Banana Split (30 page)

Gayle was looking at her as though she’d lost her mind.

“I’m not making any sense,” Sadie said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. Uh, why don’t we go to my room and we can talk.”

“Sure,” Gayle said, failing to hide her concern. “Let me just park the car.”

Sadie nodded, shifting from one foot to the next while she waited for Gayle to come back. She felt calmer by the time Gayle returned and tried to keep the conversation normal by asking about her flight as they walked to Sadie’s room.

Gayle chatted amiably, recounting her travel adventures, which included sitting next to a Hawaiian man who taught her some words while they crossed the Pacific Ocean.

“
Wikiwiki
is my favorite,” Gayle said, then turned to Sadie. “It means hurry up.”

Sadie smiled and nodded; she knew that.

“I’m going to teach it to the grandkids when I get back—they’ll love it. And then there was this drunk lady . . .”

Sadie nodded in all the right places, asking probing questions when appropriate, hoping it would convince Gayle that she wasn’t completely deranged. Just slightly so.

“I told Pete I’d let him know what was going on when I arrived,” Gayle said after finishing her recitation. She pulled out her phone. “I’ll text him to let him know you’re okay.”

Sadie knew she should use Gayle’s phone to call him herself, but she wanted to use her own phone, once she’d had a chance to calm down completely. Plus, he was still at his conference and would need to call her back at his convenience anyway.

It wasn’t until they reached the door of her room that Sadie remembered her ponderings on why someone had given her the room key in the first place. What if the key wasn’t for her room after all?

But when she slid the key into the card reader and pulled it out, the light above the key slot lit up green. She was relieved she’d escaped the closet before eleven o’clock, when she assumed her card would stop working all together.

“So, how long are you staying here?” Gayle asked. “You checked in last—” She cut off with a gasp at the same time Sadie froze just inside the door of the room, looking at what had been done in her absence.

The stack of papers she’d left on the dresser were in pieces all over the floor; the contents of her shoulder bag were likewise scattered. Something dripped off the edge of the desk where she’d left her laptop. Sadie hurried toward it but stopped when she saw the wet keyboard and the pool of caramel-colored liquid surrounding her computer. She touched a button in a halfhearted attempt to wake up the screen, but it was dead. Ruined. Her finger was sticky, and she was tempted to taste it before rethinking that idea. It could be something foul, though it smelled sweet, like soda.

“What happened?” Gayle said, stepping far enough into the room that she could shut the door.

“I don’t know,” Sadie said, looking at the pill bottle from Dr. McKay lying empty on the floor, the pills scattered and crushed into the carpet.

“You didn’t do this?”

Sadie looked over her shoulder. “I’m a mess, but I’m not insane,” she said, offended. “Why would I do this?”

“Sorry,” Gayle said. “So, it wasn’t like this before you got locked in the, er, closet?”

Sadie shook her head, biting her tongue to keep from being defensive despite the fact that she’d reacted as though to a bombing when Gayle had honked her horn earlier.

“Who would do this?” Gayle asked.

Who
would
do it and who
could
do it felt like equally difficult questions to answer.

Sadie scanned the floor for her phone. It had been in her bag when she left. At first, she didn’t see it amid the chaos and hoped she’d put it somewhere else and just didn’t remember. Then she saw a familiar metallic red piece of plastic. She bent down and picked it up, realizing it was half of the protective cover she’d been talked into buying when she last replaced her phone. A quick scan found the other half, and then she spotted the phone itself partially under the bed, the screen broken and the keys either crushed or missing. Not far away lay the ice pick Sadie had used to help pick the storage room lock and left in the hallway, proof that whoever locked her in had also ransacked her motel room.

Sadie tried to swallow the thick lump in her throat. She knew her emotion didn’t have anything to do with the phone itself, but everything to do with someone violating her space and making such a threatening statement toward her. She turned her phone over in her hand and tried to remove the back cover. The damage to the phone had jammed the cover on, and she had to hit it against the dresser in order to get it off.

“What are you doing?” Gayle asked.

Sadie didn’t answer. Instead she removed the battery, relieved to find the SIM card still inside. She used her thumbnail to pull it out of its casing, then dropped the ruined phone back onto the floor. She held the card tightly and scanned the destruction again, wondering if there was anything salvageable. She picked up her wallet and opened it to find the card compartments empty.

A slower scan of the floor provided clues to the multicolored pieces she’d seen amid the white paper. Someone had cut up all her cards—credit, health insurance, library. She reached down and picked up a piece with part of the Colorado state seal—her driver’s license. Next to that was a green sliver of paper that Sadie feared was the last of her cash. Whoever did this had brought scissors. They were intent only on making her miserable, not profiting in any way.

“They destroyed everything,” Sadie said, looking at Gayle. “My license—my cash.” She looked at the papers strewn across the floor. “Everything.”

“Why?” Gayle said, venturing a step forward before stopping again. “What would the point be?”

“To get back at me for something. Or to make me leave.”

“You need to call the police,” Gayle said. “Whoever did this is crazy. You’re going to report it, right?”

Immediate arguments began running through Sadie’s head: calling the police would mean she’d have to explain what she was doing in Kalaheo. She couldn’t expect the police to find out who did this if she hid information. She’d have to tell them everything. It would mean giving a statement, explaining why she hadn’t reported Charlie’s appearance on her doorstep sooner. And she’d have to stop her own investigation, such as it was. She’d never find the answers to Charlie’s questions.

Charlie’s questions. She looked at the shredded papers on the floor. Like everything else she’d brought from Puhi, the list was gone. She thought of the confrontation she’d had with Jim earlier that morning. He’d predicted she wouldn’t call the police about him locking her out of her room. He’d known she wanted to figure things out on her own, and he’d been right. But that was when the fire for this mystery was still burning within her, when she thought she was making progress and feeling stronger for the efforts she was making. That strength was gone, sapped by the sticky heat of the storage room and shredded like her driver’s license and credit cards. Regardless of when it had abandoned her, the passion that had fueled her thus far was gone, and she was left with a horrible feeling of foolishness for having started something she was incapable of finishing.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “We should call the police.”

Gayle didn’t need to be told twice, and she hurried over to the phone, picking her steps carefully as though not wanting to disrupt the debris. Sadie vaguely noted her friend picking up the phone and talking to someone while she stared at the spot where Charlie’s list had been.

I’ve failed you,
she thought, feeling horrible for not being able to help him after all. His letter was now lost in the mess somewhere.

Or was it?

Sadie knelt on the floor and began sifting through bits of paper, looking for the grayish newsprint of Charlie’s list amid the bright white paper pieces that seemed so stark against the burgundy carpet.

“What are you looking for?” Gayle asked.

Sadie looked up to see that Gayle had hung up the phone, which could only mean the police were on their way. “Charlie’s list.”

Sadie recognized a slice of the photo of Charlie and Noelani that she’d printed off the computer and picked it up.

She hoped Charlie had gone to school after she’d seen him at the church. It wasn’t her problem anymore, but she kept looking for evidence of his list until someone knocked on the motel room door. Gayle hurried to answer it as Sadie got to her feet. She’d found pieces of Noelani’s obituary, Officer Wington’s card, and the map Ashley had printed out for her to find the church last night, but Charlie’s list wasn’t there. Whoever wanted to get back at her or run her off had taken Charlie’s list. Why?

“Mrs. Hoffmiller?” a male voice said. She looked up into the somewhat familiar face that instantly reconnected her to the encounter she’d had with Noelani’s body. She felt herself tense in response to the connection. Officer Wington. He smiled kindly, as though she were fragile. Maybe he was right. “Why don’t we go outside where we can talk?”

Chapter 33

Nearly three hours later, Sadie was finally able to call Pete using Gayle’s phone during the ride back to Puhi. She wasn’t sure he believed she was okay, but she did her best to convince him.

“Do you fly home from North Carolina tonight?” she asked, knowing he’d told her when he was heading back to Colorado but unable to remember.

“Tomorrow,” Pete said. “We have a banquet tonight and a final assault weapon firing range in the morning.” He paused, then asked, “How are you feeling—really?”

Sadie realized that despite a tightness in her chest, and her PTSD reaction when Gayle had honked, the panic hadn’t erupted again—even when she thought for sure it would. “I’m doing okay,” she said. “Better than I would have guessed if someone had warned me what today would be like.”

“I’m glad you’re holding up.” He paused, his voice muffled, then came back on the line. “I’m sorry, Sadie, but I’ve got to go. Can I call you after the banquet?”

“I would love that.”

They said their good-byes, and Sadie considered calling Mr. Olie, but it seemed superfluous now. The police would certainly get in touch with him about Charlie. It was out of her hands. Why did that feel . . . wrong?

“Turn right at the next road,” Sadie said, putting Gayle’s phone in the middle console.

They reached her condo a few minutes later, and Sadie locked the door three times but hoped Gayle hadn’t noticed.

“I’m exhausted,” Gayle said. “Is it always so draining? Talking to the police?”

Sadie nodded and passed Gayle on her way to the kitchen. “I’m sure flying for most of the night hasn’t helped your energy levels, either.”

Gayle shrugged. “I slept most of the way, and I felt fine when I arrived. It’s the last few hours that wore me out.”

“Well, you’re right,” Sadie said. “The police do take a lot out of you, and no matter what’s happened, I always feel like I’ve done something wrong.”

Gayle sat down on the futon with a loud exhale. “I felt that way too, and all I had to talk about was why I was here and what we saw when we opened the door. Are we done, then? Or will we have to talk to the police some more?”

“It’s up to them,” Sadie said, opening a cabinet to retrieve two glasses. She was thirsty and assumed Gayle was too. As she passed the fridge, she saw the list of goals she’d made yesterday and frowned. What did it matter now? Despite all her efforts, she’d failed Charlie. She didn’t even have his list of questions anymore. “Sometimes they need more info, and sometimes they don’t. We may never hear anything else about it.”

“So, what, once you give them what you know, you’re out of the loop?”

Sadie handed one of the glasses of ice water to Gayle. “Except I usually insert myself back into it,” she said, shrugging.

“Do you plan on doing that this time?” Gayle asked in a tone Sadie couldn’t define. She almost sounded disappointed that the potential adventure was over. Or maybe she was anxious about Sadie stepping back in. She took a sip of water, looking at Sadie over the top of the glass.

Sadie shook her head. “When I started all this it was with the promise to myself that I could get out if I needed to. And I need to. Whoever broke into my room was making a statement. I’m in no position to egg them on, and I didn’t get any information that makes a difference anyway.” It was easy to say, but felt horrible to sum up like that. She’d wasted all that time and precious energy on something useless. She went back into the kitchen in hopes of finding something to eat.