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  “Wait a minute,” Sid said, “I’m almost positive it was Dolph outside the stateroom.”

  Everyone turned to look at him as he told about the overheard conversation and the sight of someone standing outside the door apparently listening far more intently than he had.

  “You never told me about that, Sid,” Kay said, showing some annoyance.

  “I clean forgot about it until now.”

  “Are you sure it was Fe on the other side of the door?” Hank asked.

  Sid nodded. “It was a woman, and she definitely had an accent–a Filipino accent. I can’t be sure about who the man was. Bart comes to mind, of course, but I can’t be positive it was him. It could have been just about any man on the boat. Well, almost any man, anyway.

  “Then you are sure it was Dolph outside the door?”

  “It had to be. He was the only one besides Captain Silva wearing long pants, and I know the captain was in the wheelhouse at the time. Guess that eliminates several of the men as possible cabin gropers. Dolph was listening, the captain was up in the wheelhouse, and I’d just left Kerwin back in the lounge.”

  Kay added, “I guess we can eliminate you as a possibility, Sid, much as you might have wanted to be on the other side of the door.”

  “We can cross Marshal off the list,” Sid added, seemingly ignoring the jibe, “Since he was engrossed in talking to you all the time I was down below.”

  “Seems to me we’re down to just three men, then,” Corky commented, amused at the barbs Kay and Sid were launching at each other. “It had to be Bart, Jeff or David Rouse. Any preferences, Sid?”

  Sid shook his head. “Uh-uh. I’d never want to testify it was any one of those three. All I can say is Fe and whoever seemed to be enjoying themselves. I didn’t stay there long enough to tell who the man was, but Dolph sure must have. If it was Bart, it provides us with a motive having nothing to do with Joanna.”

  “Hell!” said Hank, with a grunt, “I can see some hotshot attorney trotting stuff like that out when I get Rouse to trial. Does anyone else have any prime suspects to screw up my case? I might as well find out about it now.”

  Kay told him about the names in Marshal’s address book. “I suppose those keep Marshal in the running. It’s possible he killed Bart out of jealousy over Fe, even though he didn’t exactly seem up to positive action of any kind then-or on the previous trip, for that matter. As for the address of David Rouse’s wife in Marshal’s address book, I can’t see how it fits in at all—except for being interesting. The Honolulu phone number turned out to be a hotel, by the way, and she isn’t there now, at least not under her real name.”

  None of the group ventured any guesses as to the significance of this part of Kay’s find. Hank made a note of the addresses Kay supplied, looking over at Corky as he did so.

  “Oh, no!” Corky said, catching his look. “You should be able to find someone else to do your dirty work for you this time. The last time I flew over to Honolulu, we made an emergency landing on the way back. I swear I found some gray hair on my head right after that.”

  “Seems like I’m facing rebellion in the ranks,” Hank said. “My next sergeant’s going to be one who isn’t afraid to fly.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t seem particularly important, anyway. Though, if any of you are going over to Oahu, you might drop in on Marshal’s ex and this…“ he checked his pad, “Dorothy Eng.”

  Qual looked around at the other attorneys. “Anyone want to go to the big city? We can charge it up to Marshal since we may use Dorothy Eng as a character witness. It wouldn’t hurt to look up Feinberg, either. He may not be exactly eager to help since he’s lost a client to us, but you never know.”

  “I’ll do it, Qual,” Laura said, “unless somebody else wants to. I feel about Honolulu the way most people feel about New York City. It’s a great place to visit, but…!”

  “Fine,” Qual interrupted. “See what you can do about setting up an appointment with those two, and you might also stop by the hotel where Mrs. Rouse was staying. Sometimes you can talk a clerk into getting a readout of a billing. It’s worth a try, anyway.”

  Hank broke in. “Did you get to talk to Joanna Forbes?”

  “Yes, and I was hoping I’d have something from my interview with her but I ended up being a shoulder to cry on.”

  “Congratulations,” Kay said. “If it had been my shoulder, she’d have bitten it.”

  “Anything at all of interest?” Qual asked.

  “She misses Mark, even after almost three years. I think she was genuinely in love with him. The men she’s been involved with since don’t seem to have done much to alleviate the pain. She’s worried about her son, Francis, who’s on the Big Island at prep school. He had encephalitis as a kid, and fell back a couple of years in school. Mark insisted he go to this high-powered prep school over there. Joanna flies over just about every week to visit him.”

  Qual gritted his teeth. “I haven’t met him, and already I feel sorry for him. My mother used to drop by unexpectedly when I was at camp. God, but it was embarrassing, and I was only fifteen at the time. What must it be like for this kid. How old is he?”

  “Eighteen,” Kay volunteered the information.

  “Worse yet,” Qual said, the combination of sympathy and distaste clearly showing in his face and voice. The others were surprised by the intensity of Qual’s reminiscences. “It’s hard to believe, but after some of my mother’s visits I had fantasies about her dying so she wouldn’t come back.” He gave a self-deprecating smile. “Then I’d feel so guilty I thought of killing myself. Amazing what mothers can do to their sons. I hate to think how I would have felt at eighteen if she’d been flying over to college to see me every week.”

  “Wasn’t Francis aboard on the Honolulu cruise?” Corky asked.

  “That’s right, he was,” Hank said. “Maybe one of us should go over and interview him?”

  Corky immediately spoke up. “You’re bound and determined to get me onto a plane, aren’t you Hank? I’m beginning to think you’re hoping something will happen to it while I’m on it so you can go find yourself another sergeant.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Corky,” Hank replied. “Don’t you read the ads. Hawaiian interisland flights are the safest travel in the whole country.”

  “I don’t read the ads. I look at the photos instead. You seem to forget about the one plane that landed with half the roof gone. Pictures of it were all over the front page. The flight attendant was sucked out at twenty-thousand feet, just like that.” Corky went “pouf,” and threw a hand up in the air to emulate the unfortunate attendant’s dramatic departure from the aircraft. “I have visions of suddenly finding myself out there alone in midair, the way it happened to her. I’ve even had dreams about it. Talk about a nightmare! And there was the other plane which left Honolulu where a whole chunk flew off along with a half dozen passengers still sitting in their seats.”

  “That was an international flight,” Hank said.

  “Oh, sure,” Corky continued, “now I feel a lot better. Next you’ll be telling me it wasn’t so bad because they all took off together like birds.” She fluttered her hands to illustrate her point.

  “If you can wait a couple of days,” Qual said, amused at Corky’s dramatic re-enactment of the tragedy, “I have to visit one of my failures at the state pen over on the Big Island. I could always make a side trip. That will spare Corky a few nightmares.”

  “Might be a good idea,” Hank said. “Maybe Francis saw that bottle.”

  “I think it’s a very good idea,” Corky added.

  “You have to consider him a suspect, too,” said Laura, “even if it messes up your Rouse theory.”

  Hank groaned. “Keep them coming. Don’t shelter me. All I need is about three more suspects to make my day complete.”

  Chapter 14

  Kay and Sid were still talking about the case after they had finished their dinner. The dishwasher was rattling away. Kay was searching around for her unfinished myster
y novel, while Sid debated between doing some work on a credit-card fraud case he was handling, or reading the latest news magazine. Seeing the three cats curled up on the sofa, his own favorite spot for relaxed reading, he decided it would not be worth the hassle to unload them. Instead, he turned to his briefcase while trying to remember salient points in the Hawaii Revised Statutes about theft involving credit cards.

  “Have you figured out who the murderer is yet?” he asked, as he pulled a chair up to the dining-room table which frequently served as a desk.

  “I’m sure it’s Francine,” Kay answered, sitting back in the recliner.

  “Francine? Who the hell is Francine? I haven’t even met her.”

  “I should hope not. She’s a really classy blonde who doesn’t look like she has anything to gain by having murdered the housemaid, so that’s why I’m betting on her.”

  Sid shook himself to give full attention to what Kay was saying. “Oh, you mean in the book you’re reading. I was talking about real life, about who moved Bart on from faith to knowledge.”

  “In that case, I’m stumped,” Kay said, putting down her book and pushing her reading glasses up into her hair. “Hank has a really good case against Rouse, in spite of what Qual said. On the other hand it just doesn’t fit.”

  “You mean you don’t think Rouse would have done such a thing?”

  Kay nodded. “I’ve known him ever since I came to Elima. He’s really a heck of a nice guy. He made a special trip to his office one evening to treat a miserable toothache I had, which doesn’t exactly fit in with the killer instinct.” She sighed, “But, then again, I suppose it just has to be Rouse.”

  “In the book you’re reading, you pick out the least likely suspect and here you pick out the most likely one. How come?”

  “I checked with a dental supply house today,” Kay said, ignoring the inconsistency Sid was pointing out. “They said nitrous oxide comes only in those large bottles. Experimental labs and dentists are about the only ones using the stuff. Since it isn’t toxic, at least not in the usual quantities, there’s no registration or anything similar required, but people do have to present identification and sign off for it. It wouldn’t be easy for just anyone to get the stuff.”

  “How come you didn’t tell Hank that?”

  “I did, shortly after I talked to the supply house. But Hank had beaten me to it. He’d already called the same place. That’s one of the reasons he’s so convinced Rouse is it.”

  Sid looked at the frown on her face and said, “C’mon. Out with it. You aren’t satisfied with Rouse as the culprit for more than just feelings. What is it?”

  “A lot of small things, some of which we mentioned today. In addition, he’s had some medical training. Dentists have to have quite a lot of it in fact. He would have known nitrous oxide would have shown up in Bart’s blood. Knowing that, it would have been the height of stupidity to use something pointed directly at him.”

  “I see where you’re heading. Hank said, when he interviewed Rouse, the first reaction he got from him was that he’d been framed.”

  “Right. The one who’s doing the framing might have known Rouse was going to be on the cruise with Bart and definitely knew the nitrous oxide would point to Rouse.”

  “If Dolph isn’t telling the truth, then we know who the killer is.”

  “Right, again. That’s the direction I’m leaning in at the moment. Now I have an even bigger problem to deal with.”

  “Yes?”

  “Exactly where did the nitrous oxide come from?”

  ***

  Laura had just barely caught the ten-thirty flight to Honolulu. Settling back in her seat with a map of Honolulu on her lap she quickly planned out the afternoon. Dorothy Eng had agreed to lunch. Laura looked at her watch, allowed for a somewhat late arrival at Honolulu International and decided she would be able to pick up her rental car, fight the late-morning traffic into town and still make the appointment at a downtown restaurant with time to spare. As a bank clerk, Dorothy would not be able to stretch an hour lunch into anything much more than that, so it behooved Laura to get there on time.

  The hotel where Mrs. Rouse had presumably stayed was only a few blocks away from the restaurant, so Laura felt she should be through with the task by two-thirty–three, at the latest, leaving an hour for shopping at Ala Moana. Laura wanted a new suit, but had serious doubts about finding one to meet her needs and tastes in just one hour. It’s worth a try, she decided. She then had to be back downtown to visit the offices of Tsuruta, Jones and Feinberg by four-thirty. Surprisingly, Stanley Feinberg had not objected at all to seeing her. In fact, he had been rather apologetic at not being able to meet her earlier in the day.

  By the time Laura had her brief itinerary straight in her mind, the flight attendants were picking up the empty glasses and napkins.

  ***

  Dorothy Eng was a surprise, though she need not have been. Laura had been expecting a Chinese woman. Dorothy was most certainly not Chinese, not even Oriental. A slender, black woman of medium height, who was tastefully and expensively dressed, Dorothy turned out to be both pretty and pleasant. Laura had described herself so Dorothy would recognize her, but had neglected to ask Dorothy for a similar description. Laura quickly decided Dorothy was a much more agreeable luncheon companion than many who Laura had been with in the past.

  The restaurant was a cafeteria in the heart of downtown Honolulu, and was obviously the eating place of choice for the secretaries and clerks, who lacked their employer’s privilege of extending one hour lunches into two or three hours of martinis and small talk. After they had hurried through the line and selected their lunches, Laura and Dorothy found a relatively isolated booth.

  Between bites of a lettuce and tuna sandwich, Laura managed to slip in her major questions. Dorothy interspersed her inroads on the Reuben with her answers.

  “As I told you over the phone,” Laura began, “my firm is representing Marshal Dalquist in his DUI trial which may be coming up again in a month or so. Marshal suggested you might possibly be a character witness at the trial,” Laura began. “I’m not sure we would need you, but I thought I’d sound you out.”

  Dorothy shook her head. “No way. You wouldn’t want me on the stand, either. I’d probably break out laughing if I had to testify Marshal was ever sober.”

  “Did you see him the night he was arrested for driving under the influence?”

  Dorothy swallowed another bite of her sandwich as she again shook her head. “Uh-uh. He was supposed to come by my apartment. We were going out to dinner. He never made it. He didn’t get in touch with me until ten, and then he told me he’d just been sprung and was heading back to the boat.”

  “How long have you known Marshal?”

  Dorothy interrupted a forkful of macaroni and potato salad to answer. “A year, maybe. No! Less than that. It must have been about eight months ago when I met him at a party here in Honolulu.” She grinned. “He was pretty smashed then, too. We ended up at my apartment. It turned out to be a quiet night.”

  Laura wondered at how a woman could simply intend to go to bed with a man on so casual an acquaintance and so short a notice.

  Dorothy finished her food, pushed the plate aside and pulled the cup and saucer of coffee in front of her. “Marshal’s just a lush, pure and simple,” she said. “There’s no other way of describing him. He has plenty of money, and he’s not afraid to spend it. Plus he’s not abusive, no matter how much he drinks. And he just generally isn’t much trouble, if you know what I mean.” As though detecting some censure in Laura’s eyes, she added, “I don’t work the streets, but I’m not about to say no to a reasonably attractive man with a bulging wallet.”

  The dark eyes hardened. “After I divorced my husband, I did a lot of serious thinking. I like sex, but I don’t particularly care for all the games involved. I also haven’t found any man I’d want to live regularly with. That’s why I decided giving it away for a dinner or a night on the town was rea
lly a dumb-shit thing to do. I’ve got something they want, so why shouldn’t I make the most of it. I don’t have to depend on the trade. I’ve got a good job. Even if they aren’t color-blind in Hawaii, I’ve still got a chance to make it to assistant manager. Other blacks have. In the meantime, I’m enjoying myself, I’ve got my freedom, and I’m putting away a little cash for my declining years.”

  Laura could not help but smile at the disarming frankness of her companion. Asking further about Marshal produced nothing of value, certainly nothing which could be used to his advantage in court. Laura probed in the direction Hank wanted her to go. Dorothy was obviously curious, but did not inquire about this change in the conversation’s direction. She ended up by being cooperative though of little help.

  Laura decided if Marshal had been the one who had filled the bottle with nitrous oxide, Dorothy was not the one who could provide any clues pointing to such an action on his part. Her view was that the only danger Marshal might present to others was when he was behind the wheel in his car. Laura knew when she relayed Dorothy’s opinion to Sid and Kay, they would immediately cross Dorothy Eng off of the list of potential witnesses.

  They switched to other topics, and Dorothy highly recommended a women’s clothing store where she made most of her own purchases. Looking at Dorothy’s suit, Laura had no great expectations of finding something there in her own price range.

  Chapter 15

  Qual had made the trip to Kulani prison on the Big Island only twice before. For someone who was used to living on a much smaller island, the distances here seemed enormous. In addition, the expanses he covered were infinitely varied. Driving the rental car up the Stainback highway, he was once more fascinated by the rapid change in the island’s ecology, from the lush plant growth around Hilo, to the mix of temperate and tropical vegetation as he followed the southeast coast of the island into a drier region, and then up the side of Mauna Loa to the strange combination of cool weather, frequent rain, and a hot tropical sun shining down mercilessly through the thinning atmosphere.