by Toby Neal
Truth was, Jared reminded her too much of his brother. The thwarted feelings she’d had for Stevens were finally, mercifully, gone—leaving awkwardness and an emotional minefield between them.
“How’d you get my number?” The question came out sharper than she’d meant it to.
“I asked around—we have a few friends in common. I meant to ask you for it when we met, but you ran off. Sorry if this is a bad time.” His tone had cooled.
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea for us to go out.” Kathy cleared her throat. “I mean, I work with your brother.”
“So?” Jared sounded defensive, but like he was trying to make light of it. “It’s not a marriage proposal. It’s just coffee.”
Kathy gave an embarrassed burp of a laugh. “I just didn’t expect this call. You’ve caught me on the road to Lahaina, and I’m just—whatever. Sure, we can do coffee.”
“Going to Lahaina? Something to do with the case, I take it?” Interest brightened his voice.
Kathy was relieved they were moving past the stilted conversational beginning. She could tell Jared what she was doing; he was a part of the team, if only peripherally. “Yes, this is related to the Feast case. We have a lead on the blogger. Stevens asked me to interview him.”
“Wish I could be a fly on the wall for that. I read those blogs—hilarious. Unfortunately, I have a nasty fire out in Huelo to investigate, in the opposite direction.” A pause. “So, coffee. Are you going to be back in Kahului this afternoon?”
“I should be.”
“Let’s meet in Wailuku at that coffeehouse on Main Street. It’s got atmosphere.”
“Not a Starbucks fan?”
“Not so much. And they’re always mobbed. I was hoping for a little peace and quiet to talk more privately.”
Kathy felt that prickle of heat on her skin again. She wasn’t sure if it was anticipation or nervous dread—she’d heard stories about Jared’s dating habits, and not just from Stevens. “That should be nice. I’ll text you when I’m back in the area,” she said stiffly.
“Sounds good. Have fun de-blogging the restaurant.”
“Ha, good one.”
“Yeah, I’m known for a funny now and again. See you later.” He hung up briskly.
Kathy navigated the last of the turns on the road they called the Pali. The series of sinuous curves, framed by views of cobalt ocean and glimpses of Kahoolawe and Lanai, was usually one of her favorite drives. Today she couldn’t get into it.
Jared asked me out. Would that be weird with Stevens?
Definitely. He wouldn’t want his promiscuous brother messing around with someone on his team. But it wasn’t up to him.
“I’m a big girl and I can handle myself,” Kathy said aloud. “Hell if I’m going to be another notch on that guy’s belt.” Even so, she felt a quiver, wondering what Jared would be like in bed. Probably amazing. “Shit. It’s just coffee after work.”
The GPS directed her to a turnoff at the beginning of Lahaina and to a run-down, triple-decker building. Deep in the shade of huge mango trees that thrived in Lahaina’s hot climate, the faded turquoise apartment building was fronted by a cracked concrete parking lot that smelled of rotting garbage overflowing a nearby dumpster.
Kathy straightened her uniform, checked her weapon, and locked the Rogue. She ascended a flight of worn metal stairs on the exterior of the building and knocked on a door sporting several pairs of rubber slippers on a pineapple-embossed welcome mat.
“Hey.” Sage Bukowski opened the door without checking the peephole, swinging it wide in the trusting gesture of one who’s never faced an enemy at the door.
Chapter Ten
C.J.
C.J. liked to beat her team to the conference room. It kept her in the driver’s seat, and commanding a station of mostly male, testosterone-driven cops made staying in that seat extra important. She hadn’t gotten to the rank of captain by batting her eyelashes, and she never let them forget it. She sat down at the head of the table. Usually there was some eager beaver, often Jessup Murioka or that crime scene intern from UH, who wanted to schmooze her by being early.
C.J. glanced at the clock. The team meeting to review the Feast murder was scheduled in ten minutes. She created a little work area by booting up her laptop, opening her zipped-up organizer, and popping the top on a fresh Diet Coke. These mundane activities gave her a private moment to mull over last night’s events.
Her lover had surprised her, and she was still deciding if she liked being surprised.
They’d met at the Maui Beach Hotel, a three-star in the center of Kahului whose main attribute was convenience. Per their usual arrangement, he’d gotten there first and paid for the room in cash.
Unlike team meetings, getting to their liaison first sent a needy message—and C.J. wasn’t going to be needy. With him, or anyone.
He’d texted her the room number. Ready to do some hard time, Captain.
She’d smiled at that as she’d changed out of her uniform into a simple sheath dress with some very not-simple underwear on underneath. At the hotel, C.J. had tapped on the door, feeling a pleasant buzz of anticipation. Yeah, handcuffs tonight. For him.
Her lover opened the door, and he was only wearing a towel. She felt her mouth go dry at his size and muscularity—his magnificent pecs were level with her eyes.
“You’re a little late.” His deep voice always snagged on her nerves.
“And you are—yummy.” C.J. put her mouth on his nearby chest and bit gently.
He’d hauled her into the room, slammed the door, and blew away her carefully constructed fantasy with one of his own.
“Ahem, Captain.”
C.J. started. Jessup Murioka, looking sheepish, waved, and she realized she must have missed the first time he called her name. She’d been too busy staring into space with a grin on her face.
“The meeting’s in ten minutes.” She speared Murioka with an impatient glance, then looked at her laptop, which had finally finished booting. The paperwork was overwhelming in her position, and the only way she kept on top of it at all was to multitask. “You’re early.”
“Yes, sir.” The kid was eighteen, but his voice was still off, going high and reedy now and again, as if he were still in junior high. He’d had a recent growth spurt, and his Adam’s apple worked as she glanced at him, neatly dressed in a button-down and khakis, a nice change from his school uniform. He was keeping his black hair high and tight, too, and not for the first time, C.J. was glad she’d taken the risk two years ago to accept him as a technology intern. Murioka had overhauled much of the antiquated tech in the building, and continued to stay on, paid a pittance, as he worked on a degree at UH Maui.
“I just thought I’d tell you I cracked the vic’s phone and computer. There’s some interesting material on there.” And damn if the kid didn’t blush.
Must be porn.
“Bring some way to view the material to the meeting.”
“I also got the safe open.”
“What’s inside?”
“I didn’t look. I’m not a detective.”
C.J. had to find a way to keep Murioka after he graduated. She’d have to find some creative way to carve enough money out of her budget to increase his salary. “Good work. Bring the items to the meeting.”
“Yes, sir.” He spun on a heel and left.
C.J. tipped back her chair and tapped her fingernails together. The day she’d decided to be addressed as “sir,” she’d still been a lieutenant, commanding the tiny, now-defunct Haiku Station, when she’d realized that (a) she hated how being called “ma’am” made her feel old, and (b) the fewer reminders of her gender when commanding men, the better. A woman who insisted on being called “sir” had caused some waves at first, but C.J. had checked with ACLU to make sure she had a right to use “any appropriate title affording rank.”
“The shame. No grandchildren,” her mother had mourned. “No one would have a ballbuster like you.”
; C.J. had used a bad word to her mother’s face that time, and they hadn’t spoken for a whole week.
She liked being called “sir” and had no intention of having children. Watching Texeira waddle around the station pregnant had sealed that decision. Messy, drooly, distracting little things, they loved to put their sticky little hands on her clothes and cause workplace absences. Her mother would have to harp on her brother for babies.
C.J. sipped her Diet Coke as the team trickled in: Stevens first, looking better than yesterday, if still a little off-color; Mahoe, his square face chapped from shaving; Murioka, carrying a computer tablet on top of the safe.
And her lover brought up the rear. He winked from behind Murioka, grinning. “Good morning, Captain.”
C.J. dropped the pen she was holding and had to chase it around under her chair, getting her surprise under control. Nope. She was sure now that she didn’t like surprises. This was a great example of why it was a bad idea to sleep with coworkers. He’d winked at her! She was going to have to take that out on his hide.
C.J. sat upright and tapped the pen on the table to bring the meeting to order. “This case is taking a lot of heat, and bringing in Chef Noriega for an interview is getting some backlash. I got a call from the mayor this morning about our station ‘harassing’ his favorite chef. Report.”
“Yes, sir,” Stevens said. “Before we get started, I thought I’d make sure it was okay to have Detective Torufu help us. I need the extra manpower, he offered, and he’s between big cases. We have so many people to do follow-up interviews with and so much evidence from the scene to process, we could use a hand.”
“Fine,” C.J. barked, not making eye contact with anything but her computer screen. Abe Torufu was a decent detective, great at his bomb squad duties, and damn good in bed, too. She was in danger of liking him too much. “Where are we after the first twenty-four hours?”
“Mahoe? Can you do the tracking on the board?” Stevens asked. Mahoe got up to cover that chore as Stevens reviewed progress: trace and evidence from the body, initial statements taken at the restaurant and several interesting follow-ups scheduled, the interview with Chef Noriega, the search of the victim’s residence, and their impressions of Kitty Summers, erstwhile girlfriend.
“You need to find out who that ring was for,” C.J. said to Stevens. “Anything more on whoever was sabotaging the kitchen?”
“Noriega thought Métier was doing it as part of his exit strategy. It will be interesting to see if anything further occurs with Métier out of the picture. I’d say if there are no further incidents, it’s safe to assume the victim was responsible.”
“Well, Chef Noriega has some powerful motive.” C.J. gestured to Mahoe. “List the motives we already know Noriega has.” Mahoe did so, forehead knit as he printed industriously on the board.
“We have absolutely no physical evidence tying Chef to the crime,” Stevens said. “Nor anyone else, for that matter. As you pointed out, Noriega has powerful friends, and though he’s a violent man, a stab in the back doesn’t seem his style. He says he had a plan to deal with Métier. Seemed almost annoyed he wasn’t going to be able to execute it with the man dead.”
C.J. nodded. “Mahoe, make another list for Elena Noriega. Motive is jealousy of his other lovers, with perhaps the ring as a catalyst. Or same as Chef, she feels betrayed by his plans to compete with Feast.”
Mahoe wrote as fast as he could.
“Still nothing linking her to the victim.” There was a glint in Stevens’s eyes that told C.J. he was enjoying his moment as devil’s advocate. “But I have hopes for that DNA trace Dr. G found under his nails.”
“And there was nothing on the knife?”
“Nothing but smears.”
C.J. swung her foot. The Jimmy Choos she’d slipped into that morning had a tiny strap that was killing her ankle. “I want to know who Métier was proposing to. Find his next of kin and his best friends. Hopefully his phone or that safe will have more for us. Murioka?”
Jessup cleared his throat. “Yes, sir. I got into his phone and the lieutenant can have it.” The kid pushed the evidence-bagged phone to Stevens. “I also broke into the computer. Lots of files that might be of interest. I made a copy of the hard drive last night and loaded the whole thing onto this tablet.” He turned the tablet so the team could see. “Lots of videos on here. They seem to be the victim and . . . his girlfriends.” Murioka pushed a button, and one of the videos began to play.
“Looks professional,” Stevens said. A title, Fellatio with the Frenchman, came up. “This is a lot more organized than I expected.”
A production company was listed. “Pause the video!” C.J. pointed to the company name. “Follow that up.”
“Will do.” Stevens made a note. “Let’s roll this a minute, see what’s on there.”
“I imagine fellatio with the Frenchman is what’s on there,” C.J. said. “And I don’t need to see that. Your team can go over the content of the laptop back in your cubicle.” She was highly aware of Torufu’s gaze from across the table. “Murioka also got the safe open. Who wants to do the honors?”
“I’ve got gloves in my back pocket, along with explosives detection paper,” Torufu volunteered.
“We don’t think explosives are a concern, but it can’t hurt to swab first,” Stevens said. C.J. inclined her head in agreement. Abe snapped on gloves and walked around the table to stand at the corner nearest her, where Murioka had set the heavy-looking metal cube. He bent, inspecting it.
She tried not to notice the way his shirt tightened across his massive back. Abe had kept himself in shape ever since his football days with University of Hawaii, and she hoped he always would—not that they had a future or anything.
Abe took a sealed plastic packet out of his pocket. “Never know when you’ll need these.” He swabbed around the door of the safe with a chemical-soaked cotton pad. Held it up. “No evidence of explosives. How do I get this thing open, kid?”
“I contacted the safe company and got the combination,” Murioka piped. “It’s dialed in already. Just push down on the handle.”
The safe was set on its back wall. Abe took hold of the handle after pushing it down and lifted the door open. Stevens, Mahoe, and Murioka all surged to their feet, clustering around to peer in, but C.J. refused to lose her dignity. “What’s inside?”
Abe reached in and brought out a thick wad of bundled, rubber-banded cash. “Nothing but money.” He riffled through the packets. “Looks like ten thousand a packet.”
“Bet this is the startup seed money for the victim’s restaurant,” Stevens said.
Things got a little chaotic as the team counted the cash. “Can’t imagine having money like this just sitting around,” Mahoe said.
“He had a plan that required a lot of money, from everything we’re hearing. We just need to find out where this money came from. Could point us to a different motive,” Stevens said.
“Well, without counting every bill, I’d say there’s around a hundred grand here,” Abe said.
“Enough to get his restaurant going,” C.J. pointed the pen at Stevens. “Find out where this came from. And take this down and log it into evidence. I think that does it for today. Keep me posted. Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.” They replaced the money in the safe. Stevens shut the door and picked up the metal cube. “Torufu, why don’t you take the tablet, surf through it, and follow up with the video production company. I’ve got too many interviews lined up today to get to it.”
“No problem,” Torufu rumbled in that deep bass that always got to C.J. He took the tablet from Murioka and hung back as the room cleared. “Can I check with you about something, Captain?” He glanced over at C.J. and grinned, irrepressible, and as Murioka left, he closed the conference room door.
C.J. narrowed her eyes. They’d met socially at a wedding in Honolulu and had been meeting on the sly ever since—but he kept upping the ante. He’d been trying to take her to dinner, and now he wa
s talking to her at work when she’d expressly forbidden it—not to mention winking at her, for God’s sake.
“Sure you don’t want to watch this with me? It could be fun.” He waggled the laptop.
“Hell no. And we shouldn’t be talking alone, either.”
Abe’s eyes flared as his temper spiked, and he stalked around the table toward her. C.J. kept eye contact and remained seated—she wasn’t going to give any ground.
“You forget yourself,” she snapped.
“And you need to forget yourself.” Abe wasn’t looking away either. The intimacy of gazing into his rich brown eyes was almost too much. “You always brush me off when we’re alone. I decided to say something to you here.”
C.J. blinked first. She looked down at her laptop, fiddling with it, as he loomed beside her chair. She wished he didn’t smell like the hotel soap they’d both used early this morning.
“Fine. What do you want to talk about?” C.J. addressed her keyboard.
“When are we going to go on a real date?”
“We went out in Honolulu.”
“But we don’t live in Honolulu. We live here. And I want to date you—not just meet in hotel rooms.”
C.J. was thankful he’d put their liaisons so graciously—there were so many other ways he could have said that. Nervous sweat prickled under her arms. “You don’t know what’s at stake for me.”
“Your pride.”
“My professionalism.” C.J. looked up at him. “I’d never live it down.”
A long beat went by as they stared at each other. “Do you . . . care?” he whispered. He wasn’t asking about her job.
C.J. felt heat suffuse her cheeks. She shut her eyes, sagging in her chair, and covered her face with her hands. “Yes,” she whispered. “Do you?”
He reached down and grabbed her by the upper arms, lifting her out of the chair like she weighed nothing. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her with all the determination and openheartedness that had drawn her to him in the first place.