Bet Your Bones (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

Did Claude Ann think the Hawaii police wouldn’t communicate with the Honolulu police and find out about the missing gun? Jon was back at the door before Dinah had conjured up anything close to a rational reason for her lie. “Dad and Claude Ann have gone to the lodge for dinner. Will you come?”

“What about Lyssa?”

“After she talked to Raif’s mother, she took a sleeping pill. She’d rather be unconscious.”

“What about Phoebe and Marywave?”

“Phoebe volunteered to stay with Marywave. They’ve ordered in a pizza. I haven’t eaten all day and I’m starved. How about you?”

Dinah wasn’t hungry, but she didn’t want to be alone and she was in a swivet to speak to Claude Ann about the gun. She grabbed her purse and followed him to the car.

“What do you think Raif was doing out on that lava field, Jon?”

“He may have gone to meet someone on the sly.”

“A woman, you mean?”

“Lyssa would never believe it but, as you’ve guessed, Raif played around.”

“But he would’ve met a lover at the No-Tell Motel, not in the middle of a lava field.”

“Maybe she wasn’t a tourist. Hawaii, or at least this corner of it, is like a small town. Everybody knows everybody. Maybe they planned to make love in the back seat of the car.”

“The ‘Vette he rented didn’t have a back seat.”

“I don’t know, Dinah. It was probably connected to his gambling. Like Langford said, maybe somebody owed him and chose not to pay.”

Dinah wished. But how likely was it that another somebody in this corner of the island had a grandfather who willed him an Italian gun? “Who died in California back in eight-nine?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There was an article about a death at an earth sciences conference behind a picture of your mom and dad.”

“I’d forgotten I had it. It was Steve’s dad.”

“Louis Sykes?”

“That’s right. He got tanked and drowned in the hotel swimming pool.”

“Why would someone take it?”

“Why would you take the picture apart to snoop?” He let out a prodigious sigh. “Sorry, but I’ve got more pressing things to think about than a death that happened over twenty years ago.”

“Right.”

He drove to the front door of a rustic lodge lit up like Christmas. The parking lot overflowed with traffic and the raucous sound of Bavarian polka music spilled out into the night. Dinah flashed him a quizzical look. “This is where you come after a death in the family?”

“The Kilauea’s a busy place, but the back room’s reserved for us. Go on in and I’ll try to find a place to park.”

She had a yeasty feeling in the pit of her stomach, a feeling that several members of the wedding were lying their heads off. Claude Ann’s lie about the gun was the most bothersome. She had no conceivable motive to murder Raif, but the world was too full of nuts for cops to be finicky about motive. If Claude Ann’s Beretta was the murder weapon, if her fingerprints were found on it, if Hank didn’t come forward and confess to having stolen it—well, the fallout didn’t bear thinking on. Xander’s reaction to the murder had seemed labored and unnatural, and to say that Lyssa had looked at him askance was putting it mildly. Jon’s alibi, not to mention his scientific detachment and his defensive attitude, hadn’t gone over with Detective Langford. It pained Dinah to acknowledge any similarity between herself and a sourpuss like Langford, but his barefaced disbelief mirrored her own exactly.

She climbed the steps and entered the noisy dining room. On one side of the room was a cheerful fire blazing in a big stone fireplace. A roisterous group milled around the sofa and coffee table in front of the fire, toasting each other with ornate beer steins. Some wore green paper Bavarian hats with feather flourishes. Others wore pointy alpine hats with colorful braid bands. The men wore lederhosen and suspenders. The women wore dirndls. An accordion player in full Tyrolian garb strolled among the tables. The rest of the band—a trombone, a tuba, a trumpet, and a zither—occupied a makeshift stage in the far corner and played as if to raise the roof. A couple polkaed somewhat drunkenly in front of the stage.

Dinah cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted at a harried looking waitress carrying a tray full of drinks. “Where is the Xander Garst party?”

“You’ll have to ask the hostess. It’s Volksfest night.” She balanced her heavily loaded tray against her mid-section and plunged off into the hurly-burly.

Dinah stood at the vacant hostess station and scoped out the crowd. At the rear of the room, she spotted Avery Wilhite in a neon-blue shirt with electric yellow lines squiggling across it like sea snakes. At least, he wore long pants. He waved to her and she threaded her way between the tables until she reached him.

“Hell of a thing,” he said, taking her hand and patting it as if she were the bereaved. “Shocking. Unbelievable. Guns everywhere. Jon with you?”

“He’ll be in as soon as he finds a parking space.”

“Most of the guests have been sent home, but Steve and I stayed. What are friends for? Go on in. Go, go.” He pointed at a door with a Private sign. “Jon and I will round up a waiter.”

She opened the door and went inside. The first thing she noticed when she closed the door was the tomb-like quiet. The second thing was the odor of stale grease and cigar smoke. The room was windowless and mirrorless and the walls had been padded with a quilted, maroon fabric that muffled sound and collected odors. The murky lighting brought to mind stories of the yellow fogs of Victorian London. On the side of the room opposite the door, Claude Ann and Xander sat on a maroon velveteen banquette gabbing with a very large man who made sweeping gestures with a fat cigar.

In the center of the room was a rectangular table. At the far end, Steve Sykes sat with three men she’d never seen before. Steve looked up and showed her a smile and she realized how long it had been since she’d seen one. It was magnetic. She had to hold herself back from running toward him.

He stood up. “We keep meeting in the scariest circumstances. How’s Lyssa?”

“I don’t know what she must feel. I hope I never do.”

He introduced her to the other men at the table. They were all Xander’s co-workers from the U.S.G.S. They asked her to pass on their condolences to Lyssa, but they seemed ill at ease. Obviously, murder wasn’t the attraction that had brought them to the lodge this evening and it had put the quietus on their revelry. They must have felt obliged to stay on a decent length of time to show solidarity with their colleague.

Steve walked her away from the table. “Those are the oldtimers who’ve worked with Xander for years. They were at Lyssa’s wedding, although I doubt they knew Raif except in connection with her. They’re friends of Avery’s, too, going back to the time he worked for the Survey.”

“Avery’s a volcanologist, too?”

“He was some variety of geologist before he began dabbling in real estate and started his own acquisition business. He knows the older U.S.G.S. crowd anyhow.”

“Who’s that talking with Xander and Claude Ann?”

“Paul Jarvis. Uwahi closes day after tomorrow and Paul was invited to the party and the wedding. Xander and Avery called off the party and notified most of the guests not to show, but they wanted Paul here to reassure him that what happened to Raif was unrelated to business and all systems are still go with Uwahi.”

The door opened and Avery and Jon walked in to the rollicking strains of Beer Barrel Polka. When the door closed, it was quiet again.

“The bar’s back in the main dining room,” said Steve. “Would you like something before dinner?”

“I had a hit of Jon’s Scotch earlier. I’ll coast.” The word reminded her of Raif, who said that coasting was for losers. “Maybe a glass of red wine. You choose.”

Steve left and she sat down with the oldtimers and listened as they talked shop. One of them talked about doing a flyover of Mauna Loa with thermal imaging cameras. Another expounded on a paper he’d submitted for publication, something about convection and vertical pipes of molten material venting where the earth’s crust was thinnest. He nattered on, seemingly forgetful of the fact that Raif had been fallen through said thin crust mere hours ago.

Jon and Avery pulled up a couple of chairs and joined the group. There was another round of condolences.

Avery tut-tutted about the proliferation of illegal gambling in the state and the fast and loose tendencies of young people these days. “All want instant gratification, caution to the wind, no appreciation of the consequences. Poor boy probably done in by a sore loser. Too few sensible ones like Steve and Jon. And Dinah, of course. Not enough self-discipline.”

Jarvis’ cigar smoke was gassing the room and causing Dinah’s eyes to burn. Xander and Claude Ann appeared unfazed by the smoke or by grief. Raif was a rotter and Lyssa might be the only one who would truly mourn his passing, but surely the murder of one’s daughter’s husband, however unlovable, should be cause for more consternation.

She had to separate Claude Ann from Xander and pin her down for a serious powwow. Excusing herself from the table, she forged across the room to the banquette. Xander was in the middle of a spiel about property taxes. He and Jarvis stood and Xander introduced her to Jarvis.

“Pleasure,” said Jarvis, pumping her hand.

“Likewise. Sorry to interrupt, but I need to speak with you, Claude Ann. In private.”

Claude Ann smiled at Jarvis. “I’ll be back in a jiffy, y’all. Dinah, throw your purse down there next to mine. I think we can trust Paul and Xan to guard our valuables.” She took Dinah’s arm and walked her toward a pair of tub chairs in the far corner of the room. “What’s up?”

“The gun that killed Raif was a Beretta. An old one.”

“Mine?”

“It would be a remarkable coincidence if it weren’t.”

“But that means that Hank is here, on this island, and he really did kill Raif.”

“Not necessarily. You noticed the gun was missing in the late afternoon. You must have gone into your closet after that to dress for the party. It had to have been taken sometime before Hank rigged his bucket of blood. Where did you keep it and when did you last see it?”

“Sheesh, I don’t know. I kept it under the cosmetic tray in my train case. Yesterday I just got fed up with Eleanor harassin’ us. I thought if she came back, I’d show her the gun and scare her off, only it was gone.”

A tall, thirtyish woman with a good figure came into the room carrying a drink. The piercing sounds of the zither accompanied her and died when the door flew shut.

“That’s Frieda Jarvis,” said Claude Ann. “I have to go and be gracious. I’ll talk to you later.” She rushed off, leaving Dinah none the wiser.

Dinah sat down in one of the tub chairs to wait for Steve. As she did, Avery left the table of oldtimers and joined her.

“Kay, I said, what’s the world coming to? First an assault and battery and now Raif dead. Terrible. Jon says the police haven’t caught Kemper yet. Let’s hope they get Raif’s killer fast.”

Dinah said, “The police think there may be a connection between Raif’s murder and the murder of that archaeologist, Patrick Varian, who was found murdered in a steam vent. I wonder if Eleanor Kalolo could have hired him to authenticate her claim that the bones of one of her ancestors are buried on the Uwahi property.”

“Eleanor? Great Scott, hadn’t thought of it.” His eyes blinked rapidly, like the shutter of a camera shooting multiple frames per second. But whether it was her question that perturbed him or he was having one of his normal hyperkinetic fidgets, she couldn’t tell. “Expensive proposition, hiring an archaeologist. Can’t see it would do her much good. Most of ’em talk gibberish. Layers and mounds and articulations.”

Steve came through the door along with a blast of frenzied accordion music and a drunken chorus singing, “Someone stole the keeshka, someone call the cop.” An older man in a business suit followed him in.

“Great Scott, it’s Norris Frye. Running for Senate. Must introduce him to Jarvis.” Avery practically vaulted out of his seat and rushed off to greet the newcomer.

Steve returned and handed her half a glass of wine on a soggy pink napkin. “Sorry it took so long. It’s wild out there.”

“So I see.”

He sat down and quaffed the foam off his beer. “They’re almost out of Garst on draft.”

“I understand that Xander owns stock in the brewery.”

“I don’t know now. He’s sold off a lot of his investments to finance Uwahi.”

“He’s comfortably well-off, rich by most standards. Why has he staked everything he owns on this one deal?”

“He owns some choice real estate, but land values went south just as he was approaching retirement. His Garst stock was in the toilet and I’m sure his U.S.G.S. pension wouldn’t begin to keep him in the style he’s grown used to. He probably felt vulnerable and then this golden opportunity came along. He didn’t plan on staking everything, but putting all the pieces together turned out to be more costly than he’d anticipated and the deeper he got in, the harder it became to cut his losses and get out.”

With his fortune and Claude Ann’s on the line, Dinah could see how Uwahi was all-important to Xander. But why did Steve sound so serene? Did he have nothing at stake? “I know that you and Jon are longtime friends, but how did you and Xander become business partners?”

“My father, Louis, was a U.S.G.S. scientist. He and Avery and Xan were at the U together back in the seventies and our families were all close. After I finished law school in California, I came back to Hawaii to take care of my mom. At the time, Xander was trying to arrange a land swap so he could acquire Uwahi and he hired me to do the legal stuff. I was brilliant, of course, so when Avery came into the deal, Xan recommended me as legal counsel. Avery one-upped him and made me a partner in the company.”

“Did you have to put up money for Uwahi?”

“No. Avery and Xander have been very generous to me. I’ll get a token share of the sale price when the deal closes, but mostly I bill by the hour. I have other clients. My office is down in Pahoa and I live upstairs. Pahoa is a great little town. It’s in kind of a time warp, lots of hippies and New Agers and eccentrics and the air redolent of pakalolo.”