Chapter 6
There’s no protocol for the morning after a murder at a beach resort, which is a shame, because at this point we could really use one.
The police tape is still up. The beach is technically a crime scene. The shave ice machine is already running because Halea believes strongly in the therapeutic properties of frozen treats, and honestly, after last night, I’m not going to argue with her.
Ruby and Lani find me on the lanai with a coconut cream coffee that is doing more for my mental health than anything else currently available to me. Ruby is in a yellow muumuu today, her gold hoops already swinging and fully operational, and Lani has her wooden spoon. We all have our vices.
They settle in on either side of me like bookends, and for a moment all three of us just look at the resort. It is extremely full of women. Extremely.
“I’m just going to say it,” Ruby announces. “Where are all the men?”
“Ruby,” Lani says.
“I’m serious,” Ruby continues. “I counted. There are sixty-one women on this property and approximately six men, and three of them are taken and one of them is a rooster.”
Lani balks. “The rooster is not a man.”
“He absolutely thinks he is.”
She’s not wrong. That rooster has been strutting past the contestants all morning like he’s considering entering the competition just to be around the ladies.
I wrap both hands around my coffee and look out at the resort grounds, which are currently a sea of sarongs, sequins, and extremely committed blowouts.
The Miss Mango banner is still up, gold-foiled and slightly less crooked than yesterday because Halea got to it at seven this morning.
The tiki bar is doing brisk business despite the fact that it’s before noon, which tells you everything about how the contestants processed last night’s events.
The shave ice cones are selling out in mango and passion fruit and coconut, bright and cheerful.
Lani’s banana bread is on a fresh platter near the welcome table, and the cinnamon rolls came out of the oven an hour ago, and the whole property smells like paradise, which is doing a lot of heavy lifting over the crime scene tape forty feet away.
There’s a fresh pan of Lani’s mango butter mochi out too, the coconut on top toasted to golden perfection, and I watch a contestant take one, then quietly take a second, and this is the same woman I personally heard insisting last night that she doesn’t do carbs.
Grief makes hypocrites of us all. So does mango butter mochi.
“I didn’t come to Kauai to look at beautiful women,” Ruby continues her verbal tirade despite the fact nobody asked. “I look like that already.”
Lani swallows a laugh.
“I do,” Ruby insists.
“You do,” I confirm, because I value my life.
Ruby squints at the pool area. “All I’m saying is that the ratio is deeply unfair and someone should address it at the management level.” She looks at me pointedly.
“Ruby, I manage the resort,” I tell her. “Not the gender demographics of the guest list.”
“You could try.” She bats her false lashes at me, and I swear one just up and flew away.
“I really couldn’t.”
Lani is already looking past both of us with her wooden spoon tucked into her apron and her eyes fixed on something near the adult pool. “What on earth,” she says, not quite a question.
Ruby and I both follow her gaze. Down at the pool deck, a young woman in a hot-pink bikini and matching sarong is helping an elderly man settle into a lounge chair, and we can’t help but notice that his arms are covered in what looks like silver fur.
The young woman with him is tall and blonde and genuinely, unfairly beautiful, and I mean beautiful in a way that makes the trade winds behave.
She’s laughing at something he said with an ease that says the two of them are very comfortable with each other.
He hands her a bottle of sunscreen, and takes his shirt off.
The three of us gasp at the very same time. In fact, I think the entire island just gasped as well.
Our jaws unhinge. Our eyes beg to differ with what reality is offering. Our brains are wondering if it’s a catching condition.
The man is somewhere in his late sixties or seventies, built like a retired linebacker after several prosperous decades of fine dining, with a gold pinky ring and a Rolex that catches the sun from forty feet away.
His polo shirt, upon removal, reveals the single most enthusiastic distribution of white chest hair I have ever witnessed in my professional or personal life.
We’re talking hair. An ode to follicles.
Heck, an ode to fur. It travels upward from his waist. It expands generously across his chest and shoulders.
It cascades down both arms, and it appears to continue onto his back with absolutely no intention of stopping.
He is, from the neck down, essentially a silver cloud.
I make a mental note to order more sunscreen for the property. Industrial quantities. Possibly by the drum. And maybe a lint roller.
Ruby inhales very slowly. I’m guessing this isn’t the man she was doing her best to manifest.
“Is he—” Lani starts.
“Yes,” I say.
“All of it?” She marvels.
“Every square inch,” I assure her.
Ruby presses both hands to her cheeks. “Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear,” she breathes. “Fuzzy wuzzy is standing over there!” She doesn’t mind pointing for those who didn’t notice. And honestly, those who didn’t notice are probably on another island.
“Ruby,” Lani tries to reprimand her bestie, but it comes out like a cry for help.
“That man is wearing a full-length fuzzy onesie made entirely of himself.” Ruby leans forward on the railing. “That’s not a chest. That’s insulation. That’s Grizzly Adams after a spa day. That’s a walking, talking carpet sample.”
I wince her way. “Ruby, you might want to keep your voice down.”
“He’s a Chia Pet, Jinx. Someone watered him and forgot to stop.” She tilts her head. “Wait, I think he might be a silverback. Papa Silverback. The man is a human sheepdog!”
“He has a very nice watch,” Lani offers.
“He is a dusty wolf in a Rolex,” Ruby adds.
And, well, she’s not wrong.
“That man is a pipe cleaner in a white polo. He’s Velcro with eyes. He doesn’t need a sweater, Jinx. He is the sweater.”
“The man is that sweet girl’s grandfather,” I say, in my resort manager voice, which I deploy specifically for situations where Ruby is about to cause an incident. “He’s allowed to exist. Fur and all.”
“He is a walking armpit,” Ruby continues with far too much glee, “and I mean that with complete and total admiration, because that Rolex says money, the pinky ring says old money, and the granddaughter flying him to Hawaii says money with no supervision.”
I make a face. “You find everything interesting from a research perspective.”
“That’s called intellectual curiosity, Jinx. It’s one of my best qualities.”
“It’s actually your most dangerous quality,” I counter.
“I can’t help it. He’s Moldy Santa,” Ruby says, oddly with a touch of admiration. “Our long-lost polar uncle. He’s woolly and surprised. He’s Sasquatch with a reservation.”
Lani’s lips start quivering like mad, as if she’s trying not to laugh and failing. “He has a very kind face.”
“He has a very kind Rolex,” Ruby says. “The face is a bonus. He’s got assets, a pulse, and a full head of hair, and at my age you only need two of the three. What the heck. I’ve got a soft spot for old men. I’ll hit on him later.”
“Good morning, ladies.” A voice comes from behind us.
Two of them, actually, deep and cheerful, along with the sound of heavy boots hitting the lanai steps, and I turn around and feel approximately thirty percent better about the morning in an involuntary and completely automatic way, because Shaka and Loco Hale have arrived, and the Hale brothers have never once in their lives failed to improve a scene simply by walking into it.
It’s almost unfair that Koa is hotter than lava, but his brothers are too.
Shaka is the taller one, broad-shouldered with an easy smile, his dark hair combed back, sawdust on his forearms, and he’s wearing a Hale Construction shirt that has seen better days and looks better for it.
Loco is slightly shorter, same build, same easy charm.
He exudes an energy that makes people feel like everything is going to work out fine, without their ever knowing exactly why.
Both of them have their good shirts on today, which means they’re on an official job, which means someone has hired them, which I am absolutely going to ask about.
“You saved us,” Ruby announces before practically throwing herself at them.
“Did we,” Shaka says, amused as he catches her.
“We were drowning in a sea of beautiful women with nowhere to look,” Ruby growls as if she’s freshly offended by this. “And then you showed up. I needed a miracle and the Man Upstairs delivered. Now which of you is my next husband?”
Loco gives a deep belly laugh. “Sorry to break it to you, Ruby, but we’re taken,” he says, as both he and his brother glance over the railing at the pool deck and the assembled contestants and the general spectacle of the Miss Mango morning in progress, and a moment goes by, a noticeable long moment, where both of them take in the view with comfortable appreciation.
They’ve made their peace with the situation.
They’re simply acknowledging it professionally.
There are a lot of mangoes running around out there.
“Very taken,” Shaka confirms, not looking away for another second or two.
“Deeply,” Loco agrees.
Ruby fans herself. “Sure you are.”
I lean on the railing. “What are you two doing here? I don’t have a project on the books this week. Do I?” For all I know I could have requested a moat. It’s been that kind of month, and I’ve signed things.
Shaka hitches his thumb toward the beach. “The pageant hired us. We’re building a runway.”
“A runway?” I blink at him.
“That’s right,” Loco says with a toothy smile so white I’m momentarily blinded. “It goes about thirty feet out over the water, too. They want the runway for the finale to end over the ocean.” He grins. “They want all the drama Kauai can afford.”
My lips twitch. “That sounds like it ends with someone in the water.”
“Oh, somebody’s definitely going in,” Shaka agrees with a cheerful chuckle. “We grew up on this bay. The water is warm, the bottom is sandy, and the tide Saturday nights is basically a welcome mat. Worst case, she surfaces with better hair than she went in with.”
“And the pageant knows this?” I ask only slightly amused.
“The pageant is counting on it.” Loco leans in like he’s sharing insider information.
“The lady in charge asked us, and I quote, whether the drop was photogenic. We said yes, because it is. She said, ‘Then it’s a feature.’” He spreads his hands.
“We’re not building a runway, Jinx. We’re building content. ”
“Wow,” I muse. “This is either going to end beautifully or catastrophically and I genuinely can’t tell which.” I glance at Ruby and Lani. “Given the week we’re having, I’d put money on both.”
“That’s the safest bet on this island,” Lani says, “and I once watched a tourist bet against a rooster.”
Loco looks at the sign above the resort entrance. “‘May the Best Set of Mangoes Win,’” he reads, and then looks at me. “You approved that?”
“That’s the pageant’s sign,” I’m quick to tell him. “I want that on the record, in writing, and possibly on my headstone. My only contribution was standing underneath it and aging.”
Shaka belts out a laugh while Loco shakes his head.
They’re good people, these two. Koa’s brothers, built the new beachfront cabanas, built the shave ice bar, built basically everything on this property that didn’t come with it, and every single time they show up, the resort gets a little better and the morning gets a little easier.
I am aware that I’m biased, because they’re family at this point, Koa’s family, which by extension is starting to feel like mine, and I’m choosing not to examine that too closely before I’ve finished my coffee.
Some realizations require a second cup. Or a third.
They head off down the beach with their tool belts and their easy charm, and the three of us watch them go, and Ruby sighs in a way that is not family friendly.
“You know,” she says, “good-looking men are basically a vitamin.”
“They’re not a vitamin.” Lani shoots her a look.
“Sure they are. They’re good for your mood. Good for circulation. They can even lower stress levels.”
“Or raise them.” Lani dispenses the truth as she knows it.
“They can strengthen the immune system,” Ruby continues, singing the praises of testosterone hoarders everywhere. “I haven’t had a cold since 1987, Jinx, and I want you to think very hard about what else was happening in my life in 1987.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“Three lifeguards and a tennis pro,” Lani says, not looking up. “She’s told me many, many times. And I know every last detail.” She shakes her head my way and makes crazy eyes at me in an effort to deter me from asking any questions.
“Four lifeguards,” Ruby corrects with pride.
“And my bloodwork that year was perfect. My doctor called it a miracle. I called it a regimen.” She watches the brothers recede down the beach and inhales deeply through her nose, like she’s at a wine tasting.
“Right now, I’m absorbing nutrients through my eyes.
It’s called ocular supplementation. I read all about it. ”
Lani clucks her tongue. “You did not read about it.”
“I will,” Ruby says. “Once somebody writes it. Anyway, you’re doing very well for yourself, Jinx.”
I take a long sip of my coconut cream coffee and decline to respond, which Ruby correctly interprets as agreement.
I’d be doing better if I hadn’t found a body last night.
Here’s hoping I’ve met my quota for the week.