The Invasive Species, page 22
part #4 of Professor Molly Mysteries Series
“I think it’s too late to call the East Coast,” I said, to buy Donnie some time. “Maybe tomorrow would be better?”
“Don’t want to delay,” Medeiros said. “Better to do it now.”
“Does it have to be Molly?” Donnie asked. “Molly, Davison already knows you don’t think very highly of him. This is going to be hard for him.”
“What are you talking about? I’m very tolerant of Davison.”
“He told me what happened with the paper, in your class,” Donnie said.
“Ah. So he told you that he cheated? That he copied his entire paper from his friend and handed it in as his own?”
“He admitted he made a stupid mistake. And afterward, he could never get in your good books. He’s tried, Molly. He really has.”
I could tell this was new information for Detective Medeiros.
“Detective,” I said, “this was before I knew Donnie. Davison was a student in my class, where he uploaded a completely plagiarized paper. To a plagiarism detection website. Come on, that’s just insulting Geez. What a day. Did you hear about Crystal Phoenix?”
“What about her?” Donnie asked, although he didn’t seem very interested.
“She’s dead. A couple of hikers found her.”
Medeiros gave me a wary look.
“Where did you get that information, Professor?”
I remembered Pat wasn’t supposed to tell us anything.
“Oh, everyone’s talking about it on campus. Mahina State is such a gossipy place.”
“Professor, would you mind calling your stepson for us?”
I looked from Donnie to Detective Medeiros and back.
“I really don’t feel comfortable calling him.”
You can’t make me. And why should I? I should be celebrating with my husband right now, not spending my precious time wringing a confession out of my prodigal stepson.
Medeiros regarded me with a steady, calculating gaze.
“There was a body,” he said finally. “But it wasn’t Crystal Phoenix. Or Christine Roach, which was her birth name.”
“What?”
“The victim had Crystal Phoenix’s ID on her, which is how come we thought it was her. But when her former employers came in for ID her, it wasn’t the same girl.”
“It wasn’t Crystal? Who was it?”
“If I tell you, will you make the call?”
I had to hand it to Ka`imi Medeiros. He knew how to motivate me. I nodded yes.
“The victim’s name was Alison Boyd. She had been teaching yoga aboard the cruise ship. She visited the Laughing Lotus yoga studio the day before her death and had met the owners. They recognized her.”
“She must have had Crystal’s ID, though?”
“We think she borrowed it to get kama`aina discount at the shops. Not supposed to do it, but lotta people do.”
“So, what happened to her?”
“Probably just unfamiliar with the terrain. Big mistake to go out hiking by yourself here.”
“So, probably an accident,” I said.
“You ready to make the call, Professor?”
That was apparently the signal my stalling was over. Donnie gave me a faint nod as if to say, “Might as well get this over with.” He looked truly miserable.
I wasn’t so sure poor Alison Boyd really had gone out hiking by herself. If I was right, maybe Donnie’s life wouldn’t be ruined after all. I took my phone out of my bag and placed it on the table. The quilted turquoise case (chosen to match my Thunderbird’s paint job) looked frivolous and out of place, its little rhinestones glinting irreverently.
Medeiros produced a device that looked like a shiny black pack of gum and plugged it into my phone.
“Both one party states,” Medeiros said, in response to my questioning look. “Your consent is sufficient. Please make the call on speaker.”
Chapter Fifty
I switched on the speaker and dialed. Three rings, four rings—
“It’s too late,” I said. “He’s already asleep.”
As I said it, the line clicked.
“Eh, Molly?” It sounded like Davison had been woken from a sound sleep. “Where you?”
“I’m calling from Mahina, Um, sounds like you got back okay?”
“Mahina.” Davison guffawed. “Aw, kinda far for one booty call, ah? How long’s it gonna take you to get here?”
I rested my forehead in my hands.
“Davison, have you been drinking?”
“Nah, nah, nah. Just some margaritas is all.”
“I don’t think this is going to be a productive conversation,” I said.
“Please,” Medeiros mouthed.
“Molly.” My phone squawked. “Who’s there wit’ you?”
“Your father is right here, Davison. You’re on speaker.”
“Hey, buddy,” Donnie said, without conviction.
“Aw, Dad. I was just kidding around wit’ Molly, ah?”
Medeiros motioned to me to start talking.
“Hey, Davison? Remember Randy Randolph? The unpleasant man who ended up squashed to death in his home gym?”
“Yeah?” Davison sounded wary now.
“I remember Crystal mentioned he was a client. You must’ve talked about him with her.”
“Aw, that girl was psychic.”
“Do you mean psychotic?” I asked.
“Nah. What I said. Psychic. I told her how I almost got into it with Randolph, and she says, ‘Don’t worry about him. Karma’s gonna get 'em. An’ she was right.”
“Did you ever talk to Crystal after that incident with the cockroach costume? When she stormed out of the house?”
“Nah.”
“Do you know why Crystal was so angry about the costume?”
“’Cause young girls like her want things romantic an’ perfect all the time an’ can’t appreciate when someone’s just joking around.”
“Her real name was Christine Roach. She didn’t like her name, and she thought you were making fun of it.”
Davison absorbed the information in silence, then slurred a few swear words.
“Language,” Donnie mumbled halfheartedly.
“Okay, listen,” I said. “They just found the body of a young woman. About Crystal’s age, hair color, and build. She was wearing a crystal around her neck on a leather string.”
“Aw, no. Crystal?”
“It wasn’t Crystal.”
There was no sound on the other end.
“Davison, are you there?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m telling you this because you knew Crystal better than any of us. Now, did she ever tell you she changed her identity, went on the run, anything like that?”
“She told me her last name, Phoenix, meant something about a bird that dies an’ gets reborn.”
“Did she tell you whether she’s ever been reborn, specifically?” I asked.
“I dunno.”
“Crystal was caught stealing from her employer,” I said. “She was fired, and the theft was reported to the police. If Crystal had committed a serious crime under another identity, she couldn’t afford an encounter with law enforcement. She’d have to get away quickly, and throw the police off her trail.”
I was talking to Medeiros now. The fact that Davison was on the line was incidental.
“Conveniently, a young woman fitting Crystal’s description ends up dead, wearing Crystal’s jewelry and carrying Crystal’s ID. Obviously, this is supposed to make people think Crystal herself is dead. Shortly afterward, a passenger disappears from a cruise ship at Aloha Tower, the next major stop on the cruise ship route after Mahina.”
Detective Medeiros perked up at this.
“One of my students has a friend who works on a cruise ship. Someone disembarked on Oahu and never returned to the ship. I’m sure the police will look into this, to find out if the missing passenger was, in fact, the ship’s yoga instructor, Alison Boyd.”
Medeiros took his small notebook out of the pocket of his aloha shirt and started to make notes. He didn’t look happy about it, but to his credit, he did it.
“What do you want me to say?” Davison demanded. “If Crystal did something bad, let someone else snitch. I’m not gonna do it.”
“Someone else?” I said. “Who? Randy Randolph, her former client? Primo Nordmann, her former coworker? The poor visiting yoga instructor who fell down a five hundred foot embankment, dressed as Crystal? None of them can snitch, Davison. You know why?”
Medeiros was making a palms-down motion at me. Either “that’s enough” or “calm down.”
“All right, I’ll let you go,” I said. “I know it’s late, and you probably want to get to sleep.”
“Eh, Molly,” he mumbled. “It’s cold out here, ah? Freezing my `okole off. Maybe you could—”
I disconnected the call.
“We’ll follow up on the missing cruise ship passenger.” Medeiros plucked the eavesdropping device off my phone and tucked it into the pocket of his aloha shirt. I was annoyed. He didn’t say thank you or anything like it. “You got anything else you want to tell me?”
I gave him Lars Suzuki’s contact information.
“You think he’ll talk to us?”
“Lars Suzuki? Oh, absolutely. He’ll talk.”
Chapter Fifty-One
As soon as Medeiros left, I went for the wine. Donnie remained at the table, contemplating his folded hands.
“So that went as well as it could have.” I brought my brimming furikake glass and sat back down next to him.
“I think you saved him, Molly,” Donnie said quietly. “Thank you.”
“You can thank me by telling him not to talk to me in that gross way.”
“What gross thing did he say?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I sighed. I knew Donnie had a blind spot when it came to his beloved son. He apparently had a deaf spot, too. “Anyway, happier topic. I have some good news.”
“I know you do.” He smiled for the first time that evening. He stood up and went to the kitchen. I heard a loud bang, like a gunshot. Donnie returned to the table holding the smoking champagne bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other. They were the narrow kind that let the imbiber watch the little bubbles floating up to the surface.
“Real champagne glasses. Where did you get them?”
“Hagiwara’s Specialty Liquors.” Donnie was grinning. “Same place I got the champagne. Congratulations on earning tenure.”
“Tenure was my big news. How did you know?”
“No secrets in Mahina.” He set the glasses down on the table and poured. “This is a very gossipy place. Like you said.”
“Donnie, listen. I have to tell you something. You’ll probably think less of me, but, okay, come sit next to me.”
I selected the picture gallery on my phone and pulled up the photo of the old cartoon. Donnie took out his reading glasses and peered at the screen.
“This was on a newspaper page wrapped around the teapot. In the box of old silver-plate.”
“It’s supposed to be Queen Liliuokalani?”
“The cartoonist was Mary Pfaff, the Beatrix Potter of Hawaii. And the grandmother of our most promising donor.”
I described how I had used this embarrassing information to pressure Marshall Dixon into supporting my tenure bid.
“And that’s how I got tenure,” I said, when I had spun the whole sordid story. “Now you know your wife is a blackmailing fraud.”
“You’re not a fraud. Although the cartoon is, to use your word, gross.”
“The cartoon saved my job. But it’s kind of ruined Alice Mongoose for me.”
“Was this before her children’s books?”
“Yes. The overthrow was in 1893, right? I don’t think the first Alice Mongoose book was printed until after World War 1.”
“Mary Pfaff was young. Maybe the cartoon wasn’t even her idea. Maybe she had to make some compromises to get her career started.”
“Well, that’s a thing that happens, yes.”
“I don’t think you need to throw away the old t-shirt you like. Or those Alice Mongoose refrigerator magnets.”
“The socks, the earrings, my Alistair Rat alarm clock…” I pushed my wine aside and took a sip of champagne. It tasted dry and prickly.
“What is the appeal of Alice Mongoose for you? I always thought it was just popular in Hawaii. Did you get the books on the mainland?”
“I never heard of her until I moved here. You must’ve grown up with the stories, though.”
“I think a lot of kids around here grew up with their parents reading the books to them. I didn’t exactly have that kind of—I’ve seen the characters but I don’t know the stories too well.”
“Alice Mongoose is based on when the mongoose was brought in to Hawaii to get rid of the rats. But it didn’t work out because the rats were nocturnal, so the mongoose were asleep when the rats were out and about.”
“Uh huh. We learned about it in school.”
“Exactly. So the story goes, Alice is supposed to find and kill rats, right? But Alice isn’t cut out to be a killer. She wears pearls and gloves and a print dress and a little cloche hat, and she loves to sit down at a properly set table to a meal of eggs. When she eats, she picks up a whole egg in her little mongoose hands and nibbles on it. It’s cute.”
Donnie refilled my champagne glass. “And then?”
“So the first rat she meets is Alistair. She’s heard all about how rats are vicious and aggressive, but Alistair is very polite and gentle and he wears a shiny little top hat, and they start to talk and he invites her to breakfast, which for him is dinner, because she’s waking up at the same time he’s going to bed. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, they become good friends, and they have a series of adventures and little misunderstandings. They’re kind of like Frog and Toad, have you ever read Frog and Toad?”
Donnie shook his head.
“There’s this really touching illustration of when Alice first arrives on the Hamakua Coast. You see her from the back, standing on the bluff in her little print dress with her tiny steamer trunks and hatboxes piled next to her. The landscape is so vast, and she’s so tiny, and she’s holding one of her hatboxes in one hand and looking up at Mauna Kea. This is how good Mary Pfaff’s illustrations are. You can see it in her little mongoose body, her posture, the mixture of trepidation and courage. It’s such a sweet, innocent little world they live in, Alice Mongoose and Alistair Rat.”
“Alice Mongoose finds herself in an unfamiliar situation.” Donnie nodded. “But she makes the best of it, stays true to herself, and ends up finding friendship and happiness. I can see why you like her.”
“Alice Mongoose never has to threaten anyone in order to keep her job. Oh, Donnie, you must be so disappointed in me. It’s just, I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I’m not disappointed at all. Anyway, I already knew about it.”
I set my half-full glass down and stared at my husband. He did, in fact, look completely unruffled.
“Everything I just told you? You already knew?”
“Well, I hadn’t seen the cartoon before, but I heard about it.” Donnie placed his hand on mine. “Look, Molly, sometimes in business you don’t have the option of making the right decision. All you can do is make the less wrong decision. And that’s what you did. You deserved tenure. The process wasn’t working, and you did what you had to do.”
“Oh my gosh. How many people know about this? Everyone must hate me.”
Donnie laughed. “I don’t think so. They appreciate you handling things discreetly. You didn’t make a big fuss when things weren’t going your way.”
I exhaled with relief and drained my champagne glass. “Hey, as long as we’re being all honest and everything. Why were you sitting in an empty classroom with Nicole Nixon? And being so secretive about it?”
“Ah.” He took a sip of champagne. “I didn’t want to tell you right away in case it didn’t work out.”
“But now you will tell me, right?”
“I’m taking an English literature class.”
“Really? A class with one student?”
“No, there’s about twenty students.”
“I happened to walk by the classroom Wednesday and it was just you in there with Nicole Nixon.”
“That must’ve been the twelfth. All of us have been meeting with the teacher individually to talk about our annotated bibliographies.”
“Is that why you were in the library?”
“Yes. I’m a registered Mahina State student now, with full library privileges. You have some good databases there. I wish I’d known about them earlier.”
“The movies, then? Were they for the class, too? Henry the Fifth, and Becket?”
“Yes. They were homework. But it was fun to watch with you. Have you eaten?”
“No, I haven’t. And I’m getting a little lightheaded from the champagne.”
“I made some chicken cacciatore.” Donnie got up. “I’ll heat it up for us.”
“Thank you. So, why are you taking an English literature class, of all things?”
“I don’t like it when someone uses an expression, or makes a reference, and I don’t understand it. So I’m fixing that. Becoming a better-rounded person. How hungry are you? Should I heat up the whole thing?”
“Just one piece for me. I’m already well rounded enough.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
The authorities caught up to Crystal Roach in Henderson, Nevada.
Crystal confessed she set the cockroach costume on fire on Donnie’s front porch. She felt hurt, she lashed out, and she was terribly sorry, she said. She claimed she hadn’t noticed the propane tanks and never would have dreamed a little fire could have done so much damage.
The cruise ship’s records indicated Alison Boyd, the resident yoga instructor, disembarked at the Aloha Tower Cruise Ship Terminal and disappeared. In fact, it wasn’t Alison who walked off the ship. It was Crystal. Poor Alison had walked off the cruise ship one stop earlier, in Mahina, and visited the new Laughing Lotus yoga studio. All Crystal had to do was take Alison for a walk in the woods, push her down a ravine, hike down after her, swap IDs, and fasten her distinctive necklace onto the victim.
