The Green Room (15 page)

Pua nodded. “Got a modeling contract when I was seventeen.” She looked wryly at Storm. “Agencies were looking for ‘exotic' girls.”

Storm laughed and Pua joined in. “Exotic as muddy sugar cane fields.”

“If only they knew,” Pua added. “They thought I was eccentric for taking my shoes off when I went into someone's home.”

“I bet.” Storm had had the same experience when she went to college in Michigan. “Where were you?”

“New York, mostly. I had a great time, but it's a hard life for a kid. And believe me, I was still a kid. Got my GED between shoots.”

“Were you in magazines?”

“Some, but I ended up doing more runway work. I got to travel to some great places.”

“And you got paid well?”

“Yes, but I spent most of it. Part of the problem with being a kid.” Pua shrugged. “Then Mom got sick and I came back to the islands to help out. Nahoa was fifteen and playing high school football. When Mom died, I took him to California. Job opportunities were better there, plus he was falling in with some bad influences on Kaua‛i. I used an old business contact to hook me up with TV work.”

“More modeling?”

“No, I'd taken some community college courses in communications and I got a job as a weather person for a Los Angeles TV station.”

“Lucky you. Are you still doing it?”

“Yes, but I've moved to a San Diego station.” Pua frowned. “I left LA because of Steve O'Reilly.”

“The surf promoter?”

“That's what he is now.” Storm detected a note of scorn in her voice. “He was a sports announcer at an affiliate station.”

“How long did you go out with him?”

“About six months.”

“What's he like?”

“He's an arrogant womanizer.” The hand holding her wine glass trembled and Pua took a swallow.

“He cheated on you,” Storm said.

“Yup.” Pua set her glass down and folded her hands in her lap. “Got fired for it, too, the creep.”

Storm watched Pua, whose knuckles showed white. Pua had been studying her wine glass since the topic of O'Reilly had come up. Pua had pushed for this meeting tonight, and Storm didn't think it was only for the purpose of reestablishing an old friendship, though she was glad it had happened.

“Someone found out he was cheating on you and fired him?”

Pua's lips twisted in an attempted smile. “I wish. No, the other woman happened to be the producer's wife.”

“How did the producer find out?”

Pua poured herself what was left of the wine. “DeWitt—that's the producer—got some photographs.”

“They just arrived on his desk?”

“Something like that.” Pua looked back down at her hands.

Storm handed her the bowl of pistachios and Pua took a handful. “You sent them?” Storm asked.

Pua's smile was sardonic. “Nahoa did. Walked right in and handed them to DeWitt's secretary.”

Storm had to admire Nahoa's nerve. “Nahoa wasn't into job security, was he? Did he get fired, too?”

To Storm's relief, Pua laughed out loud. “No to both questions, to DeWitt's credit. Nahoa had been doing some commercial work, but mostly he'd been surfing. He knew he wanted to come back to Hawai‛i.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“He came back about a year ago,” Pua said softly. “I just got here. I came because the police notified me of his death.” Her voice started to quiver. “We were close, you know.”

Storm reached over and took her hand. “Pua, what happened on the beach today?”

“That arrogant prick told me Nahoa was a loser. Always had been, always would be.” Pua choked on the words and tears flowed down her face.

Storm felt her own eyes fill. Even if he and Nahoa and had been at odds, O'Reilly's comment showed unbelievable cruelty. The guy must be bearing a grudge the size of Mauna Kea.

“Would O'Reilly be vindictive enough to hurt him?” It would be so easy to stage a surfing accident.

Pua's eyes blazed. “I wouldn't put anything past him.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

“What's with the woman?” Barstow asked. They sat at one end of the crowded bar at Pipeline Pub and Grub. People eyed the two men with curiosity, recognizing them from the well-publicized surf event that had inflated Haleiwa's population and changed its sleepy ambiance to a star-studded media fest. But their body language and simmering hostility kept admirers at a distance. There were other, more appealing targets: brown-skinned surfers, scantily-clad women, and local celebrities drifted among the bar's patrons.

O'Reilly knocked back half of his scotch, which he drank neat. “You know women. Break up with 'em and they bear a grudge the size of my dick.”

Barstow didn't smile. His hands lay flat on the counter. “Who is she?”

He had only drunk about a quarter of his draft, a Gordon Biersch pale ale. O'Reilly considered asking him for some, just to quell the shaky feeling in his gut.

“Her name's Pua.”

“And?”

“We used to work together.”

“In California? She looks Hawaiian.”

O'Reilly ground his teeth. Barstow was going to find out anyway and the situation would look stranger than it did now. He finished his scotch. “Her brother's Nahoa Pi‛ilani.”

The muscles in Barstow's jaw twitched. “When were you going to share that little tidbit with me?”

O'Reilly gestured for the waitress. “I just did.” He pointed to Barstow's draft. “I'll have one of those.”

“You knew Nahoa from California?”

O'Reilly shrugged. “I knew who he was, of course.”

“You obviously knew his sister.”

O'Reilly couldn't help himself from smiling. “Yeah, it was good while it lasted.”

She'd looked more beautiful than ever. Too bad her brother had fucked things up. Alicia DeWitt, the producer's wife, was a whimsy, a two-or-three-night fling. He would have gone back to Pua and made it up to her.

“Just in case you'd forgotten, Nahoa's dead,” Barstow snapped. “And the cops don't think it was an accident. They came by asking me who he hung out with, if he had any enemies. You got anything you want to tell me?”

O'Reilly stared at him. “They haven't talked to me yet.” He leaned forward. He had a slow fuse, but Barstow was starting to push his buttons. His vision narrowed on his partner's face like a cold, blue laser. “I'm going to say this once and I don't want to hear another word about it. They can come talk to me anytime. I've got nothing to hide.”

“Right,” Barstow said in a low voice. “The cops said they'd shut down the meet if someone in it had anything to do with Pi‛ilani's death. I'm here because you asked me, and I'm going to be very pissed if you fuck this up.” His hands clenched into fists. “We'll never get a chance at surf like this again. You know how lucky we are with the timing of this swell?”

“You're forgetting who put this together, buddy,” O'Reilly said between clenched teeth.

“No, I'm not. And you've done an awesome job with the media coverage. But I got the big names here and that certification—”

“Hey, I forgot to tell you. Two credit card companies came in today.” O'Reilly stretched his cheeks in what he hoped was a big toothy smile. “One of them signed Ben.”

“Good, that's good.” Barstow's Adam's apple rose and fell.

“A half mil, year's contract.”

Barstow sat very still for a moment. “Thanks.” He whooshed air through his nostrils and made a visible effort to rein in his temper. “We can't have any negative publicity at this point. None.”

“I get it.”

Barstow stared at the amber in his beer glass as if it were an oracle.

O'Reilly's hackles still stood on end, but he knew what Barstow said was true. His ale had appeared at some point—he hadn't noticed—and he now took a slow swallow. Time to change the subject to more practical matters.

“What are you going to do about Goober?”

“It's out of our hands. The judges gave him a four point six and the doctors told him to stay out of the water for a couple of weeks.” Barstow seemed relieved to be on another topic.

“Kimo's still got his ride. He could bring up the average.”

“To what, a six?”

“Doesn't he have another heat?” O'Reilly asked.

“Not at that average.”

“What happens if Kimo is outstanding?”

“There's no provision for a partner change if one guy bombs his ride. That's the chance a rider takes. The only way that would happen is if another surfer gets hurt or disqualified and we've got an odd number.”

“Well, Goober's hurt. So who's going to drive the jet ski?”

“One of the other guys.” Barstow looked around the room. “I might ask Gabe to do it. He owes us.”

O'Reilly nodded. “He's going to hate it, but what's he gonna do?”

Barstow grinned at him. “I figure he'll see it our way.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

“Nahoa was never a loser,” Storm said softly.

Pua now cried freely, and Storm put an arm around her shoulders. Storm's eyes also filled with tears, and she was filled with helplessness at her friend's grief.

A knock on the door stirred both women from their misery. “Must be the police,” Storm said. She went to the door, unable to shake off the sadness that filled the room.

“Come in,” she said, and the two police detectives who had visited before stepped into the room.

Their attention turned to Pua, who sat sniffling on the sofa. “Was anyone injured?”

“No. This is Nahoa Pi‛ilani's sister, Pua.”

The officers looked from Storm's sad expression to Pua's swollen eyes. “We're sorry about your brother.”

“Thanks,” Pua said dully.

“We think Pua scared the guy away,” Storm explained. “She let me out of the bathroom.”

“How was the door blocked?” Detective Yamamoto asked.

“I knocked something out of the doorknob,” Pua snuffled.

“There's a nail on the carpet here,” Detective Ursley called from the hallway. “Probably was jammed in that little hole. You'd locked the door from the inside?” she asked Storm.

Storm shuffled her feet. “I was scared.”

“I would be, too,” Ursley said. She gestured toward the bedroom. “Have you checked to see if anything is missing?”

“Not really. We made sure he was gone and called you.”

“Why don't you take a look now, while we check out the house?”

“He started my computer.”

“Really?” The cops looked at each other. “Usually they steal 'em.”

“Can you get fingerprints or anything?”

“Maybe, but the powder will make a mess. Let's see if we can get prints from the doors first. Of course, to do us any good, they've got to be on file.”

“The Department of Motor Vehicles takes them, don't they?” Storm asked.

“Only your thumb. We'll need a whole set, which means either your intruder has a record or was printed for some other reason, usually work-related.”

Storm followed Ursley into the bedroom and showed her the dumped briefcase items, scattered floppy disks, and strewn clothing. The computer screen was in sleep mode.

Ursley put on a pair of orange goggles and lay on the floor to examine the laptop. “I don't see anything on the keyboard at all. It looks wiped clean, though I see fingerprints all over the screen. Those are probably yours.”

After a few minutes of watching Ursley scrutinize the computer screen and housing, Storm sat on the floor and began to sort through the contents of her briefcase. She had four floppy disks stacked next to her. “A floppy is missing.” She poked through the briefcase pockets. “I had five. The missing one was labeled ‘January cases.' Damn, I'd typed in information on Mrs. Shirome.”

Officer Yamamoto walked into the room. He carried a mobile phone on a newspaper. “I heard this ringing. It was outside, in a hibiscus hedge.”

Storm gave a little gasp. “It's mine. I hadn't even noticed it was gone.”

Yamamoto handed it to Ursley. “Let's check it for prints.” He addressed Storm. “Was it turned on?”

She nodded.

Ursley examined it with her orange goggles, then handed it to Storm. “You might want to check the call log.”

“It's already at the call log,” Storm said. An ominous weight sat on her. This person had been looking for information, and he'd found a lot of it. Who she'd talked to, their phone numbers, what was on her computer, whose cases she was handling. For once, Storm was glad she didn't have many high-profile clients, plus she was behind in her recordkeeping. Her call to Rodney Liu, the labor union official, would be on the phone, but she hadn't had time to record the details of her conversation. She certainly hadn't recorded today's revelations about Nahoa's and Stephanie's affair, not that she ever would. Nor would she be inclined to write down anything with regard to the 80K Stephanie had taken.

Storm stared at the face of the phone and thought about what could have precipitated the break-in. She'd witnessed a couple of confrontations in the last two days. Gabe's surfboard assault on Sunny might have been deadly. Stephanie had used bad judgment in two ways that she knew about. The affair was probably fairly widely known, but Storm assumed that the stolen money was not. Except for Barstow, who knew about it? More important, who cared that she knew? Storm didn't know the answers to these questions. But what bothered her even more were the questions she didn't know to ask.

If anyone had been following her, she'd left a trail a kid could follow. From her open conversation with Mo‛o and Buster yesterday and her meeting with Warren Yee, the jujitsu sensei, to her contact with Pua in front of hundreds of people on the beach this afternoon, she had been marching in plain view up and down Haleiwa's narrow and congested main street.

There was nothing she could tell the detectives that would lead them to her trespasser. Nothing in particular that she could pinpoint as the incentive for a burglary.

The two officers got back to work on the house. Ursley picked up the briefcase with a coat hanger hook, and shone her flashlight carefully over it. “I don't see any prints here, either. We prefer not to fume electronic equipment with superglue, but if you want, I could take the computer case and a floppy or two back to the station.”

“You think you'll find anything?” Storm knew the answer to that question by looking at their faces. They were going through the motions, trying to make her feel better.

“Never mind. Work on finding who killed Nahoa, okay?”

“There's a whole team on that one,” Ursley said.

“Any progress?”

Ursley and Yamamoto looked uncomfortable. “We can't talk about an ongoing investigation.”

“I understand,” said Storm.

Yamamoto walked out of the bedroom and came back a few minutes later. “Looks like he came and went through the sliding door on the
makai
side of the house,” he said.

“That's what we thought.” Pua had wandered into the bedroom.

Storm, meanwhile, stowed all items back into her briefcase and purse without noting anything else missing. She probably wouldn't notice until she needed it. She fought the urge to hide her purse and left it with the briefcase on top of the unmade bed. She might never know if the intruder had found what he was looking for.

She and Pua went out to the kitchen, where Yamamoto handed Storm a form. “Better fill this in for insurance purposes. And call us if you find anything else missing.”

“Thanks for coming out.”

“Lock your doors, okay?” Ursley said, and the two left.

Pua began to wash out the wine glasses. “When's your friend getting here? I don't want to leave you alone, but you need to get ready for dinner.”

“I'm okay. I'm sure the burglar's long gone. The police car was pretty conspicuous.”

“I guess so.” Pua fumbled with the soapy sponge.

Storm touched her arm. “How are you doing?”

Pua's face was pale and drawn. “Not so well. I don't know what I'm going to do without Nahoa.”

“It's got to be awful for you,” Storm agreed. “I'm here if you need me.”

“Even after all this time? I should have called you long before today.”

Storm shrugged. “I'll be here.”

Pua clasped her arms across her chest as if she were cold and turned to face Storm. “Storm, there is one thing. Will you help me find who sent him the package? Who hated him enough to leave him in the water,” her voice dropped to a choked whisper, “for the sharks?”

Storm could see Pua struggle with her emotions. The image of the somber group on the beach, hauling the heavy mass to shore, returned to her. She also remembered Gabe's maliciousness and how easy it would be to cause a death, even if it resulted from a flash of temper or a perceived insult in the water.

“The police are asking the same questions.”

“You and I both know that people here won't talk to them as easily as they will to a pretty face, one with ties to the community.”

Storm wanted to disagree, but she knew better. Both women remembered a boy who'd been a leader at school, and who'd attended Ke Kula Maka'i, HPD's training academy. He'd come back to work on the Big Island, and though he was still a local boy, people got a little quieter when he was around. They'd report something outright dangerous, but they wouldn't discuss the size of someone's
pakalolo
patch or whether Auntie so-and-so's sixteen-year-old had too many beers before he drove home. She and Pua knew that it was often these gossipy tidbits that led to a truth, like pebbles along a trail.

Pua's sad eyes beseeched her. Nahoa's death hurt even Storm, who hadn't seen him for years. It must have shattered Pua's world.

Storm sighed. “I'll keep poking around.”