Paradise Crime Mysteries

by Toby Neal

  “Screw you and the white horse you rode in on.”

  “Right back atcha. You wouldn’t be a bad investigator if you could be a team player.”

  Lei had no answer to this. Shooting Cal had ended the investigation but left a lot of unanswered questions—ten of them, to be exact. She sucked some relaxation breaths and got a grip on her temper.

  “I should have tried harder to get through to someone.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “But if I had, Bennett would be dead. As it was, we barely got him down in time, and I don’t even want to think about what Cal was going to do to him.”

  “That’s not your responsibility. This was an FBI case, and we involved senior detectives from the local PD, which didn’t include you. Keeping you in the dark was nothing personal, and it wasn’t my call. I don’t owe you shit.”

  Lei bit back the words—I liked you. I thought you could be a friend. She looked away.

  Marcella seemed to read her mind. She tossed that lush, dark head, gave a little toe tap, and the dimple appeared for a second.

  “But like I said, if I’d known you better, I’d never have left you out. You’d just come barreling back in, guns blazing.” It was as close to an apology as Lei was going to get, and this time they both smiled.

  “Okay then. What’s it looking like with my shoot?”

  “Can’t say officially yet,” Marcella said. “But it’s looking like a good shoot. In fact, I’ve been talking to the Honolulu field office about you. We think you should apply for the Bureau. You’d be great as a field agent out here, being multiethnic and all.”

  Lei snorted a laugh in reply.

  “Seriously. It’s competitive, but I’ll put in a good word for you.”

  “Weren’t you just calling me a loose cannon? Saying I needed to learn to be a team player?”

  “Well, you are and you do. But you’ve got good instincts, know how to take initiative, and you’re a woman who’d shave her head to go undercover. I think you’ve got what it takes to be a Federal cop.”

  “I’m just getting used to being a detective. Just getting used to Kaua`i.”

  “Don’t get too used to it,” Marcella said with a wink. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Chapter Forty

  Lei stuck her head into Jay Bennett’s room a few doors down. He was sitting up with Kelly wedged into bed beside him. His face looked much better without the plum-dark of congested blood.

  “Hi.”

  “Detective!” Kelly pried herself up, her face flushed. “Oh my God! You did it. You saved Jay!” She ran around and embraced Lei in a welter of bouncing curls and abundant breasts. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  The girl squeezed and wouldn’t let go.

  Lei found herself hugging her back, blinking hard. “I’m so glad it all worked out.”

  “You’re telling me.” Jay’s voice sounded rusty. “I thought I was gone; then next thing I know, I’m on a helicopter.”

  Kelly detached at last, pulled up a chair beside the bed, gesturing to another.

  Lei sat. “How are you feeling?”

  “Alive. Glad to be.”

  Kelly grasped Jay’s hand. “He was in there for almost two weeks. In the dark, tied up.” Her eyes brimmed. “A nightmare.”

  “A nightmare—that’s what it was. I’m just going to think of it that way.” His blue eyes were sunken, skin pale and chapped, marked with red rash from the tape. Lei could see gouges around the neckline of the hospital gown where he’d tried to loosen the collar they’d found on the floor of the cave.

  “One loose end I’m wondering about. The access code from the mansions was on the back of a Paradise Realty business card in your wallet. Were you involved with those robberies?” Lei gave him her best cop stare.

  “No. The hippie group were trying to get me involved with the whole papaya farm meth thing, and wanted me to help with the robbery—several of them were on the Island Cleaning crew to earn cash. Darrell Hines gave me that card—and that’s when I took off on my own.”

  “Jay, you should have told me that!” Kelly frowned.

  “I didn’t want you to worry. But I think when I bailed Cal decided to grab me. He was involved with the papaya farm thing. I had a lot of time to think about it, and I must have been a loose end as well as a—I don’t know what. I always knew he was going to kill me in the end, I just didn’t know why or how.”

  “Tell me about Cal Haddock. No one’s told me much about the case since I shot him.” Lei shouldn’t be asking, but she couldn’t help it.

  “He wouldn’t say much. He’d come in, bring me water, empty the slop bucket. I tried to get him to talk to me, see me as a person, but he hardly wanted to look at me. I made a run for it one time.” Jay rubbed his head ruefully. “He was pretty quick, took me down and dragged me back in. No water for two days, no light, and this.” He turned his head so Lei could see the lobe of his ear was gone, a scab marking its location. “That was my punishment.”

  “Unbelievable,” Lei said. “It’s amazing you’re sane.”

  “Thinking of Kelly. That’s what kept me sane.” Jay kissed the girl’s hand, looking into Kelly’s changeable brown eyes. “I found what I was looking for when I went on my walkabout—and she was right in front of me the whole time. I’m just lucky enough to have a second chance. Thank you, Detective, for that.”

  “You’re welcome,” Lei murmured. The young couple barely noticed as she slipped out.

  Lei pulled in to the Health Guardian on her way home. The store enfolded her with now-familiar scents, and she pushed aside the clashing curtain of beads to look into the back office.

  “Jazz?”

  Jazz Haddock looked up from his desk. His chambray eyes were sunk deep in folds of shadow, his mouth a pursed line. “What are you doing here?”

  “I probably shouldn’t be talking to you.” Lei closed the inner door, sat down on the couch, rubbed the black stone as she looked at him. “But I had to. Are they done interviewing?”

  “Those FBI assholes all but stuck bamboo shoots under my fingernails, but I couldn’t tell them what I didn’t know.”

  “That it was your brother. I know.”

  “And you shot him.”

  “I had to. He was going to kill us, kill Bennett, if I didn’t. I’m sorry it went down that way, believe me.”

  He put his head back against the seat, closed his eyes. She noticed he hadn’t braided his long gray hair, and it straggled over his shoulders.

  “He went off the deep end after our mother and sister died—had a schizophrenic break. I brought him here to heal, thought he’d find peace in manual labor out in nature. Took him to TruthWay to help him find some spiritual comfort. Can’t believe it all ended this way.”

  “Did you ever suspect?”

  “I knew he wasn’t well. I knew he wasn’t taking his meds. What I can’t forgive myself for is the stones—I should have put it together. Jasper. Chalcedony. Opal.” He hung his head into his hands. “I think on some level he wanted me to figure it out and stop him. But I never did. I won’t tell anyone but you, but I think on some level I must have known. That’s why I made the binder.”

  “It’s over now,” Lei said. There was nothing else to say. “The binder really helped solidify the investigation. You tried.”

  “I tried. It wasn’t enough. Too many died.” They sat in silence for a long moment.

  “I wanted to say—it was good working with you. Might stop by for a smoothie now and again. Wanted you to know… I’m sorry.” Lei stood up.

  “I know you are. Me too.” He lifted his head and his chambray eyes were shadowed with sorrow. “See you around, Lei.”

  Stevens sat beside her on the top step of her back porch in nothing but his boxers. They sipped morning coffee and watched the river. Keiki wriggled on her back in the grass, flailing her paws and grunting with the joy of a good roll. Lei leaned her head on Stevens’s shoulder.

  “It’s nice to see that ro
be again. I’m rather fond of it.” His hand reached into the collar, rubbed her bare neck.

  “I love you, you know.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “I keep meaning it. But you haven’t said it back.”

  “And I won’t.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why—it makes you freak. So I’ll just do crazy shit like this.” He held out his right arm. The inner muscle of his forearm was tattooed with a tiny purple heart encircling Lei. They’d been too busy doing other things for her to notice it.

  “Oh my God. A purple heart.” She laughed. “When did you do that? You must’ve been drunk.”

  “As a skunk. I was crying in my beer the day I saw those roses, and J-Boy hauled me down to the tattoo guy before I knew what hit me. He’s been trying to get us back together.”

  “I’ll have to get him back. Give Anuhea his home address or something.”

  “Or something.”

  “You know, Marcella asked me to apply for the Bureau.”

  “Aw, shit. Wonder what kind of work they have in Quantico for aging detectives like me.”

  Lei punched him in the arm. She was distracted by the purple heart again.

  “Cutest little tattoo I’ve ever seen. We’re not going anywhere. It’s ridiculous.” She traced the heart with her forefinger.

  “I may add more as necessary—but don’t worry, I won’t tell you I love you.”

  “Cross your heart.” She traced an X over the tiny tattoo.

  “I won’t ask you to marry me either.”

  “Excellent.” She kissed the little tattoo, trailed more kisses up the bulge of his biceps and along his collarbone as she climbed into his lap. His arms wrapped around her and his voice was rough in her ear.

  “You know, promises are made to be broken.”

  Turn the page to keep reading book three of the Paradise Crime Mysteries, Black Jasmine!

  Black Jasmine

  Lei Crime Book 3

  Rom. 12:19

  Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

  Chapter One

  Detective Lei Texeira tested the rope running through the cleat, giving it a yank before nodding to the fireman controlling the winch. He switched the engine on, and she rappelled down the cliff, keeping her knees bent as she began a slow descent. Blasts of wind off the ocean whirled her curly brown hair. The rocky bluff was marbled with pockets of underbrush, and minutes later she became tangled in a thick clump of strawberry guava.

  “Stop the winch!”

  The grind of the machine and the crash of waves masked Lei’s voice, and the rope kept playing out until her full weight rested on the bush. She spread her arms across the springy branches, resting horizontal and horrified thirty feet above the rocks for a few long seconds—and just as suddenly the bush dumped her. Lei yelped and flailed as she hit the end of the rope like a plumb bob, torquing her neck, the harness digging into her crotch and hips.

  “Dammit!” She dropped as gracelessly as a load of laundry the last ten feet onto the lava ledge beside the upside-down sedan.

  Her burly partner, Pono Kaihale, hurried forward to help her unfasten the harness. He’d been her first partner on the Big Island, and had preceded her to this new assignment on Maui.

  “Shit. You okay?” He pushed mirrored Oakleys up onto his buzz-cut head, a worried crease on his wide brow as he unclipped the cable. She groaned, fumbling at the buckle in the front and prying the straps out of her ass.

  “Gonna have whiplash tomorrow. You sure there’s a body in there?”

  The fireman who’d made the discovery came forward, hand extended. “Ouch. Sorry about that descent. I couldn’t call Ben fast enough on the walkie. Ron Vierra.” Lei shook his hand: strong, calloused grip, big local guy who wore his fire gear like a proud second skin.

  “Eh, Ron. What we get?” She slid into pidgin, liquid dialect of the islands, to establish rapport. In Hawaii, a magnet for transients, it was important to be from here, a “local,” and that identity was established within minutes.

  “We get one call from the public phone in Haiku early this morning. Wouldn’t leave a name. Said one car wen’ crash, no one inside. Probably stay from the tent village on top da cliff. Soon as it got light, we came out wit’ responding officers. Me and Ben, we rappelled down. That’s when we seen her.”

  He gestured to the wrecked car.

  Lei and Pono followed him over to the vehicle, snapping on latex gloves. Cubes of glass glittered on the rocks, adding sparkle to the turquoise sea, which had retreated with low tide, leaving the wreck shiny with moisture. Lei squatted down beside the blown-out driver’s window and peered in.

  The body was upside down, belt still in place, long red hair trailing in pinkish water collected on the roof of the aged sedan. The girl’s neck was broken at such an extreme angle that her face, intact and wide-eyed, looked up in surprise at her crushed body folded around the steering wheel.

  The hood of the car had hit the rocks first. As it compressed backward, it had jammed the steering wheel into the girl’s torso, almost bisecting it, before tipping upside down. A regular rinse of seawater through the blown-out windows had washed most of the blood away, leaving the body soggy and bleached-looking.

  Lei hated it when the eyes were open. These were blue, glassy as marbles. She resisted the urge to close them, tucking her hand in her pocket, where she rubbed a small, round black stone. She looked at Pono. “Medical examiner on the way?”

  “Yeah.” He folded Cupid’s bow lips, hidden by a bristling mustache, into a thin line and rubbed them with a forefinger as he looked at the girl. “Looks like a teenager. Suicide?”

  “Could be.” Lei steeled herself and reached in to rifle the pockets of the voluminous jean jacket the girl wore. Empty. No purse on the seat or anywhere in the vehicle. She went around and reached in from the other window to push the button on the glove box. Nothing inside but a dripping map of Maui.

  Lei straightened up, slipping the map into a plastic evidence bag. “If there was any trace here, the ocean doing the washing machine all night isn’t going to leave much.”

  They continued to check over the vehicle. Nothing in the backseat and nothing on the roof of the car. Lei radioed in the plate number, and it came back as stolen last week out of Lahaina—nothing there to help with the identity of the red-haired Jane Doe.

  She turned back to Vierra, who was guiding the Jaws of Life down the cliff on the cable. He unclipped the heavy hydraulic spreaders and cutters and set them on the rocks out of reach of the surf.

  “Wish I’d known she was in there last night,” Vierra said. He looked pale under his brown complexion. “I’ve got a teenage daughter.”

  “She was gone at the impact—way too late for the Jaws of Life to do her any good, and you guys couldn’t have done anything much at a site like this in the dark.”

  Lei looked back up at the cliff. The uniforms who’d first responded were peering over; then the winch rumbled into action again. This time it was the ME on the line, a pudgy doughball of a man in an aloha shirt and jeans. He made no effort to manage the descent, just clung to the line, and still somehow avoided the protruding guava clump.

  He landed on his feet but tipped back onto his rump. Pono helped him unclip the cable and hoisted the man back onto his feet. He clutched his crime scene kit to his chest and reached up to wipe his pallid face with a trembling hand. Apparently he was not a fan of heights.

  “Hey. I’m Detective Texeira.” Lei hadn’t been on Maui long enough to have met all the essential personnel. She extended a hand.

  “Dr. Gregory.” He shook her hand with a soft and clammy one.

  She resisted the urge to wipe it immediately on her black jeans and pointed to the body instead. “Teenager. We’re thinking suicide.”

  “Never jump to conclusions.” Dr. Gregory awkwardly hopped on one leg as he wriggl
ed the harness off his wide rear end. The metal fittings clanged as they hit the lava, and Pono stabilized his shoulder with a tiny eye roll. The harness jolted its way back up the cliff.

  “My assistant is coming down next, but tell me what you know.” Dr. Gregory approached the vehicle, donning his gloves, as Lei recapped the story.

  The ME took out his camera and a handful of plastic markers and went to work. Lei could tell that, Humpty Dumpty appearance aside, he knew what he was doing—so she turned to Pono.

  “Let’s do a search along the rocks here, see if anything might have fallen out of the car on its way down.”

  They picked their way to the edge of the lava that jutted out from the base of the cliff. Like many ocean-facing areas on Maui, the black volcanic bones of the earth were exposed by the relentless wear of wind and sea, forming a promontory that belled out from the edge of the bluff. She and Pono began a slow survey at a considerable distance from the impact site, walking a few feet apart, eyes traveling in what she liked to call “see mode”—a relaxed systematic pass back and forth, focusing only when something odd blipped in her vision.

  Nothing but tide pools filled with blennies and tiny hermit crabs, a few of the local single-shelled delicacies known as opihi, brown limu seaweed, and darting silver aholehole. Then something else silver caught her eye, about fifty feet from the wreck. She bent and spotted a shiny key in a tide pool.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think that has to be from the wreck, because even a week in the ocean and that key wouldn’t be shiny anymore.” The sun was getting hotter, and sweat gleamed in Pono’s black hair. He pushed his ever-present Oakleys up to investigate the item in question. The key was a nondescript Schlage, no markings but the name brand. “Looks like a door key, I’ve got one to my house that looks like this.”

  “Better shoot the site.” She stood over the pool, and Pono went to the crime kit they’d brought and fetched the camera.