Death in Paradise (8 page)

"What difference does it make now, Thea?" she snapped, her voice still a harsh whisper. "I'm dead."

"Then what are you—"

"Doing here? Unfinished business. Look at me. They've made a mockery of me... they've made me a laughing-stock! I want them to pay!"

"We'll go find the police," I said. "We'll tell them what happened and they can arrest the person who did this to you."

"Oh, sweetie..." She reached out a cold white hand and stroked my cheek. Her nail polish matched her outfit. "You're so naive for such a smart girl. Don't you understand? I don't know who did it. That's why I came to you. Everyone says you're good at solving mysteries. Besides, you're the only one who can see me." She bent down, scooped up the stocking, and disappeared. After that, the director let me sleep.

I woke only because someone was grabbing me again. I don't wake up easily, nor usually in a very civil frame of mind, and I was forming a juicy string of curses and considering the possibility of physical action when I opened my eyes and saw that my assailant was a pale red-haired girl about eleven. "I'm sorry, ma'am," she whispered, stepping away from my angry face. "My mother said I should wake you before you got a bad sunburn. That's my mom over there." She pointed to a woman carefully shaded by an umbrella, who was waving at us.

I checked my watch. I'd slept for forty minutes in the midday sun. Even though I tan easily, that was courting disaster. I turned my snarl into a smile. "Thank you very much. Your mom was right." I stuck out a hand. "I'm Thea Kozak."

She presented a small freckled hand with bitten fingernails. "Laura," she said. "Laura Mitchell. This is my first time in Hawaii."

"Pleased to meet you, Laura Mitchell. Are you staying at the hotel?" She nodded. "Well, maybe we'll see each other again. Thanks for rescuing me."

That brought a smile and revealed a mouthful of braces. "Well, 'bye," she said, and scampered back to her mother. Reluctantly, I turned my back on the bright blue waves and went inside, already late for lunch, my head stuffed with sawdust, wondering if I looked as groggy as I felt.

Zannah was arriving late, too. She stopped me outside the dining room and gave me a hug. "Was it awful?" she asked.

I thought she meant the dream. But how could she know? She took in my blank stare. "The police," she said.

"Yes."

"They won't tell us anything. I don't think most of the people in the hotel even know what happened."

"I think you're right. Too bad it won't stay that way."

Shannon, Jolene, and Rob were already at the table and though it was only lunch, they all had what looked like pina coladas in front of them. "Thea. Zannah," Rob said genially. "Welcome. How about some drinks? We've already started drowning our sorrow."

"Hey!" Shannon nudged him the ribs. "You don't want to be seen looking so cheerful or that nosy Hawaiian cop will put you on his suspect list."

"I expect we're already on his suspect list. What did you tell him about us, anyway, Thea?"

"I'm not supposed to talk about it. But nothing you guys need to worry about. He asked if we disagreed and I said we had differences which we discussed and dealt with like reasonable adults."

"Cripes, someone didn't!" Shannon said.

"Yeah," Rob said. "Let's go around the table and list our favorite suspects. Other than ourselves, I mean."

"You're being very coldhearted about this," Zannah said. "We might not have liked her, but without her, we wouldn't even be here today, and it's probably fair to say that the issues around single sex education would be much less well known and—"

"Relax," he said. "You're not on my suspect list."

"That's not why I—"

"Hey," Jolene said, "this is going to be hard enough without us squabbling among ourselves. We've still got two more days of this conference to sort out, and all of Martina's gaps to fill in. We don't have a lot of time to waste playing whodunit games. I left a message for Rory to join us but she didn't return my call and I haven't been able to find her. It's going to be hard to do much without her. She's in charge of the schedule and has all that stuff on her laptop, plus the lists of all the contacts in the hotel and out—"

"You want to know who's number one on my suspect list?" Rob interrupted. "Drusilla Aird."

"Drusilla Aird? You're kidding. Is she here?" Shannon said. She dropped her voice to a confidential whisper, though given her normal booming quality, Shannon's whisper was like anyone else's normal voice. "I would have thought, after she lost her lawsuit, that she'd be embarrassed to be seen by this group, but I guess some people have no shame."

"I don't see what's so shameful," Jolene said. "Drusilla had a contract to ghost-write a book for Martina. She delivered the book. Martina said it was a lousy book but paid her anyway."

"And then six months later Martina published her own book under her own name, which Drusilla claimed was the book she'd written, without giving Drusilla any credit."

"Well," Rob said, "too bad for Drusilla that she didn't have a lawyer read the contract before she signed it, or she would have known she was giving sole rights to Martina to do whatever she wanted with the finished work. She did the work. She got paid. Other than the complaint we all have, that Martina was a pit viper who didn't care who she bit and what harm she caused, I don't see where she had anything to complain about."

"Except that Martina bad-mouthed her work all over Washington, and then went and published a virtually identical work under her own name. If it wasn't good enough when it was submitted, why was it suddenly good enough later? I can see where Drusilla might have been angry," Zannah said. "It's reasonable for a person to take pride in her work. All she was trying to do was force Martina to admit the published work was the manuscript she, Drusilla, had written. The court said it didn't matter. But both her reputation and her income suffered. She has... had... good reason to be mad at Martina. But, Rob, did you say you'd seen her here at the conference?"

"That's right. Last night in the lobby, looking as cheerful as a cat that just had cream."

"I wouldn't want to be in that policeman's shoes," Shannon said. We all agreed that none of us would. "I mean, trying to figure out who might have had it in for Martina. We know how she's treated all of us...."

"Are you suggesting that we're all suspects?" Jolene asked. There was a dangerous current in her voice that Shannon didn't miss.

"No more than the rest of the world. A lot less than some. Now, if I had to pick someone—"

"I thought we weren't going to do this," Zannah interrupted.

"If I had to pick someone," Shannon repeated, "my choice would be his first wife, Linda. I've heard she was none too happy when Martina stole her handsome husband away."

"Martina didn't steal him from her," Rob said. "You can't attract a man who doesn't want to be attracted."

"At least you don't subscribe to the black-widow theory of attraction," I said.

"The what?" Shannon asked.

"The notion that men are helpless in the hands of poisonous, devious, scheming females."

"She's here, you know," Zannah said.

"May I take your order?"

The waitress had materialized behind me so quietly I hadn't even known she was there. I glanced at the menu, which I hadn't opened, and ordered a shrimp salad with fresh pineapple and iced tea. I still didn't feel hungry, which was unusual. The others teased me for not getting a drink. "It would put me right to sleep." I waited while the others ordered, then said, "Are we all set for this afternoon? Early evening seminars and then the luau? Martina wasn't leading anything today."

"Maybe the hula," Rob said.

I expected Zannah to say something. Of all of us, she had tolerated Martina the best and Martina had considered her a friend, but it was Jolene who spoke. "I really do think," she said in her careful, considered way, "that we need to be awfully circumspect about what we say from now on. This is no joke. Martina isn't going to come dashing through the door and cry 'April fool.' She's dead. Any time that human life is taken, the... deceased... the, uh, victim... should be spoken about with respect... and gravity... so there's that, but—"

"Come on, Jolene," Rob interrupted. "You didn't even like her. The two of you fought like cats and dogs over organizational decisions and board policy. I know you were pissed as hell when she stole that speech you were going to give at Radcliffe and presented it at a press conference as her own work. Isn't it hypocritical to—"

"Please let me finish," she said.

"—to pretend to be sorry that she's dead when you publicly threatened to kill her yourself?"

Jolene's face was an unflattering pink. "That's what I was about to say, Rob. That everyone one of us has had at least one occasion... oh, no!" She paused, glaring at his shaking head, and half rose from her chair, her voice dropping to a growl. "You included, don't you go shaking your head like that. You, perhaps, most of all. If the incident has slipped your mind, I could refresh your recollection." His gaze wavered and dropped to his lap as his face flushed red. I couldn't help wondering what the incident was. Maybe I could get Jolene to tell me.

"Everyone one of us," she repeated, "has had at least one occasion where we've had a confrontation with Martina we'd rather not have made public. Something we would rather not have the Hawaiian police asking us about. Right?" Even Zannah nodded.

"Well, now, all Ah can recall," Shannon said, dropping into the deep "southern speak" she sometimes affected, "is that time she promised to come and give a speech at mah school, and Ah invited every single important alumna and the whole board of trustees was there and all the girls and everybody was dressed to the nines and just shimmying with anticipation, waiting for the arrival of the great Martina Pullman, heroine of American girls' schools. The time comes for her arrival and she doesn't show up. We wait and we wait and the salads wilt and the dinners dry out and the desserts melt and finally someone comes in with a phone message. She's so sorry, she's been unavoidably detained in Washington. If she'd been nearby, then Ah would have killed her. But Ah like to think Ah got ovah it." She batted her eyes and shrugged.

"We got lucky that night, though. Thea's partner, Suzanne Begner, Suzanne Merritt now, was there, and she stepped right up to that podium and started speaking and after about twenty minutes, there wasn't a soul in that room who cared that Martina hadn't come."

I'd heard that story from Suzanne. Reported slightly differently. Not that Suzanne's speech hadn't gone well. Suzanne is as close to perfect as anyone I know. But Shannon had been ready to hop on a plane to Washington and personally dismember Martina. It had taken all of Suzanne's vast store of diplomacy to keep it from happening. I looked around the table. I knew Jolene's story, and Shannon's, but what about Zannah? It was hard to imagine Zannah mad at anyone. She had what my mother would have called "a pleasant disposition." That meant always pleasant, superficial, with never a mean word about anyone. Martina could have stolen Zannah's babies and boiled them, and it would hardly have shown.

"Here you go," the waitress said cheerfully, setting my iced tea in front of me. "Your food will be right out. Can I get anyone another drink?"

It was foolish and I didn't need anything to dim my wits, but I have a weakness for the soothing effects of alcohol, especially when everything else is being abrasive. And it was my birthday. "I'll have a pina colada," I said. Everyone smiled and nodded and the table ordered another round of drinks. Some responsible grown-ups we were turning out to be.

We concentrated on drinking, and then on eating, and kept the conversation casual, light, and impersonal. When enough time had elapsed and enough alcohol had been consumed, we returned to the matter of schedules. "Tonight," Jolene said, "all our workshop leaders are thoroughly professional. I think we can count on them not to let this get in their way. After that, everyone is going to be getting dressed for the luau and that should pretty much take care of itself. Unless, of course, we have a snafu like last night. You'd think the people here couldn't count. Maybe one of us had better—"

"Not me," I mumbled through a mouthful of shrimp. The drink had miraculously restored my appetite. "I did it last night."

"Well, it's Rory's job. She's turning out to be the original gutless wonder, isn't she," Shannon said. "All that time she spent lurking at Martina's heels, learning to be a baby Martina, you'd think she'd have gotten a few calluses, wouldn't you?"

"At least," said Zannah, "you'd think the girl would have a little gumption."

"Well,"Jolene, our peacemaker, said, "she did find Martina—"

"Thea is the one who found Martina," Rob interrupted. "And she's the one who has had to deal with police, and she hasn't taken to her bed."

"Not yet, anyway," I said. "It could happen at any moment. Actually," I pushed my chair back, "I should go and see if I can find her. If she hasn't learned from last night and checked the numbers, someone has to do it." I scribbled my room number on the check, added a tip, and picked up my glass. I wasn't quite done, and wasn't willing to leave a slurp of that ambrosial liquid behind.

"You're so heroic, Thea," Rob said.

I drifted to the door and had just managed to disappear through it when my grim companion of the morning, the massive Hawaiian cop, Nihilani, arrived at the table and lowered himself into my empty chair. I wasn't heroic; I'd just developed eyes in the back of my head and a keen instinct for self-preservation.

 

 

 

Chapter 5