Paradise Crime Box Set 4

by Toby Neal

  When he arrived at his truck, Jared checked his phone for messages, one eye on a rain shower making its rainbow-trailing way in his direction from across the ocean. His brother had called. As usual, Stevens had left no greeting. “I’m on a homicide case at a restaurant in Lahaina called Feast. One of our interviewees said you’d been out here last week investigating a fire in the kitchen that they thought might be arson. Need to discuss your findings with you.”

  Jared frowned, setting his phone on the passenger seat and retrieving a towel.

  Now that he’d made fire investigator, replacing his friend Tim who’d returned to the mainland, Jared had a nine-to-five schedule rather than the irregular shifts of a firefighter. He loved the process of investigation—checking out the scene, using all his fire science knowledge to trace the source and course of the fire, interviewing people, drawing conclusions. It was like being a detective in a lot of ways, and sometimes the outcomes were deadly, too. His cases often crossed into working with the police department.

  He had ruled that fire, which had begun with a buildup of grease in one of the ovens, inconclusive—there had been no clear ignition cause. But now, if there was a homicide, the fire might be related.

  Jared wrapped a towel around his waist, dropped his board shorts and pulled up his boxers and jeans. He took off the towel and pinned it neatly to a length of line that ran across the back of his truck’s extended cab. Everything had a place in Jared’s truck, and in his life. Organization helped keep things under control.

  Stevens had come back from his stint in Central America a physical wreck but back in control of his life. Jared had been pissed at his brother for going overseas in the first place, but by the time he returned, Jared was just glad Stevens was alive. Stevens now claimed that everything that had happened over there had been part of his recovery—he’d beaten his drinking and the PTSD that had pushed him into alcoholism in the first place.

  At least his brother was sober now. Stevens’s recovery had been rapid overall, but he still suffered from headaches and memory loss. Still, Stevens and Lei seemed to be back on solid ground with their relationship and excited about the coming baby. He’d worried they were headed toward being another statistic.

  Jared shrugged into a Maui Fire Department polo shirt and hopped into his Tacoma. He shut the door of the truck, rolled up the windows, turned on the engine, and cranked the AC—even in the morning, the sun was significant and his cab had heated up. He called Stevens back.

  “Hey, bro. Homicide at Feast?”

  “Yeah. What did you determine about that fire?” Stevens, never one for chitchat, sounded distracted and in a hurry. Jared pulled together his focus.

  “It began after hours in one of the stoves. Looked like a grease fire, but there was no obvious ignition source. In fact, they were lucky the whole place didn’t go up. I ruled it inconclusive.” Jared flipped down the sun visor, taking a quick look in the mirror to comb his short hair with a hand. “Want me to come out there? I could bring you a copy of the report, statements from the people I interviewed.”

  “That would be great. Thanks, bro. I’ll still be here at Feast for the next couple of hours.” Stevens ended the call.

  Jared put his truck in gear and got on the road toward his office at the main firehouse in Kahului. In his almost six years on Maui, his goal of getting closer to his family had been achieved. He went to dinner at Lei and Stevens’s at least once a week, and things with his mother were much improved. He often spent time with his nephew, Kiet, teaching him water sports. Still, a sense of something missing nagged at him.

  No time for maudlin musings. He had a job to do.

  Jared spent a minute greeting friends at the firehouse, then jogged up the stairs two at a time to his office, where he pulled the fire report. He made copies of it and of the witness statements. Back on the road to Lahaina, Jared checked in with the main fire chief about his current location in case of a call, then put the pedal down.

  The drive along the Pali brought reflection as the views of cliffs, sea, and sky slowed his pace to that of tourists taking in the views for the first time. The two-lane road wound along the edge of the West Maui Mountains, curving along a rugged, dry coastline hundreds of feet above the ocean. Off in the distance, spume marked whales’ breath and the shapes of Lanai and Kahoolawe rose like turtles right off the coast.

  His life was so different now from his early days as a firefighter working in Los Angeles. The ocean was his playground, and its constantly changing moods never failed to lift his spirits. Fire emergencies on Maui were frequent but less severe than in California, where it was routine for hundreds of firefighters to be deployed to battle massive blazes in the summer. Here, most of the calls were small home emergencies or wind- and drought-related blazes in the open areas.

  Jared pulled in at the restaurant, holding up his ID badge for the police officer guarding the door. “Fire investigator. Here to see Lieutenant Stevens.” He signed into the log and headed inside Feast.

  His brother was back in the restaurant’s office with his partner Mahoe, a young, square-built Hawaiian. Seated at a desk across from Stevens was Elena Noriega, whom he’d met during Feast’s oven fire investigation. She looked beautiful but upset. Beside her sat a stunning woman in an MPD uniform. They all glanced up at Jared as he opened the door.

  “Come in. You might as well hear this,” Stevens said.

  “I brought the report.” Jared held the folder up and advanced into the crowded space. “Mrs. Noriega. Nice to see you again. I’m sorry about the circumstances.” The woman nodded, blowing her nose on a tissue. Beside her, the brunette police officer extended a hand. “Sergeant Kathy Fraser.”

  “Oh, you’re my brother’s ex-partner! Jared Stevens.” He shook her hand. Kathy had a strong grip and slight calluses across her palm. This woman spent time at the shooting range, and damn, she was hot. Stevens had hardly mentioned her, though Jared knew they’d been partners in MPD’s training programs for going on two years. Maybe Stevens didn’t want Jared hitting on her, a situation that had gone bad on the brothers before.

  “Have a seat, Jared.” Stevens pulled out a folding chair and wedged it in beside him. “We were just talking about the sabotage pattern Mrs. Noriega discovered in the kitchens.”

  “Oh, really? That since I was here investigating your fire?” Jared opened his folder and addressed this inquiry to Mrs. Noriega.

  “Yes. I think the fire was the first incident,” Elena Noriega said. “Then there was the walk-in left open, the short to the air-conditioning system, the cash register burglary.” She detailed the different incidents. “The police officers who responded to each incident didn’t seem to put them together with the other incidents, though I repeatedly told them I thought we had a saboteur of some kind.”

  “That brings up my report on your kitchen fire.” Jared took the copy of the report out of the folder and handed it to Stevens. “I believe you have a copy, Mrs. Noriega. The grease that combusted in the back of the stove didn’t have an obvious ignition source, but it could have been started by some sort of spark. A buildup like that grease puddle is always a danger in a kitchen.”

  “Which is why I wish I’d talked to you.” Mrs. Noriega nervously touched the scarf knotted around her throat, stroking it. “Chef makes it a priority that all equipment is thoroughly cleaned. There’s no way that grease buildup happened by accident.” She rummaged in the desk, coming up with a binder. “Here’s our kitchen procedure manual. All the things we do to make sure Feast’s kitchens are some of the safest and cleanest on the island.”

  “Well.” Jared shrugged, smiling to take the sting out of his words. “Procedures are only as good as those following them.”

  “Do you suspect anyone in particular as being behind the sabotage?” Stevens took notes on his pad. “Is there any particular staffer you think has a bone to pick with the restaurant?”

  “Yes. We have a blogger in our midst.” Mrs. Noriega said “blogger”
like it was a dirty word. “I’ve been trying to figure out who it is. That person is out to make us look bad.”

  “And I’ve been working on that for Elena.” Sergeant Fraser held up her phone, pointing to the website on it. “The blog is called At the Feast. It’s a sort of . . . diary-like blog. Very funny. It’s gotten picked up by HuffPost Hawaii, too, so it’s getting a lot of hits.”

  “It’s not at all funny.” Mrs. Noriega frowned at the other woman.

  “Oh, come on, Elena.” Fraser turned the smartphone and read, “‘Sometimes Feast reminds me of a soap opera—Chef is the only person, man or woman, who hasn’t slept with the Frenchman.’ That’s funny, right?” She looked around. “‘The Frenchman’ must be Métier.”

  A tight silence fell. Elena Noriega’s cheekbones flushed as she looked down at her hands, twisted in her lap. “Ridiculous.”

  “Interesting that you would say so, considering I have a witness who claims to have seen you in a compromising position with Métier. On the premises, in fact,” Stevens said dryly.

  There was a short, charged silence; then Fraser swiveled to face the other woman. “Elena? What is Lieutenant Stevens referring to?”

  Elena Noriega covered her face with her hands. “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “This is murder, Mrs. Noriega. The stakes are a little higher than embarrassment.” Stevens leaned toward the woman, his voice low and sympathetic. “Of course you turned to other arms for comfort. Your husband was clearly abusive.”

  Jared had to admire his brother’s interviewing technique, as Elena appeared to melt. She lowered her hands, looking up in appeal, eyes shiny with tears.

  “That’s it, exactly. There was no one I could turn to. François—he saw the way Winston treated me, and he’d felt the sharp side of Winston’s temper plenty of times himself. But François was the only person to reach out to me, to confront me about it. He told me one day that he hated how Winston treated me.” Elena turned toward her friend. Kathy Fraser’s face was blank with surprise and suppressed emotion. “It was exactly like the lieutenant says. François was good to me. He . . .” Elena seemed to belatedly realize how many people were in the room, and she swiveled a wild glance around at Jared, Mahoe, and Stevens. She turned to Kathy Fraser. “I should probably have a lawyer, shouldn’t I?”

  “I don’t know, Elena. Should you?” Conflicted emotions flickered in Fraser’s dark blue eyes. Clearly she wanted to help the investigation, but this was her friend, perhaps incriminating herself. Jared could see internal struggle in hands interlaced so hard that the knuckles were white. “If you’ve got nothing to do with the murder, then you’ve got nothing to fear in telling the truth.”

  “Well, I had nothing to do with François’s death.” Mrs. Noriega turned back to Stevens and spoke clearly. “Yes, I was having an affair with François, I’m ashamed to say. But as you had occasion to witness, my husband was abusive.” Her slender hands went to her throat, and Elena Noriega unknotted the scarf. Jared’s eyes widened at the bruises darkening the woman’s pale skin.

  “I’m going to need to photograph those marks as part of our investigation. I recommend that you press charges against your husband, whatever the outcome.” Stevens gestured to Mahoe, who held a camera.

  “You can take the pictures, Lieutenant. But I don’t plan to press charges. Winston just doesn’t handle his anger very well.”

  Mahoe stood with the Canon and approached the desk. Fraser got up from her seat and moved to stand next to Jared as the young detective shot photos from various angles, the flash searing in the small room.

  Jared felt Kathy Fraser’s proximity like an electric field as she was pressed briefly against him by Mahoe’s maneuvering. He needed to get her number, no question. He hadn’t been this attracted to a woman in forever. He held perfectly still, suppressing a zing of reaction, as her hip brushed his shoulder.

  Seated on his other side, Stevens seemed to have forgotten that his brother was there. He turned to Jared. “Well, thanks for bringing the report.”

  Jared stood in the cramped space. Kathy’s head was level with his chin. He smelled her coconut shampoo as he inhaled. “Is there anything else I can do?”

  “I don’t think so.” Stevens absently rubbed that watch he’d worn since Honduras against his wrist.

  “I’ll be right back,” Fraser said to Elena. The policewoman pushed past Jared, and he grabbed the opportunity to follow her out of the office. Seemingly oblivious to him, she headed down the hall toward the restroom.

  She was getting away.

  He took three long strides to catch up. “Kathy.”

  Kathy turned, and now he was standing too close. She backed up, wiping her eyes with a hand, refusing to look at him. “What?”

  “It’s not your fault. You were a good friend. She was hiding the abuse from everyone.” Jared spoke instinctively to the struggle he sensed going on in her.

  “I wasn’t a good friend. I suspected, and I never pushed her. I didn’t want it to be true.” Kathy leaned against the wall, pressing the backs of her hands against her eyes in a gesture both concealing and defensive.

  “I’m sorry. Tough way to find out. Murder investigations have a way of bringing everything out of the closet.” Jared restrained himself from touching her by clasping his hands behind his back.

  Kathy dropped her hands. Blue eyes, framed by lashes spiky with tears, seemed to blaze at him in the dim hall. She squared her shoulders, tugged down the jacket of her uniform. “You don’t have to tell me that. I may work on the third floor, but I earned my place there by being a good cop.”

  She spun on a heel and stomped into the women’s room.

  There was nothing for Jared to do but turn and walk out of the restaurant, disappointment sour in his throat.

  Chapter Four

  Stevens

  Stevens resumed questioning Elena Noriega as Mahoe put away the camera.

  “That blogger said the Frenchman slept with a lot of people. Were you aware of his activities?”

  “I suspected.” Elena wrapped the scarf back around her throat, knotting it loosely. “I heard rumors. He always had someone on his arm. The blogger might have killed him—maybe she was one of his castoffs.”

  Stevens eyed her carefully. Elena didn’t seem emotionally responsive to the fact that the sous-chef had other lovers besides her.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out who the blogger is for weeks.” Kathy reentered and sat back down beside her friend. “Elena asked me to do a little digging. I’ve read all the entries, and there’s nothing that directly links back to a specific role. The blogger talks about the kitchen, working the floor, everything. I’ve run some trace software on the blog, but it’s hosted on one of those onion sites—untraceable.”

  “Clever, using the darknet,” Mahoe said. Stevens glanced at the young man, surprised that the junior officer knew of the network that ran under the radar of trackable web applications. “Mrs. Noriega, Lieutenant Stevens and I began interviewing your kitchen staff. Most of them were aware of the blog.”

  She shook her head. “I hated it. That’s why I had Kathy trying to find who it was.”

  “Well, hopefully we’ll flush out the blogger in our interviewing,” Stevens said. “Tell us how the affair with Métier got started.”

  “Like I said before, François was kind to me. We met every week. He’d work with Chef on the menu for the week, depending on what was fresh and in season. Then, when they had that figured out, sometimes down to the day, François and I would photograph a few sample dishes and discuss the media opportunities for the week. As you know, I am the restaurant’s promotional and business manager.” She gestured to the corner of the office, where a powerful spotlight was clamped to the edge of a filing cabinet, aimed at an area draped in black velvet. “We’d stage the food photos over there. I’d take the photos, then post them on social media and use them in advertising. We have our own website and various social media accounts, too.”

&nb
sp; “Perhaps you could take us through the day before, step-by-step.”

  “Well, I assume what I do at home isn’t of interest to the police.” Mrs. Noriega smoothed her trousers. “I came in about eleven a.m., as I usually do. I checked in with our floor manager, Peter Claymore. He had things in hand, so I went back to the office.” She described the various things she’d done. Stevens found his attention wandering. One of his stress headaches was gathering force behind his temples. “I didn’t spend any time alone with François yesterday, and I left at four p.m.,” Elena finished.

  Kathy spoke up. “Elena has an alibi for the time in question. She was home, with the Noriegas’ child, when the murder took place, if it was late at night—as it seems to have been.”

  “Mrs. Noriega has already been offered counsel,” Stevens told Fraser sharply, annoyed with the interference. “I’d appreciate it if you weren’t functioning in that role.”

  Bright red spots appeared on Fraser’s cheeks. “Perhaps I’d be better able to help the investigation and you, Elena, if I focus on finding the blogger.” She stood up. “I’ll see you back at your house later.”

  “Don’t go, Kathy!” Mrs. Noriega pleaded, but Kathy exited the office.

  Stevens glanced at Mahoe. “Let’s take a break. I need some water.” He stood. “Do you need anything, Mrs. Noriega?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Stevens headed out into the kitchen.

  He found a glass and swallowed a pain pill over by one of the sinks, splashing some water on his face. There were still hours of interviews to go, and his energy was flagging.

  Stevens hoped he’d been wrong about the interest in Kathy Fraser he’d sensed from his brother. Jared made no bones about being sick of Maui’s transient dating scene, and he’d lit up like a Christmas tree at the sight of Kathy—the attraction was hard to miss, if only one-sided. Hopefully Kathy knew enough from Stevens’s stories about Jared to stay away.

  Stevens probed his own mind. Was he apprehensive about Jared’s interest in Kathy because he, himself, was still attracted to her? He stared at the swirl of clear liquid filling his glass.