Right from the Gecko

by Cynthia Baxter

  These days, free-spirited natives and fun-seeking sailors had been replaced by free-spirited, fun-seeking tourists. The low, flat-roofed buildings housed art galleries, jewelry stores, clothing boutiques, and restaurants, and the narrow sidewalks were crowded with out-of-town visitors strolling around the lively streets of the charming downtown area.

  I, however, was in no mood for strolling. Not when I was frantic over the possibility that Holly Gruen might have already bolted. I half-jogged toward the coffee shop she had chosen as our meeting place, jostling a few surprised-looking tourists and trying to make up for it by muttering “Sorry” and “Excuse me” every time I took a breath.

  I turned a corner and spotted the Bean Scene. I was overcome with relief, although that feeling pretty much vanished as soon as I glanced at my watch and saw that I was more than fifteen minutes late.

  I pushed open the door, cringing at the blast of air-conditioning that assaulted me. Scanning the coffee shop, I saw that only two or three of the Formica tables were in use. The small eatery appeared to be more popular with locals than tourists—although in the middle of the afternoon, it clearly wasn’t particularly popular with anyone.

  Only one of the tables was occupied by a young woman sitting alone. Even though she’d pulled out one of the laminated menus wedged between the plastic ketchup and mustard bottles and left it open in front of her, she kept glancing around furtively.

  “Holly?” I asked as I neared the table. When she nodded, I added, “Sorry I’m late.”

  What struck me most about Holly Gruen was that, physically, she was the exact opposite of Marnie. While Marnie had a tiny frame that gave her the appearance of a wood sprite, the other female reporter who had worked at the Maui Dispatch had a stocky build. Her straight, dark-brown hair was cut chin-length and tucked behind her ears, with no signs of the punky style Karen Nelson claimed she had once adopted.

  She wore eyeglasses with black plastic frames, their severity surpassed only by the color of the black cotton blouse she was wearing. The shirt was huge, probably a man’s size. I suspected its primary function was to conceal as much of her as possible.

  As for the color, I couldn’t remember having seen anybody else on Maui dressed in black. Somehow, it didn’t fit in. Not when all the lush, fragrant hibiscus and palm trees made it practically impossible not to grab the first brightly colored garment you saw and put it on.

  I suddenly understood why Karen Nelson had become alarmed when Holly started showing up at the Dispatch with spiked hair and short flouncy skirts.

  “I was halfway out the door,” she announced petulantly as I took a seat opposite her. She sat hunched over the table, barely raising her head as she spoke to me. “I was counting down from one hundred. If you didn’t show up by the time I got to zero, I was going to leave.”

  “What number were you down to?”

  “Twelve.”

  Yikes, I thought. “In that case, I’m really sorry I’m late.”

  I was already concluding that Holly was Marnie’s opposite in other ways besides physical appearance. While Marnie had possessed enough energy and optimism to be considered practically manic, Holly in person was as lethargic and downbeat as she had sounded on the phone. No doubt another reason her idolization of Marnie had been so jarring to the people who’d known them both.

  First thing, I reached into my backpack and pulled out the marble paperweight with the gold plaque. “Here’s that award we talked about on the phone,” I said as I handed it over. “I think Marnie would have wanted you to have it.”

  “Thanks,” she said sullenly. Without even bothering to look at it, she tucked it away in her oversize black leather pocketbook. I was surprised by her lack of interest—especially given what Karen Nelson had told me about Holly’s response to Marnie winning the Association of Professional Journalists’ award. Then again, this was small potatoes in comparison.

  Holly leaned back in her chair, studying me suspiciously. “So who are you, anyway?” she asked. “I know you said you were friends with Marnie, but why should I believe you? How do I know you’re not with the police? Or a private investigator?”

  “I’m neither, Holly. I really was just a friend.” As if to prove I had nothing to do with the cops, I handed her my business card. “See? I’m a veterinarian. I live on Long Island, outside New York City.”

  As she glanced at my card, her mouth twitched downward. “I don’t remember Marnie ever mentioning you,” she said as she stuck it into her shirt pocket. She appeared to have no more interest in it than she’d had in Marnie’s award. “Not that I knew her all that well. Outside of the office, I mean.”

  “I used to live in Ellensburg, where she grew up,” I explained, hoping I was doing a convincing job of rewriting history. “But I’ve lived on the East Coast for a long time now. Over the years, Marnie and I grew apart in a lot of ways, but we still stayed in touch. Christmas cards, the occasional e-mail, that kind of thing. So I looked her up when I came to Maui for the veterinary conference that’s going on right now at the Royal Banyan Hotel. We got together on Sunday afternoon and had a great time reminiscing about the old days. And then this terrible thing happened.”

  I searched her face for a reaction. There was none.

  “Actually, I’m probably one of the last people who saw her alive,” I continued. “And I’m still in shock. I mean, she was killed just a few hours after I talked to her.”

  “It’s awful, isn’t it?” Holly’s face sagged. For the first time, I got a sense that somewhere in there was an empathetic creature. And that maybe she was starting to let down her guard a bit.

  Just then our waitress wandered over. “What can I get you girls?” she asked cheerfully, pulling a well-chewed pencil out from behind her ear.

  “I’ll just have iced tea,” Holly replied without glancing up at her.

  “Order whatever you want,” I urged. “I’m taking you out.”

  “Really?” The brightness that momentarily appeared in her eyes told me I’d just said the magic words. “In that case, I’ll have a mahi sandwich—no, make that a shrimp salad sandwich—with onion rings. And fries.”

  “I’ll stick with iced tea,” I told the waitress.

  “Gotcha.”

  “I’m really hungry,” Holly told me, her cheeks flushed and her tone defensive. “I haven’t had lunch yet. Besides, I hardly ever get to eat out. I couldn’t really afford it on what the Dispatch paid, and now that I’m not working, I pretty much stick to peanut butter and jelly.”

  “Not exactly what people expect when they fantasize about living in Hawaii,” I observed.

  She grimaced. “The problem is that it’s so darned expensive here. They have to bring everything over by boat or plane, so anything you buy costs way more than on the mainland.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Florida. So I guess that makes me one of the few people who didn’t come for the weather.”

  “What did bring you here, then?” I asked.

  “A few things,” she replied with a little shrug. “The lifestyle. The ocean, although I’m not a big fan of sunworshipping on the beach. Not with these thighs. Adventure too, I guess. You know, the romance of picking up and coming to an exotic new place.”

  “So you had different motivations than Marnie,” I observed. “She told me she came here because of the job. She was determined to make a name for herself as a reporter.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like Marnie,” she agreed. Disapprovingly, she added, “I mean, there aren’t many people who would move three thousand miles away from home just for a job.”

  “But that’s just because she was ambitious,” I pointed out. I was anxious to bring the conversation back to Holly’s feelings about Marnie. The report Karen Nelson had given about the relationship between the two women was chilling, and I was hoping to get a sense of just how accurate it was.

  “That’s an understatement.” Holly let out an odd little laugh, then added, “Believe me, e
verybody who ever came into contact with her knew that. It was her nature. That girl was the type who wouldn’t stop at anything. I mean, I’m as competitive as the next person, but she was in another category altogether.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Of course I knew she was a go-getter, but you make her sound really extreme.”

  “She was extreme,” she said simply. “I mean, you knew her for a long time, right? So you must have had a sense that she was one of those people who don’t understand limits.”

  I pretended to think for a few seconds. “It’s true that she had a few problems with the way she interacted with other people…”

  Holly snorted. “That girl had problems understanding limits in terms of everything she did. And that definitely included her job. Whatever story she was working on was always the hottest story of the decade. Whoever she’d just interviewed was the most fascinating interview of her entire life. She was just so intense in the way she approached things.”

  Intense. That same word I kept hearing over and over again.

  “And talk about being a workaholic,” Holly continued, rolling her eyes. “I mean, she’d get into work before Mr. Carrera even, and she’d still be working into the wee hours. I remember once I stopped by the office pretty late because I’d forgotten something I wanted to bring home with me. Notes for something I was covering first thing the next morning. It was probably close to eleven. But there she was, still working away. She was the only one there, in fact.

  “But that doesn’t mean she didn’t spend plenty of time out of the office too, covering stories,” she added. “The paper has a really small staff. When I was there, it was just Marnie and me reporting the news. So we were always pretty busy.”

  We stopped talking as our waitress deposited our iced teas on the table. I was still emptying a packet of sugar into mine as Holly poured in two packets of her own, then sucked up a full third of her drink through a straw without coming up for air.

  I took only a small sip, wanting to make sure I had enough time to ask all the questions I wanted before Holly’s food disappeared and Holly disappeared with it. “Marnie always had such big plans,” I commented. “That was true even when she was a kid.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Holly frowned. “To hear her talk, she was destined to become the next Christiane Amanpour. Y’know, we were friends, kind of, since we worked together and all, and in a way I hate to say this. Especially since when I first met her, I kind of admired her, you know? But then I got to know her better, and believe me, I ended up having serious doubts about whether she could ever have made it.”

  “Really?” My surprise was genuine. “Why?”

  “Marnie had kind of a strange way of looking at things. I mean, she saw the worst in every situation. She was always convinced there was scandal and corruption and all kinds of evil stuff everywhere. It got to be such a thing with her that you started wondering if she was paranoid.”

  The exact same assessment Bryce Bolt made, I noted. I wondered if that particular personality trait could have been what turned Holly off in the end, rather than her competitiveness toward Marnie. I wondered if it was what had gotten Marnie murdered too.

  “But is it possible she uncovered an important story that would have caused somebody embarrassment—or had even worse ramifications?” I persisted. “An exposé that would have made her a few enemies?”

  Holly shook her head. “Nope. At least, not while I was working there.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Believe me, if there was anything that interesting going on, we’d all have known about it,” she replied, sounding scornful of my naïveté. “Maui is like a small town. Everybody knows everybody else’s business. And nobody had any secrets at the Dispatch office. You’ve been there, right? You can hear everyone else’s phone calls and you can see what’s on everybody else’s computer screen. If Marnie was working on something like that, I’d have known about it.”

  Unless she talked on a cell phone in some other location, I reflected. And recorded what she learned on tapes instead of on the office computer.

  I decided to try a different approach.

  “What stories was Marnie working on?” I asked. “I don’t mean car accidents and ribbon-cutting ceremonies. I’m talking about big stories, like your Hawaii Power and Light story.”

  She looked startled. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.” Realizing she’d sounded a bit harsh, she added, “I mean, I don’t think Richard Carrera would appreciate it if his reporters and his ex-reporters went around blabbing about insider stuff like that.”

  I couldn’t help wondering if Holly was really that loyal—or if she had something to hide.

  “Would you say she acted the same way in her personal life too?” I asked. “Intense? Extreme?”

  Holly hesitated, staring at her iced tea.

  “Look, like I already told you, I didn’t know her all that well, okay? I mean, if you knew her since you were both kids, I’m sure you have a better sense of what she was all about than I ever did. We were just work friends.

  “But she definitely had some weird stuff going on where her social life was concerned,” she continued, measuring her words. “There was this one time, just a few weeks ago, when she called me out of the blue. She said she was meeting this guy she’d been seeing for a drink after work, and she insisted that I come along. I mean, she wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “Why do you think it mattered to her so much?”

  She shrugged. “Got me. It was just the way Marnie was. From what I could see, everything she did was just turned up to a higher speed than everybody else. Anyway, from the way she’d been going on about this guy, I figured the two of them were practically engaged or something. But when I saw them together, it was like they hardly even knew each other. You would have thought they were on a blind date or something. One that wasn’t going particularly well.”

  “No chemistry?”

  “That was part of it. But the guy—he had a goofy name…”

  “Ace?”

  “That’s it, Ace. He didn’t seem all that into her, y’know? She was all giggly and flirty, and he was practically a stone wall. He seemed like kind of a creep too. Frankly, I couldn’t figure out what she saw in him. But the one thing that really stands out in my mind about that night is that she kept touching him—you know, grabbing his hand or putting her arm around him—and he kept shrugging her off. I never once saw him touch her. You know, the way a guy will put his hand on his girlfriend’s back or let his arm brush against hers, really casual like it’s the kind of thing he’s used to doing all the time. The other thing I remember is that he hardly spent any time talking to us. He kept getting calls on his cell phone, and he seemed much more interested in talking to whoever was calling him than to Marnie.”

  “Do you have any idea who he was talking to? Friends? Business associates…?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Every time he got a call, he just got up and went to another part of the bar. Besides, it was pretty noisy in there.”

  We paused as our waitress laid out the various plates that contained Holly’s lunch. I found it difficult to believe she was going to be able to consume all that food. That is, until I saw her inhale half her shrimp salad sandwich in three seconds flat.

  “So Ace wasn’t exactly the love of her life,” I said, anxious to keep our conversation going. “But that sounds so typical of Marnie, doesn’t it? The way she tended to see things differently from the way they really were?”

  “I guess so.” Holly thought for a few seconds, meanwhile smothering her fries with salt. I got the impression she’d never really thought about Marnie Burton in exactly those terms before. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  By that point, I figured I’d pretty much gotten everything I was likely to get out of Holly. Even though she and Marnie hadn’t been close, she seemed more than eager to tell me whatever she knew, including her most negative impressions. I decided it was time to
move on to other possibly relevant topics—like Holly Gruen herself.

  “Holly,” I asked gently, “if you don’t mind me asking, why did you leave the Dispatch?”

  I was trying to be sensitive to the possibility that she’d been fired—or that she’d resigned because she was on the verge of being let go. But I wasn’t prepared for the look of alarm that crossed her face.

  “Why?” she demanded, showing more fire than I’d seen since I sat down at the table. “What did you hear?”

  “Nothing,” I replied, struggling not to react.

  In a strained voice, she replied, “It was just time for me to move on. That’s all.”

  Right, I thought. With no other job to go to. And with your finances in such bad shape that the only food groups you can afford to make part of your diet are the Peanut Butter Group and the Jelly Group.

  “But I guess we should eat, right?” Holly said with an air of finality, as if she’d decided she’d told me enough. Grabbing the other half of her sandwich, she added, “I’m sorry I haven’t been more helpful, but I really don’t know very much. In fact, I don’t even know why you bothered to track me down.”

  It was true that Holly hadn’t given me much useful information about Marnie, aside from confirming that she was intent on uncovering scandal as a means of advancing her career and that her relationship with Ace hadn’t been as solid as she seemed to think it was.

  But I was struck by the strange way Holly had reacted to my question about why she’d left the paper. For the price of a sandwich and a couple of sides, I’d learned something valuable: that Marnie wasn’t the only Dispatch reporter with secrets.

  It was nearly four by the time I got back to the hotel. I was still ruminating about my conversation with Holly as I pulled into the parking garage. She had admitted to having “admired” Marnie back when they first met, as well as changing the way she felt about her over time. That was certainly consistent with what Karen Nelson had told me about their relationship. I also found it interesting that she had agreed with the Dispatch’s other reporter, Bryce Bolt, about Marnie being intense as well as determined to find scandal everywhere she looked. In addition, Holly had picked up on the fact that there was something peculiar about Marnie’s relationship with Ace.