Chapter 19
By the time we’re back at the resort, the sun has decided none of this is its problem and is shining like a rescue team didn’t just carry a man off a mountain.
The girls are scattered across the beach in various states of recovery, which mostly means lying decoratively on towels and recounting where they were standing when they heard the scream, a story that grows more harrowing each time and currently has at least four contestants claiming they “almost went over too.”
Nobody almost went over. I was there. The only person who almost went over was me, tripping over a branch, which is becoming my signature move here in paradise.
By sunset, at least one of them will claim she was briefly airborne, and by tomorrow’s breakfast, two of them will have survived the fall itself.
Lani works the towels with a tray of mango butter mochi, pressing squares on the traumatized contestants like a medic dispensing comfort, and the strange thing is, it works.
You cannot stay fully hysterical with a piece of warm butter mochi in your hand.
I’ve tested this theory twice now. The data holds.
But nonetheless, I feel less jinxed and more actively cursed, like somebody paid good money to have me hexed and sprang for the expedited shipping.
How are so many homicides related to the Coconut Cove Paradise Resort? And furthermore, why have they started up like a bad rash once I set down roots here?
“All right, girls!” Pickles comes sweeping onto the sand, clapping, rallied and radiant, her grief tucked away somewhere behind the cardigan.
“I know this is tough. But we are going to honor Flash the way he would have wanted, which is by carrying on. The show must go on! The pageant is Saturday and we will not let this beautiful man’s memory be tarnished by quitting. ”
“What about pictures?” a contestant wails. “He was our photographer!”
“We’ll get another photographer,” Pickles says briskly. “Honestly, any idiot can point a camera.”
Ruby’s hand shoots into the air so fast she nearly takes out a passing waiter. “I have a camera,” Ruby announces. “I have an eye. My third husband was a photographer, and I watched him work for eleven months before the marriage ended, which is more than enough to absorb the craft.”
“What ended the marriage?” Halea asks, drifting over with a tray.
“He photographed someone he shouldn’t have,” Ruby says darkly. “Repeatedly. In our home. The divorce took nine days and he kept the camera. I kept everything else.” She extends her hand, which shows off a ring on each finger and three on her middle finger. It feels like a statement.
Ruby claps her hands. “I’m available immediately and I work for tips.”
“Absolutely not,” I say.
“You haven’t seen my portfolio.”
“I’ve seen your driving,” I tell her. “The answer is the same answer.”
Melanie materializes beside me, radiating her signature dark energy. The woman lives on the west side of the island and has fully committed to being its wicked witch. And so, she is officially the Wicked Witch of the West.
“Really?” Melanie growls at me with her arms crossed. “Another one? Another body. And once again, against all odds, you found it.”
“I don’t seek them out, Melanie.” I lift my chin and pretend I see no eerie connection here whatsoever.
“And yet they find you,” she counters. “It’s remarkable, really. We had a perfectly nice resort before you started turning up at every crime scene like a redheaded party favor.” She tilts her head. “Two deaths in one week. People are going to start calling us a true crime destination.”
“Well, we are a destination,” Halea offers. “Sort of a final destination for some. But, technically, that’s good for bookings.”
“Not those kinds of bookings,” Melanie snaps.
“We all know it was no accident,” Ruby says cheerfully, settling into a lounge chair. “That man worked trickier terrain than that trail his whole life. He didn’t trip. Somebody gave him a nudge with a grudge.”
“You are not helping,” Lani says, arriving with a plate of something nobody’s going to eat.
“Can we please not announce murder on the beach where forty hysterical women watched another body get carried out?” She lowers her voice.
“Although, between us, Ruby is right. The man had the balance of a goat. No goat slips off a trail like that.”
“This is the worst staff meeting I have ever attended,” Melanie says, “and I once sat through a four-hour seminar on lost and found procedures.”
“You scheduled that seminar,” I point out.
“It was important.”
“It was four hours. About a drawer. The drawer contains one flip-flop and a pair of reading glasses nobody has claimed since spring,” I’m quick to tell her.
Ruby inches back. “I thought that drawer was first come, first served. Where do you think I got these earrings?”
Spam Musubi comes tearing across the sand, ears flapping, in pursuit of absolutely nothing. She has apparently processed today’s tragedy and elected to move on, which is honestly the healthiest response anyone’s had all day.
And the sight of her snaps something into place for me.
Jelly. Spam Musubi belongs to Jelly, and Jelly is the last suspect I haven’t gotten a real run at, and after what Kali laid at my feet on that ranch, I have questions for her.
I scan the beach for Jelly’s wispy sarong and signature golden-hour positioning.
And yet there’s no sign of Jelly.
What I find instead, coming up the sand toward me, is six feet of tall, dark, and inconveniently handsome, a bandage still wrapped around his left forearm and an expression that goes gentle around the edges when it’s aimed at me and stays regulation-issue for everyone else.
Before he reaches me, though, I get intercepted.
“Jinx!” Kitty bounces up, somehow glowing even in the aftermath of a homicide, towing Wink behind her. “Are you okay? I heard you found him. You poor thing, you must be traumatized. Do you want a mango drink? Wink, please get her one of those magic mango drinks, pronto!”
“I’m okay, Kitty. Really.”
“She’s tougher than she looks,” Wink says warmly. “I can tell. You’ve got the eyes of a woman who doesn’t rattle easy.” He says it like a compliment, which, coming from Wink, it is.
If seeing him shirtless didn’t rattle me, nothing on this island will.
“Isn’t he the best?” Kitty beams up at him, then gasps at someone down the beach.
“Oh—that’s the girl who fainted in solidarity, I have to go check on her, she’s been so brave about it.
” And she’s gone in a flutter, leaving Wink standing there in a tank top that is, once again, displaying the full acreage of his fur.
I try not to look and fail miserably. There is simply so much of him, silver and bronze and improbably furry, like someone upholstered a refrigerator with gray hair.
“You’re staring at my chest,” Wink says, with a twinkle in his eyes.
“I’m assessing it,” I say. “There’s a lot of ground to cover. I’m being thorough.”
“Take your time, sweetheart. Kitty got lost in there once and came out engaged.” He laughs with delight before ambling off after his wife.
And there he goes, the Abominable Snowman of Coconut Cove, beloved cryptid, and I’m still recovering from the visual when Koa finally reaches me.
“Detective,” I say.
“How are you holding up?”
“I’ve been interrogated by my boyfriend, scolded by the resident wicked witch, offered a mango drink, and forced to evaluate Wink Crockett’s pelt, all in the span of about four minutes. So, things are pretty standard around here.”
The corner of his mouth lifts, but the rest of him stays serious, and his good hand finds my elbow, steering me a step away from the towel gallery.
“Do you have some free time tonight?” he asks.
I look up at him. “Detective Hale, are you asking me out on a date, or are you about to arrest me?”
“Would it change your answer?”
“It would change my outfit.”
“It’s not an arrest.” He pauses long enough for his dimples to go off, no smile. “Yet. I’ll keep my options open.” He glances at the sky, where the afternoon’s already tilting gold. “Wear something you can walk in. That’s all you’re getting.”
“That’s not a plan, that’s a ransom note.”
“There’s still daylight,” he says, like that settles anything. “I’ll pick you up at six.”
“Koa. Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
And that’s it. That’s all he gives me, this maddening man, just the ghost of a smile and a thumb moving once against my cheek before he turns to deal with the long night ahead of him.
Six o’clock.
Somewhere on this island a killer is circulating through my resort with a mango drink in one hand and a perfect alibi in the other, and I am standing on a beach picking out an outfit in my head.
Priorities.