Murder at Dolphin Bay (Sand and Sea Hawaiian Mystery Book 1) by Kathi Daley Page A

signs if the condo was really empty.”
    “Like what?” I asked.
    “I don’t know. The mail would pile up or something.”
    “Not if he didn’t have mail delivered to this address,” I pointed out. “A lot of people have post office boxes.”
    “These condos aren’t cheap. Why would anyone rent one they weren’t going to live in?” Carina asked. “It makes no sense.”
    I turned to Elva. “You said you saw a man the day Mr. B moved in. What did he look like?”
    “He was short. Thin. Had on dark clothes. It was dark and I only saw him from the back, but I’m sure he was no taller than Chen.”
    Mr. Chen was our landlord.
    “So how, if you didn’t talk to him, did you know his name was Mr. B?” I wondered.
    “I asked Mr. Chen about him when I paid my rent. He said the new tenant had wired the money to rent the apartment, so he hadn’t actually spoken to him in person. He said he had a name that was hard to pronounce, so he’d just been referring to him as Mr. B.”
    English was Mr. Chen’s second language and he seemed to find a lot of common words hard to pronounce, so this totally made sense. “Okay, so did you get a better look at him on Wednesday when he passed by your window on the way out?”
    “He had a pair of sweats on. Gray. With a hooded sweatshirt. The hood was pulled over his head and he had on dark glasses, so I didn’t get a good look.”
    “So you saw some guy from the back a month or so ago. He lets himself into unit 6, so you ask Mr. Chen who it is and he tells you the man has a hard name to pronounce so he just calls him Mr. B. We all see his lights and television going on and off, but none of us has ever seen him until Elva saw him again on Wednesday. What are the odds of that happening?”
    “Sean and I are hardly ever here,” Kevin reminded me. “At least not during the past month. We were assigned to a European flight and then we were away on our trip. In fact, I bet this is only the fourth or fifth night we’ve spent in the condo since the man moved in.”
    Kevin had a point. They had been away a lot lately.
    “And I work nights and sleep in late,” Carina added. “I figured the guy just came and went when I was either asleep or working.”
    Cam, Kekoa, and I all agreed that we’d thought it odd that we’d never seen him, but we really hadn’t thought much about it. We lived busy lives and figured we’d just missed someone who obviously preferred to keep to himself.
    “I think one of us should have a chat with Mr. Chen to see if we can get more information about the guy,” I suggested.
    “Mr. Chen has left on his trip to visit his family,” Elva reminded us. “He won’t be back for a month.”
    “Oh, yeah, I forgot. Okay, I guess we should just all keep an eye on the condo. If anyone sees the guy we should attempt to speak to him. Maybe this whole thing is nothing. The timer could just be a method of dissuading vandals from breaking in when the man is away. Just because he wasn’t home tonight doesn’t mean he’s never been home during the month he’s lived here.”
    “That’s true,” Sean agreed. “Who’s up for another hurricane?”
    Everyone agreed the drink made dealing with the weather system by the same name a whole lot easier. Not that we were actually experiencing a hurricane. When I’d checked the Weather Channel they were referring to it as nothing more than a strong storm system, but from where I was sitting it felt like a hurricane.
    I couldn’t help but think of Luke and all his horses. I guess he must bring them inside when it rained. I hadn’t actually counted the stalls in the barn, but it seemed there were enough for every horse and then some. I was thinking that perhaps I should call Luke just to check in when the lights flickered off.
    “I have candles and LED lights,” Sean assured us.
    “And the food is ready,” Kevin added.
    The newlyweds certainly were prepared for whatever the night might bring. Without the music to