Murder at Waters Edge (Sand and Sea Hawaiian Mystery Book 6) Read online

  It sounded like the brawn half of all the other teams had a lot more going on than me. I was glad Zak had them all beat in the brains department, and Luke was really good on the fly if decisions needed to be made while we were out chasing clues.

  “We’re currently in fifth place and a husband-and-wife team from Nova Scotia are in sixth. Based on the information I have available the rankings will remain constant through tomorrow.”

  “So we’re probably safe tomorrow but in big trouble on Wednesday,” I stated.

  “Perhaps,” Zak acknowledged. “Anything can happen in a contest like this. The most physically fit team in the world can still be eliminated if they misinterpret even one of the clues. Having you on our team is a huge advantage because you know the history and geography of the area better than most. I honestly think we can hang in there as well as any other team.”

  I appreciated Zak’s vote of confidence. I just hoped it was justified.

  I took a sip of my wine before I said, “Okay, let’s discuss Cammy’s fall from the cliff. The competition is taking up most of my time. I wonder if staying in it is even the best tactic at this point. The contestants are all staying until the end of the week whether they’re eliminated or not. Maybe it would be best to get cut so we have more time to investigate.”

  No one answered right away. Finally, Zak said, “There are two things going on here. One is Cammy’s death and our desire to figure out exactly what happened and who to blame; the other is the reason behind her death, the suspicious hacks. I can see that being eliminated would give us more time to investigate the death, but it’s very beneficial to be on the inside in terms of having access to the hacks. Can I hack in and get the information even if I’m not associated with the contest? Sure. But what I’m hoping is that whoever is behind what’s going on will decide to give us the hack associated with the endgame. We’ll be better able to control things if we’re involved in what’s going down then.”

  Zak’s point was solid. Hanging in and seeing this through really was the best option.

  “I can ask around about Cammy,” Zoe volunteered. “I’m actually very good at snooping, and now that I feel better I want to have a job to do. The members of the teams who’ve been eliminated are bound to be bitter and I’ve found the bigger the grudge a person holds, the more apt they are to spill their guts.”

  Zak glanced at me.

  “Okay,” I said. “That sounds like a good plan. Zak will continue to do the computer thing, Luke and I will do the race, and Zoe will put her legendary sleuthing skills to work.”

  “Then I’ll start with the teams who’ve been eliminated and are hanging out here at the resort,” Zoe said. “You said Cammy and Irina had some kind of rivalry going on, but do you know if there were any participants she was close to? The contestants have been traveling together for four weeks. Rivalries had most likely formed during that time, but it also seems that teams may have established ties for one reason or another.”

  “I’ll see if I can find out from Bethany,” I offered, “but only the top ten teams came to Maui, so chances are we’re more likely to find rivalries than alliances.”

  We went our separate ways after dinner. Zak and Zoe headed down to the beach for a walk in the moonlight and Luke and I went to the bedroom for the canoodling part of the evening. No matter how tired I was or how much was on my mind, Luke had a way of relaxing and invigorating me that I was quite certain I’d never tire of.

  Chapter 8

  Wednesday, May 3

  By the time Wednesday rolled around there were five teams left. Kimmy and Kenny had dropped into second place and, surprisingly, first place had been taken over by Hulk and Cracker. Ivan and Irina were in third, we were in fourth, and Trent and Hallie were in fifth. The husband-and-wife team from Nova Scotia had been eliminated on Tuesday, as Zak had predicted.

  The previous day Luke and I raced to Ka Iwi O Pele, where the fire goddess Pele fought with her older sister, Namakaokaha’i, goddess of the ocean. The hill and the land adjacent was, interestingly, owned by Oprah Winfrey, who we didn’t run into. Once there, though, we found the next clue, which led to Wai‘anaapnapa State Park, not only a beautiful spot but, thankfully, not all that far away. Eventually we were led to the Kaupo Church. I was beginning to see a pattern with churches being the final clue. It was possible the organizers were predictable in other areas too, which would provide a huge advantage to those who’d been involved in the competition from the beginning.

  The hack from that morning had been the most complicated yet. It wasn’t a problem for Zak, of course, but he thought it would have stumped most hackers given the false threads that seemed to be promising but ended up going nowhere. We’d decided he should aim to complete his hack coming in third. We still didn’t want to call attention to ourselves, but we did want to show promise for whatever was on the horizon.

  Hulk and Cracker got their hack done first, followed by Ivan and Irina. When they were in, Zak completed ours, which gave us a clue I determined led to the Nakalele Blowhole on Maui’s north shore.

  Luke and I chatted about the goings-on back home on Oahu as we made the trip. I asked about the horses he raised and he asked about my family. Luke and I both had parents who believed it was best to control and manipulate us to a certain extent, so I wasn’t surprised when he admitted to having seven unreturned calls from his mother after I mentioned my mom had called me four times in the past twenty-four hours.

  The Nakalele Blowhole was a popular tourist stop, so I wasn’t surprised when we pulled into the unofficial parking area to find a bunch of other cars already there. The hike to the blowhole itself was steep and could be precarious, given the loose shale and lack of a marked path. We wore sturdy shoes, which was a good thing; the steep decline and rocks led to unsure footing.

  Luke held my hand and helped me over the rough spots, and I accepted his help, even though I didn’t really need it. I’d noticed Zoe usually accepted help and pampering from Zak even though I knew from the time we’d spent together when he wasn’t around that she’d be fine without it too.

  I had to admit I struggled with any gesture Luke presented that I felt minimized me as a person. Most women would be happy to have their significant other lend a helping hand when the path became difficult, but instead of feeling loved and cherished they made me feel defiant. My brother Jason had once commented that I hadn’t changed a bit since I was four, and though I don’t remember that time in my life very well, I was willing to accept it as my I-can-do-it-myself phase.

  Had I somehow become developmentally stuck at the age of four?

  “What now?” Luke asked as we arrived at the bottom of the hill and stood level with the blowhole, just above the sea.

  “The second part of the clue said something about a turkey looking over paradise,” I said as a steeple of water shot forty feet into the air.

  I looked around and didn’t see any turkeys, not that I expected to. I considered whether we might be after a turkey-shaped rock. The constant pounding of the sea had caused the rocks in the area to take on all sorts of interesting shapes, including a perfect heart that was frequently photographed by tourists. “It has to be a rock, but I don’t see anything that looks like a turkey.”

  “The clue led us here, but it didn’t specify whether we’d need to climb down,” Luke commented. “We just assumed we needed to get as close to the blowhole as possible. Maybe we just needed to show up, and the turkey is visible from a higher elevation.”

  I paused to consider that. On one hand, there would be a natural assumption that a clue leading to the blowhole would require a climb down to it, but you could see it from the parking area above. There were a couple of other flat viewing points on the way down the hill, so maybe…

  “I guess we can climb back up, stopping frequently to look around,” I suggested.

  Luke nodded to Ivan and Irina, who were at about the halfway point on the hill. They’d stopped to study a rock. After a few moments th
ey headed back up the rock, so I assumed they’d found the turkey. The hike up the hill was more strenuous but less dangerous, so we managed to make pretty good time. By the time we made it to the spot they’d been studying they were long gone.

  The fact that Ivan and Irina had been a good twenty minutes behind us and we’d completed the hack at about the same time must have meant we’d figured out the general location of the clue faster than they had. For the first time I felt we might actually have a chance to hang on in the competition to the end.

  We found the turkey, then looked around for the clue. There were black rocks scattered all around, even though there weren’t that many of them in the rest of the area in general, so I felt like black rock, or maybe just the color black, was a clue and mentioned it to Luke.

  “Two things come immediately to mind. There’s Black Sand Beach, which is popular and spiritually significant, and there’s a diving rock near Ka’anapali Beach that’s known as Black Rock. There are also black rocks up on the Haleakalā volcano. I’m sure there must be others in the area as well, but those are the ones that stand out to me as having both recognition and spiritual value.”

  “Why did you bring up the spiritual aspect?” Luke asked.

  “There’ve been a couple of exceptions, but most of the sites we’ve been directed to this week have had a spiritual or at least a historical significance.”

  As Luke looked around, I saw Trent and Hallie had just pulled into the parking area. I figured it was prudent that we step away from the clue, so I pulled his arm, indicating that we should continue up the hill. We hadn’t seen Kimmy and Kenny or Hulk and Cracker. I had no way to know for sure, but if they were ahead of us, as I suspected, Trent and Hallie were the ones to beat.

  We returned to the car and discussed the obvious options. Black Rock, the diving area near Ka’anapali Beach, was believed by the ancient Hawaiians to be where, after death, spirits went to meet their ancestors. If there were no family spirits to receive them, they would wander there, attaching themselves to rocks and generally causing mischief. It was for that reason it was considered unwise to take away any rocks from the area.

  Black Sand Beach, on the other hand, was on the south end of Maui, near where we’d been the day before. There were several significant historical and spiritual markers in the area as well, and in my opinion it made a good place to leave the next clue.

  And then there was the volcano, which had black rocks. Haleakalā was a significant location, so I might lean toward that, but I could think of better, more specific clues leading to it that I imagined would have been used if that was where the organizers intended we should go now.

  After a bit of discussion Luke and I decided to check out Black Rock, which was popular with both cliff and scuba divers, so I wasn’t sure whether the next clue would be above or below the water.

  “If it seems scuba diving is the way to go we’ll need to rent gear,” I commented. “I’m hoping if there’s a dive involved it requires a free one from the top of the rocks into the ocean rather than a scuba one, which will require a lot more time and effort.”

  “How high off the surface of the water is this rock exactly?” Luke asked, a hint of concern in his voice.

  I grinned. “Don’t worry. It’s not that high. Cliff divers do it all the time. I’ve never tried it, but I hear it’s as easy as falling off a cliff.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “Are you afraid of heights?” I teased, suddenly feeling energized because I had the upper hand after all the help Luke had offered me during the climb down the cliff.

  “Not heights per se, but I’ve seen videos of people cliff diving and I’d much prefer scuba. Unlike you, I didn’t grow up in the water, and the pool near my hometown didn’t even have a diving board. Not that I won’t do it if we have to; I’m just saying that given the choice, a leisurely dive below the surface of the water seems preferable to a free fall from a cliff.”

  I smiled. You’d think it would be a turnoff that Luke was showing a weakness, but I found it comforting and even a little sexy. Not that weakness was necessarily sexy, but Luke had come to my rescue so many times I was beginning to feel inferior. That simply wouldn’t do.

  “Don’t worry.” I grinned again. “If we have to jump I’ll hold your hand.”

  Luke winked at me. “I’m counting on it.”

  ******

  At Black Rock, we parked in the Sheraton Hotel lot. Quite a few scuba divers were there already, showing its popularity. There were signs telling people to stay off the rock, which I knew pretty much everyone ignored.

  We’d discussed the situation and decided to climb to the top. If the clue was there, there was no reason to bother with renting diving equipment. I began to look around as soon as we got up there. There were fewer people around at this time of day—most jumps were made at sunset—but I figured the organizers had taken that into account. The clue would be something we could find.

  To this point, figuring out the first clues had been somewhat difficult, but finding the next one after you arrived at the location was relatively easy. Everything had been left out in the open and, except for the Iao Needle, locating the clues hadn’t required that much physical effort. We needed to place at least fourth today if we weren’t to be eliminated.

  We eventually found a sign telling us to take a leap of faith. I tried to determine if it was new or if it had been posted at some much earlier time. It didn’t look completely new, as some of the others had, but not ancient either. We looked around a bit more and didn’t find anything else. We needed to make up some time if we were to stay in the running, so noodling around wasn’t an option.

  “What do you think?” I asked Luke.

  He looked over the edge. It really was a pretty decent drop. “Okay, let’s do this.”

  I took his hand in mine, squeezed it, counted to three, and jumped. We landed smoothly in the water and then swam to the surface.

  “That was fun,” Luke said with a grin on his face.

  “I told you it wouldn’t be bad.”

  Luke looked around at our surroundings. “What now?”

  “I saw something about halfway up on the way down. I don’t know for certain if it’s what we’re looking for, but it didn’t seem natural, sort of out of place.”

  “What exactly did you see?”

  “A box, sort of like a mailbox but a bit smaller, and made of wood. I can’t be certain, but at this point I’m willing to bet it has the next clue.”

  “So we climb?”

  I nodded. “We climb.”

  The clue, once accessed, led us to yet another church. This one was close by, so if the church was the final clue of the day, as had been the case to this point, we were going to have an early day. At the car I called Zak, getting him ready to record the information, when he told me that he’d texted earlier to let us know that without help, Kimmy and Kenny hadn’t solved their hack and thus were eliminated. The order in which we submitted the final information could affect our ranking, but we could take a breath and relax a bit because at the very least we’d survived to play the next day.

  We determined the necessary information, Zak fed it into the computer, and we were free to head back. I suspected it was intentional that we’d been provided with easy clues, all located in close proximity to one another today, giving us time to rest. And if I was right about that I wondered what was in store for us the next day.

  By the time we returned to the resort Zak was able to inform us that we were in third place, Hulk and Cracker were in first, Ivan and Ivana in second, and Trent and Hallie in fourth. To remain in the contest all we needed to do was maintain our position the next day. I had a feeling it was time to set Zak loose so Luke and I would have the lead we’d need.

  Chapter 9

  Luke and I took long showers after we chatted briefly with Zak. It was early still, which meant I was going to have plenty of time for sleuthing. I knew there was a lot going on, or at lea
st there seemed to be a lot going on, but my endgame remained constant: finding Cammy’s killer.

  I found Zak hard at work when I returned to the common room. I grabbed a bottle of water from the kitchen, settled down on one of the sofas, and asked, “Any new insights?”

  “Maybe. Based on what happened today, I think it’s clear Kimmy and Kenny were plants all along. I don’t know why the event coordinators chose to have them planted at the top if they weren’t going to go all the way.”

  “Do you think there are any other plants?”

  Zak hesitated. “Everyone left in the competition seems to legitimately have the skills to have made it this far, so I don’t think so.”

  I glanced at Zoe, who had just walked in from the lanai. Her long, curly hair was pulled back in a scrunchie and she looked more than a little hot and sweaty.

  “Were you taking a walk?” I asked.

  “Yeah. It seems cooler today.”

  “The humidity has lessened, which makes the air feel less heavy. Did you hear that Kimmy and Kenny were eliminated?”

  Zoe nodded. “All I can think of is that we’re down to only four teams. If something’s going to happen it’s going to be soon. I think we need to take the time to rethink all the angles.”

  “Agreed. It might be a good idea to ask around, see if we can come up with anything in relation to Cammy’s murder while we’re at it. I’m hoping all the players will be out and about on the property. Maybe we can strike up conversations with some of them.”

  “You never know when someone’s going to say something that will lead to the thread that unravels everything. There were only a couple of people hanging out at the pool when I stopped by. I didn’t see any of the contestants who’d been eliminated, but there were two women who seemed to be on the housekeeping staff having lunch at one of the tables in the shade. I overheard one say she’d found some strange things in the room of one of the contestants.”