Too Hot Four Hula: 4 (The Tiki Goddess Mystery Series) (14 page)

“He invited me in for a drink,” she said.

“An’ you obviously had a couple.”

She held up her index finger and waved it at him. “I only one shot of tequila while I was there. O-n-e. I’ll admit I had some grog at the pirate party.”

“Which explains the outfit,” he said.

She looked down at her blouse and tried yanking up the plunging neckline but gave up after a couple of tries.

“I was working undercover.” She shrugged. “This is a disguise.”

“Did you meet this dePresto before the party?”

“No. But he may have seen me standing around with Louie, but my uncle didn’t even recognize me.”

“Did he know your uncle’s book was missing?”

“Not unless he stole it. We haven’t spread the word around.”

“Well, unfortunately, Ms. Johnson, you got caught in the act of rifling through his stuff.” Chun drummed his thick fingers on the desk.

“Don’t I get one phone call?” She’d already decided she couldn’t call and upset Uncle Louie. Kiki and the Maidens were out of the question. There was only one person on Oahu she could rely on right now.

“Hold on a minute.” Chun got up and walked out of the room. When he came back he handed her the shopping bag with her purse inside. “Okay, make a call.”

“And say what?” She pulled out her purse and dug around for her phone.

“That you need to be picked up. I’m going to let you go on your own recognizance and whoever picks you up, be sure it’s someone responsible. I want your word that you’ll stop looking for the damn recipe book.”

“Booze Bible.”

“Whatevah. Go down to the main precinct and talk to a real detective. Maybe you can identify whoever dropped off the letter on the hotel’s video surveillance of the lobby area.”

What was she? A hamster on a wheel? She was back to the video playback.

“I tried that. Their system is out.”

“Okay, so time to phone a friend,” he said.

She looked down at the small
lauhala
bag she used on Kauai. Sophie had found it at the Humane Society Thrift Shop and got it for her. It was so familiar, so
not
Pussy in Boots, she got tears in her eyes.

The time on the phone read twelve thirty-five a.m. She hated to do it, but she called Nat.

22

EM’S CELL PHONE jolted her out of a stupor the next morning. For a second she had no idea where she was, then realized she was in bed at the Hilton. She rolled over and fumbled around, patting the carpet until she found her phone on the floor.

She glanced at the caller ID and groaned. Not only was it six forty in the morning, but the caller was Roland.

She cleared her throat and tried to sound lucid. “Detective.” Her voice sounded like she’d smoked a boatload of cigarettes.

“Hi.” Roland was a man of few words. Any other time it would have been so good to hear his voice. After last night’s caper, she was afraid she was going to burst into tears. But she was made of sterner stuff.

“Hi yourself.”

“Howzit?” he said.

“Okay. Not great.”

Suddenly she wanted to dump on him, tell him how much she wished she’d stayed on Kauai. Then again, how would Louie have coped without her?

Just then there was a knock on the door of the suite.

“Hang on a sec.” Em swung her feet over the side of the bed and wondered if her legs would hold her. Her knees shook harder than a Tahitian dancer’s hips. With her phone pressed to her ear she exited her bedroom and walked to the door in the living room/kitchen area of the suite. Naturally the peephole was an inch too high for her to peer through.

“Who is it?” She spoke as loud as she dared without waking Louie in the other room. She pictured a gaggle of Hula Maidens in the hallway. She hadn’t laid eyes on them since they left the hotel to go bar hopping with the Kamakanis. Hopefully they’d made it back and were sleeping it off their rooms.

“It’s me,” Roland said.

“Somebody just knocked on the door,” she said into the phone. The
Taiko
drummers were back.

“It’s
me
,” he said again.

“No, really, somebody just—”

He cut her off. “I’m outside. Open the door, Em.”

She flipped the lock but left the safety guard on and cracked the door far enough to peek out. Sure enough, there he was.

“Roland?”

He still had his phone against his ear, too. “Yeah?”

She shook her head and ended the call. She whispered, “You’re nuts. What are you doing here?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “You gonna make me stand out here? Somebody might call security.” He was holding a small duffle bag.

She shushed him and started to open the door until she realized she was still in torn fishnet stockings. Somehow she’d changed into a long black Tiki Goddess tank top that hit her mid-thigh. She had no idea when or how she got it on.

“I’m not dressed.”

“You have on a T-shirt,” he noticed. “Probably covers more than your swimsuit.”

She shoved her hair back out of her eyes and pulled out a hair pin. He walked in and looked around. “Where’s your uncle?”

“Shh. He’s in his room asleep.” She motioned for him to follow as she tiptoed back to her bedroom. She closed the door behind them.

“I thought it would be harder than this,” he said.

“What?”

“Getting into your bedroom.” His gaze swept the space carefully.

She followed his gaze and wanted to crawl back under the covers and hide. The fluffy black crinoline adorned the lampshade on a bedside table lamp. Her peasant blouse and skirt were on the floor, and the leather bodice was draped over the television. One of her boots was spread out across the dresser, the other nowhere to be seen.

The room looked bad enough. Panicked, Em walked over to the mirror over the dresser and almost screamed. Her hair was matted and shoved off to one side of her head. Crimson lipstick smeared not only her lips but her chin. The kohl liner around her eyes made her look like a panda. Her skin was as pale yellow as macaroni-potato salad. She swallowed a gag.

“Excuse me a minute.” She didn’t wait for a response. She fled into her bathroom.

Em closed the door, downed three glasses of water as fast as she could, and then held her breath. The water stayed down. She wet a washcloth and scrubbed off the lipstick until she was afraid she was peeling off skin. Her chin was still pink. She grabbed some eye cream and erased the panda rings. Then she brushed her teeth and drank another glass of water.

When she walked back into the bedroom Roland was leaning against the desk, staring at the bed.

“Did you get a pet?”

“No, why?”

He pointed at something black and hairy that was curled up on her pillow. Em stared at it a second then shrugged.

“That’s my wig.”

“And this?” He held out his hand. The black mask dangled from his finger.

“I went to a costume party. What are you doing here, Roland?”

“Nat called me. Said you needed help.”

“Nat? He did?” Officer Chun had been impressed when Nat Clark walked in to vouch for her, and Em had introduced him as the creator and head writer of the latest major network cop show being filmed in Hawaii.

“Hey, put my name in for a cop part,” Chun had said. “I worked an episode of
Hawaii Five-0
a couple weeks ago. They used a bunch of real cops in an officer’s funeral scene.”

Nat took Chun’s name and number and promised to keep Em out of trouble before he hustled her out of the station.

Roland tossed the mask on the bed and studied Em carefully. “Nat didn’t say what kind of trouble you were in, but looking at you and the condition of this room, I’d say things are a lot worse than he let on.”

“You flew over just because I needed help? What if all I wanted were directions to Pearl Harbor?”

“Nat sounded like it was a lot more than that. Obviously it was something he couldn’t handle.”

“He’s flying to LA today.”

“Looking at this room I’d say you need an intervention. Are you working Kalakaua now?”

“I’m sorry he bothered you, and I’m
really
sorry he didn’t explain. It’s nothing Louie and I can’t handle.”

“He didn’t have a chance to tell me, actually. When he said you needed help, I said okay and hung up.”

“But what about work?”

“I had some vacation time coming. Changed my shifts around. Got a flight out on a medical emergency flight headed over at four thirty this morning. Here I am.”

“Wow.”

“Only one problem, though.” He set his backpack on the floor. “I couldn’t get a room.”

Em crossed her arms over her breasts.

“In all of Waikiki? Not one room?”

He arched his brow. “Not here anyway. I didn’t waste time with the rest of Waikiki.”

“There are thirty-five hundred rooms here.”

“I was in a hurry.” He shrugged. “Just say thanks.”

“Thanks, of course.”

A loud crash came from the direction of Louie’s room. Roland’s hand automatically went to his hip, but he wasn’t carrying a gun.

“It’s all right. That’s just the monkey,” she said.

“The monkey?”

“Yeah. Someone thought it would be the answer to our problem. It’s locked in Louie’s bathroom.”

“If a monkey is the answer to your problem, why am I here?”

“I have no idea.” She finally smiled. “But I’m sure happy to see you.”

23

BY THE TIME EM showered and dressed, Roland was sitting on the balcony overlooking the beach, sipping coffee he’d prepared in their efficiency kitchen.

Self-conscious, she smoothed her hair back and smiled.

“The
lua
in my room is free,” she said. “No sense risking a run-in with the monkey.”

“I’m good.” Roland walked over to the kitchen and poured a second cup of coffee and handed it to her. “Looks like you need this,” he said.

“Still that bad?” She glanced at her reflection in a mirror near the bar counter.

He moved closer. “You still look tired.”

“I thought this was going to be a relaxing getaway,” she mumbled. “I’m more worried about Louie than I am tired.”

“Fat chance of relaxing with the Maidens along.”

When they heard Louie stirring, Roland headed back to the kitchen counter to pick up his coffee cup.

Em said, “I’ll call room service. Would you like a full breakfast, or I can order a continental breakfast basket we can share?”

“Continental is fine.”

Louie appeared in the doorway.

“Hi, Roland.” Louie said it as casually as if he woke up to find Roland around every morning and seeing him here on Oahu was no different. He nodded to Em. “Continental basket sounds good to me, too. Be sure to order some bananas. A
lot
of bananas.”

“For the monkey,” Roland said.

“You got it.” Louie nodded. He scratched his head, yawned, and headed for Em’s bathroom. “Last night he ate my tube of toothpaste. I’ll have to borrow yours.”

Louie disappeared into her bathroom. While they waited for room service, Em filled Roland in on almost everything that had happened except her foray into snooping through dePesto’s room and near arrest. She showed him the ransom note.

“So someone really did steal the notebook, and they’re holding it hostage,” she said.

Roland studied the page and the envelope. “When was this delivered?”

“I’m not sure. The front desk called us early yesterday afternoon. It could have been sitting there for hours.”

“You notified hotel security?”

She nodded. “We did. We spoke to a security officer named Kim when the Booze Bible went missing. He said he’d check the video camera in the hall.”

“And?”

“I finally got to see it myself, and sure enough, there was a man in a hoodie who slipped into Louie’s room and back out again right after we checked in. He was carrying a plastic shopping bag from the ABC Store. Everyone down at hotel security is as nice as can be, but we haven’t had a chance to view the main desk video to see who dropped off the letter. The playback isn’t working. I spoke to a Lieutenant Chun at the Waikiki substation . . .” She paused a minute and then quickly added, “when the Maidens were arrested and . . .”

“Arrested?”

“They were hauled in, but not booked,” she said.

“I’m not even going to ask.”

“I take it you missed the news a couple nights ago.”

Before Roland could answer there was a knock at the door, and room service was delivered. Em eyed the assortment of sweet bread choices and poured them some juice.

Louie walked back in. “Yeah, they were arrested. It wasn’t much. Just a little riot down at the beach bar. Dancing without a permit. Failure to cease and desist. I’m surprised the police didn’t throw in resisting arrest.”

Roland pulled a bran muffin the size of a cantaloupe out of a napkin-lined basket.

Em broke off a piece of Danish and popped it into her mouth.

Louie grabbed a croissant, a cup of coffee, and a couple of bananas. “I’ll eat this in my room. Gotta be down at the conference hall before the day’s competition starts.”

“What’s happening today?” Roland asked.