Chapter 27
By the time I climb back up the beach with sand in places sand should never reach, Halea has taken over the stage, because somebody has to, and Halea is the only person at this resort with the poise to emcee a pageant forty minutes after its director was arrested for double homicide on a black sand beach.
“Aloha, everyone, and mahalo for your patience!” She’s radiant at the microphone, holding the whole rattled crowd together by sheer force of charm.
Halea has poured herself into a scarlet dress that fits like a rumor, her dark hair is pouring down her back and catching the tiki torchlight like silk, her red lips at full wattage.
The former Miss Mango is showing forty current contestants exactly what the crown looks like ten years into the reign.
“In light of recent events,” she continues, “the judging panel has been, let’s say, recalibrated. Effective immediately, your judges for the evening will include myself, and our own Melanie Luana.”
Melanie rises from her seat beside me and gives the crowd a regal nod, like she’s been waiting her whole life to be handed power over forty beauty queens, which she probably has. I can’t help but frown her way. Nobody asked the manager.
“Don’t,” Melanie says, sweeping past me toward the judges’ table. “I’ve earned this. I survived the lost and found seminar.”
Soon enough it’s time for the swimsuit competition, which is when the beach basically turns into a riot.
The contestants come out onto the runway in waves, and whoever designed these suits was paid by the inch and clearly came in under budget.
There are bikinis held together by what appears to be optimism and a single brave thread.
There are suits cut so high on the hip that they’re less swimwear than a rumor of swimwear.
Honestly, postage stamps would have given them more coverage.
Somewhere in the third row a man drops his shave ice entirely and does not appear to notice.
The crowd whoops. The trade winds cooperate. They must be male.
Ruby fans herself with a program and announces to no one that she hasn’t seen this much skin since her nudist colony phase, which she did not care for due to all the creative sunburns.
Even the girls who spent the week tinted green and purple strut down that runway like they own the ocean, and honestly, in this light, against that bay, every last one of them is glorious.
One by one they parade to the end of the runway that juts out over the water, pose against the black-and-gold shimmer of the bay, and circle back, until all forty of them are lined up shoulder to shoulder across the platform under the string lights, glowing, breathless, and waiting for the results of a fair competition.
After a tense debate amongst the new judges, Halea steps to the microphone with the envelope.
And here’s the thing. With Pickles in handcuffs, nobody is steering this pageant anymore. Whatever deal she made, whoever’s crown this was supposed to be, all of it left the beach in the back of a squad car. For the first time in thirty years, nobody knows who’s going to win.
Halea opens the envelope. “Your new Miss Mango is—Kali Akoni!”
And when she reads the name, the whole beach erupts, because it’s the right one. Ruby, Lani, and I scream our heads off along with the rest of the crowd. I can hear Shaka and Loco howling away. And somewhere in the distance a few roosters have chimed in, too.
Kali. The farm girl. The hometown girl who had this on lock from the get-go. The sure thing somebody died to stop.
She walks to center stage looking genuinely stunned, and they settle the crown into her dark hair, and the entire island roars for her, and for the first time in thirty years the crown goes to the girl who actually earned it instead of the girl who paid for it.
The other contestants mob her before the tiara’s even pinned, and somebody starts the music back up, and suddenly there are thirty-nine women dancing barefoot on a runway over the Pacific with their sashes swinging, all rivalry apparently suspended on account of true joy. Even the green ones are glowing.
Something in my chest loosens, a knot I didn’t know I was carrying until it’s gone.
I’m still smiling at Kali when I catch it, off to the side, in the shadows past the flickering tiki torches. Wink Crockett, peeling bills off a fat fold of cash and pressing them into Charlotte Ashby-Wells’s manicured hand.
Every loose thread I’ve been carrying around all week, the meetings, the distraction, the flooring business that never sleeps, his big silver head bent close to hers at the luau, the Velvet Veranda I looked up on my phone and have not been able to unsee, all of it knits together at once into one tidy, sordid little picture.
“Ruby,” I say. “Lani. Come with me. Quietly.” As if that’s possible.
“Ooh,” Ruby says, instantly delighted. “Are we putting on our amateur sleuth hats again? I love sleuthing. And I’m so good at being quiet. Hey! I’m actually good at two things!”
She is not good at being quiet. And I do not want to know what the other thing is.
But the three of us slip around behind a stand of tall leafy foliage dotted with red and orange blooms that look like lobster claws, close enough to hear, and Ruby manages, against all odds and her entire personality, to close her pie hole.
“You’ll get the rest afterwards,” Wink murmurs. “Same as always. You’re sure the room is private?”
“Honey, discretion is the entire business model,” Charlotte purrs. “Fifteen thousand, as long as you need me tonight, no questions, no records. The Velvet Veranda has never once had a leak.”
“And you can do the, uhh…” Wink lowers his voice further, and I have to lean in. “The arrangement we discussed. The full setup.”
“Mrs. Claus,” Charlotte says smoothly. “The red velvet dress, the white wig, the little spectacles, and the foot portion is included, yes. You’re one of my best customers, Winky.
You book every December and twice in July.
” She fingers his chest fur. “And guess what? I checked the list. You’ve never once been on the nice side of it.
Though I’ll remind you the sleigh bells are a rental. You break them, you buy them.”
Lani tries to swallow a laugh and it sounds like she’s crying. On second thought maybe she is crying. She’s a big Mrs. Claus fan. You know what they say. Never meet your heroes.
“Mrs. Claus,” Ruby gags, but her eyes are filled with delight. “The woman gets paid to tell a grown man he’s been naughty, and he keeps coming back to hear it. And feet are involved? Oh, this is the best night of my life.”
I don’t even want to know how the feet work into the picture. I say that, and yet I have never leaned harder into a bush in my life.
“Kitty can’t know,” Wink says sternly to the future Mrs. Claus. Have I mentioned what’s left of her hair is still smoking? “She thinks I’m heading into a meeting. She actually thinks we’re trying for a—”
That’s all I need. I step out from behind the prehistoric foliage and growl at the two of them. Ruby and Lani burst out on either side of me like backup dancers, and Wink Crockett goes gray, the full gray, the gray of a man watching his entire life leave the building without him.
“Good evening, Wink,” I all but hiss. “How’s the flooring business?”
“This isn’t—” He’s already backing up with his hands raised as if this was a stickup. “You misunderstand—”
“Fifteen thousand dollars, a private room at my resort, and a set of sleigh bells you’d better not break,” I say.
“I understood it pretty thoroughly, actually. The acoustics back here are excellent.” I turn to Charlotte.
“I looked you up, Charlotte. The Velvet Veranda took some digging—you don’t exactly advertise.
But I found the invite-only forum, and I know exactly what you’re selling back there.
” I let the words hang in the air for a moment.
“It isn’t loungewear. The Velvet Veranda is a front for prostitution!
And I bet that so-called manager of yours, Forsythe—he’s your pimp! ”
Charlotte gasps, but she doesn’t deny it.
“You DIRTY OLD GOAT,” Ruby roars, advancing on Wink with a pointed finger, and Ruby has buried and divorced so many husbands there is nothing she doesn’t know about a cheating man.
“You furry silver disgrace! You’ve got that gorgeous honey-pot of a wife who looks like a teenager and thinks you hung the moon, who cried when she saw this island, who wants to have a dozen of your fuzzy babies, and you’re back here negotiating a game of footsy with the Velvet Veranda tramp dressed as Mrs. Claus? ”
“It’s very common to want—” Wink tries.
“It is NOT common!” Ruby thunders. “I’ve been married thirteen times, you fuzzy walrus, and not ONCE has anybody asked me to surrender my jingle bells!”
“You should be ashamed,” Lani says, low and shaking, which is somehow scarier than Ruby’s shouting. “That poor sweet girl you lassoed into holy matrimony. Shame on you. I hope every rooster on this island finds your window at dawn.”
I wince because that sort of curses us by proxy.
“That’s right,” Ruby steps forward. “May every beach chair you sit in fold.”
Lani nods. “May your Rolex run slow and your alibis run out.”
“Ha!” Ruby gives Lani a high-five before turning back to the brute beast. “May the sand find you in places that even the sand is ashamed of!”
“I want all of that and more for you,” I tell him.
“You’d better lawyer up, Wink. And not with a lawyer who specializes in flooring.
The kind that specializes in sticking an entire pallet of flooring where the sun don’t shine.
Because between Charlotte’s naughty business, a sleigh bells rental agreement, and three witnesses standing in a hibiscus bush, Kitty and her legal team are about to redraw the map of everything you own.
I’d start practicing the word settlement.
You’ll be saying it a lot. She’s not getting half. She’s getting everything!”
And of course, because the universe is petty and I respect that about it, that’s the moment Kitty floats up out of the crowd, flushed and glowing, holding two frozen mango concoctions.
“There you are!” She beams at Wink. “I’ve been looking everywhere. They crowned Kali, it was so beautiful, I cried!” She takes a moment to inspect us and the drinks lower. “What’s going on?” She bats her lashes at the entire lot of us.
The whole beach seems to hold its breath.
Ruby opens her mouth, and I touch her arm, because this one shouldn’t be a roast. This needs to be done gently.
“Kitty,” I say. “I’m so sorry. The meetings weren’t meetings. Wink’s been paying Charlotte. For an arrangement. Here at the resort.” I keep my voice soft. “He wasn’t distracted because of the baby stuff. He was distracted because of his naughty, fur-covered brain.” Okay, so I couldn’t resist.
I watch as she takes it all in. I watch the glow go out of her like someone turned the sun down a notch, watch her look from me to Charlotte to the thick wad of cash still in Charlotte’s hand to the husband who can’t meet her eyes, and her face just crumples, and for a second she’s a thousand miles from home and holding two mango drinks for a husband with no intention of ever giving her the family she cried about.
“Kitty,” Wink starts. “Sweetheart—”
“Don’t.” She says it quietly, without screaming, without a scene.
She just straightens and looks at him with a composure that makes my throat go tight.
“I cried when we drove in. Do you remember that? I told you it was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen, and you laughed at me.
” Her voice doesn’t shake. “The island stays. That part I’m keeping. You’re the part I’ll be cutting out.”
And that’s it. That’s all she gives him, which is so much worse than anything Ruby or Lani shouted.
Lani steps in and takes Kitty into her arms. The fury’s gone and, just like that, Lani’s grandmother mode has taken the wheel.
“Come on, sweet girl,” she murmurs, turning Kitty toward the lights of the resort.
“Let’s get you a mango malasada, still warm, and then we are going to find you a very good lawyer.
I know a woman. She’s terrifying. You’ll love her. ”
She leads Kitty up the beach, away from the tiki torches and the cash and the furry walrus, and Kitty goes with her head high, and she doesn’t look back once.
As they take off, here’s what I think about, standing on the sand next to a shamed Sasquatch who books appointments to play footsie with Mrs. Claus.
I came to this island by accident. By way of a typo, crying through a Zoom call, too heartbroken to notice I’d agreed to move four thousand miles the wrong direction.
I came here running from a man who treated love like a spreadsheet, and tonight I caught a killer, crowned the right girl, and watched another woman find out the same thing I found out in a different bed in a different state—that the people who are supposed to be your safe place are sometimes just very good at wearing a costume.
But I also watched Lani fold a stranger into her arms like family. I watched Ruby go to war for a girl she’d only known for a week. I watched four cats and the cutest little pooch this side of the Pacific take down a killer to keep me breathing.
Paradise. It’ll break your heart and rig your pageant and bill you fifteen grand for the privilege. And then it hands you a mango malasada and all is right with the world again.
Every single time.