Murder in Honolulu: A Skye Delaney Mystery (12 page)

I followed Darlene into the huge study. It
had a wet bar and an impressive wall-length wooden ornamental
bookcase filled with Carter's law books. That part of his life had
apparently always remained with Carter, even if it had taken a back
seat to his strong desire to become a force in the business
world.

"I'd give you the grand tour, but..."
Darlene left it at that.

"Don't knock yourself out," I told her
sarcastically. "I didn't come here to see what Carter left
behind."

We settled into leather accent chairs around
a glass top coffee table, facing a floor to ceiling window with a
magnificent view of the ocean beyond a swimming pool.

Darlene frowned. "He left behind a wife and
a daughter who will never really get to know her father..."

Although I concurred with her, especially
regarding the daughter, I said tersely: "Carter didn't
leave
either of you intentionally. Someone
chose
to snuff out his
life."

She stared at that reality for a moment, and
said in a monotone voice: "Yes, that is what the police are
saying." Darlene drew in a long sigh. "I think I need a drink..."
She rose swiftly and headed for the wet bar. "Can I get you
something?"

Three o'clock in the afternoon was usually
way too early for me to indulge, particularly when investigating a
murder, but I found myself borrowing her words from our previous
meeting: "I'll have what you're having."

She made two martinis. Handing me one,
Darlene said: "Carter told me that I drink too much. Funny, but I
often accused him of the same thing..." She put the glass to her
mouth. "I guess that makes me a living alcoholic, and him a dead
one—"

It was hard for me to believe that Carter
was an alcoholic, but when I thought about it, the signs were there
long before the medical examiner told me that Carter's blood
alcohol level was excessive at the time of his death. The man I was
married to had always been able to carry his liquor. Now I strongly
suspected he had carried it way too far.

Darlene put her glass on the table and
looked at me. "So what is it we need to talk about? Other than the
fact that the man we both married just happened to be at your house
when somebody decided to kill him." Her eyes shifted distrustfully
at me. "Maybe you can tell me what the hell Carter was doing there.
Or am I supposed to guess?"

I tasted the martini and took a moment to
try and figure out if this woman was actually implying that I had
reversed the tables and was having an affair with Carter. I would
never have stooped to her level, but I let Darlene consider the
possibility just a while longer, fully aware I could be looking at
an accomplice to murder.

I took a deep breath, then said levelly:
"Carter hired me as a private investigator—"

Darlene's eyes widened and she licked her
lips. "Well, this ought to be interesting—"

"Oh, it is," I assured her, and wet my
throat with more drink. "He suspected you were having an affair..."
I watched Carter's widow suddenly grow tense. "He wanted me to
verify it. At four o'clock on the day Carter died, I was supposed
to meet him at my office to tell him what I had learned in my
investigation. Only he never showed up. He must have decided to
meet me at my house. That's where I found him—"

Darlene's eyes became slits. "That bastard!"
After sipping her drink, she asked accusingly: "So, what were you
going to tell my husband?"

I un-crossed my legs and sat erect in the
chair. Looking her in the eye, I said: "Well, for starters, that
you were—
are
—having an affair..."

She was silent, apparently fuming inside at
the thought that I had discovered her dirty little secret. Of
course, that wasn't the half of it.

Darlene's nostrils flared. "It must have
been quite a perverse thrill for you—his ex-wife—to discover that I
was cheating on him just like he cheated on you."

I sneered. "Don't flatter yourself. It was
strictly business on my end—nothing more." I had the feeling she
wasn't buying that, so I added: "To be perfectly honest, my
marriage to Carter was over long before
you
came into the
picture, for all intents and purposes—"

I had managed to convince myself of that
when I looked back now.

Darlene's brows contracted as she gave me a
look that wavered between uncertainty and edginess. She asked
cautiously: "And so you're here to tell me what? You think because
I was cheating on Carter, I had something to do with his
death?"

"The thought crossed my mind," I replied
honestly.

She set her jaw defiantly. "Well I'm sorry
to disappoint you, but you're wrong—at least about my being
responsible for Carter's death." She paused. "Okay, I won't deny
that I was having an affair...what's the point? But that doesn't
make me a murderer—" As if it made a difference, she added: "Not my
own husband...the father of my daughter—"

I went back to the "doesn't make me a
murderer" part. "What does it make you?" I dared to ask, having my
own ideas.

Darlene finished off her drink in one fell
swoop. "It makes me a normal, healthy woman who was damned sick and
tired of being rejected by a husband who was too critical, too
busy, and too womanizing!"

Darlene caught my attention with those last
two words, and she knew it. "Are you saying Carter was having an
affair?"

She peered at me. "Figure it out yourself.
You're the detective
and
former wife. Once an asshole,
always an asshole! He didn't know the meaning of the word
faithful
—certainly not with me, and obviously not with you.
I swear, I don't even know why he and I ever got married in the
first place—"

I could think of two very good reasons. One
was the thrill of the chase, which clearly wasn't that thrilling
once Carter had caught and married Darlene. The other was the very
real possibility that Darlene was pregnant, which would have been
all the more reason for Carter to do the right thing, in his mind,
and marry her.

Then I thought of one other reason. Darlene
had coined the phrase rather aptly:
Once an asshole, always an
asshole!
But that was beside the point at the moment.

Darlene leaned back in her chair. "His
latest fling was a hula dancer. Carter was spending most of his
nights and a fair share of his days with her for the past three
months."

Despite being well aware that Carter had
trouble keeping his pants on, this revelation caught me completely
off guard. It was as if I had expected him to treat his new wife
with the respect he should have given me. But why would a zebra
change his stripes with a change of scenery?

"Sorry to shatter your illusions about
Carter, if you had any left," Darlene said with a self-satisfied
grin. "I accepted his faults for the sake of our child. But I'm
only human with needs that he was either incapable of or unwilling
to fulfill."

"Does that include doing drugs?" I asked
point-blank.

"Excuse me?" Darlene said with a look of
bewilderment.

"My guess is crack—"

She fixed me with hard eyes. "What the hell
are you talking about?"

I lifted two photographs from my purse. One
showed her with the Hawaiian drug dealer, the other was a close-up
shot of the packet he handed her.

I passed Darlene my photographic work.
"Maybe these will help jog your memory of what the hell I'm talking
about—" She gazed at the prints and colored. "Look familiar?"

She grimaced. "Where did you get these?"

"The same place I got these—" I added to her
collection the telling photos of her and her lover, Edwin Hugh
Axelrod. "Remember, I'm a private investigator. I was supposed to
hand these over to Carter, but someone murdered him first."

Darlene shot to her feet and threw the
pictures on the table while glaring at me. "You had no right!"

A natural reaction
, I thought. Was it
defensive? Or apprehensive?

"I was only doing my job," I informed her
with a touch of regret, as if I'd done something wrong in exposing
her secrets. "Did Carter know about the drugs?" I had to ask,
partly out of curiosity, but more as a possible motive for his
death. "Maybe your drug dealer friend freaked out after Carter
confronted him or something."

She licked her lips nervously. "Kalolo had
no reason to kill Carter. He didn't know we were married and Carter
never knew about Kalolo or..." Darlene hesitated while favoring me
warily. "Should I have a lawyer here, or what? I mean I wouldn't
want anything I say to you to get back to your cop friends. Or is
that what this is all about? You're just here to set me up."

"I'm not here on behalf of the police," I
promised her. Not that they were too far behind me in trying to
connect her to Carter's death, I thought. "I work for and by
myself." I chose to forget for the time being that Ridge was
heading the investigation into Carter's murder, making us
unofficial partners in this case. "My only interest is in finding
out who might have killed Carter, and why. Anything else you tell
me won't leave this room."

Darlene flashed her blues eyes at me for a
moment or two of, no doubt, reluctance, fear, anger, maybe even
betrayal—before seeming to decide it was better to tell me than my
so-called cop friends. She made herself another drink without
offering me one this time, and sat back down.

"I've been using cocaine recreationally for
a couple of years," Darlene admitted. "Ironically, I was introduced
to the stuff at a party Carter took me to—" She put the glass to
her lips. "He was too damned busy doing whatever with whomever to
notice. Kalolo—the guy in the picture—is just someone I met at a
club. He knows me only by my middle name. Amber." She wrinkled her
nose. "He isn't a big time drug dealer or anything. If I need
something, he knows where to get it. We only meet maybe once a
month—"

That's one time too many
, I thought.
I wanted to tell
Amber
that, in light of her obvious alcohol
and drug abuse, she might consider entering a treatment program.
But I decided it wasn't my place to tell her. Besides that could be
the least of the troubles she faced.

Assuming Kalolo was not involved in Carter's
death, it still left Darlene's attorney-lover as a suspect, which I
relayed to her.

"Edwin couldn't have killed Carter," Darlene
was quick to come to his defense. "Yes, we've been having an
affair, but we were both married. Neither of us wanted anything
more than sex—" Her eyes met mine. "Carter may have suspected, but
he never had any proof..." She rubbed her nose and sighed heavily.
"Whatever you think of me, you've got to believe that, in spite of
our screwed up marriage, I never wanted Carter dead."

Her argument was convincing, if not
altogether airtight. It was too soon to eliminate
suspects—especially one who, on the surface, seemed to have the
most to gain by her husband's death.

"Someone obviously did," I told her with a
catch to my voice. "You have any ideas who that could be?"

She ran a hand through her hair. "As I told
the police, Carter kept his professional and personal life totally
separate. He was not the ex-prosecutor or the sharp businessman in
our relationship." She took another sip of her martini. "I honestly
don't know who would want to kill him..."

Perhaps
, I thought guardedly,
watching her eyes watch me. But Ollie had taken a piece of someone
and I couldn't help but think that Darlene knew more than she was
letting on.

"Did you know Carter's blood type was AB
negative?" I asked curiously.

"Yes," she said coolly. "Why?"

"My dog bit someone with that blood type.
Only it wasn't Carter."

Darlene shrugged. "I don't know what to tell
you. I don't make a habit of asking people their blood type. And,
in case you're wondering, I'm O positive—"

Looks like you're off the hook on that
one
, I thought, knowing that the victim of Ollie's bite was an
unknown male.
But it still doesn't let you off the hook
completely. Not till some missing pieces of your puzzle fall neatly
into place
.

"That wasn't exactly on my mind," I told her
truthfully. "But it's something the police may want to know, just
for the record."

The phone rang twice before stopping.
Momentarily, Elberta entered the study.

"Your attorney's on the line," she informed
Darlene, and eyed me sternly. "Do you want me to tell him you'll
call back?"

"That's not necessary," I answered for
Darlene, wondering if her attorney was Edwin Axelrod, the same man
she was sleeping with. I got to my feet. "It's time for me to go
home and let my dog out for some fresh air. He just hasn't been
himself lately since witnessing Carter's death—" If Darlene was
involved, I thought, that just might shake her up a bit.

"It's better that your dog saw it, believe
me," Darlene said as if she could vouch for this. "How frightening
would that have been if you or I saw Carter murdered?"

"Pretty frightening," I admitted, though
feeling no less sorry that Ollie had been there to see it. Except
for the fact that he'd probably taken a chunk out of the probable
killer, which would ultimately lead to the person's arrest.

Darlene walked me to the door. "My daughter
just started piano lessons," Darlene said. "I was never any good
with musical instruments, but she really seems to like it." Her
face became downcast. "I'm seriously contemplating having Ivy stay
with relatives until this thing blows over. It's really been
terrible for her. She keeps asking me when is her daddy coming
back. She doesn't understand that he isn't—"

I did, only too well.

* * *

Ollie wasted no time scampering out into the
backyard. Though the vet had given Ollie a clean bill of health, I
had a feeling he would never be at peace until Carter's killer was
apprehended.