Sabina’s second visitor arrived unannounced at the guesthouse shortly past noon. She had just finished partaking of a light lunch brought by Kaipo and was perusing an article in the current issue of the Honolulu Evening Bulletin criticizing the burgeoning influx of American warships and military personnel when the knock came on the screen door. She opened it, and there stood Philip Oakes.
“I hope I’m not intruding, Mrs. Quincannon,” he said. “I’d like to speak to you. May I come in?”
“Speak to me about what, Mr. Oakes?”
“My uncle’s death. May I come in?”
There was none of Saturday evening’s flirtatiousness in the way he looked at her, nor was he nattily well groomed or his manner urbane, so it was not a foolishly ill-timed attempt at seduction that had brought him. He seemed more upset today than he had been when she’d spoken to him last night. His voice and eyes were both beseeching.
She allowed him inside. He waited until she had reseated herself at the rattan table, then occupied the second chair and mopped his face with an embroidered silk handkerchief. In the close confines of the porch she detected the odor of whiskey on his breath, but it was not strong and he was nowhere near intoxicated. A large drink or two to settle his nerves, at a guess.
“I’ve come to ask your help,” he said.
“My help? To do what?”
“Prove that my uncle’s death was an accident. An accident. You’re a detective, aren’t you? Captain Jacobsen told me you were after he spoke with you.”
Oh, Lord. The police detective had been no more circumspect than Margaret had in keeping her profession confidential. “Yes,” she admitted, “I am. In San Francisco.”
“There is nothing to stop you from practicing your trade here, is there? Detective business is why your husband went to the Big Island, isn’t it?”
Sabina swallowed a sigh. “The captain seems convinced your uncle died by his own hand.”
“Jacobsen is wrong. My uncle would never have committed suicide. Never.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Positive. He was too fond of himself, had too much to live for. Great Orient Import-Export, his position with the Reform Party and the annexation. Yes, and finishing the book on ancient Chinese history he was writing. I told Jacobsen all of this but he wouldn’t listen, just wouldn’t listen. His investigation was cursory, he made up his mind in a hurry. The man is an incompetent blockhead.”
“An incompetent blockhead doesn’t become a captain of detectives,” Sabina said.
“He does if he was given his position for political reasons. Jacobsen was. He must have been.”
“What makes you think I am any more competent than he? How do you expect me to prove him wrong?”
“Come with me to the house, conduct your own investigation. There must be something the police missed in my uncle’s study, something they missed. I’ll pay you. I’ll pay whatever your agency charges in San Francisco.”
“Payment is not an issue,” Sabina said. “Why are you so desperate to prove your uncle did not take his own life?”
“Suicide is bad for business. Bad for business. A blot on the family escutcheon.”
“Come now, Mr. Oakes, you’re not being frank with me. There must be more to it than that.”
He was silent for a few seconds, as if debating with himself. Then, “Oh, very well. The main reason is insurance.”
“Insurance?”
“A life insurance policy with an American firm. Twenty thousand dollars. Twenty thousand dollars! I happen to know that I am the beneficiary.”
“I see. The policy contains a nonpayment clause in the event of suicide, is that it?”
“Yes. Twenty thousand dollars is a substantial amount — all that is likely to come to me and I won’t be cheated out of it. I won’t be cheated.”
“But surely you stand to inherit your uncle’s home, his share of the import-export business...”
“Not the business,” Oakes said. “There are ironclad agreements with the other partners... no, I don’t stand to inherit his share. Or the house. Likely he left it to his business partners, or the Reform Party. Or his paramour.”
“Paramour?”
“Miss Earlene Thurmond.” His lip curled disdainfully as he spoke the name. “That is what she was, you know, in addition to her secretarial duties. His paramour.”
Sabina let that pass without comment.
“No financial bequest to me, that is the point,” Oakes said. “No money except the insurance. Not even a token amount in his will, he told me that. Not even a token amount.”
“In that case, are you certain you’re still the beneficiary of the insurance policy?”
“Certain, yes. Positive. My uncle was manipulative, autocratic, but he wasn’t a complete bas... wasn’t completely heartless. He hadn’t much sense of family loyalty but he did have some. Not enough, but some.”
Once more Sabina was silent. Unbidden, the lines from the old nursery rhyme again intruded on her thoughts. One, two, buckle my shoe. Three, four, knock on the door. Five, six...
“Pick up sticks,” she said aloud.
“What? What’s that?”
“Pick up sticks. Captain Jacobsen told me your uncle spoke those words before he succumbed. You haven’t any idea what they mean?”
“No. He never said anything like that before. Never. Out of his head with pain. What does it matter?”
“Perhaps it doesn’t.” And perhaps it did.
Oakes mopped his forehead again. “Will you at least come to the house and look through the study? At least that much, Mrs. Quincannon?”
Sabina’s inclination was to politely but firmly decline. She did not like Philip Oakes and she found his mercenary motives distasteful. And yet there were puzzling aspects to Gordon Pettibone’s death that were not satisfactorily explained by Captain Jacobsen’s conclusion of a willfully self-inflicted gunshot.
The fact that 3:00 A.M. was a curious time for a man to choose to take his own life; the gunshot wound in an unlikely location for a suicide; that inexplicable dying utterance of “pick up sticks”; and the shadow shape that might not have been imaginary after all.
Add all those together, and she knew what John would have made of the bundle. If the two apparent anomalies were nothing of the kind, and “pick up sticks” was not just nonsense but some sort of dying message, then it was possible Gordon Pettibone hadn’t shot himself on purpose or by accident — that someone had put the bullet in his heart despite the fact that the study doors and windows had all been locked.
John, if he were here, would surely accept the investigative challenge; conundrums of this sort intrigued him. If she refused the opportunity, he would chastise her for it when he found out. And be perfectly right in doing so. She had, after all, been instrumental in solving a few conundrums herself.
“Very well, Mr. Oakes,” she said. “I’ll do as you ask.”
15
Quincannon
Quincannon left Kailua shortly past dawn on Wednesday morning.
Rain had pelted down again during most of the night, but at this hour the sky above the village was clear. Banks of clouds on the horizon were not quite dark enough to be the harbingers of another storm; an intermittent offshore breeze carried no scent of ozone. The ever-present muggy stickiness suggested another blistering, if dry, day ahead.
The hired wagon was little more than a wooden cart with iron wheels, but its bed was large enough to hold a trussed prisoner on the return trip; now it contained only his borrowed carpetbag and a package of food and bottle of water provided by Abner Bannister. As for the creature in the traces, Quincannon had never seen one quite like it. A Kona nightingale was smaller than the four-legged asses he was used to, and resembled nothing so much as a leathery-skinned mouse grown to fifty times its normal size. He had eyed it skeptically on first encounter; it seemed incapable of either the stamina for a thirty-mile trip or the ability to move along at any but a retarded speed. The impression, at least in the early stages of the trek, had proved false. The animal trotted along the muddy, heavily rutted road with no evident strain and at a pace almost equal to that of a horse.