Stolen in Paradise (A Lei Crime Companion Novel) (9 page)

“Please, sit,” he said, indicating a seating arrangement around a beautiful ikebana arrangement of bird-of-paradise. They sat. Smith had the beefy, sunblasted look of a golfer and the lavender polo shirt to go with it. He showed them a lot of veneered teeth. “I’m wondering how we can possibly be of interest to the FBI.”

Rogers took the lead. “We’re investigating the murder of a prominent scientist, Dr. Trudy Pettigrew. She was working on a project AgroCon is reported to be interested in, and her research was stolen. We’re following up on anyone who had an interest in the research.”

“What!” The man’s shock appeared genuine. “I did hear about Dr. Pettigrew on the news, but I didn’t know the research was stolen! I thought the rights to her work reverted to the University of Hawaii.”

“No. Her research was stolen and the sample stock as well.”

Smith’s face reddened and a vein pulsed in his forehead, indicating a possible problem with his blood pressure. “This is news to me.”

“Be that as it may.” Rogers forged on. “What was AgroCon’s interest in Dr. Pettigrew’s research?”

“We helped fund it. We owned an interest in it. This is a terrible loss.” He stood up, paced.

“What exactly was your understanding about ownership of the rights to BioGreen?” Rogers asked.

“We gave Dr. Pettigrew a five-hundred-thousand-dollar grant. We had a handshake agreement that she would entertain our offer for the rights first, over other competitors, if the project was successful. Which we had heard it was.”

“Hm. We were given to understand by the university that grants are given no strings attached; unless it’s a privately funded lab, all work product is jointly owned by the researchers and the university. No one can unilaterally ‘buy’ a project; nor does the research automatically belong to anyone who contributes to the project,” Marcella said.

The AgroCon VP flapped his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Grants are the lifeblood of research and we all know that, as do the researchers. Dr. Pettigrew knew which side her bread was buttered on, and now that I’m aware of this, I’ll be having our legal department draw up a claim.”

Rogers and Marcella exchanged a glance. Marcella finally spoke. “We are in the middle of an active murder investigation. Perhaps Dr. Pettigrew didn’t see it the way you did—perhaps she had other plans for BioGreen. And you killed her for it.”

Smith’s high color faded, leaving him the same mushroom shade as the seating arrangement.

“That’s ridiculous. No one would be that stupid. Dr. Pettigrew was worth way more alive.”

“How deeply caring,” Marcella said.

“What I mean to say is, AgroCon Ltd. would never stoop to such tactics. We are a worldwide conglomerate with no need to compromise ourselves in this way.”

“Oh. In what way do you compromise yourselves?”

“No comment. Now, if you have nothing further to ask me, I have a company to run.”

“We’d like copies of all the paperwork between your firm and Dr. Pettigrew.”

“There wasn’t much. Just her grant application and our letter approving the grant. Anything further was a verbal agreement, which we will still consider binding.”

“Not when the woman is dead, leaving no paper trail. We’d also like any internal memos, etcetera.”

The VP depressed a button on his desk and spoke into it. “Janice, can you notify legal that these agents are asking for internal paperwork and copies of correspondence relevant to Dr. Pettigrew? Thank you.” He released the button, showed his veneers again. “I’m sure you have a subpoena for that information.”

“By the time you collect it, we’ll have it,” Rogers said. “Your lack of helpfulness is duly noted.”

They left the office, Marcella working her phone to get subpoenas for the AgroCon correspondence. Back at the Acura, Rogers loosened the collar of his pressed white shirt, yanked out his tie, turned the key with a roar.

“Corporate ass.”

“Did you expect anything different? Types like that, all they do is make phone calls and generate memos. I’ve got no problem with AgroCon having a motive—but finding out who in a giant organization actually pulled the trigger, or hired someone to pull it, is going to take time. I, for one, want it to be one of the students—much easier to track them.”

Rogers pulled the vehicle out of the parking lot. “I just hate that faceless corporation shit. Someone somewhere in that big-ass building is making decisions, and one of them might have been to kill Dr. P and steal the research.”

“You’ll get no argument from me.” Marcella copied Cindy Moku’s address off her phone and plugged it into the GPS. “Let’s see what Cindy’s up to that she isn’t answering her phone.”

Cindy Moku lived in a small add-on ohana, or in-law unit, attached to a bigger family home near the university. They pulled the Acura up outside the small building. Marcella stepped out onto the concrete driveway, dodging a skateboard. She and Rogers walked up three rickety wooden steps to the peeling front door, knocking softly—then louder.

A dark-haired toddler on a Big Wheel rolled out of the nearby garage, eyed them. “You know where Aunty Cindy stay?” Marcella tried a little pidgin, which she was bad at. The child appeared to think so too and shook her head, pedaling back into the garage.

“I’ll go around the back of the house,” Rogers said. Marcella tried to peer in the window, but the blinds were down, and with the inquisitive child nearby, she couldn’t blame Cindy for keeping everything shut up tight.

“Agent Scott!” Rogers called from the back of the house. Marcella left the porch and swished through untrimmed grass dotted with the fallen pinwheels of plumeria blossoms to a small back deck with a sliding door. Rogers had it open, and one look at his face told her bad things waited inside.

She pushed the door wider and stepped inside, the shadowed interior throwing her off so she almost walked right into the figure that hung from the ceiling fan in the living room.

She took a step back as Rogers reached up to apply two fingers to the empurpled throat of the young scientist.

“Gone.”

“No. Dammit.” Marcella covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes filling. They took in the scene a minute longer: the tipped-over chair. The rope wrapped around the fan base, which must have been screwed into a beam to take that kind of weight. That sweet-faced scientist, so full of promise, scion of her family—motionless but for a gentle spin of the still-rotating fan, long black hair hanging down to conceal the cruel means of her death.

Marcella tasted bile—not from horror, but from a sudden and profound grief. Fucking waste of promise. Homicide or suicide, this death was a damn shame. Marcella wondered—if she’d just taken the time to talk to Cindy yesterday, maybe the young woman would still be alive.

There was no way to know.

Sometimes she hated her job. On the other hand, better for them to have found the remains than the child playing in the driveway.

“I’ll call it in.” Rogers called Dispatch as Marcella shook herself back into her role and did a slow cruise around the room. She found the note on the cheap little side table. She used a tissue from a nearby box to pick it up.

Rogers hung up. “They’re notifying HPD. The ME and our crime lab team are on the way.”

“Good. Lemme read this to you.” Marcella cleared her throat around an unexpected blockage. “‘I can’t take it anymore. I killed Dr. Pettigrew because she was going to give the formula away—she had no right. And now it’s just a matter of time before my life is over. I just can’t hurt like this anymore.’ It’s not signed.” Marcella set the note back where she found it.

“Looks like plain computer paper and typed,” Rogers said.

“I’m not buying it,” Marcella said.

“What doesn’t sit right for you?”

“Cindy doesn’t seem the type. If anything, she’s practical. Her biggest concern, from what I could tell, was that Dr. Pettigrew wasn’t around to sign off on her research. Not only that, her call to me yesterday. She was ‘checking something out.’ She tipped her hand somehow, made herself a target, and now she makes a handy scapegoat.”

They went back outside onto the tiny deck. Marcella drew in a sweet, sweet breath of fresh air, pushing her fists into her lower back, arching her head to look up at the sky, indifferently blue and depthless. She sighed the breath back out again, thinking terrible thoughts of how Cindy’s last moments must have been.

“I hate this,” she said. “I hate this a lot.”

“Me too.” Rogers avoided her eyes, reached out to give her shoulder an awkward pat. They walked out to meet the blare and scream of sirens filling the street.

Kamuela and Ching were in the wave of third responders to the hanging. Marcella noticed Kamuela out of the corner of her eye. He moved quickly toward Rogers, who was standing outside the front door, and her partner brought the two HPD detectives up to speed. Marcella turned a bit farther away so she wouldn’t be distracted. She continued her questioning of Cindy’s weeping cousin, who owned the main house. The woman’s arms were wrapped around the toddler as tears flowed freely.

“Did Cindy have any history of depression? Was she on any medications?”

“No and no!” The other woman sobbed, hunched on the back steps in her muumuu and rubber slippers, a dish towel to her face as she held the child.

“Was she acting any differently lately?”

“She was so upset about Dr. Pettigrew. She was worried about not getting her doctorate now that the doctor died.”

“Was she upset enough to kill herself? Could she have had anything to do with Dr. Pettigrew’s death?”

“No!” The cousin recoiled. “No talk crap like that. No disrespect her name!”

“I’m sorry. I meant no disrespect.” Marcella floundered a bit, not wanting to reveal anything further and not sure how she’d gone wrong. The woman stood up, scooped up the toddler. She drew herself up proudly and gave Marcella a contemptuous glare, or “stink eye”—as Marcella had heard it called.

“Cindy, she was a good person. She loved God. She would never kill herself. You find who wen’ kill her, you’ll find who killed Dr. Pettigrew too.” She spun on her heel and stomped back into the house, slamming the door so hard, the windows rattled.

Marcella sighed, looking down at her phone. She’d have to come back later and reinterview the woman. She’d mishandled that somehow.

“Problem?” Kamuela’s voice. She looked sideways at him, a quick glance, and felt her heart speed up.

“No problem.” She made her voice as cold as possible. “The witness was understandably upset.”

“Hawaiians don’t take kindly to insults to their families. Implying Cindy was unstable won’t go over well—besides, Rogers says you don’t think Cindy hung herself.”

“I don’t.” Marcella watched Dr. Fukushima and her assistant, pushing a gurney, hurry up the little driveway. “I think Cindy knew something and was about to tell us.” She filled him in on her theory. “This really points to someone on the inside.”

“Or, she was calling to confess yesterday and chickened out. Went home and killed herself.” Rogers joined them. Ching had followed Fukushima into the cottage along with the lab crew to assist in cutting down the body.

“I’m with Marcella. I think someone on the inside killed her because she knew something. They cover their tracks and point the finger for Dr. Pettigrew by making it look like suicide,” Kamuela said.

“Well, we’re not any closer to a main suspect with those interns,” Marcella said. “All the lab people have motive. Natalie, I suspect, is Pettigrew’s heir and has money problems. AgroCon thinks they own that formula already and might kill to get it. Too many suspects is what we have, and too many things to follow up on.”

“We have Gundersohn, the tech team, and the lab team, and of course two of HPD’s finest. I think we can do this, Marcella.” Rogers gave her a narrow blue stare. “Buck up and let’s get busy.”

“We shouldn’t be having this conversation in a witness’s garage. Let’s go see how they’re doing in there and talk in private.”

Just then Dr. Fukushima and her assistant rolled by with the black-bagged, strapped-down body on a gurney. Wails of grief rose at the sight from the crowd of friends and relatives gathered on the other side of the crime-scene tape at the end of the driveway. Marcella blinked hard. She turned her back, squared her shoulders, and led the way back into Cindy’s little place.

“Okay. We need to search in here. Take her computer in. Let’s go over the place now. I don’t want to wait for Fukushima to pronounce; I think we have enough motive to move ahead as if this is another murder. After we’re done with that, we’ll pool ideas and divide up the leads that are left.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Kamuela. The agents and detectives gloved up and went to work along with two lab techs from the FBI office.

Cindy’s life had been simple. A life that had revolved around her studies, marked by a few relics of her childhood: a pennant from a Kamehameha football game, a teddy bear. Her bedroom was cluttered and small, used just for sleeping. Her fridge was full of food, though—the antithesis of Marcella’s—and everything looked homegrown and local. Who went to the farmer’s market for fresh produce, then hung herself? Marcella wondered.

In the end, they packed up the suicide note and yet another computer to take into the IT department. Not a lot left to mark a life. Darkness stained the sky indigo when Marcella’s phone rang.

“Marcella!” It was Papa Gio. “You forget Sunday dinner? Your mama, she upset.”

“Oh crap, Papa. We have another murder. I can’t come.” Marcella ripped a glove off to rub her burning eyes.

“You always have another murder. Your mama, she cooked for you!” His volume climbed. Kamuela lifted his head from sorting through Cindy’s desk, a flash of his white teeth lighting his face.

“Marcella’s in trouble,” he singsonged. Kamuela had a nice smile, Marcella noticed. She realized she didn’t know his first name. Never had heard it.

“I’m on my way,” she barked into the phone. She punched off. “You obviously don’t know what it’s like to deal with an Italian papa.”

“It’s my Hawaiian mama that cracks the whip. It’s much the same with Sunday dinner—only they live on Maui, so I don’t have to go too often. And my mama’s laulau makes it worth it.”