Death in Paradise (14 page)

I leaned back and looked up at the stars. "Pretty night. With all this going on, it's hard to remember that it was only this morning we found Martina."

"You can't be dwelling on that, Thea."

"So far, I haven't been given a choice."

"Look around you. These people are really having fun. Oh, and I went around to the seminars this afternoon. A dynamite bunch of speakers. If people don't go home from this thinking it's the best conference they've ever attended, they should have their heads examined."

"Any feedback from the field trips?"

"You mean their adventures in paradise? A few of the Mt. Haleakala crew got carsick. One or two of the ones who took the bike trip down got skinned knees. The Napali coast crew loved it but a few of them got carsick, too. Maybe tomorrow we should put Dramamine on the breakfast menu. The snorkelers were all happy except for one who complained that they'd been promised sea turtles and didn't see any. I don't know. I suppose they think the tour operators go out at dawn and sprinkle turtles and other wildlife about. And these are supposed to be the smart people. You've got to wonder sometimes."

I sighed. I'd come to the luau still worked up from the trials of the day, feeling totally unfestive and weary. I'd done my best to get into the spirit of the occasion by wearing a long, flowery sundress and letting my hair down. I'd even taken a rose from Andre's bouquet and pinned it in my hair, and the scent had been drifting across my face ever since like tiny reminders of the good things in my life. Now, sitting here, the night was working some kind of a spell. It ought to have been totally hokey—the artificially fueled torches and the canned drumbeats and the faint scent of Sterno and the karaoke. But the sky was vast and lovely, the air was gentle and perfumed with flowers, and in the distance, there was the resonant sound of waves on the beach.

"I could grow to like this," I said.

"You?" Jonetta laughed. "It would be a total waste to put someone like you in paradise. You'd see the light of day so rarely it wouldn't matter if the sun shone and the balmy breezes blew."

"Hey, this is the new me. I've reformed. Since Andre came to Boston, I've been outside plenty. I've run through rain and sleet and snow. I've skied in rain and sleet and snow and ice. I've skated on—"

"Girl, you've got a twisted notion of fun, you know that? You gonna marry that guy?"

"Questions like that give me palpitations."

"So, we'll talk about something else. Did you know that Martina's husband's first wife is here?"

"Someone said something at lunch but I didn't quite follow it. She's not at the conference, is she?"

"Oh, but she is. I guess when they divorced she was pretty much a homebody, but part of the deal was that he get her a good job. He used his connections... that man has more connections than a New York drug dealer... and got her a job in the Department of Education. And through some personal perverseness, she's made single-sex education her special area."

"I hadn't heard."

"She's here somewhere. I'll point her out if I spot her. She doesn't go by Pullman. She took back her maiden name, so she's Janovich, Linda Janovich. Anyway, until recently, she was very quiet. In the past year, she's surfaced. She's been at the last two conferences I've attended. Not making any waves. Not calling attention to herself. Just sitting there where Martina is sure to notice. She doesn't say anything. Just sits there and smiles. It drives... it drove... Martina nuts. I hear they had words in the lobby last night."

"Looks like Martina managed to have words with a lot of people. Me. Rory. Her husband's ex-wife—"

"Drusilla Aird..."

"Her, too? How'd you hear that?"

Jonetta grinned. "I get around."

"She have words with anyone else?"

"Well, I wasn't here, so I've escaped the list. What did the two of you argue about?"

"Rory, treatment of. Martina had been drinking."

"What's new?" Jonetta said.

"And she was being loud and obnoxious." Sotto voce, Jonetta murmured "What's new" again. "Rory was trying to get her to quiet down, to stop calling attention to herself, to not, as Rory put it, 'embarrass the conference.' Martina called her a sneaky little guttersnipe in front of the whole bar and told her go upstairs and collate papers or something, since that's all she was good at. Rory fled in tears and when Martina went to the ladies' room, I grabbed her, dragged her down the hall to a place where I thought we wouldn't be seen, and told her to get a grip on herself and start behaving like a responsible adult."

"I'll bet she took it well from you."

"Yep. She suggested I try some anatomically impossible activities and then she said I couldn't fool her, she knew what I was trying to do."

"Which was?"

"That Suzanne and I were trying to take over the board as a way of getting a higher profile and more business for our consulting group. She said she knew we were behind the conspiracy to throw her out." I pushed back the hair that was blowing into my face. Up on stage, Rob and the shoop-shoop women finished a song to a roar of applause.

"Jonetta, up to that point, I didn't know she had any idea of what the rest of the board was thinking, but she was on a tear... you know how she could be... so angry she was practically foaming at the mouth, and getting more obscene every minute. She said that she was chairman for life or until she decided otherwise, and that any change she didn't want would happen only over her dead body."

"Hot damn!" Jonetta said. "And who do you think overheard that and reported it to the police? That's got to be why they've been breathing down your neck."

"I guess I'm not very good at math," I said.

"What's that mean?"

"It means I didn't put two and two together until just now."

"So you don't know who saw you?"

"I didn't think anyone had but Zannah said something about it at lunch today so I guess I was wrong. And if Zannah and Shannon and Jolene and Rob all know..." I trailed off. No need to state the obvious. The tables around us were filling up and the noise level had reached the point where talking was almost impossible. "What do you think? Shall we get some food?"

"You know me," she said, heaving herself to her feet. "I never say no to food. Looks good, doesn't it?"

We left our drinks there to secure our places and threaded our way among the tables to the buffet. There were only about twenty people ahead of us. I could already smell the food, and after my run, I had a healthy appetite. Just like I only have two speeds, I seem to have two states of hunger: indifferent or famished. Suddenly I was impatient with the pace at which things were moving. I wanted to shout at them to hurry up because I was hungry, but the line seemed paralyzed. No one was moving. I stepped sideways and looked ahead to see what the problem was, expecting, with a sinking feeling, that it was because they'd run out of food. It wasn't.

In the space ahead, where the line should have been moving sedately along the food tables, two women were squared off like boxers in a ring. As I watched, one of them grabbed a fistful of grilled shrimp and threw it at the other. The other woman picked up a pineapple and heaved it. The rest of the group seemed paralyzed, watching them. I turned to Jonetta. "If we don't stop them, they're going to toss away our dinners."

"Right," she nodded. "Let's go."

Together we pushed our way through the crowd to the combatants, just as one picked up a whole platter of ribs, about to heave it at her opponent. I sprang forward, grabbed the tray, and slammed it back on the table. "What do you think you're doing?" I yelled. Instead of answering, she picked up a huge wooden candlestick and charged at the other woman. The other woman seized a lethal-looking fork and they dove at each other.

You would have thought Jonetta and I had played college football the way we tackled those gals. I went for the brunette with the wooden candlestick. Just like Clue. The tall brunette with a candlestick at the luau. The plump blonde with a serving fork on the patio. Jonetta took her woman down in one neat tackle, hula hoops flying and all that crocheted fringe jiggling. I had a little more trouble. My brunette was wearing a tight, silky number that made her as slippery as an eel. Hard to get a grip on. I got her down but couldn't keep her pinned and finally ended up having to sit on her. It was about as undignified as it could get. All the while, the two of them kept cursing at each other like a pair of hookers in a lockup.

Over the din, Jonetta leaned toward me and winked. "Something I've been meaning to put on our agenda, Ms. Kozak," she said. "The increase in fighting among girls. It's getting to be quite a problem." Despite the awkwardness of our situation, I had to laugh.

We were rescued at that moment by the arrival of two men in Hawaiian shirts and leis, flashing hotel security identification. Neither of us minded handing our charges over to them and letting them lead the two cursing women in opposite directions to calm them down. Neither of them had uttered a single phrase that was printable but neither of them had said anything worth saving for a rainy day, either. I was disappointed. I'm a great fan of creative cursing.

Jonetta dusted off her dress, planted her hands on her hips, and said to the staring group. "Come on, eat, will ya? We're hungry." Obediently, the line started moving. As we moved back to our places, she gave me a high five. "Well done, girlfriend."

"Who were they? Did you know either of them?" I asked.

She looked surprised. "You didn't recognize them?" I shook my head. "The tall brunette, the one you took down, was Linda Janovich, formerly Linda Pullman. The other woman was Drusilla Aird."

"I thought Drusilla Aird was a redhead?"

"That was last year and twenty pounds ago."

Now some of the things they'd been saying to each other made sense. Stripped of embellishments, each had been accusing the other of the capital crime of killing Martina before she could do it herself. Each claimed that she had had more right, or been more wronged. Each was furious about a missed opportunity. Or so they claimed. And where were the cops when they were needed? Both Bernstein and Nihilani would have found the encounter most enlightening. But they were probably at the Maui Policeman's Banquet, listening to a lecture by Dr. Pryzinski.

"Well, we almost got through this event without incident. Soon as I eat, I guess I'd better sing to these people and settle them down."

"Oh, I think there will be some nubile maidens clad in bits of grass to entertain us. They'll be a good warm-up act for you. Should I ask the guy to get that started?"

"Get yourself some food first," she said. She looked around. Everyone seemed to be tucking into their plates with gusto. "Folks sure are funny. Best fight I've seen in all my years of going to conferences, and it doesn't look like too many people even noticed."

I took enough food to feed the tackle I'd just been and carried it back to my spot. Shannon, Jolene, and Zannah were waiting for us. "What was that all about?" Shannon asked before I could even sit. "Wasn't that Drusilla Aird?"

"And Linda Janovich?" Zannah added. She had a pinched and worried look that reminded me that I wasn't the only one having a bad day. "I knew something bad would happen the moment I saw her in the lobby."

"But last night, when she and Drusilla were in the bar, they acted like the best of friends," Jolene said. "I wonder what happened?"

"Each of them seems to believe the other killed Martina, thus depriving her of the pleasure. Or something to that effect," I said, picking up a rib. I bit into it. Heavenly. But they were juicy and I only had one napkin. I flagged down a passing waiter and asked for more. Across the table, Jonetta was busily engaged in reducing the mound on her plate to rubble. We wanted to eat, the others, having already eaten, wanted to talk.

"Shannon," I said, "maybe you should ask the emcee, or whatever he's called, to get this show on the road. I don't want to give people time to sit around talking about the fight. It's been perfect so far. Let's keep the momentum going." Perfect. An ironic choice of words. But then, it seemed sinful to even think about having a good time, under the circumstances, and yet we all were. Not our good time. Theirs.

"Good idea," Jolene said. "I'll take care of it." She slipped away, deftly threading her way among the tables. I saw her onstage, whispering in the man's ear, and it seemed like only seconds later that he was announcing the beginning of the next phase of entertainment and the drumbeats got louder.

"This food is wonderful!" I said.

"At least they didn't screw up like they did last night."

"Thanks to Thea," Jonetta said.

"When I called them, they'd undercounted by eighty-five people," I said.

"That Rory," Shannon began. "If she'd just do her job...."

"She gave them the right count. I saw the correspondence. It was the hotel that screwed up. But they have more than made up for it."

But Shannon was on a tear. "Well, she didn't follow up on the rooms, you know, and the hotel had us set up in two adequate rooms and two so small you couldn't have fit a mouse convention in them. It was touch and go whether we'd get everything rearranged in time, and then the program had been printed with the wrong rooms in it, so we had to stand there and direct everyone to the right rooms. And Rory wasn't a bit of help. Tell them, Jo."

Jolene said, "When I went to speak with her about it, she said too bad, she was sick, we'd just have to manage on our own. It took me half an hour to talk my way into the room and cajole her into agreeing to try and pull herself together and finish the conference. And she only agreed to that after so much sweet-talking I felt like a cotton-candy machine. I realize this has been difficult for her—she was very close to Martina—but she knows the conference still has to go on. As an educator, I shouldn't say this, but sometimes I worry about what's going to happen to the world when so many of our young people don't seem to have any of what my mother would have called 'guts and gumption.' This attitude that says 'To hell the rest of the world, let chaos reign, I need to pay attention to my own feelings right now' truly scares me."