Death in Paradise (43 page)

"Wait a minute," she ordered. "That sniveling little weasel was stealing our money?" I nodded. "And this person called Fox... Fox?... was helping her?"

"Right," I said. "This Fox character was supposed to fly in to Maui and then fly out again to Honolulu for some unstated purpose. I assumed it was a rendezvous. Rory made the arrangements. Now I'm thinking maybe it was Jeff, flying in to kill Martina and then flying out again so he can fly in again after the police called, on a plane arriving at the right time—the time he would have been arriving if he was coming from the East Coast."

"Hold on," Jonetta said, shaking her turban slowly. "I don't know. It seems too neat, somehow. Too easy if you can sit around and figure it out in ten minutes. Jeff Pullman comes all the way to Hawaii to kill his own wife? When it would have been so easy to arrange some drunken fall back home? And how'd he get on the plane using someone else's ticket? I have enough trouble using my own ticket. What if you're wrong?"

I shrugged. I didn't think I was wrong. I thought I'd figured out what it was they believed I knew. Rory thought I'd asked about the phone and the police because I was suspicious about Jeff's whereabouts; suspicious about the fact that he'd gotten the call on his home phone instead of his cell phone when he was never home. "Then I'm wrong. But everything fits. He could have used a false license for ID. Anyone can get one."

"And what are you going to do with this neat theory, Thea?"

I didn't understand why she was arguing with me. Didn't she want the murder solved? Wasn't she relieved that it wasn't one of us after all? "Take it to the police," I said, reaching for the phone. "Tell them what I know and let them take it from here." I was proud of myself for being willing to let it go. Normally I want to have a hand in things.

"Hold on a minute," she said, taking the receiver out of my hand and returning it to the cradle. "Let's talk about this. You're angry at Jeff Pullman," she said slowly, "because of what he did to you. I don't blame you," she added quickly, catching my angry look, "but before you do something that could prove seriously embarrassing, even damaging, to his career... and yours, if you're wrong, let's look at other..."

Didn't she understand? I wanted to drop this and run. "You got a better theory?" I stuck out my chin, childish and truculent.

Jonetta folded her hands over her stomach and settled more deeply into the couch, like a storyteller getting ready to spin a tale. Her dark eyes fixed on my face. "Maybe I do," she said. Unspoken, behind the words, was the command to settle down and listen.

I felt a prickle of fear, followed by uncertainty and a growing sense that something important was coming. It was so unlikely that she was about to confess, but there was something unsettling about her manner. She was silent for a long time, and it was a credit to the force of her presence that I sat quietly, too, and kept my mouth shut. I do not wait well. But Jonetta was one of my few heroes. If she confessed to some complicity in this, it would shake me as few things have done. Maybe I didn't want to hear this. Maybe it was better left unsaid? I considered telling her to stop. But I was a slave of duty and a high priestess of truth. I believed in the ultimate value of truth over most things. Still, I felt like a kid at the dentist as I waited.

Finally she said, "What if it happened like this? Suppose that Rory is stealing the money, not for herself, but because she's hopelessly in love with Jeff Pullman?"

"I thought she was having an affair with Billy Berryman. Certainly in the E-mail I've seen, they were plenty intimate."

Jonetta grunted. "I think that's been over for a while. Did you look at the dates?" I hadn't, and thought I had reason to believe that it wasn't over. Still, I was amazed that she had known about them and I hadn't.

"Why does everybody know all this stuff while I'm in the dark?" I complained.

"Everybody doesn't know all this stuff, Thea. Everybody knows bits and pieces. And everybody talks to me."

I didn't have to ask why. I'd confided in Jonetta, too. That was why she was here. We confided in her because she was wiser and more experienced. More real. Because we knew she could keep secrets. Because we all felt comfortable talking to her. She was a good listener. Maybe I was a little jealous. I was used to people confiding in me. I was used to being the one in the know. "Okay, you know everyone's stories. Why would Rory steal money for Jeff Pullman? Were they planning to run away together?"

"So his daughter, Melissa, could go back to private school."

"Give me a break! You've got three professional people with three professional salaries and they can't afford private school?"

"Three not all that big professional salaries, Thea. Supporting the necessary trappings of a fast-track lifestyle. Linda's is a government salary. Jeff's is bigger, sure, but the divorce cost him big bucks and he's paying for two houses, child support, and his son's college. The only one with any money was Martina, and she wouldn't pay for Melissa. I know you heard that story from Billy."

"What kind of a marriage is it where you can't just ask—"

"A crappy one," she said.

"I should have sent those nosy cops to you, Jonetta. You're the one who knows everything."

"I'm so glad you didn't." She took my hand. "Don't tell me your nose is out of joint because you wanted to be the one to know everything? I thought you were eager to get out of the detective business. And I thought, as board members, we were all working toward the same goals."

She read me like a book. "Sorry," I said, pulling my hand back. "This is so confusing."

"It is, isn't it? Shall I continue?"

There was more going on here than our talk about possible suspects. Jonetta was asking me some fundamental questions about trust and openness, and about competition or cooperation. This conversation was also about how our relationship, as well as the board's relationship, would go in the future. Jonetta had laid down a challenge without saying a word. Was I going to trust her and work with her or was I going to hold back and play the Lone Ranger because I wanted to be right and I wanted to be in charge?

But I didn't think this was about the board anymore. For me, this was about finding Martina's killer and getting the hell out of here. I couldn't operate on all these levels, I just wanted this to be over. Didn't she understand I was too tired for this? Probably not. Go around acting like Superwoman and people being to treat you that way. No one thought they needed to cut me any slack. "Yes, please. Go on."

She gave a sharp, affirmative nod. "Good. Now, you know that we are sitting in a whole hotel full of people with their own agendas regarding Martina. For the past few years, that woman has been like poison in the water supply. There are so many people here with reasons to hate her. Suppose one of them decided to act on it?"

"It wasn't a spontaneous thing, Netta. Whoever killed Martina had planned it. Knew about the lingerie killer. Bought the costume, hired the actors..."

She nodded. Vigorous. Decisive. I envied that energy. I felt as drained as if a vampire had been sipping my blood. "You're right. I didn't mean to make it sound spontaneous. This thing has been festering for a long time."

"But why kill her? Why not just remove her from a position of power, where she can't do so much harm?"

"Because this wasn't done to prevent future harm, Thea. This was done to revenge past harm."

I roused myself. If she knew so much, why had I had to play Lone Ranger? "How do you know? And if you already know what happened, why didn't you tell somebody? Were you planning to sit on it? To keep it to yourself and eventually go home from this conference congratulating yourself on all the progress that had been made, regardless of the evil that went with it?"

Suddenly Jonetta's face was fierce. "So you think that you were able to put your scenario together tonight because of all your brilliant insights, and that's okay, but that I must have been harboring mine secretly in my mind for a long time, so that's not okay?"

Jonetta was angry. "What if I told you that just as the pieces fell together in your mind just moments ago, the same thing happened to me while you were talking?"

Three hundred pounds of angry Jonetta was a daunting sight, especially leaning in close and personal. I wanted to whimper pitifully and throw up my arms to protect myself. "I didn't mean that. Look, Netta, why don't I just shut up and you tell the story and then we can yell at each other for a while?"

I've been in some strange spots in my life, and I've had some disturbing conversations, but this was one of the oddest. The air in this haunted room seemed to be charged with electricity. The dark fearsome corners were alive with anticipation. We were just two women sitting in a hotel room talking. But look what we were talking about. I'd said I knew who dunnit and laid out my theory. Now Jonetta was saying maybe she was the one who knew who dunnit, and was laying out a different theory. I didn't think stuff like this was supposed to happen in real life.

"Okay," she said, with a decisive nod of her head. "You shut up and listen. I talk. Then we talk. Decide what to do next. I think our killers are Linda Janovich—we have Rory's confirmation on that—and Rob Greene."

"Rob Greene!"

"You said you were going to be quiet." The turban and ruffles trembled menacingly.

"I will be," I whispered.

"Hey, girl." She laid a warm hand on my arm. "Take it easy. We're just two people talking, okay? You look scared."

"I
am
scared, Netta. Two people dead. Someone wanting me to be the third..."

She took my hand between hers. "I'm your friend," she said firmly.

"What scares
you
, Netta?"

"You really want to know?" I nodded. "Failure. Letting all those girls down. Tellin' them they've got a chance and then taking it away from them." She inclined her head, regal and splendid. "Yes, I could have killed her for what she did. But what kind of example would I be setting them?"

I left my hand in hers. It was like plugging into a wall socket. I could practically feel her energy flowing into me. "So," I said, "what about Rob Greene?"

She pulled her hand back, settling into her storytelling mode again. Deprived of that infusion of energy, I felt bereft. "I didn't tell you all of Rob's story. I said he patched things up with his wife. That's not entirely true. At the time that this happened, though neither Rob nor his wife recognized what was going on, Rob's wife was suffering from a severe postpartum depression. It was their first baby. They were both busy professionals, and they didn't pay enough attention to what was happening. Marilee thought her exhaustion and dark periods and mood swings were all normal results of too little sleep and high stress. She didn't seek help. And Rob was so busy just trying to get through the days and nights, he didn't notice either."

She leaned forward, her earrings jingling, and looked me square in the eyes. "After Martina's mean little practical joke, Marilee Greene got off the phone, wrote a note, and took every pill in the medicine cabinet. The baby-sitter found her the next morning in a coma. She's gradually recovering but there was a lot of damage. She'll never be entirely right again. You can imagine how Rob felt about Martina."

Rob Greene. Pleasant, cynical, wisecracking Rob. How could I have not known that he was carrying such a festering hatred? How could Martina have not known? Perhaps she had known and hadn't cared, and that had been even more galling for him.

"But why would he try to kill me? I didn't even know the story."

Jonetta shrugged. "When you asked me to come up here, you said you wanted to go over things, see if you could figure that out. You still want to do that?"

I shrugged. I didn't feel the fuzziness I'd felt when Jonetta first arrived. Her story had gotten me too stirred up. But I did feel physically exhausted. Still, we might as well see this through, whatever that meant.

"Sure," I said. "Sure. Let's do that. Ever since Rory said I knew too much, I've been obsessing about what she meant. I thought she was talking about the phone call to Jeff. But even if she wasn't, I'm still confused. Where does she fit into all this? What did she know that got her killed?"

Jonetta shook her shiny turbaned head. "I'm not sure. I think that Rory gave either Rob or Linda the key to Martina's room. I know she had one on Friday."

"And on Saturday we had to get security to let us in," I said. "No wonder she was so anxious to get into the room. But I'm sure that Rory thought Jeff had done the killing. That explains her hysteria and her silence. She loved him. She was helping him. And... what if Jeff was here? What does that do to your story? Why was he here? And why would she give Rob or Linda the key? I mean, what makes you think she did?"

"Something she said when we were waiting for the ambulance. She said she gave away the key. That she had given it to the wrong person. It was a mistake and she was sorry. You know she'd been drinking, too. If someone knocked on her door when she was half-asleep—"

"But that suggests there was a plan, that she'd planned to give someone the key. And you didn't tell this to the police?"

Jonetta sighed. "Maybe I should have, Thea. You know how I feel about the police... and then, this all has happened so fast... it's hard to know what might have made a difference. I think we need a pot of coffee and some sandwiches, if we're going to do this much longer. This brain of mine needs to be fed at regular intervals or it doesn't work at all."

What was a little more room service? I was already supporting half of the island's economy. A little more wouldn't hurt. I picked up the phone and ordered food. Lots of food. Enough for a small army. Undoubtedly, by the time it arrived, at least one more hungry person would have come knocking on my door. Wasn't it about time to feed Bernstein and Nihilani again?

"What makes you think Rob Greene is involved? I mean, for Jeff Pullman I've got the phone forwarding and his involvement with Rory and the fake name and the plans for a plane ticket in and out. What have you got?" I sounded like a little kid playing a stupid game of one-upsmanship.