Maui Widow Waltz (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series) (7 page)

CHAPTER 8

O
n
Sunday morning, my cell phone slithered across the nightstand, buzzing and
vibrating with an incoming call. I rolled over and checked the time—six-thirty.
The caller ID said
K McGillvary
.

“Hi Kevin. What’s up?” I said,
attempting an ‘already had my coffee’ voice. I didn’t mention the early hour. I
like clients to think I never sleep; as if I maintain a constant vigil until
their Big Day.

“I need to talk to you. Soon.”

“Is Lisa Marie all right?”

“She’s fine. But I need to see you
this morning.”

“I don’t normally work on Sundays.”

“I don’t need you to do anything. I
want to give you a heads-up before Lisa Marie’s family gets here.”

“Can’t you just tell me now?”

“No,” his voice was tight. “Not on
the phone.”

We agreed to meet at my shop at
nine. He offered to pick up something at the bakery, and I said I’d have a
fresh pot of coffee ready.

“Will Lisa Maria be coming with
you?” I said. I thought I better ask because when I’d last sniffed the cream it
smelled like it was getting a little ripe.

“No,” he said, practically
shouting. “She’s out of the loop on this.”

In my line of work I’m used to
functioning as mother confessor for weird personal quirks and family secrets.
I’ve been summoned to more than a few clandestine meetings where a member of
the wedding party felt compelled to dump a furtive factoid in my lap. One time
I learned it wasn’t the bride’s first marriage—although the groom had been led
to believe his bride was a blushing virgin. Or, there was the time I was warned
Uncle Barney was a mean drunk so the bartender needed to have a liquor bottle
watered down with colored water ready to pour. A favorite of mine was hearing
the bride’s older sister was really her mother. Oddly, this one had come around
more than once. Family secrets rarely surprise me. Probably Kevin’s big
hush-hush meeting involved some petty disclosure I’d heard before and would no
doubt hear again. It’s all part of what I get paid to do.

 Kevin arrived right on time looking
downright ghastly. The gray weather hadn’t lifted for more than a few sunny
hours in the past week, so any tourist sporting a tan probably had had it
sprayed on, but Keith’s pallor reminded me of that guy in
Beetlejuice
.

“Coffee?” I said.

“Thanks.” He handed over a white
bakery bag. I peeked inside and saw two humongous muffins and a puffy apple
turnover laced with icing. They smelled fabulous. I wanted to stick my whole
face in the bag and suck up the aroma. Instead, I daintily lifted the goodies from
the sack using the little piece of wax paper from the bakery. After laying them
out on the bag, I offered him first pick.

With a wave of his hand he declined
the scrumptious-looking carbohydrates.

 “So, what’s going on?” I
said, laying claim to the turnover. I broke it into three pieces before biting
into the cinnamon-scented filling.

“If Brad was alive, this week would
have been huge for him.”

“You think Brad’s dead?” I said it
as calmly as I could.

“How should I know? The Coast Guard
says he’s dead, so I guess he is.”

“But if you don’t think Brad’s
coming back, why are you standing in as proxy?”

“I’ve got my reasons.” His eyes
darted around the room. “You don’t have like, uh, surveillance cameras in here,
right?”

“Nope. No hidden mics or thermal imaging
devices either.” I smiled, but he seemed to take me for serious.

“Okay, then,” he said. “I probably
should keep my mouth shut, but it seems only fair I clue you in on what’s going
on with Lisa Marie.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I
think I’ve pretty much figured out what’s going on already.”

“That right?”

“Yeah. I figure she’s all hot to
have this wedding—with or without Brad—so she can claim to be his widow and
have a shot at his estate. From what I’ve seen,
she’s
gonna need some serious dough to keep up her Dom Perignon lifestyle. With Brad
around, DigiSystems was footing the freight but now it looks like they’re
cutting her off.”

“Why do
you think that?”

“Because
I talked to Todd Barker. Lisa Marie told me he’d pay the wedding bills, but
when I called him he said he’d only pay the existing bills and no more.”

“That
douche bag. What’s he doing? He’s a clueless bean counter.”

“It’s
fine, I’m not worried. I’ll just dial everything back a tad and make it work.
I’ve
dealt with brides like her before. You know, caviar appetite—tuna fish budget.”

His lips formed a nearly
imperceptible smile. “Not to dis your powers of observation or anything, but
there’s no way you’ve dealt with someone like Lisa Marie Prescott before. Let
me hit the high points:  You think Lisa Marie’s marrying Brad for his
money? That’s a laugh. If anything, it’s the other way around. You ever hear of
Refuse Removal, Inc.? Well, RRI’s the biggest garbage hauler in the country.
They’ve got subsidiaries world-wide: Canada, Europe, Australia, you name it.
The company’s worth billions—that’s with a ‘b’.”

“RRI? I think that’s the name on
the garbage trucks here on Maui.”

“Bingo. RRI is a single
proprietorship, solely owned by Lisa Marie’s dad, Marv. The company was started
by her great-grandfather in the nineteen twenties. Their last name used to be
Prescovski—it was Russian or Polish, I’m not sure—but Marv changed it to
Prescott when Lisa Marie was born. She’s his only child and there’s nothing he
won’t do for her—including giving her an American-sounding name. You following
me?”

I nodded.

He went on. “The Prescotts don’t
give a rat’s ass about money. To them, it’s like the air we breathe—infinite.
All that matters to them is power and respect.” He paused as if he thought I
might need a moment to let that sink in.

“I practice martial arts,” I said.
“I’m well-versed in the respect thing.”

“Good. ‘Cuz if you cross
them—especially if you piss off Marv—you’re toast. Literally. Rumor has it
there’s more than just garbage in Marv’s landfills.” He folded his arms across
his chest and leaned back in his chair.

“You think that’s what happened to
Brad? He got out of line?” It was my turn to let a few beats go by so something
could sink in.

He shrugged. “Dunno. But it’s damn
hard not to wonder.”

“Great. Now I’ll be sweating
bullets about getting whacked by the Godfather of Garbage if I mess up Lisa
Marie’s wedding. You’ve got to admit what you’re telling me sounds like a pitch
for a really bad reality show.” I couldn’t keep the chuckle out of my voice.

“Look,” he said leaning in, “this
is serious. These aren’t people you want to screw with. I had to see you this
morning because I want to propose something: you watch my back, I’ll watch
yours. You hear anything, see anything, you let me know. I’ll do the same for
you. Deal?”

 “It doesn’t sound like I have
much choice.”

“You don’t.”

He got up to leave. As the door
clicked shut, I was left alone with two cups of cold coffee, a half-eaten
turnover, and the uneasy feeling maybe it was time to start locking my
doors. 

***

I picked up Lisa Marie at exactly
eleven and we made it from Olu’olu to the Kahului Airport in thirty minutes.
 

“Where are you going?” said Lisa
Marie as I moved into the lane for the parking lot.

“I’m parking the car. This is as
close as we can get to the terminal.”

“Maybe this is as close as you can
get to the
public
terminal, but daddy’s jet doesn’t come in here. It
lands over there.” She pointed to a sign marked ‘General Aviation.’ The road
led to the other side of the runway, toward a small outcropping of buildings.

I’ve spent hundreds of hours at the
Kahului airport but I’d never been out there. The general aviation area—where
private aircraft land—isn’t monitored by Homeland Security. Unlike commercial
flyers, general aviation passengers are exempt from the cattle chute security
offered by the TSA. No ‘grabbing the junk’ or barefoot parades through the
metal detectors for the well-heeled. And, at least while I was still pulling a
paycheck from Uncle Sam, air marshals were never assigned to private aircraft
flights.

As I pulled up to the chain-link
fenced parking lot a uniformed guard scowled at my beat-up car. I rolled down
my window while Lisa Marie dug out her ID. When she passed it to him, he looked
at it and broke into a sunny smile.

 “
Aloha, wahines
. You
can take any open spot.”

 We parked and I popped the
trunk. I carefully lifted out ten purple orchid leis from a flat white box and
draped them over my arm. We got to the edge of the tarmac just in time to watch
a sleek white Learjet make an almost soundless landing. It glided past us and
taxied to a stop.

“That’s daddy,” said Lisa Marie.

I squared my shoulders and started
walking out toward the plane. Lisa Marie grabbed my arm. “You can’t go out
there until they signal us.”

The engines whined to a stop and a
ground crew guy waved a red baton at us. We hustled across the runway, dodging
the puddles from an earlier shower. A half minute later the jet’s cabin door
popped open and a built-in stairway slowly lowered to the ground.

When the stairway locked into place
I positioned myself behind Lisa Marie, ready to hand her a lei for each
passenger. Earlier, I’d demonstrated the proper
aloha
greeting—place the
flowers over the head, offer a warm
aloha to Maui
, and then plant a
little kiss on each cheek. An older guy I assumed was her father was first down
the stairway. Lisa Marie stiffly went through the
aloha
routine with
him, but then abruptly turned away and stared across the runway as if she was
planning to bolt. I asked her if she was all right but she ignored me and just
kept staring. I stepped up and took over. As I kissed the cheeks of the
glittery blond stepmother it was hard not to notice she looked decades younger
than her husband. Plastic surgeons don’t come that good. She and the three
bridesmaids waiting at the top of the stairs probably graduated from high
school within just a few years of each other.

“Can I get a couple more?” Stepmom
said, snatching four leis from my outstretched arm. “My personal assistant
certainly doesn’t need one, and those girls up there are just some eye candy
Marv hired to play bridesmaids.” She winked and leaned in. “I found out coming
over here that not a one of them has ever even met Lisa Marie.”

Once everyone had deplaned, the
small entourage began the short trek to the passenger lounge. I hung back to
walk with Lisa Marie.

“Will your real mother be coming?”
I whispered as we approached the tiny building. With a pushy stepmother in
attendance, I’d need to get creative with the seating chart if both “moms”
showed up. It’d be a clear of dereliction of duty to seat the ex-wife
mother-of-the-bride within spitting distance of the half-her-age trophy wife.

“Ha! As if I ever had a
real
mother,” Lisa Marie said. “No, I doubt my bio mom will be willing to tear
herself away from her latest ‘Sven’ or ‘Julio’ to make the trip. She brags
about putting the ‘grrr’ in ‘cougar.’ Besides, if her twenty-three-year-old
daughter’s getting married, how can she explain the age on her driver’s
license? It says she’s thirty-four.” 

Entering the hushed passenger
lounge was surreal—as if the rigors of air travel had been given an extreme
makeover. The place was a quiet oasis of leather furnishings and cool slate
floors. It even had a fun tiki bar with rattan stools. A uniformed hostess,
carrying a tray of tall tropical drinks, encouraged the six passengers to enjoy
complimentary refreshments while the crew dealt with the baggage.

“And who is this delightful young
lady?” boomed Marv Prescott as Lisa Marie and I both declined a
highly-garnished mai tai. I stepped up to introduce myself, extending my hand
for a shake. He grasped my fingertips and brought them to his lips. His breath
smelled of scotch and peanuts. His sparse hair sported an expert dye job but
his puffy face, crepe-skinned neck and watery blue eyes gave away his age. I
pegged him for late sixties or early seventies.

“Daddy, lay off,” said Lisa Marie
in a deadpan voice.

Stepmom was giggling as if her
husband’s courtly antics were beyond cute—they’d veered into adorable
territory. She chucked him under the chin, and with a wink, silently promised
to show him her own version of adorable as soon as they were alone.

“I’m Pali Moon. I’m coordinating
Lisa Marie and…” I balked at providing a groom’s name. “…uh, I’m coordinating
your daughter’s wedding. You must be Mr. and Mrs. Prescott.”

“Call me Marv. And this here’s
Tina.” He gestured toward stepmom who dipped a slight curtsy, accompanied by
another giggle. I wondered if the giggling was habitual or simply the result of
a long alcohol-fueled flight over the Pacific.  

“This whole thing with Brad really
screws the pooch, doesn’t it?” said Marv.

He didn’t look like he expected an
answer, so I didn’t give one.

 “You think he’s a goner?” he
continued.

Lisa Marie was clearly within
earshot.

“I only know what you know, sir,” I
said. “The Coast Guard believes he may have fallen out of the boat.”

“Hey, no ‘sir’ stuff with me. So,
if he went in the drink he’s most likely in the belly of a whale, right? You
know, like Jonah.” He grinned as if expecting me to high five him for his
clever biblical reference.

For a moment, I considered pointing
out that whales found in Hawaiian waters are herbivores and wouldn’t be the least
bit interested in human flesh, but decided against it. I stole a look at Lisa
Marie to see if she’d overheard. Her stricken face signaled she had.