Chapter 26
The black sand at the far end of the beach may as well be on a different island.
Twenty feet past the last tiki torch, the light just gives up. The music grows thin and far away behind me, the laughter folds into the sound of the waves, and the sand underfoot turns from gold to deep volcanic black, cool and alien, Hanalei Bay heaving dark and loud against the shore.
And there at the waterline stands Patricia Patrini, better known as Pickles.
Alone.
Her white cardigan sits over tan slacks and sensible shoes.
Even her beige tote bag looks sensible. Nothing about her says double homicide, which I suppose is the point.
You don’t run a racket for thirty years by dressing like a racket.
And she has an ear tipped toward the surf as if she’s waiting for it to tell her something.
She doesn’t turn around when I stop behind her. It’s almost as if she already knows. Either that or she has no clue I’m here.
“Beautiful, isn’t it,” she says softly, dismantling my assumption. “I meant what I told you the other day. I could just die here.”
“Funny choice of words,” I say, “considering.”
“Considering what, dear?”
“Considering this is where Vera died. Right here on this stretch of sand, that first night.” Spam Musubi has gone rigid and silent in my arms, her whole small body pointing at the woman in the cardigan.
“I know, Pickles,” I tell her. “I figured it out about ten minutes ago, which I’ll admit is later than I’d like, but the point is, I got there. ”
Pickles turns, and her face is doing that warm, puzzled, grandmotherly thing it does so well. “Figured what out? Jinx, you’ve had a dreadful week. I think the stress has—”
“You always know who’s going to win.” I don’t let her finish.
“Thirty-plus years and you’ve never once been wrong.
Everyone thinks it’s a gift. But it’s not a gift.
You decide it. You’ve been brokering these crowns since before half these girls were born.
The right rooms, the right people, the right outcomes.
You told me that yourself, then you caught it and glossed over it.
You fix pageants, Pickles. You sell the result to the highest bidder, and you’ve never been caught, because who on earth would suspect the sweet old coach in the soft cardigan.
And by the way, I should have known something nefarious was happening with you because who wears a cardigan every livelong day in this heat?
” I wince because I’m not sure why I just brought up a fashion offense in the same breath as murder.
Not that I’ve actually brought up the murder just yet, but oh what the heck, my mind is turning into mango pulp at this point.
“Oh, sweetheart.” She shakes her head sadly.
“Is this about Kali? She’s a lovely girl.
She simply wasn’t going to place, and I have an eye for these things.
” She leans in. “You know who you should really be looking at for all this trouble? Charlotte. That Velvet Veranda business is filthy, Jinx. Vera was blackmailing her over it. If you want a woman with a reason to—”
“Stop handing me Charlotte.” My voice comes out flatter than I expected. “You’ve done it twice now. You’re not even being subtle about it.”
“I’m trying to help you—”
“Kali was the obvious winner. She had this thing on lock. The whole island wanted her. And weeks ago, before a single judge laid eyes on a single girl, you told Jelly that Kali wasn’t going to win.
” I take a step closer. “You knew. Because you’d already sold the crown to somebody else.
And Vera found out. Vera knew you’d fixed it, and she was going to blow the whole thing open—so she started making noise about disqualifying Kali, loud and public, because a disqualified frontrunner is a scandal, and a scandal is a spotlight, and a spotlight was the last thing you could afford.
The two of you were on a collision course over a teenager’s tiara. ”
She doesn’t flinch, and a thought comes to me.
“She was going to turn you in, wasn’t she?
” I ask. “So you shot her on this beach and you carried that trophy around all night like a grieving friend. And when Flash figured out what his own photos showed, you walked him up the Kalalau Trail and you pushed him off it before he could utter your name.” I’m shaking, but I keep my voice level.
Pickles turns to me slowly, and the grandmother is still fully in place.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Her face folds into something soft and sad and worried, all at once.
“You found two bodies this week. Two. That’s more than anyone should ever have to carry.
It does things to a person’s mind, grief like that.
You’re seeing shapes in the dark that aren’t there. ”
“I’m not seeing shapes.”
“You’re exhausted, dear. You’ve been arrested, you’ve been up half the night, you’re running on fumes and mango drinks.
” She reaches out and pats my arm, warm as ever.
“Come sit down with me. Let’s get you some water and we’ll wait for that handsome detective of yours together. He’ll sort all of this out.”
“Flash told me he knew who did it,” I say. “The day before he died. He was scared, Pickles. He kept looking over his shoulder.”
“And isn’t that just heartbreaking.” She shakes her head, eyes shining.
“That poor man saw danger everywhere. All those years on the circuit, all those cameras—he collected secrets like other people collect stamps, and it made him nervous as a cat. If Flash told you he knew who killed Vera, he told six other people the same thing. He loved an audience.” A gentle, pitying smile.
“He slipped on a wet trail, dear. I begged him to wear proper shoes.”
“You’re very good at this,” I say, and I mean it, and it comes out sounding like a threat.
“I’m just an old woman, Jinx.” The smile doesn’t waver.
“I coach girls to smile under pressure. I’ve never so much as had a parking ticket.
Look at me.” She spreads her cardiganed arms. “Do I look like someone who could hurt a soul? You’re going to feel just awful about this in the morning, and I’m going to forgive you for it, because that’s the kind of week it’s been for all of us. ”
And that’s the one that does it. Because look at me is exactly the trick. It’s always been the trick.
“There’s only one way you know how a thing ends before it starts, Pickles,” I say.
“You don’t have a gift, and you don’t have an eye.
You have a ledger. You already know every ending because you’re the one who writes them.
” I take a step closer. “You didn’t predict Kali would lose. You sentenced her to it.”
For a long moment she says nothing.
Then Pickles lifts her chin. Just slightly.
A small, proud, final motion, the kind a woman makes when she’s decided the game is over and she’d rather lose it standing up than keep crawling.
The grandmother doesn’t argue. The grandmother doesn’t fold.
The grandmother simply steps aside, because there’s no more use for her.
And I know, in the pit of my stomach, that I’ve bested her—and that being right might be the most dangerous thing I’ve done all week.
Her face doesn’t shatter. That’s the part that turns my stomach. The warmth simply drains out of it like water out of a tub, the twinkle in her eye grows cold and reptilian, and what’s left underneath is the calmest, and cruelest thing I have ever seen.
“Pageants,” she repeats, and her voice has changed too, lower, drier, every smooth edge replaced with splinters.
“You say it like it’s no big deal. Do you have any idea what a crown is worth, Jinx?
What families will pay to make their daughter the girl who won?
Doors open for a Miss Mango that stay shut for a runner-up.
Contracts. Marriages. Careers. I sell certainty in a business built on hope, and certainty commands a premium.
I have built an empire one tiara at a time for over thirty years. Thirty years of perfect work.”
“It was perfectly criminal.”
“Maybe so.” Her hand drifts to the tote bag on her arm.
“And then Vera found my ledger. That greedy, sloppy, blackmailing fool. She’d spent her whole career collecting everyone’s secrets, and mine was the biggest one she ever caught.
She wanted in. Half. Half of thirty years, or she’d expose the whole arrangement, and every crown I ever placed would come with an asterisk.
And when I declined, she went to work on Kali.
Everyone thought she was digging for a way to disqualify that girl.
Vera herself went out of her way to make it look that way.
She wanted me to believe it. She wanted to blindside me.
Even you thought so, dear, and you’re cleverer than most. Vera was doing the opposite. She was armoring her.”
“What?” I say, stunned, not sure that I heard her right.
“I didn’t stutter,” Pickles goes on. “Vera was finding every skeleton in that child’s closet before I could, so that the one contestant I could not allow to win would be untouchable.
That was her price. Half of everything, or the farm girl takes the crown and thirty years of perfect work dies on that runway in front of the whole island.
I gave her every chance to be reasonable.
” She looks at me, serene as the flat water behind her.
“So yes, dear. I killed her. In fact, I killed them both.”
“So Kali wasn’t your winner. Someone else paid the highest dollar. Vera was trying to blindside you. She even went out of her way to make it look as if she wanted Kali out of the competition herself.” I shake my head at the twist of the century. “And Flash?”
“Flash should have minded his lens.” She says it with a shrug as if she just commented on weather. “He always saw too much and said too much. Decades of doing the job and he never learned that some pictures you simply delete.”