Lana'i of the Tiger (The Islands of Aloha Mystery Series) (10 page)

I went into the bedroom and
flopped on the bed. It was about the firmest excuse for a mattress I’d ever met.
And I’d met some doozies when I’d flown as an air marshal from Hawaii to Asia. Japanese
hotels are notorious for mattresses that make you feel like you’re camping in
the back of a pick-up truck.

I got up and pulled out my suitcase.
For more than a month I’d dreamed of repacking that suitcase and leaving the
rental house keys on the coffee table. But I wasn’t completely free to leave.
I’d promised Darryl and Ewa I’d stay until they got back. As far as I could
recall, I’d never consciously broken a promise to a friend. I’d already become
a liar, I wasn’t about to become a lousy friend.

I considered staying overnight
at my rental house, but then thought better of it. Tyler might change his mind
about spending his last night on Lana’i up at the Lodge. Since he’d paid for
his room at the White Orchid I needed to be there in case he came back or
showed up in the morning for breakfast.

Sure enough. When I turned the
corner on Kua’aina Street there was a Jeep parked in front of the bed and
breakfast. I jogged up to the gate. The porch light wasn’t on but I hadn’t left
it on since I’d gone out the back way. Tyler wouldn’t have turned it on since he
wouldn’t want to alert the paparazzi that he was there. I figured he’d probably
used his key to get in and had gone directly back to his room.

I went through the courtyard,
pulling my key from my pocket as I went. When I reached the front door, I
fumbled with the lock as I tried to find the keyhole in the dark.

“Good evening.” The voice was
definitely male. It had come from somewhere to my left.

I whirled around to face whoever
it was. I planted my feet and assumed a defensive stance. If the guy thought
he’d get the jump on me by lurking in the dark, he’d soon figure out he should
have done his homework. With twenty years of
kung fu
practice to back me
up, stranger danger wasn’t high on my list of concerns. Unless the guy was
armed. I squinted to see if I could spot a weapon in the darkness.

“Pali, it’s me.”

I switched from scrutinizing the
guy’s hands to trying to make out his face. I recognized the voice. But I was
so shocked at hearing my real name spoken I didn’t trust myself.

“Ono? Is that you?” By now he’d
stepped closer. The guy definitely resembled my friend from Lahaina, but I
wanted confirmation.

“Yep, it’s me. I hope you’re not
mad at me for showing up without calling.”

I grabbed him around the neck
and kissed him—the first time I’d ever done anything like that in my life. Of
course I’d kissed my share of guys before, but never so impulsively, so
recklessly. His mouth felt like home, and he smelled like everything I’d been
missing for the past month. 

“Wow. I’ll take that to mean it
was okay not to call.” His smile looked like a Cheshire Cat grin, a white
half-moon floating in the deep black of the Lana’i City night.

“Let’s go inside,” I said. I
fumbled with the key.

Ono took the key from my hand
and expertly fit it into the lock. Then he pushed the door open like he owned
the place. We slipped off our shoes and left them by the door.

“
Mahalo
,” I said. “I’m just
so blown away to see you here.” I walked across the dark great room and snapped
the switch on the feeble sixty-watt floor lamp.

Oliver “Ono” Kingston looked
better to me than even my fondest recollection. His hair was a little longer, a
bit past his collar. It was a darker brown than mine with streaks of blond at
the crown. The blond was the result of sun and wind exposure while sailing the
catamaran he captains for visitor snorkeling trips and private parties. He
lives aboard in Lahaina Harbor. He’s a few inches over six feet tall, and that
night he was wearing a rumpled cotton shirt with rolled-up sleeves along with his
customary baggy khaki cargo shorts.

The last time we’d been together
he’d been angry with me, so it was doubly rewarding to see him again. Not only
was I thrilled to see a familiar face, but it appeared our squabble was
long-forgotten.

“How’d you find me?” I said.
“Wong’s gonna have a fit when he hears.”

“Why would you tell Detective
Wong anything?”

“He’s trying to keep me alive,”
I said. “I think I owe him full disclosure.”

“C’mon, Pali. You don’t owe him
squat. He’s the one who owes you—big time. The cops totally used you to flush
out that drug cartel, and now they’re using you to testify. To make it worse, I’ll
bet Wong’s
still
not telling you everything that’s going down.”

I mentally chewed on that for a
moment. No doubt there was a lot of stuff Wong hadn’t told me. I hoped most of
it was ‘need to know’ information that I didn’t need to know.

“You’re truly a sight for sore
eyes,” I said. “What are you doing over here?”

“Well, first off, I came to see
you. I couldn’t imagine you slogging through Christmas all by yourself.”

“You’re staying until
Christmas?”

“Nah, I can’t take a whole week
off. But I’ve got a couple of days. I brought a group of golf fanatics over on
the catamaran to play the courses at Koele and Manele Bay. They’ll be playing
all day tomorrow and then again on Thursday. We’ll head back sometime Friday
morning, the twenty-first.”

“How’d you find me?”

“You know, that’s kind of
pitiful. I mean, sorry to break it to you, but you weren’t that hard to track
down. I don’t think the bad guys are trying very hard if they haven’t found you
by now. You know how they say there are ‘six degrees of separation’? Well, it
took me only three degrees. I talked to a guy at the dock who crews for a big
snorkel outfit. He’d heard from the gal who works the ticket booth at the Maui-Lana’i
ferry that a cop brought somebody over here last month after that big dust-up
at the harbor. Then, this afternoon when I rented the Jeep, I asked the guy at
the rental place if he’d noticed anyone new in town. He said a young widow had
shown up out of the blue last month and she’d just gotten a job at the White
Orchid Bed and Breakfast. Like I said, it wasn’t too tough.”

“Jeez, so everyone knows I’m
here? That’s it, I’m going home for sure,” I said.

“Whoa, not so fast. The bad guys
haven’t all been rounded up yet.”

“They will be soon. And like you
said, if they wanted to find me they would’ve by now. If I go home and keep my
head down, I’ll be fine.”

“Keeping your head down won’t
cut it. Those losers know exactly where you live—and where you work.”

“But they don’t know where
Farrah lives.” Farrah Milton, my b/f/f, lives in an illegal apartment above the
grocery store she runs in Pa’ia, Maui. No one except her close friends knows
she’s up there.

“Well, pardon the guilt trip,
but you’ve already caused Farrah a world of hurt.”

“What? What’s happened?” I felt
panic rising along with the bile in my throat.

“Maybe the authorities didn’t
know she was living over the store, but the drug dealers did. When they
couldn’t find you, they went looking for her.”

I couldn’t breathe. I felt like
I was drowning. I plopped down on the sofa—hard—and waited for him to tell me about
Farrah.

CHAPTER
12

“Calm down,” he said. “She’s
fine. She had a pretty big scare, but I guess she managed to run the guy off.
From what I heard her dog sort of saved the day.”

He told me apparently Farrah’s
Jack Russell terrier had latched onto the guy’s leg and bit him pretty good. But
the guy took a few potshots at the dog before fleeing. 

“They said the dog was fearless.
Wouldn’t let go, even after it got grazed by a bullet.”

“Poor Sir Lipton, and poor
Farrah,” I said. “It’s all my fault. I got her involved in this mess in the
first place.”

“Don’t worry. Like I said, I
heard she’s doing fine. And the store got a bunch more business afterwards.
Everybody in town wanted to come by to see the bullet holes. And everybody’s
talking about the little dog with the big balls.”

“Yeah. Well, that’s pretty
funny,” I said. “Sir Lipton doesn’t have balls, big or little.”

“He’s neutered?”

“Not exactly.”

“What then?”

“You know that movie, Lady &
The Tramp? Well, Lipton’s more Lady than Tramp. But enough about the dog.
Where’s Farrah now?”

“She’s playing the same game as you—hiding
out. There’s some old lady running the store most of the time. Farrah’s there
every now and then, but she’s never alone. And she sure as heck isn’t living upstairs
anymore.”

“I wonder where she went?”

“Speaking of wondering, I wonder
if you’ve got another kiss in you like the one you nearly flattened me with on
the porch?”

We sat in the great room, snuggling
and talking. At around ten-thirty, I offered Ono a room, but he begged off.

“As much as I’d like to sleep
under the same roof—or maybe even the same sheets—as you, I’ve got to get back
to the boat. It’s anchored in open water. No way I’ll chance getting it broken
into or letting the current drag the anchor.”

 “Are you coming back tomorrow?”

“Yep. My people are staying up
at the Lodge tonight and I promised I‘d join them for breakfast. They have a
mid-morning tee-time, so I could be back here around ten.”

I walked him to the door and we
lingered.

“I really wish I didn’t have to
go,” he said.

“You don’t.”

“I do. But maybe I’ll check into
renting a slip at Manele Bay for tomorrow night. They have security there. No
need to sleep aboard.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

***

I awakened to the sound of
someone pounding on the back door. Had Ono changed his mind? I looked at my
bedside clock—it said 11:08. I’d been asleep less than a half hour.

I got up and stumbled to the
back of the house. “Who is it?” I said through the door. My hand was on the
deadbolt, but I wasn’t going to twist it open unless the person on the other
side persuaded me I wouldn’t regret it later. 

“It’s me.” Male voice.

“Give me a break. Who’s ‘me’?”

“It’s me—Tyler. Open the door,
Penny.”

I opened the door to a
bedraggled facsimile of Tyler Benson. His clothes were rumpled and sweaty. His
face was lined with worry.

“What happened?” I said.

“You’re not gonna believe this.”
He pushed past me. “Lock that thing up good and tight.”

I closed and locked the door and
started for the great room, but he headed for the kitchen. I turned and
followed him.

“What’s going on? Why are you
coming to the back door at eleven o’clock at night? Didn’t your front door key
work?”

“Okay,” he said. “I need you to just
listen. Don’t ask questions. Just hear me out.”

Fine by me. I wasn’t in a chatty
mood anyway.

“Deedee’s dead. She was found stabbed
in her room.”

“She’s dead? Murdered?” My brain
was having a hard time imagining beautiful Desiree Diamonte with a knife
sticking out of her ample chest.

“Yeah. After I left here, I started
to go back to the Lodge but there were fire trucks and cop cars all over the
place. And, a whole bunch of people were standing around outside. A cop was
stopping people at the driveway so I just kept going straight. The road turns
to dirt and if you stay on it, it takes you to the top of the island. The stars
up there were fantastic.”

I couldn’t believe he was waxing
poetic about the evening sky while his fiancée was being stabbed to death in
her hotel room.

“Why did—”

“No, let me finish. Anyway, I
got back down from there a little after ten-thirty. There were still a couple
of cop cars out in front of the Lodge. They had the lights going and a few people
were still milling around. Last thing I needed to deal with was crap like that
with the paparazzi sniffing around. So, I parked at the bottom and walked up. I
thought I’d sneak in the back way to Deedee’s room after I’d heard what was
going on. I asked an old guy what’d happened and he said a young black woman
had been stabbed in an upstairs suite. When I asked him if she was going to be
okay, he said she was dead.”

There was a beat as Tyler wiped a
hand across his mouth. Then he blew out a breath. His eyes looked like he
wanted to flee.

“Maybe it wasn’t Deedee. Maybe
there was another young black woman staying in a suite on the second floor,” I
said. I like to put a hopeful spin on things.

“Trust me, it was her. I can’t
believe this. I’ve got to get off this island but I can’t fly out until morning
because the runway’s closed at night. I’m sorry to wake you up, but my key
didn’t work.”

 “No problem. Your key only
works for the front door. But you can’t just take off in the morning. The
police are going to want to talk to you.”

“Yeah, well, here’s the thing. While
I was driving over here I came up with an idea. I need you to do me a favor.”

“Sure.”

“I need you to have my back. I
need you to tell the cops I was here with you at the White Orchid. All night. Tell
them I never left.”

“But you weren’t, and you
did—leave, I mean.”

“Look, Penny, it’s no skin off
your nose to vouch for me. Just say we went out to the harbor and then we came
right back here and hung out until bedtime. It’s not like I’m asking you to
concoct a crazy story or anything.”

“Tyler, I can’t—”

 I was interrupted by loud
pounding on the front door. “Maui County Police! Open up!”

CHAPTER
13

Tyler pushed past me and ran out
the back door. I went to the front to let in the police before they hauled out
a battering ram. There were two cops standing on the porch.

“We’re looking for Tyler Benson.
Is he here?” said one cop.