Photo Finish Read online

  “McKenna! Don’t you start on that!”

  “I never did believe that sea-turtle story, so one day I asked your brother about it.” After he’d stopped laughing, Alexander’s brother had told me that the great mishap had nothing to do with sea turtles. The real story went that a pretty girl by the name of Loni Whachamajiggy on the board next to Alexander lost her bathing suit top. I said, “If you need an alibi for Kira—oh, Kira. She called. You’re in the dog house.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Again?”

  I nodded. “You’ve got to do better than this. I’ll tell her—I’ll come up with something. Long as you two didn’t—you know.”

  Alexander glared at me. “Screw you, McKenna. You think I got this gash from some little nature walk?”

  “No, I guess not. So’d you go into a biker bar by mistake? How many of them were there? Five? Six? What’d they do, try to haul off Legs or something?”

  “Legs?” Harris fixed her gaze on mine, then winked.

  Alexander added his suggestion. “Go screw yourself, McKenna.”

  Though I felt stupid for letting my pet nickname for Harris slip, I realized that maybe she felt the same attraction I did. My pulse quickened at the thought, but I remained undaunted. These two were BS’ing me.

  Harris's face went white with pain as she shifted position in her chair. “Don’t worry, Alexander, I’ve got the pictures to prove it.”

  “You hope you do. Your camera, maybe it’s broke.”

  “Thank God it landed on me, not the other way around.”

  Now I had them. “So you did drop your camera! Even an eighty-foot drop, you’d be sushi, yesterday’s beef stew, Hungarian—”

  Harris said, “Enough! There was a ledge, just a small outcropping of rocks about twenty feet down. If I’d have missed that—all I’d be is legs.” She snickered, then winced.

  She wasn’t going to let me live that one down. “So your camera doesn’t have a neck strap, huh?”

  Alexander butted in. “For chrissakes! She was all, ‘I’ve gotta have that shot over the cliff.’ I tied the line around her waist. I wrapped my end around a big boulder. But, when a bullet shatters a couple of feet from your head, you notice. She fell cuz the guy in the plane almost blew my head off.”

  This ridiculous improvisation needed lots of work. Maybe, if I heard the whole thing, we could polish it up a bit. “I’m an old man and can’t keep up with both of you. One tells the story; otherwise, I’m outta here. Wait a minute, this is my hale. You’re outta here.”

  “You got the pics. You tell him.”

  Harris said, “It all happened so fast. I was hanging off the cliff, the plane skimmed the ridge and a guy in the plane threw a body out the door. I snapped a couple of photos of the plane. I guess my lens reflected the light. The plane did this big turnaround thing and came back. This time the guy had a gun, and he started shooting at us. I heard Alexander yell for me to grab onto a rock or something and take cover. That’s about the time he must’ve gotten that gash on his face because before I could grab anything the rope went slack.”

  I waved my hands. “Kira would see through this in a second. Let’s try—”

  Apparently, Harris was just getting wound up because she only paused long enough to take a deep breath. Nobody had cut me off like that in a long time and, in a way, I kind of admired her for it. She was a take-charge kind of girl. I half-wondered if that’s what my life needed as she continued.

  “Next thing I know, I’m trying to run uphill, but my feet can’t feel the ground. I was looking up at the sky wondering why I felt like I was in slow-motion. That’s when I realized I was looking at the opposite side of the canyon—upside down. I thought I was gonna die and had this crazy thought about why didn’t I become a lawyer like my mother wanted me to be. I think Alexander thought I was—”

  “Hey, my tours are always round trip.”

  Legs smiled. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  Alexander rested a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Company policy.”

  He leaned over the chair, and they did a big wimpy, huggy thing.

  A twinge of jealousy shot through me as I watched them. For crying out loud, was this entire cock-and-bull story true? It was actually a lot better than either version of the surfing contest story. “So what’s your problem? You survived, you only got a few cuts.”

  Harris winced again. “And stuff.”

  “So what are you worried about? Maybe the cops’ll find these guys, yah?” I realized after I said it that as time went on I sounded more and more like a local. The longer I lived here, the more I adopted the island lilt in my speech and some of the common idioms, like “yah,” which subconsciously solicited agreement when speaking. It was polite and friendly and when I wasn’t feeling like a grump, I used it quite a bit. Of course, being from LA, I also used the good old American “yeah,” a word that reminded me of tough guys in movies with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths as they stared down the barrel of a gun.

  Harris seemed to be zoning out.

  Alexander said, “McKenna, I can’t report this.”

  “Why not? If you two witnessed someone disposing of a body—”

  “She didn’t have permission for us to be there. We were trespassing on state land.”

  “What?” I glanced from Alexander to Harris, then back.

  “Right after I pulled her up, she told me the email from the state was a lie.”

  “It’s in the works! I got a verbal approval to go in, okay? I’m like, really sorry, but I don’t have the written confirmation yet. I just needed to get those pictures.”

  “So she’s got a verbal approval,” I said. “How long can it take for the paperwork to get here?”

  Alexander let out a deep sigh. “What bureaucrat you know gonna give an okay to go in there after what happened today?”

  I groaned. “State land. Trespassing. Tour operator.”

  Alexander added, “No more license.”

  Harris said, “Prison. Divorce.”

  Alexander glowered at her. I thought she was cute.

  She and I exchanged an abbreviated smile as she apologized. “Sorry. I got carried away.”

  Alexander said, “You get the idea? Besides, this guy had a gun. Okay, maybe he can’t hit anything, yah, but he might have friends who can. If the cops arrest us for trespassing and those pictures hit the news, it won’t take long for these guys to connect us. We gotta be really careful.”

  “So somebody’s gonna want to kill you? Here?” I squeaked, then cleared my throat. “In my apartment building. And you can’t call the cops.” I glanced at Legs. “Or see a doctor.”

  Alexander waved his hands as if he were fending off a swarm of fruit flies hungry for a rotten apple. “We just need some time to think this through. Tomorrow morning we can figure out how to clean up this whole mess.”

  Harris had a faraway look in her eyes, but she nodded agreement.

  I licked my lips. “Uh, about that. You can’t go home tonight.”

  He sighed, “I figured. Use your couch?”

  “Sure.” I had to admit that Harris appeared as though she’d come close enough to death to realize she was too young to die. Or that she still had things to do.

  She reached out and took my hand. Though roughened by the day’s adventure, her touch still felt soft and warm. She stared into my eyes.

  Talk about having a stupid-me moment.

  Alexander said, “You could help her out with this, McKenna.”

  As a skip tracer, it had been my job to find people who’d bailed on their debts. In the old days, I’d even repossessed cars in relatively safe situations. I’d found a few guys who always carried weapons and one who was rumored to have bombed a church, but in those cases I just turned my results over to tow-truck drivers who were used to stealing cars in the middle of the night, and the cops, who were used to dealing with the bad guys. Again, Harris jarred me from my thoughts. The spiders crawling down my back and arms caught me tot
ally off guard. I shivered and rubbed my arms to warm them, but the effort was futile. Nothing I could do would shake that feeling as long as I held her gaze.

  It had been so long since I felt as though I’d really accomplished anything important that I had to think about it for a long time. They both stayed silent while decades worth of incidents flashed through my mind. My parents’ childhood mantra, the one brought on by my own deceptive behavior, played loud and clear. “Better safe than sorry.”

  Come to think of it, I’d never played it safe. And I’d frequently been sorry. I’d never hurt a soul, but I had an arrest record in California and an ex-girlfriend who’d disappeared when I screwed up our relationship. It would have been easy for me to find her afterwards, but she didn’t want that, so I’d never tried. All in all, I’d become an emotional wreck and fled to Hawaii, where I’d played it safe. And still wasn’t happy.

  I made up my mind, there was only one thing I could do—evict Harris for something. With her gone, life could return to normal.

  Quiet. Dull. Tedious.

  That’s when she did the one thing I feared most.

  She started to cry. “Please?”

  Chapter 3

  It had been a couple of hours since Alexander and Harris had shown up on my doorstep. During that time, I’d learned a couple of things about myself; I was still a sucker for a pretty face and a tear and tired of being a lonely old grump. I was also petrified by the thought of becoming anything else.

  During my four years here in Hawaii, I’d gotten close to Alexander alone—that due more to his persistence than my receptiveness. Tonight, I had him on my clean couch, taking up the only real sitting room in the apartment other than the dining-room chairs. Harris was on the chaise lounge on my lanai, leaving me a choice of a dining room or lanai chair. I took the lanai. I could have gone to bed, but that seemed rude and if there’s one adjective that doesn’t fit me, it’s rude.

  A movement to my right jarred me from my thoughts. Alexander stood at my side and put his hand on my shoulder. In a voice as soft as the surf on the shore, he said, “Why not give her some kokua?”

  Me? Help? My eyes rolled at the thought. I grumbled, “Like that’s going to happen.”

  “You like her; I can see it.”

  He was right. I liked being around Harris. She made me feel—yeah, that was it, she made me feel again.

  Alexander squeezed my shoulder. “I had to get up for a minute, saw you moping out here. Think about it. I’m going back to the couch.”

  He left me listening to the surf, admiring the moon’s reflection off the black ocean surface and wondering what to do about Harris as I got sloshed on my third glass of wine. Every time her eyelids closed and her facial muscles started to relax, she jerked like a hula-girl doll in the back window of an old Chevy on a bumpy road. Her pain-noises were starting to bug me, but she’d nearly gotten her brains splattered on a mountainside. She hadn’t asked for some guy to fly over in a plane and start shooting. Watching her suffer brought back memories of my own problems.

  The last time I’d been anywhere close to someone else’s personal drama was in Los Angeles. I’d had a growing case of depression, which had been brought on by a digestive disorder called Celiac sprue.

  Celiacs can have a rainbow assortment of symptoms and until you know you’re not able to tolerate wheat, oats, rye and barley, the symptoms will worsen. To top it off, you’re basically screwed because doctors don’t always know to test for it. The bottom line is that on a particularly bad day, my girlfriend Jenny’s son Michael was beaten up because he wore the wrong colors, a gang’s colors, to school. Like an idiot, I made things worse by ranting at him about his choice of apparel instead of driving my stupid butt to the school to obtain justice. I made the ultimate mistake of threatening to shake some sense into him. Jenny called the cops.

  My dumb luck included two hard-nosed uniforms who hated domestic abuse cases. The cops and I played a short game of “I Can Top That” and, needless to say, they slept in their beds that night while I got a drunken, smelly roommate who kept calling me Ralph. The next day, when I arrived home, Jenny and Michael were gone.

  Just like me, Harris had unknowingly brought this on herself. The major difference was that her situation had been completely avoidable, mine, medically inevitable. I watched her face. A wince of pain. A twitch of discomfort. Why the hell had she gone to that park in the first place? For a stupid job? To make it big in her field?

  Fifteen minutes, or maybe an hour later, I’d drained the glass when Harris started. She blinked, then glanced over and said, “Help me up, McKenna.”

  “You gotta pee?” Just asking the question made me think that it might be my turn to go again.

  “No, I’m going back to my place.”

  Talk about conflicted. Stay? Or go? If she stayed, we could help her. If she went, she might die in her apartment. That would be exceptionally bad news. I could lose my job if I let her die in there. And even if I didn’t lose my job, I’d have a helluva time renting her place because prospective tenants were so picky about that dead body thing. “Can’t do that.”

  “I want to download those pictures. Besides, I’m getting cold.”

  Having watched how much pain these two were in for nearly two hours, I kind of wanted to see those shots myself. It might also help to pull me out of the exceptionally funky mood that grew inside of me. She tried to roll herself out, but her face turned crimson. She couldn’t make it up on her own.

  “I’ll get you a blanket.” Talk about sounding stupid. I was about three sips from losing all common sense, but could recognize a no-win situation when it bit me in the behind. “Wait till morning.” I could stick her in my bed and sleep. But where? Here, I guess.

  Her head moved slightly from side to side, but even that seemed to cause her pain. “I’m too keyed up to sleep.”

  It was well after eleven, and Alexander snored like a happy pup on my couch, but wouldn’t stay asleep for long if Harris didn’t shut up. Women. Why couldn’t they be less trouble? She probably didn’t want to die in her landlord’s home. I didn’t want her to die in hers. I hoisted myself out of the chair, teetered towards her, and kept my voice low. “I’m stiff, can’t sit in one place for more time than it takes you to say humuhumunukunukuapua’a. You ever wonder who named that little fish?”

  “I need to see those photos.”

  My reaction reminded me of a drunk who’d just seen the flashing red lights in his rearview mirror and desperately wanted instant sobriety. I was way off my game. Who was I kidding? I hadn’t been on my game in five years. My only hope was to stall and hope Harris didn’t notice. “They were from Tahiti, you know. The first Hawaiians, not the fish. I don’t know where the fish is from.”

  Her lower lip began to quiver, and I saw another of those damn tears. “I’m a twin.”

  “A twin what?” Oh. Wow, I really was drunk. “Sister?”

  “I need the money from this job to help her. If I get delayed, she might—are you gonna help me up, or not?” Harris’s face turned scarlet. Even like this, she was gorgeous.

  “We’ll take them to one of those 24-hour photo places tomorrow, then we’ll call the cops. You rest now.” She wouldn’t go for that, but it was worth a try.

  “It’s a digital camera. I have to transfer them to my hard disk.” Her blond hair, which she’d tied back in a ponytail, combined with the cuts, scrapes and bruises she’d picked up gave the straight lines of her face a severe appearance that told me she wasn’t about to take any of my crap.

  I was stuck. I’d have to get Harris back to her place and keep an eye on her. If I could keep her from dying immediately, it would be a win-win for me. She’d live and my bosses wouldn’t be inconvenienced by having to fire me, their faithful, indentured servant.

  I stood over her and extended my hand, then leaned back a bit to keep from doing a splashdown on top of her.

  She said, “Don’t let go.”

  Her grip felt stro
ng and warm and weak and vulnerable all at the same time. It looked as though it would be my job to keep Ms. Photographer from killing herself. We took the shortcut, our footsteps crunching on the lava rocks that separated my lanai from the main walkway.

  Harris said, “I’ll be okay once I’m back in my place.”

  The last thing in the world I wanted now was to leave her. Alexander had been right; I did have feelings for Harris. We stumbled along like a couple of amateurs in a three-legged sack race. “We’ll get you settled in, then tomorrow—”

  “Nuh-uh. I have a deadline. No delays allowed.” She stiffened in pain.

  I scrunched up my face in sympathy. “I get along pretty good with computers. And I’m interested in seeing if this whole story is for real.”

  “It is.”

  “But before the cops will send someone up there to look around, they’ll want proof that the body’s real.”

  She shook my shoulder as though I’d just heartily volunteered for something. “That’s the spirit.”

  Shit. She’d done it again. If I volunteered one more time, I’d be up for a damn humanitarian award. My mouth stayed shut as we made our way through the courtyard, the scent of jasmine and plumeria filling my nostrils. The dull murmur of the ocean’s waves lapped against the shore in the background.

  We shuffled quietly past five apartments to the end of the walkway, then took a left to Harris’s unit on the end. These places had no air conditioning so the tenants slept with their bedroom windows open at least a crack. The last thing I needed was crabby tenants—crabby was my province.

  Once inside, Harris said, “I’ll boot up the machine.” She pressed the power button, then said, “Be right back.”

  When she returned, she extracted the media card from her camera, which sported several nasty scratches. It looked a lot like her on the outside. I hoped its insides were in better shape. Otherwise, they might both die for nothing. “Looks like you.”