by Toby Neal
He followed her down a step into the slightly sunken living room, admiring her slim curves in an aqua-colored miniskirt and halter top. He’d probably get to see a lot more of her in the videos on that computer. He felt a guilty flush at the nasty thought.
She looked around at the books, not as neat as they’d been before. Bright red accent pillows had fallen off the couch, and Brandon picked one up off the floor after Summers retrieved the other two, smacking them into the corners of the couch in a way that told him she was annoyed by the disarray.
“I should have expected this. I guess I just didn’t realize you’d get here so fast.” Summers sat on the loveseat across from him and crossed her legs. Her feet were bare, and her toenails hot pink—she must have slipped her shoes off at the door, as was done in Hawaii.
Summers reached for a tissue from the box on the coffee table, dabbing her eyes, but he hadn’t seen any moisture in them.
Brandon took out his phone and thumbed to the voice memo, setting it between them on the coffee table. “Okay if I record this? It often helps us get all the information we need in one interview.”
“Okay. Do I need a lawyer or anything?”
Brandon smiled reassuringly. “This is just an initial statement, but of course that’s always your right.” He waited a beat, but she didn’t respond. He flipped open the spiral pad he liked to use for notes—he hoped it conveyed his seriousness to witnesses. “So. How did you know the victim?”
“We worked together at Feast. He was my boyfriend.” Summers cast her eyes down and dabbed again—she was trying to muster up some tears. They heard scraping and clanking sounds. LT was searching the bathroom, opening cabinets and shutting drawers.
“Were you exclusive?”
“I had a key to his apartment. That’s pretty exclusive.” Summers fiddled with the little purse she’d carried in. She retrieved a stick of gum, putting it in her mouth. “I’m trying to quit smoking.” Her expression was defiant as she chewed, the gum making a moving wad in her cheek beside plump pink lips. “I was the only one who had a key.”
“So you knew about his . . . habits.”
“What habits would those be?” Summers chewed harder. The gum bunched her cheek.
Brandon cleared his throat. Was she kidding? “We have statements from several witnesses that he slept around at Feast. That he was a player.”
“I knew that. But we were moving forward.” Summers grabbed the throw pillow, wrapping her arms around it, hugging it. “He loved me. I know he loved me.”
Brandon waited a beat, but Summers bent her head so her hair fell forward to hide her face. “So were you working the night he was killed?”
“I was. I had the later shift, came on at seven and worked past closing. I can’t believe he was dead in that walk-in. I must have passed it a hundred times that night.” Finally, tears brightened her eyes. She was the picture of bereaved, wringing slender fingers to go along with that woebegone face. “He was going to ask me to marry him.”
Brandon was glad Stevens had come to join them, sitting down next to him on the sofa. “This is interesting, Lieutenant,” Brandon said. “Apparently Miss Summers was about to get a proposal.”
“So how did you know that?” LT asked.
Summers shrugged, and her eyes skittered away. “We’d been talking about marriage. He was . . . nervous that night. Keyed up. Told me he had to talk with me after work. That’s why I was surprised when he never came to my place. I went home and waited for him there until I finally fell asleep around midnight.”
“So you didn’t call his cell phone?” Brandon had bagged the phone found on the body, scrolling briefly through it at the scene. He remembered seeing her name on the Recent Calls list.
“I did call. He didn’t pick up. I figured something had come up.”
“Did you have any other signs that he was going to propose?” LT asked.
“We had decided to be exclusive. He said he had to—tie up some loose ends, as he put it. I thought that meant breaking it off with—others.” She looked down modestly. “And I spotted a ring. In his pocket.”
“Since you were moving forward as you say . . . did you know who else he was tying up loose ends with?”
“I don’t know. But I did know we weren’t exclusive until recently.”
“So when did things change for the two of you?” Brandon leaned forward, hoping to show sympathy with his posture and clasped, dangling hands.
Summers flicked her hair back and sighed. For the first time Brandon saw real emotion in her brimming eyes. “I missed a period. It turned out to be nothing, but it pulled us together. He told me things were going to change between us.” The tears, now that they’d gotten started, were really going, slipping quietly down her cheeks. “He was such an amazing man.” She dabbed her eyes.
“Hmm, yes,” Stevens said. “Is there anyone who can verify that you didn’t enter the walk-in after nine p.m.?”
“Maybe our floor manager, Peter Claymore. We were jammed. He was moving wine, and we had some tables we were working together.”
“So what did you come to the apartment for today?” Brandon asked, noting the manager’s name. They had an interview scheduled with him the next day.
“I was picking up a few things. Personal things.” Summers ducked her head again. Probably had wanted to remove the sex toys and other paraphernalia before they were seen.
“Were you aware that Métier may have been recording your . . . intimate moments?” Stevens asked, brows knit in concern.
Summers’s gaze flew to the computer, on the floor beside the front door. “Uh. Yes. These videos were for us.” Again, the wide defiant stare. “I’d appreciate having them back.”
“Well, we aren’t sure who’s going to inherit all this,” Brandon said. “Could be they would get the computer. Any idea who his next of kin is?”
Summers’s eyes flashed with anger. “I get those recordings. They were private!”
“I understand, Miss Summers. Right now the computer and its contents are evidence. We’ll get back to you on who gets what. In fact, we’re just finishing, but we can’t let you take anything out while the apartment is an active crime scene.” The LT stood. “So you don’t have an alibi for the time of the murder?”
“I would never—I loved François!”
“I take that as a ‘no.’” Brandon rose to his feet as well.
“A hundred people saw me working. Would anyone swear I never went into that walk-in? Probably not. But I didn’t do it.” Kitty Summers stood, smoothing her miniskirt. “I want those videos. They’re mine. And . . . the other stuff, too.”
“We’ll be in touch,” LT said. Brandon herded Kitty Summers gently out the door. He shut it behind her.
“Do you think the vic was proposing to her, LT?” Brandon bent and picked up the heavy safe.
Stevens picked up the computer. “I don’t see it. I’m guessing Métier was the type who’d want to marry someone who enhanced his status or brought something to the table. Summers knew about the ring, though, and she was telling the truth about being in the videos. I’ll put money on that.”
“Not a bet I’d take,” Brandon said. They sealed the door with crime scene tape and headed for their vehicles.
“You did all that casework while I took a dinner break—so I’ll take these items to the station and log them all in to evidence. You hang out with Jessup now and again—can you let him know we have a computer for him to work on?” Stevens hefted the computer into the backseat, and Brandon set the safe beside it.
“Sure. I hang out with the kid on occasion—if you call getting my ass handed to me at World of Warcraft ‘hanging out.’ Murioka is way too good.” Brandon swiped an arm over his forehead. “I’m more worried about getting this safe open. Did you find a combination in the office?”
“No. I plan to call and set up an appointment with the financial planner and estate lawyer with the info I found. Maybe they will know something. We still haven�
��t got a next of kin to notify. Did you see any names in his phone?” Stevens stowed the evidence bags beside the safe in the backseat.
“It was password protected. Gonna have to have Jessup unlock that, too. You sure I can go home?” Brandon was reluctant to leave. His mother, a nurse, was working graveyard tonight. Nothing and no one waited for him at home but a frozen pizza and The Wire on Netflix.
“Yeah. Go get some rest. We’ve got another long one tomorrow.” Stevens slammed the door of the Bronco with finality and drove away.
Chapter Seven
Dr. Phil Gregory
Dr. Phil Gregory opened his closet and looked at the row of aloha shirts neatly arranged in a rainbow of colors.
He was feeling green today.
He riffled through the various choices. “Honey, where’s my green shirt with the honus on it?” The shirt’s background, ocean-colored, set off sea turtles done in purples and yellows, a particularly eye-catching design. The turtles, with their curious expressions, helped him find answers.
Leslie Tanaka sat up in bed, stretching slender arms high. She wore a pink sleep tee with Tweety Bird on it. She shook her head. Her jet-black hair, cut with its edgy knifepoint angles, fell effortlessly into place. “I think that one’s in the laundry room.”
“Thanks for washing it for me.”
“You didn’t get blood on it this time, thankfully.” She flopped back down. “We’re backlogged, aren’t we?”
Phil came around the bed and leaned over to kiss her. He still couldn’t believe she actually loved him—he was the luckiest man on Maui. “Take another hour. The dead won’t complain.”
Leslie reached up to touch his face. “Yeah, but the living will. You’re so good to me.”
“Ha. It’s mutual.” Phil left her with another kiss and went to the laundry room. Their house was a new ranch in Waiehu; he liked how close it was to the morgue and to the ocean. He never got tired of listening to the sound of the surf wafting across the edge of the golf course the house faced. With solid jobs, they’d been able to buy it during the depressed real estate market, and he was still pinching himself that he’d achieved his dreams: living in Hawaii, doing a job he enjoyed, spending every day with the woman he loved.
Phil shrugged into the honu shirt, pleased to see that it was hanging a lot better since he’d amped up his workouts and cut out convenience foods—not easy at a job where he basically never left the building. Leslie, without ever saying a word, had rubbed off on him. She cooked nutritious meals, packed lunch for both of them, and used the gym in the hospital building daily.
He wanted to be worthy of her—not that she’d ever indicated he wasn’t, but he didn’t like the way his paunchy gut looked next to her slim figure. Plus, the bachelor diet of pizza and beer was just tired.
This morning he had a meeting with Lieutenant Stevens and Brandon Mahoe about François Métier’s post. He’d begun it last night but hadn’t quite finished—he’d had hula practice.
Another Leslie idea. Phil grinned. It was so crazy, a haole guy like him with the kane hula group, and klutzy, too. Good thing his kumu was understanding.
Phil returned to the bedroom. Leslie seemed to have taken him at his word and had gone back to sleep, so he shut the door carefully and went into the kitchen.
After a quick breakfast of fruit and yogurt, he picked up the lunch Leslie had prepared for them the night before and got on the road to the hospital.
Morning on Maui was glorious. The sun broke over the shoulder of ten-thousand-foot Haleakala like a lance ripping the blue fabric of sky to emit the gold of angels passing. Palms swayed along the congested road leading into town, and even with the bumper-to-bumper morning commute traffic, Phil got a glimpse of canoe paddlers in Kahului Harbor and the latest cruise ship, decked with lights, at anchor.
The morgue was quiet. “And I’d be worried if it wasn’t,” Phil said aloud as he hit the iPod he used to pipe music into the open work area with its shiny metal tables. Hawaiian slack-key guitar began a mellow backbeat to his day as he stowed their lunches in the little personal fridge near his and Leslie’s office area.
He donned his apron, choosing the yellow smiley face one today, and then went to the bank of refrigerators.
François Métier looked the same as he had yesterday—bluish from exsanguination, the cause of death Phil had recorded officially on his report. He finished dictating his notes as he closed the chest incision.
A buzzer sounded, and he glanced up. Lieutenant Stevens and Brandon Mahoe were framed in the glass of the door leading into the sally port. The tall lieutenant wasn’t looking that good. His color was off and he looked tired, even though it was only eight a.m.—but then, he’d been recovering from that disaster in Central America. Considering what could have happened, Phil was glad the man was back at work at all. He and Lei were some of Phil’s favorite people.
Phil hurried around the end of the table to open the door for them. “Hey, guys. Wish I had some coffee to offer you.”
Mahoe’s brown eyes had gone to Phil’s apron, already a little smeared from leaning over to get a particularly stubborn stitch through Métier’s chest incision. Skin could be tougher than people knew. Phil rubbed the spot but made it worse with his bloody glove.
He gestured with his black-threaded needle. “Come on in. I’m just finishing up with your boy.”
“Nice to see you looking so healthy, Dr. G,” Stevens said.
“Thanks. How’s your wife?”
“Rough night last night.” Stevens pushed his hand through his rumpled hair, moving it off his forehead but mussing it further. “She had a lot of those false labor pains, and her back was hurting. We were up a lot. But it’s okay—she’s out on maternity leave now, so she gets to take a nap if she needs to.” He laughed ruefully. “I wouldn’t mind a nap myself.”
“I can run to the cafeteria for some coffee, LT,” Mahoe said. The square-faced, earnest young Hawaiian looked a little ill; clearly not comfortable with the sights and smells Phil took for granted.
“That would be great,” Phil said. “Grab me one too, will ya? Black.”
Stevens nodded at Mahoe. “I’ll take cream and sugar in mine today,” he told the young man. “Thanks.”
Mahoe left for the hospital’s cafeteria on the first floor, and Phil gestured to the body. The two of them approached Métier.
“I don’t have anything too surprising to say about your victim,” Phil said. “As you might have guessed, cause of death is exsanguination due to a stab wound.”
“Hmm.” Stevens made a note in a spiral notebook with its stub of pencil tied on with a bit of string.
“He had some epithelials under the nail on the hand that was holding the ring,” Phil said. “It’s going to take a while to do DNA processing on the sample, and it’s so small I’m concerned there won’t be enough tissue to process. But that could at least show who he was with recently. As a chef he’d have been washing his hands frequently in the kitchen during food prep, so perhaps the DNA belongs to his killer.”
“Good. I’ll put a rush on that at the lab,” Stevens said. “Anything else?”
“No. This is the body of a healthy thirty-two-year-old male in excellent physical condition, dead of unnatural causes.” Phil sighed. “If we’d found him sooner, we might have been able to harvest some of these beautiful organs.”
“No one ever thinks he’s going to die.” Stevens met Phil’s eyes. “I know better, especially after my stint overseas. And—of course I’m an organ donor.”
“Well, I hope never to meet you on one of these tables.” Phil fussed with removing some instruments from the autoclave to hide his emotion. Stevens had come way too close to death last year for his peace of mind.
“I’ll second that,” Stevens said.
Mahoe appeared at the sally port, and Phil buzzed him in. “Black for Dr. G, cream and sugar for LT.” The young detective handed them each covered cups of coffee from a cardboard carrier.
S
tevens’s gaze rested on the victim as he sipped his brew. “Anything about the knife wound that we didn’t already cover?”
“That chef’s knife was so damned sharp that it severed a major artery and dropped him like a rock.” Phil grimaced over his black coffee—he couldn’t afford the calories the way he liked his coffee, and black took some getting used to. “The thrust didn’t require a lot of strength, but this person knew just where to hit him—or was very lucky. Slid that blade right between his ribs. Stabbings are often messier; take more hits to kill. The vic takes a while to die and can sometimes get help. This stab was quick, clean. Surgical, almost. I’ll fax over the report when it’s done, per usual.”
“Thanks, Doc.” Stevens lifted his coffee in a wave, and the two left.
Phil put his hands on his hips, surveying his little kingdom. “Let’s finish this,” he told Métier, and picked up his needle and thread.
Chapter Eight
Lei
Lei surveyed the guest room/office, the third bedroom of their modest house, and rubbed her aching lower back as she looked at the daunting amount of furniture. A filing cabinet, desk, office chair, dresser, and a twin bed would all have to be relocated or given away.
She just wasn’t willing to do it. Truth was, she didn’t want to pack this room up and turn it into a nursery—she and Stevens needed somewhere to get away from the family noise to work, and also a place to put guests who visited from the mainland or another island.
Better to just keep the baby in their room in the cradle and then move the child into the bedroom with Kiet when he or she was old enough to sleep through the night. Until then, if one of them needed extra rest, they could crash in the guest room.
“Thank God,” Lei muttered, decision made. “I didn’t want to do that chore anyway.”