Right from the Gecko (27 page)

“Yes!” I cried after I'd hung up the phone. Not only had I found a home for Marnie's cat; he was about to be adopted by someone I felt really good about.

At least there's one thing I've managed to resolve, I thought, pulling back onto the road and heading toward the hotel. But my sense of accomplishment lasted only a few seconds. After all, finding a place for Moose to live was small potatoes compared to the enormous questions about his former owner that, at the moment, I didn't feel even close to answering.

This time, as I unlocked the door of my hotel room, I was prepared to find Moose waiting for me. However, I didn't expect to find Nick. But he was sitting on the lanai, talking on his cell phone.

From his tone of voice, it sounded serious.

“I see,” I heard him say as I slid open the glass door to join him. “Okay, thanks for being so straight with me, Mr. Kourvis—I mean Rob…. Yes, I realize that, but you've still been extremely helpful.”

“Anything interesting?” I asked as soon as he ended his call.

“Definitely in the ‘interesting' category,” he replied. “I just spoke to Bryce Bolt's former boss at the
San Diego Times.
Just as he promised, he had a lot to tell me.”

“What did he say?”

Nick frowned. “Apparently the reason Bryce left his last job wasn't that he was dying to live in paradise. He was fired for journalistic fraud.”

My jaw dropped to the floor.

“It seems our buddy Bryce won quite a bit of acclaim for a series he wrote on sex offenders who were released into the community after serving time,” he continued. “It sparked a lot of debate and he was quite the media star for a while. Then it came out that he had fabricated almost all of it.”

“He made stuff up?” I asked, incredulous. “In a newspaper?”

“In a very fine newspaper, in fact,” Nick replied. “One of the most highly regarded newspapers in the country. Bryce used fake names for the sex offenders and the members of the community he wrote about, he made up quotes—he even made up most of the incidents he wrote about.

“His defense was that the people in his articles were composites and that he'd changed names to protect the people he'd interviewed. He also claimed he'd combined quotes from several different people to voice what he called ‘common sentiments.'”

“You can't do that!” I cried. “Newspapers are supposed to report the truth!”

“Bryce's boss, Rob Kourvis, felt the same way. So did all the other higher-ups at the newspaper. Not only was Bryce fired; the
Times
printed an apology. A whole bunch of other newspapers picked up the story too. So Bryce Bolt's name was mud.”

“At least on the mainland,” I observed. “I suppose it's possible that the scandal didn't travel all the way to Hawaii.”

“That must be the case,” Nick agreed, “since Rob insisted that after word spread, no newspaper would touch him.”

“So it sounds as if Bryce Bolt is someone who'll stop at nothing to achieve the success he wants,” I commented.

“That's what Rob Kourvis seemed to think. Along with just about everybody else in the journalism business.”

The severity of Bryce Bolt's transgression left me reeling. He had not only betrayed the newspaper he worked for; he had broken every rule of journalism. He had also compromised himself in ways that would make it impossible for most people to look at themselves in a mirror ever again.

Yet from what I had seen, he'd remained unfazed. He still thought of himself as an ace reporter, someone who belonged at a high-quality newspaper like the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

I felt as if my gut reaction to the arrogant Bryce Bolt was justified. I hadn't liked the man from the start.

Still, the fact that he was ambitious enough to let poor judgment come close to ruining his career didn't necessarily mean he was ruthless enough to commit murder.

After lunch, Nick went to the beach to enjoy some well-deserved downtime. As for me, I gathered up Moose, his toys, and all his other worldly possessions and headed off to Karen Nelson's house in Wailuku.

Thanks to the directions she'd given me on the phone, I found it with ease. As I pulled up in front of the modest one-story ranch, I noted that it was surprisingly similar to the homes that covered Long Island. It was painted pale yellow, with a small porch edged with a white wooden railing. The property even included a tiny lawn, so narrow that it stretched only about ten feet from the road. A neat row of bushes was planted along the front of the house, although they were so sparse and fragile-looking I suspected they hadn't been there very long.

The front door was open, and Karen appeared in the doorway before I'd even climbed out of my Jeep. As if wanting to prove her claim that she was already a cat owner, she was carrying a white Persian in her arms.

“How were my directions?” she asked cheerfully, coming out to greet me. Instead of the business attire she was wearing the other time we'd met, she was dressed in beige Bermuda shorts and a pink and green plaid shirt.

“They were great,” I assured her. “Moose and I found you without any problem.”

I also held the cat in my charge in my arms, not sure how he'd react to his new surroundings. I shouldn't have worried. As soon as he saw the lawn and realized he'd been freed from the confines of hotel living, he began squirming and meowing, telling me in no uncertain terms that he was ready to be let loose.

“Okay, Moose,” I told him. “I can see you're anxious to check out your new home.”

“I'll hold on to Eudora here until Moose gets the feel of the place,” Karen said.

But it didn't take Moose long to start acting as if he belonged here. After being cooped up inside for so long, he probably felt he was in heaven. Karen introduced Eudora, and after the two cats checked each other out for a minute or two, Moose found a shady spot, plopped down on the grass, and cast me a look of great satisfaction.

“Come on inside,” Karen offered. “Can I get you something to drink? Lemonade, iced tea…?”

“Iced tea sounds perfect.

“Thanks for taking Moose,” I said as Karen plunked down a tall frosty glass in front of me.

“Glad to have him,” she replied, sitting down next to me with a glass of her own. “In fact, it's kind of nice to have something of Marnie's. It's a way of keeping her with me. I know the guys in the office used to complain about how pushy she was—and how ambitious—but she wasn't any different than they were. It's just that she was a female, so they had different expectations. I thought she was a great kid. Full of energy, full of life…”

She stopped, pretending the reason was to sip her iced tea. Before speaking again, she cleared her throat. “By the way,” she asked, “did you ever get in touch with Holly?”

“Yes, thanks to you,” I said. “I used that number you gave me. We had lunch in Lahaina a few days ago.” I hesitated before adding, “You were right. There were definitely some issues between her and Marnie. I'm not sure I understand all of it.” Thinking out loud, I added, “Maybe I should call her again to see if I can find out anything more.”

“You'd better hurry,” Karen advised. “She's leaving the island.”

“What?” I cried.

“That's right. She stopped by the
Dispatch
office yesterday afternoon to say good-bye.”

“But I just talked to her a few days ago,” I said, still in shock. “She didn't say a word about it.”

“I had no idea either. Not until she came in to say good-bye to Peggy and me.”

“Not Mr. Carrera?” I asked, surprised.

Karen grimaced. “They're not exactly on the best terms. I don't think he ever forgave her for quitting so abruptly and leaving him in the lurch.”

My eyebrows shot up. “I didn't realize there was tension between Holly and Mr. Carrera.”

“Sure. When Holly quit, she hardly gave any notice at all. If I remember correctly, she announced on a Thursday that she was leaving and that the next day would be her last. Mr. C was in such a panic to find a replacement that he started going through all the résumés he had on file. We get a lot of them, since it seems just about everybody in the universe wants to live on Maui. Anyway, Bryce Bolt was the first person he contacted who said he could start the following Monday. He hired him sight unseen.”

So that's how he landed another reporting gig, I thought, despite the scandal that drove him away from his previous job. But I decided not to mention anything about Bryce's past.

“Do you know where Holly's going?” I asked.

“Back to the mainland,” Karen replied. “Florida. That's where she's originally from. But I believe she's flying out this weekend, so if you want to talk to her, you'd better not wait. If you'd like, I can give you her home address.”

“Had she been planning this for a long time?” I persisted. “Do you know if she has another job there or her family wants her to come home…?”

Karen shrugged. “As far as I know, it's something she just decided on the spur of the moment. Yesterday was certainly the first time I'd heard anything about it.”

I hadn't intended to contact Holly again. But the fact that she'd suddenly decided to take off made me anxious to talk to her one last time.

Especially since I couldn't help thinking that her decision to leave Maui less than one week after Marnie had been murdered was more than a coincidence.

Chapter
16

L
ike Marnie, Holly Gruen lived in an apartment. But her complex looked considerably older than Marnie's, with its shabby white stucco buildings and its dense growth of bushes in desperate need of trimming.

According to the mailboxes, the Gruen residence was located on the third floor. I tromped up two flights of open-air steps, which were covered in terra-cotta tile. When I reached the landing, I was surprised to see that the door of Apartment 3B was wide open.

“Holly?” I called softly. “Anybody home?”

I peered inside, scanning the empty bookshelves, the cleaned-out kitchen cabinets with their doors wide open, and, through an open door, a bed stripped down to the mattress. Two giant wheeled suitcases lay on the floor, packed so densely that zipping them up promised to be a real challenge. The three cardboard cartons that sat on the kitchen counter were just as full. Two of them were crammed with dishes, pots, and other housewares, while the third one was stuffed with file folders, envelopes, and papers.

“Holly?” I called again, this time more forcefully.

She appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. Even though it was warm, she was wearing jeans, a baggy black T-shirt, and scruffy sandals. Her dark-brown hair was tucked behind her ears but stuck out haphazardly in a few spots.

“Jessie?” she asked, looking surprised. “What are you doing here?”

Ignoring her question, I said, “Karen Nelson told me you were moving this weekend. I can see you're already halfway out the door.”

“My plane leaves in…” She glanced at her wristwatch, an oversize model with a clunky stainless-steel band. “Four hours and twenty minutes. So if I'm going to make it, I've really got to get busy.”

I glanced around. From the looks of things, she'd already packed away every possible sign that she'd ever inhabited the compact apartment in the first place.

“I understand you're going back to Florida.”

“Yup.” She gave a careless little shrug, meanwhile pushing her black-framed eyeglasses up the bridge of her nose. “I've had enough of paradise. In fact, I don't know why I didn't leave months ago.”

“Holly, did your decision to leave Maui have anything to do with what happened to Marnie?” I asked gently.

“Why, do you think I'm next?” she returned sharply.

Her words surprised me. “No,” I insisted. And then, doing some fast thinking, I added, “Do you?”

She stared at me for a long time, her eyes burning into mine. At first I thought she was angry. Then I realized she was thinking. Thinking hard.

I stepped toward her slowly, approaching her as if she was a frightened animal. “Holly,” I said in a soft voice, “I think it's time for you to tell me what you know.”

Her eyes immediately shifted to the box of papers sitting on the counter, a reaction that verified what I'd suspected almost from the beginning.

“It's all about the work you and Marnie were doing at the
Dispatch,
isn't it?” I said. “The fact that you found something. Both of you, working together.”

“What did she tell you?” she demanded, her voice shrill.

I decided to take a stab at it. “She told me all about FloraTech,” I said simply, hoping she'd fill in the blanks.

Holly's reaction told me I'd struck gold.

“She was such a fool,” she mumbled, shaking her head hard. “I tried to get her to listen. But Marnie was so ridiculously headstrong. She thought she knew it all.” Laughing coldly, she added, “Or else she was so naive she never believed they'd make good on their threats.”

Her words struck me with the force of a physical blow. I walked over to the couch, a red plaid upholstered monstrosity that looked as if it belonged in Hawaii about as much as an igloo. I sat down, my way of communicating that I wasn't going to leave until I got the whole story.

“Tell me everything, Holly,” I said in a low, urgent tone. “I want to hear your version of what happened.”

“Oh, boy.” Rubbing her forehead, she sank onto the couch beside me. “I knew from the start that those people from FloraTech were ruthless,” she said in a dull voice. “I could tell they meant business. They'd been watching us, so they knew from the beginning what we were doing.”

“What were you doing?” I asked.

“What reporters do,” Holly replied. “Talking to people, working our butts off to find out the truth….”

She let out a deep sigh before continuing. “It was Marnie who figured it all out. Of course, she was the one who'd been suspicious right from the get-go.” With a strange little laugh, she added, “This was one time when what we were all in the habit of thinking of as her paranoia turned out to be a real nose for news.

“And at first it was great, working on the story with Marnie. We felt so cool. I mean, here we were, barely out of college, and we were uncovering the hottest story of the decade. It was fun. At least, until they realized what we were doing. They found out we were talking to some of their employees, and they weren't happy about it. That was when they approached each of us—Marnie and me—and offered to pay us to keep quiet about what was going on. A lot of money too. More than either of us was making working for the
Dispatch.
The deal was that as long as we agreed not to go public with what we knew, they'd keep paying us hush money.”

She looked at me with dull eyes. “That's why I left. It wasn't a deal I could live with. But Marnie kept on going. Not only did she refuse to believe they were serious; she pushed even harder, determined to follow it through to the end.”

“But what was it that FloraTech was so anxious to keep under wraps?” I asked.

Lowering her eyes, Holly muttered a single word: “Cocaine.”

“What did you say?” I demanded, my voice a hoarse whisper. Just hearing the word sent a chill more powerful than a blast of the strongest air-conditioning on the island through my entire body.

“Cocaine,” she repeated. “Snow, C, blow, flake, whatever they're calling it these days. Coca plants are being grown here on Maui, right under our noses.”

I was still having trouble taking all this in. “And no one's noticed?” I asked. “Not the police, not the DEA, not even the nosy neighbors next door to wherever they're growing it?”

“That's the whole point,” Holly replied, her eyes boring into mine. “It doesn't look like coca.”

Whatever she was trying to say didn't make sense. “Tell me what you know,” I insisted.

Holly took a deep breath. “There's this new plant FloraTech developed, a crazy hybrid. It looks like an ordinary hibiscus. As far as anybody can tell, the fields that are covered with it look like regular hibiscus fields. But by using genetic engineering, they've invented a hibiscus that produces cocaine.”

“How?”

“I'm no scientist, so I don't understand all the technicalities,” she continued in a low voice. “But somehow they take the genes from the coca plants and stick them into a hibiscus. The DNA gets mixed up so they end up with a flower that looks like a regular hibiscus—except it has the same chemical the coca plants make on their leaves. That's the stuff they process and turn into cocaine. Here, I've got the name written down in my notes.”

She strode over to the box on the kitchen counter and shuffled through the file folder until she located the piece of paper she'd been searching for. She handed it to me.

Written on a sheet of paper in a handwriting I now recognized as Marnie's was a single word:
benzoylmethylecgonine.

I knew enough chemistry from my four years of college plus another four in veterinary school to recognize it. She was absolutely right. This was, indeed, the chemical compound that most people knew as cocaine.

If what Holly was telling me was really true, I thought, my mind racing, if this cocaine-producing hybrid had actually been genetically engineered and was growing right here on Maui, then the two reporters were on the verge of uncovering one of the biggest stories to come out of Hawaii since the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

It also explained why Nick couldn't find any information on FloraTech, I realized. It wasn't a legitimate company at all. It was a front for an illegal drug-producing scheme—not some innovative biotech firm using the science of botany to advance medical science.

“Holly, how did Marnie figure all this out?” I asked.

“A secret source,” she replied. “Some guy who worked for FloraTech started getting nervous about working for such a sleazy operation. In fact, he's the one who approached her, not long after FloraTech arrived on the island. Seems he was having second thoughts about being involved in what they were doing, even though the money they were paying him was phenomenal. She wasn't sure whether or not he was being straight with her, but she taped their conversations on this little tape recorder she had. After she did some nosing around and verified what he was telling her, she planned to use those tapes as proof. Not only for the newspaper articles she intended to write, but also for the cops.”

I could practically hear a snapping sound as one more piece of the puzzle fit into place.

The audiocassette. The faulty tape, the one she had left behind in my hotel room—the one that somebody else wanted badly enough to break in.

“Who was the person who offered you this…this deal, Holly?” I asked. “Who told you FloraTech would pay you hush money to keep the truth under wraps?”

“I didn't know the first guy, and I never saw him again,” she replied. “I think he was somebody from FloraTech. A guy in a suit. He never told me his name.

“But he wasn't the only one,” she continued. “Someone from the governor's office came to my house.”

“The governor's office!” I cried. “Who?”

She looked surprised. “It's nobody you'd know. He's just an aide. I mean, it's not as if he's in the public eye or anything.”

“What's his name?”

“John Irwin.”

I gasped. “What did he say?”

“That if the truth about FloraTech ever got out, the governor's political career would be ruined. He said it was his job to make sure that didn't happen.”

I thought about the photographs Nick had found in Marnie's folder, the ones of Governor Wickham with Norman Eldridge, FloraTech's founder. He had described them as the type of photos he took when he was a private investigator. The two men outside a motel room, shaking hands. Dining in a restaurant, alone.

And walking through a hibiscus farm.

Is it possible even the governor is in on this? I wondered, a sick feeling suddenly descending over me. Could the story that Marnie was about to expose be that big?

My head buzzed as I tried to think of who else might be involved.

“What about Bryce Bolt, the reporter who replaced you?” I demanded. “Do you think he's taking money from FloraTech?” By that point, my brain felt as if it was on fire. As the magnitude of what Holly told me really started to sink in, I was beginning to understand the possible ramifications. Not only in terms of what was happening right here on this idyllic island, but also in terms of Marnie's murder. “And what about Richard Carrera? How does he fit into all this?”

“Look, what goes on with Bryce and Mr. Carrera is really none of my business.” Within seconds, Holly's entire demeanor had changed. She was suddenly so closed off it was as if someone had slammed a door shut. “If I'm going to catch my plane, I have to get moving. And believe me, I really want to catch that plane. The truth is, I can't wait to get out of here.”

She jumped up off the couch and crouched down in front of one of the overstuffed suitcases, pretending she was absorbed in rearranging the contents so she could eventually zip it shut.

“Holly,” I persisted, “you have to finish this story. Aside from Marnie, you're the person who was the most involved. The person who was closest to her and what she was doing. You must have some idea of who killed her.”

“I don't know anything about that,” she mumbled. But from the way she kept her eyes down, refusing to meet mine, I knew she was lying.

“Holly, please,” I begged. “You're getting on a plane in a few hours. You're about to leave all this behind. But there are so many other people who won't be able to come to grips with what happened to Marnie until they know the truth. The whole truth. Surely you must have your suspicions.”

She stopped moving. Instead, she simply stared at the bunched-up sweater she clasped in both hands. I held my breath, waiting for what seemed like an eternity.

My heart was racing when she finally looked up at me.

“You want answers?” she asked with a cold smile. “Go ask Alice.”

As I drove away, I realized I was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my hands ached. It was an indication of just how frustrated I was over Holly's unwillingness to tell me the whole story.