Dead On Arrival (A Malia Fern Mystery) Page 4

  Unbelievable.

  I made it to my car door, thankful I hadn’t locked it before going into Pearl’s and sank down into the seat, not caring what happened to the upholstery and watched Natua lecture Pearl. She still had the gall to glare at me through the glass. I returned the favor.

  The whale bellowed one last time as Natua exited the store.

  Angrily yanking batter from my hair, I demanded, “I want her arrested. Your little late night snack — and she is late night if you hadn’t noticed — attacked me for no reason.”

  A self-satisfied smile spread across his face. One that spoke volumes to what he thought of my reaction.

  I sounded jealous. Jealous of an old woman who was not in his league. Not that I was in his league or wanted to be in his league.

  I growled.

  “Malia.”

  I liked the way my name played with his tongue, but squinted angrily at him anyway.

  “Pearl is not my ‘late night snack.’ I haven’t had any ‘snacks’ since I’ve been on Kaua’i. Although why I’m confessing that to you, I have no idea. She’s a lonely middle-aged woman who lost her husband to a younger woman. Surely, you have some compassion for a divorcee in her position?”

  No snacks? Really? My shoulders slumped and my hands fell from the mess in my hair. My anger slipped away as I looked past him into the store. I shouldn’t believe him. About the snacks or about Pearl, but looking at the middle-aged woman standing alone inside her shop did something to me.

  “Officer Natua—” I started.

  “Makaio.”

  I ignored him and went back to mistrusting the womanizer in front of me. “Officer Natua, I need to speak with you about the missing person’s report you took a few days ago.”

  Pearl moved toward the door, her spoon raised in the air. I sunk down in my seat again.

  Natua came to my rescue, or his, I’m not sure which. “Why don’t you follow me to the construction site across the street? There’s a big parking lot and we’ll be able to talk without being interrupted.”

  “Okay,” I agreed before another scene erupted.

  Natua winked and turned toward his patrol car.

  He definitely spelled T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

  Chapter Six

  Makaio.

  I gave myself a mental head thump. Officer Natua was not drawing me in with his hot sexy looks. I have three brothers, so I’ve seen and heard every cheap move a guy will make to get into a girl’s pants.

  Yeah, sure, I was in Makaio’s shorts at the moment, but he wasn’t getting in them. Period.

  Maybe.

  I filled my nose with the salty air and exhaled, loudly. I tried to slow my racing heart as I followed Natua’s patrol car to the construction site. By the time I passed the empty guard shack in the parking lot of The Garden of the Gods, my palms were sweating, and the all-over body itching had returned. I stopped and waited for Officer Natua to swing his vehicle around.

  Vying for more time to control my emotions, I ignored his approach and reached over to pull a small spiral notebook from the glove box. By the time I turned to roll down my window, he was patiently waiting with his car pulled up within inches of my window. His sexy smile dared me to make a move.

  I got right down to business. “You know I’m helping my brother with this case, right?”

  “He said his C.I. was going to ask around for him.”

  I rolled my eyes and continued, “When did you take the report on the missing tourist?”

  “Monday around 0300 hours.”

  “Why would someone report a missing person at three o’clock in the morning?”

  “That’s when the victim’s business partner flew back from Oahu and realized the victim hadn’t been to their condo since he left three days earlier.”

  He was answering my questions as if he had the script in front of him. I was glad one of us did. Coming up with questions was harder than I thought. “Sooo… he’s not just a tourist?”

  “The witness said he wasn’t here on business. He was just here to have a good time. A mini-vacation from the wife.”

  I hid the smile wanting to spread across my face. Despite the fact that we were talking about a guy looking for an island sex toy, Makaio was giving up all the information John wouldn’t. “What’s your victim’s name?” I reveled in my ability to obtain information.

  “What does that have to do with the body?” He asked.

  I scoffed, unsure why he was playing coy. “You’re the one who told John you thought it might be your missing person.”

  “We won’t know that until we get a positive ID.”

  “But…but that’s the direction John was taking the investigation,” I argued.

  “Yes, to identify the body, but my missing person may not be the guy you mutilated.”

  My pen stopped in mid-sentence. Natua had the same sick sense of humor my brother did, and both of them delivered at the expense of my ego. “Give me a frickin’ break. About sixty thousand people live on Kaua’i. Even with the million and a half tourists visiting annually, everyone knows when there’s a death, or a missing person. So why didn’t your report make the local news? What’s different about this case?”

  I waited for him to answer my questions. They were good questions if I did say so myself.

  “Why didn’t your brother give you this information?” He countered.

  “We got in an argument. He wanted to boss me around and I…”

  Hand in the air, he stopped me before I could explain any further. “I get it. He wants a little bit of information from the surfers you hang out with, and you were being nosey.”

  “I wasn’t being nosey!”

  “Okay, fine, if you weren’t being nosey, why the third degree? Once the vic’s ID hits the news, you ask your buddies if they know anything about him. Some say no, others say, ‘I saw some haole businessman scoring some ice at Joe Brah’s. It’s as simple as that. End of story.”

  He suddenly sounded a lot like my brother. “You knew what I wanted, and that my brother wasn’t going to share any information with me.”

  His smile was no less than glorious. “Not until there was distance between us and I was in my car. Then my brain was able to function a little better.”

  I might have lashed out at him if he wasn’t so damn attractive. But then he did the unthinkable. He talked.

  “The missing guy was a business man who was also a recovering addict. His family didn’t want his addiction exposed in the media because his partner believed he was on a drug binge. Since there was no sign of foul play at the condo, his partner assumed the guy fell off the wagon, which it looks like he did, and ended up getting washed off some rocks. Or he walked too far into the surf and lost his footing.”

  Wow, I didn’t expect that much info, but I wasn’t buying it either. “He had on socks.”

  “So he fell off the rocks and drowned.” His skepticism was evident as he yawned. He wasn’t going to jump on my band wagon.

  “And wasn’t found for several days?” I waited for an explanation.

  “The tide carried him out and finally brought him back in.”

  Oh, please. “Nope, the surf’s been puny and there haven’t been any riptides on this end of the island for almost a week. He would have been found sooner if he started on shore. What condo was he staying at?”

  “It’s a private condo in KaPa’a. What did you say you did for a living?”

  We had graduated to a serious conversation about what could have happened to the body. A body I didn’t want to keep visualizing or study in my mind any longer, yet there it was, face-to-face staring at me with real-life gore every time I so much as blinked. It wasn’t the scene of a natural death or an accidental death. I was convinced of it. It was a homicide.

  I don’t know how I knew it, I just felt it. In that split moment when its arm was still attached to the body, it whispered in my ear.

  Help me.

  Obviously, the body didn’t really whisper
in my ear, but if I admit it whispered in my mind, I might have to commit myself to the funny farm.

  “I’m a surf instructor.” He didn’t need to know my other job. “And no, the guy didn’t drown. He was killed.”

  “Okay.” His fingers tapped on the steering wheel.

  We were on the same page. Brainstorming about the case and somehow I found myself more intrigued by the moment. I suddenly understood my brother’s drive, and my dad’s thirty years of what he called working ‘the dark side.’

  Nevertheless, I still had no desire to be caught dead in that ugly uniform.

  “And what makes you think the Menehune aren’t up to their old tricks?” Natua asked, his mouth twitched with humor while his eyes twinkled. The man was a first class flirt if he could make a move while talking about a dead guy.

  “How the hell did we get on the Menehune people?” I asked.

  “Maybe, this was their ploy to bring us together.” He licked his lips again.

  I couldn’t stop the happy dance in my heart, yet wondered where my resolve to resist him had gone. Slapping up emotional reinforcements against him, I delivered the kiss of death, to a great pickup line, with my favorite tactic. A history lesson. “The Menehune aren’t mythical elves who live in the forest, nor are they cupids or leprechauns. They were the first occupants of Kaua’i who were turned into workers and slaves by the Tahitians. Cold hard facts supported by the 1820 census which listed sixty Menehune people as residents on Kaua’i.”

  I knew my Hawaiian history. Elves my ass.

  “Mock me if you want, but the Menehune have pierced your heart with their arrows. Arrows tipped with magic to make you fall in love. With me.” He was relentless in his flirtation. “The census doesn’t give the story behind the numbers.”

  Was he kidding? I couldn’t tell if he was serious. Part of me wanted to jump on the seductive bandwagon. Makaio was serious eye candy. And he’d been better than I could possibly imagine up to this point, but I didn’t want to go down that road. Yet.

  Or did I?

  If he was teasing me, I wouldn’t be able to face any of the cops at KPD. If he used me and spit me out, I wouldn’t be able to face my brother or anyone else for that matter. I’m not a woman who falls for guys like him.

  “No sane person really believes the Menehune are capable of shooting love arrows like cupid. I don’t believe in Menehune elves, and I don’t believe the body I found belonged to a user, either. What’s the name?” I wasn’t leaving without a name.

  He capitulated. “Peter R. Johnson, white male, thirty four years of age from New Mexico. He left behind a wife and a baby boy.”

  To say I was elated when Natua gave in easier than I expected, would be incorrect. In fact, my stomach bottomed out, but it was from a combination of things. One — my soul was inexplicably repentant when I denied the Menehune. Two — I wanted Makaio to chase harder. And three — It had an identity.

  It was no longer just a body. It was a he. He had a name. Peter. Peter Johnson, who had a baby robbed of his father and a grieving wife made into a widow. They deserved better than for me to refer to their loved one as it.

  Chapter Seven

  Officer Natua and I went our separate ways. I had no doubt he was going in search of action he didn’t get from me. I raced home to take my overdue shower, wondering what the hell was happening between me and a guy I knew was a man-whore. He didn’t come across like that, but weren’t the real players deceiving? Didn’t they make you feel like you were the only woman in the world who could possibly affect them so deeply?

  I pulled into the gravel parking lot behind the russet colored strip mall and Private Kaua’EYE’s Investigations, spraying gravel in my haste to get inside. I ran up the outdoor steps to my small studio apartment, grabbing the newly painted off-white railing to help me take the steps two and three at a time.

  I didn’t wait to get in the bathroom before I kicked off my shoes and socks, but paused before stripping off Natua’s clothes. Part of me was reluctant to take off his t-shirt and shorts, something the other side of my psyche — the part that desperately needed cleaning — found disturbing. Yet it couldn’t be denied.

  Even his shorts smelled good.

  Not that I sniffed his shorts. That would so be crossing a line. But his essence drifted from them as I folded them in a neat pile.

  Essence?

  I did a mental headshake and rolled my eyes at the dreamy thoughts sneaking into my head. The man reeked of sex. Period. He was a walking temptation to the female gender. Hell, men would want to get close to him, even if they didn’t swing that way.

  A sex god.

  A sigh escaped my lips. Okay, my imagination was officially out of control. He probably sucked in the sack.

  Shoving his pile of clothes in my hamper, I slammed the lid closed, then headed toward the bathroom. Angry with myself, I turned on the massaging shower head full blast, stepped into the intensely hot water and basked in the simple pleasure of cleansing water. I had been dying for this moment ever since I stumbled upon Mr. Johnson’s body. I lathered the washcloth, soaped myself all over, and tried to rinse all the morning’s anxiety down the drain. But whenever I closed my eyes, Mr. Johnson’s empty eye sockets haunted me — followed me the moment I let my eyelids drift closed.

  Images of Natua’s broad chest finally took away the nightmare. His smile and appreciative look as those deep brown eyes traveled the length of my practically nude body, assaulted my memory. My mind begged for a distraction and my body begged to be touched. My massaging showerhead was too much temptation.

  I can’t remember the last time I had a real date. A real date, with real sex. Hot and wild sex. With a guy. I’m not a one-night-stand kind of wahine and after seeing death, I needed to feel alive. On top of that, Natua didn’t help me quell those latent urges demanding to be satisfied after a long dry spell. So between the no-sex-god-needed shower head and thoughts of one hot cop, I managed to release all the tension built up in my body.

  What can I say? I’m self-reliant. I take care of myself.

  After a shower that satisfied me on several levels, I applied my kapuna wahine’s special lotion to the ugly welts covering my body. My grandmother’s ancient blend of kukui nut oil, aloe, jojoba oil, papaya and some secret ingredient she said she’d give me from her deathbed, was the best thing for any skin breakout.

  After a quick call to my dad to let him know I was in one piece — yes, I shouldn’t have been running at that hour of the day, no, I wouldn’t do it again (until tomorrow) and no, we definitely weren’t going to tell Mom — I went through the mundane tasks of vacuuming and cleaning my apartment (all 390 square feet of it). I found my day off filled with the smell of cleaning products and thoughts of Peter Johnson’s family. The search for their missing loved one was over. They never got the opportunity to be with him on his deathbed, or hear family secrets he promised to share. I could only imagine the torture they endured not knowing the what or the why of it all.

  By late afternoon, I was more than ready to go to work. The wait put me on edge and made me fidgety. I needed to find out just exactly why Mr. Johnson had disappeared and washed up on the beach a few days later, wearing socks.

  I changed into a sport bra tank and board shorts. My usual bikini wouldn’t hide the lingering welts, and the last thing I wanted was to distract the surfers I was going to question. I needed answers, not exclamations of how gross my skin looked.

  Grabbing my exceptionally pretty pink and purple, custom-made board, I headed out the door. I’m not a beginner surfer by any means, but I’ll never get to the big wave level either. I prefer fast zippy rides with water spraying my face and the breeze whipping the hair out of my eyes. It’s like being on the edge of the world waiting to go over. Exhilarating? Yeah. A little scary? Yeah. Do I love it more than my life? YEAH.

  I always get this deep, grounded, satisfied feeling when I put Paradise in the back of my little convertible. (If you haven’t figured it out, I n
ame my boards like other people name their pets. Paradise is the best companion a girl could ask for.) That board, that six foot long, pink and purple fiberglass platform tells you everything you need to know about me. Paradise tells you I love nature and spending time outdoors. She defines my independence, despite my occasional reliance on family for secret recipes and college tuition (that I’m not using at the moment). She hints at the fact that I’m a wahine who likes to accessorize bikinis to her tropical theme. And she likes to ride in style in my MINI Cooper, telling everyone to get out of my way. I may not be big, but I’m quick and won’t let anyone or anything define the road I take.

  The beach was going through its daily afternoon transition when I arrived. Families packing up their gear and abandoning the shady spots they’d laid claim to for the day while dragging screaming kids away from the salty water (the same salty water they’d complained about all day because it burned their eyes and got in their mouths). Surfers headed out into the waves to catch the adrenaline rush they’d been anticipating all day. Everyone wanted to feed that part of the brain that drives humanity to take risks and do the unthinkable.

  We all have our addictions in life.

  Like a symphony warming up for a performance, each instrument playing to its own tune, the surfers scattered in different directions, ready to hit the water and put their toes to the nose. I wanted to join the lineup going out to boost the lip in a perfectly orchestrated concert. All of us ready to entrance the onlookers by ripping through the waves like a rock guitarist shreds his metal strings. Since it also happens to be feeding time for sharks, some people secretly hope our performance will crescendo into screams of agony, as we become dinner for the bottom dwellers, but that doesn’t stop us.

  The homicide case did, however redirect me when I saw a group of friends walking toward the water. I ran to catch up.

  “Aloha,” I greeted them casually, as if it was just another day.

  “Brah, where you been? Did you hear they found a body on the beach this morning? Right down there.” Moa crowded me and pointed toward remnants of yellow crime scene tape waved in the breeze like a silent vigil for Peter Johnson.