Stolen in Paradise (A Lei Crime Companion Novel) by Toby Neal Page B

pulled the trigger, or hired someone to pull it, is going to take time. I, for one, want it to be one of the students—much easier to track them.”
    Rogers pulled the vehicle out of the parking lot. “I just hate that faceless corporation shit. Someone somewhere in that big-ass building is making decisions, and one of them might have been to kill Dr. P and steal the research.”
    “You’ll get no argument from me.” Marcella copied Cindy Moku’s address off her phone and plugged it into the GPS. “Let’s see what Cindy’s up to that she isn’t answering her phone.”
    Cindy Moku lived in a small add-on ohana, or in-law unit, attached to a bigger family home near the university. They pulled the Acura up outside the small building. Marcella stepped out onto the concrete driveway, dodging a skateboard. She and Rogers walked up three rickety wooden steps to the peeling front door, knocking softly—then louder.
    A dark-haired toddler on a Big Wheel rolled out of the nearby garage, eyed them. “You know where Aunty Cindy stay?” Marcella tried a little pidgin, which she was bad at. The child appeared to think so too and shook her head, pedaling back into the garage.
    “I’ll go around the back of the house,” Rogers said. Marcella tried to peer in the window, but the blinds were down, and with the inquisitive child nearby, she couldn’t blame Cindy for keeping everything shut up tight.
    “Agent Scott!” Rogers called from the back of the house. Marcella left the porch and swished through untrimmed grass dotted with the fallen pinwheels of plumeria blossoms to a small back deck with a sliding door. Rogers had it open, and one look at his face told her bad things waited inside.
    She pushed the door wider and stepped inside, the shadowed interior throwing her off so she almost walked right into the figure that hung from the ceiling fan in the living room.
    She took a step back as Rogers reached up to apply two fingers to the empurpled throat of the young scientist.
    “Gone.”
    “No. Dammit.” Marcella covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes filling. They took in the scene a minute longer: the tipped-over chair. The rope wrapped around the fan base, which must have been screwed into a beam to take that kind of weight. That sweet-faced scientist, so full of promise, scion of her family—motionless but for a gentle spin of the still-rotating fan, long black hair hanging down to conceal the cruel means of her death.
    Marcella tasted bile—not from horror, but from a sudden and profound grief. Fucking waste of promise. Homicide or suicide, this death was a damn shame. Marcella wondered—if she’d just taken the time to talk to Cindy yesterday, maybe the young woman would still be alive.
    There was no way to know.
    Sometimes she hated her job. On the other hand, better for them to have found the remains than the child playing in the driveway.
    “I’ll call it in.” Rogers called Dispatch as Marcella shook herself back into her role and did a slow cruise around the room. She found the note on the cheap little side table. She used a tissue from a nearby box to pick it up.
    Rogers hung up. “They’re notifying HPD. The ME and our crime lab team are on the way.”
    “Good. Lemme read this to you.” Marcella cleared her throat around an unexpected blockage. “‘I can’t take it anymore. I killed Dr. Pettigrew because she was going to give the formula away—she had no right. And now it’s just a matter of time before my life is over. I just can’t hurt like this anymore.’ It’s not signed.” Marcella set the note back where she found it.
    “Looks like plain computer paper and typed,” Rogers said.
    “I’m not buying it,” Marcella said.
    “What doesn’t sit right for you?”
    “Cindy doesn’t seem the type. If anything, she’s practical. Her biggest concern, from what I could tell, was that Dr. Pettigrew wasn’t around to sign off on her research. Not only that, her call to me yesterday.