Vacations Can Be Murder: The Second Charlie Parker Mystery (8 page)

I felt sorry for him, but then, in my
business, it's seldom that I don't feel bad for the clients and the
messes they get themselves into. I left Mack sitting at his desk,
his fingers rubbing at his weary eyes.

Mack's shuttle driver gave me a lift back to
the hotel, where I retrieved my rental from the parking lot. Mack
hadn't given me a lot to go on, so I thought I'd see if I could
find out what the police knew. It might give me an edge.

I also wanted to search out anyone I could
find locally who had known Gil Page.

Kauai General Hospital was only three or four
blocks from Paradise's office, a modern four-story structure of
gray concrete with deep blue stucco accents. The visitor’s lot was
about half full It was a little before ten o'clock.

Three hours or so into the morning shift,
those with seniority might be taking a few minutes extra on their
coffee breaks, leaving junior staffers, or perhaps nobody, in
charge.

I felt like a kid on her first day in a new
school. I knew the general routine, but it varies from one town to
the next. I was nervous that a procedural faux pas would send me to
Principal Akito's office.

I took a chance that the morgue would be in
the basement. Riding the elevator down, I formulated a plan.

Luckily, I had dressed in a linen suit this
morning. I snagged an empty clipboard from an unattended counter
top, and stopping at a ladies room on the way, I rooted around in
my bag for a few items of costume. I pulled my shoulder length
straight hair into a ponytail at the nape of my neck, and held it
in place with a fabric covered stretchy band. Non-prescription horn
rimmed glasses helped convey an air of authority, I hoped. I stuck
a few sheets of paper into the clipboard, my car rental receipt,
and the Westin's List of Guest Services, among them.

Well, I would just hold it close to my
chest.

Coming off the elevator, I had noticed a
discreet sign indicating that the morgue was down the hall to my
right. I emerged from the ladies room, and headed that direction,
looking much more confident than I felt.

The basement corridor was quiet and
unpopulated. I had not seen anyone since getting off the
elevator.

The hallway was tiled in white vinyl,
patterned with light blue speckles, and polished to a gloss.
Upstairs, the walls had been painted pale blue to coordinate, but
down here they were institution tan. There were scuff marks on the
walls, just at gurney height—so many that I imagined a game of
medical bumper cars going on.

All the doors along the corridor were closed,
and I could see double swinging doors at the far end, which I
presumed to be the morgue. I tried to walk confidently without
allowing my shoes to make any noise on the shiny tile floor. It
isn't easy.

A quick visual survey revealed only one
attendant behind the swinging double doors. I hoped to get this
over with fast, and be out of there before anyone else showed up.
This one was young, twenty-one or -two at most. He was a tall,
skinny thing with a sprout of red curls, and freckles so large that
they blended together in unusual patches, making me wonder if he
was the victim of a dreaded epidermal disease.

I waved my open wallet in his general
direction, as I consulted the top sheet on my clipboard.

"I'm investigating the Gilbert Page case.
That's P-A-G-E. I need to see the autopsy report, and if you have
it, the police report as well." I clamped my lips together tightly,
and stood with my arms crossed.

"Yyess, ma'am." He stammered over the words
like I was an IRS auditor asking him to show me his dependents. He
began clumsily rummaging through a file drawer in the desk.

"Here's the file," he announced, handing it
to me.

I flipped it open, and glanced over the
pages. I tsk tsked a couple of times, and consulted my clipboard
again.

"Already, my secretary has a couple of vital
facts wrong. I'll need copies of these for my files. You do have a
copier here, don't you?"

"Oh, yes ma'am."

I shoved the folder toward him. "Fine. The
top two pages, please."

He practically went down face first in his
attempt to clear his ungainly size twelves from the rolling wheels
of his swivel chair. He blushed the color of a ripe watermelon, and
stumbled into a little room behind him. I glanced at my watch.

Fifteen minutes had passed since I'd entered
the building. I wondered if his supervisor would come back any
minute now, and demand to see my credentials. I willed him to
hurry
.

“Here they are, ma’am,” he said, returning
from the other room with a neat sheaf of papers.

I tucked the copies safely into my clipboard.
"You've been most helpful," I said, gracing him with a smile.

Back in the ladies room, I pulled the papers
from the clipboard, and jammed them into my bag. The glasses were
beginning to make me feel weird, so I shoved them in there,
too.

As nonchalantly as possible, I dropped off
the clipboard where I had found it, and pressed the elevator
button. The girl sitting at the desk didn't even look up.

I waited until I was back in the car to take
out the papers and re-read them. It looked like pretty standard
stuff. Time of death: between 10 and 12 p.m. Cause of death: blow
to the back of the skull with a blunt instrument. Hmm, the
proverbial blunt instrument. The police report didn't have any
further notation.

So, they didn't know what the weapon was yet
either. Victim's blood type was A positive. So common that there
was a very good chance it would match they type they found in the
helicopter.

I read through the police report twice. I
couldn't see anything incriminating enough to warrant throwing Mack
in jail at midnight last night. Drake had told me Akito had it in
for Mack. I'd say. Back on the mainland, he’d be looking square in
the face of a false arrest suit.

Something caught my eye that I'd missed the
first time through. The body had been identified and claimed by
Mrs. Catherine Page. The wife, no doubt. I'd need to find her, and
ask some questions before she left the island.

Chapter 6

I had a hunch about where to reach Mrs. Page,
and figured it would be quicker to follow it up by telephone. There
was a bank of pay phones right outside the entrance to the
hospital.

"Aloha, Westin Kauai." An extremely cordial
male voice greeted me. I always picture such voices as belonging to
tall, tan guys with muscles like iron. They generally turn out to
be short, overweight, and fifty.

"Yes, do you have a Mrs. Catherine Page
registered?"

"One moment." The good-looking voice came
right back. "Yes, ma'am, she is registered. However, her key is
here at the desk, so apparently she is out."

"Thank you, I'll try later."

It figured. Once exposed to the fine life of
first class hotels, she was hardly likely to check into a cheap
little motel down the street.

I was fairly certain that she would either be
at a funeral home arranging for her husband's body to be shipped
back to the mainland, or at Akito's office. Since I didn't know
what she looked like, I couldn't very well go cruising around town
hoping to bump into her somewhere.

It was not even noon yet, but my three a.m.
awakening was beginning to tell on me. My eyelids felt droopy, and
I had that curious lightheadedness that comes from either lack of
sleep or a terrific bender. I sat in the car for a few minutes
fighting a strong urge to crawl over into the back seat for a
nap.

Maybe I just needed food. It had been almost
six hours since breakfast.

I started the car, and put the top down. I
figured either the wind in my face would refresh me, or the sun on
my head would lull me to sleep. I pulled out of the parking lot
onto Kuhio Highway.

According to my map, this would eventually
lead to Rice Street, and back to the hotel.

Kuhio, I discovered, held Kauai's version of
fast food row. I didn't think I could handle the grease in fried
chicken, so I turned in at the golden arches. I took the reports
inside with me, and pondered over them as I polished off a Big Mac,
fries, and a Coke.

I don't know what I expected the reports to
yield. They didn't say anything different than they had thirty
minutes earlier.

Back at the hotel, I picked up a house phone
in the lobby, and used my former ploy to find out Catherine Page's
room number. She was on the eighth floor, one above mine.
Apparently, she didn't want to stay in hubby's room which was
already paid for. Imagine that.

I knew if I quit moving, I'd be asleep in
minutes. Better stick with it. I took the elevator to the eighth
floor, watching with longing as my own seventh floor slipped
by.

Catherine Page answered the knock on her door
so quickly, I almost believed she was expecting someone.

She let me in after giving my business card a
cursory tired appraisal. She was about five-four, slim, with medium
length brown hair the drab color of a cardboard box. She wore a
linen suit in a cream colored shade, with a matching silk blouse,
obviously expensive. She had once been an attractive woman, but
something was a tad off. The upper eyelids sagged, the mouth was
pinched into a thin colorless line. I could see fine blue veins in
her throat, making her look fragile.

Her age had been listed on the police report
as forty-three, but she sure looked fifty-ish to me. Her nose
already showed deep enlarged pores, and her mouth was rimmed by the
fine lines of a heavy smoker.

But, there was something else, something in
the set of her shoulders. The phrase that leapt to my mind was
battle-weary
.

"Would you like a drink?" she offered.

I declined, but told her to go ahead. One
drink would put me on my tail in five minutes flat.

She stepped to the mini-bar, and chose a
glass. I noticed that she had a full-size bottle of bourbon sitting
there. Even the wealthy don't indulge in the outrageous prices of
the mini-bar, I guess.

She poured her drink, and lit a fresh
cigarette from the butt of the last one, still smoldering in the
ashtray.

"I know this is a bad time for you, and I'm
sorry to intrude." I've found when I'm about to intrude on the most
personal aspects of someone's life, it's a good idea to at least
apologize for doing it.

Her mouth was engaged with the rim of her
glass, and she waved one wrist limply toward me, as if to say "no
problem." A small sprinkle of ash drifted down to the carpet. We
each took one of the room's upholstered chairs which were about as
comfortable as concrete stadium bleachers. I began by explaining
that I was gathering evidence in hopes of helping Mack Garvey.

"Were you aware of the purpose of your
husband's trip here?"

She huffed a puff of smoke out her nostrils,
which I took to be a chuckle. I hadn't meant it that way, but I
realized she knew about Susan Turner.

"I suppose you mean, did I know he was
calling on Mack Garvey?” She tapped the cigarette against the edge
of the ashtray. “Yes, I did. They had some kind of business deal.
I'm not sure what it was. I only met Mack once, on a previous trip
to Kauai, although I'm not sure he'd remember me. We stayed here at
the Westin, and Gil had him come by for drinks out by the pool. My
skin doesn't take the sun well, so I came back inside right after
the introductions."

"When was the last time you spoke to your
husband?"

"The night he died. Let's see, it was
late—probably about eleven o'clock. That would be about eight p.m.
here. We talked about our son, Jason."

"Was there anything unusual about the
conversation? Did he say anything about Mack?"

The battle weary look came into her eyes,
stronger than ever. "No, the conversation was
very
typical."

I studied her face while she drained her
drink. She reminded me of a dog I knew once who was kicked around a
lot by its owner. It never fought back. It just became resigned to
the kicking.

"Tell me about Jason."

Her face softened considerably, and there was
almost a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. She picked up
the ashtray off the table, and made a few seconds of busy work as
she elaborately rolled the ash from the end of her cigarette.

"He's twenty. He attended two years at
Stanford, and lived on campus there, but now he's back home."

"Which is...?"

"Mill Valley. A lovely, quiet spot right
outside San Francisco. Anyway, Jason says he's 'bummed out' on
school, and wants to take time off. He'd like to try the race car
circuit."

"Umm. An expensive hobby, I hear."

"Yes, I suppose so." Her voice was small and
drifty again. I got the idea she didn't comprehend that race cars
and loaves of bread weren't in the same price range.

"Did Jason overhear that phone conversation
between you and Gil?"

"No, he wasn't home. He had stayed over with
a friend for a couple of days."

"Male or female?"

"Probably his friend, Mark. They work on
their race car together all the time."

Her thoughts turned inward, I could tell, and
she smiled indulgently. "Poor little Jennifer. That's the
Hightower's daughter, down the road. She's crazy about Jason. What
girl wouldn't be? He's a handsome boy. But, he's so wrapped up in
that car, he doesn't give her a second glance. She sits around,
hoping he'll call her, but he never has the time."

I wondered what any of this had to do with
anything, then realized it didn't. Catherine's bourbon was merely
rambling.

"I may want to speak with Jason," I
interrupted. "How could I get in touch with him?"

She wrote out two numbers for me. One was
their home, and the other was for Jason's racing friend, Mark
Cramer. She said I would surely find him one place or the
other.