Chapter 7
Ruby, Lani, and I are still staring out at Hanalei Bay when a bright voice chirps behind us.
“Excuse me? Hi!”
The three of us turn around. We’re still on the lanai, the coffee’s still warm, and the blonde from the pool deck is standing at the top of the steps in her hot-pink sarong and enormous sunglasses, wearing a smile so bright it could power the tiki bar.
“I’m so sorry to bother you,” she says. “Do you know where I can find extra towels? We forgot ours and I didn’t want to call the front desk because I feel like that’s a whole thing and I’m still figuring out where everything is.”
She’s so beautiful that it makes you want to find at least one flaw just to restore your faith in fairness, and I’m looking, I’m genuinely looking, and I’ve got nothing. So much for fairness.
“Not a bother at all,” I say, switching into resort manager mode, which I can do very quickly now after several months of practice—and contrary to popular belief, I actually work better when there’s not a dead body in front of me.
I lean over the railing and flag down one of the cabana boys passing below.
“Can you bring a fresh set of towels to the adult pool? Thank you.” I turn back to her. “They’ll be right down.”
“Oh my gosh, thank you!” She presses both hands together. “You’re a lifesaver. We literally just checked in this morning.”
“Please, let me welcome you.” I offer my hand her way. “Jinx Julep. I manage the resort.”
Her face lights up. “You’re the manager!
It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Kitty. Kitty Champagne.
” She pauses and winces as if she’s explained this before far too many times and it’s taken on a life of its own exactly that many times as well.
“Well, Crockett now, technically, but I kept Champagne because my married name wasn’t exactly sparkling, if you know what I mean.
” She scrunches her nose. “Crockett. It sounds like something you’d shout if you stepped on something pointy in the dark. ”
We all share a quick laugh in honor of the moniker she decided to eschew.
“You two must have quite the story,” Ruby fishes.
“Oh, it’s boring until the good part.” Kitty waves it off, sunny as ever.
“I spent my entire twenties getting cheated on, lied to, and traded in, and then I met Wink, and he treats me like I’m made out of something valuable.
So now the story’s just... nice.” She shrugs like it’s simple, because for her it finally is.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Kitty Champagne,” I say. “These are my friends. Ruby, our social butterfly, and Lani, who runs our kitchen.”
“Oh, I love that!” Kitty beams at them both. “You all work together? That’s so sweet.”
“It sure is,” Ruby beams. “And if you need any tips on finding a hot man, I’m extensively qualified. Fourteen attempts and counting.”
“She’s not kidding,” I say.
Kitty laughs and her blonde curls quiver with the rest of her.
“That’s so kind of you to offer, thank you.
I’m actually here with my husband. We’re sort of on a babymoon, which I know technically means you’re already pregnant, but we’re sort of pre-babymoon.
Like, a moon for the making of the baby.
” She tilts her head. “Which sounds a little clinical when I say it out loud, but my husband, Wink, says we should manifest the whole journey and the journey starts here, so.” She wiggles her shoulders.
“I guess it’s more of a conception moon?
A stork trip? Wink called it a fertility retreat and I told him that makes it sound medical and slightly sad. ”
“How about calling it a honeymoon?” Ruby offers.
“Oh, we’re way past that. We’ve been married almost two years.” Kitty looks out at the resort and her eyes go wide with delight. “This place is absolutely gorgeous, by the way. We checked in and I just stood on the lanai for ten minutes, feeling the warm hug this place had to offer.”
“We have that effect on people,” I say, and mean it.
“We’ve got five acres on the North Shore, three buildings, four pools.
” I gesture broadly. “Building one is where you are, best view on the property. You can see straight across Hanalei Bay from your lanai, and the black sand beach is right there on your doorstep. You’ve even got an adults-only pool, ocean access, and the works. It’s my favorite building.”
“It’s magnificent,” Kitty confirms.
“Building two is what we call our family building.” I gesture behind me.
“It boasts a lava pool with a waterfall, very dramatic, and very Hawaii.” I pause.
“Also directly adjacent to approximately forty children at any given hour, all of whom have opinions about the waterfall and are not shy about expressing them. The families can’t get enough of building two. ”
Kitty gives a solemn nod. “Noted.”
“And building three.” I consider how to put this delicately and then decide not to. “Building three has a pool, too.”
“That’s it?” Kitty blinks my way.
“That’s its only redeeming quality,” I confirm. “It has a pool and it exists and we’re grateful for it.” Mostly.
Lani snorts. “That pool looks like the Olympics left it behind in the ’80s and nobody had the heart to tell it.”
“It does,” I agree with a wince. “We’re working on it.” Or we will be, one day.
“Shaka and Loco are working on it,” Lani corrects. “Eventually. Maybe when they finish the runway that’s going into the ocean.”
“We don’t need to get into the runway,” I say quickly.
Kitty laughs so hard she slaps her thigh. “I love it here already.”
“The buildings need names,” Ruby announces, to no one in particular and everyone in general.
She’s been looking at the property with the expression she gets when she’s decided something needs to be handled and she’s the one to handle it.
“Building one, building two, building three? Those aren’t proper names. That’s an inventory system.”
“I’ve been meaning to address that,” I admit.
“Address it now,” Ruby says. “We have a witness.” She nods at Kitty.
“Coral,” Lani says immediately, like she’s had this ready for a while. “Building one is Coral. Building two is Palm. Building three.” She pauses. “Hibiscus. Everything the island gives you. It’s Hawaii. It’s appropriate.”
“Coral, Palm, and Hibiscus,” I say, trying them out. “I actually love that.”
“Of course you do,” Lani says. “I suggested it.”
“But what about Pearl?” Ruby says.
We all look at her.
“Building one needs to have the name Pearl,” she says. “It’s on the ocean. It has the best view. It should be Pearl.” She considers this for a moment. “And building two can be something romantic like Lanai or Moonrise.” She waves her hand. “Something that makes people feel things. Sexy things.”
I lower my lids at her. “And building three?”
Ruby looks out at building three, with its slightly haunted pool and its general air of having once had higher hopes for itself. “We’ll come back to building three,” she says with a shrug.
“We’ll think about it,” I say. “Lani, send me your three names and we’ll get proper signage made. Ruby, I’ll take Pearl under advisement.”
“You’ll take Pearl as a definitive yes,” Ruby informs me with a swivel of her hips—a dangerous endeavor at her age.
“How about this. I’ll take Pearl under enthusiastic consideration,” I offer.
Kitty claps her hands together. “I love this. I feel like I’m watching a board meeting.”
“It’s exactly like a board meeting,” I say. “Except Lani has a wooden spoon and Ruby has never once followed Lani’s Rules of Order. Or anyone else’s.”
“That’s because I follow my own rules,” Ruby says. “They’re better.”
The four of us laugh it off, with Ruby laughing the loudest and longest.
“It was nice meeting you all,” Kitty says with a wave. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
She takes off, and Ruby watches her go with a warm, slightly wistful expression. “What a lovely girl,” Ruby says, turning back toward the pool. “Her grandfather is going to burn to a crisp down there if she doesn’t get back with that—”
She stops.
Kitty just reached the pool deck. She walks straight to the lounger where the white-haired elderly man is sitting, leans down, and kisses him square on the lips and stays there a beat too long. He puts his arm around her waist and gooses her bottom.
Ruby, Lani, and I just stare.
“That’s,” Lani starts.
“Not her grandfather,” I finish.
“That’s her husband,” Ruby says. “That’s Wink.” A long pause ensues. “Wink is a carpet sample.”
“Ruby.” I bite down on my lip to keep from laughing or crying. Maybe both.
“What? I’m processing.” She presses a hand to her chest. “I said I had a soft spot for older men and I was going to sidle up to her grandfather, and I was talking about her husband, Jinx. I was talking about her husband.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I nearly flirted with a married man.” She gasps.
“You flirt with married men constantly,” Lani reminds her bestie.
“I do, but I like to do it knowingly.” Ruby smooths her muumuu with a modicum of dignity. “There’s an ethical framework.”
We stand there in a row looking at Kitty Champagne applying sunscreen to Wink Crockett’s extremely enthusiastic back hair, and she’s laughing the whole time, and he’s saying something that makes her laugh harder, and they are, against every visual expectation, completely and genuinely adorable.
“She said she’s been burned before,” I say. “Every man her age cheated or left.”
“And she found a man who treats her like gold,” Lani says quietly. “Good for her.”
“He is literally covered in it,” Ruby says. “Actually, he’s covered in silver and gold, but still.”
Halea blows past us with her phone pressed to her ear and her clipboard wedged under her arm, mid-sentence with someone she is clearly handling.
“No, the sponsors are staying. Yes, all of them. Because I told them the show goes on and I said it in my Miss Mango voice.” She covers the phone with one hand and swings toward me without breaking stride.
“PR contact came through, Sis. The pageant board voted at seven this morning to continue the pageant in Vera’s honor, which is a beautiful sentiment that also happens to protect a whole lot of sponsorship money.
The show must go on, and so must the drama.
” She’s already moving again. “I have a sponsor crying on line two.”
I’m still watching Kitty scratch Wink behind the ear when something at the far end of the beach catches my eye.
Past the pool, past the shave ice bar, past the new construction site where I can already hear Shaka and Loco setting up, there’s a figure on the path that runs along the water.
A woman, moving with purpose, her long red hair loose and wild in the morning light.
And at her feet, a small rust-colored puppy keeps perfect pace, alert and slightly manic, clearly late for something important.
I grab Lani’s arm. “That’s her.”
“Who?”
“The woman from last night. The one who was arguing with Vera right before.” I gesture in the general direction of the crime scene tape. “Before the big bang.”
Two big bangs, to be exact.
Both Lani and Ruby look that way, but the woman is moving fast, head down, and her dog is keeping pace.
Spam materializes on the lanai railing beside me as if summoned by the opening of a can.
His good ear locks forward, and his whole body goes still in a way I recognize immediately, because I watched him do it two minutes before the conch shell and the shouting and everything that came after.
Spam Lockdown, round two. Whatever his one-cat security division knows about that dog, he is not sharing it with management.
“We should go talk to her,” I say.
“We should shake her down and ask where she buried the body,” Ruby says as she narrows her eyes on the woman.
“Ruby, the killer didn’t bury the body,” Lani points out. “The body was left on the sand. Although, she nearly buried Koa.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” I mutter. “We should maybe start the investigation,” I say, mostly to myself. “We should go over there right now and—”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.” A deep voice comes from directly behind me. Low, dry, and seasoned with a frustration that has delivered this exact sentence to me before and made its peace with how little it has ever accomplished.
I already know who it is before I turn around, but I turn around anyway, because that voice does things to my body that I have simply accepted as a permanent condition of my life at this point. Have I mentioned I’m a big fan of those things?
“Leave it to the professionals,” Koa says, arms crossed, one of them wrapped in a clean white bandage he’s wearing with indifference, as if being shot is an inconvenience he has personally decided not to dwell on.
I look from him to the red-haired woman disappearing down the path and back again, running the math on how much trouble the truth is about to buy me.
“Define professionals,” I say.
His mouth does the almost-twitching thing that means he’s already lost this argument and knows it.
His eyes, this morning, are the warm Kona-coffee brown they go when he hasn’t slept enough and the sun is hitting them right, and they are doing the thing where they stay on me specifically, steady and warm and not going anywhere.
“Jinx,” he says.
“Koa.” I fight the all-out grin wanting to break out.
He looks at the path, then at me, and uncrosses his arms. “Stay away from the suspects,” he says. “All of them.”
“I manage the resort,” I say. “All of the suspects are currently sleeping in it.”
His jaw does the thing. Then his eyes do a different, more dangerous thing. I’m still taking notes when the corner of his mouth surrenders entirely, which is a thing I’ve only seen twice and never on a weekday.
“Try not to solve my case before I do,” he says. “It’s bad for my ego.”
I make zero promises, and we both know it.