03 - Three Odd Balls (26 page)

“Oh, I see!” she said. “I didn’t hear anyone calling because I’m half deaf.”

Chris jumped, too. “I heard it instead!” He looked at me, his eyes wide. “You and your mother were supposed to be kidnapped, not you and me.”

“Exactly.” I turned to Wilson. “But once Buster realized whom he had lured out there, he must have panicked and changed his plans.”

Wilson groaned. “And took my son.”

I studied my eighty-two-year-old mother and thought about the implications of this mishap. Chances were very good that if Tessie had been trapped with Bee Bee and me up in Pele’s Prison, we would all still be there. I shifted my focus to Chris. Okay, so maybe I was starting to appreciate Rye Junior. Maybe I was starting to appreciate him very much.

“Why was Bee Bee kidnapped?” Louise asked. “What about Bee Bee?”

“Bee Bee?” Bee Bee asked.

“Well now, I misspoke a moment ago,” Mother answered. “Davy Atwell was not the last remnant of the old days with Pono. This little guy was.” She reached out to the bird and he waddled over to be petted. “One last perso—I mean, one last creature to get rid of for that clean slate.”

“Why not just kill him?” Vega asked, and both Bee Bee and Louise squawked.

Tessie smiled at the bird. “I do not know. But aren’t we all glad he didn’t?”

Wilson turned to Vega. “We need to catch this guy.”

“Great idea.” Vega pointed back and forth between Chris and me. “We’ll use these two as bait.”

Excuse me?

Chapter 27

Altogether aghast, I stared at my reflection in the cloudy mirror of the ladies restroom at the Halo Beach Police Station. The specter staring back at me was horrifying, but not nearly as horrifying as “The Plan” Captains Vega and Rye had in store for me. I whimpered slightly and set about cleaning up.

I washed my hands, face, neck and arms in the rusty sink. Then I tried doing the same to my hair. But the soap from the dispenser clearly was not meant to tackle anything so challenging, and I managed only to get my very short coif into a tangled, sticky mess. I hunched over and rinsed and rinsed to no avail whatsoever. In fact, when I looked up the purple stain at the top of my head might have actually spread.

Officer Oskeen yanked a few paper towels from the dispenser and handed them to me, and I dried my purple do as best I could. Although I was not under arrest, Vega had decided I needed an escort to the ladies room. A good idea—Ms. Oskeen was indeed keeping me from jumping out the window.

I spied her reflection in the mirror. “You don’t happen to have a comb I might borrow?”

“Not on your life.”

I gave up on my appearance and turned to face the cop. “I understand I’m to get one last meal before my final demise?”

She took my elbow and ushered me back to Vega’s office, where a pizza party was already underway. Chris was sitting in front of an entire pie, and devouring such with little trouble whatsoever. My mother sat me down in front of another pizza, handed me a paper plate, and encouraged me to eat. She picked up a slice and no doubt would have hand-fed me if I had not taken it for myself.

Testimony to my stalwart and rugged nature, I continued eating despite the dinnertime conversation. Everyone but yours truly was excited about “The Plan,” which they discussed as if it were perfectly reasonable to send Chris and me back into the jungle. Yes, you read that right. Chris and I were going back up Kekipi Crater. Back to Pele’s Prison. Back to Ms. Huge and Hai—

Perhaps I should explain.

First of all, once the pizzas were gone, Captain Vega was going to call the Wakilulani Gardens and tell Buster and Ki that Wilson had been arrested for the murder of Davy Atwell.

“I’ll lie and say we think he killed you guys, too, but we have yet to locate your bodies.” Vega pointed back and forth between Chris and me, and I groaned accordingly.

“It’ll throw Buster off guard,” Wilson said. “He’ll think he’s off the hook.” He grinned. “That is until Tessie shows up.”

I groaned again as my mother and Louise chimed in with part two, their role in “The Plan.” They were to take Bee Bee home. And when they got back to the Wakilulani, they would concoct a story about how they had found the bird by the side of the road, just a mile away from the resort, when they were driving around in search of Chris and me.

Of course, Mother and Louise were going to act very concerned that Chris and I had yet to be found, dead or alive.

“And we’ll be shocked—absolutely and totally shocked—when we hear the terrible, terrible, terrible news about Wilson’s arrest!” Louise said.

“Terrible, terrible,” Mother tut-tutted, practicing her performance.

Bee Bee looked up from the pizza crust Louise was feeding him. “Terrible, terrible, terrible!” he reiterated gleefully. But of course Bee Bee could afford to be gleeful, since he was going back to the Wakilulani. Unlike yours truly.

“Y’all can count on us,” Mother said. “We’ll keep a close eye on Buster’s actions as the dinner crowd thins out.”

“Seeing Bee Bee will freak him out,” Chris explained, just in case I was not following. “He’ll wonder if we’ve also escaped from Pele’s Prison. He’s bound to come looking for us, right?”

“Right!” Louise answered for me. “Tessie and I will call Captain Vega the moment—the absolute moment—Buster leaves the Wakilulani,” she assured me.

Knowing where this was headed, and more importantly where I was headed, I put down my pizza and tried desperately to think of a flaw.

“It won’t work,” I said and shook my head vigorously at Vega. “You’ll be up on that mountain with us, correct? And cell phones don’t work on Kekipi Crater, correct?” I threw my hands up in surrender. “It won’t work,” I repeated and sighed dramatically. “No reception.”

“Yes, reception,” Vega said. “All our cars have signal boosters.” While I curled my lip he explained that his car was equipped for electronic communication, even on the mountain.

I mumbled a fantastical as Wilson, quite unnecessarily, reminded me of my role in this whole thing. Apparently Buster would come looking for us in Pele’s Prison. And—I hope you are sitting down—Chris and I would be there.

Oh yes. While my mother and Louise sat at the Wakilulani bar in comfort and ease, enjoying who knows how many pink drinks without me, and waiting for Buster to make his move, I would be traipsing back up that stupid volcano with Christopher Rye, i.e. The Mountain Man. Wilson and Vega were hiking up with us in order to get us back into that stupid cave and—wait for it—tie us up again!

“We’ll get lost,” I insisted. “There’s no way we’ll find Pele’s Prison at night.”

But Vega assured me he was “outdoorsy,” had been to Pele’s Prison “a million times,” and thus would have no trouble finding the stupid, stupid cave. “No trouble at all,” he said.

“No trouble at all!” Bee Bee said.

“I’m too tired.” I pointed to my burned-out flip flops. “I really don’t see how I can get up that mountain again in these.”

“I’ll carry you piggy-back if need be,” Wilson the ever-chivalrous offered, and Vega reminded me he’d be driving us practically the whole way. Apparently the road extended far, far up the hill, much farther than where Chris and I had found it.

“You can do this, Jessie,” Wilson insisted. “And once we get you two back in the cave, Vega and I will be hiding very close by. You know I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“That’s right,” Chris said. “And when Buster shows up, we’ll ask all the right questions and get a confession out of him, right?”

“Right,” I mumbled.

Vega held up a tape recorder, and lo and behold I thought of another detail to take issue with. “Any confession we get on that won’t be legal.” I threw my hands up in defeat once again. “I’m afraid this just won’t work.”

“This isn’t for the courts,” Vega said. “It’s for Ki.”

“Excuse me?”

Vega insisted that, despite his lack of social graces, Ki Okolo was concerned about law, order, and justice. “It’s why he does the IT work for the department. Once Ki understands what’s happened, he’ll make sure his brother confesses. All legal and legit.” He wiggled the tape recorder at me. “You’re doing the talking by the way.”

“Me!?”

“You’re fast on your feet,” Chris said. I raised an eyebrow, and he reconsidered. “You’re a fast thinker anyway. You’ll talk Buster into confessing way better than I could.”

I appealed to Wilson, but he insisted that I’m a great amateur sleuth, to which everyone chimed in agreement.

“You’ll be perfect!” Louise said. “What with Adelé Nightingale’s extensive experience at annihilating the bad guys? Just pretend you’re one of your heroines, Jessica. Delta Touchette, or Ava LaTellier, or Alexis Wynsome, or Devin—”

“Jessie doesn’t have to pretend to be anyone but herself,” Mother argued. She turned to Vega. “My daughter is quite experienced at catching killers, you know? She’s helped Wilson several times.”

I sighed dramatically and spoke to Chris. “You’re okay with this plan?”

“No fear,” he said.

“Yes, fear,” I argued. “Surely you haven’t forgotten about Ms. Huge and Hairy?”

His face dropped. “Umm, she’ll be asleep, right? I bet she won’t even notice we’re there.” He tried sounding certain, but something else must have occurred to him, and his face fell a bit further. “But what about the rats?” he whispered.

“There never used to be rats.” That was Vega.

“What?” Chris and I said in unison.

“It was one of our best natural phenomena. Now they’ve been brought in on ships. But we were rat-free for centuries.”

I smirked at Chris. “Told you so.”

***

Oh, to possess the skill set of Skylar Staggs, I thought to myself as I dutifully trudged through the jungles of Kekipi Crater. I mean, wouldn’t it be convenient to simply swing from tree to tree and branch to branch, with wild animals smiling down upon me, until we found our destination?

But no. Unlike the brave and talented Skylar, I myself was once again flip-flopping my slow, painful way—this time uphill and in the dark—along what my companions insisted was a path. A very short path, Vega even tried to convince me as he led the way.

“Your cave isn’t far from here at all,” he called over his shoulder.

My cave? I had news for the guy—that cave belonged to Ms. Huge and Hairy. But I did not argue, preferring to conserve my energy for more pressing matters, such as swatting frantically at the flying insects of the Hawaiian night.

“Aren’t we there yet?” I whined at some point. “It’s been over an hour.”

“It’s been ten minutes,” Wilson grumbled from behind me.

“Is she always this annoying?” Vega asked.

“Yes,” the Ryes replied in unison. Wilson gave me a little push through the next patch of heavy brush and I staggered into a small clearing.

“Pele’s Prison,” Vega announced triumphantly and flashed his flashlight into the tunnel.

“Eeeeee…”

He jumped and dropped his light. “What was that?”

“It’s just Jessie.” Chris bent down to retrieve the flashlight. “It’s her heebie-jeebie hum.”

“Her what?” Wilson and Vega asked.

“She doesn’t even know she’s doing it.” Chris directed the light into the tunnel and disappeared.

***

“Holy Mother of God!” Wilson, who is not much for exclamations, exclaimed.

You guessed it—we were all in Pele’s Prison—and Chris had the flashlight pointed at Ms. Huge and Hairy. She was, most decidedly, not asleep. How could the poor creature sleep when she was far too busy devouring yet another Mr. Rainbow Bug?

I blinked twice. At least I assumed it was a different rainbow bug than earlier in the day. After all, Ms. Huge and Hairy looked like she had put on some weight since I last saw her.

Vega was also staring aghast. “They’re not poisonous,” he tried.

“Yeah, right.”

“No, really.” The man had yet to move his eyes from the spectacle. “At least, not very.”

Wilson reached out and gave my hand a squeeze. “You guys will be fine,” he said none too certainly.

“Of course we will.” Poor Chris. For some reason, perhaps delirium, he actually sounded confident in that statement. He took off his Hawaiian shirt, tossed it to his father, and invited me to join him as he sat down in the gravel.

I resigned myself to my fate, and we got into position, back to back.

Wilson knelt down to tie us up. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as Vega handed him the rope.

Vega had brought along some new rope in his knapsack, but we all agreed Buster should see the rope he had originally used. The hiking Harveys likely would not have approved of such flagrant littering, but Chris and I had left that scrap in the cave when we had departed earlier. Escaping with ourselves and Bee Bee alive and intact had seemed the more pressing issue.

The old rope was frayed and not in great shape, but Wilson assured us it would do the trick as he tied some sort of Boy Scout knot behind our backs. “If Buster notices it’s in tatters, he’ll assume you’ve been sitting here all day trying to free yourselves.”

He guided my right hand to one of the frayed ends. “Pull this and it will come undone. But don’t do it too soon. We want Buster to think you’re still trapped, right?”

“Right,” I mumbled unenthusiastically.

He held up two pocket knives for my viewing pleasure. And while I pondered why, he slipped one into my shorts pocket and presumably put the other one within Chris’s reach.

“A pocket knife?” Chris was clearly unimpressed. “What about the gun?”

“Gun!?” I shouted.

“Yes, gun,” he repeated. “If Buster has a gun and starts shooting at us, I don’t care how many pocket knives we have, we’ll be dead.”

Silly me. Here I had been under the mistaken and altogether naïve delusion that my most pressing problem would be suffering through another simple bout of the heebie jeebies.

Wilson nodded to Vega, and a gun emerged from the knapsack.

“You guys are putting us in this situation, and you actually think Buster will have a gun?” I asked indignantly.

“No,” Wilson corrected me. “We don’t think he has a gun. He would have used it by now if he did. But better safe than sorry.”

I nudged Chris behind me. “I assume you know how to use the stupid thing.”