Right from the Gecko (9 page)

Terrific, I thought sullenly, rearranging my lei to keep it from scratching the back of my neck. Here I am on a romantic getaway in paradise, and my significant other isn't even speaking to me.

True, I felt bad. But at the same time, I was already switching my focus to the next step in my unofficial investigation of Marnie Burton's murder. My interest in finding her killer was as strong as ever, not only because of my desire to see justice done but even more because I still believed that I wouldn't be completely safe until the murderer had been caught.

I only hoped her boyfriend would be more willing to talk to me than my own boyfriend was.

Chapter
5

I
t was after nine by the time Nick and I settled into our new hotel room, one that looked identical to our first room but was a few floors higher up. Getting the manager to move us turned out to be harder than I'd anticipated. While at first he'd seemed quite concerned about the break-in, his attitude changed when I told him that the only thing that was taken was an envelope filled with booklets from the veterinary conference. He gave me a form to fill out, one I suspected would get stuck in some file folder, then begrudgingly handed me a new set of key cards.

Since Nick and I were still not officially on speaking terms, as we unpacked we limited our communications to simple questions and curt responses. We topped off the evening by flopping into bed and falling asleep without any of our body parts touching.

By the next morning, the air still hadn't cleared. I was glad Nick decided to take advantage of the hotel's free windsurfing lesson. I, meanwhile, had a task of my own: tracking down Marnie's boyfriend and trying to decide whether he was someone who deserved a spot on my list of suspects.

Thank heaven for the yellow pages, I thought after Nick took off, leaving me alone in our room. I ran my finger along the page with the heading
Auto Body and Collision Repair
and stopped when it collided with
Ace's Auto Artists.

The Plastic Surgeons of Car Bodies!
the subheading read. But I was much more interested in Ace's address, which was printed below the drawing of a sleek automobile with an even sleeker woman draped across it. She had more curves than a Rolls Royce.

Ace's Auto Artists was located near the airport. In fact, as I drove toward it with my trusty map in tow, I passed the Purple Mango, the bar I remembered Detective Paleka mentioning as the place where Marnie was last seen. Startled, I stepped on the brake to get a better look. I don't know what I hoped to find out, but I didn't learn anything besides the fact that the Purple Mango looked like a seedy bar that I, for one, would be nervous about patronizing. Just riding past it gave me the creeps. It was a terrific reminder of why I was pursuing this investigation with such determination—as if I needed one.

Compared to the Purple Mango, Ace's establishment, two blocks away, was a breath of fresh air. It looked positively ordinary: a low concrete-block building with a black and white sign informing me that this was the place. Through the open garage doors I could see a couple of car-filled bays.

In fact, as I strode inside with a confidence I didn't actually feel, I saw that everything at Ace's was related to cars. Big metal tools, paint, oil, noise, brawny men. The place practically reeked of testosterone. The only reminder that the planet was also inhabited by women came in the form of the Babes of Hawaii calendar hanging over a cluttered desk.

I spotted the man himself as he strutted into the office from the back, wiping his hands on a greasy towel and thrusting his pelvis out as if he was cruisin' for chicks. Given the way he'd billed himself in the yellow pages, I half-expected him to be wearing scrubs and a surgical mask. Instead, he was dressed in tight jeans and a navy blue T-shirt with the name
Ace
printed in white on the front and
Ace's Auto Artists
across the back. The shirt looked as if it was at least one size too small, given the way the stretchy fabric pulled against his exaggerated muscles.

He stopped abruptly in front of a small plastic-framed mirror that hung on the side of a tall metal file cabinet. It looked like one of those mirrors designed for hormonally challenged high-school students to stick inside their lockers to facilitate frequent zit counts. Even though Ace was well past the bad skin years, he stopped and peered into it, taking a comb out of his pocket and running it through his straight black hair. It was already perfectly styled, thanks to a shiny substance that looked as greasy as the tattered rag he'd stuck in his belt.

But I was looking for something beyond the obvious. I was trying to evaluate his attractiveness to the opposite sex. Frankly, at first glance I couldn't figure out what Marnie had seen in him. His preening aside, his face had the leathery look of someone who'd spent too much time in the sun as a young man and, as a middle-aged man, discovered it was prematurely turning him into an old man.

But one thing that was definitely in his favor was that he had the bluest eyes I'd ever seen. In fact, they were as blue as the Pacific Ocean. I could see how a young woman who wasn't a very seasoned swimmer could drown in them.

I was still studying him when he suddenly flashed a grin at the mirror. At first, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, assuming he was checking his teeth for sesame seeds or taking care of some other form of personal housecleaning. Then I realized he was simply admiring his own reflection.

Overcome with embarrassment, I cleared my throat loudly.

He snapped his head in my direction. “Hey, how ya doing?” he called, looking completely unfazed. He swaggered toward me, still carrying himself as if he was king of the hill—or cock of the walk. “Drive around the side so I can take a look.”

“Actually, I'm not here about my car,” I told him. In a gentle voice, I added, “I'm here about Marnie Burton.”

I braced myself for his reaction. Frankly, I didn't know what to expect, but I figured there was a good chance I was about to see a grown man cry.

Instead, he jutted out his chin defensively and demanded, “You a cop?”

“No, I was a friend of Marnie's.” Trying not to show my surprise over his unexpected reaction, I said, “I'm trying to get some sense of closure, or maybe even some understanding, by talking to other people she knew. I thought it might help to meet you, since the two of you were so close.”

His eyebrows jumped up so high they nearly overshot his hairline. “Is that what she told you?”

“Yes, that's right.”

“No way,” Ace insisted, his voice suddenly sharp. “Listen, Marnie Burton and I had a business relationship, and that's it. She became a regular customer after she came in with some dings on her Honda.”

And you've been dinging her ever since, I thought wryly.

“As far as I know, she didn't even have a boyfriend,” he went on, sounding annoyingly confident. “I don't think romance was very high on her list of priorities, y'know? She was too busy with her career. Yeah, that was real important to her. She was always going on and on about the newspaper business. She loved everything about it, even the weird people she was always talking to as part of her job.”

He must have realized suddenly that most of us don't discuss our dreams and desires with the guy who smooths out our chassis, because he quickly added, “I mean, I think I remember her sayin' something about that once. We were, y'know, making small talk.”

“So it sounds as if you've know Marnie for a while,” I commented. “I guess you met when she first moved here.”

He shrugged. “I don't remember…maybe a year ago? After that, she ended up bringing her car in here every couple of months, since she was always banging it up. She wasn't that great a driver, if you know what I mean. But there's no way she was anything more than a good customer.”

I couldn't help noticing that the longer he spoke, the more agitated he became. He kept slicking back his hair with one hand, and his left eye twitched, just a little. “Okay, so
maybe
you could say we were friends. It's my policy to go out of my way to establish a good relationship with my regular customers, you know? It's good business. But that's it. If she told you we were anything besides friends, it was just because she had things twisted up in her head.”

Right, I thought wryly. Friends. Somehow, I didn't see Ace as the kind of guy who had a lot of buddies of the female variety, even if they were steady customers. My main clue was Miss January, who, behind his right shoulder, was romping in the surf in nothing more than a lei, a seductive smile, and a few well-placed grains of sand.

I put on my “confused” expression. “So Marnie wasn't telling the truth when she and I talked Sunday afternoon and she mentioned that she was meeting you for dinner later that night.”

Ace's eyebrows shot up. “She said that?” he squawked.

I just nodded.

“No way,” he insisted. His left eye gave another little twitch. “You must have me confused with somebody else. Besides, Sunday night I was at Scores, havin' a beer.”

I guess my face registered my surprise, because he quickly added, “It's a sports bar. Y'know, scores? Like sports scores?”

I'm sure it's an extremely wholesome place, I thought disdainfully. “So you were out with friends?”

“Actually, I was alone.” He reached into his pocket and began rattling a set of keys or something else metallic. Once again, his left eye got busy. “Sometimes I just like to relax by myself, y'know?” he said, sounding more than a little defensive. “So I get a table in back, alone, and watch the TV that's over the bar. It gives me a chance to think.”

If I ever heard a weak alibi, I thought, that's it. If the bartender can't remember him being there, Ace can always blame the fact that he's a shy, retiring guy who likes to be alone with his thoughts, no doubt pondering the great mysteries of the universe. And the latest sports scores, of course.

“I must have misunderstood what Marnie said.” I hoped I sounded as if I was actually buying all this. “And I certainly understand that in your line of work, you must need some serious downtime. It can't be easy, spending all day dealing with cranky customers who come in upset because their cars are smashed up.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, smirking, “it's not like I intend to do this for the rest of my life.”

Aromatherapist? I guessed. Yoga instructor? Kindergarten teacher?

“I'm gonna sell this place and get me one of those cushy nine-to-five jobs,” Ace went on, exhibiting more passion than I'd seen since I walked into his fine establishment. “One that comes with a steady paycheck and a ni-i-ice long lunch hour.”

Frankly, while there was definitely something to be said for having a reliable income, having a desk that one was expected to be seated at promptly at nine every Monday through Friday had never appealed to me. I much preferred making my own schedule, even if it usually ended up extending from very early in the morning until very late at night, Monday through Sunday, twelve months a year.

“So being your own boss isn't all it's cracked up to be?” I asked.

“It's not that so much.” He hesitated before adding, “Let's just say I've had a better offer.”

I wasn't particularly interested in Ace's career plans. I found his insistence that he and Marnie had been “just friends” much more intriguing. It left me with two possibilities to consider. One was that Marnie's claim that she and Ace were boyfriend and girlfriend and that he was on the verge of popping the question had simply been a manifestation of her tendency to exaggerate or even to see things that weren't there.

But I found that explanation hard to accept. Maybe some of the people who'd worked with her found her likely to exaggerate, but the starry-eyed way she'd spoken about him—and the pride she'd exhibited in his professional abilities—convinced me that Ace was the one whose story was out of alignment, not her.

Which brought me to the other possibility: that my pal Ace here was lying through his teeth.

Of course, I understood perfectly why he would feel compelled to do exactly that. After all, he must have been aware that whenever a woman was murdered, her husband or boyfriend immediately became a prime suspect.

But from what Marnie had told me, Ace had also been secretive about their relationship while she was alive. Maybe she had been lovestruck enough to interpret his preference for quiet, out-of-the-way restaurants as a sign that he was a hopeless romantic, but frankly, now that I'd met the man, I didn't buy that explanation at all.

Nevertheless, I nodded, acting as if I believed him as much as I believed the sign behind him that read,
All Our Work Is 100% Guaranteed.

“Ace, you mentioned before that Marnie was totally involved in her career—so much so that she had no time for romance.”

“Ri-i-ight,” he agreed uncertainly, as if he wasn't sure where I was going with this.

“Did she ever mention any of the stories she was working on?”

He just stared at me.

“Or the fact that she was getting information from a secret source?” I continued. “How about a tape she'd been carrying around, one that might have been a recording of an interview she'd conducted recently?”

“You're thinkin' maybe her job got her killed.”

So Ace had a few brain cells in that swelled head of his after all. “I think it's a possibility,” I ventured.

“Yeah, she did talk to me about that, as a matter of fact. She mentioned she was working on something really dangerous.” The more he talked, the more animated he became. “Yeah, now I remember.
Dangerous
—that was the exact word she used.”

I wasn't sure whether or not to believe him, mainly because his sudden claim that Marnie was worried about a “dangerous” story she was pursuing went a long way in relieving him of guilt.

“What was it?” I asked.

“She, uh, didn't say.” I could see his defenses springing up so clearly I felt I was watching a movie about a castle under attack. “Like I told you, we weren't exactly best friends.”

“Ri-i-ight,” I agreed with the same level of certainty he'd just expressed.

“Listen, I got stuff to do, so is there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?” Ace asked abruptly. “Aside from this misunderstanding about what the nature of my relationship with Marnie is? I mean, was?”