CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Shanelle leaps to her feet so fast you’d think her thong caught on fire. “Are you telling me that Tiffany Amber’s husband stayed here with a
dude
? Sleeping in the same dang room?”
Luisa looks taken aback. She glances nervously at Deirdre.
I intercede before Luisa clams up. “Are you sure, Luisa? This man could be involved in something big so it’s really important.”
Luisa keeps her gaze trained on her employer. “I am sure, Missus. Not so often we have two men together. You don’t remember?”
Deirdre squints again at the photo. “He looks vaguely familiar, I suppose …”
“Do you remember when it was?” I ask Luisa.
“Christmastime,” she says immediately. “A little after. We still had the tree up. And the lights outside.”
“New Year’s,” Shanelle mutters, as though the timing makes the stay especially naughty.
“And the man this man was with”—I cock my chin at the printout—“what did you say about him?”
“He had blond hair,” Luisa says. “Not natural. Colored. And very …” She runs out of words but raises her hands as if to indicate a bouffant style.
Shanelle and I stare at one another. My heart starts to thump. I can think of one man Tony Postagino knows who fits that description. And I’m sure so can she.
“Deirdre,” I say, “will you look at your accounts for late December and early January and see if you have both these men listed as guests?” I’m having crazy thoughts of going to Momoa with this. And if I do, I’ll need more than Luisa’s say. And more than the photo of Tony Postagino in this B&B’s living room.
But Deirdre is balking. She’s shaking her head and backing away. “No. I’m not comfortable doing that. Live and let live, is my philosophy. I’m not going to give out information about who stays here, and with who.”
“I understand. And believe me, I’m not making any moral judgments here.” Although truthfully I am. Tony Postagino was married at that time, after all. And it wasn’t his wife he stayed with at this B&B. That doesn’t sit right with me. “But this man’s wife was murdered in cold blood. And the fact that this man was here, with another man, only months before …” My words trail off.
Deirdre is obviously shocked by the implication. “You think he had something to do with killing his wife? But that doesn’t make any sense! The police already arrested the killer!”
“I don’t know if this man had anything to do with the murder or not. And they did arrest someone, true. But I think the situation is more complicated than we know.”
Deirdre still doesn’t look convinced.
“Look,” I say. “Somebody tried to kill me today. And you know who else got hurt. And might have died.”
She stares down at the picture of Tony Postagino. “Dirk,” she breathes. She crushes the printout into Luisa’s hand and races out of the room. “I’ll be right back,” she calls over her shoulder.
Seconds later I hear the click of keys on a computer keyboard from somewhere deep inside the B&B. Luisa makes noise of her own by shoving the vacuum cleaner into a hall closet. Elijah has all his G.I. Joes shooting at each other with automatic weapons and moaning in agony as they drop dead. But Shanelle and I are as silent as corpses. My mind is cranking at warp speed. Probably hers is, too.
Deirdre returns with a sheet of paper in her hand. “This is what you want, I think.” She hands it to me. “It’s a copy of the guest record.”
The paper bears the Plumeria Bed and Breakfast letterhead. On it is a detailing of the expenses of a two-night stay ending January 5th. It specifies that the number of guests was two and that they stayed in room B. The amount billed was slightly more than three hundred dollars. And the guest name in the upper left hand corner, the person who paid the bill, is Rex Rexford, complete with his Beverly Hills address.
As soon as I heard Luisa’s description of the blond helmet hair, I knew it had to be Rex. He’s a one and only.
“I don’t know what that’ll be good for,” Deirdre says, “but you can take it with you.”
“I really appreciate it,” I say. “You’ve been tremendously helpful.”
Shanelle and I make ourselves scarce. We’re barely out of the house and onto the walkway when she hisses into my ear. “What the hell do you make of that?”
“Is there any chance Rex and Tony could have stayed at this B&B for a reason other than an affair? Like they were strategizing how Tiffany could win the Ms. America pageant?”
“They could do that in California! And if they did do it here, where was Tiffany?”
“It is very hard to imagine two men would stay in the same room in this B&B, or any other, and not be … you know.”
“It’s impossible!” Shanelle pronounces, and I have to agree.
We get to the street and realize we need a cab. Once I place that call, I look again at Shanelle. “So Tiffany was right when she told Keola that her husband was having an affair. But I doubt she knew it was with Rex.”
“She never would’ve kept working with him.”
“I wonder if the affair was over by the time the pageant started.”
“Who knows? And there’s still the matter of Sebastian Cantwell getting arrested today. How do you explain that?”
I can’t. We mull the various possibilities until the cab arrives and after we’re inside. We’re only about a five-minute drive from the Royal Hibiscus when a flash of memory illuminates my mind. I grab Shanelle’s arm. “Oh … my … God.”
“What?”
“I remember who I bumped into today, literally, when I went to the casual café to tell Trixie about the photo of Tony Postagino.”
“Who?”
“Rex Rexford.”
“
What
?”
“Yes! Right at the entry. I crashed into him, no kidding, because I wasn’t watching where I was going because I was so anxious to talk to Trixie.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“Yes. He said …” I try to remember. “He said something like what’s your hurry? I don’t remember exactly.”
Shanelle scrunches her face. “I wonder if he eavesdropped on your conversation with Trixie. Because he could see you were agitated. And he probably knew you were investigating. Could he have overheard you?”
“Yes.” I feel like an idiot. “Because I didn’t really try to keep quiet. And neither did Trixie.”
“Maybe he’s the one who poisoned your drink,” Shanelle says.
That had occurred to me.
When the cab halts at the Royal Hibiscus, Shanelle gets out but I stay put. She frowns at me through my open window. “What are you up to now, may I ask?”
“I have another stop to make.”
“Should I be worried about that?”
“No. But answer your cell if it rings. You may be my one phone call.” I realize as the cab screeches away that that probably wasn’t the thing to say to keep Shanelle from worrying.
We have to wend a circuitous route through Waikiki as some beachfront blocks are being closed off for the night’s weekly street fair. I soon discover that the Honolulu Police Department is in a neighborhood with which I’m somewhat familiar. It’s close to the hospital I visited twice today, once as a patient and once as a cardiac-arrest inducer. Actually, I realize, remembering the old man whose ER area I invaded on my hands and knees, I sort of did that on my second stop-by, too.
It’s getting on toward twilight as I enter the reception area. The fluorescent lights are so bright the cops could perform surgery. There’s a big sign on the wall that says: SERVING AND PROTECTING WITH ALOHA. There’s also a small sign that says: SAFETY IS NO ACCIDENT. PLEASE DRIVE WITH ALOHA.
Maybe that’s my problem. I’m not doing enough things with aloha.
I find out from the cop manning the front desk that indeed Detective Momoa is in. And yes, he will see me. I pace, because I’m too amped up to sit while I wait.
Finally, Momoa emerges from the sanctum sanctorum. “Ms. Pennington,” he says.
“Detective Momoa. You look surprised to see me.”
“I am. I heard from the hospital earlier that you disappeared before you were released.”
I just bet that’s how he found out I was no longer in the ER. “I felt fine and I’ve never been one for a lot of rules about where I can and can’t go,” I tell him, though he might already have figured that out about me.
“Then what brings you to my little neck of the woods this evening?”
“Information that might crack the Tiffany Amber murder case wide open.”