The Flaming Luau of Death (14 page)

“That’s it, I’m afraid,” said Meg. “The dolphins need their rest.”

How had our half hour gone so swiftly by?

Little Willie swam by for one last longing look before he disappeared with his parents into the holding tank beyond the lagoon.

“That animal was in love with you at first sight,” Millie said as we walked back to the little shack where we’d left our things. “Must be that bikini. I used to wear bikinis all the time. Still could, you know. I’ve got the goods. But I don’t want to be a distraction to the lifeguards.”

We both laughed.

“I felt tremendous healing energy,” said Gabriel, his sunburned face aglow. “Did you feel it, Holly?”

“It was thrilling,” I said. “Just being so close to such beautiful creatures, so large and so gentle.”

“And that Little Willie,” he went on. “He kept talking about knowing you in a former life. You had been lovers.”

I stared at Gabe.

“Well, that’s what he said.”

“To you?” I asked him, point-blank.

“No, of course not.” He looked at me as if I must be crazy. “He told your fairy and she told me.”

Of course.

We all used the outdoor shower, and then I toweled off and climbed into my little T-shirt and shorts. By the time I left the Dolphin Excitement shack, a fresh photo of Little Willie and me ordered from the kiosk, the sky was already showing signs of darkening as the sun was setting somewhere offshore.

I cut behind the lagoon and took a path I suspected might be a shortcut around the resort. It was deserted, and I picked up my pace as I skirted around a stand of huge man-made jungle.

As I continued, the path arced, and I soon realized I was no longer alone but approaching the group of Japanese gentlemen I’d earlier noticed had been observing our Dolphin Excitement session from the deck. I smiled and moved to the side to let them pass.

The four men stopped and quickly surrounded me, speaking only a command or two in what I imagined must be Japanese.

“What is going on?”

Another hurried word, but I couldn’t tell what the man said, and still he wouldn’t move.

I thought of Little Willie’s warning. But then I chided myself. All that was impossible. Here I was with the glorious sun setting against the backdrop of giant ferns, just a little off the beaten path at a freaking luxury resort. What sort of danger could there be?

I asked, “Can I help you?” I just felt uncomfortable being surrounded, was all. I supposed the men might have been in need of directions and didn’t realize they were swarming me. I tried to back up and away, but it seemed another short man in a suit always moved in my way.

“Stop.” The man who spoke looked very serious.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I am in a hurry to meet a friend.”

“Look at me,” he said, his voice dull and urgent at the same time.

That’s when I first realized the short man in the ugliest of the suits was actually pointing a gun at my stomach, only I hadn’t noticed it before. Typical me to have to be reminded that I was being threatened.

“What is this?” I asked, almost put out. I’d just had a mystical experience with a young dolphin who claimed to be my lover in a former life. Did I really have any consciousness left to waste on four shortish thugs? I thought not. “What do you want?”

“We want your husband.”

Quick-thinking time. Husband. We knew someone had been looking for Marvin Dubinsky, and I was Holly Nichols over here at the Grand Waikoloa. So it didn’t take Nancy Drew to figure out that these men must be connected to all that.

“Look. Guys. I am not in contact with Marvin Dubinsky. That’s the truth. I don’t know where you can find him. Honestly. Now, please leave me alone.”

“Oh, no. You are coming with us now. We will hold on to you until your husband must come and find you. He is a terrible man, you know. He deserves much worse to happen. He steals from us, so it is fair that we steal from him.”

“No, no, no.” I couldn’t believe it. Was I being kidnapped in daylight from the overly landscaped grounds of a luxury resort? Tell me it wasn’t happening.

“Yes, yes, yes, Mrs. Dubinsky,” the guy holding the gun said. “Move.” They all nudged me down the path and around the hotel and farther away from anyplace populated. Hands grabbed me so hard I knew I was going to be black and blue. We came to a small private road. Down the long drive came a car, rolling fast. A valet was bringing it around to the front. Of course he didn’t slow down to gawk at our group of four men in dark business suits surrounding one outraged redheaded girl. Nothing out of the ordinary about us. Much. Did these men actually mean to kidnap me while waiting for a valet to bring around the car? I mean, really.

“Get a grip,” I told the men. “There are witnesses! You’ll never get away with this. Let me go.”

“Nobody see nothing.” Well, eloquence was not one of their virtues.

“What’s to stop me from screaming my head off?” I asked the gang of men, furious as they herded me farther and farther from the front of the hotel entrance.

“You make one sound,” the man told me, tapping his pocket where his hand was still gripping his gun.

“Yo!” A man’s voice. “Holly!”

All of us turned at once toward the voice.

Gabriel Swan, wet angelfish swim trunks clinging to sunburned thighs, came hightailing it down the path behind us at a fast clip.

“Tell him go!” ordered the man with the gun roughly. “Or I shoot him too.”

But you know, I really didn’t buy it.

“Nope.”

They stared at me.

It’s not that I’m reckless. It’s not that I’m brave. And hold on—it’s not that I was getting a special delivery message from my fairy. No. It was logic. It simply was not going to get these Japanese dudes any closer to Marvin Dubinsky if they shot any of us in public.

I pulled away from the two men who were holding my arms, and they struggled to hold on.

“Let go of me!” I yelled.

“Holly! Who are these fellows? Their auras are—”

It was at that point that one of the men rushed up to Gabriel and attempted to smash him on the head with the side of his pistol. And at that moment, I pushed even harder on the one guy who still had me in his grip, and I broke free.

Luckily, Gabe is a tallish guy, and his head was rather
out of range for the short Asian man who was trying to swipe at him. “Hell’s bells!” Gabriel cursed, shocking any number of invisible heavenly creatures and disturbing our myriad angels all to glory. “Get away from these men, Holly. I’m all right.”

The thing was, every time someone called me Holly, I hesitated just a second, not recognizing it was me they were calling.

“She comes with us,” muttered the man who had scuffled with Gabriel, and short of bashing him in the head, instead wrestled him now to the grass.

Gabriel kept up his end of the fight, but he kept looking toward me. Well, more accurate to say, he was looking at my left breast. “No, I shouldn’t,” he said to my chest area. And then he hauled off and slugged his assailant, knocking him back down to the grass.

Two men, carrying golf bags on their shoulders, could now be seen across the private drive, far down the path. “HEY!” I yelled, trying to wave both arms.

They were too far away to hear me well, but they looked up sharply.

“LET GO!” I raged at the two men still grabbing at me, and they finally did.

The four men spoke furious Japanese to one another, and then three of them dashed away down the drive.

The one who remained was the one with the gun. “You be smart,” he said, his mouth pressed close to my ear. “You keep your mouth shut. You go to the police and you will for sure see me again. The next time I pick a quiet place where no one will interrupt us. Then not only your husband going to die, Mrs. Dubinsky. You understand me? You tell nobody about this and maybe you can stay alive.”

And then he left us, jumping into a rented Lincoln that his buddies had pulled up to the curb.

I spun around and rushed over to Gabriel Swan, lying dazed on the ground.

“Are you all right?”

“Me? I’m fine,” he said, his voice just a little shaky. “Thank the lights and the crystals that Sally came to me and told me you were in trouble.”

“My fairy?”

Gabriel Swan gave me a beautiful smile. “She is really looking out for you today, I’ll tell you. So who the heck were those jerks, Holly?”

Now that was exactly what I wanted to know.

I jumped into the Mustang convertible and drove as fast as I could back to the Four Heavens, leaving Gabriel, shaken but unhurt, as he made his way to the Grand Waikoloa security office. He was off to report the attack, but I had to leave, had to find Wesley and Holly.

As I drove, I thought I saw a dark car parked just out of sight behind a tangle of bushes. Did it pull out on the road behind me? I studied my rearview mirror and saw a car turn left and disappear. Not a Lincoln, though. No. Probably not. I shook it off.

Reporting this incident to some bored policeman was not going to make it go away. They said they’d retaliate. What if they made it their mission to hurt us? I didn’t doubt they could do it the second time. The adrenaline rush was wearing off, and I began to shiver. What the hell had I been thinking back there, pulling away so hard from a man who was holding a gun on me? Was I insane?

I looked back in the rearview mirror. Who knew how many men in suits were gunning for Marvin Dubinsky? Arresting those four wouldn’t protect us. Others would come. And, damn it, they knew what I looked like now. They’d be better prepared. I noticed I was driving sixty on a thirty mph road and took my foot off the accelerator.
What had that poor plant dweeb, Marvin, done to them? He stole something, they said. But what?

I needed more information. If I could find Dubinsky—he was apparently somewhere on this island—then at least I would have something to deal with. And that meant I absolutely had to speak with Holly. And warn her we were still in trouble.

I thought back. The last time Holly had been seen was at the North Shore Medical Center, where Liz had been taken in for tests. And then, Liz said, Holly suddenly left. It seemed unlikely to me that Holly would have walked out on her closest friend while she was in the midst of being treated.

What had really happened?

And then something clicked. Not two plus two, clean and simple, but like a long line of twos that suddenly become sixteen. And don’t go getting all woo-woo and telling me that it must have been my little fairy “Sally” flying around, buzzing with ideas, who sent me a message. No, it was a small remark Millie Reisch had made that suddenly came back to me.

I parked my car near the main lobby at the Four Heavens and rushed up to the lobby bar to use one of the house phones. The hotel operator patched me through to the Medical Center.

“Hello,” I said. “I need to talk to a nurse in the ER, please.”

A few moments of Gloria Estefan later and I was connected.

“ER, can I help you?”

“Yes. Hi. This is Liz Mooney,” I said. “I was a patient in your ER this morning. Did I meet you?” Heck, I’d been a bamboo worshiper, a temporary masseuse, Holly
Nichols, and now Liz. It was positively getting easier, no question about it, for me to be someone else.

“What time did you leave the ER, hon?”

“Early afternoon.”

“Then we probably didn’t meet. I’m on the evening shift,” said the voice. “Is something still wrong, hon?”

“No, no. I was just a little dazed when I left the Medical Center and I don’t actually remember all the advice the doctor gave me. And I thought it was probably important.”

“Which of our doctors did you see?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Didn’t you keep the copy of your discharge instructions?” she asked, surprised.

“The discharge instructions, right. Well, I can’t find them,” I said, giving my best version of regret-filled embarrassment.

“Never mind,” she said. “We keep a copy in your files. I can look them up for you.”

“That would be just great,” I said. “Elizabeth Mooney.”

“Just a second, Miss Mooney.”

I waited happily, humming right along to the Miami Sound Machine. And then she was back on the line again. “Here it is. I found it. Now, what did you need to know?”

“Well…anything on that sheet.”

“Not much here, hon. I just see a note that you were advised to consult your doctor at home,” she said.

Oh, hell. I had this woman convinced I was Liz and still I was getting nowhere. It was time to take my chances. “To see my ob-gyn, you mean?” I asked.

There was a pause. “Wait a sec,” the voice said, and
immediately I was back to Gloria Estefan singing about the “Conga.”

She was on to me. I could feel it. There were goose bumps along my scalp. Why had she placed me on hold so long? Was she having the authorities trace the phone call? What law had I actually broken—impersonating a patient? And if the cops burst through the double doors of the Four Hea—

The music abruptly ended and the nurse was back on the line. “Oh, here it is. I couldn’t find all the tests. Right. Here it is.
Congratulations!”

“Thanks.” My scalp settled down. My stomach settled, too. “Thanks very much.” I hung up the receiver and leaned back on the cushion of the lobby bar settee.

So that was that. Liz Mooney was pregnant.

No wonder she was fainting right and left. And maybe, just maybe, Holly heard the test results, hanging out as she probably had been in the curtained waiting area. Didn’t all those ERs have curtained waiting areas? And maybe this pregnancy news upset Holly. Upset Holly enough to prompt her to drive right away. Now why would her friend’s unexpected pregnancy do that to Holly?

“Hi, Mad.”

I looked up. Marigold Nichols was walking over. It appeared she was just coming through the lobby and had veered over in my direction when she spotted me seated at a deep wicker sofa in the lobby bar using the house phone.

“Hey,” I said back. “Have you seen Holly?”

Marigold shook her head, and I noticed her eyes were red.

“Sit down for a minute. Let’s talk a bit,” I suggested.

Marigold was the second sister, twenty-four years old, coming right after Holly in the progression of Nichols girls. Since she was only two years behind Holly at school, I figured she knew all of Holly’s old schoolmates.

“Look,” I said, “Marigold, I’m worried about your sister.”

“Holly always turns out all right,” she said. “Say, Maddie. I’m really having a great time in Hawaii. I was just out on a nature walk. The animal life here is, like, profound. I can’t wait to look up some of the species I’ve observed when I get back home to my work computer.”

That’s right. Marigold worked with animals. “You like working for the zoo?”

“God, yes! It’s the most fascinating work,” she said, warming up.

“Tell me,” I said, always curious about what turned other people on, “you must have an area of specialization.”

“Sex.”

“Ah.”

She grinned. “I’m the resident expert on mating.”

“Wow.”

“Specifically, animal mating ritual behavior. I can tell you how over two thousand individual species do it.”

“That must be the official zoological term.”

Marigold smiled. “When I see people, I can’t help but think of the animals they resemble, behavior-wise. For instance, have you heard of a species of bird called the Jacana?”

I shook my head.

“Well, in that species, traditional sex roles are reversed.”

“Really?”

“Yes. In fact, there are twenty species of birds in which that’s the case. The female Jacana is pretty much superior to the male in every way.”

I smiled back at Marigold.

“In the bird world, female Jacanas kind of rule. They take many lovers. And later the males must raise the babies. Pretty socially evolved of them, don’t you think?”

“Yes I do.”

“I thought you would. You remind me of a Jacana, Maddie.”

Oh. Oh, my. “So…anything else I need to know about them, Marigold?”

“When a Jacana female decides she wants another female’s mate, she goes after the male and pretty much forces him to have sex with her.”

I couldn’t help but think of Honnett and me. And Honnett’s ex-wife. And while I guess I had flirted with him awful hard when we first met, I hadn’t realized he had another female flying around. Really. I had to give Marigold props. Either she was more perceptive than I realized, or she was taking a bizarrely lucky guess. I swallowed. “You mean the male tries to fight her off?”

“Yep.” She smiled broadly, enjoying watching me squirm under her anthropomorphic microscope. “But how can a guy refuse an offer of sex? He usually gives in.”

“Oh, man. I need a Diet Coke.” I looked around the lobby for a waitress and signaled her over. Both of us ordered, and then she left us.

“What do you know about dolphins?” I asked, still feeling a little warm.

“Oh, be careful with dolphins, Maddie. I mean, really. Male dolphins can be very…um…experimental.”

“Sexually?”

“To say the least,” Marigold said, grabbing a handful of macadamia nuts from a small bowl on the table. “Bottle-nosed dolphins, the kind people love to swim with, are sexually aggressive.”

I thought of my dear soul mate, Little Willie. Say it wasn’t so. “All of them?”

“Well, they are charming and intelligent. They are mammals, of course. But the males like to poke themselves into all sorts of other creatures.”

“No.”

“Yes. They stimulate themselves by having simulated sex with eels, sharks, turtles, other male bottle-nosed dolphins, honey you name it.”

“Go on!”

“True. They are indiscriminate players, all right.”

“Kind of reminds me of some of the animals I’ve met in Hollywood.”

She smiled. “But only the alpha males. Most of the other males in the herd have such low testosterone levels they are mostly just nonsexual.”

“So what animal does Holly remind you of?” I asked.

“Holly? Let me think.” Marigold paused for a moment. “Maybe Holly is a blue jay.”

“Very pretty.” Holly did like to dress up.

“I was thinking about their mating rituals,” Marigold said. “Female jays love to eat. And male blue jays always bring a nut or a sunflower seed when they are looking for romance.”

“Holly does love food,” I agreed.

“Not to mention,” Marigold said pointedly, “men bearing gifts.”

Not the most romantic assessment of her sister.

But she was hot on her topic now and continued. “Now the one I am most intrigued by is Liz.”

Our Diet Cokes were delivered, and we both took deep sips. “Liz,” I said, taking another sip, “intrigues me too.”

“Liz is a thirteen-lined ground squirrel.”

I giggled.

“Hear me out,” Marigold said. “The female thirteen-lined ground squirrel is a little uptight.”

“An uptight squirrel?”

“She avoids sex. Almost completely.”

I knew Liz kept a very quiet profile—the shy accountant—but I now had proof positive that she was not entirely abstinent. Marigold looked at my expression and read the skepticism.

“Wait!” She held up a hand. “Except for one afternoon a year.”

“Really?”

“For that entire afternoon the female thirteen-lined ground squirrel just whoops it up and has nothing but sex, sex, sex.”

“And you think that’s Liz?”

“Well, she has never had a real boyfriend. Not really. Holly and Liz are a strange pair of friends, aren’t they? Holly dates about a hundred guys a year, and Liz is always alone on Saturday nights. But about once a year, just when we are least expecting it, Liz brings a guy around to a party. We’re always so shocked and hopeful. But then she never mentions the guy again, and she comes to parties alone the rest of the time. So I figure…thirteen-lined ground squirrel.”

“You remember the last guy she brought around?”

“Of course, silly,” Marigold said, putting down her empty glass. “It was Donald.”

I looked up, startled down to my flip-flops.

“Donald,” she repeated. “Donald Lake.”

“Holly’s
Donald?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know? That’s how Holly and Donald met for the first time. He came to a party with Liz.”

Now I was completely confused. Earlier in the day, I had thought I heard Marigold saying she was in love with Donald. Yet by her tone of voice, it didn’t seem like that was so. “What about you, Marigold?” I asked. “I thought you were interested in Donald.”

“Me? Good grief, no! He’s not my type at all. Too tall, for one thing. I like the short ones. And I’ve never been into all that movie business nonsense. I like the very intellectual, scientific guys. Big brains turn me on.”

“But you’re sure that Liz used to like Donald?”

“Yep.”

Donald Lake? My goodness. I’d had no idea Liz Mooney had at one point in time dated Holly’s fiancé. And now one had to ask: had the thirteen-lined ground squirrel remained attached to her once-a-year flame?

My head began to swim. If Liz was pregnant and if Holly heard the news and fled, did that have something to do with Donald?