Chapter 3
The conch shell trauma is still echoing somewhere in my ears when Halea materializes at my elbow and steers me away from the others with brisk, focused efficiency.
She obviously has somewhere specific to be, and she intends to get there—with me in tow. Spam leaps from my arms because he has no intention of being shuttled anywhere against his will.
Halea gives me a look she wears when she’s about to introduce me to someone important and isn’t entirely sure I’m going to handle it well. It’s a very specific look. I’ve come to recognize it like recognizing a storm front coming off the water.
“Jinx.” She keeps her voice low. “I need you to meet Vera.”
Before I get into that, a brief orientation for anyone who’s just arrived.
My name is Jinx Julep. I’m five foot five, redheaded, green-eyed, and I have personally witnessed more homicidal situations in the last year than anyone with my particular height-to-chaos ratio should reasonably be expected to survive.
I run the Coconut Cove Paradise Resort on Kauai’s North Shore, which was held together with duct tape, optimism, and a concerning number of roosters when I first took it over.
But thanks to a few very talented construction workers and friends with wooden spoons and strong opinions, it’s become a genuinely beautiful property with a thriving ocean view, a shave ice bar, three freshly renovated buildings, and what I can only describe as a homicide problem.
Also a feline problem—which on occasion is the same problem, depending on the week.
This is one of those weeks.
The woman already moving toward us is tall, Day-Glo orange from a tan that has to violate at least one federal regulation, and her hair is bleached and lacquered to within an inch of its life.
She’s dripping with diamonds on her ears, neck, wrists, and fingers, and they catch the tiki torchlight and throw it back in every direction like laser beams.
She’s wearing three-inch heels on beach sand, which is either a testament to iron will or a crime against ankles.
Possibly both. And she’s carrying a trophy in her hand as if it were a baton.
A baton she is ready and willing to use as a weapon.
I file that observation away the way I file all potential-murder-weapon observations these days, which is to say automatically and with mild despair.
She looks me up and down the way you look at something when you’re taking inventory rather than making conversation.
Halea steps forward. “Vera, this is the resort manager—”
“The resort manager.” She says it the way someone reads an ingredient off the back of a label.
“I suppose a place like this has a certain charm, if you know where to look. But thank goodness that’s all you are and you’re not a contestant.
I couldn’t imagine the lengths you’d need to go through to win something like this.
” She gestures to the sign referencing mangoes as female body parts, in case I’d missed which mangoes she meant.
Shots fired.
Ugh. Sure, my red hair is unruly with all the humidity, I have dimples where dimples shouldn’t be, and my love of Lani’s fresh-baked cinnamon rolls is obvious to the untrained eye, but still.
I consider telling her I manage this resort entirely on the strength of my personality and a series of increasingly poor decisions, and that the sign was not my idea, and that I too have questions about it, several of them, all of them urgent.
But I smile instead, because the deposit has already cleared.
Besides, she’s already insulted the contestants, the sign, and by implication my entire property, and we’re approximately eleven seconds into this relationship.
I’m choosing to interpret this as enthusiasm.
I stick out my hand regardless. “Jinx Julep. So nice to meet you.” One truth and a lie. I’ll let you figure out which.
She considers my hand for a second and then shakes it, despite the look on her face announcing she has somewhere far more important to be.
“I’m Vera Crowned Vanderkamp.” She lets it soak in a moment.
“I had my middle name changed legally, so no one can say I haven’t been crowned.
” She laughs loud and long at her own joke.
“Clever,” I say, and I even manage to mean at least half of it. It’s actually silly. As if a name could actually influence the way people perceive—
My own moniker comes to mind. On second thought, scratch that.
“Darn tootin’, I’m clever,” she fires back.
“I’ve spent thirty-five years turning this circuit into something worth winning.
Contestants, judges, sponsors—they all answer to me, which means this week, in a very real and practical sense, so do you.
” She offers a dark smile. “The banner is crooked.” She gestures at the sign, then gives the resort a long, pained look, as if she’s being asked to appreciate something she finds deeply beneath her.
“The lighting makes the food look poisonous, and unless that cat is a judge, he needs to get his furry little behind off the shrimp platter.” She turns back to me. “I assume all of this is temporary.”
I look at the welcome table, where Spam is in fact sitting directly on the shrimp platter with total composure, as if he’s been there the whole time and doesn’t see what anyone’s problem is.
He’s purring. He’s also very visibly not moving.
He slides a look my way, blinks once, and returns his attention to the shrimp in a manner that communicates his position on the matter with finality.
“I’ll have someone replace the shrimp platter,” I say, because telling her that Spam is effectively a senior member of this staff and outranks the shrimp seems like the wrong first impression. Not that we’ve made any good impressions on her thus far, but still.
Vera stares at Spam for a long moment. Spam stares back.
A standoff takes place between two creatures who both fully believe themselves to be in charge of this resort, and I can tell you right now that only one of them is wrong about that.
I’m not naming names, but I’ll give you a hint. She’s not wearing a fur coat.
Before anyone can say another word, there’s a click, and then another, and a man materializes at my elbow in a cloud of cologne and cigar smoke.
Two cameras swing from his neck, and a third is lifted to his eye.
He’s somewhere in his late fifties and has made a series of confident choices about it.
A thin gray ponytail trails from a head that surrendered its hairline years ago, his linen shirt is unbuttoned exactly one button past advisable, and he’s got at least ten gold chains that he’s wearing like leis.
He fires off three quick frames of me before I can object, glances at the back of the camera, and beams like I’ve personally made his evening.
“You’re gorgeous,” he trills my way, and I’m starting to wonder how many mai tais he’s had.
“You photograph spicy, you know that? Redheads always do!” He’s already backing away with the camera up, sweeping the crowd.
“Don’t fix a thing. I’ll find you later.
” And he drifts off toward the contestants, shutter firing in little bursts.
He’s calling someone darling before he’s even reached them.
Gorgeous? Spicy? I’ve been called worse, and by men wearing significantly less gold.
“That’s Flash,” Vera says. She watches him go with mild tolerance.
“Reggie ‘Flash’ Guttman. He’s my photographer.
For thirty years I’ve dragged that man around this circuit.
” She turns the trophy in her grip. “He’s like a fruit fly, that one.
Completely harmless, faintly irritating, and utterly impossible to get rid of no matter how hard you try.
” A thin smile curves on her lips. “Believe me. I’ve tried. ”
I offer the goofy grin I’ve developed over the past several months of managing this particular establishment.
It’s the smile you deploy when you need this booking, have made peace with that need, and refuse to let a crooked banner or a cat on the shrimp interfere with the deposit already clearing the resort’s bank account.
Halea has told me it looks mildly deranged.
And in the context of this nefarious resort, that actually works.
“Vera.” A warm voice cuts through the moment, and a woman appears at Vera’s shoulder.
She’s older, sturdy and soft-looking, with a silver-streaked auburn bob.
Her reading glasses bounce on a beaded chain over a cardigan that has absolutely seen its fair share of things she didn’t approve of.
Her beige tote bag is stuffed to the gills, and I spot bobby pins, a Ziploc of mints, and what appears to be a paperback with a broken spine poking out of it, which tells me she’s my people.
She looks like everyone’s favorite aunt, the one who remembers your birthday and also quietly runs everything.
“Patricia,” Vera grouses. It lands flat, but not totally unfriendly. More like a long-established ceasefire.
The woman turns to me with a handshake and a smile that turns up full volume. “Patricia Patrini. Everyone calls me Pickles.” She winces. “Don’t ask. It’s a twenty-five-year story and it always ends with the same three people laughing, and none of them are me.”
I like her immediately. I like her the way you like someone before you’ve even decided to, which Koa would probably tell me is my most alarming trait. I glance over and spot him watching us like he’s investigating a homicide that hasn’t even happened yet.
What can I say? The man is intuitive. Plus, I’m in the equation, which always seems to inspire a visit from the Grim Reaper. In fact, I’m starting to think that sickle-wielding overachiever has the hots for me. I bet he finds me spicy and gorgeous, too. Just my luck.