Beachboy Murder Page 15

Hector took hold of my hand and squeezed, and the simple gesture moved me so much, I collapsed into his arms. "What happened?"

  "That Hershel guy headed straight into the foothills. Uneven ground. In the dark, the hump we hit looked different than it actually was. Smaller, not as steep. Rick came off the back. He must have hit his head. I couldn't wake him up. So I came back to get him help."

  The med techs had rushed to the SUV and opened up the back end. By the dome light in the car I could see that they'd put the back seat down and piled fire extinguishers and several duffle bags to make room for Rick to lie fully stretched out in the shadowy cargo space. Limp. Still.

  I couldn't stand to look at him but couldn't look away. "Rick." I hadn't meant to say it out loud and was surprised when I did.

  Freddy blurred past me at a full run, heading toward the SUV and medical team. It was obvious he meant to stay out of the way of their ministrations, but at the same time he wanted to convey something to the EMTs. He kept gesturing toward Stella, sitting dark and silent about fifteen or twenty yards down the road.

  What was he doing? I kept watching all the while thinking—Leave them alone. Let them help him. But what Freddy had told them finally became apparent when he ran to Stella, opened up all her doors, and then climbed inside and put on the headgear.

  I remembered what Rick had said about Freddy being a fully licensed helicopter pilot with a lot of hours under his belt.

  The EMTs and one of the police officers gently jockeyed Rick out of the SUV and onto a stretcher. Then as Freddy began to flip switches, Stella's engine began to whine, and her rotors began to turn, slowly at first then faster and faster. The EMTs bent low, rushing across the road and loading Rick's stretcher across Stella's back passenger bench before climbing in with it. My heart swelled at what they'd all done. Supermen, all of them, every bit as heroic as Hawkeye and Trapper John. God bless them.

  * * *

  Over an hour later, we were still at Wilcox Hospital. Detective Ray and two of the officers who'd been on the scene all evening had taken over a private consultation room where the three of us submitted statements of the events after the ER doctors had double-checked making sure we were, for the most part, unscathed.

  Detective Ray had taken advantage of our presence to question the heck out of us. I'd already told him everything I knew—twice—and I was fairly certain Freddy had as well. It was hard to tell about Sarah. After all, both her story and her situation were more complicated than either Freddy's or mine.

  I'd only had the occasional glimpse of Hector since we'd arrived, but once again his very presence considering the company of such heavy representation of the bureaucracy was testimony to the level of his commitment and friendship to Rick.

  Freddy had been waxing poetic about what a sweet girl Stella had turned out to be. "She gave Rick a nice smooth ride here."

  Sarah, on the other hand, had been so quiet for so long I'd almost forgotten she was even there.

  There was still no word from the doctors who'd rushed Rick in from the helicopter, and not knowing how he had made me crazy with worry.

  Using the same phone Freddy had borrowed from one of the paramedics, I'd called Ace. He was with Janet when I reached him. They weren't far away, just a few miles up the road from the trauma center at Shitoku in Wailua. They must have left their dinner on the table, because they rushed into the waiting room at the hospital within fifteen minutes.

  Janet came straight at me and took me into her arms where I felt it was safe to fall apart. "Anything yet?" she said softly beside my ear.

  "No." It came out in a shuddering sob.

  "What are they saying?"

  "W-w-wait and see." I pulled back and looked at her dear, familiar face. "How do they expect me to wait and see?"

  Her mouth drew into a straight line of sympathy and understanding, and she shook her head and pulled me back into her embrace.

  "I…I…Jan, I haven't even had the chance to tell him I love him. Nothing can happen before I get the chance to say that to him."

  She sounded so sure of herself. "Nothing will happen."

  Detective Ray walked in, looking older and more tired than I'd ever seen him. He even sounded tired. "One of our units finally caught up to Hershel Goldberg," he said. "We've taken him into custody. He continues to deny any involvement in Val Markson's murder. Insists he ran from us because of a warrant out for him back on the mainland under an alias. Said he knew that once we put him in the system under any name, his goose would be cooked."

  My curiosity got the better of my mouth. "When are you going to charge him in the murder?"

  Detective Ray shot me one of those glares that indicated he couldn't believe I was butting in yet again, but he answered. "That has yet to be determined. We may not if we can't tie him to the murder weapon."

  "The shoe heel?" This time it was Janet who was the buttinsky.

  Detective Ray scowled at her. "Yes. The shoe heel." He held up a clear evidence bag he'd apparently been holding behind him. "And this."

  I was pretty sure my eyes widened when I saw the contents of the bag. It held a woman's shoe. Even as mud-covered as it was, the shoe was plainly a black patent pump missing the stiletto heel. Patches of a signature red sole peeked through the layers of mud and grass.

  Behind me Janet gasped, and at almost the same instant I said, "The murder weapon."

  "Your little buddy Five-O brought this beauty to your neighbors' house. Your neighbor gave it to an officer canvassing the area." Detective Ray turned his attention on Janet, his gaze dropping to her cute Tory Burch ballet flats (that she'd probably worn to keep from being taller than Ace). Then he took a quick look at my own feet, shod tonight in (what I liked to think of as) my cutting-edge flip-flops. My dear, sweet Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress and Nina pumps addict of a mother would have cringed to see the rubber soles and naked toes. What could I say? My feet had become mute testimony to the ongoing process of my becoming an island girl.

  "Well, congratulations, ladies." Detective Ray sounded a little disappointed. "I can tell just by looking at your, pardon the expression, clodhoppers, that neither of you could even begin to squeeze into this"—he held the bag up to his nose and squinted at it—"size five-and-a-half US, thirty-five-and-a-half EU shoe." He thrust the bag at the two of us Big Foots so we could see how small the shoe was. "You're both off my suspect list."

  I wiggled my toes. "Never thought I'd be grateful for these size eights."

  Janet grinned. "And I'm sending out a special thanks to Albina Belinski, my five foot eleven Russian farm girl grandmother who bequeathed me her size ten and a half tootsies. Spasibo, Babushka."

  Janet and I high-fived.

  "Okay," Detective Ray said. "Let's see if Sarah Goldberg turns out to be one of Cinderella's step-sisters too. Where is she?"

  I turned around to where Sarah had been sitting quietly for the last hour on the sofa but wasn't anymore.

  "I don't know," I said. "She was here just a minute ago."

  Detective Ray headed for the door. "All right, I'll send a female officer to the ladies' room."

  "Oh, right," Janet said nervously as Detective Ray walked away. "That's probably where she is."

  I gave her an odd look, and she came closer to me. "Did you see how small that shoe was?"

  I nodded slowly. "Cinderella only had two step-sisters."

  "Have you seen how small Sarah's feet are?"

  Again, I nodded. "That shoe does look like it would fit Sarah. But her shoes were in her closet. Both of them. I saw with my own two eyes."

  "You saw one pair of Loubies in her closet. One pair." Janet had kept her voice low so that only I could hear her. "Who's to say she didn't bring—"

  As one we both said, "—more than one pair."

  Janet scratched the end of her nose. "So let's say the shoes are hers. I'll buy that. But do you think she killed Val?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Why would she attack him? I mean, they did go out f
or a while, but she reconciled with Hershel. She and Val parted friends, and it really was just business as usual to the beachboy."

  But I knew why she'd killed him. Sarah had in so much as confessed her motive to me straight out—"…Val covered for me…" And even Janet had just vocalized it—"just business as usual to the beachboy."

  I'd been too convinced Hershel was the killer in the Goldberg family to be able to see that Val Markson was a threat to Sarah's scheme.

  "Blackmail," I said. "Sarah killed Val because of blackmail."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Detective Ray had said he was sending a female officer to look for Sarah in the ladies' room. I also saw him dispatch a couple of uniformed officers throughout the hospital to look for her.

  Janet headed off to the cafeteria to see if Sarah had gone there.

  I headed to the front of the building and out the wide sliding doors. If I found Sarah, the trick would be to convince her to come back inside where she could be apprehended.

  Walking around the circular drive, I scanned the immediate area for a glimpse of Sarah. Didn't see her. Where had she gone? I ventured a bit farther from the building out to where two ambulances were parked in the glow of halogen light poles.

  Clenching and unclenching my fists as I stalked around the parking lot, my frustration nearly got the best of me. Dumb—this was just dumb. What the heck did I think was I doing out here while my beautiful flyboy lay unconscious in a hospital bed? I wanted to—needed to—be at his side. Even if he was out cold, I knew he'd sense my presence, my energy, my strong feelings and intense need for him.

  That was where I belonged. Go to him. Go now. He needs you there, and you need to be there. Resolutely, I made an abrupt turn to go back inside and—well, damn. There she was. Little Sarah Lipski—Sarah from the South Side—and she was trying to steal one of the empty ambulances.

  Okay. Mentally girding my loins, I put one flip-flop in front of the other, marched right up to the driver's side door and yanked it open.

  Remember, coax her back inside. "Sarah, what are you doing out here?" It was my best wide-eyed naïf Buttercup from The Princess Bride. But it obviously needed a little work because Sarah got one look at my face and not only decided no—she apparently decided hell no.

  She kicked out and shoved me away with her foot, grabbed the door handle, and slammed the door shut. I heard the click of the lock.

  Okay. Fine. I'm not in the mood for this.

  "I'm comin' for you, Sarah." Knock it off, Gabby. You're not Liam Neeson.

  Still, I ran around to the back of the ambulance, pulled open one of the doors, and scrambled up inside. Definitely not Liam Neeson. I'd made so much racket clambering in, Sarah could have heard me coming if she'd been listening to Beethoven's Fifth via noise-reduction headphones.

  Still on my hands and knees, barely inside the ambulance, I looked up—

  And—yes, of course—Sarah was already there waiting for me, her face twisted into an insane Bellatrix Lestrange grimace. Shaking all over either from rage or pure reaction, she held a small oxygen tank over her head. Her eyes sort of bulged, and I knew she was getting ready to smash me with it.

  I pushed onto my side, and the heavy metal cylinder glanced off my shoulder, clanked as it rolled onto the bed of the ambulance, and rolled away. My back and shoulder hurt like the devil, but she hadn't knocked me out. At least not yet.

  I looked up. Sarah twisted, glancing one way then the other, and it was clear she was seeking something else to attack me with.

  I couldn't even get up off the floor, but I had to get my hands on her, stop her before she found another weapon to launch at me. As well-stocked as the ambulance was, it wouldn't take long before Sarah managed to find some piece of equipment intended to save lives that she could repurpose.

  Only about a yard away, Sarah had planted her teensy little size five-and-a-half feet. I grunted with the effort and reached out with both hands, grabbed her ankles, and hauled back, pulling her feet out from under her. She landed hard, crashing backward against the bench support with an outrageous South Side of Chicago curse.

  The biker boots and Bermuda shorts-clad legs that appeared behind her were as welcome a sight as I'd ever encountered.

  Wordlessly, Hector reached down, took a grip on Sarah's wrists, held them together with one hand, and began to wrap gauze around them with his other. She struggled and kicked and yelled. But he stayed calm, methodical, acting as if restraining a woman who was trying to kick, claw, and bite him, was something he did on a daily basis.

  Once Hector got her hands and ankles bound together with the gauze, he helped me up and, carefully, flipped Sarah over onto her stomach. He stepped back and offered me a seat on her derriere. I sat down on her while Hector pulled out his cell phone, dialed, and turned it on speaker.

  Together we listened while an autobot thanked us for calling Wilcox and maneuvered us through a series of choices until we were finally connected with the nurses' desk nearest Rick's room.

  "Second floor nurses' station."

  "Dude," Hector began. "Think you could track down that gendarme they call Detective Ray?"

  "Pardon me? Gend-what?"

  "Five-O. The police. Specifically the policeman named Ray. He's in charge. When you find him, please tell him that the fabulous and intrepid Gabrielle LeClair has cornered his suspect in the back of an ambulance in your parking lot."

  He hung up, gave me a wink and two thumbs up, and said, "Remember. I was never here."

  He used the pass-through to make his way to the front of the ambulance, then left through the passenger side door. Same way he'd gotten in.

  Detective Ray and two officers, one male, one female, showed up within five minutes and took charge of Sarah Goldberg.

  I went straight back to the hospital. Janet met me at the front entrance.

  She grabbed me by the hand and began to pull me along. "Rick's awake, Gabs. He's asking for—"

  I didn't even give her a chance to finish before I bolted down the hall, up the stairs, and into Rick's room, almost throwing myself on him. At the last minute, good sense prevailed. I stopped by the bed, pulled up a chair, sat, and took hold of his hand.

  I stared at him. His eyes were closed. Was he conscious or not?

  He squeezed my hand, and said, "Hey, Princess." Yes, conscious. Thank God.

  He opened his eyes—they looked funny. Not ha-ha funny—more like out-of-it funny.

  I bent and kissed his hand. "Never ever do this again, Rick Dawson." I tried to sound stern not pathetic. Pretty sure I didn't succeed.

  He cleared his throat. "Something I want to—need to tell you." His tongue sounded thick, like it might have been sticking to the roof of his mouth. "I—"

  I laid my finger against his lips. "Me first."

  He swallowed and started to object.

  I tried to sound firm. "No, Dawson. No." All I really wanted to do was lie down beside him and stroke his face. "I need to say this." All my courage deserted me, but I went on, silently praying my urgent revelation would be well received. Didn't matter. I still had to say it. I'd been nearly smothered in regret at even the thought he might never know. "You…I'm…I"

  One corner of his mouth lifted in a tired smile. "I love you too."

  Elation was only way to describe the small sound that slipped from my throat.

  "I won't be selling the agency to the consortium," I said, marveling at the irony of it all. "Like they'd even still want to make an offer after I've done such an excellent job of decimating their ranks by seeing two of them hauled off to jail tonight."

  "Good." He looked and sounded drowsy. "I was"—his voice trailed off—"worried."

  "You shouldn't have. Even if I'd sold, I wouldn't have gone back to Chicago. How could I?" My voice was husky. I cleared my throat. "You need to rest." I stood to go, but leaving his side was the last thing I wanted to do.

  His grip on my hand tightened. "Don't leave me."

  His voice was
barely audible, but my heart heard it loud and clear.

  "Never. I'll never leave you if that's what you want." I sat back down and laid my hand on his cheek. He turned his face into it and kissed my palm.

  EPILOGUE

  Rick's concussion was mild. They only kept him twenty-four hours for observation.

  The evening of his release I was busy as a mosquito at a nudist colony.

  I met with the (remaining) members of the consortium, who—and I couldn't believe my ears—still wanted to buy Gabby's Island Adventures and put their own people on staff to incorporate their ambitious game plan and slowly take over many aspects of tourism on the island. The offer was incredibly generous, but—

  "I'm sorry. I have to decline. I won't be selling. I've come to realize this island is my home now, and my little travel agency is an element of that. Thank you all for your interest."

  They'd grumbled a bit, but in the end they thanked me for accommodating them while they'd evaluated the viability of their plan. Then all of them, now only nine in number, left for a late afternoon Talk Story Hour where Ona Hale would be regaling them with the story of a torrid love affair between Pele the Fire Goddess and the demi-god Kamapua'a.

  Not long after they left my office, Mele came around.

  "Gabby, I don't suppose you've heard from Hector today?"

  Remember. I was never here.

  "No," I kept my voice and expression vague. "Not today."

  Concern edged her voice. "I went out to his place to see him. He wasn't there. He's always there. I don't know what to think."

  "He helped us, Mele. Helped Rick. Helped me. He was heroic. Try not to worry if you don't see him for a few days. Last night was a bit much for a guy like Hector. He's probably pretty worried that since he poked his head out like Punxsutawney Phil, maybe Interpol or the NSA or even the IRS got wind of him. I'm guessing he'll lay low for a couple of days to throw them off his scent, and then he'll go home, and everything will be back to normal."

  Yeah, right. Normal.

  Mele seemed to be thinking it over. She nodded. "That sounds logical." It does? "Thanks, Gabby. Guess I've been hanging around my guy, Hector, too much. I was worried one of those agencies had already found him."