Murder at Dolphin Bay (Sand and Sea Hawaiian Mystery Book 1) (10 page)

“A bunch. But it’s worth it.”

Sounded like a scam to me, but I didn’t say so. Trent seemed happy with his hobby and I supposed that was what really mattered.

“Can I see the photo of the lady in the red bikini?”

“Sure. It’s one of my best. My phone is in my backpack, which I left in the tower. I’ll get it.”

“I’ll come with you. Luke is waiting for me there anyway.”

I had to admit Trent had managed to catch the expression of the woman perfectly. She looked both intent and contemplative. If I had to guess I’d say she had something other than sunbathing or surfing on her mind.

It turned out the Elton Luke knew was the same one Patrick Anderson had referred to on the phone. Like Luke’s dad, Elton had been approached early on by Cole and, also like Luke’s dad, he’d turned him down when his research turned up some disturbing facts.

“So what changed his mind?” I wondered.

“I guess CAD Development somehow managed to address all the environmental and zoning issues presented to them and they were awarded permits to break ground this summer. Elton said once he confirmed the permits were legit he decided to jump onto what he was assuring me will end up being a money train. He even encouraged me to invest.”

“Are you going to?”

“No. I have other plans for my money.”

I sighed as I sat back in my chair.

“Is there a problem?” Luke asked.

“Not really. It’s just that pretty much my entire theory regarding who might have killed Cole was based on dirty goings-on with CAD Development. If everything is on the up-and-up I really have no idea what the motive might have been for killing him.”

“The motive might not have had anything to do with the project.”

“I’m beginning to realize that. The thing is, I don’t have any other ideas.”

“What about the girlfriend my dad mentioned?”

I’d forgotten about that. “What was her name again?”

“Dad said Helena. He didn’t have a last name.”

I sat forward in my chair. Maybe Luke was on to something. “If Cole was seeing someone maybe we can ask around and find out who she is. We know he was staying at a motel in Honolulu the first three nights he was on the island and that he wasn’t registered as staying anywhere else until he checked in at Dolphin Bay. Sean said Cole planned to stay with a woman, so I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the woman is this Helena.”

“Makes sense, but how can we use that to track this Helena down?”

“I say ask around. What we need,” I realized, “is the name of the hotel where Cole stayed when he first arrived on the island.”

“Maybe there’s a clue in the photos you took.”

Luke logged onto his computer and we pulled up the file I’d e-mailed myself. At first I didn’t see anything that would point us in a direction, but then I realized the note that had directed us to the bar had a pen laying across the bottom of it with the name of a motel near the airport.

“He might have picked this up on another trip, but I’m betting the Bayside Motor Lodge is where he stayed his first three nights.”

“Isn’t that place kind of a dive?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, it really is. I can’t come up with a single reason why someone who can afford the tower suite at Dolphin Bay would stay there, but it’s worth a road trip to check it out.”

Luke shrugged. “I’m in. Let me grab my truck keys.”

The road south was a beautiful one, but both Luke and I had driven it so many times that we used the time to get to know each other just a little bit better. I told him about my life growing up on the island and he told me about his growing up on a ranch in Texas. I’d never been to Texas and couldn’t imagine a place with so much open space. Living on an island you get used to the compactness of everything. There wasn’t anywhere you could go that would pose much of a commute, but the great state of Texas was so vast you could fit over 400 Oahus in it. The whole thing was mind-boggling.

“Favorite animal growing up?” Luke asked as part of our twenty-questions-to-getting-to-know-someone game.

“I didn’t have any animals as a kid. I wanted one very badly, but Mom insisted that she had six children to feed and clean up after and wasn’t going to spend one minute looking after a dog or cat. Sandy is actually the first pet I’ve ever had.”

“That’s so sad.”

I shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad. How about you? Who was your favorite pet as a kid?”

“My dog Rusty. He was a border collie my dad bought to help with the herding, but he broke his leg when he was young, so Dad let me make him a pet. I really loved that dog. I was devastated when he died. So much so that I promised to name my first child after him.”

“What if you have a girl?”

“I think Rusty works equally well for a boy or a girl.”

I laughed. “You know, I really expected you to say that your favorite animal was a horse.”

“I learned to ride almost before I could walk and I had a lot of great horses through the years, but a horse can’t sleep in your room or share your secrets the way a dog can. We had a lot of dogs on the ranch, but they were working animals and were really considered by everyone to belong to my dad. But Rusty was mine. I was the one he was most loyal to, unlike the others, who were well trained and obeyed anyone in the family but listened to my dad above all others.”

Suddenly I found I missed Sandy. I usually spent a lot more time with him on my days off. Of course it looked as if he was having a blast with Duke and Dallas.

“Favorite childhood vacation?” Luke asked.

“I went to California with Kekoa’s family when I was nine. We had the best time. We went to Disneyland and a real baseball game. My favorite part of the whole trip was Hollywood. I kept expecting to see someone famous, but I never did. Still, it was fun to look. How about you? What was your favorite vacation?”

“Our family didn’t take a lot of vacations. It’s hard to get away when there are so many animals to take care of. But there was this one trip to Kentucky I’ll always remember. I was twelve and my dad decided it was time I went to my first horse breeders’ auction. I’m not talking about the auctions they have at the fair; I’m talking about a high-dollar auction for prize breeding stock. I remember being so excited to finally have some one-on-one time with my dad. He was a busy man and didn’t really spend all that much time with my sisters and me. I guess he figured my older brothers actually provided him with some help, while we were more of a responsibility.”

“How was it?”

“We never got there. There was a big storm and our plane was diverted to Denver.”

“You were traveling from Texas to Kentucky and you ended up in Denver? How did that happen?”

“That’s exactly what my father asked. At first Dad was upset that he was missing the auction and not all that much fun to be around, but then he finally accepted that he wasn’t going to make it and began to relax. After that we had a wonderful time, talking and really getting to know each other.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yeah. It was the best time we ever had as a father and son. My turn; what was your most embarrassing moment?”

“No way I’m answering that one. What’s your favorite movie?”

We continued with the game until we pulled up in front of the motor lodge.

“Now what?”

“I guess we start with whoever is working the desk and see what we can find out,” I answered.

“And you think that person is just going to tell us what they know?”

“Got any cash?”

“Yeah. I’ve got some.”

“They’ll tell us. Let me do the talking.”

It turned out the desk clerk did remember Cole, and he also remembered that a woman showed up asking for him on the morning he checked out. The clerk didn’t know the woman’s name but confirmed that she was the same one in the photo we had. The question was, was this Helena, or were we looking for two different women?

“So what now?” Luke asked after we’d returned to the truck.

“I should probably head home. I have to work tomorrow and I never did do my laundry.”

“Do you want to grab some dinner on the way back? I know a great steak house. My treat.”

I looked down at my casual clothes. “I’m not really dressed for a steak house.”

“You’re dressed fine for this one. Trust me; you’ll love it.”

Luke was right. I did love it. The steak house was not only charmingly Texan in décor but it featured local Kobe beef that was cooked to perfection.

“This might possibly be the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth,” I gushed as a country band played in the background. “What’s in that sauce?”

“I don’t claim to know all the ingredients, but it really does bring out the taste of the beef. How are your potatoes?”

“Delicious. How’d you find this place? I’ve never even heard of it.”

“It’s only been here for a year, so it isn’t all that popular yet. One of the guys in the band likes to hang out at the beach where I surf sometimes, and when he found out I was from Texas he told me about it. It turns out the man who owns it is a transplant from Texas, just like me. We hit if off right away.”

“Well, with the exception of the fact that the servers are all wearing chaps over their jeans and holsters on their hips, it’s a great place. I’ll need to come back sometime.”

I watched as several of the patrons wandered onto the dance floor. I was having the best time with Luke. I know I’m being repetitive, but if you had told me even a day ago that I would be dining with Luke in a cowboy steak house and having the time of my life I would have thought you were crazy.

“I’ve been thinking about the woman from the bar.” I decided to get my head out of the clouds and back in the game. “If the woman Cole met after he’d been here just a few days was the same one who met the man in the bar, as we suspect, maybe she’s the one who killed him.”

“That had occurred to me as well. He arrived on the island, where he holed up in a dive for three days. The woman we’re referring to as the woman in the bar showed up at the motel and they left. He went off the radar until he checked into the Dolphin Bay Resort. Three days later a toxin was added to his drink and, if the redhead you spoke to is to be believed, the drink was brought to him by a woman with dark hair.”

“It really does look like this woman could be the killer. She knew about the meeting at the Jungle. The only thing I’m not sure about is how to prove it.”

“Maybe it’s time to loop in your brother. I’m sure he has resources for finding out who the woman in the photo is, and he certainly has the authority to question Anderson in a more formal way than we would be able to.”

I hated to admit it, but Luke was right. It was time to talk to Jason. “I’ll stop by on my way to work tomorrow. Maybe I can distract him with the information we’ve been able to dig up and he won’t yell at me for too long. If nothing else, if I stop by on my way to work I have a built-in escape if I need it.”

“Sounds like you’ve thought this through.”

“I have, but only in the past few minutes while we were sitting here. We should probably go. It looks like I’m going to have a long day tomorrow.”

Here’s the thing about brothers. Or at least my brothers. I love them and I know they’d die for me, but there are times, such as today, when they can be a total pain in the ass. I’d called Jason that morning and told him I was ready to talk. I asked if he could stop by my condo before I had to leave for work and he told me it would be better under the circumstances if I stopped by the station. The station? Really? What was he planning to do, arrest me?

I’d like to think the answer to that was no, but Alana had said he was pretty mad, and I had spent the past day and a half avoiding him. I figured if push came to shove I’d simply swear my phone had been stolen and the incriminating photos he’d found had actually been taken by someone other than myself. Of course I’d already admitted to both Justin and Alana that I’d taken the photos, but I supposed I’d deal with that if I had to.

I’ll admit I was starting to sweat just a bit in spite of the fact that I’d done my homework and had information to trade to Jason in exchange for a decrease in the amount of yelling I was sure he planned to do. For one thing, Luke had helped me track down Janice’s date, Frank Browning. It seemed that, like Elton, Frank had been approached by Cole about investing in the project, and also like Elton, he’d initially declined. He’d been in town this past week to speak to Cole for a second time after discovering that somehow CAD Development had managed to do the impossible and clear up all the roadblocks to the project to gain the permits they so desperately needed.

Not only had he confirmed what Elton had told us but he’d provided an interesting piece of information when Luke asked if he’d met with one of the other men since Cole’s death. He reported that yes, the meeting had taken place, with the lead partner in the project, Helena Devlin.

Wow! I know, right? Helena and Devlin were one and the same. I’m really not sure if that makes me suspect her of killing Cole more or less. Luke forwarded the photo I took of the woman in the bar and Frank confirmed that the woman we saw was indeed Helena Devlin.

So, you ask, what am I thinking? Honestly, I have no idea.

I spent the entire drive to the precinct trying to decide how all these random pieces of information fit together.

Based on the information I’d gathered, the project had originated with Devlin, who we now knew was also Helena, the woman Cole had been bragging about dating. If that was correct, Helena had approached Anderson first about the project, so I could assume she knew him well enough to be aware he planned resorts for a living and might be interested in planning one of his own on the island. Devlin and Anderson knew they’d need seed money to buy the land, draw up the plans, and go through the permit process, so they’d brought Cole on board.

The woman Luke and I had seen in the bar was very beautiful and at least twenty years younger than Cole, so I wasn’t sure where the romance came in unless Cole wasn’t initially on board with the project and Helena needed to somehow convince him to use his connections to help them raise the money they needed.

Whatever the basis for their relationship, I knew Cole had come to the island for the last time a few weeks ago. He’d stayed in a dive motel for three days until Helena came looking for him. They left together and were off the radar for close to two weeks before Cole suddenly reappeared and rented the most expensive room at the very exclusive Dolphin Bay Resort. Three days later he was dead.

I suspected the toxin that killed Cole had been delivered in a drink, although apparently I was the only one who remembered seeing the glass. Of course now I had Brody’s photos to back up my assertion, which should make Jason take me seriously on at least this one issue. During the time I was speaking to the redhead, who seemed to have disappeared, someone took the glass. The redhead had said the drink was delivered by a tall brunette, so I was going to assume it was Cole’s girlfriend, Helena Devlin, who brought him that drink. That would explain why he stopped to speak to her and why it appeared she was flirting with him. Sort of. There was still the fact that he was old and plump while she was young and beautiful, but for now I was going to assume she still needed his financial connections.

The question remained, did Devlin kill Cole, and if so why? I supposed it was possible the toxin had been delivered in some other manner and the drink had nothing to do with it. Without the glass there was really no conclusive way to prove it one way or another. I did know that Devlin had met the man of Japanese descent in the bar the following day, but maybe she was already going to attend the meeting with Cole and her presence had nothing to do with his death. She’d handed him a thumb drive, but it could have contained anything. Maybe he was going to apply to be the resort’s sushi chef and she was giving him the information he’d need. Okay, I don’t really believe this, but the fact that she gave something to the man didn’t prove she killed Cole.

When I began my drive I’d felt like I’d figured out a lot, but the more I thought about it the more I realized I really hadn’t figured out anything. Or at least not anything Jason probably didn’t already know. When I was listening in on his conversation with my dad, Jason had said he’d spoken to both Anderson and Devlin, so he already knew Devlin was a beautiful woman and not a man.

Suddenly I began to wonder if I really did have anything to offer to Jason in exchange for my neck out of a noose. I’d been running around for days chasing clues that suddenly seemed less like clues and more like insignificant pieces of information. I don’t know why I thought I could solve Cole’s death before the HPD. Maybe everyone was right and I wasn’t cut out to be a cop.

I was feeling quite humbled and was prepared to go into the precinct, apologize to Jason, and head off to work with my tail between my legs when I noticed a woman who looked an awful lot like Helena Devlin coming out of the bank and getting into a white sedan that was waiting for her. Suddenly throwing in the towel was the last thing on my mind. I executed a quick U-turn and followed her.

I had no idea where this was going, and it did occur to me it might be a wild-goose chase that was going to make me late for both my meeting with Jason and work, but my gut told me that following the woman I’d suspected all along—okay, maybe not all along, but for a while now—was the only chance I had of saving face and solving this case.

Devlin seemed to be traveling back toward the north shore. It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to tell someone where I was going, so I dialed Luke’s cell and left a message when he didn’t pick up.

“Hey, Luke, it’s Lani. I’m following a car in which Helena Devlin is traveling. We’re heading in the general direction of your ranch, although we could turn off at any time. I assume you aren’t meeting with the woman. If you are, this is going to be embarrassing. If not, I just wanted to fill you in on what I’m doing. Oh, wait, the car is turning onto a side road. I’ll call you back.”

I slowed down and hung back after the sedan turned onto what looked to be a private road. If I continued to follow in my car it was going to be obvious, so I pulled off the road and parked in some dense shrubbery. Then I headed down the road on foot. Chances were the white sedan’s destination wasn’t all that far away. I wasn’t sure where we were exactly, but I was pretty sure the bluff to my right was the same one where Luke watched the sunrise; I was just on the other side.

By the time I’d traveled about a half mile I could see a building in the distance. It was a small house that had been built into the dense shrubbery, making it almost invisible. I got as close as I dared without risking someone seeing me. Of course I had no idea what I was going to do at this point. I couldn’t get close enough to the house to look through the windows, so I really had no way of knowing what was going on inside. Maybe nothing. Holing up in an out-of-the-way house was certainly no crime.

I decided to call Luke again to see if he’d pick up this time. Maybe he would have an idea that hadn’t occurred to me.

“It’s Lani again,” I began when Luke’s voice mail picked up again. “I’m outside a house that I think is just over the bluff from your place. I was following…”

A hand was placed over my mouth from behind. Damn. How had someone snuck up on me without my knowing? I was really off my game.

“What are you doing here?” the voice behind me asked.

I pointed to the hand over my mouth to indicate that I couldn’t answer, which might have been just as well because I really didn’t
have
an answer.

“You’re that lifeguard who found the body.”

I nodded my head in the affirmative.

“I’m going to remove my hand from your mouth, but you aren’t to make a sound.”

I could feel a gun in my back, so it was a safe bet I’d comply.

A woman took her hand from my mouth and demanded that I turn around slowly. I did as she asked and was surprised to see not Helena Devlin but the woman from the beach who had been wearing a red bikini on the day Cole had died.

“Now I’m going to ask you again, what are you doing here?”

“I was hiking and got lost.”

“Nice try. What are you really doing here?”

“Following Helena Devlin.” I figured there was no reason to lie. The woman obviously knew what I was doing there.

“Why are you following Helena Devlin?”

“Because I thought maybe—” My answer was interrupted by a gunshot. I watched in horror as the chest of the woman I’d been speaking to turned red. I didn’t stop to think about what I should do, I just reacted and took off running. I ran as hard and fast as I could, although even I knew I couldn’t outrun a bullet. I could hear voices behind me, but still I ran, even though my legs were bleeding from the scratches of the dense shrubbery and my lungs felt like they were on fire from lack of oxygen. Luke’s ranch was just over the bluff, if only I could keep going.

Just when I felt like I was going to pass out for sure I felt myself being scooped into the air. As the last of my breath was pushed from my lungs by the death grip around my chest, my feet flew helplessly through the air. I felt like I’d been scooped up by a giant eagle, like you see in sci-fi movies. There was no other explanation. I must be close to death because I was obviously hallucinating. I closed my eyes and let the dizziness overtake me.

“Are you okay?” a voice said in my ear.

I opened my eyes. “Luke?”

“Are you hurt?”

It took me a minute to realize I wasn’t actually flying but riding. “Did you seriously just ride up on a white stallion and save me?”

Luke slowed the horse and smiled. “I guess I did.”

I looked at the horse beneath me and the man who held me in his arms. Kailani Pope was no princess and she was no damsel in distress. I was afraid things with Luke were over before they’d begun because there was no coming back from this.