Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 09 by Damned in Paradise (v5.0) Page A

wooden floor, like maps of unchartered islands…
    The bathroom was spotless—including the tub where the body of Joseph Kahahawai had been dumped for cleaning and wrapping purposes.
    “Mrs. Fortescue didn’t live here,” Leisure said from the bathroom doorway as I studied the gleaming bathtub.
    “What do you mean?” I asked.
    “She just stayed here. Like you stay in a hotel room. I don’t think there’s anything for us to learn in this place.”
    “Do you see anything useful, son?” Darrow asked me, from the cramped hall.
    “No. But I smell something.”
    Darrow’s brow furrowed in curiosity. Leisure was studying me, too.
    “Death,” I said, answering the question in their eyes. “A man was murdered here.”
    “Let’s not use that word, son—‘murder.’”
    “Executed, then. Hey, I’m all for getting our clients off. But, gentlemen—let’s never forget the smell of this place. How it makes your goddamn skin crawl.”
    “Nate’s right,” Leisure said. “This is no vacation. A man died, here.”
    “Point well taken,” Darrow said, his voice hushed, somber.
    The seven-mile stretch that separated Honolulu from the naval base at Pearl Harbor was a well-paved boulevard bordered by walls of deep red sugarcane stalks on either side. The breeze rustled the cane field, making shimmering music.
    “I like Thalia,” Darrow said, after a long interval of silence. “She’s a clever, attractive, unassuming young woman.”
    “She’s awfully unemotional,” Leisure said.
    “She’s still in a state of shock,” Darrow said dismissively.
    Leisure frowned. “Seven months after the fact?”
    “Then call it a state of detachment. It’s her way of dealing with tragedy, protecting herself; she’s erected a kind of wall. But she spoke the truth. I can always tell when a client’s lying to me.”
    “Two things bother me,” I said.
    Darrow’s brow furrowed. “What would those be?”
    “She kept describing herself as ‘dazed,’ and painted a nightmarish picture…convincingly.”
    Darrow was nodding sagely.
    “But for a woman in a daze,” I said, “she noted a hell of a lot of details. She gave us everything but the laundry marks on their damn clothes.”
    “Perhaps the awful event is frozen in her memory,” Darrow offered.
    “Perhaps.”
    Leisure asked, “What’s the other thing that bothered you, Nate?”
    “It’s probably nothing. But she talked about her mother taking over the housekeeping for her…”
    “Yes,” Leisure said.
    “And that when she got back on her feet, the place was suddenly too small for them, and Thalia could handle the housekeeping herself again, so her mother moved out.”
    Darrow was listening intently.
    “Only in the meantime,” I continued, “housekeeper Thalia’s taken on a full-time maid.”
    “If there’s room for the maid,” Leisure said, raising an eyebrow, “why not room for Mom?”
    I shrugged. “I just think relations between Thalia and her mother may be a little strained. Isabel told me Thalia practically raised herself, that her mother was never around. I don’t think they were ever close.”
    “Yet the mother faces a murder charge,” Darrow said, savoring the irony, “for defending her daughter’s honor.”
    “Yeah, funny, isn’t it? Let’s say they don’t get along—can’t be under the same roof together—then why does Mother Fortescue go out on this limb for her little girl?”
    “Maybe she was defending the family name,” Leisure suggested.
    “Or maybe Mrs. Fortescue feels guilty about neglecting her kid,” I said, “and cooked up a hell of a way to finally make it up to the girl.”
    “Mother and daughter needn’t love each other,” Darrow said patiently, as if instructing children, “for a mother’s instincts to take hold. Among many species, the mother forgets herself, in protecting the life of her offspring. It’s purely biological.”
    At Pearl Harbor Junction, our limousine bore straight ahead, pulling up to the