Chapter 5
Iscream.
I’m not proud of it, and I’ll probably never mention it again, but I scream, loud enough that somewhere behind me on the beach a rooster answers back, which is either solidarity or a noise complaint, and I genuinely don’t have time to find out which.
“I’m okay.” Koa’s voice comes up from the sand, tight and controlled and gritted through his teeth, which is how I know he is not entirely okay.
He’s already pushing himself up with one arm.
The other hangs at his side at an angle I don’t love, and there’s something dark spreading across his sleeve that I’m not looking at directly, because if I look at it directly I will scream my head off again, and we’ve already established that doesn’t help anyone.
The Miss Mango welcome party is kicking off at the resort, and we’re currently on the black sand beach just shy of it.
“You’re not okay,” I say. “You’ve been shot.”
“Grazed.” He’s already on his feet. His gun is in his good hand, drawn from somewhere I didn’t see, and he’s scanning the darkness beyond the rocks with a calm that lets me know his nervous system runs on a completely different operating system than mine.
I’ve accepted this about him. I’ve also accepted that it’s deeply unfair.
“Get down, Jinx.”
“I can’t get down,” I’m quick to protest. “There’s a madman on the beach. I need to get the guests to safety. I need to make sure the chickens and the cats are—”
“Down.” He growls it with an authority that does not invite further discussion, so I crouch behind the nearest rock like the reasonable, cooperative woman I have never once been.
He puts two fingers to his ear and starts talking into what I assume is a radio or a phone or possibly directly to the universe, because backup arrives so fast that either Kauai’s finest were already in the neighborhood or Koa Hale has a direct line to the police gods.
I have never been so relieved to hear sirens in my entire life, and I say that as a woman with a documented history of hearing sirens.
The party, for what it’s worth, has largely relocated itself.
The beach has thinned considerably. What was forty contestants and a full crowd twenty minutes ago is now a scattered handful of people pressed flat against the resort wall or crouched behind the tiki bar furniture, which tells you everything about human instincts and also about the structural soundness of tiki bar furniture as perceived cover.
Spoiler: it’s rattan. It is stopping nothing.
The Hawaiian country music is still playing, because nobody told the speakers what happened, and the slack-key guitar keeps pouring out slow and honeyed over a beach that now contains a crime scene and approximately seventeen people having the worst Friday of their lives.
Koa takes off and crouches beside Vera. He presses two fingers to her throat and stays there for a moment that stretches longer than I want it to. Then he takes his hand away and looks over at me, and his expression tells me everything before he says a single word.
He shakes his head.
Vera Crowned Vanderkamp, who has been holding that trophy all night like it was her favorite teddy bear, is lying on her back on the black sand beach with the stars above her and the ocean going about its business fifteen feet away.
The trophy is in the sand beside her, glittering in the flickering tiki torchlight.
She spent thirty-five years building an empire, and she spent tonight making sure everyone in a quarter mile knew it.
I’m pretty sure she didn’t plan for this particular ending.
Though with Vera, honestly, you never fully know.
The woman legally changed her middle name to Crowned. Planning was her entire personality.
“Well,” Ruby says, materializing at my elbow with her gold hoops swinging, “somebody finally took that trophy away from her.” She looks at Vera and shakes her head. “She really bit the big one.”
“That she did,” I confirm.
“That’s three bodies in what, eight months?” Ruby tilts her head. “Four?”
“I’ve lost count.”
“That’s concerning, Jinx.”
“I’m aware.”
“At some point the tourism board is going to notice.”
“Ruby.”
“I’m just saying, we may want to lead with the shave ice bar in the marketing materials and quietly omit the body count.” She smooths her muumuu. “When you get to be my age, you learn to accentuate the positive.”
Lani materializes on my other side, wooden spoon already in hand, lavender-tipped hair slightly windblown but otherwise fully operational. She looks at Vera, then at the trophy, then at me. “You found another body!”
“Something like that,” I say, trying to make my way to Koa, who is already briefing a small army of officers on the lethal chain of events.
Ruby jumps in front of me. “This is becoming a pattern.”
“I know.”
“A deeply concerning pattern,” Lani adds.
“Trust me, I’m well aware.” At this point I’m considering adding it to my business cards. Jinx Julep, Resort Manager. Bodies located free of charge.
Ruby leans in. “On the bright side, the widower in linen was very heroic during the whole ducking-for-cover portion of the evening. He threw himself in front of me and everything.” She pats her heart. “I’ve already revised the timeline of our upcoming nuptials considerably.”
Lani stares at her. “A woman is dead, Ruby.”
“And I nearly was too,” Ruby fires back. “A woman has to process trauma in her own way.”
Lani scoffs. “That is not what processing trauma looks like.”
“Husband number fourteen would disagree.”
“He doesn’t know he’s husband number fourteen yet, Ruby,” Lani fills in all the important details.
“Which is exactly why the timeline matters.” Ruby smooths her muumuu and tosses back her shoulders. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a strict schedule to adhere to. As you can see, life doesn’t last forever.”
The crowd is trickling back now, cautious and wide-eyed, drawn toward the scene the way people are always drawn toward a wreckage despite everything their better judgment is telling them.
The contestants come in clusters, holding onto each other, mascara making its way south.
The judges arrive looking shaken and officious simultaneously, which is a complicated combination and frankly a talent.
The pageant mothers descend last, and every one of them radiates the specific readiness of a lifetime spent waiting for a disaster to manage.
Based on what I witnessed during the afternoon check-in, this is the moment they’ve been training for since their daughters could walk in heels.
Halea reaches me at a near-sprint. “Tell me she tripped,” she says.
“She did not trip.” I wince her way.
“Tell me she’s fine.”
“She is not fine,” Lani is quick to confirm.
Halea closes her eyes for exactly two seconds.
Then she opens them and pulls out her phone, already scrolling to what I can only assume is a catastrophic-event checklist, because of course she has one, and of course it exists, and of course this is not the first time she’s needed it. Have I mentioned she works here?
“Okay,” she says. “Okay. I’m calling the PR contact.”
“We have a PR contact?”
“Not ours. Theirs. I’m more or less a fixer when it comes to beauty pageants. It’s sort of my thing.”
“Have you dealt with a homicide before?” I ask, genuinely interested and not asking for a friend.
“You’d be surprised,” she says, already taking off to fix who knows what for who knows whom.
I decide not to be surprised. It’s more efficient that way. Besides, this evening would have used up my entire monthly allotment.
Melanie appears with a tray in hand, a single glowing cocktail somehow still upright on it, which I find both impressive and vaguely threatening.
She looks at Vera, then at me. Melanie’s lipstick is still actively hostile.
Her expression is the one she reserves for situations she finds deeply unsurprising, which is a growing category at this resort.
“Another body.” She spits the words out at me.
“Yes.” I gird myself once I affirm the obvious.
“At our resort.” She seethes.
“Yes.” I shrink a little.
“During a booking.” Her eyes bulge like two very angry hardboiled eggs.
“Melanie—”
“I’m just establishing the pattern.” She picks up the remaining drink from her tray and holds it out to me. “You look like you need this more than whoever I was bringing it to.”
I take it and drink it down posthaste. It’s something tropical and strong, and I don’t ask a single question about it, because a gift horse in a little black dress deserves that much respect.
Koa strides up with his shirt off and wrapped around his bad arm, because apparently getting shot at a welcome party is just a thing that happens now and he’s handling it with infuriating composure, completely at ease, like this is just how Friday nights go when you’ve chained yourself to a woman whose nickname is not ironic.
I would like to state for the record that the shirtless situation is doing absolutely nothing to help me focus on the crisis at hand, and I resent him a little for it, and also not at all.
Melanie gives him the once-over. “Good luck staying in one piece around her.” She disappears into the crowd after dispensing those cryptic words.
Koa looks at me. “She’s not wrong.”
“She’s never wrong,” I say. “It’s her least likable quality.”
He puts his good arm around my shoulders and we both look at Vera, and at the trophy in the sand beside her, and at the dark water beyond the rocks, which is not offering any useful information, as the ocean rarely does.
It’s seen everything that’s ever happened on this island and it has never once given a statement.
The flashing lights from the road are turning the whole beach blue and red in spasms. The scene is being cordoned off.
Kauai’s finest are doing what Kauai’s finest do, and the tiki torches are still burning bright, and somewhere up the beach the shave ice machine is still running because nobody told it to stop, and the guitar is still coming through the speakers because nobody told that to stop either, and the whole warm torchlit evening is just sitting there, completely unaware that it became something else entirely about twenty minutes ago.
“Well then,” I say.
“Yeah,” Koa says.
Somewhere out there, a killer just made their first mistake.