03 - Three Odd Balls (20 page)

She threatened to begin crying again, so I tried to set her mind at ease, reminding her it was an accident, and how hard her job was, and reassuring her Wilson would actually be grateful she and Karen were taking such good care of his cats.

“The main thing is Wally is going to be okay,” I added firmly.

“Dr. Smith says he’ll be good as new. But no more chasing Puddles around. Not this week anyway.”

***

“Wild goose chase,” were the first words out of Lieutenant Russell Densmore’s mouth.

Clearly under the impression he was speaking to his boss, he didn’t wait for any sort of acknowledgement, but simply continued his report. “Her real name is Samantha Dimmery,” he said as I reached for my mother’s clipboard. “Dimmery has a history of moving from job to job, and island to island. She also has a history of petty crime. I’m guessing the woman has to resort to petty theft, since she can’t seem to hold a job for more than a few days. Her gig at the Wakilulani Gardens was something of a record—six whole weeks. But now she’s moved on to Honolulu, looking for her next job. You want me to keep track of her progress, Captain?”

I looked up from writing “petty crime” and “Honolulu” next to “Samatha Dimmery.”

“We’re talking about Rachel Tate?” I asked, and I do believe the Lieutenant dropped his phone. I jotted down “Rachel Tate” in parentheses next to the “Dimmery.”

“Jessie?” Russell said eventually.

I verified, but somehow this did not set his mind at ease. “Where’s Captain Rye?” he demanded. “And what about Captain Vega? And what about Chris? Don’t tell me he’s already been arrested? Where is my boss, Jessie? Why are you answering his pho—”

“Russell!” I scolded. I told him to take a deep breath and explained the latest developments.

“Let me get this straight,” he said as I finished. “Captain Rye is off somewhere in the jungle searching for a bird?”

“Bee Bee is not just any bird. We think he’s an important witness.”

Dead silence.

“Bee Bee is a very smart parrot,” I reiterated. “But let’s move on, shall we? What else have you found? Some good dirt, I hope.”

“Are you alone?”

I gazed out from the porch. The Coochies were within eyesight, but with the maid’s vacuum cleaner running down in Louise’s bungalow, I couldn’t hear what they were playing over at the Song of the Sea. I assumed they could not hear me either, but just in case, I picked up the clipboard and went inside Paradise.

“All alone,” I said and sprawled out on the bed.

“Are you sitting down?”

I sat up. “Yes.”

“Here’s the dirt—Captain Jason Vega and Ki Okolo are friends. They have been for years.”

“No!”

“Yes. But don’t get too excited. Ki Okolo has lots of friends.”

I told Russell I found that hard to believe, even as I scribbled down Ki and Vega’s names and drew a big thick arrow between them. “Ki is very abrasive,” I said.

“Maybe. But he’s also a computer genius. Practically everyone on that island has needed his help at some point. The Halo Beach PD actually keeps him on retainer. I get the idea Vega’s even worse at technology than my boss.”

“Wilson’s lucky to have you for all this techie stuff, Russell.”

“Maybe. But the Halo Beach cops don’t have me, they have Ki Okolo. They call him Sherlock.”

“Everyone calls everyone Sherlock around here. Vega uses the expression, as does Ki.”

“Like I said, they’re friends.”

“Sooo.” I wrote Sherlock in parentheses under Ki’s name. “If Ki’s the murderer, it’s in Vega’s best interest to protect him. He needs to keep Ki out of prison and available for the next Halo Beach PD computer crisis.”

“Don’t get too excited, Jessie. We have no proof Ki’s the killer.”

“But Vega always lets the locals off the hook. Rumor has it he always blames a poor hapless tour—”

“Let’s stick to the facts,” Russell said firmly.

“You’re just like your boss, you know? Facts this, facts that.”

“So here’s what we know for fact,” he continued, dismissing my complaint. “Ki Okolo visits police headquarters at least once a week to work on something or other, and he and Vega usually take a long lunch afterwards.”

I shook my head in dismay. “How did you learn all this stuff, Russell?”

“Practice,” he said humbly and turned the subject to the other Okolo brother. “Big brother Ki might have clients all over the place, but Palakapola, a.k.a. Buster Okolo, has never worked anywhere except the Wakilulani Gardens. He moved in with his grandfather at age eleven and never left.”

“Buster loves it here,” I agreed. “His grandfather Pono trained him to take over the business.”

“Good sleuthing, Jessie.”

“More like simple observation.” I scanned my notes. “So who else did you get the dirt on?”

“There’s very little dirt,” Russell said.

“But there has to be dirt,” I insisted and explained a few of the intriguing love-triangle theories to prove my point.

Bless his heart, Russell gave each some consideration.

“I found nothing to suggest that Samantha Dimmery, a.k.a. Rachel Tate, was engaged to Davy Atwell,” he said eventually. “And there’s no evidence Bethany Iverson was involved with the guy either, even if she does know how to mix what the Captain tells me are some damn fine pink cocktails.”

“But Russell,” I whined. “We worked so hard to figure out those love triangles.”

“Okay, how about this? I will agree that any triangle involving Carmen Dupree might have potential. She and those kids she had with Atwell could stand to inherit a fortune.”

I wrote “Carmen Dupree” in big block letters on top of my notes. I almost confessed our plans to break into Davy Atwell’s house later that day, but thought better of it and instead mentioned the Beyond the Beach tour.

“Carmen’s a tour guide, so we’re going this afternoon,” I explained, and suddenly antsy to get going, I got up from the bed to pace the room. “Beyond the Beach actually makes a stop at Davy Atwell’s mansion.”

Russell told me to have fun. “Better yet, learn something useful. Break into the place. Captain Rye certainly knows how.”

I stopped short and blinked twice.

“Try to find Atwell’s will while you’re in there,” Russell suggested. “Computers might stump him, but Rye can crack a safe faster than anyone I know.”

Excuse me? Not only was Wilson Rye adept at breaking and entering, but he could also crack a safe?

I was standing in front of the closet, and for some reason felt compelled to open it and take an inventory of Wilson’s stunningly silly shirts. My beau—the clown, the cop, and the criminal. What’s the saying? An enigma wrapped in a mystery? And wearing a fluorescent green shirt. The pink and orange spider-web specimen caught my attention, and I remembered another expression—something about tangled webs and deception.

“Jessie? Are you still there?”

I snapped out of it and closed the closet. Skeletons in the closet.

I snapped out of it again. “Umm, Russell,” I ventured. “You don’t by any chance happen to know anything about Wilson’s past?”

Dead silence.

I soldiered on. “Something about a Dianne Calloway?”

I heard a loud clang and ascertained that the good Lieutenant had once again dropped his telephone.

Chapter 21

“Housekeeping. Knock, knock!”

I glanced through the open doorway to see the maid struggling up the stairs with a vacuum cleaner.

Mother’s clipboard and Wilson’s phone landed in the nearest dresser drawer, and I met the maid on the porch with a big smile on my face. Maybe I wasn’t having such a useless morning after all. I mean, there before me stood a member of the Wakilulani staff who had not yet been interrogated. At least not by me.

Still smiling, I stepped forward and introduced myself.

The fifty—or maybe even sixty—something woman put down her vacuum with an exaggerated grunt and gave my hand a cursory shake. “Leslie Coochie,” she said.

My mouth dropped open, but Ms. Coochie didn’t even notice since she was already back to struggling with her machine.

I stepped in her way. “Coochie, as in Hoochie Coochie?” I fluttered a few fingers Song of the Sea-ward.

“Cousins,” she mumbled. She got a firm grip on the vacuum cleaner and maneuvered it around me and into Paradise. “I’ll be about a half hour if you want to wait down by the pool.”

Yeah, right.

While she moved back and forth carrying loads of sheets and cleaning supplies from her cart to the bungalow, I hung around on the porch pretending to fiddle with something on my laptop. How had we failed to notice this woman in all our sleuthing?

Well, she must have cleaned our room while we were out spying on Carmen Dupree the day before. And the morning before that she would not have disturbed us. That had been the morning after Davy’s murder, when we slept in. Also, maybe we had simply not given the cleaning staff much thought. I scolded myself for being such a snob and walked to the doorway.

Ms. Coochie had already stripped the bed and was arranging the clean sheets. She looked up at me. “Can I help you?”

“No, but I can help you.” I hastened to the opposite side of the bed and gestured for her to throw me a corner of the sheet.

Instead, she clutched the sheet in both fists. “What are you doing?”

“Umm, I thought I’d help,” I said weakly. “I don’t mind.”

She frowned and asked me to please get out of the way.

So much for being helpful. I stepped back to let her get on with it, and with a few more frowns in my direction, she made the bed. She was tucking in the last corner on Wilson’s side when I gave up and resorted to honesty.

“My friends and I are curious about Davy Atwell’s murder,” I blurted out as she hustled her way into the bathroom.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she called from the vicinity of the shower.

“Actually, I was kind of hoping you could tell me something I don’t know.” I smiled encouragingly as she emerged from the bathroom with an armload of dirty towels.

She dropped the towels onto the pile of dirty sheets. “Not likely.” She gathered up all the laundry, and left me while she carried it outside to her cart.

I reminded myself an amateur sleuth’s job is never easy and waited patiently for this annoyingly efficient maid to return. Sure enough, she came back with a stack of clean towels, but I stepped directly into her path to the bathroom.

She stopped. “Whaaat?” she said. “I don’t know anything, okay? I just work here.” She looked pointedly around me. “At least I’m trying to.”

I reached out to her shoulders, backed her up toward the bed, and firmly pressed down until she was forced to sit.

She shook her head. “Ki warned me about you.”

“Excellent!” I said and noticed the slightest hint of a smile.

I encouraged the effort and pulled up a chair to face her. Smiling or not, Ms. Coochie was still holding her stack of clean towels and was poised to spring towards the bathroom at the first opportunity. Therefore, I ignored my rather involved list of suspects and love triangles and got right to the point. I asked only about the Coochie cousins. When need be, I, too, can be efficient.

She shook her head again. “You’re wasting your time and mine,” she told me. “Hal and Cal did not kill the bartender.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” I hastened to agree. “But they were here that night. They had just checked in. And, well, I’m just curious is all. I love their music.”

Ms. Coochie ever so slowly raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, so maybe not,” I said to the eyebrow. “But I am curious about them. I understand they stay here every year.” I pointed to her maid’s uniform. “And you have to admit, it is an intriguing coincidence that you work here. Have you had this job long?”

Leslie—she relaxed enough to let me to call her Leslie—informed me she was new to the staff, and with a few persistent prods and pleas from me, offered a bit of her history. Apparently Hal and Cal were her second cousins, sons of a favorite cousin on her father’s side. And Leslie was a retired school teacher trying to make a little extra income to supplement a not-so-great pension.

“After decades of dealing with kids, parents, principals, and anyone else who cared to blame teachers for every problem under the sun, I wanted a job where I can work all alone.” She again raised an eyebrow. “Something where I don’t have to talk to anyone. Where I’m ignored and left all alone.”

She kept emphasizing the “all alone,” but I refused to take the hint and tilted my head expectantly.

She sighed in resignation and told me Cal had found her current job for her. “He thought I’d like the Wakilulani. I mind my own business, work all alone, and I’m done by noon. Then I get to enjoy the beach the rest of the day.” She shrugged. “It’s touristy, but I like Halo Beach—I can be anonymous here. Not like in Iwatanii Town.”

Iwatanii Town?

I sat up straight as a flood of information suddenly collided in my brain. Iwatanii Town was Buster and Ki’s hometown, Leslie Coochie’s place of origin, and—I remembered the last connection—the town listed on Hal Coochie’s driver’s license!

I worked to regain my amateur-sleuth poker face, but it was hard to keep from smiling.

“Whaaat?” Leslie asked.

“Iwatanii Town.” I tapped my chin. “Isn’t that where the Okolo brothers are from?”

Leslie actually set aside her stupid towels in order to fold her arms and glare at me. “Yes,” she said emphatically. “And before you start jumping to conclusions, yes. We all know each other—the Okolos and the Coochies. Everyone from that stupid little town knows each other.” She harrumphed. “For better or worse.”

I leaned forward. “Did you know Buster and Ki’s parents?” I asked. “They must have been about your age?”

“It figures you’d know about the accident.”

I mumbled something about curiosity, and she continued, “Yes, I knew the parents. And if you must know, I taught both Ki and Buster when they passed through the fourth grade. But so what?” Leslie pointed to me. “From the look on your face, you’re finding this far more interesting than it really is.”

She stood up, awkwardly stepped around my chair, and reached for her vacuum cleaner. She had it plugged in and running before I could stop her.