Lana'i of the Tiger (The Islands of Aloha Mystery Series) (22 page)

“So the guy tossed something and
then presumably took a header off a second-story lanai. Why would someone do
that?”

“I don’t think Marta can answer
that,” said Kate.

“Right. I was just thinking out
loud.”

We sat in silence for a few
moments while Marta relived the horror of that night. Maria reached over and
took her sister’s hand. I sat there wondering what could’ve led to the bizarre
events Marta had just described.

“Would you please ask her if she
went into the bedroom and saw Miss Diamonte?”

Kate asked and Marta answered in
the affirmative. She followed it up with a bit more hushed talk.

“She says yes, she saw her. And
she said she thought it was odd because there wasn’t much blood.”

“What?” I said, “I thought
Deedee Diamonte was stabbed to death. Ask her what she means by ‘not much
blood’.”

Kate asked. It took Marta a few
sentences to answer. Then Kate translated.

“She says the lady was face down
on the bed and there was a knife in her back. But the wound wasn’t bleeding
much. She said she knows about knives and bleeding because back home in the
Philippines they used to butcher hogs on her father’s farm. And when they’d stick
in the knife a lot of blood would spurt out.”

By now Marta was looking really
stricken and Maria looked anxious for us to leave. I turned to Kate.

“One last question,” I said.
“Can Marta describe the man on the lanai?”

Again, my public school Spanish
came through in a pinch. “
Gordo
,” said Marta—fat.

Things were starting to fall
into place. I recalled Wong’s comment to Darryl that ‘things aren’t always what
they seem.’

***

We drove Ono’s VW bus back to
Lahaina and I gassed it up. Kate insisted on paying for the gas, which I
appreciated, since I’d used the last of my White Orchid earnings for my ferry
ticket. I parked and took the keys back to the
Maui Happy Returns
boat
slip and hid them in the dock box marked with the slip number.

We got back to the ferry waiting
area with plenty of time to spare before the twelve-forty-five departure to
Lana’i. As we waited, Kate and I reviewed what we’d learned.

“Okay, so Marta’s got a twin
sister here on Maui,” Kate said. “And she’s legal because she married an
American. How great is that?”

Kate seemed way more concerned
about saving her job than solving a murder, but I couldn’t blame her. She’d
never met Deedee Diamonte or Tyler Benson.

“So let me see if we’re thinking
alike,” I said. “You’re going to ask Maria to come to Lana’i and pretend she’s
Marta?” I said.

“No, I’m going to ask the security
guys to come over here to Maui. They already know Marta left Lana’i and she doesn’t
want to work for us anymore. We can meet at the Four Seasons in Wailea. They’ll
take Marta’s statement and leave. They’ll probably alert the police, but that’s
up to them. I’ll tell Maria if she’ll impersonate her sister for me I’ll make
sure Marta gets paid for the week she worked at the Lodge.”

“And, by coming forward, Maria
will also make it possible for her sister to come back to the U.S. for visits,”
I added. “But what if they ask Maria questions we didn’t ask Marta? What if
they try to trip her up?”

“It doesn’t matter. Marta’s
already quit. It’s not as if she could get fired. And when Maria talks to the
police she can just say she doesn’t remember. What’re they going to do? She’s a
witness, not a suspect.”

By now the ferry was pulling
into view. I was sad to be leaving Maui so soon, but I was anxious to get back
to Lana’i and find the last piece of the puzzle before Wong caught up with me. 

“Can I go back to the Lodge with
you?” I said. “I’d like to look around for whatever it was that George Romano
threw off that lanai,” I said.

“I think the police probably
searched the area pretty carefully,” Kate said.

“Yeah, I’m sure they did. But if
our chubby jumper had a pitcher’s arm, you never know. Whatever it was could’ve
landed outside the search grid.”

She didn’t say anything. Maybe
now that Kate had her own problem solved, she wasn’t that interested in delving
any further into mine.

I went on, “But you know what
really bugs me? How did Tyler Benson’s prints get on that knife?”

“Yes,” said Kate, sounding like
she was warming to the notion of playing Nancy Drew with me. “And why wasn’t
there much blood?”

“Yeah. That doesn’t make sense.
Unless…” I tapped my finger against my chin to signal brain cells at work. “Are
you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I am if you’re thinking maybe Ms.
Diamonte didn’t die from a knife wound,” she said.

***

It was tough for me to watch
Lahaina disappearing off the stern of the ferry. But at least I knew I’d be coming
back soon. Eluding Wong meant I hadn’t heard any updates on our trip to ‘Disney
World.’ But regardless, even waiting until the first of the year meant I only had
a couple more weeks to go.

We docked at Manele Bay and Kate
and I walked to the parking area and climbed into her Corolla. On the ride up
to Lana’i City we formulated a plan.

She drove past the Hotel Lana’i,
past Dole Park, and on up to the Lodge at Koele. Even though it was her day
off, she still parked in her marked spot in the employee parking lot.

“I don’t want to go past the front
desk,” she said. “Everyone knows me and they’ll ask why I’m here.”

We skirted the outside of the
building and came to a spot where the immaculate lawn had been trampled and
torn up. The police tape was gone, but the area under Deedee Diamonte’s lanai
was going to need a few more days of water and sunshine to erase the signs of a
police investigation.

“So that was her suite up
there?” I pointed to a lanai above the sloping roofline of the extended first
floor. “Seems like the first floor roof should’ve broken Romano’s fall.”

“Yes, it’s pretty wide, but from
what I hear so was Mr. Romano,” said Kate.

“I guess a guy that big and out
of shape wouldn’t land on his feet like a cat.”

“Apparently not,” she said.

We started searching the bushes for
the ‘wad of paper.’ After about ten minutes I’d come across very little—a stray
golf ball, a yellow crayon, and a Tic-Tac box.

“How’re you doing?” I yelled to
Kate.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But I
just found something you might want to see.”

CHAPTER
28

Kate was crouched down, pointing
to a knotted lump about the size of a hen’s egg. It was under a cluster of small
bushes at the base of a palm tree.

“What is that?” I said.

“I’m not sure, but it looks like
gloves.”

“Gloves?”

“Yes, see? I think those are
fingers there. It looks like a pair of gloves tied together.”

All I saw was a knot of dirty
rubber. I hated to think what it might be if it turned out to be something
other than a pair of gloves. I squatted down beside her to get a better look.
It could have been a trick of the light, since the knot was well-hidden in the shrubbery,
but I thought I detected dark brown smudges on the beige-colored rubber.

“We use latex gloves like these
in housekeeping,” she said. She reached in and turned the lump over using a pen
she’d taken from her purse. On the underside, a thumb and forefinger were
clearly apparent.

“Those are gloves all right,” I
said. “We better leave them here, just as they are.” I’d learned the hard way
about messing with evidence. “The police will probably want to take pictures of
where they were found before they bag them and send ‘em to the lab.”

 “Now what do we do?” said Kate.

“Well, now I’m going to go
inside and make a quick call. I’ll tell the Four Seasons security guys that I just
remembered something. I’ll say Marta said she may have seen a man on the lanai toss
something over toward the palm tree.”

“But isn’t that risky? I’m sure
they’ll call in the police to investigate,” said Kate. “What if they demand that
you come in and talk to them again? Or they step up their search for Marta? And
what if Romano didn’t throw these gloves? What if they just turn out to be some
trash that fell off a housekeeping cart?”

“Where’s the risk? Marta’s on a
jet to Manila and these gloves will be checked out at the forensics lab. I
think the security guys and the cops will be way more interested in looking
into some possible new evidence than tracking down a couple of out-of-work
hotel maids.” I stood up to leave.

“I can’t believe how brave you
are,” said Kate. “First your husband’s military career makes you go into hiding,
and then you help me save my job and get to the bottom of this horrible murder.
When you can, please email me and let me know how you’re doing.”

She handed me her Four Seasons
business card. It read, “Kate Abaya, Housekeeping Supervisor.” It had numbers
for the front desk, her extension, and her Four Seasons email address. “I’ll
never be able to thank you enough. I don’t know what I would’ve done if…” She
let it trail off, as if losing her job in the Four Seasons housekeeping
department was not only unthinkable but unspeakable.

***

I went into the lobby and asked
the perky desk clerk if I could use their telephone. I flashed her Latham’s
card and she smiled and pointed to the concierge desk. “You’re welcome to use
that phone over there,” she said. “Just dial nine to get an outside line.”

I dialed the number on Latham’s
card.

“Eric Latham,” he said when he
answered.

“Mr. Latham? It’s me, Stella
Marquez from the housekeeping department at the Lodge at Koele. Do you remember
me?”

“Of course. Have you located
your co-worker yet?”

“Yes, it seems she went to Maui
to calm down after all the commotion. If you want to talk to her you’re going
to need to do it quickly because she’s planning an overseas trip to visit her
mother. She said she won’t be coming back for a while, maybe never.”

 “Is that why you’re calling,
Ms. Marquez? To tell me Marta’s leaving?”

“Yes. And, she remembered
something I think you should look into.”

“What’s that?”

“On the night of the incident
Marta said she saw a man in Miss Diamonte’s room throw something off the
lanai.”

“I thought you told us you
didn’t see a man.”

“I didn’t see him, but Marta
swears she did.”

“And now you say he threw
something?”

“What I’m saying is it might be
something you’ll want to look into. She said she thinks whatever he threw probably
landed around the palms trees.”

 “How would she know where it
landed? Look, we need to interview this Marta. The police are looking for her,
too. I’m obligated to give them all information we uncover during our internal
investigation. Where can we reach her?

“Kate Abaya is already making
plans for you to meet with Marta before she leaves. Oh, I’m sorry, but I need
to go. You told me to call if I thought of anything, and so I called.
Aloha.
”
I hung up and thanked the desk clerk on my way out.

The doorman whisked the door
open as I approached. I went outside and saw the shuttle bus roaring up the
long driveway. The time had come to take my lumps from Detective Wong.

***

While the shuttle made its way
down to the Hotel Lana’i, two cop cars screamed past. I couldn’t be sure, but I
figured chances were good they were on their way to the Lodge to beat the
bushes out near the palm trees.

The sun was getting low in the
sky. I got off the bus and strolled through shadowy Dole Park on my way to the
police station. I mentally bid
aloha
to the kind people I’d met on
Lana’i. There was Mr. Ho in the greenhouse who’d dropped everything to take me
down to the ferry to get Auntie Cora. And the guy at the café who’d offered to
do the fancy
pupu
platters for Tyler and Deedee’s wedding. And Stella,
who’d given up a good job to protect a co-worker from getting deported. I
nodded toward the lights of Auntie Cora’s little yellow bungalow, and then I
slowed to a stop as I came to the corner of Kua’aina Street, the home of Darryl
and Ewa and now little Ekana.

I approached the modern
one-story Lana’i Police Station. The lobby was ablaze with fluorescent lights
and Detective Wong was leaning on the reception desk.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he
said, looking up. He didn’t look as furious as I’m sure he felt.

“Yeah. Sorry about that.” I
looked around. The room was beige on beige on beige. Funny how all government
buildings seem to use the same color-blind interior decorator.

“Do I need to get out my cuffs?”
he said.

“No. What I needed to get done
got done,” I said.

“Excellent,” he said with more
than a hint of sarcasm. He led me past the front desk and into a tiny interview
room. After he closed the door, he said, “I guess you’re probably aware of what’s
going on up at the Lodge.” 

“Not really. What’s happening?”

He looked sorry he’d mentioned
it. “We got a tip on some possible new evidence,” he said. “Sounds promising.”

“That’s great.” I glanced toward
the door. “Is Tyler Benson still in custody?”

“He’s in Wailuku.”

“In jail?”

“In jail.”

“Have you charged him with the
murders?”

“I said he’s in jail,” said Wong.
“I’ll leave the rest up to your vivid imagination.”

“I have a theory about what
happened that night,” I said.

“Although I’m respectful of your
opinion, Ms. Moon, I really don’t want to discuss an on-going investigation
with you.”

“You called me by my real name.”

“There have been some
developments.”

 “Really?” I said. “What’s going
on?”

“Way I see it, your little
disappearing act left me cooling my heels here. Why should I tell you
anything?”