by Toby Neal
Stevens, grinning, went to the fridge and opened it, taking out an O’Doul’s non-alcoholic beer and popping the top. He still felt an occasional tug of longing for that evening drink, but so far he had been able to redirect or modify old habits. He heard a rush of water and murmur of voices as Lei turned on Kiet’s bath.
Stevens smelled something good and peeked into the oven. Teriyaki chicken rarified the air with the scent of ginger, soy sauce, and garlic. The rice cooker bubbled, and a salad was already made. Lei reappeared, cheeks flushed, hair a frizz.
“I’m sorry you had to see me in that thing.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it.” He hooked an arm around her neck and drew her in for a kiss. “You look . . . what do they call it? Blooming.”
“’Ballooning’ is more like it. Kiet called it right.” She hugged him, though, snuggling close under his arm. He brought a hand down to rub the hard bulge of her belly pressed into him.
“I think I like you home. Barefoot. Pregnant. Fixing me dinner.” He kissed the top of her head, tightening his stomach for the punch she gave him, a playful blow he’d been expecting—and that turned into a leisurely exploration. She ran her hands over his abs as he caressed her belly. They kissed.
“I’m breathing better,” she said against his mouth. “Baby moved around again, and now I’ve got room for my lungs.”
He slid an arm around her. “Hmm—does seem like it’s further down since this morning.”
“Yeah. I now constantly have to pee, not just most of the time. But I hope that means things are progressing.”
A stab of apprehension and excitement tightened Stevens’s guts. They were as prepared as they could be, except for the nursery area, which hopefully she’d have time to work on now that she was home. Both had gone to the childbirth class held at the hospital, and Lei wanted to have the baby natural.
“I’m healthy and strong. Women have been doing this since the dawn of time. How hard can it be?” He remembered her confident declaration at the class, and the tittering of more experienced mothers. It had given him a shiver—but Lei was strong, one of the bravest women he knew. If anyone could do this, she could. Besides, Lei had Pono’s wife, Tiare Kaihale, as her labor coach and doula. Nothing would dare go wrong with Tiare in charge.
“I need a shower. This is just a pit stop; I have to go back out. We’re searching the victim’s house.” Stevens gave her tummy a final pat. “Told Mahoe that this old man needed a home-cooked meal.”
“You should have invited Mahoe over—you’ve got that kid picking up all the slack. Dinner’s almost ready.” Lei bent over to open the oven and poke at the bubbling chicken. “Get your shower. This will be on the table by the time you’re done.”
“Yeah. Like I said, I could get used to this.” He gave Lei a light swat on the behind and went to their bathroom.
Stevens was about to sit down when his father-in-law arrived from his cottage next door. Wayne’s craggy face lit with a smile at the sight of Lei carrying the chicken in a glass pan to the table.
“My favorite, Sweets,” Wayne said. “And I didn’t have to fix it. That’s always a treat.”
Ellen, Stevens’s mother, followed Wayne, her arms wrapped around a big paper bag. Stevens came around the table to greet them.
“Hey, Wayne. Mom.” Stevens kissed his mother’s cheek, pulling her in for a hug. She was looking good, her blond hair touched up, her skin smooth and fresh. She smiled, blue eyes bright.
“I’m so excited. I can’t stop buying stuff for the baby.” Ellen spotted Kiet, sitting at the table already, and caught his eye. “But I never forget my best little man.” Stevens let go of his mother’s slender form, and she hurried over to hug Kiet. “Brought you something fun. You have to wait until after dinner, though.”
“Oh, good,” Kiet said. “Is it Legos?”
“Like I said. After dinner.”
“All we need is for Jared to show up.” Stevens heard the familiar beeping on the wall alarm that told them someone had punched in the code. “Speak of the devil. Did you call the whole family?”
“Guilty. I wanted to kick off my maternity leave with a family dinner,” Lei said. “I knew you couldn’t stay long, but I hoped we’d all be here.”
“I smell teriyaki chicken,” Jared announced when he entered. He held up a metal pan. “I brought dessert. One of the guys down at my station made a mango cobbler. Really huge, so I stole some.”
“Excellent.” Lei gave Stevens’s brother a quick hug. “Glad you could make it on such short notice.”
“I always make time for a noteworthy occurrence, like a night you cook dinner and the smoke alarm doesn’t go off,” Jared teased.
“You mean my cook timer?” Lei said. “Gotta make sure that annoying thing doesn’t need batteries.”
In moments they were all seated around the picnic-style dining room table Stevens had built.
Wayne cleared his throat. “Grace?”
They held hands and bowed their heads around the table. Stevens relished the feeling of Lei’s hand in his on one side, Kiet’s small one on the other, and all of their close family gathered in their home. Moments like this didn’t come often enough with everyone’s hectic schedules.
“Heavenly Father, thanks for these blessings we are about to receive,” Wayne prayed. “Help us use this food to make us strong. Bless my daughter’s hands that fixed this, and may your spirit join us as our honored guest. Amen.”
“Amen,” they all echoed. Stevens noticed that Ellen and Wayne were still holding hands as Lei got the chicken pan, large salad, and bowl of rice moving around the table. He caught Jared’s eye, and his brother raised his brows in a way that told Stevens he wanted to talk to him after the meal.
Stevens took his time eating, as the headache he’d been battling all day finally receded. He let the conversation ebb and flow around him.
“Been watching the weather reports.” Wayne cut into his chicken. Weather monitoring was one of Wayne’s hobbies, though there wasn’t much to follow with Maui’s mostly uniform patterns of sun and rain. “Looks like there’s a hurricane on the way.”
“There’s always a hurricane on the way, during the season.” Jared helped himself to seconds. “We keep an eye and ear on it, too, at the fire department. But Maui has never had a major hurricane. We’re buffered by the Big Island and the smaller islands off our coast.”
“Shouldn’t get complacent,” Wayne said. “That’s when something can go wrong. Is your hurricane supply stocked up?” He aimed this last question at Stevens.
“Can’t say.” Stevens wiped his mouth. They kept the extra water, batteries, toilet paper, canned food, and other supplies in a metal shed in the backyard, but he knew it had been a while since they’d made sure it was usable. “Lei, maybe you could check on that when you’re working on the nursery.”
“Sounds good. One more thing to go shopping for,” Lei said. “I’m sure the TP is shot. The cockroaches come in from the jungle and eat anything they can get into, and I don’t think we put it in a plastic tub or anything.”
“So disgusting.” Ellen sipped from her water glass. “I’m amazed at the things cockroaches will eat here in Hawaii. At the Sunday school class I teach, I found they’d even gotten into the crayons. Chewed on them and left colored bits of poop all over the cupboard!”
“Gross,” Kiet said. Stevens smiled at his son; the boy was using his knife and fork like a champ.
Dinner wound down, and Stevens helped clear the table, waving off dessert. “Unfortunately, I have to get back to work—we caught a fresh homicide today, and you know the twenty-four-hour rule.” He kissed Lei and Kiet as they sat at the table. “Don’t wait up for me, Sweets. Mahoe and I have a lot to do.” He headed for the door.
Jared set the cobbler on the table and chased after him. “Gotta speak with you privately, bro.”
“What is it?” Stevens continued out to the Bronco, opening his door.
“I want Kathy’s number,”
Jared said.
Stevens paused, then turned, frowning. “You don’t get to screw around with her, bro.”
Red suffused Jared’s neck. “It’s not like that.”
“Yeah? How is it, then? The way you ‘liked’ Stephanie McCormick? And Jessie Saldana?” Stevens named friends his brother had dated in LA who’d ended up crying on Stevens’s shoulder when Jared dumped them. “She’s my ex-partner. My officemate. I can’t have you shit where I eat.”
“I thought that might be your attitude. Makes me wonder if you aren’t eating a little of that yourself.”
Stevens felt hot rage flush his body as he spun toward his brother. On top of the issues he’d had with Lei about Kathy, it was too much. “You didn’t just say that.”
They glared at each other, gazes clashing. Stevens felt the need to hit Jared vibrating along his arms. Family is overrated. Brothers in particular.
Jared dropped his eyes. “Shit. No. I didn’t just say that.”
Stevens let out his held breath. “Good thing, too.”
“That was a long time ago, Mike. I’ve changed.”
“You’ve been here five years, bro, and all I’ve seen that whole time was the three-bang rule.” Jared’s habit of sleeping with women three times before disappearing was something of a legend.
“This is different.” Jared’s jaw bunched. “I guess I’ll have to prove it.”
“Yeah, and you’ll have to get her number some other way, too.” Stevens jumped into the truck and fired it up, then drove out of the compound without looking back.
Chapter Six
Brandon
Brandon walked behind Lieutenant Stevens toward the upscale condo complex in Lahaina where the victim had lived. Darkness rendered the building dramatic, lit by spotlights on a fancy ivory-and-plum color scheme. Palms in huge planters marked an entrance between two of the buildings. Brandon admired the sandstone walkway that led to a trickling fountain of a mermaid pouring water into a small, lily-studded pond. Beyond the buildings, a large pool, lit from below, glowed space age blue.
Stevens checked his phone for the victim’s apartment number. “Looks like it’s just ahead.”
“This guy was living large,” Brandon said as they ascended a short flight of stairs that split at the entry into two units. He was still struggling with his upcoming thirtieth birthday, and Métier had been thirty-two. “He wasn’t a lot older than me.”
The LT didn’t reply. He’d procured the key from the body, but he knocked on the door.
No answer. He knocked again. “Open up. Maui Police Department.”
Still no answer.
“No one at the restaurant thought he had a roommate, male or female,” Brandon said, as the LT slid the key they’d taken off the victim’s body into the shiny, lacquered black door and pushed it open. The living room was spacious, half of it sectioned off into a loft, where Métier’s office area was accessed by a metal spiral staircase, leaving a high-ceilinged living room area. Sliding glass doors opened onto a patio overlooking the glowing blue pool and an ocean view.
“Where’d he get all the money?” Brandon set down his crime kit on a granite counter leading into the kitchen. He snapped on his gloves. “The vic must have been loaded.”
“Appearances can be deceiving. We have to find out who his next of kin is—they will be getting all this.” The lieutenant went ahead of Brandon and quickly checked each room. “Always make sure the residence is clear, Mahoe. Who knows? He might have had a friend here or something.”
“You mean a woman.”
“You sound jealous of this guy, Mahoe.” The LT fixed Brandon with one of those hard blue stares that seemed to laser his soul. “You may have been close in age, but from what I can tell, Métier was a jerk. You’re solid. Just keep doing what you’re doing—you’re already a success.” Stevens clapped Brandon on the shoulder. “Take the bedroom and bathroom. I’ll take the kitchen and office. We can both do the living room. Let’s start here since this is where we are.”
Brandon nodded. He searched rapidly, pulling books off the dark wood shelf and flipping through them, shoving them back in. He appreciated the LT’s words, but it was hard to feel like a success when he didn’t even have a girlfriend and lived with his mother, trying to save up for a down payment on his own place someday. That goal felt next to impossible on Maui, with the island’s inflated prices.
He flipped open a glossy art book, and frowned in surprise as hundred-dollar bills drifted out of it. “Got a cash stash here.”
“He was funding this new restaurant with something,” LT said from across the room, where he was checking around the entertainment unit. “He didn’t make enough as a sous-chef to afford an apartment like this, let alone to open a competing restaurant.”
Brandon squatted, picking up the hundreds and stuffing them into an evidence bag. He almost slipped one into his pocket reflexively. Who would ever know?
He would know, and so would God. He didn’t need a penny of this guy’s dirty money. Brandon labeled the bag and set it by the door. He moved on, lifting the pebbled black leather couch cushions quickly. The sound of Velcro ripping up on one of them was loud in the room. He spotted an unsecured corner of black fabric over the boxy structure of the couch, and found a small safe nested inside.
“Hey.” Brandon gestured for the LT. “Looks like some kind of strongbox or safe here.” It weighed a ton, and LT helped him lift it out.
“Gonna have to take this to the station to get it open.” Brandon fiddled with the dial-style combination locking mechanism.
“Well, he definitely had a stash of some kind going on,” LT said, rising. “Maybe we’ll be able to find the combination somewhere.”
Brandon moved off into the bedroom with his kit. The room was large, dominated by a bed covered in black satin. The doors of the closet were mirrored. Another mirror hung over the bed, and a third one was inset in the padded satin headboard, bringing Brandon to a halt.
Images of Métier bringing hot women here for sex filled his mind. Brandon scowled, his hands fisting. The guy was dead, and Brandon was alive. He’d meet someone special someday, and hell if he’d make a performance out of their private moments like this sleazeball had.
Brandon photographed the room briefly and walked across the silky gray plush carpet to the bed. He pulled out the top drawer of the roomy nightstand next to it.
A collection of sex toys and bondage equipment filled the space. Probably not worth bagging and bringing in, but the props were highly realistic. He stirred them with a finger, glad he had gloves on, and pulled out the next drawer.
Masks, feather boas, spandex and leather costumes, both male and female, filled the drawer, each one in a plastic bag neatly labeled. Brandon grinned at the cop costume—the pair of handcuffs looked real, but the blue satin man thong wasn’t going to leave much to the imagination.
Métier probably had a camera somewhere to record the activities. Why get all crazy and dressed up if there wasn’t an audience? Brandon took out a small flashlight and shone it along a collection of tribal masks set on a narrow shelf that ran around the room at shoulder height, giving an impression of a watching audience. Directly across from the bed, he found the camera, a small round lens planted in the eye of one of the masks. The camera was attached to a narrow wire that fed into a hole in the wall.
“Hey, LT!” Brandon called.
“Yeah?” Stevens’s voice drifted down from above. He must be in the area of the loft office.
“Can you check if there’s a black cable leading into the floor, coming from the computer?”
A few minutes went by, then: “Yeah. Looks like it goes into the floor.”
“I think the victim might have been making porn in here,” Brandon said. “If so, that could be some important evidence for us to review.”
“I’ll give that to you to go through when we gain access to it. I’m a married man with tender sensibilities.”
“Aw, damn, LT, really? You g
onna make me watch the vic’s homegrown porn all by myself?” Brandon grinned as he checked under the bed. Nothing there but a dried-up condom. He opened the closets. Rows of expensive-looking clothing and designer shoes. “That was the big news in here. Guy was quite a player from the looks of it—in more ways than one.”
“Maybe that’s what got him killed.” Stevens appeared in the doorway, carrying a computer. “Thing’s password protected, so we’ll have to take it in for Jessup to crack.”
“I’m moving on to the bathroom.” Brandon followed the lieutenant as he added the computer to a growing pile of items to carry out to their vehicles for processing. “Did you find anything else interesting up in the office?”
“Yeah. The name of Métier’s financial adviser and an estate lawyer. That should help us find the source of his funds, and maybe his next of kin.”
Brandon was heading for the bathroom when they heard the sound of a key in the lock. Brandon pulled his weapon, slipping behind the doorjamb, as Stevens did the same, standing beside the front door. The door opened with the kind of loud, confident click and shove that told Brandon the young blond woman entering expected to be alone. She jumped and dropped a large canvas bag at the sight of the LT holding his weapon.
“Oh my God!” The woman’s hand came up to her throat. Wide blue eyes, waist-length ripple of hair, skimpy outfit, long tanned legs—probable girlfriend. “What are you doing here?”
“Lieutenant Stevens and Detective Mahoe of Maui Police Department.” The LT holstered his weapon and showed the badge on his belt as Brandon held up his ID. “Who are you?”
“Kitty Summers.” The woman’s eyes filled and she covered her mouth with a hand. “This is about François being killed, isn’t it?”
“Yes. We were going to find you to talk with you about the murder, but since you’re here, why don’t you have a seat? Brandon can take your statement,” the LT said. “I’ll finish the search.”
Brandon’s mentor was trying to get him to take the lead on investigations more and more. He squelched intimidation at the woman’s total hotness and smiled, gesturing to the living room seating area. “Please. I’m sorry we surprised you this way.”