Stolen in Paradise (A Lei Crime Companion Novel) (3 page)

Marcella pushed a roll of paper towels over, and Moku blew her nose with a honk that vibrated the camera phone.

“Anyway, there’s no one. Oh wait. I had an online chat window open. I was talking online to Abed and Fernandez.” A rosy blush marbled up Moku’s neck.

“Good. We’ll check that. Something going on between you?” Marcella kept her voice neutral, her eyes on the young scientist’s betraying skin.

“No, it’s nothing. We’re all friends. We were comparing notes, that’s all.” The blush darkened to mulberry.

She was lying.

Rogers stuck his head in. “Almost done? I got the rest.”

“Yes. Thanks, Cindy. We’ll talk more.” She punched off the phone and collected a swab and Moku’s prints. The young woman left, wiping the ink off her fingers with a bunched-up wad of paper towel.

“It’s late, but let’s go to lunch. I’m hungry for some of your mama’s cooking.” Rogers sealed the door with crime tape and contacted the university to change the touch pad at the door to a new code. Marcella called the Bureau to send out the evidence-collection team.

Marcella was a little light-headed with hunger by the time they hiked across the lush grass toward the building that housed the Culinary Arts Cafeteria, where students studying to be chefs cooked for the rest of the campus at reasonable rates. She trailed Rogers, who pushed open the door to a pleasant café-style setting, where hairnetted students served choices from behind a gleaming glass counter. Little tables dotted the room.

“Marcella! Mattie! You sit. I serve you!” Anna, swathed in a white apron with a chef’s hat dwarfing her head, waved at the tables. “Sit. I bring the food!”

Marcella picked a table in the corner and sat facing out.

“Everything your mother says seems to have an exclamation point to it,” Rogers observed as Anna loaded two plates, chattering in Italian to another student.

“You should see my parents together,” Marcella said. “Can’t get a word in edgewise.”

“That why you never had me and the family over? You live with them, right?” Rogers poked her with a grin.

“Hells, no. I’ve got my own place,” Marcella growled as Anna set loaded plates, redolent with garlic and spices, in front of them.

“Eat. Eat!” she exclaimed. “Or as my husband would say,
Mange! Mange!
”

“Where’s yours, Ma?” Marcella asked, forking up the delicious chicken dish. “Sit down with us.”

“I ate already.” Anna Scatalina perched on a chair. “So, Mattie. You have a family, don’t you?”

“I do, Mrs. Scatalina.” He cut his eyes at Marcella with a slight emphasis on the full form of her last name. “I have a wife, Bettina, and two little girls.”

“So you
can
have a family and be in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Anna pronounced it “infestigation.” “I asking Marcella who she dating, when I get some grandchildren, she always saying she have no time. Always working.”

Marcella rolled her eyes.

“It’s not easy, Mrs. Scatalina. I found the right woman, and she works part time to be home with the children. I think it would be very hard to have two working parents with the hours I put in. Besides, Marcella is picky. She’s waiting for just the right guy.” Rogers addressed his chicken, keeping a straight face.

“You got that right.” Marcella bolted down the glass of water Anna had brought with the meal and stood up, gripping her chair back. “I’m waiting for the right guy, Ma. We’re not even going to think about babies until that’s settled. If ever.”

“Well, of course not, darling. No good, that single-mother thing. Though if it happened, we would help you with the baby.” She patted Marcella’s white-knuckled hand. “We just want you to have the happy of a family.”

“I have the happy of family—you and Dad. Matt, you ready?” Marcella picked up her tray. “Thanks for the great lunch, Mama. We really need to get going.”

“Yes, it was delicious, Mrs. Scatalina. Thanks so much for the invite. Where do we pay?”

“Your money no good here,” Anna said, standing and straightening her chef’s cap as she addressed Marcella. “I see you Sunday?”

“I told you I would come.” Marcella hugged her petite mother hard. “I’m sorry, Mama. Just please leave this alone, will you? I love what I do. It’s enough for me right now.”

“I know. I no understand, but I know. Okay then. Don’t get shot.” She blew Marcella a kiss.

Marcella tightened the FBI Twist and made sure her buttons were all the way up as they parked in front of a run-down apartment building a few blocks off the hotel district—Dr. Pettigrew’s next of kin’s address. Whiffs of the Ala Wai Canal, redolent of ripe algae and unpleasantness, tickled Marcella’s nostrils as she slammed the door of the Acura and faced the building. Tired bougainvillea struggled to brighten a moth-eaten scrap of lawn in front of the entrance. Inside a linoleum-floored lobby lined with aluminum mailboxes, the elevators were out of service.

“Dammit,” Marcella said, looking down at her beloved impractical shoes. It was all her dad’s fault—he’d given her the Manolos the last time she’d had dinner at the parents’ condo. Maybe it was time he gave her something more orthopedic…

“Getting my cardio on. The apartment’s on the fifth floor.” Rogers pushed through the glass doors and headed up the metal-and-cement stairs on the outside of the building at a brisk military trot.

Marcella followed, and by the fifth floor she’d developed a blister and had to redo her hair yet again. Fanning herself with the folder on Dr. Pettigrew, she gave an irritated squint to Rogers’s grin as she rang the bell on the sun-bleached door.

A long moment passed. Marcella took in the view off the banister (nondescript) and the decor she could see through the blinds (early 1980s, well worn) before she leaned on the bell again.

The door flew open so abruptly that Marcella’s hand landed on her weapon. A tall, whippet-thin young woman glared out of violet-blue eyes raccooned in mascara. Jet hair capped a shapely skull, and tattoos banded wiry, pale arms. Natalie Pettigrew was an attenuated Goth cartoon.

“Yeah?” The girl sported an attitude evident in her cocked hip and narrowed eyes.

“FBI. May we come in and speak to you a moment?” Marcella and Rogers flipped open their creds.

“No.” Automatic, decisive. The girl took the cred wallets and studied them, handed them back. “What’s going on?”

“Some bad news. It would be better shared in privacy.” Rogers tried a friendly smile.

“No thanks. I take my bad news standing up.”

“All right then. We’re here about your aunt—Dr. Trudy Pettigrew. She’s—dead.” Rogers’s voice had gone appropriately somber. Marcella waited for a reaction—surprise, grief, anger, denial—nothing.

Finally the girl said, “I bet you want to ask me questions about it. That I’d prefer to do inside.” She retreated, leaving the door open.

“We’re sorry for your loss.” Rogers followed her, Marcella bringing up the rear. “We hear she was a great scientist.”

“She was a prize bitch, is what she was.” Natalie walked into the kitchenette—roughly the size of a double bed—and poured herself a glass of unfiltered cranberry juice, sipping it. She didn’t offer them any.

Marcella still hadn’t spoken. She did a three-sixty in the narrow living room, taking in furnishings that hadn’t improved on closer inspection. “Mind if we sit?”

“Yes. But sit anyway.”

Marcella parked on the battered pistachio microfiber couch. Rogers was still trying to engage.

“So you and your aunt weren’t close?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said she was a bitch.” Marcella locked eyes with the girl. “Cut the shit. Talk to us here, or we can take it back to the Bureau office.”

Natalie took a leisurely sip of cranberry juice, a stray sunbeam catching in the red liquid and dropping a reflection on the girl’s white skin like a drop of blood. She strode on black-jeaned pipestem legs to sit on the love seat across from them. She set the glass down and crossed bare feet on the coffee table.

“Ask away.”

Marcella set the phone on the coffee table and activated Record. “What kind of relationship did you have with your aunt?”

“We…” For the first time, the girl bit her lower lip. “We fought a lot.”

“What about?”

“The usual. She wanted me to make something of myself.” Natalie made quotation marks with her fingers. “She was always on my case.”

“So what is it that you do?”

“I’m an artist.”

“I don’t see any art.” Marcella gestured to the bare, dingy walls.

“I don’t keep it out here.” A long pause, then: “I have a day job. I work at Hot Topic, the clothing store.”

“So where were you two nights ago?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Do you use drugs? Is that why?”

The girl stood abruptly. “You know what? I don’t need this shit right now. You haven’t even told me why you’re here—I’m assuming there’s been foul play, since it’s the FBI telling me my aunt’s dead and interrogating me.” Natalie’s lips trembled, and she pressed a hand against her mouth. Yellow paint marked bitten nails, lending credence to her claim to be an artist.

“My partner gets a little direct, sorry,” Rogers said. “And, yes. Your aunt was murdered.”

Natalie sat down, this time abruptly—as if her legs couldn’t hold her anymore. The hand was still pressed against her mouth.

“We do need to know where you were. Just routine. We’re asking everyone who was close to Dr. Pettigrew.” Rogers was gentle, leaning toward the girl, with his elbows propped on his knees and big hands cupped. His posture seemed entreating—a practiced ease and sincerity to it. Marcella still admired his interviewing skills.

“All right. Well.” Natalie leaned forward, picked up the glass of juice from the coffee table, took a sip. “I was with someone.”

“Who?”

“I’m seeing someone, so I have an alibi. But I’m not saying who it is unless I have to.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.”

That reminded Marcella of another evasion she’d heard that day. She made a mental note before asking, “Do you own a handgun?”

“No. Hate those things. So…she was shot?” Again a little vibration in the voice, a hum like the sound of rain moving in.

“Yes. She was.”

“So she…Did she suffer?”

“It was quick. She couldn’t have felt a thing,” Rogers said. Marcella was silent, picturing the openmouthed expression of surprise frozen on Dr. Pettigrew’s face. She’d felt something all right—she’d been betrayed. Marcella was willing to bet money on it.

“I think we’re going to need that alibi,” Marcella said.

“I’m—not making the right impression.” Natalie’s eyes filled, but she widened them, blinking rapidly to keep the tears at bay—and the blue of them was definitely purple, Marcella decided. “I loved my aunt. We just didn’t—get each other. She wanted me to…I guess, be living another kind of life. But I can’t. I want to show you something.”

She got up, and the two agents followed her down a tattily carpeted hallway to a bedroom, flicked on the light. Color assaulted them from huge artworks lining the walls to the ceiling. The backing material appeared to be plywood, and the girl’s abstract style filled the room with a vibrating energy that left an impression—Marcella knew because she closed her eyes for a second, still seeing the vivid triptych of slashing contrasts on the wall across from her.

“These are good,” she said. “You have a distinctive style.”

“Thanks. But this isn’t what sells in Hawaii. This is.” Natalie reached behind a stack of paintings and held up an innocuous illustration of a turtle sunning itself on the beach.

“That’s a nice one,” Rogers said, admiring.

Both women gave him a glare, and he raised his hands. “Hey. I’m no art critic.”

“Thanks for showing us these,” Marcella said. “Mind if I take a photo?”

“If you must.”

Marcella photographed the room, ending with a shot of Natalie Pettigrew holding the turtle painting. “Appreciate that.”

“No problem. Since I didn’t do it, I have nothing to hide.” Natalie led them back into the living room.

“Did you know of anyone who would wish your aunt harm?”

“No. Those students of hers have—had—her on a pedestal. But I think she was working on something pretty high-powered. Maybe whoever shot her was after that. Are we done?”

“For now.” Marcella handed Natalie her card. “We are still going to need your alibi.”

“I can’t tell you right now.” The girl set her mouth in a stubborn line. “I will when I have to, but not a minute before. People could be hurt.”

“Oh please.” Marcella did a tiny eye roll. “Wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that. I’ll find out anyway; you can bet on it. In any case, call if you hear or remember anything that could help with the investigation.”

The girl gave a brief nod, looking down at the card, and the sun-blistered door closed firmly behind them. They heard the light patter of Natalie’s feet running away to the back of the apartment.

“She’s going to her bedroom to cry,” Marcella said as they clunked down the stairs. “And she’s got a bladder infection. Probably from boffing whoever’s name she won’t give up.”

“How do you know?”

“Cranberry juice.”

“I’ll remember that,” Rogers said as he beeped open the Acura. “You’re scary.”

Chapter 3

Marcella locked the door of her apartment with a couple of dead bolts and a heavy brass chain and turned back into her apartment, tossing the stack of reports onto a sleek glass coffee table already buried in background reading from other cases. She shed the light jacket she always put on in the Bureau office, taking time to put it on a hanger and put it away in the bedroom closet, unbuckling her weapon harness with a sigh and a scratch, yanking the now-dingy white shirt out of the gray trousers.

She leaned in close to a round clear glass bowl of water beside her bed, tapped on the glass.

“Hey, Loverboy.” The purple-blue betta fish flashed his fins at her, made a little charge at the glass. “I’m happy to see you too.”

Marcella stripped on her way to the bathroom, tossing soiled clothes into a wicker basket and getting into the shower. She let the massaging shower head work on her shoulders for a while, but she still couldn’t uncoil inside. She stepped out of the shower, toweling long brown hair. The red light on her old-fashioned answering machine was flashing. She punched On and listened.