O'ahu Lonesome Tonight? (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series #5) (24 page)

“What do you
need from me?” I said.

“I need you to
give me a heads-up when your sister-in-law goes to the police. I’d like to be
there. I’ll take a
photog
with me to get a shot of
the grief-stricken widow attempting to seek justice for the husband that all of
Honolulu turned out for yesterday. Your brother’s memorial service was page
one, above the fold. The timing on this couldn’t be better.”

Of course Wendi
was only doing her job, but her glee struck me as more than a bit callous. I
must’ve made a face because she jumped right in and continued. “You must think
I’m awful, chortling over your brother’s death. I’m sorry. It’s just that my
editor’s slapped my hand one too many times when I’ve tried to expose the kind
of crap the city gets away with. Well, this time, the crap’s on
them
.”

“Literally,” I
said.

She smiled.
“Yeah.
Sorry if I seem inappropriately delighted with the
situation, but I’ll be forever in your debt.”

“Actually, in my brother’s debt.
He was the sacrificial
lamb.”

I took a sip of
coffee and pondered the unfairness of it all.

***

Ten minutes
later I was threading my way through the one-way streets of Queen
Kapiolani
Park on my way to Natalie’s house in
Kahala
.

I rehearsed the
speech I was going to give her. I probably should’ve stayed back at Starbucks
and sketched out a few notes so I wouldn’t forget something important, but I
was riding a wave of elation at finally fitting the last piece in the puzzle.
In that regard, I had no right to chastise Wendi for her delight in how things
had turned out. 

When I got to
the house there was a car in the driveway blocking my entrance to the portico
so I parked on the street.

I was still
rehearsing my speech as I rapped on the door. Natalie’s sister, Yvonne,
answered the door and stared at me like a guilty child.
Like
I was going to rat her out or something.

“Excuse me,
miss,” I said. “Is Natalie Wilkerson at home?” I used my best
never saw you
before
voice.

She bobbed her
head in a short bow and stepped back to allow me to come in.

“Natalie,” I
cried out. “It’s me,
Pali
.”

There was a
shallow rattan basket in the foyer where Natalie had shucked off her shoes and
sandals as she’d come indoors over the past few days. There must’ve been a
half-dozen pairs in there, along with a pair of sunglasses.

I noticed it
because I wondered why Yvonne hadn’t returned Natalie’s shoes to her
closet. 

I bent down to
take off my own
slippas
and toss them in the
basket. I took off the first one and then I saw something that made my
rehearsed speech die in my throat.

CHAPTER 33

When Natalie came
into the foyer I stepped forward and put my hand lightly on her shoulder. She
shrugged a bit as if to try to shake me off so I clamped down harder.

“First off, I
haven’t had a chance to tell you one-on-one how sorry I am for your loss,” I
said.

She glared at
me as if assessing my sincerity. “I’m fine. Actually, it’s probably for the
best. Stuart would’ve been mortified if he’d awakened and found his leg
missing. This way, at least he got spared that.”

I pointed at
the blue Mercedes cap in the rattan basket. “Isn’t that Stu’s hat?” I didn’t
wait for her to answer before I reached down and picked it up.

“I guess. We
each got one when we bought our cars. But I never wear mine. I don’t even know
where it is.”

“Do you know a
guy by the name of Robert
Torstrick
?”

“Isn’t he the
guy on the car commercials?”

“Was he
involved with Stuart in any business dealings? Beyond Stu buying a car from
him, I mean.”

She narrowed
her eyes. “What is this, twenty questions? What gives you the right to come to my
home the day after I put my husband in the ground and badger me like this?”

“Look, Natalie.
I’m not badgering you. I just got some information that may help us get to the
bottom of what happened to Stuart.”

“Oh.”

“There’s a
witness who saw a guy in a hat like this near the canal when Stu got pushed
in.”

“Pushed in?”
she said.  “I thought the police said he fell in.”

“Yeah, well I
don’t think he did. I think somebody knocked him in the water.”

“But what does
it matter?” she said. Her eyes flared in what could have been mistaken for
anger but I was pretty sure was her way of expressing grief. She’d held up at
the memorial service like a trooper. No tears, merely a stoic dignity that paid
homage to her upbringing.

“I’m still a
widow, aren’t I? I’m still pregnant with a dead man’s baby.” She covered her
face with her hands in the first display of emotion I’d seen since that first
day in the hospital.

“I know. I’m
sorry. I’m not trying to upset you. But I promised myself that before I left
Honolulu I’d find out how Stuart ended up in that canal. Now I’m pretty sure I
know.”

“What
difference does it make?” she said. Her words came out flat, staccato—like
pennies being flipped into a pile of rocks. “Stuart’s dead. And he didn’t
drown. So, even if he got pushed, which the police say he didn’t, so what? He
died from the crap in the water. Everybody knows that.”

“True. But I’m
still going to the police. This is a chicken and egg situation, Natalie.”

“Huh?”

“If Stuart
hadn’t been pushed in the canal, he wouldn’t have come in contact with the
sewage. There are almost a million people in Honolulu and nobody else has died
from the sewage in the canal except Stuart. Don’t you see? The guy who injured
him and then shoved him in the water is responsible for his death, not the
city.”

“But the city
polluted the water! The city has to take responsibility for killing my
husband.”

I figured
Natalie had probably already gotten a dozen calls from ambulance-chasing
lawyers itching to take her case. Nothing I could say would change that.

“I realize this
isn’t a good time to talk about this. But would you agree to at least go with
me to the police station? It won’t affect your case against the city. In fact
it might help.” 

“If I agree to
go with you to the police will you go back to Maui and let me grieve in peace?”
she said.

“Absolutely.”

“Okay, then.
Let’s go.”

I drove her
down to the HPD precinct on
Kalakaua
Avenue. When we
got inside, I did the talking.

“We’re here to
speak to someone about the death of Stuart Wilkerson. He died this week after
he contracted—”

“Oh yes, I’m
aware of Mr. Wilkerson’s death,” said the desk clerk. She was attractive and
smiley. As if the HPD wanted to show Waikiki tourists that even the Honolulu
police oozed
aloha
. “Please have a seat. I’ll call a detective to come
out to speak with you.”

 We sat
down and within a minute a grizzled guy in a rumpled aloha shirt and high-water
beige slacks came out to greet us. Where were the guys from
Hawaii Five-O
?
I was hoping for Dan-O or
McGarrett
; instead we got
the old guy from Law & Order.

When the
introductions were over, Detective Webber took us into an interview room. I
smiled to myself as we walked down the hall to the windowless mirrored room.
How many interview rooms had I been in during the last year?
Four?
Maybe five?
I was probably the only wedding planner on
the planet who spent more time in police interview rooms than wedding gown
salons.

I brought both
Webber and Natalie up-to-date on what I’d found out. When I was finished making
my statement, I asked if I could be excused to make a phone call.

Natalie looked
pained when I got up to leave.

“Can I go too?”
she said.

“Just a few
questions, Mrs. Wilkerson,” said the detective. “I’ll have you out of here in a
jiffy.”

I went outside to
make my call. I’d been in enough police stations to know it was considered bad
form to use a cell phone inside the building.

I called Jason.
It was almost three o’clock so hopefully he was up and getting ready for work.

He answered and
I said, “Jason, guess what? I’m pretty sure I know what happened to Stu.”

“What?”

“I talked to a
homeless guy who saw everything. He remembered seeing someone in a Mercedes hat
talking to Stu over by the canal and then he heard the splash.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah.
So it looks like I was right. Stu got pushed in. He
didn’t fall. The cops are talking to Natalie right now.”

“Cops?
Where are you?”

“We’re at the
police station in Waikiki.
The one on
Kalakaua
by the Hyatt Regency.”

“Don’t leave.
I’ll be right down.”

***

Jason arrived
ten minutes later. He skidded to a stop in the lobby. I was still cooling my
heels waiting for the detective to finish up with Natalie. It had been almost
an hour. I couldn’t imagine that Natalie had that much to say, but I knew that
for some reason the police tend to ask the same questions over and over so I
knew how these things went.

“Where is she?”
he said. He glanced around the room sort of wild-eyed.
Like
he’d dashed in there to get away from a relentless timeshare salesman in hot
pursuit.

“She’s still in
the interview room. It shouldn’t be long now.”

“Look, I
gotta
talk to somebody,” he said.

“Here?”

“Yeah.
Ask if they’ll let me talk to someone.”

What was I, his
mother? “Ask them yourself, Jason. I’m sure the gal at the desk there would
love to hook you up.”

He strode over
to the desk clerk and waved his arms around as he talked. I couldn’t hear what
he was saying, but after a minute,
the
aloha
desk clerk nodded. She pointed to where I was sitting.

“What’s going
on?” I said when he plopped down beside me. Jason was one of those guys who
looks
even hotter when he’s riled up; and at close range he
even smelled yummy.

“Natalie’s in
there filling them full of lies,” he said.

I thought I’d
misunderstood.

“What? No,
she’s clueless. She’s only here because I forced her. I found out about the guy
in the baseball cap. You know, the one you said had a run-in with Stu that
night at the yacht club? A homeless guy saw them out near the canal, and then
the next thing you know, Stu was treading water.”

“Wow. You don’t
seriously believe that, do you?”

That’s one of
those questions you ignore or you’ll find yourself in an argument.

“Look,” he
said. “Did your homeless guy tell you he called 9-1-1?”

“No. He said he
didn’t have a phone. I still don’t know who called.”

“Well, guess
what? It’s
gonna
take the cops about two seconds to
find out who did.”

“So…?”

“So it was me,
okay? It was me. And now Nat’s telling them God knows what to pin this whole
thing on me.”

“You ever watch
late night TV?” I said. “You
know,
old shows like ‘I
Love Lucy’?”

He shook his
head. He seemed peeved that I’d changed the subject.

I said,
“Because, Lucy, you got some ‘
splainin
’ to do.”

CHAPTER 34

Jason was
ushered back to an interview room before Natalie had come out of hers. I waited
for a few minutes and then I went back outside to make another phone call.

Wendi Takeda
picked up after the first ring. “What’ve you got for me?”

“You’re not
going to believe this.” I filled her in on the sketchy information I’d gotten
in the past couple of hours. It sounded ridiculous, even to me, but she managed
to cobble together a tentative scenario.

“Okay, so maybe
the guy in the bar was a set-up. Maybe Jason pushed your brother in and then
had second thoughts and called for help. He knew your brother couldn’t swim.”

“Yeah,” I said.
“But our guy Norman said the guy he saw by the canal was skinny. He said it
could’ve even been a teenager. Jason’s got the body of a beefed-up personal
trainer. No way
he’d
be mistaken for a kid.”

As soon as it
was out of my mouth, the other shoe dropped. “Natalie,” I said.

“Yep,” said
Wendi. “Looks like it.”

I waited for
almost two hours for Natalie to be released. I figured if she was responsible
for killing my brother, the least I could do was stick around so I could spit
in her face.

Natalie came
out to the lobby smiling like she’d just had her nails done and was very
pleased with the results.

I stood and
waited for her to say something.

“Well, that
turned into a nightmare,” she said. “Thanks for nothing.”

“Do you want to
tell me what happened?” I left the question ambiguous. I’d have been happy to
hear about what she’d said to the cops as well as anything she wanted to share
about the night Stuart went into the canal.

“I feel sorry
for Jason,” she said. “He was just protecting me. The last thing I wanted to do
was snitch on him, but what could I do? He must realize he really let Stuart
down that night.”

On the drive
back to Natalie’s house, she told me what she’d told the police. She said Jason
had called her that night. He told her Stuart had been drinking a lot and he’d
gotten into a shoving match with the guy who owned the Mercedes dealership.
Jason demanded that Natalie come down right then and there and drive Stuart
home.