Paradise Crime Mysteries

by Toby Neal

  The rusted steel outbuildings and belching stacks of the processing plant rose around them like a factory out of a Dickens novel. Ferreira navigated past a row of parked red Ford trucks caked in filth and down an alley between towering corrugated metal buildings. A clattering rumble of machinery surrounded them and made it hard to think, and the cab of the truck filled with the rich, tactile scent of boiling molasses.

  “I’m in favor of the sugar industry, but you wouldn’t see me working here,” Ferreira said, parking in front of a rusty metal outbuilding with no windows.

  “It’s quite a contrast to the beaches—that’s for sure,” Stevens said, stepping out of the truck into the parking lot. Dirt rose in reddish, powdery puffs under his boots.

  Owen had parked beside them, and he got out of the yellow truck. “Gonna have to wash this when I get back to base,” he said, gesturing to the residue that already coated the vehicle.

  “That’s why the workers stay covered up.” Ferreira pointed to a group of workers getting off a beat-up old school bus. They were attired in long-sleeved shirts and pants, big cloth hats, and bandannas covering their faces. “Let’s get inside where it’s air-conditioned.”

  Lei walked onto the plane and slid her tightly packed backpack into the overhead compartment. She took out the case file to review during the flight. Settling in her seat, she wrestled one last time with her conscience.

  She should have at least called Stevens. She’d gotten better at remembering to communicate, but she didn’t want to call now and have Stevens realize there was more going on than she was willing to say. Once she was in Hilo and checked into the cheap motel she’d picked out, she could text him. If he called, she’d tell him about the case that had brought her over to the Big Island. Less was more right now.

  Still, Lei’s gut roiled uneasily at the deception. “No help for it,” she muttered.

  How she was going to pull off anything useful remained to be seen.

  She’d had to check her weapon in its special case, and she felt a little naked without it. She buckled her belt over her unfamiliarly tight waist and settled back in the seat, telling herself to relax.

  She shut her eyes as the plane took off, remembering last night with a pang of guilty loss. After Lei locked everything back up in her office, she’d come out to the living room. Jared was gone. Kiet was asleep in his bouncy seat, an empty bottle beside him, and Stevens was on the couch.

  “Alone at last.” Stevens had hooked a long arm around Lei, hauling her over to him on the couch and giving her a thorough kiss. She’d melted against him, her tender breasts prickling with need. She didn’t remember hearing about how pregnancy made women feel sexy, but now that the nausea was gone, Lei always seemed to be “in the mood.” Just a look or a touch from her husband seemed to be enough to get her going these days.

  Kiet belched softly from his seat.

  “Well, not quite alone,” Stevens said, turning back to the baby and loosening the straps that held him in. “I’ll put him down. Meet you in the bedroom.”

  “I’ll be a few minutes. Got to clean up.” Lei went into the kitchen as he carried the baby off. She put away the leftovers and loaded the dishwasher. Part of their agreement with her dad was that he got a clean kitchen in the morning. She went to the bedroom after brushing her teeth, stepping inside and shutting the door.

  He’d closed the curtains, and the light was off. In the total darkness, the known became new again. “Where are you?”

  “Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.” Stevens growled, and she smiled, feeling her way forward.

  “Thought that was my line,” Lei said. “I don’t want to grab Keiki by mistake.” The big Rottie slept on the bed with them.

  “She’s banished for the moment.”

  “Oh. You have some devious plan, I can tell.”

  “You told me you liked my devious plans. Back when we weren’t old married folk.”

  “I do like your plans.”

  “No more talking.”

  Lei’s heart rate spiked at his low, commanding tone. Her nipples tightened as a soft ache tugged at her. Prickling awareness rippled up her arms and made the tiny hairs rise in instant response.

  She’d reached the side of the bed. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the faintest outline of his long, naked body, and her mouth went dry. She swallowed, trying to see more, savoring the anticipation. There was only enough light to glimpse the heavy curve of his shoulder, the slant of his side, the long plane of his extended thigh.

  “Come here.” His voice was a vibrating chord that thrilled her.

  No, marriage and family hadn’t quenched their passion. At least not yet.

  Lei forced her attention back to the file, feeling bad again for leaving him. Deceiving him. Well, maybe nothing would come of it. She’d work her case and go home. Still, this was an opportunity to get an eye on the Changs’ operation. She had to take it.

  Fortunately, no one had taken the seat beside her, so she was able to open the file and sort through the records she’d collected on the gambling ring that had emerged on Maui. Just a week ago, a confidential informant she’d cultivated had gotten her involved in what was developing into a case with deep roots.

  “So, mah-jongg one Chinese game,” her CI, Claudine Figueroa, an innkeeper in Wailuku she’d met on a murder investigation, had told her. “I been getting these invitations on e-mail. Me and my friends, we like go. Sometimes we watch the players. Sometimes we play and we bet.”

  “How high are the stakes? I mean, this sounds like small potatoes,” Lei said. She’d responded to Claudine’s phone call that she had some “important information for the MPD,” and now that she was here, at the woman’s inn, the equivalent of organized bingo didn’t sound like a big concern.

  “Stakes are big. My second cousin, he lost his house in one of these games. Not only that, they get some boys breaking legs if people don’t pay,” Claudine said, sucking her dentures the way she did when upset. She plucked at the neck of a banana-yellow muumuu, and Lei spotted matching Crocs peeking out from underneath the hem.

  “I can tell there’s more going on than you’re telling me.” Lei fiddled with the rough, white-gold pendant she always wore.

  “Those boys, they’ve already got us paying protection money,” Claudine hissed, leaning forward to catch Lei’s eye. “If it’s not mah-jongg, it’s blackjack or the lottery in the Mainland. They got an idea for everyone who like gamble, and you don’t get hooked on something, they keep trying until you do.”

  “Protection money? And who is ‘they’?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Six months ago, these two guys, they came around to all the small-kine businesses in Wailuku. Nobody knows them, but they’re big guys, armed. They tell us they charging one ‘tax’ for keep doing business here. Some of us no like pay the tax. And you remember the building wen’ burn down on Market Street? That guy, he no like pay.” Claudine’s pidgin thickened with her agitation. “I tell the husband, we going pay. So we do. Then next thing, we getting e-mails about all the things they like us to gamble on.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Lei asked. “When you had that homicide at your inn? It might have been important.”

  “No, I nevah like deal with it then. Now I know this just going get worse and worse until they bleed us dry, and it’s got to stop. After my cuz lost his house, I say enough already. And I know you. That’s why I call you. You one good girl.”

  Lei smiled at that description. “I have to take this back to the station and see if my captain wants to assign it to Vice. I usually work Homicide. But thanks for the tip, Claudine. I’ll get back to you no matter what.”

  Captain Omura had ended up authorizing Lei to run with the case. Lei was working it alone because she was currently without a partner, due to resigning from the hazardous explosives detail. Abe Torufu, her partner on that assignment, was now training with another detective who’d volunteered to take her place on the bomb squad. />
  And it was just as well she didn’t have a partner, Lei thought, as she leafed through her notes. Through interviews, she’d uncovered persistent rumors that both the “protection” payments and organized gambling had their roots in the Changs’ Big Island operation and that the two thugs who collected payment were unknown to Maui folks because they came over from that island. Last week, when she’d asked to go to Hawaii to check out the situation, Omura had given the okay.

  But Omura didn’t know Lei had been ordered by the FBI not to have anything further to do with any investigation involving the Changs. Lei would have been perfectly happy to honor that if she didn’t suspect Terence Chang had somehow found a way to kill Anchara and her aunt and set Stevens up for murder.

  And Chang was still holding on to one more shroud.

  She shut the folder, reclined her seat, and closed her eyes for the short flight. Her mind immediately went back to the bedroom with Stevens. The remnants of that rich memory didn’t make it easier to get off the plane, knowing she was going after their enemy behind his back instead of by his side.

  Chapter Four

  The Fireman did a preliminary assessment of the address he’d received, and the results were daunting. As he drove back toward Kahului, he mulled over the challenges. On the plus side, it was a remote location that he could probably approach relatively undetected. Potential fuel in the form of tall eucalyptus robusta trees surrounded the property. The trees, while green, had a lot of combustible sap. The house itself was also highly flammable, an old wooden structure on a post-and-pier foundation with a tin roof, which, if properly ignited, could go up fast and deadly.

  On the minus side, the house was surrounded by a ten-foot cedar fence and appeared to have a security system, not something he’d been prepared to breach. According to the TMK map he pulled up, inside the fence were two dwellings: a cottage close to the fence and a main house with thirty feet of open lawn that would provide a firebreak. He pulled the truck over and hiked back through the vacant lot bordering the property to get a look inside. Climbing a tree, he was able to look over the fence into the yard, and that’s when he spotted the Rottweiler.

  It had spotted him, too, and the deep bellow of its bark shriveled his balls. He’d almost fallen getting out the tree.

  He hated dogs of any kind. Guard dogs aroused even more antipathy. Twenty thousand wasn’t looking like good or easy money anymore. He wanted more if he was going to figure out how to navigate these multiple challenges.

  Back at his apartment, he took out his phone and texted the number he’d received the original message from: Challenges with assignment. Dog. Fence. Security system. Firebreaks. Green trees. Need more money for this job.

  He waited. No reply.

  “Asshole,” the Fireman muttered. He had only one real way to communicate.

  He got up and set the stop sign in the window. The blinds remained down behind the sign, as he’d left them since he’d figured out how he was being observed, and now his already-depressing apartment was always semi-gloomy except for the new flat screen he’d bought the day the money arrived.

  Even if he didn’t hear back, he needed to get a fire plan. Sitting down with a pencil and paper, he copied the TMK map of the property and planned his assault. When he was done with that, he made a list of materials he could use for the ignition.

  Imagining every stage of setting fire to the challenging fortress of a property energized him, and even though his phone remained stubbornly silent, his spirits lifted.

  He was the Fireman. He could do this. If he could just get into the house, he could set a fire that would be a masterpiece of destruction.

  Stevens and Owen followed Ferreira through a metal-faced door into the administration offices of the sugarcane company. Inside a linoleum foyer area with a heavy rubber mat stood a wooden shoe rack where various boots were lined up. Ferreira called to the receptionist on the other side of a half wall.

  “Cheryl! How you stay?”

  “Keeping cool,” the middle-aged woman said. Her black hair was scraped into a bun and her cheeks were acne-scarred. “What you here for, cuz?”

  “Meeting with the brass. Got us on the calendar?”

  “Yes, I see you right here. Welcome to Maui Sugar,” Cheryl said, including Stevens and Owen with a gracious nod. “Can you gentlemen please put your boots on the rack? As you can see, we have a little dirt situation around here. I’ll show you to the conference room.”

  “No problem.” Owen sat beside Stevens on a conveniently located chair and undid his laces. Stevens did likewise, darting an assessing glance around the utilitarian space, a room built into the prefabricated metal building using studs and drywall. In their socks, the men followed Cheryl’s ample rear down the hall. She opened a door and gestured them into a conference room surrounded in whiteboards. A wheezing AC unit was set flush in the windowless wall. “Can I get you anything to drink? Tea? Coffee?”

  “I’d love some coffee,” Stevens said. “Black is fine.”

  “Water for me,” said Owen.

  “Nothing, thanks,” Ferreira said. “But is the restroom still down the hall?”

  “Sure is.” Cheryl led Ferreira out, and Owen and Stevens sat down at the Formica conference table.

  “Never took a meeting in my socks before,” Owen said.

  “Get used to it,” Stevens responded. “Cultural thing. Though in this building, I think it’s just that they want to keep the dirt on the mat in front.”

  Ferreira reappeared. “I wanted to get my cousin alone for a few minutes, to see what she might have picked up about the fires. She had a few names she thought were good to investigate, guys who’d been fired or laid off and had an attitude about it. We can see if they jibe with the ones the administration offers up.”

  As if on cue, the door opened on two men in business casual. Ferreira stood first, shaking the taller one’s hand. “Hey, Jake.”

  “Josh Ferreira! Didn’t expect you here; thought we were talking to the fire investigator.” The stocky man with thinning hair glanced around, and Tim Owen popped up, extending his hand.

  “And we’ve met before. Hi again. Tim Owen, fire investigator for Maui County.”

  “Jake Schumacher. I’m the general manager. This is Fred Okasako, director of operations.” Stevens introduced himself, and they all sat back down after the obligatory small talk about where everyone was from.

  Stevens glanced at Tim Owen, and the young man caught his eye, clearing his throat to get everyone’s attention.

  “I asked for this meeting to discuss the series of arson cane fires you’ve been experiencing in Maui Sugar fields. For the benefit of the detectives here, I’ll just recap that we have met twice before, discussing various aspects of these fires. I’ve given the management here some ideas regarding prevention, which we should discuss again. But now that there’s been a fatality, the criminal aspect of the investigation is going to shift to the Maui Police Department. I will continue to work closely with the detectives to investigate any fire-related aspects of the case.”

  “Thanks for clarifying the roles and responsibilities,” Okasako said. He was shorter and stockier than Schumacher, but he carried himself with the solid authority of a leader. “Jake is the ‘big kahuna’ in charge of all aspects of the Maui Sugar operation; my responsibility is operations, in which I oversee personnel and human resources as one aspect. We have more than eight hundred employees working in various capacities.”

  “Didn’t realize you had so many,” Stevens said, leaning forward to make contact with the man he sensed was the real head of the company. “We want to focus on any employees who might be disgruntled and possibly have fire-setting experience from working with your controlled-harvesting burns.”

  “Tim had given us a heads-up about that. I was talking with my department heads and we prepared a list.” Okasako produced a typewritten set of names with addresses and phone numbers. “Some of these are current employees. Some were laid off a f
ew months ago during budget cuts—as you may have heard, we aren’t making much of a profit these days—and some were fired for cause.”

  Stevens took the paper and scanned down it. “I see you have fifty names here. That’s going to be tough. Do you have some you’d prioritize?”

  Okasako met Stevens’s eye with his own direct, pebble-hard gaze. “I’d start with the ones who were fired, then the ones who were laid off.”

  Jake Schumacher leaned forward. “What we noticed is that the fields being burned were close to harvest. By burning them a couple of weeks before harvest, there’s been an attempt to ruin our harvest, which implies a financial revenge motive. At least from our perspective. What we haven’t shared publicly is that this arsonist isn’t really hurting us that badly. Yeah, we’ve lost some tonnage, but we’ve still been able to harvest and process a good deal of what he’s burned.”

  “Do you think he knows this?” Stevens asked, tapping the paper with his finger.

  “We’ve kept it out of the news for this reason. Talked to the reporter and asked her to exaggerate the damage,” Schumacher said. “We don’t want him to start burning the one-year cane. That would really put us back.”

  Stevens narrowed his eyes. “From here on out, we need to be informed and a part of any information that is circulating to the public. So you refer to the arsonist as ‘he.’ Any particular reason?”

  “Most of our burn and harvest crews are male,” Okasako said.

  “And most arsonists, statistically speaking, are male,” Owen interjected.

  “So who knows which fields you’re going to burn?” Stevens asked. “Seems like this perp has some insider knowledge.”

  “Actually, that’s a matter of public record. Right on our website,” Schumacher said. “Because our burns affect the public in terms of health and safety, we have to post our burn schedule. It’s right there on our website year-round, and we mail out letters to neighborhoods affected a couple weeks ahead of time.”