Too Hot Four Hula: 4 (The Tiki Goddess Mystery Series) (16 page)

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EM REALIZED SHE must have passed out when she woke up and saw Roland leaning over her. Someone had stretched her out on a yellowing plastic lawn chair. A uniformed officer walked up with a bottle of water and handed it to Detective Bardon who handed it off to Roland.

Roland twisted off the cap and held it out to Em. She sloshed water on herself before she managed to take a sip and hand it back.

“Phillip’s dead,” she said, not really believing it.

“Your ex?” Roland offered the water again.

“Someone shot him.”

Detective Bardon said, “The neighbors saw him having a big beef with a guy named Damian Bautista when he moved in yesterday.”

Em looked around. “There must be some mistake. Phillip wasn’t staying here.” She looked up at Detective Bardon. “He lives in California. He was on vacation at the Moana with his fiancée.”

“He rented this place yesterday late in the afternoon.” Bardon made a note on his little notepad. “Said he was alone. Are you from California, too?”

“No. Not anymore. I live on Kauai with my uncle.”

“Did you come to Oahu to meet your husband?”

“My
ex
. No.” She shook her head. “Not at all.”

“So you haven’t seen him?”

“I have seen him. We had lunch together yesterday.” Em felt Roland’s intense stare without looking at him. She wished she’d told him she was going to have lunch with her ex before she left Kauai. Would he think she was hiding it from him?

“Her uncle is Louie Marshall,” Roland explained. “He owns the Tiki Goddess Bar up on the North Shore of Kauai. There was a reality series shot there last year called
Trouble in Paradise
.

The detective studied Em carefully. “I thought you looked familiar, but then I thought, naw, couldn’t be her.”

“That’s what everyone says,” she mumbled.

“Feeling better?” Roland was still hunkered down beside her.

“A little.” She tried to sit up. Another wave of dizziness hit her.

“Did you find the murder weapon?” Roland asked the other detective.

Bardon nodded. “A Springfield PC9111.”

“Did anyone hear shots fired?”

“Hard to say. There’s an old lady who lives on one side of that room. Has her television volume cranked up night and day. Hard to hear anything else, or so the neighbors say. If anyone heard gunfire they’d probably deny it anyway. It’s that kind of neighborhood. People pretty much keep their heads down and their guard up.”

He turned to Em. “Did your husband own a hand gun?”

“Not when we were married. Not that I know of anyway.”

“So if you didn’t come to see your husband, why are you on Oahu?”

She didn’t correct him when he referred to Phillip as her husband again.

“I’m here with my uncle, Louie Marshall. He’s in a cocktail mixing contest. A group of women, the Hula Maidens, are traveling with us. They were featured on the TV show.”

She never thought she’d have to use the cable show as a credibility reference.

Bardon remained impassive but turned his attention to Roland. “Wasn’t that show cancelled after somebody was murdered in the restaurant?”

Roland answered slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. “The murder had nothing to do with the location. The vic was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“What brings you to Oahu, Officer Sharpe?”

“Detective Sharpe,” Roland said. “Someone is trying to extort Em, and her uncle and I’m trying to find out who that is.”

Bardon looked at Em. “Extortion?”

“Someone stole my uncle’s notebook full of drink recipes, one he’s been working on most of his life. Yesterday someone delivered a letter demanding a hundred thousand dollars to the hotel. A friend of ours called Roland and told him we needed help, so he flew over from Kauai.”

“Why didn’t you come to us?” Bardon asked.

Em sighed. “Somebody told me the HPD was too busy for something so insignificant and said I should let Hilton security take care of it.”

A uniformed office came walking over and said something to Bardon that Em couldn’t hear. She shivered. This was real. Phillip was dead.

Detective Bardon stood. “It’ll still be a few minutes,” he told Em, “but I’ll need you to identify your husband. The Crime Analysis Unit is almost
pau
. If you could stay put until they bring him down, I’d appreciate it.”

“Me?” Em’s voice cracked.

“Can’t she do the ID at the morgue?” Roland asked.

Bardon shrugged. “It shouldn’t take long to bag, tag, and load him in the van.”

Em suspected Bardon was gauging her reaction to his insensitive remark. She was too numb to feel anything.

“You don’t have to stay, Em,” Roland said. “We can go to the morgue.”

“I don’t mind. I’d rather . . . I’d rather get this over with,” she said.

Em slid over to the edge of the chaise and put her feet on the ground.

“May I have some more water?” She waited for Roland to hand her the bottle. Her mouth was dry, and her hands still shook.

Bardon asked, “You saw your ex yesterday? When and where?”

“For lunch at the Halekulani. He called me at the Goddess before I left and said he’d read about the Regional Shake Off in the
LA Times
and said he’d be here at the same time, wanted to know if I was coming over with my uncle. He asked me to meet him for lunch. I thought it would be good to have some closure. Things had gotten pretty messy by the end of our divorce.”

“Did you ever think about getting back together?”

She shook her head. “Never. Ever.”

Bardon excused himself and walked away, scribbling as he went.

Roland had been listening so intently he made her nervous. Neighbors were gathered in knots around the apartment building’s inner courtyard. Two older women in faded cotton muumuus and a Japanese man with a hoe were sneaking glances at them. A couple of pre-teen girls who should have been in school stared and whispered with their heads together.

A short, potbellied
haole
man in a ball cap and T-shirt that said MANAGER hurried up the stairs in front of a gurney being hauled to the second floor. He carried a huge key ring.

“Maybe it’s not Phillip.” Em said to Roland. “I just can’t see him staying here for any reason. What if someone stole his wallet?”

He shrugged. “Anything’s possible.”

He didn’t sound convinced.

Em clung to the possibility that it was a case of mistaken identity.

“Phillip is probably sitting in some upscale restaurant about to order lunch with his fiancée right now. Someone stole his wallet. That’s why the police contacted me. My name was still on his emergency ID.”

The gurney appeared on the balcony again and was hauled down the stairs and out to the coroner’s wagon. Detective Bardon was headed their way.

“You could be right,” Roland said. “For your sake I hope so.”

The HPD detective asked them to follow him out to the van where the medical examiner zipped the body bag down far enough to reveal the victim’s head and shoulders.

Em clung to Roland’s arm. The dead man was indeed Phillip. His face was gray and waxy. All she could see was the collar, but she thought he was wearing the same shirt he’d had on at Orchids yesterday.

Her mouth couldn’t form the words. She took a deep breath.

“That’s him. That’s my ex-husband.”

“Phillip Johnson,” Detective Bardon said.

Em nodded. “Yes.”

“You’ve made a point of referring to him as your
ex
at least three or four times, Mrs. Johnson. Was yours a contentious divorce?”

Em blinked. What was he asking, and
why
was he asking it?

“I told you it got messy at the end. That’s no secret.”

Roland held onto her arm and faced her away from the gurney.

“What are you getting at, Detective Bardon?” Roland sounded pissed.

“Just clarifying things. I did overhear Mrs. Johnson say things were pretty messy at the end.”

Em was shaken, but not enough to let Bardon intimidate her, especially in front of Roland.

“
Ms
. not Mrs. It
was
an ugly divorce, Detective. It was an ugly marriage, but I had no idea how ugly until it was too late. I ended up with nothing, and so did he. Is that what you wanted to hear?” She hated airing her dirty laundry in front of Roland, hated sharing something she thought was behind her.

“We’re done here, aren’t we?” Roland asked the other detective.

“Just a couple more questions.”

“Am I a suspect?” Em asked point blank.

“Until we can narrow it down, everyone is a suspect. We’re looking to question Damian Bautista, the neighbor he had an altercation with. He rents the apartment next to the one your husband rented, but no one’s seen him since the argument out front. You mentioned your husband had a fiancée. Do you know her name?”

“Felicity. Felicity something . . . I just met her yesterday.”

“How’d that go?”

“Excuse me?” Em frowned.

“When you met her? How did it go?”

Em was fed up with his insinuations
and
his scribbling.

“It went great after I tackled her across the table at Orchids at the Halekulani and managed to pull out most of her hair. Which reminds me, her last name was Duncan. Felicity Duncan. As in donuts.”

Em heard Roland snort. She glanced up at him. His expression was impassive.

“If I were you, Detective Bardon, I’d be looking for Ms. Duncan. They were staying at the Moana, or at least that’s what Phillip told me. I can’t see the woman I met staying here,” Em said.

“Just out of curiosity, where were you from the time you left Orchids yesterday afternoon until this morning, Ms. Johnson?”

“At the Hilton first, then I went to rent a costume at the Ilikai, then I went back to the hotel and attended a party. I spent the night in my room. This morning I was with Roland until I went with a friend to the emergency room at Straub. That’s where I was when you called me.”

“Time of death was sometime between midnight and three a.m.,” Bardon said.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, Detective,” Roland said. “Besides, you know time of death is only an estimated window, especially in the tropics.”

“Gotta go at this from every angle, you know that.” Bardon scribbled more notes. “You’re staying at the Hilton, correct?”

“Yes,” Em said. “We both are.”

“Together?” Bardon didn’t look at Roland.

“No,” Roland said.

“How long?”

“Until Monday morning,” Em said.

He turned to Roland. “And you, Sharpe?”

“I’m not sure.” Roland put his hand on Em’s shoulder. “Is that all, Detective?”

“For now. You take care.”

“Yeah,” Roland said. “Mahalo.”

The coroner’s wagon pulled out, and Detective Bardon told them they could go and that he’d be in touch. By the time Em slid into Roland’s rental car, she was trembling so badly he had to reach over and fasten her seat belt.

She lowered her head toward her knees.

“Should I pull over?” Roland asked.

“I’ll be all right in a second.”

Em took a couple of deep breaths before she slowly sat up and watched the cityscape slip past the car window. The tropical blue sky and puffy white clouds so contrasted with the image of Phillip lying in a body bag that everything seemed surreal.

Roland easily navigated the maze of one-way streets and crowded intersections.

“For a guy from Kauai you sure know where you’re going.”

He shrugged. “I lived here every summer with some cousins when I was a kid. This is where I learned fire dancing.”

An unasked question hovered between them.

Em took a deep breath and started to answer it.

“Look, I didn’t tell you I was meeting Phillip because—”

“It’s not my business.”

“But . . .”

“Really, Em. It’s not.”

“You don’t think I killed him, do you? Bardon does.”

“Of course not. Besides, you were playing pirate all night.”

Em turned away and stared out the passenger side window.

“I wasn’t at the party all night,” she said.

They were passing Kapiolani Park. Roland pulled into a vacant parking space, rolled down the windows, and turned off the motor.

“What’s up, Em? What else haven’t you told me?”

“I was at the Waikiki substation last night. Nat had to pick me up. That’s why he called you.”

“You were
arrested
?”

“No. I was freed on my own recognizance and Nat’s word he’d make sure I stayed out of trouble.”

“You got sucked into one of the Hula Maiden capers?”

“No, they weren’t there.”

“What did you do?”

“Nice of you to assume I’m not innocent.”

“I know better. Let me guess. You were snooping where you didn’t belong.”