Chapter 23
The Kauai Police Department holding cell is, I’ll be honest, nicer than my first apartment.
It’s clean and bright and smells faintly of pine cleaner and the ocean, because on this island even incarceration comes with a sea breeze through a high window.
There’s a bench. There’s a cinderblock wall painted a soothing shade of institutional beige.
There’s a poster about knowing your rights that Ruby has already critiqued for its font choices.
And there’s the three of us, still damp from the blowhole, sitting in a row like the world’s least convincing crime syndicate.
A groan works its way up my throat. “I want to state for the record that I have never been arrested before moving to this island, and I’ve now been adjacent to it twice in one week.”
“Adjacent?” Lani scoffs. “We’re in the cell, Jinx. That’s not adjacent. That’s the thing itself. We’re sitting behind bars.”
“We haven’t been charged,” I point out.
Lani blinks. “Charged is a technicality.”
“I’ve survived worse technicalities,” I say, though at the moment I can’t name one.
“What I want to know is where are the men?” Ruby shakes her fist with the demand.
“What men?” I ask.
“Any men. A jailer. A bailiff. A handsome wrongly accused stranger in the next cell with a tragic backstory and excellent forearms.” She fans herself.
“There is always supposed to be a man. I’ve been arrested on four continents and there is always a man, Jinx.
This is the least romantic incarceration of my life. ”
“You’d get sent to a women’s prison anyway,” Lani says.
Ruby’s face falls so fast it’s almost audible. “A what?”
“A women’s prison,” Lani doubles down on the gender-specific threat. “That’s where they’d send you. And there would be no men at all. Just you and the laundry detail for eight to ten.”
Ruby lets out a wail of genuine anguish and grips the bars. “GET ME OUT OF HERE! I HAVE NEEDS AND A SOCIAL CALENDAR!”
“She’s bananas.” Lani turns to me.
“You just figured this out?” I hike a brow her way.
“You’re the one who followed her onto the lava rocks, despite the sign.”
“How do you know I wasn’t following you?” I shoot right back.
“All right, all right.” Ruby crosses her arms like a referee. “That’s enough, ladies. Now back to the sexy bailiffs. Where can a girl get her hands on one of those? Asking for a friend whose name rhymes with shoobee doobee.”
“Speaking of men,” Lani chooses to ignore her bestie as she turns to me. “Aren’t you dating the lead detective? Shouldn’t he be here by now, kicking the door down, sweeping you into his arms, the whole production?”
“Knowing Koa?” I lean back against the beige wall.
“He’ll leave us in here a few hours on purpose to let us marinate.
Teach me a lesson about following Ruby past signage that specifically threatens prosecution.
” I consider this for a moment. “He won’t even be mad.
That’s the worst part. He’ll just look at me with those sexy eyes and say something like ‘The signage was very clear,’ or ‘Same time next week?’ and I’ll have to live with that. ”
“Romance,” Ruby sighs.
“It’s not nothing,” I admit.
Lani stands up and gives the cell a slow once-over, the way she inspects a delivery of produce she already suspects is subpar. The bars get a quick shake. The hinges get a look. She’s broken out of worse, is the message, and I know better than to ask for details.
“Okay. The window is too high,” she starts, “and the door is solid. But the bars on the window up there look older than I am, and I’m extremely old, so—”
“Are we breaking out?” Ruby perks up. “I love breaking out. It’s on my bucket list right under get arrested, and would you look at that. We’re killing two birds with one illegal stone.”
Speaking of birdies I’d like to kill. Now that I’m out of circulation, I’m sure Birdie will be sinking her talons into Koa’s back the first chance she gets. And as much as Ruby’s scheme to flee the scene is appealing, the logistics don’t look good.
I shake my head. “I’m sorry, but I feel like I have to point out that breaking out of a police station seems like a surefire way to end up dead.”
Ruby grunts. “Especially since there’s a serial killer loose on this island, and here we are, sitting ducks, locked in a box, with no protection and no exit and—” She stops. Her eyes go wide. Slowly, she turns to look at me.
“Ruby.” I inch back.
“You find all the bodies,” Ruby whispers.
“Ruby, do not.” I hold up a finger and she pushes it right back down.
“You do.” Lani turns my way, her face doing something I do not care for. “Both of them. Vera. Flash. And all those who came before them! You were right there. Every time. Against all odds, as Melanie keeps saying.”
“I can’t help it. I trip over them!”
“That’s exactly what the killer would say,” Ruby breathes, sliding one inch down the bench away from me.
“Please,” I say. “I’m dating the detective.”
“And it’s the perfect cover,” Lani murmurs, nodding gravely—or approvingly. It’s hard to tell which.
For one full, ridiculous second the two of them stare at me like I’m a serial killer in a sundress, and I stare back, deeply insulted, and then Ruby’s demeanor cracks and she starts cackling and Lani follows and the whole thing collapses like a house of homicidal cards.
“You should have seen your face,” Ruby wheezes. “You, a killer? No, no, not you. You’d confess before you finished planning it. Probably to Koa. Over dinner. And then if you were smart, you’d offer yourself up for dessert.”
I shoot her a look. “I’m choosing to take that as exoneration.” And a good idea.
“Take it however you like, toots, you’re cleared.”
Lani sits back down, wiping her eyes. “Okay. We’re stuck in here a while regardless. Let’s take our minds off it. Let’s talk about murder.”
Our murder meet-and-greet has officially relocated to county jail. Attendance is excellent, mostly because the door is locked.
“Finally,” Ruby says, settling in like we’re about to play cards. “Who’s on first? Who killed my fourteenth husband before I could even get him to the altar? Do you know what Flash and I could have been, Jinx? I had plans for that man. I had a honeymoon itinerary.”
“You met him four days ago,” I say.
“Love doesn’t read a calendar.”
“All right.” I tick them off, because somebody has to organize this.
“You want a proper murder board? Here’s the board.
Charlotte Ashby-Wells. Old Charleston money, garden-party face, and she’s running something quiet and online called the Velvet Veranda that moves more cash than any hobby should.
Vera knew about it. Jelly all but said Vera was squeezing her over it. ”
“Now there’s a motive,” Ruby says approvingly. “Squeezing is always a motive.”
“And then there’s Flash,” I say. “He spent decades on the circuit, photographed everything, and told me to my face he knew who killed Vera and was scared to say it out loud. Eighteen hours later he’s at the bottom of the Kalalau Trail with his neck in the wrong direction and his camera still ready to take the perfect shot.
” I shake my head. “He didn’t slip. Somebody made sure he never finished that sentence. ”
“Poor man,” Lani says quietly. “He was so nice. He called me darling.”
“He called everyone darling,” Ruby sniffs. “But he kissed my hand. We were practically engaged. I’m a widow fourteen times over now, and I didn’t even get the ring.”
“Then there’s Kali,” I go on in lieu of rolling my eyes.
“The local girl, the obvious potential winner, the hometown story everyone loves. And for some reason Vera spent her last month trying to dig up a way to disqualify her. You don’t try that hard to sink a sure thing unless the sure thing scares you, and I have no idea why a frontrunner would scare the director. ”
“And Jelly?” Lani asks.
“Jelly told me herself, today, that Vera had something on her. Something old that could’ve sunk her clothing line if it dropped at the wrong moment.
She also admitted she wasn’t grieving. She basically handed me her own motive and dared me to do something with it.
” I frown. “Which is either the most honest thing anybody’s done all week or the wiliest.”
“And Pickles,” Ruby says.
A moment drifts by.
“Everybody loves Pickles,” I say with a frown.
“You said that about a woman in a cardigan and then made a face,” Lani notes. “What did Jelly say about her?”
“Something about Pickles always knowing who’s going to win. That she owns her girls. That she has them by the—” I wave a hand. “It was gossip. Sour grapes. I don’t know.”
“So,” Ruby says, slapping her thighs. “Where do we dig?”
“The Velvet Veranda.” I’m already sure of it. “Whatever Charlotte is running, Vera was onto her, and Flash photographed everyone so he might have been onto her too. We find out what the Velvet Veranda actually is, and I think a few things start lining up.”
“Agreed,” Lani says. “That’ll be the first thing we do when we’re free. Whenever that—”
She stops cold and looks at the floor.
There, ambling out from under the bench, without a single care, dressed for the occasion in gleaming mahogany, and fearing no law, is a cockroach the size of a minivan.
The cell erupts as the three of us explode all at once.
“I NEED OUT,” Ruby bellows, back on her feet and at the bars in a single motion no woman her age should be capable of. “I’M A CELEbrITY, GET ME OUT OF HERE! GUARD! GUARD, THERE IS WILDLIFE IN HERE!”
“It’s just a roach, Ruby,” I call out, trying not to look petrified myself.
“It’s the size of Pele!” Ruby counters.
She’s not wrong.
A young officer appears at the end of the hall, looking deeply reluctant to involve himself.
“Well, hey there, hot stuff!” Ruby presses against the bars, switching instantly from terror to seduction, which is its own kind of horrifying.
“Young man. Get us out of this cell and I’ll marry you.
I mean it.” For some reason this doesn’t register as a threat to her, but judging by the look on his face, it sure does to him.
“I’m a generous widow with a clean prenup and a beachfront property! ”
Lani rolls her eyes. “He’s twenty-five, Ruby.”
“I’m flexible on age and everything else!”
“I’ll give you free cinnamon rolls,” Lani cuts in, all business while elbowing Ruby aside.
“For life. Delicious ones. I’m the cook at the Coconut Cove Paradise Resort and people have bribed me with gold for the recipe alone.
You let us out of here and you will never pay for breakfast again as long as you live! ”
The officer hesitates. I can tell the cinnamon rolls have hit home in a way the marriage proposal did not, and for one shining moment I think Lani’s sweet treats might genuinely break us out of the Kauai PD.
And if it works, I’ll eat an entire sheet pan of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls to celebrate. What can I say? I’m hungry.
And then a familiar voice comes down the hall, dry as the lava rocks we got arrested on. “They’re with me.”
I look up. Koa is standing at the end of the corridor with his badge clipped to his belt and his bandaged forearm and that particular twitch of his mouth that means he is somewhere between exasperated and entertained and is not going to tell me which.
The evening light is coming in sideways through the window and catching him at an angle that should be illegal in a building dedicated to enforcing the law, and even behind bars, damp, traumatized by a roach, and freshly accused of double homicide by my two best friends, I feel my entire stupid heart do the thing it does whenever Koa Hale is in the vicinity.
“Detective Hale,” I say. “It took you long enough.” I’m only half-teasing.
“You followed Ruby past a prosecution sign onto wet lava rock.” He pulls the keys. “I came as fast as my better judgment allowed.”
So that’s what he went with.
And as the cell door swings open and Ruby tries to propose to my boyfriend out of sheer momentum, I realize that somewhere out there a patient killer is about to get a good night’s sleep, the pageant is tomorrow, and I’ve got exactly one lead—something called the Velvet Veranda.
And I have one evening of freedom left to crack this thing wide open like a coconut.