own personal copy. “This squiggle here is the fork in the river, not an imitation wave. And all these other little squiggles are a little waterfall, not the big one at the Secret Falls. And the X shows where you gotta stop, not where the treasure is buried. You can’t go no farther there ’cause the river narrows down too much and gets too shallow.”
“After we reached the impasse and went onshore to eat our box lunches, we found the little waterfall in a lovely glade,” Tilly continued. “But we have one of the Dicks to thank for finding the treasure.”
Dick Teig shrugged. “It was nothin’.”
“Go ahead,” Helen urged proudly. “Tell Emily what you did.”
He lifted his shoulders again. “I sat down.”
Applause. High fives. Laughter.
“On what?” I asked, noting that the teak box wasn’t splintered into a bazillion pieces.
“A heap of rocks by the waterfall. It looked pretty stable until I sat myself down, then the whole pile dislodged beneath me.”
Hunh. I guess even rock piles had a maximum weight limit. “Is that where you found the box?” I asked. “Under the rocks?”
“Show her, Dick,” Grace Stolee instructed her husband.
Dick unwedged himself from his seat on the sofa and handed me his camcorder. “Just press the button there, and it’ll play back.”
I set the box back down on the vanity, punched the button on the camcorder, and watched the action unfold on the display screen.
Dick Teig, flat on his butt near a little waterfall, a surprised look his face. Laughter in the background.
Dick shaking his fist at the displaced rocks behind him. Growly noises from his throat.
Dick tilting his head as if he’s just noticed something of interest in the cavity where the rocks collapsed.
Dick rolling over onto his hands and knees for a better look. More hoots and hollers, with people talking over each other.
The back of Dick’s head.
A blank screen.
I waited for the picture to return. And waited. And waited. “There’s nothing on the screen,” I fussed. “It’s gone blank.”
“I know what you’re looking at,” Dick Stolee spoke up. “It’s not blank. That’s just a close-up of Dick’s head.”
I squinted at the image. Oh! I should have been able to figure that out. Duh.
The picture wobbled, followed by a more steady shot. Okay. Here we go. Hands grappling at the rock. Yanking. Wrenching. Grunting. Muted gasps of surprise.
A close-up of the top of an old chest that looked to be the size of a shoe box. “Oh, my. That thing looks like a real antique. What’s it made of? Looks like some kind of metal.”
“Lead,” said Tilly. “The perfect vault for a wooden box. It won’t rust. It won’t weather. And the lid was sealed so tightly, it didn’t allow any moisture into the chamber that might have caused the teak to decay.”
I scanned the floor of the cabin. “Did you bring the chest back with you, too?”
“It was much too heavy to transport in our kayaks,” said Tilly. “And we weren’t at all sure about handling the lead, so we left it there.”
I returned my attention to the display screen to view fists beating on the lid. Dueling voices. An angry Uff da as someone broke a nail. A Swiss army knife angling into the picture. The lid of the chest being slowly levered off. Oohs. Aahs. An initial shot of the teak box lying within the lead chest. A slow three-sixty of the stunned reactions on everyone’s face.
“Balls!” yelled Dick Teig. “Check out the time!”
Gasps. Shouts. Wails.
The floor seemed to tilt as the group struggled to their collective feet. Bumping. Shoving. Hysterically out of control. “How did that happen?” cried Helen. “It’s a quarter past six! We’ll never make din
ner on time!”
Not only had my group lost all sense of direction, they seemed to have lost all sense of time. Wow. Folks back home were never going to believe this.
They rushed toward the door, jamming up in the tiny entryway like jellybeans escaping a narrow-necked bottle. “My camcorder!” Dick Stolee called back to me, extending his arm through the crowd.
As I attempted to depress the button to stop the replay, I stood motionless for a heartbeat, my eyes glued to the display screen as Bailey Howard’s image stared back at me in the final frame. Oh, geesch! How could I have forgotten about Bailey? I was happy to see she was still alive.
The most disturbing and baffling question now was…who was dead?
Chapter 11
With the elevator being hogged by the dinner crowd, I took the stairs back up to my cabin, my mind churning with unanswered questions.
If Tilly and the gang had found Griffin Ring’s treasure, what had Percy and Basil found that needed to be stored in the ship’s safe? What had Nils and the boys dug up that Ansgar had taken off with? Did I dare believe anything that Jennifer or Shelly had told me? And what about Bailey? Was she the dedicated grad student she appeared to be, or an ambitious killer with a flair for hip eyewear? The real problem for me was, whose version of the truth was I supposed to believe when everyone seemed to have an ax to grind?
I hit deck ten sucking in air like a Hoover WindTunnel. Inserting my room key into its slot, I realized this was the result when your only cardiovascular activity of the day was a protracted scream in the cockpit of a crashing helicopter. And a protracted scream might not even be classified as cardiovascular. It might be pulmonary.
I pushed open my door, puzzled by an unexpected smell. I sniffed the air suspiciously. What in the —? I punched the light switch on the wall, then stood paralyzed as I gazed around the interior of my Royal Family Suite.
Roses. On every surface. In every space. An ocean of color in coral and pink, cream and red, lemon and blush. I looked from arrangement to arrangement, feeling as if I’d either stepped into the Secret Garden, or the Serene Reflections viewing room at Heavenly Host Funeral Home. Sweetheart roses. Long-stemmed roses. Tea roses. Miniature roses. Damask roses. In sprays and bouquets, vases and baskets. On the floor. On the counters. On multitiered pedestals that stretched from one end of the suite to the other. If there were any roses left on the islands of Hawaii, I’d be very surprised.