Here Today, Gone to Maui (12 page)

Tiara looked up, horrified. We locked eyes and then glanced hurriedly away, both struck by the same thought:
Let it be her boyfriend, not mine.

“Does either of you have a picture of your companion?” the officer asked.

“I don’t,” I said. For a while I’d kept some shots on my cell phone. I’d flashed them proudly while visiting my sister at Christmas (she’d long since deleted the one I’d e-mailed). I’d never printed the pictures, though—it seemed too possessive, too serious—and I’d deleted them in anger one evening after Jimmy canceled our plans so he could take a customer out to dinner.

“How about you, Miss Cardenas?” the detective asked. “Any photos?”

Tiara bit her hand and sniffled. “I can’t show them to you.”

“It would be very helpful,” the officer said, not explaining the obvious: a picture might save one of us from having to view . . . whatever was left. At least the damage couldn’t be too gruesome if a snapshot was enough to identify the body.

“In the pictures I have of him—I’m in them, too,” Tiara said, nibbling on a bright pink fingernail.

“That’s really not a problem,” the officer said. “Unless you’re—
oh!
” His eyes popped.

“It was just a—it was a private thing,” Tiara said. “Between consenting adults.”

I can’t wait to tell Jimmy about this girl’s naked pictures,
I thought for an instant before realizing he wasn’t here to tell. Jimmy would have thought this was hysterical. If only it were all a joke, if only there weren’t two men missing, at least one of them almost certainly dead. The diamond felt heavy on my left hand. I rubbed it with my other hand as if doing so would yield three wishes. Right now I’d settle for one.

“Perhaps you can describe your boyfriend, Miss Cardenas,” the officer said.

“He was beautiful, like . . . like an angel,” she said. “Or a surfer. Except I don’t even know if he surfs. God, I can’t believe I don’t even know that!” Her crying resumed full force.

“How about his height?” the officer asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Tall.”

“Tall as in six feet? Six foot three? Six foot six?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

The officer blinked twice, the slightest flicker of irritation showing through. “Miss Shea gave us a description of her boyfriend yesterday. Let me read it to you.” He pulled a sheet of paper off his desk. “Thirty-four years old. Five eleven and one-half inch. One hundred seventy pounds. Dark blond hair. Blue eyes. Athletic build. Scar on chin.” Here he paused and frowned at the paper. “Detached earlobes.” (They’d asked for distinguishing features; I was just being thorough.)

“I don’t understand what all of this has to do with Jimmy!” Tiara blurted.

“Jimmy?” I said.

“Having two men go missing in twenty-four hours—that’s pretty unusual,” the detective said, crossing his arms. “Even more unusual is when both missing men are named Jimmy James.”

“Jimmy’s real name is Michael,” I said, as if that cleared things up. “My Jimmy, I mean.”

Tiara stared at me. “Same thing with my Jimmy.”

I grabbed the side of my chair. The room spun. There must be some misunderstanding. Some terrible mistake. “Do you live here?” I asked when I could speak. “Does your—your Jimmy live here?”

She shook her head. “California. I live in Irvine. Jimmy lives in Laguna Beach.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered, covering my mouth with my left hand.

She yelped. “You have a ring!”

I held out my hand and blinked at the diamond as if I’d never seen it before.

“You and Jimmy were
engaged
?” she wailed.

“He wanted to marry me,” I whispered, hiding the ring with my right hand.

She stuck a knuckle in her full mouth and made sounds like a wounded animal.

“Miss Cardenas arrived in Maui three days ago,” the officer told me. “Same day as you. Her boyfriend flew in separately, said he was on business and staying in a client’s condo but he’d visit her at the hotel.”

Jimmy’s disappearances returned in a flash: the early morning meetings, the sales calls. And then it hit me. It couldn’t be. Oh, no.

“Where are you staying?” I asked slowly.

“Huh?” She fluttered her damp eyelashes, too dazed for a moment to speak. And finally, the answer: “On Kaanapali Beach. At the Hyatt.”

That did it: total emotional overload. My head buzzed. My breathing came in gasps and spurts. Everything grew fuzzy and pale.

“Can we get some water over here?” the detective called out. Someone brought it and made me drink. I gagged but got it down. The detective asked us more questions, and I’m sure I answered them, but I’m not sure what was said. Mostly I remember waves of nausea, catapults of emotion: pain, anger, confusion, more pain.

“This doesn’t really change anything,” the officer said in closing.
Doesn’t change anything?
That may have been the stupidest thing anyone had ever said. “We still have a man missing. And probably—” He looked from me to Tiara and back to me. “Probably dead.”

I tightened my mouth and nodded shakily as Tiara burst into a fresh round of sobs.

The officer stood up. “The search crews are out today—we’ll send them out again tomorrow if necessary. You’re free to go. We’ll be in touch.” In touch. As if we were completing a job interview. I stood up. Tiara remained hunched in her chair, her wails growing louder and, quite frankly, annoying.

“Oh, Miss Shea,” the detective said. “Did you get any more contact numbers for his friends and family? Maybe someone can send me a recent picture.”

“I talked to his mother already,” I said. “And his office manager. I told them what was going on.”

“You know his mother?” Tiara asked weakly.

“We’ve spoken,” I answered after a pause. “I charged his cell phone on the way over,” I told the detective, wanting to change the subject. “I’ve got it right here.” I dug the phone out of my purse and hit the power button. Somehow, I didn’t expect it to work, as if it needed Jimmy’s life force to function.

But the screen came to life with its made-for-teenagers greeting, WHERE YOU AT?
I’m in the innermost circle of hell,
I thought miserably.

The phone’s battery was low—the drive to the station had been short—but there was enough of a charge to check the contact list. I zipped right down the list to the
T
s. And there she was: TIARA. Home number, cell number. No photos, thank God. Then I backed up to the
J
s, just to make sure I was there, that Jimmy hadn’t erased me from his phone in preparation for erasing me from his life. But there I was: JANE SHEA. My name is short: easy to enter in its entirety. And yet, it bothered me. Tiara was just Tiara. I was “Jane Shea.” I could be anyone—business acquaintance, hairdresser, one-night stand.

The detective crossed the room; I handed over the phone.

“You know a Scott?” he asked, flicking through the numbers.

“Work.”

“Bryan?”

“Roommate.”

He ran down the list (omitting my name and Tiara’s). I knew some names, coworkers from the restaurant, mostly (Bunny, Chaz, Luis). There were girls’ names (Holly, Simone, Tammi). What was their story? I wondered. Were they one-night stands from Laguna Beach? Or were they holed up at yet another hotel? (And if so, was it nicer than the Maui Hi?)

“Nothing for his parents,” the officer said finally, shutting the phone and handing it back to me. “They’d probably be the best bet. Can you get me that number?”

I nodded. “I’ve got it back at my room.”

Tiara staggered across the floor, dabbing her eyes with a wad of toilet paper (the station had run out of tissues). “So you never met his parents?” she asked in a little voice.

I shook my head. “Did you?” It was ridiculous how badly I wanted her to say no. And she did. But it didn’t make me feel much better.

The detective put his hands in his pockets. “That will be all for now. Thanks for coming down.”

We both looked at him, bewildered.

“If I hear anything else, I’ll call of course. And, Miss Shea, I’d appreciate you calling me with that phone number.”

I nodded. Tiara and I continued to look at him. How could he just send us off like this? What were we supposed to do?

“You two might want to sit down together,” the detective suggested. “Someplace else, someplace neutral. And compare notes.” He saw my expression. “Or—not.”

Not,
I thought.

But Tiara said, “That would help me. Really. I’m staying at the Hyatt.” (As if I’d forgotten.) “Maybe you can come over, and we can talk. I have so many questions.”

I did, too, of course, though I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear answers.

Tiara blew her nose into the wad of toilet paper. “Please come with me. I don’t want to be alone.”

So I finally got to see the Hyatt, though the experience wasn’t quite what I had envisioned.

“It never even occurred to me to rent a car,” Tiara sniffled from the little red car’s passenger seat as we glided up a long, palm-lined driveway to the hotel. It was the first thing she had said since leaving the police station.

“I mean, why would I need a car?” she continued. “All’s I was gonna do was lounge by the pool and make love to Jimmy. Maybe stroll down to some restaurants if we got hungry. But mostly, I figured, we’d just get room service.”

“Welcome to the Hyatt,” the valet said, opening my car door. “Will you be staying with us?”

“She is,” I said, nodding toward Tiara.

After one look at Tiara, the valet practically yanked me out of my seat, leaving me stranded in the driveway as he raced around to assist her. He opened her door and leaned forward eagerly. She held out her limp, manicured hand. “Let me help you,” the valet murmured.

Standing in the lobby was a major déjà vu moment—not because I’d been there in this (or any) life, but because in the past month I’d spent so many hours poring over photos in guidebooks and on the Web.

Alo-fucking-ha.

The photos hadn’t done the Hyatt justice: pictures couldn’t capture the soaring open-air atrium, the ocean breezes, the smell of hothouse flowers, the chirping and cawing of brightly colored birds. Reddish flagstones lay underfoot, interrupted here and there by towering palm trees and antique canoes.

“You wanna see the penguins?” Tiara asked. “Because I think that’s just really cool. You know—penguins in Hawaii.”

What was she—my tour guide? My enthusiasm for penguins had diminished over the last couple of days, but I followed Tiara, her heels clicking on the stones, until we reached a gold railing surrounding a leafy enclosure.

“See?” Tiara put her hands on the rail and leaned forward. “Penguins.” She sounded proud, as if she owned them. As if we had nothing more important to think about than exotic birds.

The penguins were smaller than the usual tuxedo kind, their markings more muted. Plus, they didn’t stink the way penguins usually do.

“Nice,” I said.

“There’s flamingos, too,” she said. “And swans. You want to see them?”

“Not really.”

“Oh.” She looked stumped, confused—like she couldn’t remember why we were here.

“When did you meet Jimmy?” I asked. Wasn’t that what we were supposed to discuss?

“Not that long ago. Sometime after Christmas,” she said, still gazing at the penguins. “I can’t remember, exactly.”

“Was it still December?” I asked. “Or January?” For some reason, the timing felt important, something I had to know. Did Jimmy pull away from me because he’d met someone else? Or did he look elsewhere because I’d begun to bore him? Maybe he just got lonely when I left him to go to New Jersey for Christmas.

She looked at me, baffled. “Maybe.”

“Maybe what?”

“I’m not sure. January?”

I remembered Jimmy once saying that I was smarter than the girls he usually dated. No shit.

“Was it before or after New Year’s?” I said, speaking slowly.

“Oh! It was after.” (Comprehension: yay!) “Because for New Year’s? I was dating this other guy.”

“Mm.” I nodded. “And how long before you and Jimmy . . . were intimate?” I couldn’t bring myself to say
made love
.

“Oh, we fucked the first night,” Tiara said. “Four times.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. No wonder Jimmy had lost sexual interest in me. He’d been exhausted. In the penguin enclosure, one of the birds waddled into his plastic igloo. I longed to follow him.

The questions continued to jump around in my brain. Did Jimmy take me to Maui because he felt guilty about Tiara? Or had he met her after booking the tickets?

“It would help me,” I said, “if you could tell me the exact day you met Jimmy. I could—better understand things, maybe.”

She shook her head, confused. “I really haven’t a clue. I mean—do you know when you met him?”

“September eighteenth,” I said. “Seven P.M.”