Chapter 10 #2
Charlotte shakes her head. “I have a feeling that once Miss Mango is over and the world sees what I’m capable of, none of the personal stuff will matter anyway.
” Something shifts in her expression, a confidence that runs deeper than pageant posture.
“I’ve been building toward this for three years.
My whole life is about to change after this week.
Win or lose, everything is already in motion. ”
“What sort of motion?” Ruby asks with friendly curiosity.
Ruby has wanted to know everything since roughly 1962, and she’s never once stopped.
“The sort that pays very well,” Charlotte says, and smiles, and it’s the most genuine thing she’s produced in the last ten minutes and also the most guarded.
“I have a following. I understand my audience. And the Miss Mango platform—” She glances toward the shoot.
“Let’s just say the timing couldn’t be better. ”
She doesn’t say what the following is for. She doesn’t say what she’s selling. But her eyes have lit up like a woman with a very healthy side business, and she is extremely pleased about it. I make a note of all of it. New folder.
Flash pops up at Charlotte’s elbow. He’s spotted his next shot and he intends to move on it. “Sweetheart.” He points a finger gun at her and clicks his tongue. “The river light is perfect right now. I just need two minutes.”
Charlotte looks at him the way you look at something mildly unpleasant that’s been a permanent fixture of your environment so long you’ve stopped reacting to it. Like mold. Or property taxes. “Fine,” she says, and hands me her cold coffee without looking, and follows him toward the riverbank.
And just like that, I’ve been promoted to the help. I hold the coffee anyway, because you never know what counts as evidence around here, and my standards have gotten flexible.
Lani opens her mouth to say something else, and that is the exact moment Spam the cat, who’s been running his own patrol of the greenbelt at a respectable distance, spots a chicken.
The chicken, to be fair, spots him first and makes a decision.
The decision is to run directly across the swinging bridge.
Spam makes a counter-decision to pursue, and Coconut, who’s been sitting quietly on a flat rock minding her own sweet business, sees Spam running and decides that whatever he’s doing, she’s in, and suddenly both cats are on the swinging bridge at a full sprint chasing a chicken, and the bridge is doing what swinging bridges do when subjected to unscheduled livestock activity.
It swings. A lot.
“Oh no,” I say.
“Oh yes,” Ruby says, and she’s already moving toward the bridge, because Ruby Figgins has never in her life watched something happen when she could be in the middle of it instead.
She gets a good six steps onto the planks before the chicken reverses course and comes back the other way, and Spam reverses with it, and the bridge hits a frequency I can only describe as dangerously enthusiastic.
Ruby grabs the rope rail with both hands as her sun hat goes sideways.
The gold hoops are swinging in an entirely different direction than Ruby is swinging, and she’s making a sound I’ve never heard her make before, somewhere between a laugh and a prayer.
“Ruby!” Lani is standing nearby with her wooden spoon out, as if she intends to use it on the bridge itself. Knowing Lani, the bridge would apologize.
“I’m fine!” Ruby shouts from a forty-five-degree angle. “I am completely—” the bridge surges and plunges “—fine!”
She is not fine. Her hands have left the rope rail, her feet have left the planks, and she’s essentially horizontal over the Hanapepe River. The chicken is nowhere to be seen, because the chicken, having accomplished its goal, has departed. Honestly, I respect the commitment to chaos.
Spam Musubi comes flying in from the greenbelt at a full sprint with all four paws in motion, her ears flat, that goofy grin swapped out for focused intensity.
She hits the bridge at top speed, and the barking she produces is small and extremely urgent and aimed directly up at Ruby, which accomplishes nothing structural but is very emotionally supportive.
“Someone please—” I start.
“I have it.” Koa is already on the bridge, three steps ahead before the rest of us finish registering what’s happening. He read the situation before it finished becoming one. Dating me has turned out to be excellent training.
He reaches Ruby in four strides, gets his good arm around her, and walks her off the bridge like this is simply the current task on his list. And it so was.
Ruby’s feet touch solid ground. She straightens her sun hat, smooths her muumuu, and looks up at Koa.
“My hero,” she says with total sincerity and a lot of swooning.
I’m sort of swooning, too.
“Glad to help,” Koa says as he shoots me a look.
And I look right back at him with pure innocence, since I wasn’t on the bridge and therefore have nothing to answer for. For once. It feels wonderful. I should be uninvolved more often. I hear it does great things for the complexion—and your relationship with a hot detective.
Spam and Coconut emerge from the far bank and trot back across the now-still bridge, without a care in the world. Whatever happened out there had nothing to do with them, and they don’t know what you’re referring to. Troublemakers.
Pickles’s whistle cuts across the greenbelt.
“Everyone gather together, please! We need everyone together right this moment!” She waits for the group to collect itself, contestants and judges and photographers and two cats and one Shiba Inu and one slightly dizzy Ruby Figgins.
“Thank you all for your patience during what has been an incredibly difficult twenty-four hours. I want you to know that this pageant is in good hands.”
A voice floats up from somewhere in the middle of the group. “Did they catch whoever did it? Are we still in danger?”
A murmur moves through the crowd like a wave looking for a shore.
Ruby draws herself up to her full height beside me.
“Don’t you worry,” she announces, projecting to the entire greenbelt, having never once in her life waited to be asked.
“Jinx Julep is on the case! She’s solved a bunch of homicides and she hasn’t lost a killer yet.
” She gestures at me like a lawyer presenting evidence.
“She’s the best amateur detective on the North Shore, possibly the entire island, and she is standing right here. ”
The group applauds—actually applauds. Several people look at me, visibly relieved, as if they’ve just been told their homicidal situation is manageable.
I smile and nod and try to look competent and not like a woman who was ordered to stay out of the case by the actual detective standing four feet to my left.
Have I mentioned how hot he is?
Koa leans down slightly. “Congratulations on the accolades,” he says, his voice quiet. “You now have a target on your back with a killer who knows you’re coming for them.” He straightens up and walks back toward the parking lot.
I stand there with Spam in my arms and Coconut at my feet and forty people who believe in me, and somewhere in the crowd Kali Akoni is watching me with those careful, exhausted eyes.
I have questions for her, too.
All in due time.
Unless, of course, the killer gets to me first.