Right from the Gecko (16 page)

I also made sure I brought along the business card I'd found in Marnie's drawer, the one with his address written on back. Just in case I lost it, I'd memorized the words,
Home: 254 Hukelani Street, Wailuku.

“Ready?” I asked my sidekick.

Nick just grinned. I could see he was really looking forward to this.

Maui's simple road system was already becoming as familiar to me as the intricate web of highways and byways that cover Long Island. It was another beautiful day, and Nick and I rode along Honoapiilani Highway with all the windows down. I had to admit, it was extra nice having him along. I tried to remember if Ned Nickerson ever accompanied Nancy Drew in all those novels I'd read when I was young. If he had, it was no wonder she'd been so fond of spending most of her time running around, solving mysteries.

According to my map, the street on which Ace lived wasn't too far from the police station, so finding it was a breeze. I hoped accomplishing my goal of actually spotting him would be as easy.

“This is it,” I muttered as I turned onto Hukelani Street. “His house is number two fifty-four.”

“Not exactly the high-rent district,” Nick observed.

I had to agree. Hukelani Street turned out to be a quiet road lined with half a dozen small, shabby houses. Not quite the ocean-view palaces tourists picture when they fantasize about living on Maui. Then again, Ace hadn't exactly struck me as a man who was clambering up the ladder of success.

Number 254 was at the end, the last house on the right. The condition of the place Ace Atwood called home bore out my theory. The house itself was nondescript, a single-level bungalow half hidden by the over-grown bushes and trees crowded onto the tiny front lawn. Jammed into the short driveway were no fewer than three vehicles—a dusty pickup truck with a badly dented passenger side door and two cars that might have been considered vintage if they didn't look as if a slight tap would send all the metal crashing to the ground. The sorry condition of his fleet was quite a surprise, given his line of business.

“The guy certainly seems to like cars,” Nick commented. “Especially cars that have been totally trashed.”

“Maybe he gets so tired of working on other people's junkers all day that he has no energy left to work on his own,” I suggested.

“It sure looks that way.”

Fortunately, there were a few other vehicles parked on the narrow street, much nicer ones that probably belonged to Ace's neighbors. That made my rented Jeep Wrangler much less conspicuous as I parked right across the street from his house. Still, I pulled my hat down as low as it would go, then began the arduous task of doing absolutely nothing.

Nick squinted at the side door, which was less than a hundred feet away. “Okay, now I'm starting to get curious about this guy. How will I recognize him?”

“Try to imagine the guy from
Saturday Night Fever
once he hit forty.”

“Gotcha,” Nick replied. Dryly, he added, “I can hardly wait.”

For me, doing nothing is one of the most difficult things in the world. Within about thirty seconds, my hands start to get fidgety. My brain too. Usually, if I'm waiting in a car, I find something to do, like rearrange the bills in my wallet so they all face front, or grab the owner's manual out of the glove compartment and catch up on fun facts like what the optimal tire pressure should be.

This time I didn't dare. I was too afraid of missing my target.

“Nick,” I asked, “when you did this for a living, how did you keep yourself from getting bored out of your skull?”

“Actually, that's a real problem with stakeouts,” he replied seriously. “It's easy to fall asleep or get distracted by something else you've been staring at just to keep your mind working. Drinking coffee helps, although then the lack of bathroom facilities can become a problem.” He reached across the front seat and took my hand. “Of course, having somebody to talk to is always useful. As long as the conversation doesn't become so engrossing that you forget what you're there for.”

With that thought in mind, we chatted for a while, being careful not to talk about anything too interesting. But knowing that you're talking because you're
supposed
to be talking makes it really hard to come up with things to talk about.

Through it all, I sat with my eyes fixed on Ace's house. When Nick and I ran out of topics of conversation that were sufficiently mindless, I tried to remember the capital of each state, beginning with the East Coast and moving west.

I was starting to feel as if I'd been sitting in that spot forever, but finally, just as I got stuck on Idaho, our vigilance paid off. The side door of the house swung open, and who came loping out but Ace himself.

“That's him,” I muttered, my heart suddenly pounding. Here I'd just started wondering if I was wasting my time. Yet this was turning out to be my lucky day. At least I hoped so. Part of me worried that my plan to learn more about Ace would end in disaster, since he impressed me as someone who wouldn't exactly appreciate being followed, especially by a busybody like me who he undoubtedly thought asked too many questions. Part of me was afraid of something even worse: that I wouldn't find out anything new at all.

“You were right,” Nick commented. “
Saturday Night Fever,
alive and well on Maui.”

Ace wasn't alone. Scampering gleefully beside him was a fair-size dog that looked as if his lineage included some German shepherd and some Rottweiler. Whether the keys in Ace's hand were responsible for his canine companion's exhilaration or it was simply the joie de vivre that ninety-nine percent of all dogs routinely exhibit, I couldn't say.

I smiled at the sight of the enthusiastic pup, then forced myself to focus on Ace. After all, it wasn't his dog that was the murder suspect.

Ace opened the passenger-side door of his pickup truck, then called, “Come on, Buddy. Climb in.” Once his trusty companion was sitting shotgun, his tongue hanging out as if he were thinking excitedly,
Oh, boy! I can't believe we're going for a ride!
Ace climbed into the driver's seat and backed out of his driveway.

My heart began to pound even harder.

“Let's go,” Nick urged. “Now comes the fun part.”

Nodding in agreement, I turned the key in the ignition. I followed the pickup truck, driving at what I hoped anyone who observed me—Ace, for example—would consider a moseying pace. I even switched on the radio, hoping the soft rock that came floating out would help me stay in my moseying mode.

As soon as I began tailing him, it occurred to me that since Ace was a car guy, he might notice the Jeep that just happened to be right behind him looked familiar. Fortunately, scrappy vehicles like the one I was driving were common on Maui. I hoped that would keep him from peering into the rearview mirror with too much interest.

My theory seemed to hold. Ace drove at a leisurely pace for nearly two miles with his left arm stuck out the window on his side of the cab. Buddy, meanwhile, rode with his entire head jutting out the passenger-side window. Keeping up was easy. So was hiding the fact that I was following him. Since there was only one road on this part of the island, there was enough traffic on it that I could blend in, but not so much that I had to worry about losing him. Following someone on Maui was turning out to be a lot easier than it was at home. A complicated system of streets, highways, and expressways crisscrossed all over Long Island, and most of them were clogged with traffic. When it came to choosing a place whose geography was conducive to solving crimes, Magnum, P.I. clearly had the right idea.

“You're doing great,” Nick commented.

“Thanks for the encouragement,” I replied.

“No, I mean it. You're a natural. You're focused, you're cool-headed…I could have used somebody like you back in the day.”

“See that?” I couldn't resist interjecting. “Turns out I'm pretty good at investigating murders.”

When Ace pulled up at the front entrance of a nondescript office building, I nosed into a parking space on the other side of the lot. The good news was that from that vantage point, Nick and I could see everything he did. The bad news was that his actions consisted of nothing more exciting than sitting in his truck with the motor running.

Fool's errand? I wondered, knowing exactly who would turn out to be the fool.

As I fought the temptation to lose heart, I noticed some movement. Someone—a woman—had come out of the office building. She was dressed in a business suit, but the inexpensive-looking kind that was made of a shiny fabric. Whatever sense of authority the suit was designed to convey was pretty much contradicted by her large, flashy jewelry, which included gold hoop earrings the size of saucers and enough bracelets for an entire troupe of belly dancers. The same went for her hair, which was dyed a jarring shade of red and looked as if it had been mercilessly fluffed and teased before it was frozen in place with a frightening amount of hair-spray.

In other words, she looked like just the kind of woman a guy like Ace was likely to find attractive.

“Look, he came here to pick her up,” I pointed out. “Maybe I should get out of the car and go over there.”

“Go for it,” Nick urged. “But you need a plan. What's your excuse for being here? Even more important, what are you trying to find out?”

I thought fast, trying to decide what to do. But not fast enough. Before I could come up with a strategy, Ace and his gal pal sped out of the parking lot, disappearing down a side street before I even managed to start my car.

“Damn!” I muttered. “I missed them.” By this point, I was really feeling like that proverbial fool.

“But you have some new information,” Nick noted. “You know where his girlfriend works.”

“How do we know she's his girlfriend?” I countered, wanting to consider every possible angle. “I mean, she could be his sister or…or…”

And then, on impulse, I retrieved the scratched and broken sunglasses I'd stashed in the glove compartment the day I rented the car.

“Where are you going?” Nick demanded.

“To find out who that woman is.”

“Have you worked out your strategy?”

I just held up the sunglasses, then headed inside.

I didn't expect to be lucky enough to find any signs of life in the lobby of the building. In fact, I thought I'd simply end up perusing the directory that I figured would be posted on the wall and that my idea about how I could use the sunglasses would go to waste. So the rate of my heartbeat picked up considerably when I saw that the building actually came equipped with a living, breathing human being: a security guard.

The tall, beefy man with straight black hair shorn to a stubble was sitting behind a high counter, reading the
Maui News.

“Excuse me,” I asked him politely as I approached, “but did you happen to notice that woman who just left?”

He put down his newspaper and peered at me. “What about her?”

“I think she dropped these sunglasses.” I held them up as proof, hoping he wouldn't notice what bad shape they were in. “I ran after her so I could return them, but she took off before I could get her attention.”

“I'll take 'em,” he offered. “And I'll make sure Mrs. Atwood gets 'em.”

“Thanks,” I said calmly, handing the security guard the battered sunglasses.

But I wasn't feeling calm on the inside. Bingo! I thought, as a lightbulb the size of a neon sign in the middle of Times Square went off in my head. So good old Ace has a missus!

Suddenly it all made sense. Ace was a married man who had been having a fling with Marnie. No wonder he preferred taking her to “romantic” restaurants whose main selling point was that they were out of the way. That would also explain why he got so upset whenever she was late, since whenever he was with her, the clock was ticking. It could have also been the reason he was so reluctant to show any affection for her when they were out in public with Holly.

And now that Marnie had been murdered, he was probably more frightened than ever that the truth about their relationship would come out.

I walked back to the car slowly, thinking hard. Marnie said he had something important to tell her the night she was killed. She had assumed he was going to ask her to marry him. But knowing that he was already married, it was at least as likely that he had planned to break up with her. Maybe his wife was getting suspicious…or maybe he was just growing tired of his duplicitous life.

At any rate, if he had broken up with her, there was no doubt Marnie wouldn't have taken the news well. That could have led to an argument, perhaps threats that she would tell Mrs. Atwood what had been going on…

Even though the day was warm, a chill suddenly ran through me.

I now knew that Ace had an important secret. Which raised an important question: Just how far had he been willing to go to try to keep it?