The Influencer, page 7
part #10 of Professor Molly Mysteries Series
“It’s possible you’re overreacting,” Emma said. “But I wouldn’t bet Jandie’s life on it.”
“I agree, you’ve already annoyed the police as much as anyone possibly could,” Pat added helpfully.
“Oh yeah, remember that time they had to mobilize every emergency vehicle on the island to find her?” Emma said. “I thought Detective Da Kine was gonna blow a gasket.”
“That unfortunate situation was not my fault, and you both know it.” I called the non-emergency police line and left a message describing the situation. I honestly didn’t expect to hear back. But to my amazement, not ten minutes later a police cruiser pulled up in front of my house.
I opened my door.
“...Detective Medeiros?”
The detective was broadly built, and tall enough to hit his head on my door frame if he didn’t duck. His thick black hair was tied back in a ponytail and he had a small goatee. He wore a colorful, presumably custom-tailored aloha shirt (I don’t think they’re available off-the-rack in his size).
But something was different about Detective Medeiros. Had he gotten new tattoos? A haircut?
“Aloha.” He put out a beefy hand. I hesitated. The friendly gesture was way out of character for Detective Ka`imi Medeiros, whose attitude toward me ranged from annoyance to exasperation.
“Detective Brian Medeiros,” the man said. “You called about your tenant, Jandie Brand?”
“Oh! Brian Medeiros. I thought you were—”
“Yeah, I get that a lot. Ka`imi is my cousin. He’s the brains of the family. I’m the handsome one.”
“Ah!”
“May I come in?”
“What? Oh. Yes. Yes, of course! Thank you for coming so quickly. Please.”
I led him into the living room and introduced Pat and Emma, who gawked at him rather rudely, in my opinion. They hadn’t heard our exchange and were clearly shocked to see Detective Medeiros being so cordial.
I, too, wondered what had earned me this VIP treatment, but I wasn’t going to question it. No need to bite the hand of the gift horse that feeds me, as poor Jandie would say.
“I’m so glad you came,” I said. “The thing is, I’m worried about my renters. They’re kind of new here, and they went out just as the bad weather is coming in. I can’t reach them by phone.”
“Lucky for your tenants, the mayor has a personal interest in their well-being,” Medeiros eased down onto the opposite end of the couch from me. I felt my side of the couch lift until my feet dangled above the floor.
“The mayor?” Pat, Emma, and I exclaimed at once.
“Does the mayor know them personally?” I asked.
“Not yet. I think he’d appreciate an introduction, but. The wahine, not the husband.”
“Good choice,” Emma said. “So our mayor’s a Jandista?”
“What is that?” Medeiros asked.
“Someone who’s a fan of Jandie Brand,” Emma said.
Medeiros looked pained.
“In a way, I suppose you could say. But it’s not about her music or whatever.”
“There’s no music involved,” Pat said. “She’s an influencer. Famous for being famous.”
Medeiros heaved a sigh.
“Okay, the thing about it is, Jandie Brand is making Mahina look like a real appealing destination with all her photos and da kine that she puts up. She’s been good for our economy.”
“So it’s about tourist dollars,” Pat said. “Sorry, I mean visitor dollars.”
“More importantly, yen, yuan, and euros,” Medeiros said. “The international visitors spend more. If something happens to Jandie Brand, it’s bad for our restaurants and hotels and da kine. Anyway, that’s probably more than you needed to know.”
“No, thank you for giving us that background,” I said. “It’s very helpful.”
As a naturally inquisitive person, I appreciated the detective’s openness. Detective Brian Medeiros’s cousin, Detective Ka'imi Medeiros, always acted like he’d get his pay docked if he dared to give me any information.
Detective Medeiros went on to ask all of us the expected questions about the missing couple, and some unexpected ones as well. What was my relationship with the tenants, did I get along with them, were they having money problems, had I noticed unusual behavior from the neighbors?
My warm feelings toward the “good” Detective Medeiros (as I now thought of him) cooled a bit when I noticed his questions becoming unnecessarily repetitive, as if he were trying to catch one of us out in a lie. Or perhaps some sin of omission. Like omitting the fact that Emma and I had been snooping in the rental house.
Unfortunately, his method turned out to be effective.
“You entered their house?” Medeiros looked from me to Emma and back, not bothering to conceal his surprise. “Both of you? When they wasn’t there?”
“She went first,” I said.
“Yeah, well she came in afterwards an’ helped.”
“Blaming each other isn’t gonna work,” Pat said. “You’re both getting kicked out of paradise.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong, Detective Medeiros. It’s my house.” Even to myself I sounded whiny and defensive. “According to the lease I can inspect it at any time.”
“Do you go into your tenants’ house regularly?” Medeiros asked.
“Well...no. This was the first time.”
“Why today then?”
“The same reason we called you,” I said. “Because they’re missing and we’re worried about them. Oh, and they were supposed to meet someone and missed the appointment. Pat, your friend Howdy, I can’t think of his real last name.”
“Howdy Howell,” Pat said. “Yeah, that’s true.”
“I’ll need his contact information from you.” Medeiros turned to Emma. “Did you remove anything from the house?”
She shook her head.
“You?” He turned to me.
“No, I didn’t...oh, hang on.”
I remembered the sticky note I’d found stuck to the inside of the trash can. I dug it out of my bag and held it out to Pat.
“Why are you giving this to me?” Pat asked.
“You have your phone out. Take a picture. Please.”
Pat snapped the picture and handed the paper back to me. I leaned across the couch and handed it to Medeiros. He glanced at it, folded it in half, and stuck it in his shirt pocket.
“You shouldn’t have removed anything from the house,” he said.
“That note was in the trash.”
“Is the house a crime scene?” Emma asked.
“Is it?” I asked.
Medeiros braced his hands on his knees and stood. My side of the couch thunked back down to earth.
“Not that we know of. I’m going to go check it out right now. Will you be here in case I have any more questions?”
We assured him we would.
As soon as he was gone, I heaved a sigh of relief.
“What a day.” I went into the kitchen to check whether the rice in the rice cooker was still good. It was fine, maybe a little hard around the edges. “How many people did I have to interact with? Edward Ladd, Harriet Holmes, Howdy Doo—Howdy Howell, Detective Medeiros 2.0.”
“What about me and Emma?” Pat asked.
“You guys don’t count. It’s strangers and acquaintances that wear me out. You’re the kind of friends I can ask to set the table while I heat up dinner. Oh yeah, anyone else up for a late dinner? I’m famished.”
CHAPTER 17
“I LIKE THIS DETECTIVE Medeiros better,” Emma said through a mouthful of kim chee chili and rice. “The other one is so uptight.”
“It’s because Molly’s a landlord now,” Pat said. “Of course the police are gonna be nice to her. The agents of class control work for the oppressor class.”
“Oh, I’m an oppressor now? Pat, you’re the one who’s always saying individual choices don’t matter within the context of a capitalist system. Besides, I thought you said you liked the rental unit.”
“I do like it,” Pat said. “I’m not judging, I’m just observing.”
“Speaking of people judging me,” I said, “I still can’t figure out why Jandie Brand called me a crackpot.”
“She what?” Pat asked.
“We went over to their house to warn them about the hurricane,” Emma said. “We overheard ‘em talking, and Jandie was saying what about the landlady, she has trouble minding her own business and she’s kind of a crackpot.”
“You can’t argue the point about minding your business,” Pat said. “You only heard her say it because you were eavesdropping at the time.”
A knock on the door interrupted the conversation.
“I’ll get it.” Emma hopped up and opened the door to Detective Medeiros.
“Eh, Detective, you like come in?”
“No, I just wanted to let you know I’m leaving now.”
“You find anything suspicious?” Emma asked.
“If you see anything unusual, call and let me know. You can leave a message if there’s no answer.”
Medeiros handed his card to Emma and left.
We cleaned up and Pat disappeared into the guest room. Emma and I agreed that it wasn’t a good idea for her to drive on such a dark and stormy night. Well, maybe not exactly stormy, but it was drizzling. And the cloud cover definitely made it dark.
Emma got comfortable on the living room couch and called Yoshi to tell him she was staying with me. She launched into a narrative of the day’s events, starting with our visit to the rental unit and Edward Ladd’s admission that his wife was missing. There didn’t seem to be any harm in it. Medeiros hadn’t sworn us to secrecy or anything, and I supposed Yoshi must be as eager for news as anyone. Even more so, in fact, because Yoshi loved being the expert and the first to know things. This quirk of his was amusing at a distance and really annoying otherwise. I flipped the porch light on and went to bed.
The rain was so loud on the metal roof I had trouble falling asleep. The instant I did, or so it seemed, I was awakened by a banging on the front door.
Now what? I walked by the couch and shook Emma awake, and then we both tiptoed to the front door. I put my eye to the peephole.
Harriet Holmes was standing on my front porch, calmly shaking the water off her umbrella. I opened the door and quickly hustled her inside, glancing around to see who might have been pursuing her.
No one was.
No, it just happened that in Harriet Holmes’s mind, ten o’clock at night in the hammering rain seemed like a perfectly appropriate time for a neighborly visit.
Before I knew it she was in my kitchen. She pulled out three matching furikake glasses from the dishwasher.
“I wouldn’t have popped round,” Harriet said, “only I saw you had your light on. Cheers. Or should I say, sláinte. Speaking of which, where’s young Flanagan?”
“Asleep in the guest room,” I said. “He can sleep through anything. Evidently.”
Harriet sat at the dining table and placed the glasses down. From somewhere within the various pockets and folds of her battered field coat, she produced a full-sized bottle of whiskey and set it on the table.
“Whoa, nice!” Emma hurried into the kitchen. “I’m gonna get the Chicken Boy mug. Molly, are the dishes clean?”
“In the dishwasher? Yes. I ran it this afternoon. Emma, what’s wrong with the furikake glasses?”
“Nothing, I just like Chicken Boy.”
The furikake glasses hold about six ounces. The Chicken Boy mug has about three times that capacity.
“Oh yeah, still warm,” Emma said as she retrieved the mug. “Eh Harriet, you make a decision on the place up the street?”
“We did,” Harriet said. “Nigel and I went round and signed the lease this afternoon. It’s official. We’re neighbors.”
Emma and I joined Harriet at the table. She pulled off the top of the bottle and poured us each a generous amount.
“That’s great news, Harriet, welcome to the neighborhood.” I raised my glass halfway and set it down. I so dearly wanted to be back in bed at this point, I didn’t even have the energy to drink.
“You decided you rather have a view of the cemetery?” Emma asked.
“Mm.” Harriet sipped her whiskey. “Be a welcome change, to be honest. Clyde, he’s my landlord you know, he’s been rather a dry stick ever since Nigel’s come to Mahina.”
Harriet still pronounced it “Ma-HIGH-na.” I’d tried correcting her a few times, but it never stuck. I eventually gave up.
“Oh yeah, I get it,” Emma said.
“I expected Clyde and Nigel to get on,” Harriet said, “They’ve so much in common. They both have a bit of the outlaw about them, haven’t they?”
I didn’t see the similarity myself. Nigel Holmes was a retired law professor, the kind of person who would wander around for an hour looking for his glasses only to realize they’ve been perched on his forehead the whole time. Clyde Hamamoto, on the other hand, had the insignia of his motorcycle club tattooed on his neck.
“But when it comes down to it,” Harriet was saying, “Clyde can be appallingly conventional, never mind the plaited beard and the leather waistcoat and all the rest of it. Bit of a disappointment, really. I say, on the topic of rentals, Barda, there’s been a bit of activity around yours, what?”
“Detective Medeiros come by today,” Emma said. “Looks like the mayor’s taking Jandie’s disappearance seriously, so Mahina PD is too. Molly and me, we think the husband killed her.”
“We do not necessarily think that, Emma” I countered. “Oh, sorry, Harriet, please no smoking inside.”
Harriet reluctantly tucked her pipe back into the recesses of her field jacket.
“Both tenants seem to have disappeared, now, though,” I said. “First her, then him.”
“And they missed an appointment with a reporter,” Emma added.
“Well, I can report that Ladd is alive in any event,” Harriet said.
“He is?” I was suddenly wide-awake. “Where is he?”
“Guest of the state,” Harriet said. “Safe and sound in the Mahina PD cell block.”
“Jandie’s husband was arrested?” Emma took the bottle and poured herself more whiskey. “Eh, Harriet, you kinda buried the lede there, ah?”
CHAPTER 18
“MOLLY, YOU WANT AN ice pack?” Emma asked. I realized I had my elbows on the table and was digging the heels of my hands into my eye sockets to push back against the throbbing.
“Yes please.”
“She gets migraines when she’s confused,” I heard Emma explain to Harriet. “She gets ‘em a lot lately.”
“Stressed, not confused,” I objected. “Okay, I’m also confused. Harriet, how do you know where Edward Ladd is, and why is he in jail? And most of all, why do I have no idea what’s going on here?”
I felt like my eyeballs were about to pop out of my skull. Only the firm pressure I was applying with my hands was holding them in place, I was certain.
“I do a bit of pro bono work,” Harriet said. “wonderful way to get to know where the bodies are buried. Not merely a figure of speech, it seems.”
I felt Emma nudge the ice pack into my hand. I took it from her and planted my face in it. The cold immediately dialed the headache down from agonizing to merely uncomfortable.
“What happened?” Emma asked. “How’d they catch him?”
“They nicked him at the airport,” Harriet said. “He had a one-way ticket to Honolulu.”
“That’s insane,” I said. “He thought he was just going to hop on an airplane and somehow no one would notice?”
“Probably not thinking straight,” Emma said.
“Well even if he’s not as smart as he thinks he is,” I said, “he has to be smarter than that.”
I pressed the cold pack tight against my head, and took slow, deep breaths. With each exhale I visualized the pain seeping out of my eye sockets like used motor oil. It sounds gruesome, but it actually works.
“Edward Ladd wouldn’t leave his precious aquarium,” I said.
“Molly, he’s a sociopath,” Emma said. “He murdered his wife. You think he cares about some fish?”
“Brilliant,” Harriet exclaimed. “So we’re investigating then.”
“What? No!” I pressed the cold pack into my forehead as hard as I could. “No, we are not investigating anything. The Mahina Police Department is on it, they’ve already made an arrest, and I know from bitter experience that they do not welcome help from well-meaning citizens.”
“Oh, pish-posh,” Harriet declared. “Rumor has it both of you been involved in a case or two.”
Harriet herself had recently been accused of murder. Emma and I had been unavoidably pulled into the situation, but things had turned out well in the end. More or less.
“It was certainly an experience,” I said. “Not one I care to repeat.”
“We could just look into it a little,” Emma said. “Molly, come on, don’t you care about a murder happening on your own property?”
“You want to stick your oar in, you go ahead. Both of you. Welcome to it. But I’m not inclined to sign up for anything like that again.”
“I say, Barda,” Harriet said, “do you know the story of the horse that wandered out of a village and could not be found?”
I set down the cold pack, which was no longer cold. Trying to understand where Harriet was going with this would just make my headache worse. I decided to nod along but be careful not to commit to anything.
“I don’t believe I know the story, no.”
“Well, the best minds of the village failed to locate the horse. But one day the village idiot walked into town, leading the missing animal by the bridle. When they asked him how he had done it, he said: 'Well, I just thought what I'd do if I was a horse, and then I went and did it.'“
“I see,” I said, humoring her.
“I don’t,” Emma said.
