Unsound (A Lei Crime Companion Novel) (2 page)

I didn’t quite know how things had gotten to this place, but I suspected it was a very long time ago, when I was fourteen, and half of me was lost in a bolt of grief that had never really been dealt with.

I’d lost everyone who mattered to me. I was alone.

One of a pair of shoes.

One of a pair of bookends.

One boob still dangling on the chest of a cancer victim.

My losses swamped me, a great wave that began in the hand touching the soft creamy fur of Hector’s belly, rolled up my too-thin arm, and broke over my head with a roar.

I opened my mouth and a sob came out, followed by more. Ugly sobs that racked my body and stretched my face.

Hector was alarmed. He scrambled out from under my hand and trotted away, twitching his tail and commenting on my unseemly display.

Screw it. I’d quit drinking tomorrow.

I got up, my chest heaving with convulsive hiccups, and poured myself a glass of good chardonnay to start—Silver Creek. Today’s events called for quality, and that first drink is the best one, the one for the good stuff. I went out onto the deck and sat in one of the Adirondack chairs. I looked out at the view. Hector followed and hopped up into my lap, starting his motorboat purr now that my noisy outburst was over, paws kneading.

Richard had chosen the site to make the most of a gulch at the back of our property, and the raised deck overlooked a deep ravine overgrown with tree ferns and tiny wild purple orchids. Keeping the
wiwi
strawberry guava and Christmasberry bushes trimmed took a lot of extra time for the yard guy—time I couldn’t afford anymore.

If I sipped the wine slowly and closed my eyes, I could stroke Hector and imagine I heard Chris laughing, giggling, and running across the wide-open space, Richard chasing him like he used to do when we were a happy family. I couldn’t bring those days back. But at least I could stay in the house where those memories happened. I’d had a life before Chris went to college and my husband left me for an acrobat from the Cirque du Soleil.

I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. Of course Richard couldn’t just diddle his secretary like a normal guy; he had to get with a twenty-two-year-old flying contortionist. Who can compete with that? It was a joke—but the joke was on me, enough to make even a psychologist indulge in the demon rum.

Speaking of, it was time for a refill. I got up and walked to the wet bar, my footsteps echoing in the empty, lonely, too big house.

I used to be a social drinker, just a couple of glasses of wine a week. Somewhere in the last year, the occasional glass of wine had segued into a daily necessity and now apparently not something I wanted to give up even in the face of embarrassing bags of bottles and my maid’s disapproval.

I didn’t stop thinking about sad things until the wine bottle was down to an inch.

By then I had the stereo blasting and was singing “Witchy Woman” and doing a little moonwalk. I had a few moves, back in the eighties. Hector refused to dance with me, even when I took hold of his paws. The music must have been up too loud for me to hear the car in the driveway, because next thing I knew, celestial chimes cut across the Eagles and I realized someone was at the door.

No one came out to my house. So I had to really think about what I was supposed to do next. I still had my clothes on, fortunately, but even I knew I was drunk as I listed toward the front door and applied an eye to the peephole.

Great.

Detective Kamani Freitas stood on my front step. I knew her from various situations and cases, and on another day she’d have been a welcome sight.

I cracked the door. “Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any.”

“Dr. Wilson.” Kamani frowned, a slight scrunch of her smooth forehead. She has wonderful rich brown skin and could be anywhere from twenty to fifty, her lush black hula hair in a braid that brushed her waist. She put her hands on her curvy hips. “Can I come in?”

“Why? What did I do?”

“No, no. I’m sorry to bother you at home, but you weren’t picking up your cell, and I was in the area. Captain Ohale told me you’d be home, so I thought I’d drop by.”

“I smell a setup. He sent you to check on me.” I opened one side of the double front doors, leaving her to follow as I headed back to the bar. “How do you feel about the Eagles? I think they’re the best thing my generation produced. Drink?” I held up a couple of bottles. One was Patrón, the other some awful peppermint schnapps left over from last Christmas. I put it down and picked up the white wine, waggled what was left.

“I guess—I’m not technically on the clock anymore. Can you turn the music down?”

“Sure,” I shouted. I set down the bottles and clapped my hands a couple of times and the volume went down. “Sorry. Didn’t realize it was so loud. What would you like?”

“Some wine would be nice.”

I switched to Maker’s Mark and splashed the last of the Silver Creek into a long-stemmed glass for her. I followed the detective out onto the deck, where Hector was giving her the once-over. He decided she was okay, and wound around her ankles, commenting as he did so. Siamese are never short on comment.

“Beautiful place.” She took the wine from me. I held on to the railing, realizing my feet were a very long way off. It was important to keep it together, though.

“Thanks. It’s got a name. Hidden Palms.” I sipped my drink. That whole thing about mixed drinks causing a hangover is an urban legend, in my experience. “My ex designed it.”

“Well, he has good taste.”

“Not anymore,” I said, and knocked back the rest of the drink. “I think I better eat something. How about you?”

“Sure.” She sat on one of the teak
Adirondack chairs, Hector climbing aboard her crotch and purring. I walked back into the house, taking careful steps so that I got there without running into anything. I opened the fridge, one of those big silver side-by-sides we all got before the economic bad times made them outré.

“Got some cheese and crackers,” I said, bringing a wedge of
Gouda and a row of saltines on a cutting board back out onto the deck. Thank God Bettina hadn’t stopped picking up a few food items for me during the week—I’d forget to shop.

“Thanks.”

I set the snack on the low teak coffee table, sat next to her, and ate a cracker with cheese on it. Something in my stomach was a good idea—I had that floaty feeling, like nothing and no one really mattered. A good feeling, a feeling I liked—except when a detective was eyeballing me with that assessing look.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said.

“You do?”

“You’re feeling sorry for me.
Poor Dr. Wilson, all alone after her divorce in this big empty house, drinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking that.” Kamani sat up, helped herself to a cracker and cheese. “Should I be feeling sorry for you?” Her big, brown, long-lashed Hawaiian eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Because I know a lot of people who’d trade places with you in a heartbeat.”

“Forget I said that.” I ate another cracker. It was time to focus, and the food was helping drown out the siren song of another drink. “What do you need help with?”

“I wanted your opinion on a case. But I’m thinking I should have made an appointment.” Kamani stood, brushed crumbs off her dark slacks, brushing all the way down to the floor so that Hector’s hairs fell off too. “How about I meet you at your office tomorrow morning?”

“Let me check my book.” I got up, made my careful way across the room to the entry, dug my beaded reading glasses out of my purse along with the little dog-eared date book that makes me feel more secure than saving anything in my phone. “I can do nine o’clock.”

“Good.” She came over, and to my surprise, embraced me. I felt the strength in her strong arms—she probably lifted or something. I needed to do something like that, but for now I just enjoyed her vitality, my second hug in three days. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay.” I shut the door behind her. I teetered my way down the hall and took a shower. I had a good cry in the stall, where I wouldn’t scare Hector. After all, I was the one feeling sorry for myself. I might as well do it up big.

I went to bed, wet hair and all—but not without drinking a quart of water and taking three preventive pills: two Advil and one Tylenol. One thing I knew how to do was head off a hangover.

I unlocked my office at the South Hilo Police Station to meet with Kamani Freitas the next morning. I’d been able to unsnarl my hair by spraying it with detangler, dragging a comb through it with water, and blow-drying the whole thing. I’d spackled concealer onto the bags under my eyes and wore my reading glasses, choosing the pair that were partially shaded, an effect that was almost as good as wearing sunglasses indoors. In my usual outfit of blue polo shirt—supposedly the color of my eyes—orderly blond bob, and twill skirt, I was the epitome of respectable.

Maybe that would erase Freitas’s view through the side door panel of me dancing alone to the Eagles with my cat and a bottle. Probably not, but it was worth a try.

I got behind the desk with my thermos of extra-strong black coffee and decided to stay there, keep the high ground. I’d brought my laptop, and I had a boatload of e-mail to pretend to be busy with when she got here. I glanced around the space. I hadn’t done much with it in the last two years. Still had a couple of my son’s high school paintings on the walls, my lounge chair, a leatherette sofa, and a coffee table with a Japanese sand garden on it, rake invitingly angled.

A penis, complete with testicles, was outlined in the sand garden.

Someone had pranked me. This wasn’t the first time—my office door was locked, but everyone knew where the key was kept—in the key closet in the supply room.

I had to get rid of it before she arrived. I scuttled out from behind the desk and dragged the rake through the genitalia, had it all but gone, when I heard a knock. I saw Freitas’s face looking curiously at me through the little glass window in the door.

I opened it for her, but stood back. “Detective Freitas, please, come in.”

A full retreat to formal was in order, and I went back behind the desk to seal the deal. Kamani Freitas followed me over, set her giant Starbucks cup down on my desk, looked around, found a chair off the stack in the corner, and damn if she didn’t carry it over and park it right next to me on the corner.

I unscrewed my thermos, poured some coffee into the shiny silver lid. “So. Glad we could reschedule. What is this regarding?”

“Sure you got enough coffee there?” Freitas’s voice was dry. I tilted my head so my eyes were behind the tinting and sat back, doing my inscrutable psychologist face. I wasn’t going to dignify that with an answer. “Well, I’m here about a case.”

“I remember that much,” I said, my tone equally dry. “What can I do for the Kona Police Department?”

“It’s a new case. Someone’s embezzling from the Big Island Land Trust, a big nonprofit that leaseholds and manages state lands. We have several candidates, and I wanted your take on who seems the most likely.”

Freitas set a file folder on the desk.

“Detective Freitas. Kamani. This seems like the kind of case best solved by a money trail. Why are you approaching me with this?” I sat back, crossed my legs at the knee, brushed imaginary lint off my skirt.

“True dat.” She used a bit of pidgin. “We’ve uncovered three strong possibles. None of them have clear financial motive or anything solid tying them to the case so far. My chief has authorized me to get your opinion on these three to give us some more direction.”

“I’m going to need fifteen hundred dollars, minimum, plus travel expenses,” I said, thinking of putting in the security measures at my office with this windfall. “I charge five hundred dollars per evaluation, as you know.”

Freitas gave me a long look. “I’m not asking for a full evaluation of each suspect.”

I shrugged, making sure the blue tinting on my glasses covered my eyes. “Take it or leave it. I’ve got plenty of work.” Truth was, I really needed this, but it wouldn’t do to let her know that.

The detective sighed. “Okay, I’ll tell the Chief you played hardball. Submit a bill.” She stood up, tapped the folder. “I’ll e-mail you everything else we have. When do you think you can get to this?”

“Next couple of days. I’ll call you if I’m missing anything. Do you have any video on the suspects? Interview transcripts, things like that?”

“We do have some surveillance footage. I’ll send it on.”

“Sounds good.” I stood up and walked behind her to the door.

“Do people often get into your office?” Freitas turned at the doorway, a tiny wrinkle between arched brows.

“Oh, you saw that.” I shook my head. “Some of the guys are pretty immature. That’s not the one that worries me.”

“What do you mean? I’m still a little worried about
you
, Dr. Wilson.” Her dark brown eyes were wide with sincerity.

“Well, I’m going through a bit of a rough patch. Divorced six months ago. Son left for college.” I found myself tearing up behind the screen of my glasses. “It’s just a lot to get used to, but I’m handling it. Anyway, it’s something else. I told Captain Ohale about it already.”