The Paradise Affair

22 Quincannon

The rainsquall had been brief, having blown itself out by the time Quincannon reached the Millay ranch. Small comfort — he was bedraggled and damp, his hair, beard, and clothing steaming perceptibly in the afternoon heat. And he was still furious, though an effort of will had tamped the fury down to a controlled simmer.

He found Grace Millay in the stable, helping one of the paniolos tend to a newborn colt. Her surprise at seeing him might or might not have been genuine. He drew her outside, out of earshot of any of the ranch hands.

She showed little emotion while he gave her a terse account of what he’d found in the heiau’s burial chamber and what had transpired afterward, but the news of Sam Opaka’s death struck her like a blow. She wavered, then steadied herself against the stable wall with her eyes squeezed shut. It took half a minute for her to regain her equilibrium. When she opened her eyes again, it was as if she had never lost control at all.

“I did not send him after you,” she said.

Quincannon reserved judgment as to whether or not she was telling the truth. “If not, then your brother did.”

“My brother.” She spoke the two words with anger and a measure of disgust. “Yes, Sam would have gone on his orders. He was fiercely loyal to both of us.”

“Loyal enough to commit mayhem, evidently.”

“I don’t believe he was trying to kill you.”

“No? Why?”

“Native Hawaiians consider a heiau, even the ruins of one, a forbidden place. Sam would never have violated the kapu by taking a life in the burial chamber. To enter it and fire his rifle must have cost him a great deal.”

“If that’s so, then he wasn’t the one who shot Vereen.”

Grace Millay shook her head, a gesture of agreement. A vein throbbed in her forehead; the cords in her neck stood out in sharp relief. “It couldn’t have been Sam.”

“Did you know about the murder before now?”

“No. What I told you yesterday is the truth — I never saw the man, never knew he existed until you came.”

“But you did know about the chamber.”

“Yes. It’s the burial place of the high priest who ordered the heiau built, and of his family. Stanton and I found it when we were children. I am not proud of this, but after my father died, we brought some of the artifacts up here to the house. You must have noticed them in the parlor.”

“Objects of value?”

“Not particularly,” she said. “The Polynesians who inhabited this coast were not of the ruling class.”

Quincannon believed her now. He said, “All right. Where can I find your brother?”

“He’s not here. He and one of the hands rode out shortly after you left to check on the herd.”

“When will he be back?”

“I don’t know, but it shouldn’t be long.”

The prospect of a wait, however short, was an added scrape on Quincannon’s nerves. Even if Grace Millay were willing to act as a guide, he was not about to demand the use of a horse and go chasing after her brother in unknown territory. His only option was to go with her to the ranch house, where they occupied chairs under the monkeypod tree on the lanai. Neither of them had anything more to say to the other; they sat in brooding silence.

Time seemed to have slowed to a crawl, but it could not have been more than half an hour before hoofbeats in the ranch yard announced the return of Stanton Millay. By the time he and the paniolo named Keole dismounted their lios at the corral, Quincannon was on his feet and hurrying across the yard, Grace Millay at his heels.

A scowl warped Millay’s handsome features when he spied Quincannon. He came striding toward him, stopped a few feet away. His bloodshot eyes and sweating face bore witness to the hangover he was suffering, and to an attempt to cure it by taking more okolehao along on his ride.

“What the hell are you doing back here?” he demanded. “I told you yesterday I don’t want you on my property. Get off and stay off.”

“Not until I’m good and ready.”

“Now, goddamn it.” Millay laid his hand on the butt of the sidearm holstered at his belt.

Quincannon immediately swept the tail of his jacket back, gripped the Navy’s handle. “Draw your weapon, Millay,” he said, cold and hard, “and I swear you’ll regret it.”

Short, tense standoff. The paniolo, Keole, wanted no part of it; he moved several paces to one side, out of the line of fire. Grace Millay did the opposite. She stepped forward, not quite between Quincannon and her brother, and in one quick movement she jerked the pistol out of his holster and backed off with it.

Millay made no attempt to regain control of the weapon. All he did was yank off the sweat-stained cowboy hat he wore, slap it hard enough against his thigh to raise a thin puff of dust. His eyes avoided Quincannon’s now. There would be no further trouble from him.

“We’ll go into the house, the three of us,” his sister said to him.

“What for? Listen—”

“No, you listen.” She made a shooing gesture to Keole. Then, when the paniolo was out of earshot, “Sam is dead.”

“... What?”

“You heard me. Sam... is... dead!”

“Oh, Christ. How—?”

“Not out here. In the house.”

Millay followed her there without protest; Quincannon followed him. They went into the large front room containing the array of pagan objects. Grace Millay crossed to the mantelpiece, laid the pistol down next to one of the feathered fetishes displayed there. While she was doing that, Millay turned abruptly and faced Quincannon, his bloodshot eyes flashing.

“You! You killed Sam Opaka—”

His sister said, “No, he didn’t,” and then stepped in close and fetched him an open-handed, roundhouse slap. The blow had the force of a whip crack, staggering him. “They fought and the tide dragged Sam into the blowhole. A terrible way to die.”

Quincannon said, “I believed he was trying to kill me. On your orders, Millay.”

“No! I didn’t tell him to kill you. Only to follow you and scare you off if you...”

“If I went into the ruins and found the burial chamber — and what you left there.”

That brought a faint moaning sound out of Millay. He sank heavily into the chair he’d occupied the day before, reached for the decanter on the adjacent table. Grace Millay made a move to take it away from him, but he swung away from her and clutched it tight to his chest the way a child clutches a favorite toy. She watched disgustedly as with both hands he poured okolehao into a glass, then took a long, shuddery swallow.

Quincannon said to him, “I found Vereen’s body in the heiau. Why did you kill him?”

“I—”

“Don’t waste my time denying it. Why?”

Millay lowered the glass, wiped his free hand across his mouth. His voice, when it came, was low and thick with self-pity. “Self-defense. The bastard gave me no choice. He was angry enough to use his pistol on me when he saw there was no cloak among the artifacts...”

“Cloak?”

“Damn nonexistent ‘ahu ‘ula.”

“You stupid fool!” his sister snapped at him. “What possessed you to claim there was an ‘ahu ‘ula in the ruins?”

Millay couldn’t look at her. He said nothing.

“A mahiole, too, I suppose?”

His chin dipped in a jerky affirmative.

Quincannon asked, “‘Ahu ‘ula? Mahiole?”

“Feathered cloaks and helmets,” she said, “made of hundreds of thousands of colored feathers from the mamo and other birds tied into woven nettings. Symbols of the highest rank of the noho ali‘i, the ruling Polynesian chiefs believed to be descended from the gods.”

“Valuable?”

“Very. And extremely rare. No such garments were ever in the heiau here. They were not made for high priests, only chiefs like Kamehameha for spiritual protection.”

Millay took another swallow of okolehao, his hand so unsteady that his front teeth clicked against the glass and some of the liquid spilled down over his chin. “I was trying to impress a... a woman in San Francisco... I didn’t see any harm in making the claim so far from home.”

“A whore, you mean,” Grace Millay said in harsh tones, “and you were drunk at the time.”

“All right, yes, a whore and I was drunk. Those two, Varner and Reno or whatever their names, were there and overheard. They struck up an acquaintance... claimed to be businessmen, sports... asked me questions about the cloak and helmet.”

“And you told them more lies.”

“I didn’t think I’d see them again. But then I... I made the mistake of saying I was about to sail for home and they turned up on the steamer.”

“With a proposition, no doubt,” Quincannon said.

“Yes, but not right away. After we docked they talked me into staying over in Honolulu for a few days, showing them the... the nightlife.”

Setting him up, Quincannon thought, while pandering to their vices in a new and exotic locale. No wonder they had seized the opportunity to come to Hawaii. A fatally bad choice for both of them, as it turned out. There was a certain fitting irony in that, he supposed, despite the fact that he had had no hand in their downfall.

“So then you sent them to Justo Gomez.”

Another jerky nod. “They said they didn’t like hotels, that they wanted a private place to stay.”

“And Gomez not only supplied them with the Hoapili Street bungalow, but with female company.”

“... I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

His sister muttered something under her breath.

Quincannon asked, “When did they spring their proposition on you?”

“Last Saturday, at the bungalow.”

“What was the game?”

“I’d give them the cloak and helmet, they’d broker them to a rich collector of antiquities they knew about, and we’d split the proceeds. But I think... now...” A muscle in Millay’s cheek flexed and commenced a nervous fluttering. “Just a lie, a damn ruse. All along they were planning to...”

“To steal the cloak and helmet,” Quincannon finished for him, “and dispose of you once they had them.” Like as not true, if such artifacts were as valuable as Grace Millay had indicated. Those two jackals had been entirely capable of cold-blooded murder if enough money were to be had.

“That’s right,” Millay said, “but I didn’t think so then. I thought... I don’t know what I thought. I tried to tell them I’d made up the story but they wouldn’t believe me. They threatened me, threatened Grace... I had to keep playing along. What else could I do?”

Quincannon produced the crude map, held it in front of Millay’s face. “Who drew this? You?”

“Yes.”

“Willingly?”

“No. The fat one, Reno... he insisted.”

And Vereen had overlooked the map or been unable to find it after Nevada Ned’s demise. “They both intended to take the inter-island steamer with you on Sunday?”

“That’s what they said.”

“Did Vereen tell you why he was alone when he met you at the dock, that his partner was dead?”

“No,” Millay said. “I didn’t know about Reno until you told me. All he said was that the heat and humidity had laid his partner low.”

The kona weather might or might not have been a contributing factor in Nevada Ned’s death. Heart failure, accidental morphine overdose, or deliberate act of murder by Vereen... there was no way that Quincannon would ever know which it had been. Not that it mattered a great deal, now.

He said, “And on Monday, after an overnight stay in Kailua, you brought Vereen straight to the heiau.”

“He made me take him there. I kept trying to convince him that I’d made it all up, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“What happened in the burial cave?”

“He was... crazy mad when he saw that the cloak and helmet weren’t there. He accused me of taking it to the ranch, wanted to come here.... I couldn’t let him do that, I was afraid for Grace....”

“Liar,” she said.

“He drew his pistol and I... I fought him for it and it went off...”

“Twice?” Quincannon said.

“What?”

“He was shot twice. You somehow gained possession of the pistol and put two bullets in him, deliberately. That is what actually happened, isn’t it.”

Millay shook his head, the motion making him wince. “I don’t remember. I don’t want to remember.”

Quincannon let the lie pass unchallenged. “But you do remember emptying his pockets and disposing of his luggage.”

“I... was afraid to leave anything that might identify him if the body were ever found.”

“No, you weren’t. You wanted whatever of value he had on him. He had to have been carrying cash, and stock certificates and bearer bonds from the swindle that brought me over here. What did you do with them?”

“Brought them here. I couldn’t just throw them into the sea with his carpetbag, could I?”

When neither Quincannon nor his sister answered him, Millay ingested more okolehao and then staggered to his feet. They followed him into another room, one which contained a rolltop secretary desk. Millay opened it, handed Quincannon the contents of one of the drawers.

The certificates and bearer bonds were all there; Vereen and Nagle had made no attempt to dispose of any of them, other than the one bond they’d cashed in San Jose, before embarking for Hawaii. But they had spent most of the two thousand dollars they’d filched from R. W. Anderson, or they had if the amount Quincannon counted — three hundred and ninety dollars in greenbacks — was the full sum that Vereen had been carrying. Millay swore it was, but Quincannon was not about to accept his word.

The three of them returned to the front room. He said then to Millay, “You will arrange for a bank draft, payable to John Quincannon, in the amount of one thousand six hundred and ten dollars.”

“Why should we do that?” Grace Millay asked.

He told her why.

“And then what? What do you intend to do about the dead man in the burial cave?”

Somewhat mollified now, Quincannon said, “Nothing, as long as the draft is honored at your Honolulu bank. Even though Vereen was shot twice I have no proof to refute the veracity of your brother’s claim of self-defense. As for Vereen’s remains... if the bones of ancient priests have no objection to those of a murdering thief lying among them, I have none either.”

Grace Millay said to her brother, her voice cold and bitter, “I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done. If it weren’t for your drunken lies and stupidity, Sam Opaka would still be alive. I wish it had been you who was dragged into the blowhole instead of him.”

Millay let out a heavy sighing breath, sank down again into the chair, and cradled his head in his hands.