Vacations Can Be Murder: The Second Charlie Parker Mystery Read online

I felt sorry for him.

  "I met him about three years ago at a helicopter convention in Las Vegas. He had money, and was looking to invest in some type of helicopter operation. My old aircraft was really tired. It was to a point where I'd either have to put about two hundred grand into a major overhaul on it, or replace it. Going to the convention is like visiting a new car dealer's showroom, while your old clunker sits out in the parking lot. I wanted one of those new ships with all the bells and whistles. I must have been practically drooling.

  "Gil had real business savvy, and we really hit it off. He offered to put up five hundred thousand, and I'd use my two-fifty."

  I did a mental whoa. Seven hundred fifty grand for one of those little whirlybirds? I know I'd counted twenty or so such machines out at the heliport. Fifteen million or so, just sitting out there on the ground.

  "Gil said he didn't want to get involved with the daily operations of the business. He had plenty else going on in California, where he came from. We would treat the money strictly as an equipment loan. That was fine with me. I didn't want a partner trying to butt in and tell me how to run my business. I can see now that I had stars in my eyes when I signed the contract. I didn't realize that the interest rate he wanted was almost twice what the regular aircraft financing companies were charging at the time. And I didn't pay much attention to the clause that allowed him to call in the loan, in full, at any time."

  "So Gil came here, pressuring you for the whole balance, and you didn't have it."

  He nodded, staring at a distant point on the carpet.

  "And, I don't suppose you could have borrowed it from somewhere else? Or satisfied him with part of it?"

  He pulled himself up, waving one hand vaguely. "Well, of course I have contacts."

  He seemed about to go on in that vein, but suddenly slumped again. "Gil just never gave me a chance to work anything out. He wanted all the money, and he wanted it right then."

  I could see that he was emotionally drained. I closed my notebook, and sat with him in silence for a few minutes. It's a terrible thing to watch a man's dream fade away.

  Finally, he spoke: "Charlie, I began to see Gilbert Page, not as the savior of my business dreams, but as a slick con man, with degrading tactics and a terrible temper. I grew to hate him, but I didn't kill him—I swear I didn’t. I need your help."

  It wasn't going to be easy. Money is a powerful motivator, and Mack had about five hundred thousand reasons to want Gil off his back. That fact, coupled with an old-time grudge with the police, didn't make Mack's situation look any too hopeful.

  I felt sorry for him, but then, in my business, it's seldom that I don't feel bad for the clients and the messes they get themselves into. I left Mack sitting at his desk, his fingers rubbing at his weary eyes.

  Mack's shuttle driver gave me a lift back to the hotel, where I retrieved my rental from the parking lot. Mack hadn't given me a lot to go on, so I thought I'd see if I could find out what the police knew. It might give me an edge.

  I also wanted to search out anyone I could find locally who had known Gil Page.

  Kauai General Hospital was only three or four blocks from Paradise's office, a modern four-story structure of gray concrete with deep blue stucco accents. The visitor’s lot was about half full It was a little before ten o'clock.

  Three hours or so into the morning shift, those with seniority might be taking a few minutes extra on their coffee breaks, leaving junior staffers, or perhaps nobody, in charge.

  I felt like a kid on her first day in a new school. I knew the general routine, but it varies from one town to the next. I was nervous that a procedural faux pas would send me to Principal Akito's office.

  I took a chance that the morgue would be in the basement. Riding the elevator down, I formulated a plan.

  Luckily, I had dressed in a linen suit this morning. I snagged an empty clipboard from an unattended counter top, and stopping at a ladies room on the way, I rooted around in my bag for a few items of costume. I pulled my shoulder length straight hair into a ponytail at the nape of my neck, and held it in place with a fabric covered stretchy band. Non-prescription horn rimmed glasses helped convey an air of authority, I hoped. I stuck a few sheets of paper into the clipboard, my car rental receipt, and the Westin's List of Guest Services, among them.

  Well, I would just hold it close to my chest.

  Coming off the elevator, I had noticed a discreet sign indicating that the morgue was down the hall to my right. I emerged from the ladies room, and headed that direction, looking much more confident than I felt.

  The basement corridor was quiet and unpopulated. I had not seen anyone since getting off the elevator.

  The hallway was tiled in white vinyl, patterned with light blue speckles, and polished to a gloss. Upstairs, the walls had been painted pale blue to coordinate, but down here they were institution tan. There were scuff marks on the walls, just at gurney height—so many that I imagined a game of medical bumper cars going on.

  All the doors along the corridor were closed, and I could see double swinging doors at the far end, which I presumed to be the morgue. I tried to walk confidently without allowing my shoes to make any noise on the shiny tile floor. It isn't easy.

  A quick visual survey revealed only one attendant behind the swinging double doors. I hoped to get this over with fast, and be out of there before anyone else showed up. This one was young, twenty-one or -two at most. He was a tall, skinny thing with a sprout of red curls, and freckles so large that they blended together in unusual patches, making me wonder if he was the victim of a dreaded epidermal disease.

  I waved my open wallet in his general direction, as I consulted the top sheet on my clipboard.

  "I'm investigating the Gilbert Page case. That's P-A-G-E. I need to see the autopsy report, and if you have it, the police report as well." I clamped my lips together tightly, and stood with my arms crossed.

  "Yyess, ma'am." He stammered over the words like I was an IRS auditor asking him to show me his dependents. He began clumsily rummaging through a file drawer in the desk.

  "Here's the file," he announced, handing it to me.

  I flipped it open, and glanced over the pages. I tsk tsked a couple of times, and consulted my clipboard again.

  "Already, my secretary has a couple of vital facts wrong. I'll need copies of these for my files. You do have a copier here, don't you?"

  "Oh, yes ma'am."

  I shoved the folder toward him. "Fine. The top two pages, please."

  He practically went down face first in his attempt to clear his ungainly size twelves from the rolling wheels of his swivel chair. He blushed the color of a ripe watermelon, and stumbled into a little room behind him. I glanced at my watch.

  Fifteen minutes had passed since I'd entered the building. I wondered if his supervisor would come back any minute now, and demand to see my credentials. I willed him to hurry.

  “Here they are, ma’am,” he said, returning from the other room with a neat sheaf of papers.

  I tucked the copies safely into my clipboard. "You've been most helpful," I said, gracing him with a smile.

  Back in the ladies room, I pulled the papers from the clipboard, and jammed them into my bag. The glasses were beginning to make me feel weird, so I shoved them in there, too.

  As nonchalantly as possible, I dropped off the clipboard where I had found it, and pressed the elevator button. The girl sitting at the desk didn't even look up.

  I waited until I was back in the car to take out the papers and re-read them. It looked like pretty standard stuff. Time of death: between 10 and 12 p.m. Cause of death: blow to the back of the skull with a blunt instrument. Hmm, the proverbial blunt instrument. The police report didn't have any further notation.

  So, they didn't know what the weapon was yet either. Victim's blood type was A positive. So common that there was a very good chance it would match they type they found in the helicopter.

  I read through the police report twic
e. I couldn't see anything incriminating enough to warrant throwing Mack in jail at midnight last night. Drake had told me Akito had it in for Mack. I'd say. Back on the mainland, he’d be looking square in the face of a false arrest suit.

  Something caught my eye that I'd missed the first time through. The body had been identified and claimed by Mrs. Catherine Page. The wife, no doubt. I'd need to find her, and ask some questions before she left the island.

  Chapter 6

  I had a hunch about where to reach Mrs. Page, and figured it would be quicker to follow it up by telephone. There was a bank of pay phones right outside the entrance to the hospital.

  "Aloha, Westin Kauai." An extremely cordial male voice greeted me. I always picture such voices as belonging to tall, tan guys with muscles like iron. They generally turn out to be short, overweight, and fifty.

  "Yes, do you have a Mrs. Catherine Page registered?"

  "One moment." The good-looking voice came right back. "Yes, ma'am, she is registered. However, her key is here at the desk, so apparently she is out."

  "Thank you, I'll try later."

  It figured. Once exposed to the fine life of first class hotels, she was hardly likely to check into a cheap little motel down the street.

  I was fairly certain that she would either be at a funeral home arranging for her husband's body to be shipped back to the mainland, or at Akito's office. Since I didn't know what she looked like, I couldn't very well go cruising around town hoping to bump into her somewhere.

  It was not even noon yet, but my three a.m. awakening was beginning to tell on me. My eyelids felt droopy, and I had that curious lightheadedness that comes from either lack of sleep or a terrific bender. I sat in the car for a few minutes fighting a strong urge to crawl over into the back seat for a nap.

  Maybe I just needed food. It had been almost six hours since breakfast.

  I started the car, and put the top down. I figured either the wind in my face would refresh me, or the sun on my head would lull me to sleep. I pulled out of the parking lot onto Kuhio Highway.

  According to my map, this would eventually lead to Rice Street, and back to the hotel.

  Kuhio, I discovered, held Kauai's version of fast food row. I didn't think I could handle the grease in fried chicken, so I turned in at the golden arches. I took the reports inside with me, and pondered over them as I polished off a Big Mac, fries, and a Coke.

  I don't know what I expected the reports to yield. They didn't say anything different than they had thirty minutes earlier.

  Back at the hotel, I picked up a house phone in the lobby, and used my former ploy to find out Catherine Page's room number. She was on the eighth floor, one above mine. Apparently, she didn't want to stay in hubby's room which was already paid for. Imagine that.

  I knew if I quit moving, I'd be asleep in minutes. Better stick with it. I took the elevator to the eighth floor, watching with longing as my own seventh floor slipped by.

  Catherine Page answered the knock on her door so quickly, I almost believed she was expecting someone.

  She let me in after giving my business card a cursory tired appraisal. She was about five-four, slim, with medium length brown hair the drab color of a cardboard box. She wore a linen suit in a cream colored shade, with a matching silk blouse, obviously expensive. She had once been an attractive woman, but something was a tad off. The upper eyelids sagged, the mouth was pinched into a thin colorless line. I could see fine blue veins in her throat, making her look fragile.

  Her age had been listed on the police report as forty-three, but she sure looked fifty-ish to me. Her nose already showed deep enlarged pores, and her mouth was rimmed by the fine lines of a heavy smoker.

  But, there was something else, something in the set of her shoulders. The phrase that leapt to my mind was battle-weary.

  "Would you like a drink?" she offered.

  I declined, but told her to go ahead. One drink would put me on my tail in five minutes flat.

  She stepped to the mini-bar, and chose a glass. I noticed that she had a full-size bottle of bourbon sitting there. Even the wealthy don't indulge in the outrageous prices of the mini-bar, I guess.

  She poured her drink, and lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the last one, still smoldering in the ashtray.

  "I know this is a bad time for you, and I'm sorry to intrude." I've found when I'm about to intrude on the most personal aspects of someone's life, it's a good idea to at least apologize for doing it.

  Her mouth was engaged with the rim of her glass, and she waved one wrist limply toward me, as if to say "no problem." A small sprinkle of ash drifted down to the carpet. We each took one of the room's upholstered chairs which were about as comfortable as concrete stadium bleachers. I began by explaining that I was gathering evidence in hopes of helping Mack Garvey.

  "Were you aware of the purpose of your husband's trip here?"

  She huffed a puff of smoke out her nostrils, which I took to be a chuckle. I hadn't meant it that way, but I realized she knew about Susan Turner.

  "I suppose you mean, did I know he was calling on Mack Garvey?” She tapped the cigarette against the edge of the ashtray. “Yes, I did. They had some kind of business deal. I'm not sure what it was. I only met Mack once, on a previous trip to Kauai, although I'm not sure he'd remember me. We stayed here at the Westin, and Gil had him come by for drinks out by the pool. My skin doesn't take the sun well, so I came back inside right after the introductions."

  "When was the last time you spoke to your husband?"

  "The night he died. Let's see, it was late—probably about eleven o'clock. That would be about eight p.m. here. We talked about our son, Jason."

  "Was there anything unusual about the conversation? Did he say anything about Mack?"

  The battle weary look came into her eyes, stronger than ever. "No, the conversation was very typical."

  I studied her face while she drained her drink. She reminded me of a dog I knew once who was kicked around a lot by its owner. It never fought back. It just became resigned to the kicking.

  "Tell me about Jason."

  Her face softened considerably, and there was almost a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. She picked up the ashtray off the table, and made a few seconds of busy work as she elaborately rolled the ash from the end of her cigarette.

  "He's twenty. He attended two years at Stanford, and lived on campus there, but now he's back home."

  "Which is...?"

  "Mill Valley. A lovely, quiet spot right outside San Francisco. Anyway, Jason says he's 'bummed out' on school, and wants to take time off. He'd like to try the race car circuit."

  "Umm. An expensive hobby, I hear."

  "Yes, I suppose so." Her voice was small and drifty again. I got the idea she didn't comprehend that race cars and loaves of bread weren't in the same price range.

  "Did Jason overhear that phone conversation between you and Gil?"

  "No, he wasn't home. He had stayed over with a friend for a couple of days."

  "Male or female?"

  "Probably his friend, Mark. They work on their race car together all the time."

  Her thoughts turned inward, I could tell, and she smiled indulgently. "Poor little Jennifer. That's the Hightower's daughter, down the road. She's crazy about Jason. What girl wouldn't be? He's a handsome boy. But, he's so wrapped up in that car, he doesn't give her a second glance. She sits around, hoping he'll call her, but he never has the time."

  I wondered what any of this had to do with anything, then realized it didn't. Catherine's bourbon was merely rambling.

  "I may want to speak with Jason," I interrupted. "How could I get in touch with him?"

  She wrote out two numbers for me. One was their home, and the other was for Jason's racing friend, Mark Cramer. She said I would surely find him one place or the other.

  There didn't seem to be much more she could tell me and I left a few minutes later.

  An eternal optimist, I hoped my luck w
ould hold, and I'd find Susan Turner in. I thought about Catherine Page as I rode the elevator up to the tenth floor.

  A simple check of the phone records would confirm whether she had talked to Gil from California that night. She didn't strike me as a wielder of blunt objects, anyway. Still, I couldn't disregard that beaten-pup look. Sometimes the quiet ones will fool you.

  And, she certainly had money enough to pay top quality help for any service she needed.

  The elevator doors slid open on number ten, and I glanced both ways before stepping out. Susan's room was about four doors down, on the left. As I approached, I realized the young woman walking toward me had just left that room.

  "Susan?"

  She stopped, and appraised me.

  She was a big girl, about twenty-four years old, five-eight or -nine, I'd guess, and probably a hundred forty pounds, without an ounce of fat on her. She had the solid body of an athlete. Spandex shorts hugged her muscular thighs, and the oversize T-shirt she wore didn't hide the well-developed neck and shoulders. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a neat French braid. Her eyes looked haggard.

  "Can we talk a minute?" I showed her my card, and she reopened the door to her room.

  She had apparently tried out the concrete bleacher chairs already, because she opted for the bed. Not being familiar enough with her to share the bed, I got stuck with one of the chairs.

  "I was just going down to exercise. Doing aerobics helps me when I feel bad."

  Two puddles of moisture pooled in her lower eyelids. Her full lips settled into a little pout, the kind favored by teen models.

  "Yes, I imagine it was quite a shock to learn about Gil."

  Her lower lip quivered, and she nodded without speaking.

  "Look, I won't go through any cute pretenses that you're traveling with Gil as his secretary, or anything. I'm just trying to help a friend. How did you and Gil meet in the first place?"

  She went into the bathroom for a Kleenex, and came back dabbing at her eyes.

  "He used to come into the club where I worked out. In the beginning, he said he was concerned about his cholesterol. He thought aerobics classes would help. We saw each other at class three times a week for over a year.”