Chapter 16
The next afternoon, the Coconut Cove Paradise Resort looks like paradise indeed, and yet it feels like a riot in progress.
The sun is high and generous, the trade winds are wandering through the open-air lobby, and somewhere a rooster is delivering a monologue nobody asked for. Out on the lanai it’s nothing but plumerias, rolling waves, and gently swaying palms. Here at the resort, it is the fall of Rome.
I find the good people first. Kitty, Ruby, and Lani have claimed a table by the pool, and unlike everyone else at this pageant, they are eating, which under the current circumstances qualifies as an act of rebellion.
Lani isn’t at the table so much as orbiting it, because Lani has spent her entire morning trying to feed approximately forty women who have collectively decided that food is the enemy.
“I’ve got coconut shrimp,” she announces, setting down a platter nobody reaches for. “Macadamia crusted. I will not be defeated by a room full of women on a juice cleanse.”
“We’ll devour it,” Kitty says loyally, and takes one, because Kitty eats like she’s glad to be alive, which is one of roughly four hundred reasons I like her.
“They’re not eating anything,” Lani mutters, watching a cluster of contestants drift past her untouched spread like it’s radioactive.
“I made malasadas this morning. Mango custard malasadas. A woman told me she was saving her calories for her liquids. I don’t even know what that means and I’m afraid to ask. ”
“It means she’s into skinny drinks,” Ruby says, working through a plate of kalua pig with reckless abandon. The woman has buried six husbands and intends to enjoy every remaining lunch. “It’s all they consume. Air and the skinny drinks.”
On cue, Melanie comes power-walking out of the café with Halea half a step behind her, and Melanie’s morning is written all over her face. It’s been a slow-motion catastrophe, and it’s not quite finished.
“Speaking of which,” Melanie says, “we’re out of the skinny syrups.”
“All of them?” I ask.
“All of them. Sugar-free vanilla, sugar-free caramel, sugar-free coconut, the zero-calorie macadamia, gone, every bottle, overnight.” She pinches the bridge of her nose.
“We’re also out of skinny shave ice, because somebody swapped every sugar-free bottle at the flavor station for the full-sugar versions, so the skinny rainbow has been regular rainbow all morning, and three contestants marched up to the front desk demanding someone be arrested for it.
They filed criminal complaints at the front desk. ”
“With who?” I ask. “Who’s the governing body for shave ice grievances?”
“Me, apparently,” Melanie says darkly. “It’s always me.”
She is our resident barista, so it sort of makes sense. Also, nobody else wants the job, and Melanie collects grievances the way Ruby collects husbands, so really the system works.
“And there were shenanigans with the skinny coffees as well,” Halea adds, wincing.
“The whole skinny line, in fact. The oat milk’s curdled, the almond milk’s vanished, and someone swapped the sugar-free pumps with actual sugar so the entire morning rush got full-fat lattes and didn’t find out until it was, and I quote, ‘already in their bodies.’”
There was a scene about that, clearly. I can see it in Halea’s eyes. She has witnessed things this morning that no front desk assistant should ever have to witness.
“And the kitchen is backed up forty orders deep on food nobody’s picking up,” Lani says, “because every ticket that comes in gets canceled the second they remember they’re not eating, so I’m just cooking meals into the void.
I made a loco moco an hour ago. It’s still sitting there.
At this point it’s an emotional support entrée. ”
In case you’ve missed out, loco moco is white rice topped with a hamburger patty, a fried egg, and a ladle of rich brown gravy, and it’s what comfort food dreams about becoming when it grows up.
And loco moco aside, I should mention, this is roughly the fifth wave of all-out shenanigans to strike since the mango madness began.
The sabotage at this pageant has been creative and relentless.
Yesterday someone glued the sashes together.
The day before, somebody tampered with the self-tanner, and half the contestants went to bed orange and woke up distinctly green.
The resort currently houses a dozen women the color of a key lime pie who are not speaking to anyone, including each other.
Whether this is one saboteur or a free-for-all, I genuinely can’t tell.
Forty women who survive on air and ambition turn out to be capable of a great deal.
I want to say, not my circus, not my monkeys. Although it is my circus, they are very much my monkeys, and I signed for the tent. But I file it under not-my-problem regardless and reach for a coconut shrimp, because denial pairs beautifully with macadamia crust.
“Anyway,” Ruby says, with a wicked gleam in her eye, “here comes the best part of my whole day.” She nods past me to where Wink Crockett is making his way across the pool deck with a comet’s tail of beauty queens trailing behind him.
I count six of them, orbiting him, beaming, holding up phones—and Wink, to his enormous and rather hairy credit, is being a complete gentleman about it, posing with his newfound posse as his easy charm works overtime.
He’s wearing a tank top, shorts, and that silver fur coat nature issued him at birth.
“They love him,” Kitty says, glowing. “Isn’t it the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?”
“They’ve nicknamed him,” Ruby informs me, delighted.
“They have not.” I lean back and squint at the oddball scene.
Are these women vision impaired? Have they been starved of testosterone-bearing creatures for so long that even the aged and woolly of the species looks like a tasty treat?
Maybe the heat is getting to them? It is hot enough to melt lava rocks out here today.
Honestly, I’m half shocked they haven’t clawed Koa to pieces by now.
Or Loco and Shaka, who are here busily assembling their walkway into the Pacific to be ready for the big pageant on Saturday.
Two shirtless construction gods hammering things forty feet away, and six women are photographing a Rolex-wearing yeti.
This island has never once made sense, and at this point I’d be suspicious if it started.
“Oh, but they have nicknamed him. The Abominable Snowman.” Ruby gestures at Wink as a whole—the silver hair, the general magnificent mountain of him. “Because he’s enormous and silver-haired and apparently very warm in person. The girls think he’s amazing. He’s leaning all the way into it.”
Right on cue, one of the contestants calls out, “Smile, Abominable!” and Wink lets out a roar and lifts both arms, and the entire cluster shrieks with laughter, and a rooster, deeply offended or deeply afraid, flees the premises.
“That’s my hot husband,” Kitty says, with a sigh of pure contentment. “He’s a real legendary beast!”
“I married a man once they called the Sasquatch,” Ruby says, “and that was for entirely different and far less charming reasons.”
Flash materializes, because Flash always materializes with his camera swinging, and starts firing off shots of Wink and his entourage, then the pool deck, then he aims his weapon our way.
“And my favorite table at the whole resort. Don’t move, don’t fix anything, you’re perfect as you are.
” He catches a frame of me hoarding a half dozen shrimp that I will absolutely be requesting he delete, and his whole face creases up with delight.
“There she is. The honest face. Finally, somebody at this pageant who eats. You’re my hero, sweetheart, the rest of them think a grape is a meal.
” He pats my shoulder as he brushes past us, already lifting the camera toward the next group.
“Eat a shrimp for me. Heck, eat two or ten.”
And off he goes down the sand, working the crowd, calling everyone darling, charming as ever in a sea of green-tinged women and shattered latte dreams.
I finish my plate, because I was raised right and Lani is watching, and then I get up to track down my weekly planner that I left at the front desk, moving fast the way I always move, and I round the corner of the lobby and walk directly into Flash once again.
“Oof, sorry—”
“You’re her, aren’t you,” Flash says, and his voice has changed. His expression sobers as the showman in him disappears. He lowers the camera, looks right at me, and there’s something underneath the easy charm I haven’t seen before. “You’re the detective lady. The one who figures things out.”
“It depends,” I say.
It seems my reputation precedes me. Either that or he heard Ruby’s spiel, which was delivered at a volume the neighboring islands could confirm.
I glance around. The lobby is busy, but Koa’s not in it. I’d know. I always know where Koa is in a room. My internal radar has exactly one setting, and it’s him.
“I have to tell you something.” Flash steps closer, dropping his voice. “It’s about Vera.” His expression grows serious. “I know who did it. I know who killed her.”
Everything in me freezes solid.
“Who?” I all but shake the man. “Flash, who? Who did this to Vera?”
His eyes cut past me, sweeping the lobby, the lanai, all the way down to the sand. Whatever he’s looking for, he doesn’t find it, and somehow that seems to make him more nervous.
“Not here.” He’s already backing away, bringing his camera up between us like a shield. “Not where anybody can see us. I’ll tell you the first second we can get alone. I promise. Soon.” He growls, mostly to himself. “I should’ve said something days ago.”
And he’s gone, swallowed into the crowd, leaving me standing in the middle of my own lobby with my heart racing like mad and a weekly planner I no longer care about.
Something small and warm presses against my ankle.
I look down as Spam Musubi gazes up at me, her little head tilted, studying my face like my feelings are officially her department now and she takes the position seriously.
I scoop her up, and she settles against me, and I scratch her ears, just trying to make my pulse behave.
And that’s exactly when I feel another set of eyes on me.
Across the lobby, draped along the top of the bamboo front desk like a fuzzy orange basketball, one ear partially missing, his tail whipping back and forth like a threat, sits Spam. The original. And he happens to be staring at me. More specifically, he’s staring at the dog in my arms.
But the look on his face isn’t judgment, and it isn’t hurt.
It’s murder. Plain, premeditated, one-eared murder.
That cat is staring at the dog in my arms like he’s already dug the hole, picked the tarp, and established an alibi with the front desk.
If Spam had thumbs, Koa would be reading him his rights.
I’ve lived here long enough to read that cat, and today the reading is simple. There’s a traitor in this lobby, and the traitor is me.
But Spam will have to take a number, because there’s a bigger betrayal loose at this resort. Somebody here knows who pulled the trigger on Vera Vanderkamp—and Koa. And I’d bet every last custard-filled mango malasada in Lani’s kitchen that somebody else already knows they know.
On this island, that’s not a secret.
That’s a countdown.