We spent the next twenty minutes reviewing the facts of the case as we knew them without coming to any firm conclusions. We all agreed Eddy probably had the best motive for killing Alex. But we still needed more information before we would know anything for sure.
The bell above the door jingled, and Aunt Audrey walked in, a wide grin on her face. She wore a burgundy scoop-neck dress held up with wide shoulder straps.
Hanging around her neck was the diamond and ruby necklace. Even under the indirect lights of the office, the diamonds gave off a fiery sparkling glow.
"Oh, my goodness," Dorothy exclaimed. "You've got your necklace back!"
"Jimmy Toki brought it to my room about ten minutes ago," Aunt Audrey said. "I had to come out and show you."
"Did he say where he got it?" I asked.
"Yeah," Leilani added. "Who took it?"
"Jimmy didn't say, and I don't think he knows. He said somebody brought it up to the front desk. They recognized what it was and gave it to him."
"I suppose it doesn't matter who took it, now that you have it back," I said.
"That's true," Aunt Audrey said slowly. "And I suppose I should be grateful the thieves had a change of heart. They even had it cleaned. My necklace hasn't looked this good in years."
"So, what's wrong?" Dorothy asked as she looked at Aunt Audrey. "You seem troubled."
Aunt Audrey sighed and nodded her head. "Something about this seems off. Why would someone go through all the trouble to steal the necklace, only to give it back? It doesn't make any sense."
* * *
Aunt Audrey took off a few minutes later, saying she had to show everyone that her necklace had been returned. Dorothy looked at us and shook her head, apparently at how crazy the world was.
Leilani grabbed three sodas from the small refrigerator we have stashed in the back of the office. "I wonder who returned the necklace to the front desk?" she asked as she passed out the drinks.
"There's one way to find out," I said as I punched the speakerphone button on my desk phone and called the front desk.
"Hi, Summer," I said when she answered. "It's Kristy."
"Hey, Kristy," she said in her always cheerful voice. "What can I do for you?"
"We heard the stolen diamond and ruby necklace was returned to the front desk. Do you happen to know who brought it up?"
"Jimmy Toki was here asking us the same thing," she said with a laugh. "The necklace was in a big manila envelope. I was in the back office at the time, but I heard a teenager had dropped it off. According to Rachel, the kid had a towel draped over his shoulders, and it looked like he'd just come in from the beach."
"Did the envelope have anything written on it?" Dorothy asked.
"All it said was Return to the front desk. Jimmy has it now. You can ask him if you want to know more about it. Anything else I can help you with?"
Dorothy, Leilani, and I looked at each other. Leilani shrugged.
"Thanks, Summer," I said. "I owe you, again."
"Well, that doesn't help us a lot," Leilani said with a scrunched-up face after I hung up with Summer.
"I can't help but think the stolen necklace somehow ties in with everything else," I said. "But I don't see how it could."
"That's true," Dorothy said. "But did you hear Audrey's voice? She thinks something's off with the theft as well."
"Well, she has a point," Leilani said. "Who steals a valuable necklace and then hands it back?"
"Dorothy," I asked, wanting to talk about something other than the murder, "how long have you been keeping that scrapbook with all of the crazy weddings?"
"Yeah," Leilani added. "I didn't know you had anything like that."
"You mean my Hall of Fame?" Dorothy asked with a slight chuckle. "I started it after the first time we were forced to hold the ceremony in the hospital."
"How long ago was that?" Leilani asked. "The hairstyles in the first picture look like they're from an episode of Friends."
"Oh, that must have been twenty-five or thirty years ago," Dorothy said as she smiled. "A few weeks after the ceremony, the bride sent me an eight by ten of the wedding party gathered around the hospital bed."
"What happened to the groom?" I asked. "In the picture, he looked pretty messed up."
"He broke his leg in a hang-gliding accident," Dorothy said with a smile and a shake of her head. "The bride had warned him to not jump off a cliff so close to the ceremony, but he did it anyway. You should have heard her yell at him as they applied the cast to his leg. I've always kept the picture of that ceremony as the first page in the book."
"What about the other pictures?" I asked.
"Whenever something crazy happens at a wedding, I'll show the bride the photos and ask her to send me a picture of her ceremony for the book. Most of them do, knowing their wedding will be forever enshrined in the Aloha Lagoon Wedding Hall of Fame."
"How often do you have to use the book?" I asked. "I didn't know you had it, and I've been here almost six months."
"I only bring out the Hall of Fame in an emergency," Dorothy said. "I've found that whenever a bride goes into a panic because of a problem, it helps when they see crazy things often happen at a wedding. It usually works to calm them down. I figured that having a groomsman murdered counted as a bridal emergency."
"Well, it worked with Carly and her aunt," Leilani said. "It was like you fed each of them a Valium."
My cell phone started ringing. I pulled it out and saw it was a local number, but one I didn't recognize. Dorothy and Leilani were both eyeing me as I answered it.
"Hello, Kristy, this is Detective Ray." His voice was the same deep monotone I remembered so clearly from our previous meetings.
"Um, yes, Detective," I said. "What can I do for you?"
Dorothy and Leilani exchanged a glance and leaned forward to listen. I waved them away and concentrated on trying to hear the detective.
"I'd like you to come down to the station," Ray said. "Something interesting's come up, and I'd like to get your thoughts on it."
"Sure," I said. "When would you like me to come in?"
"Right away, if you don't mind."
* * *
I drove down to the police station. It was a single-story stucco structure in the middle of town, across from the Blue Manu Coffee House. I'd been to the coffee shop before, but a visit to the police station was a first for me.
I parked in a visitor's space and checked in with the desk sergeant. He indicated I should have a seat in the sparse waiting area until Ray came out to get me.
I didn't have long to wait before the detective arrived to lead me down a long hallway to his office. He cleared a mound of magazines from a visitor's chair and offered me a seat.
As I made myself comfortable, I looked around the office. It was a disaster.
Styrofoam coffee cups and empty soda cans littered his desk, along with several stained fast-food containers. The trash can was overflowing, and the place had the vaguely unpleasant smell of a college dorm room.
"Miss Piper," Detective Ray said. "Thank you for coming down. How's your wedding party holding up?"
"The group's doing pretty well, all things considered," I said. "The rest of the guests will arrive later today and tomorrow. We're still going ahead with the wedding as planned."
Ray nodded with understanding, then reached under his desk and pulled out a clear plastic bag that contained the souvenir tiki statue. I shuddered at the sight of the murder weapon.
"This has been run through the lab, and they confirmed the presence of blood and hair from Alex Adair. We didn't detect the presence of any unknown DNA, and there weren't any latent prints. But they did conclude this was the murder weapon."
"What about Jake? He was hit as well. Wasn't there any of his hair or blood on the statue?"
"The injury Jake Hunter received to the side of his head didn't even break the skin. I would have been surprised to have any of his blood on the tiki. But the reason I called you down was this."
Ray held up the plastic bag containing the figurine. "See, just a normal souvenir tiki, like you can get at any tourist shop on the island. But the lab found something unusual."
The detective pushed on one of the tiki's knees through the plastic. The side of the statue popped open to reveal a secret compartment.
"Over the years," Ray said in his flat voice, "I've come across a lot of items with hidden compartments, but this is about the best I've ever seen."
"Do you think it's for drugs?"
"I don't know," Ray said as he ran his hand through his hair. "It seems kinda small for drugs. I was hoping you may have overheard something that could tell me what this was going to be used for?"
I mentally searched through my conversations of the last few days but came up empty. "Sorry, Detective. I don't know anything about the tiki, and I can't even guess at what was going into the compartment."
"Okay," he said, his voice now sounding tired. "If you hear of anything, let me know."
"I'll keep my ears open. I should also let you know. I've been asking around, and I think we can eliminate all but five of the people in the wedding party as suspects."
"You've been asking around?" the detective asked, suddenly looking unhappy.
"Yes," I said, knowing he would want the information. "It turns out that when Alex was killed, Aunt Audrey, Justin, Carly, and Derek, were at the Rainbow Buffet having breakfast. Roxanne was at the Loco Moco."
Ray sighed, pulled out his battered notebook, and picked up a pen from his desk. He flipped over several pages and looked at me.
"And how do you know they were all at breakfast when the murder was committed?"
"From the timestamps on their bills. When someone leaves a restaurant, the system registers the time. Since everyone is charging their food to the wedding account, nobody paid in cash or used a separate credit card."
Ray scribbled a few notes and looked up at me. He didn't say anything, so I continued.
"We've also learned a lot about why people hated Alex so much. It turns out he was a cheat, a bully, and a jerk. He had a lot of enemies within the wedding party."
I looked at Detective Ray, waiting for him to respond, but he only looked at me.
I rushed in to fill the silence. "In college, Alex pretended to care about Lauren and started dating her, simply to get back at Orson over a cheating scandal they'd had earlier in their senior year. Then, on the beach the other day, Alex picked up Lauren and was going to throw her into the ocean. She ended up slapping him pretty hard. I've talked with her, and I know how much she hated Alex."
"Are you saying Lauren Maxwell took out both Alex Adair and Jake Hunter in that conference room with the tiki? She's a healthy-looking woman, but I wouldn't place a bet on her in a fight to the death with those two."
"No, I'm not saying it was Lauren. There's also Orson. He almost got kicked out of school because Alex cheated off his English paper. It shattered Orson's dreams about being a university professor. When Orson discovered Alex was intimate with Lauren, who was Orson's girlfriend at the time, it broke his heart."
"So, you think Orson Cross did it?" Detective Ray asked, skepticism in his voice.
"No, because it gets worse. Eddy and Roxanne were married right after college. Two years later, Eddy found Alex with his wife, and there was a fight in the bedroom. Alex ended up in the hospital, and Eddy served two years of probation over it."
"Anything else?" Ray asked. I caught some snark in his voice.
"Alex picked up Roxanne on the beach the other day, spent several minutes carrying her around, and then threw her into the Pacific. It was as if Alex was purposefully taunting Eddy. I could tell it really upset him."
"Okay, you now think Eddy Martin did it?"
"I can't say for sure yet. But at the moment, he's definitely the one I'd be looking at."
"But you don't have any information that Jake Hunter was the killer? Even though he'd gotten into a fight with the victim the day before and apparently was in the middle of another fight with him at the time of the murder?"
"No, of course not. Jake didn't kill anyone. He heard someone in trouble and was only trying to help. Besides, I'm pretty sure he didn't hit himself over the head hard enough to be knocked unconscious. And what exactly was his motive?"
I noticed Detective Ray had stopped making notes. It was sort of hard to tell, but the look he was giving me didn't seem all that friendly.
"Miss Piper," he said, his tone clearly unhappy now. "I know you're only trying to be helpful. But I don't need you to interview the witnesses for me, and I don't need you to establish their motives or alibis."
"But I thought you'd want to know," I said, feeling frustrated. "I mean, I'm right there, and these people are talking with me. Some of them have really opened up."
"Or it's possible they're simply using you to help establish their alibis. Please, leave this to the professionals. All you're doing is muddying the waters."
"Fine," I said, now feeling slightly hostile toward the detective. "Then I suppose you also don't want to know that Aunt Audrey has her diamond and ruby necklace back."
"Yes, I heard about that. Jimmy Toki called about fifteen minutes ago. My next stop is to return to the resort to talk with both Jimmy and Ms. Audrey Wentworth."
"To save you some time, the necklace was sent to the front desk in a manila envelope. They think the person who brought it up was a teenager who'd come in from the beach. The envelope had Return to the front desk written on it."
The detective raised an eyebrow. "And how did you learn this information?" he asked in a tired voice.
Geez, this guy is suspicious of everything.
"Um, I called the front desk and asked."
Duh.
"You can go, Miss Piper," he said with a sigh. "But please stop playing detective and let me get on with my investigation."
* * *
I drove back to the resort and parked in the employee's lot. I still had some time before Jake was due to arrive. I wasn't yet ready for Dorothy to grill me about my visit with the detective, so I took my time walking back to the main building.
I ended up strolling through a grouping of The Huts, the high-end bungalows that were scattered between the main building and the beach. These were the cottages where the members of the wedding party were staying.
I had just turned to go back up by the central pool when I saw someone hiding against a wall, behind a small plumeria tree. As I looked closer, I saw a pair of pasty white legs wearing bright orange flip-flops.
Orson?
What was Gamer Orson doing that had him skulking around the grounds? I was about to walk over to him, but then my curiosity overcame me.
I carefully angled myself behind him to see what he was looking at. When I was more or less seeing what Orson was seeing, I watched as Angry Eddy and Flirty Roxanne came into view.
They were standing in a wide spot along one of the paths that wound through the resort. Tropical foliage lined the walkway, shielding them from the prying eyes of the rest of the resort. But not from Orson and me.
As I watched, they appeared to be simply talking. But judging by their body language, it was apparent their conversation was of an intimate nature.
They were both smiling and standing close to one another. At one point, Eddy placed his hand on her arm, and she took the opportunity to step closer to him.
Although I was somewhat concerned about Roxanne hooking up with a possible murderer, what was happening between the two wasn't anything unusual. When former lovers reunited after being separated for years, it often led to rekindled romances.
My larger concern was for Orson. It was obvious he was spying on the couple, and I suspected it would end badly. If I didn't intercede, someone would likely report him. He'd then find himself talking to resort security or maybe even the police.
I moved closer to where he was standing and greeted the legs I saw behind the tree. "Hi, Orson," I said in my most friendly, non-judgmental tone. "Don't you love the way the blossoms smell? Some people call it a frangipani tree, but I always prefer plumeria."
"Oh, um, yes," Orson's voice stammered out from behind the branches. "They're lovely."
"Just to let you know," I said in a confidential tone, "I wouldn't pick too many of the flowers. The head groundskeeper here, Nick Woodfield, tends to get cranky whenever he sees a plumeria tree with no blossoms."
"Oh, of course," he said with a forced laugh as he stepped out from behind the leafy tree. "Um, I figured nobody would notice if I only took a few from the back."
"Good thinking," I said. "Here, I'll keep a lookout while you nab a few."
Orson glanced in the direction of Eddy and Roxanne, then absentmindedly pulled off two blossoms from the back of the tree and showed them to me.
"Perfect," I said. "You know, if you float the blossoms in a bowl, they'll last longer."
"Thanks," he said as we started walking back to the main building. "I'll grab something to put the water in."
We were passing the central pool when Orson stopped me. He paused as if organizing his thoughts, then he spoke.
"Kristy, what do you think about what's going on here?" He seemed remarkably focused for someone who'd been caught spying on his fellow wedding party members.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Alex's murder," he said as if it was obvious. "Can't you see? We're missing something. None of this makes any sense."
"Do murders have to make sense?" I asked. "I know Alex had his share of enemies."
"I design a lot of games, and all of them have a mystery element. But this murder came out of the blue. Sure, a lot of people hated Alex, but enough to murder him? I don't think so. Plus, Aunt Audrey's had her necklace returned. That's huge. There's a motive here we aren't seeing."
"Well, who do you think did it?" I was curious as to what he thought.
He paused and stared into the distance for several seconds. Again, I couldn't tell if he was thinking some deep thoughts or simply spacing out. Maybe it was a bit of both.
"So far, Eddy's the one with the clearest motive," he finally said. "His hatred of Alex has been building up for years. But if it was Eddy, I can't figure out how he did it."
"What's to figure out?" I asked. "Alex was hit on the head with a tiki."
Orson shook his head and waved his hand dismissively. "That's not what I'm saying."
"Well?" I asked. "Then what?"
"I'm pretty sure I saw Eddy walking on the beach about the time Alex was being murdered. I can't say for sure since I wasn't paying close attention. I mean, who knew we'd need an alibi for that morning. But I think it was him. If so, there's no way he could have been in two places at once."
"You were also on the beach when Alex was killed?"
"That's right, he said. "And as I've already told the detective, I don't think anyone can confirm that."
"So, let me get this straight. Now you don't think Eddy killed Alex?" Orson seemed to be in a talkative mood, and I wanted all I could get out of him.
"I have several plausible story threads going on this. Eddy's motive is simply the most likely. Like I said, a lot of people didn't like Alex, but most of them didn't hate him enough to murder him."
"Any idea who did hate him enough?" I asked.
"Well," he said as he rubbed the back of his head. "I have my suspicions, but I'd rather not say. At least not until I can come up with some proof. You know, I don't want to say someone's a murderer unless I can back it up."
"I guess I can understand that," I said, a little disappointed. "Um, if it's not too delicate of a subject, I heard Derek originally started his company with your idea. Do you want to tell me about it?"
At the mention of Derek, Orson became angry. I'd obviously hit on a sensitive subject.
"I came up with a new way for computer networks to communicate with each other," Orson fumed. "The idea was completely brilliant. Unfortunately, no one but Derek thought it would work. He started a company after we graduated to develop my ideas. I thought he was doing me a favor by signing me up as employee number one."
"Well, that sounds great," I said. "What happened?"
"Unfortunately, when I signed up as an employee, it seems I also signed away all the rights I had to my ideas. They became the property of Derek's company. When I said I deserved a share of the profits generated from my ideas, the jackhole fired me."
"That doesn't seem right. Couldn't you take him to court?"
Orson's face softened, and he became somewhat melancholy.
"Oh, sure. I talked to a lawyer, several actually. Unfortunately, the paperwork I'd signed was ironclad and apparently pretty standard in the tech industry. Derek legally stole my idea, and there wasn't a lot I could do about it. Basically, chalk it up to being young and stupid."
We both stood for a moment in an awkward silence. Neither one of us knew what to say next.
"Okay, I finally said, "let me know if you come up with anything new with the murder investigation. Also, don't forget, dinner is tonight at six o'clock, starting with drinks in the Rainbow Lounge. They'll have us set up for dinner in a room in the back. Dress is island casual."
Orson looked down at his aloha shirt, white pants, and orange flip-flops, then back up at me.
"You're perfect," I said.