Right from the Gecko (7 page)

“I think it's still too early for anyone to know much more than what was already in the paper this morning,” I replied politely.

“Right. I saw that piece in the
Star-Bulletin.
I applied there too.” Smirking, Bryce added, “I guess those guys on Oahu are just too dense to recognize real talent when they see it.”

I made a point of not responding. Especially since being sincere about my reaction to Marnie's colleague would have demanded that at least some of the coffee in his mug end up on his head.

“So you must be freakin' out,” he went on coolly. “Having one of your friends end up in Kahului Bay like that and all.”

Whether he was going out of his way to be offensive or if this was just his personality, I couldn't tell. But this guy made Forrester Sloan look like Mr. Rogers.

“I guess I'm still in shock,” I finally replied. I glanced around, adding, “Although now that I'm here, I'm finding it kind of a surreal experience, seeing Marnie's office and meeting some of the people she worked with day in and day out. But who knows? Maybe being in the middle of her work environment like this will help me come to grips with her murder.”

“I suppose you're looking for ‘closure,'” Bryce sneered, meanwhile making that annoying quotations gesture in the air with two fingers of each hand. “To be honest, I'm not the best person to help you with that. Marnie and I were both reporters, but that's where our connection ends. Even though we worked in the same place, I never got to know her all that well. For one thing, I never felt there was a lot of potential for a warm, fuzzy relationship between the two of us, given her personality. For another thing, I've only been here at the
Dispatch
a few months.” He paused to stuff a large part of his second donut into his mouth, chewing and swallowing it with amazing speed.

“I didn't realize you'd been here such a short time,” I commented. “Was there someone you replaced, someone who might have known Marnie longer than you did?”

He looked annoyed, perhaps because he preferred being the one who asked all the questions. “My predecessor's name was Holly Gruen. But for all I know, she's left Maui by now.”

His answer surprised me. “Why would she have left the island?”

He shrugged. “She just didn't seem to fit in here. On Maui, I mean. She was too…tense. Not that I knew her that well either,” he added quickly. “She was gone by the time I started. But she used to stop in at the office every once in a while.”

“To visit, you mean?”

“Look, I never paid that much attention to either Holly or Marnie, okay?” Bryce insisted impatiently. “But there is one thing I can tell you about Marnie. She was a real know-it-all. A lot of people found her extremely irritating.”

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, I thought with annoyance. Still, thanks to her boss's comments, I knew Bryce wasn't alone in that perception.

“Maybe that was just a front,” I suggested. “To convince people she was on top of things. After all, she was pretty ambitious.”

“No kidding,” he replied with a contemptuous snort. “She thought she was the next Woodward and Bernstein. Y'know, those guys who uncovered the Watergate scandal during the seventies?”

“Yes, I think I've heard of them,” I replied. And I managed not to sound the least bit sarcastic.

“Trouble was, most of the stuff she came up with was out of Fantasyland.”

“Meaning…?”

Bryce made an annoying boy-was-that-a-dumb-question face. “Meaning she saw scandal and intrigue and corruption everywhere she looked. Dickie-boy would send her out to cover…I don't know, the Girl Scout jamboree, and she'd come back convinced that the leader was embezzling the cookie money.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “I mean, it's one thing to sniff out news. But Marnie was pretty wacky, the way she was always convinced she'd just uncovered the hottest story of the century.”

“Maybe she was just passionate about what she did.”

“More like desperate to make a name for herself. She was ambitious, all right.” Glancing around, he lowered his voice conspiratorially before adding, “In fact, our little punk-haired friend wasn't above kissing up to Dickie-boy to get the big stories. Or at least the stories she was sure were gonna turn out to be big.”

“Like FloraTech?”

He looked startled. “How did you know about that?”

I shrugged. “I just remember her mentioning that it was something she was working on.”

He looked satisfied with my answer. “Okay, then, perfect example. Here's this really positive thing that's happening on Maui—an innovative new company, bringing in high-tech jobs in the biomedical field—and good old Marnie had to go and find something negative about it.”

“Which was…?”

Bryce snorted again. “That it was ruining the ambience of our tropical paradise or something. Like we're still living in the days of grass huts and outrigger canoes! I mean, get real! There is such a thing as progress, y'know? We are in the twenty-first century. Isn't it time to get with the program? Instead, she wants to pit people against each other about whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.”

“I guess controversy sells newspapers,” I offered.

“Right,” he grumbled. “And makes a name for the people who stir it up.”

O
-kay, I thought. I think I've had about enough of Bryce Bolt.

And I hadn't even learned very much, aside from the fact that he had clearly disliked Marnie. Whether his reaction to her was rooted in sexism, professional jealousy, or something much more personal, I couldn't say.

“I'm curious, Bryce,” I said, casually bringing up a question that had just occurred to me. “What were you doing before you came to the
Maui Dispatch
?”

He narrowed his eyes. “You sure ask a lot of questions. What do you think you are, a reporter?”

“Actually, I'm a veterinarian,” I told him with a big smile. “But I'm interested in everything and anything that has to do with Marnie's life, including the people she worked with.”

Still eyeing me warily, he replied, “I worked for a couple of papers on the mainland.”

I noticed he didn't volunteer their names, or even the cities he'd lived in, which made me wonder if there was a story there.

But Bryce was already heading out of the kitchen, brushing powdered sugar and cinnamon off his fingertips. I grabbed an empty cardboard carton and made a beeline for Marnie's desk.

Chapter
4

I
quickly got busy cleaning out Marnie's desk, starting with the drawers. And I immediately learned that our eager young reporter had been prepared for everything.

Almost everything, I thought regretfully. Too bad she didn't consider carrying a can of Mace in her purse standard operating procedure.

But she'd thought of just about everything else. In addition to a coffee mug, her desk was crammed with tissues, Tampax, a large tube of sunblock, a hairbrush and comb, several packs of chewing gum, half a dozen protein bars, Advil and Tylenol, Band-Aids, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a flashlight, several books of matches, and, for some reason, a pair of socks. She also kept a sweater and a pair of dressy shoes in the bottom drawer.

Handling each item as if it were made of very breakable glass, I packed them into the carton I'd found in the kitchen. As I surveyed them, a wave of despondency rushed over me.

How sad, I thought, that the most important aspect of this woman's life, her career as a reporter, could be reduced to a cardboard box of things that meant practically nothing to anybody else.

When I'd finished, I did a final check, opening each drawer one last time to make sure I'd gotten everything. In the bottom drawer, pushed way toward the back, I found a badly wrinkled electric bill dated seven months earlier. I tossed that into the box too, since printed on top was Marnie's home address. I suspected that checking out her apartment was going to end up on my to-do list.

I carried the carton toward the door, discovering that, while it wasn't heavy, it was fairly awkward. Even so, I made a point of stopping at the receptionist's desk.

“Excuse me,” I said politely. “It's Karen, isn't it?”

“That's right,” she replied pleasantly. “What can I do for you?”

“I don't suppose you have a phone number for Holly Gruen, do you? The reporter who used to work here?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” She clicked a few keys on her keyboard, then peered at her computer screen. “I can jot down her cell phone number for you. Will that do?”

“Perfect,” I told her, already knowing who was next on my list of people to contact.

As she handed me a Post-it with a local phone number written on it, Karen glanced around nervously, as if checking to see if anyone was listening. I automatically did the same. At the moment, Bryce Bolt was hunched over his keyboard, typing away madly. Richard Carrera, the only other person in the office, was talking on the phone.

“I don't mean to pry,” she said in a soft voice, “but I thought I heard you asking questions about Marnie.”

“That's right.”

“And now it sounds like you're planning on calling Holly. Is that also to talk about Marnie?”

“I thought I might do that.”

Karen hesitated for a few moments, then looked around the office one more time. “Maybe you and I should walk out to your car together,” she suggested.

“Sure. I could use the help.” I tried not to let on how intrigued I was.

Standing abruptly, she said in a voice that was slightly too loud, “Here, let me help you with that box.” Then, with a flourish, she opened the door of the office so I could pass through it, box and all.

Once we were outside in the parking lot, she led me to the corner of the building. It afforded some shade, thanks to the overhanging roof. It also afforded a place to sit, courtesy of a yard-high ledge around what was supposed to be an area for planting flowers. Instead, it contained nothing but a few scraggly weeds and an empty Mountain Dew can.

“Since you don't know Holly, I thought it might be useful for you to be aware of a few things before you ask her about Marnie,” Karen began. “I don't usually like to talk about people behind their back, but this is kind of a special situation, don't you think?”

“It definitely is,” I agreed.

“Mint?” she offered, reaching into her pants pocket and pulling out a metal box of Altoids. “They're wintergreen.”

“No, thanks.”

She nodded, then picked out a tiny mint and popped it into her mouth. “When it came to Marnie, Holly was a little bit…strange.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“At first, it was little things, the kind of things the guys in the office probably wouldn't have noticed. But I did. Peggy too. We used to talk about it all the time.”

“Little things like what?” I prompted.

“Well, you know the way Marnie wore her hair, right? Kind of spiky-looking? The way she put gel in it or whatever to make it come to points?”

“What about it?”

Karen sighed. “After Holly had been working here for a few weeks, one Monday morning she came in wearing her hair the exact same way.”

“Maybe she thought it was cute,” I suggested. “Or that it would be flattering.”

Eyeing me warily, Karen said, “I think you'll have a better idea of what I'm talking about after you've met Holly. It's just that…it wasn't really a good look for her.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to reserve judgment.

“Then there were the clothes. Again, it was the same kind of thing.”

“The same how?”

“Holly started imitating Marnie. Marnie dressed kind of crazy sometimes. And she could carry it off, since she weighed about a hundred pounds and she had this pixie thing going for her. She'd show up in one of those short flouncy skirts, or maybe one of those little sweaters—shrugs, I think they're called—and she'd look great. But then, a few days later, Holly would show up in the same style garment.”

“They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” I remarked.

Karen shook her head. “I think it was more than that. It was almost like Holly wanted to
be
Marnie. And there were other things besides the clothes. Like she'd order whatever Marnie was having for lunch. And she started using the same expressions Marnie used. And then she began keeping track of wherever Marnie went and who she went with.”

Maybe Holly was just lonely, I thought. But the fact that her behavior had made Karen so uncomfortable made me wonder if it could be explained away so easily.

“Of course,” she continued, “that was only up until a few months ago, when Marnie won that award. As soon as that happened, everything changed.”

“Changed how?” I asked.

Karen stuck her hand into her pants pocket and began jiggling the box of Altoids. I didn't think she was even aware of what she was doing. “Holly got kind of…mean. It was clear she'd idolized Marnie, but Holly was also a very competitive person. She was sure she was going to get that award, and she wasn't at all happy about the fact that Marnie won it.”

“How do you know Holly thought she'd get it?”

“I overheard her talking to someone on her cell phone about it right before they announced the winners,” she replied. “I couldn't tell who it was. Her mother, maybe. But she sounded all excited about it, as if she was sure she was a shoo-in. See, she'd just done a big article on a new plant Hawaii Power and Light was trying to build. It never happened, since there was such a strong public outcry. But she'd done a great job of covering the story. Even Mr. Carrera thought so.”

“But then Marnie won the award instead.”

“Exactly. And after that, everything was different. It was like Holly froze Marnie out completely. She wouldn't even talk to her unless she absolutely had to. You know, about job-related things. But it wasn't just Marnie. She began acting oddly toward all of us. She became…withdrawn. Sulking all the time, not saying much, that kind of thing.”

With a shrug, she added, “And then, a few weeks later, Holly just upped and quit. Completely out of the blue. I sure didn't see it coming. I don't think any of us did.”

Glancing back at the building, Karen said, “I should get back. The phone's probably been ringing off the hook. Mr. Carrera will have a fit.”

“Thank you, Karen. For filling me in, I mean.”

She grimaced. “Well, if you were going to go looking for Holly, I figured you should know that Marnie wasn't exactly at the top of her A-list. At least, not anymore.”

Once the cardboard box was settled beside me on the front seat of the Jeep, I checked the Post-it Karen had handed me, the one with Holly Gruen's cell phone number. When I'd first gotten it, I couldn't wait to call her. Now, after what I'd learned, I felt as if I was treading in dangerous waters.

Yet there was no way I could walk away. Not when I hadn't learned anything that convinced me I wasn't in the same danger Marnie had been. I had no choice but to keep going.

Still, I wasn't very encouraged when a sullen female voice answered, “Hello?”

“I'm trying to reach Holly Gruen.”

“Speaking,” she replied. Then, sounding wary, she added, “Who's this?”

“My name is Jessica Popper. I understand you used to work at the
Maui Dispatch.
” I hesitated before saying, “I was a friend of Marnie Burton's, and I was wondering if you and I could get together.”

There was a long silence at the other end of the line. I was about to ask if she was still there when I heard, “What for?”

I was desperately trying to come up with an answer when my eyes lit on the box of Marnie's personal possessions. “I, uh, have something I'd like to give you, something that belonged to her. It's, uh, an award. She won it for”—I grabbed a three-inch square of marble with an engraved gold-colored metal plaque affixed to one side—“for her coverage of the Maui Special Olympics.”

As soon as I got the words out, I kicked myself for latching on to the first thing I found. An award, of all things. “Anyway,” I went on quickly, “I thought you might like to have something to remember her by. And since you were both reporters, I figured this award would be fitting.”

“Yeah, I remember when she got that,” Holly admitted grudgingly. “Even though that paperweight thing they gave her is kind of hokey, she was pretty excited about it.”

“I'd really like you to have it,” I replied. “I'm sure she would too. When can we meet?”

“I'm kind of busy,” Holly said, still showing about as much animation as a tree slug. “I'm also pretty upset about what happened to Marnie. I'm not exactly in the mood for socializing.”

“Me either,” I assured her. “But I'm not asking for much time. Fifteen minutes. Ten, even. I just have a feeling that Marnie would have liked it if everybody she worked with got something that meant a lot to her.

“Besides,” I added, “maybe it would make us both feel better. You know, just to talk.”

It took five more minutes of cajoling before she finally agreed to meet me at a coffee shop in Lahaina the following afternoon at two. I seemed to remember that a particularly intriguing conference session on hyper-lipidemia—a potentially dangerous elevation of lipids like cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood—was scheduled around then, but now that I'd managed to pin Holly down, I wasn't about to let her go.

“The Bean Scene is a pretty out-of-the-way place,” she assured me as her parting words. “Nobody's likely to see us there.”

As I hung up, I wondered if her interest in privacy was simply a result of her reporter's instincts. At any rate, I hoped that the following day she'd be more open with me than she'd been on the phone.

“Oh, no,” I breathed, glancing at my watch as I put the car in gear. It was after six—well past the time I'd sworn I'd meet Nick.

After racing back to the Royal Banyan and parking the Jeep in the garage, I dashed up two flights of stairs to the hotel. Any thoughts I'd had of getting gussied up for my evening out with my special guy had already flown out the window.

As I sprinted across the lobby's tiled floor, thankful for the traction my rubber-soled sandals provided, I flashed back to the painful memory of our last trip to Maui. Then I'd also let Nick down, big-time. Funny how a marriage proposal gone bad will do that, especially one that's made on an isolated stretch of beach at sunset, beneath swaying palms and a sky streaked with pink, orange, and lavender.