Shattered Palms (Lei Crime Series) Page 4

  “And who do you want to have for your hair and makeup?”

  “Oh. I can do that myself.”

  A deafening silence. Lei rubbed the hammered white-gold pendant that Stevens had given her, which she wore on a chain around her neck, and shut her eyes. She knew Tiare meant well and was probably right. “Who do you think I should call?” Lei asked meekly. “Maybe I will need a little help.”

  “Lei, it’s the pictures. I mean, pictures of your wedding are forever. So you want to look your best, and frankly, sometimes your hair…”

  “Yeah, I know.” Lei pulled a curl and it extended, springing back into the welter of curls drying after the shower. She’d forgot to put in gel. Stevens came to the door, cocking an eyebrow at her, looking tasty in nothing but his boxers. He gestured to the door.

  “Going home,” he mouthed. She nodded.

  “I’m sure I could use someone to help with my hair at least.”

  “Okay. Well, call these ladies.” Tiare rattled off a couple of numbers. “They really need to get a look at you to appreciate the challenge.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Lei hung up, feeling hopeless and overwhelmed. She padded back into the living room, where Stevens was shrugging into his shirt. She burrowed into his arms, pressing her face against his neck.

  “You love me, right?” she asked, her voice muffled.

  “God help me, you know I do.”

  “Well, I’m incompetent as a woman. I forgot to even look for a wedding dress, and it’s only two weeks away.”

  “You’re more than enough woman for me.” His hands had begun to wander, waking up her barely dormant nerve endings all over again. “I don’t care if you wear a burlap sack or show up naked, as long as you don’t leave me standing up there by myself.”

  Lei was in no mood for joking or being distracted.

  “I need a dress. And someone to do my hair, and probably makeup too. Also, Tiare wants us to call the family members who are coming, make sure their arrangements are all good. For you, it’s your mom and brother.” Lei hadn’t met either of them yet. “And she wants to know if the honeymoon is under control.”

  “You don’t need to worry about the honeymoon. I’ve got that in hand. You know, the wedding isn’t really for us. It’s for the friends and family who need to witness this miracle.” He tugged a curl off her forehead, let go. Did it again. She batted at his hand.

  “Really? Because it seems like it should be for us.”

  “Well, if it were, all I’d need to do is stand with you and promise to have and to hold you.” He kissed her, a tender stamp on the lips, looking into her tilted brown eyes, smoothing one of her straight brows with a thumb. “In sickness and in health. For richer, for poorer. Until death do us part.” He kissed her firmly after each vow, and she kept her eyes on his, wrapped in his arms, her favorite place in the world.

  “Then can we just do that and call ourselves married?” she whispered. “Because I will have you and hold you, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, until death do us part.”

  Blue eyes looked into brown for a long time, and then Stevens sighed. “Not gonna cut it. You still need a wedding dress.”

  Stevens left for his apartment, always a wrench, and one that Lei knew would end after the wedding. It really was going to be a passage for them, and she was appreciating that more and more. She turned off the exterior lights as the Bronco pulled away, then armed the house and checked all her locks by force of habit. Did her bathroom business and climbed into bed, Keiki ensconced at her feet.

  She tossed and turned but couldn’t sleep, worries about the mythical dress cluttering her mind. Finally, she picked up her phone beside the bed, still attached to the recharge cord, and called her best friend, probably sound asleep right now on Oahu.

  Special Agent Marcella Scott picked up, her voice thick. “This better be good.”

  “I need a dress for the wedding.”

  “What?” Marcella was coming fully awake. “Please tell me you’re kidding.” Marcella, effortlessly stylish, daughter of an Italian fashion-plate mother and a couture shoe importer father, was clearly horrified. “It’s in two weeks. I’ve just had my final fittings for my maid of honor dress.”

  “I know. I just—well, I hate those boutique places. I get overwhelmed. I went in a couple and walked right back out. Then I sort of blocked it out of my mind. But Tiare says I have to get something. She can’t do it for me.” Lei put her fingers over her eyes, pressed. She wanted to cry. She’d had just a couple of things to do and she hadn’t done them.

  Stevens and his love, his vows, and his burlap sack or nakedness didn’t help a bit.

  “Calm down,” Marcella said. “Let me get up, get on my computer. I wish you’d told me this a hell of a lot sooner.”

  “I’m sorry. This is all you have to do as my maid of honor. I promise.”

  “Okay. Calm down,” Marcella said again, and Lei wasn’t sure she was telling it to Lei or to herself. “What we need is a custom place, have them whip something up for you. I’ve heard of someone who does good custom gowns on Maui. Let me make some calls, and I’ll get back to you with the next steps.”

  “But I don’t even know what I want!” Lei wailed. “I don’t know what will look good on me!”

  “I do,” Marcella said. “You have an awesome tight body, but you’re a little slim in the hips with small boobs. You should wear something simple in a really good fabric most women couldn’t pull off. I have some ideas.”

  And indeed she sounded like she did, and was excited about it too.

  “It can’t be too sexy. I’d feel weird,” Lei said, thinking of how uncomfortable she’d feel being stared at and photographed in something low-cut. On the other hand, something tight and heavy like a Hawaiian-style holoku gown didn’t feel right either. “Thank you, Marcella. I mean really, thank you. If you get this figured out for me, I’ll buy you that new weapon you’ve been wanting—that antique Italian pistol you were telling me about.”

  Marcella laughed. “You can’t afford it, and neither can I, which is why it’s a collector’s item. If I do this, and I will, I’ll have bragging rights forever as the woman who helped Leilani Rosario Texeira be the most gorgeous woman in the world on her wedding day.”

  Lei felt tears build behind her eyelids. “You’re a good friend.” She sniffed. “Why is everything about this whole thing so emotional?”

  “It’s a wedding, girlfriend. They’re always cryfests, so just roll with it. Where’ve you been, under a rock all these years?”

  “I guess. I’ve never even been to one.”

  “Cultural philistine.” Marcella’s voice was warm with affection. “You had a deprived childhood and have been a workaholic. But it’s time to turn all that around. You and Stevens deserve to be happy. You’ve had enough heartbreak.”

  “True. Most of it my fault.” Lei got up and went to the bathroom, blew her nose. “Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “You can pay me back when it’s my turn.” Marcella had been seriously dating an HPD detective for close to a year, and Lei wouldn’t be surprised if her friend turned up with a ring on her finger.

  “Of course, but you’ll never do something like forget to order your wedding dress. And shoes! Oh my God!” Lei smacked her own forehead.

  “Hey, it’s at the beach, right? You can go barefoot. Just bring something for afterward.”

  “Oh good. Wasn’t sure of the protocol on that.” Lei got back in bed. “At least Stevens will be with me all the time after the wedding. It’s so hard saying goodbye to him. Every time it’s hard, these days.”

  “Why aren’t you guys living together? Remind me again.” Marcella had been in on their bumpy romance from the beginning.

  “I just got to like my space when I was in Honolulu. I thought it would give us something to look forward to, keep things—I don’t know—before and after. And besides, Keiki needs a yard, and his place didn’t have one.” The big Rottie raised her
head off the end of the bed at the sound of her name, eyes questioning. Lei patted the bed beside her and Keiki crawled up. She stroked the dog’s big broad head.

  “So I’ll call you tomorrow with where and when you should go for the fitting. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  “Okay, I won’t.” Marcella would handle it, and was so much more qualified to do so. Lei decided to obey her and put it out of her mind. “So, on another topic, I caught an interesting case today.” She filled Marcella in on the John Doe in the national park jungle. “We think he was poaching.”

  “Holy crap. That’s low, poaching endangered birds!”

  “Yeah, and who knows. I might need to do an official consult with you because I suspect he’s a Chinese national. He had some weird equipment on him, none of it American made.”

  “That isn’t really indicative of anything. Most stuff is made in China these days.”

  “Well, still. I just have a feeling.”

  “More will be revealed on your murder, but wait for my call about meeting with the dress designer. I’m making a list as we speak, and hopefully one of them can take you on short notice.”

  “I’m counting on it—and for you to know what the dress should look like.”

  “Not a problem. I have just the thing in mind. You called the right Italian FBI agent, baby. I’m on a mission now.”

  Chapter 6

  Lei and Pono stood outside the doors to the morgue. Maui Memorial’s morgue wasn’t as bad as some, but Lei always needed a moment to gather her fortitude for the smells and sights that lay before them—not so much because they were disgusting (though that was part of it), but because of the association they would always have with one of the most traumatic moments Lei had experienced in her adult life—identifying the body of a close friend.

  Pono had been with her.

  He reached over and squeezed her arm just above the elbow. “Gregory keeps it pretty clean in there,” he said. She nodded and followed him as he hit the pneumatic door with its lever bar. Leslie Tanaka, Dr. Gregory’s assistant, was working on a body across the room and hardly looked up, muttering something into a voice recorder. The ME was wearing an aloha shirt done in lurid rainbows. His rubber apron had a smiley face on it, and while Lei could objectively appreciate the attempt to lighten the atmosphere, the blood spatter on the design made her grimace.

  “Hey there, detectives,” Dr. Gregory said, hosing down a slab with a flexible steel hose attached to a metal arm above the table. “Here about your Haleakala John Doe?”

  “Yeah. Wondering if you have anything for us. Feeling no great need to see the body,” Pono said.

  “Probably wise, as four-day-old decomp doesn’t really improve with time. But I do have something for you. Follow me.”

  He led them to his office corner and punched up a list, ran his finger down the screen and hit another button, opening a file on their most recent murder case, labeled john doe asian waikamoi.

  Lei pointed to the screen. “We found an ID at his hotel. Xu Chang.”

  “Good.” Gregory retitled the case, and Lei checked her phone, dictating the case number to him.

  “So I ran his prints,” Gregory said. “Not in the system. Given the Chinese writing on some of the implements he was carrying, I sent the prints over to Interpol. I haven’t heard anything back yet.” He toggled through various gory photos of the body and the autopsy process. “Cause of death was a single arrow. Extraordinarily well aimed. Arrows are often badly placed, and people can take a while to die by this method—but this one hit the vic in the heart from behind and dropped the man like a rock.”

  “Anything else interesting about the body?”

  “Well, the vic appears to be around age forty-five, and dental was consistent with foreign dentistry—in other words, his teeth were in bad shape and they were pulled when they rotted, which tells me he grew up somewhere poor and possibly undeveloped. Could be China; could be somewhere else. I also have an interest in the native birds on Maui and the conservation movement. Thanks for sending me copies of the bird photos. A real shame.” Gregory toggled to the series of photos of the birds Lei had forwarded him.

  “This isn’t the same as a full necropsy, mind you. Just an idea to see how they might have died. What’s sad is that these birds died of dehydration in the bag, from what I can tell by looking at the photos. Their eye sockets are sunken, as if the liquid in their tissues was lost.”

  Lei looked at the photos of the birds, feeling a pang of sorrow at the sight of their bent heads and tiny, curled claws. “This one was the Maui Parrotbill, or Kiwikiu.” He tapped his computer screen, pointing to the green one with the hooked bill and the band of yellow. “Critically endangered; only five hundred of them in existence.”

  Gregory’s pink lips worked, and he took his magnifiers off and wiped them vigorously on a towel hanging off a hook on the corner of his desk. “The one with the crest, the Akohekohe, is also very rare. In any case, it’s a real shame whoever shot this man didn’t go check what was in the bag.”

  “That’s so sad.” Lei’s words felt inadequate to express the magnitude of loss.

  “A man also died, but I have to say, I’m more upset about the birds, because at this point humans are definitely not endangered.”

  “So do you have any information on the arrow?” Pono asked. “And can we have it?”

  “Sure. I extracted it and cleaned it for you. No other interesting trace on the body.”

  “Were you able to identify the birds? We have a meeting scheduled with the Hawaiian Bird Conservatory people who manage the Waikamoi Preserve, but this would give us a little advance notice,” Lei said.

  Gregory rattled off the names of the birds in Hawaiian and Latin. Lei took notes but knew she wouldn’t remember the names without repetition—and it was unknown whether the type of bird they were had played a part in the crime. Still, the fact that the man was up there, on private conservation land, hunting them meant that, dead or alive, the birds were important.

  “Thanks, Phil.” Lei jotted the names as best she could in her notebook.

  “Happy to help. And happy to do anything I can to catch someone preying on our wildlife. So little of it, and so precious.”

  “Well, I’ll take you hunting next time,” Pono said. “Can you handle a compound bow? We hunt for pig, axis deer, and goat. All of them good eating, and all of them ruining the native forest.”

  “I’m not much of a shot, but I’d love to try,” Gregory said. “Let me make copies of some of this stuff for you.” With his usual attention to detail, the ME gave them individual photos of the bird bodies Lei had sent over with their names noted at the bottom, the man’s fingerprints, and the autopsy report. “Don’t forget to check with Interpol tomorrow on this.”

  Back at the station, Lei sat at her desk and booted up her computer. She logged the arrow and autopsy report into the case and did some work on their other cases. One was a domestic violence murder and another a meth-production-related murder, both more common Maui crimes than the new bow hunter case. Before she knew it, the front desk clerk paged them that the biologists from the Hawaiian Bird Conservatory were in the conference room. Lei scooped up the case folder. “Do you have the video recorder?”

  “Got it.” Pono waggled the small camera they used to video interviews. They found the two scientists in the conference room with its smoked-glass windows and whiteboards all around the walls. Both stood as Lei and Pono entered.

  “Dr. Jud Snelling,” a tall, thin man said, shaking Lei’s hand. “I’m head of Hawaiian Bird Conservatory here on Maui.”

  “Dr. Cam Rinker.” The other biologist, sandy-blond, also shook hands. “I’m head of the land management project at Waikamoi.”

  Lei and her partner introduced themselves, and they all sat. “Mind if we tape this? Helps us if we need to go back for clarification about anything,” Pono said.

  “No problem.” Snelling seemed to be in charge, by his posture and eye contact. “W
e were shocked to hear a man had been accidentally shot in the preserve.”

  “We don’t know how accidental it was,” Lei said. “We think he might have been a poacher, catching native birds. He had a number of dead birds on his body, and we’d like your help verifying their species.”

  She opened the folder, spread the photos that Gregory had identified out in front of the biologists. “Can you confirm that these are the species of birds that our medical examiner identified?”

  Snelling and Rinker leaned forward, and Snelling jerked back, picking up the photo of the green bird with the yellow banding. “Oh my God. This is a Maui Parrotbill!”

  “All of these are rare, but these two are the most critically endangered.” Rinker tapped the mottled black-and-white bird with the crest and the hook-billed one Snelling still held.

  “Can you confirm Latin and Hawaiian names of the birds noted on the bottom of these photos?” Lei asked. The biologist took the Sharpie she handed him. In a moment Rinker looked up. “These are identified correctly.”

  “What can you tell us about what this man might have been doing and how he was doing it?” Lei took out the photos of the equipment the man had been carrying. The conservationists took their time, and finally, Snelling tapped the photo of the net wrapped around a stick and the recorder.

  “This is probably how he caught the birds. The Parrotbill, in particular, is very territorial—part of why it’s so endangered. Only one pair can live in any given area, and our most common way to trap the birds for banding is to play the song of another Parrotbill. If there’s one in the area, it will be curious and come to investigate. Then we can catch it in these nets we string. They’re called mist nets because they’re almost invisible.”

  “What about these other things?” Lei tapped the sticky wire, the needle-nosed bottle.

  “These are other ways to capture birds. Except for the Parrotbill, the birds you have displayed here are nectar feeders and do what we call trapline feeding, where they work their way over the outside of an ohia tree—you know, the one with the fluffy red flowers called lehua,” Snelling said. Lei thought of the red flowers, each a round burst of fine filaments. She nodded, and Snelling went on. “If a birder observes their nectar-gathering pathway, he can be pretty sure the bird will be coming back by within a few hours and working the same trapline after the flowers have regenerated their nectar. So he could string a sticky wire or put the glue on branches where the bird is likely to land and catch them that way.”