Right from the Gecko (21 page)

Besides, she must have sensed that she was in danger, I thought, speeding up to put some distance between me and a tailgater. Why else would she have hidden in the freezer her list of the people whose land FloraTech had attempted to buy?

I was still absorbed in my own thoughts when I noticed a small cluster of office buildings up ahead. The reason they caught my attention was that a half dozen cars were parked haphazardly on the grass that separated them from the road.

I stepped on the brake when I noticed that one of them was a silver BMW. And when I spotted a big sign that read
PRESS
stuck in the windshield, I turned abruptly and entered the parking lot.

That car could belong to only one person, I concluded, thinking back to my conversation with Richard Carrera. And that was Bryce Bolt.

On impulse, I pulled up behind the BMW, turned off the ignition, and waited, keeping my eyes glued to the doorway. There was a question that had been nagging at me for days, and I wondered if he could answer it for me.

Only about ten minutes passed before people started straggling out of the building. Some carried notebooks or laptops, others had cameras, and almost all of them were talking on cell phones.

Sure enough, Bryce was among them. I spotted him strolling out of the building, exhibiting a distinct cockiness even in the way he walked. I waited until he had made it to his car before popping out of mine.

“Bryce! Remember me?”

He glanced up, looking surprised. And puzzled.

“Jessie Popper,” I reminded him, walking over to him with a big smile on my face. “Marnie's friend.”

“Oh. Sure. It took me a second to place you, that's all. How's it going?” I guess he finally did remember me, because he suddenly frowned. In a much less cordial voice, he demanded, “What are you doing here?”

“I was driving by and I noticed all the commotion,” I replied cheerfully, gesturing toward the last few reporters and photographers who were straggling out of the building. “Obviously something big was happening here, and I couldn't help wondering what it was.”

“Just a press conference,” he said, eyeing me suspiciously.

“Really? For what?” I persisted.

“The Maui Visitors Bureau. They reported the usual statistics about how tourism is up, business is booming, the environmental impact is devastating…. They hold these things a few times a year. Not exactly front-page news.”

“Actually,” I said, trying to sound casual, “I wanted to ask you something that's kind of related. To front-page news, I mean. Or at least to the newspaper business.”

“Okay,” he replied warily.

I hesitated. “I wanted to ask you about Holly.”

He stiffened. “Holly Gruen? What about her?”

“She and I got together a few days ago. I think having the chance to talk about Marnie made us both feel a little better. But there's something that keeps gnawing away at me.”

“What's that?” he asked uneasily.

“Holly wouldn't tell me why she left the
Dispatch.
I was hoping you would.”

He glanced around nervously. “You know, I really shouldn't be talking about this. In fact, I feel kind of funny talking to you at all.”

I could see that he did. In fact, Bryce suddenly seemed to be having difficulty making eye contact.

“Of course you do,” I agreed with the same heartiness. “Who could blame you? And I know that it's none of my business. At least, it wouldn't be if this…this terrible thing hadn't happened. To Marnie, I mean.”

“I don't see what it has to do with Marnie,” he commented, still acting kind of edgy.

I decided to go for broke. “Bryce, what do you know about the rift between Holly and Marnie? It sounds as if the two of them were close, and then all of a sudden Holly just completely shut down.”

He looked stricken. “Who told you about that?”

“I've been asking around, that's all,” I answered vaguely.

Bryce sighed. “Okay. What I can tell you is that from my perspective, it was all about two major egos butting heads. You know, both Holly and Marnie vying for the chance to cover the biggest stories, knocking themselves out to outshine each other, that kind of thing. And the last straw for Holly was when Marnie won that award from the Association of Professional Journalists.

“Yeah, that was the real turning point,” he went on, gazing off into the distance as if he was looking back in time. “That was when Holly really started resenting Marnie. In fact, I heard it got so bad that one day they had a huge blowup, right in the office. They both acted pretty unprofessional, I guess. Screaming at each other, making all these accusations…”

He hesitated, as if he was considering whether or not to continue. Finally, with reluctance, he added, “I probably shouldn't go around repeating this, but apparently Holly threatened Marnie. She actually said something about how she was going to kill her.” Shaking his head slowly, he added, “Right after that, Holly handed in her resignation.”

It took a few seconds for the meaning of his words to sink in. “Did Marnie file a police report?” I finally asked.

Bryce shook his head. “I don't think so. I guess she figured it would just blow over. Or maybe she didn't want to involve the paper. She was pretty loyal to the
Dispatch,
always talking about how she wanted to do the right thing to preserve its integrity and all that. I'm sure she wouldn't have wanted to air two employees' dirty laundry in public.”

“Bryce, how do you know about this?” I asked, thinking surely it couldn't have been Richard Carrera who told him. “After all, it must have happened before you were working at the
Dispatch.
”

“I heard about it from a couple of other employees,” he replied. “After Holly left, two of the women who work in the office, Karen Nelson and Peggy Ehrhart, used to talk about it. Only when Marnie wasn't around, of course.

“According to them, their feud got even worse after Holly left. Apparently she just assumed she'd fall into some other job, maybe with the
Maui News,
the bigger paper here on the island. But for whatever reason, that didn't work out. So in the end, Marnie ended up doing just fine in the newspaper business, while Holly was left out in the cold.”

“I see,” I told Bryce noncommittally. By that point, most of the other cars had driven off. “Listen, I'd better let you get back to work. Thanks for your time—and the information.”

“No problem,” he replied, turning and heading toward his BMW.

As I walked back to my own car, I wondered why Karen Nelson hadn't mentioned the screaming fight Marnie and Holly had in the office. She had been so forthcoming, yet she hadn't said a word about that particular incident.

I was also curious about whether that final showdown between the two reporters was the reason Holly had left the
Dispatch
so abruptly. She clearly had reason to be angry with Marnie. According to Karen, she'd developed an attachment to her that bordered on pathological, then felt betrayed when Marnie grabbed the award Holly was convinced she was entitled to.

The question was whether Holly was disturbed enough to have followed through on her threat.

As soon as I walked into my hotel room, I scooped up Moose and nuzzled his soft fur. It was so nice coming home to a sweet, loving pussycat that I found myself desperately missing my own menagerie back at home.

My two dogs—Max, my eternally energetic Westie, and his sidekick, Lou, a gangly Dalmatian—gave me a hero's welcome every time I walked through the door. Even though Max's tail was nothing but a stub, a legacy of his former owner, he would wag it so hard his entire butt would shake. Lou tended to hang back a bit, since his own past, which included losing one eye, had left him on the timid side.

My two cats, serene Catherine the Great and Tinkerbell, an orange-and-white tiger kitten with attitude, were more controlled, but always just as happy to see me. The same went for my blue and gold macaw, Prometheus, who invariably started squawking some nonsense designed to capture my attention. Leilani, the Jackson's chameleon Nick and I had shanghai'd during our last trip to Maui, didn't show much emotion, but I suspected she was glad to see me too.

It was also nice coming home to Nick.

He stood in the doorway of the bathroom wrapped in a damp towel, with strands of wet hair hanging around his face.

“I have an idea,” he greeted me. “Instead of holing up here in our hotel room, what do you say we put on our bathing suits, go downstairs, and act like tourists for a while? We have some time before our dinner reservation at the Kula Grill, and we can talk there while we watch the sunset. After all, that is one of the main reasons we came to Maui in the first place.”

Fifteen minutes later, we were settling into a pair of comfortable lounge chairs that overlooked the hotel pool. It was actually an entire complex that looked as if it came pretty close to qualifying for water-park status. The huge operation included three pools, one of them just for kids, a half dozen twisting water slides, a bunch of waterfalls, two hot tubs, a smattering of poolside cabanas, and the usual impressive display of palm trees and brilliantly colored flowers surrounding the whole shebang. There was even a bar disguised as a tropical hut, complete with a thatched roof, tiki torches, and a bartender in an aloha shirt.

As soon as we plopped down, a waiter appeared to take our order. I barely had time to slather sunblock all over my pale face and limbs before he reappeared, this time bearing two frosty mai tais.

“This was what I call a long day,” I said with a sigh. I took a sip of the cool, sweet drink and instantly felt refreshed. “And this is what I call good stuff.”

Nick grinned. “There's definitely something to be said for the Magnum, P.I., lifestyle. You know that old saying: When in Hawaii…”

“The lying-by-the-pool part is great,” I returned. “It's the investigation part that's tricky.”

“Sounds like you also had an interesting day.”

“Definitely interesting,” I assured him. “I learned a few things about FloraTech. Mainly that the company has been pretty aggressive about buying people's land.”

“Not surprising,” Nick commented, “since they obviously need to grow huge quantities of hibiscus in order to produce their wonder medicines.”

“True,” I agreed. “But what bothers me is the way they seem to be going about it. Frankly, it doesn't sound all that businesslike.”

I told him about my interactions with Makiko Cooper, Wesley Nakoa, and Wesley's daughter, Lila. “At least I was able to decipher Marnie's code,” I concluded. “
YES
refers to landowners who were willing to sell to FloraTech and
NO
signifies those who weren't. Some people are matter-of-fact about making a deal with them, but others are really resentful.”

“And Alice Feeley was still undecided at the time of Marnie's murder,” Nick observed.

“That's what I figure,” I agreed. “But that could simply mean she hadn't made a decision yet. Or even that FloraTech hadn't gotten around to making her an offer.”

Nick frowned thoughtfully. “The question is, is FloraTech actually doing anything wrong? Or do the reactions of people like this Nakoa guy you met up with simply reflect the residents' feelings about an outsider coming in, especially a big company, and taking possession of something the locals don't think they have a right to own?”

“I was hoping you'd uncovered something in Marnie's files that would answer that question,” I replied. “Or maybe some helpful little factoid about the company that would clue us in.” My heart began pounding a little faster as I added hopefully, “Did you?”

“See, that's the strange thing.” Nick sounded puzzled. “I'm usually pretty good at tracking down information. And frankly, this isn't my usual thing. But I found a librarian who really knew her stuff, and she turned me on to Edgar.”

“Who's Edgar?” I asked.

“It's a what, not a who. Edgar is a service the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission offers. It's an acronym for the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system—in other words, the government's way of helping people get information about companies. You can even get it through the Internet. It's called Edgar Online.”

It sounded simple enough. Why, then, was I hearing such tentativeness in his voice?

“It's really comprehensive,” he continued. “You can search for information by company name, industry, business, even area code or zip code.”

“It sounds amazing.”

“It is. Which is why it's so weird that we weren't able to find out a thing about FloraTech.”

“Really?” My eyebrows shot sky-high.

“Yeah, the librarian was pretty surprised too. So she suggested that I try calling the SEC's reference branch, since companies that are raising less than one million dollars aren't required to register. I thought that might be the case with FloraTech. But that turned out to be another dead end.”