“I’m not leaving you,” Nomo insisted, his voice charged with emotion.
Something clicked in Greg’s mind. Years ago as a troubled teenager, he’d come to the institute. Nomo had shown a special interest in him, nurturing his love of animals, encouraging him to go to the mainland and get a first-class education as a marine biologist.
All these years he’d thought of Nomo as his mentor, sure, but nothing more. Now the truth hit Greg: Nomo was a surrogate father. Greg had flourished due to his love and support.
But he’d never properly thanked him. Greg put his arm around the older man, a person who loved animals as much as he did, someone who worked harder than anyone to help others. Greg hadn’t a clue what to say. He just kept his arm around Nomo and they stood there watching Dodger try to convince Abbie to take the bottle.
Finally, Abbie took a few pathetic sucks of goat’s milk. Exhausted, Greg left Nomo in the nursery, somewhat hopeful the pup would survive.
He returned to his office and sat there, staring at the
paperwork, thinking about Lucky. Reliving every moment they’d shared. Greg realized he had lost track of time, when a knock startled him. The bright, harsh light of the new day flooded his room with dazzling sunshine, and Cody walked in, his expression serious.
“I went by your house but you weren’t there. I called your home number. It channeled into a 900 number with a phone sex message.”
It took a minute for his brother’s words to register. “Get real!”
“It’s true. I called the phone company. It’s some computer glitch. They’re trying to straighten it out.”
Greg let out a world-weary sigh. “Phone sex, what next?”
“Aikane!”
Buddy! yelled Nomo, rushing into the room, interrupting them. “Look at this!”
Nomo held a paper in his hand.
“
Lucky didn’t sign her name when she accepted delivery of the goat’s milk. She wrote C
-
311
in the signature space. What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know,” Greg said. “People sign their names so often that they automatically do it—without thinking what they’re writing. I always thought that Lucky would say or write her real name, yet she never did. People had all sorts of weird explanations why she never knew her name. But I have no idea why she would use a number.”
“I’ll bet I know,” Cody said, his expression grim.
Greg stared at his brother, unable to imagine what he was talking about.
“She was in prison,” Cody said quietly. “All she had was a number. I’ll bet she was prisoner number 311 in cell block C.”
30
T
he Orchid King checked the corn
er of his computer screen to see how much time had elapsed. Two hours and fourteen minutes. Probably not long enough to cause death, he thought. He rocked back in his chair and studied the ceiling.
“Let’s see what else I can do to make Greg Braxton’s life hell.”
He’d already screwed up his bank account. It would take Braxton years to reestablish his credit rating. His phone calls had been rerouted to the most explicit phone sex enterprise around, which was one of the king’s more novel ideas. At first he’d intended to disconnect his telephone, but phone sex was more fun.
“Now it’s time to actually repossess his car.”
The king was talking out loud to himself, but he didn’t care. There was no one around except the alley cat, and the filthy little beast couldn’t hear him. He accessed the data bank holding the paper on Braxton’s car, electronically altering the information to trigger a repossession order.
The king chuckled. “The repo man cometh.”
This was more fun than he’d expected. Not only was he the Orchid King, but he was also king of the information superhighway. They’d been running a phony credit card scam for years, hacking into bank’s data bases. But this was more exciting. Because it was personal.
“The IRS is next. Let’s say Braxton owes half a million in back taxes.” The king roared, totally pleased with himself. Every hacker knew IRS files were ridiculously easy to break into.
He could shut down an airline if he wanted to. The phone company. An entire city. Terrorists with bombs were chicken shit. He could cause a technological Chernobyl with a modem and a keyboard. Fucking up Braxton’s life was a piece of cake.
Thoroughly pleased with himself, he checked the time again. Two hours and twenty minutes. Was the cat dead yet? It had taken over three hours for the poisonous fumes in the orchid vault to kill the last cat. This time he had put more of the deadly orchids in the chamber to speed up the process.
“Two hours. A man has to die in two hours.”
No one came into the warehouse except for the deliverymen who brought the orchids. Hidden in the bottom of the orchid crates were the counterfeit credit cards from Singapore. He and his partner repackaged them, then shipped them out, not trusting anyone else to do it. The fewer people involved, the less chance there was of being discovered.
Every few hours the deliverymen came for a pickup or left containers. The Orchid King had to be able to kill someone with those orchid fumes and pack the body in a crate of orchids in under two hours, or risk someone seeing the dead body.
The king walked into the warehouse and switched on the ventilator in the chamber. Considering the orchids he’d added, the alley cat he’d enticed with a bit of fresh albacore was probably in catnap heaven. True, a cat wasn’t a man, but he couldn’t very well experiment on real people.
There was a dog he’d like to get his hands on, though.
He swung open the steel door to the vault. He’d had the
chamber built like a brick shit house. Once you were in there, you weren’t getting out. The perfect icing, he thought with a chuckle.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” he called when he didn’t see the cat.
It must have gone behind the plants and died. He carefully pulled back several orchids. Nothing. He moved aside another, reminding himself to hurry. Fumes had built up, and he couldn’t chance damaging his lungs.
“Ye-e-ow!” The cat flew out of nowhere, claws bared, snarling.
“What the fuck!” The king jumped back, but not before the cat caught him on the underside of his forearm. Its claw snagged the tender skin, ripping it open. Blood streamed out as he kicked at the fleeing cat. It darted past him and charged out the door.
The Orchid King realized his lungs were starting to bu
rn
and he was feeling light-headed. The ventilation system hadn’t been on long enough to draw out all the deadly fumes. Blood dripping from his arm, he stumbled out the door and slammed it shut behind him.
“It’s going to take more fucking orchids than I anticipated to ice him.”
C
ody found Scott Helmer outside Makawao, watching the
panielos.
The cowboys were roping calves and branding them, the scent of singed hide filling the tropical air.
“Always wanted to be a cowboy,” Helmer remarked. “But I grew up in the city. I don’t even know how to ride.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m meeting a source at the Road Kill Bar and Grill in an hour.”
“I need your help,” Cody said. It took him a few minutes to tell the undercover agent about the situation with Lucky. “Could you find out if she was in prison?”
“With one phone call,” Helmer assured him. “You’re a lot smarter than I thought. I think you solved this puzzle. Lucky
was a prisoner in a smaller state. A three-digit prisoner number means there were less than a thousand inmates in that facility when she was incarcerated. A large state would have a bigger number.”
“She has a four-year-old daughter. So it had to have been over five years ago that she was in prison.”
Helmer shook his head, his skull and crossbones earrin
g sparkling in the sunlight. “
Not necessarily. Remember the serial killer, Ted Bundy? He fathered a child while he was in prison. That’s conjugal visits for you.”
“You checked out Brad Wagner. Was there any record of his wife being in prison?”
“
Nope. The group in Quantico is still checking on him. Let’s see what comes of this lead. She probably did time for some petty crime and never told her husband.”
“That’s exactly what I think, The dude’s a little nerdy, but rich. She didn’t tell him she was an ex-con.”
“I did get some interesting information on Thelma Overholt. The final report came in on the cause of death.” The only people around were the
panielos
doing the branding, b
ut Helmer lowered his voice. “
She was dead at least two days before she was tossed off that hiking trail. We figure she was killed in Singapore. Her body was shipped here because no one would think to look for her in Hawaii.”
“That’s why the airlines didn’t show her traveling and why her passport wasn’t scanned in Singapore,” Cody commented. “But how in hell do you get a dead body halfway across the world?”
Helmer smiled, his cocky punk’s grin. “In one of those long wooden crates that they use to ship orchids. They send them in refrigerated containers. Perfect for a body. There isn’t any smell.”
“That’s how the bugs from the orchids got in the woman’s hair. She wasn’t in southern China, she was in the container hidden under a bunch of orchids.”
“Exactly what we figured.”
“I guess it blows my theory about how Lucky got Thelma’s shoe.”
“Not necessarily,” Helmer said. “They flew the body here, but I doubt they opened it where anyone could see what was inside. They took the container somewhere, and the shoe fell out. Instead of throwing it away, they kept it. A year later, Lucky comes along and puts on the shoe.”
Cody watched the
panielos
brand a runt of a calf. “You should be able to trace the orchids through air freight shipments, right?
”
“We’re working on it. The orchids are the key.”
T
he second morning in her new home, Lucky made the macadamia nut pancakes that Greg liked so much. Brad liked them, though she suspected he preferred the fresh fruit and granola he usually ate. But Julie only picked at them, then attempted to drown her pancakes in syrup.
“Wang’s nose is out of joint,” Brad said. “He was hired to do the cooking because you insisted that you never wanted to cook another meal as long as you lived. Now you’re taking over.”
His tone was gentle, and she smiled at him to let him know she wasn’t upset. He’d been great the past two days, giving her space.
“Yeah,” Julie chimed in. “Wang makes the best peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
Lucky accepted the backhanded reprimand from her very intelligent four-year-old daughter. Yesterday morning, her first day back, Lucky had sent Julie off to preschool with a turkey sandwich. It came back uneaten.
“I like to cook,” Lucky insisted. “Maybe we don’t need Wang.”
Brad put down his fork. “Let’s see how long you stay interested in cooking. A first-rate chef like Wang is hard to find.”
Lucky looked away, a rush of unreasonable anger pushing
against the walls of her chest. The demon—her temper—was rearing its ugly head again. She had a second chance at life; this time she was going to control her temper. Brad had every right to doubt her. She would just have to prove him wrong. “It’s time for you to go, pumpkin,” Brad told Julie.
Lucky stood up, saying, “I’ll walk you to the car, sweetie. Remember, when you come home we’re going to the aquarium.”
At the door, Malia, the maid, handed Julie her Barbie lunch box. It slipped, hitting the marble floor and popping open. The contents of a container of orange juice spilled across the white marble. Julie threw her little hands over her ears, and Malia drew back. Lucky realized they both expected her to get angry.
Lucky dropped to her knees and hugged the child. “It’s okay, Julie. It was an accident. Malia will get you another juice.”
Julie took her hands off her ears. “Yore not mad?”
“No, sweetie, I’m not. Mommy’s sorry if she’s been angry with you in the past. Can you forgive me?”
Julie responded by kissing her cheek. It was a tentative little peck, and Lucky realized her daughter hadn’t kissed her often. She had so much to make up for. Hugging Julie, she kissed her daughter’s cheek.
“Instead of going to the aquarium this afternoon, maybe we could go and pick out a puppy. Wouldn’t you like to have a dog?”
“Could we, Mommy? Could we?”
“Sure,” Lucky agreed, glancing up. Brad had walked into the entry behind Malia, who’d returned with another juice.
“You hate dogs. When you were a child a dog attacked you. Are you sure you want one?”
Julie’s little face crumpled at her father’s question. Lucky quickly hugged her and smiled reassuringly.
“You know, I’m glad I don’t remember that. Children need pets. Maybe we’ll get a cat, too.”
Lucky walked her daughter out to the courtyard, where Raul
was waiting with the limo. Julie tugged on her hand, and Lucky bent down so her daughter could whisper in her ear. She seemed to whisper to her more often than necessary. Lucky decided this was just an excuse to get close to the mother who in the past had been so cold.
“Mommy, could you drive me to school like the other mothers?”
It hadn’t occurred to Lucky that arriving at preschool each day in a stretch limo would set her daughter apart, making her feel awkward. “You bet. It may take a while because I don’t have a car. I’ll ask Daddy to get us one.”
Julie kissed her yet again. “I love you, Mommy.”
“You know I love you. I’l
l be waiting here when you get
home.”
She watched the limo pass through the gates, then turned to see Brad coming out of the house. He would hop in his jet-black Porsche and take off for his office, leaving her alone in this mausoleum of a house.
“Brad, do we need a limo?”
He looked startled. “You really have changed. You’re the one who wanted the limo.”
“I’m thinking about a minivan so I can haul around kids who eat jelly sandwiches.”
“Really? Well, sure.” He hesitated a moment. “You know, you might want Sebastian to look at your hair. There’s a business thing tomorrow night
…
a cocktail party. I want you to come with me.”
She wasn’t really up to meeting people yet. Like an ugly duckling dropped into a pool filled with swans, Lucky had no idea how to act around Brad’s friends, who were undoubtedly wealthy and sophisticated. But she couldn’t disappoint him. He’d been so great about everything.
He hadn’t touched her. Thank God. She wondered if this was strange. Had they stopped sleeping together long ago? Was that why they had separate bedrooms? Lucky wasn’t sure what to think about this, and there was no one she could ask.
Climbing the marble staircase, she thought about Greg. How she missed him. Trying to fit into Brad’s life, a life that seemed so foreign, wasn’t as easy as she’d anticipated.
“You’ve got to try harder,” she whispered to herself. “You promised Julie.”
Upstairs, she surveyed the closet for something to wear. The wardrobe from hell. Everything the woman in the mirror had chosen either had necklines that tickled her navel or was one size too small. And most of the clothes were black or white. She’d determined this yesterday morning when she’d tried to find something to wear.
She checked the address book she’d discovered in the nightstand. Sebastian was not listed, and she hadn’t asked his last name. Thumbing the pages to see if she could find him, Lucky again noticed how few friends she had. Brad had confirmed this yesterday, saying she was close to her hairdresser, her manicurist, and her personal trainer.