North Shore Nanny Read online

  “Food means preparation and cleanup. More ways to leave a clue. Besides, I'll bet Juliana was only here for a few days, and this neighborhood has plenty of options. What irks me is now we have to find her again. We still don’t know how much of what she told us was the truth.”

  “My dad has a lot of government connections.”

  “The kind that might know this doctor Juliana was talking about? It was Wayford, yah?”

  “Right, that’s him. Dad golfs with governors and senators all the time. He’s always been good at making political connections.”

  Chance had always been close-mouthed about his dad. But, something in the way he emphasized the word “political” compelled me to question him. “He was better with them than his son?”

  When he pulled out his phone without answering, I knew exactly what he meant. Dad did business, not family.

  “Hold off on that,” I said. “Call him from your place so you can have a little privacy. Right now, we need to get out of here before June changes her mind.”

  Chance put the phone back in its case. He turned and walked toward the door. Over his shoulder, I heard him say, “Believe me, McKenna, privacy is one thing my dad and I don’t need.”

  The Ferrari was Chance’s car, and it was right where we'd left it. For some reason, though, I was the one who lived in fear of some scumbag stealing it. Come to think of it, I didn't really worry where Chance parked in a public place. It was the lot at the apartment complex I managed that scared me. On my turf, I felt responsible.

  We were just pulling into traffic when my brand new phone rang. I recognized the ringtone. It was the one I’d assigned to Benni—rather, the one she’d assigned to herself while playing with the phone. How I, an underpaid apartment manager, came to own an expensive, high-tech toy was another story. All I'll say is in the process of saving Chance's hide during the Honolulu Hottie case, mine bit the dust.

  I answered by tapping the big green button on the screen. I tried to sound nonchalant and cool—like I really knew what I was doing with this thing. “Hey, Benni. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “Thank goodness. Do you suppose Chance can give me a ride to the airport? I’ve got to leave right away.”

  My heart sank. I hadn’t even adjusted to her leaving tomorrow, and she was leaving today? “Um, I’ll ask.”

  She must have heard the disappointment in my voice. “My client caught a ride on a friend’s private jet this morning. He called a few minutes ago to say he’ll be on island in about four hours.”

  “It’s almost a six-hour flight. How’d he pull that off?”

  “I think he’s showing off for some friends. This is going to be another tough one.”

  I shook my head. Her new clients, entertainers with rockstar egos and a budget to match, were a real piece of work. She'd told me how difficult it was to keep them on track—kind of like herding cats. “Can you drive Benni to the airport? She’s got to fly back right away.”

  Chance nodded as he negotiated our turn onto Kalākaua Avenue. “Sure, tell her we’ll be there in ten.”

  I relayed the message, then said, “After what you went through with Cam, I suspect I might have the easier task.”

  Benni snickered. “And dangerous. These guys want to live like they’re going to die tomorrow. Are you having any luck finding Juliana?”

  “We did, but she slipped away after we talked to her. She’s on the run again.” I wanted to tell her the truth, but it was best if Benni didn’t know about June’s change of heart. What Benni didn’t know couldn’t inadvertently slip out later in a conversation.

  “Look,” said Benni. “I have to finish packing. I’m glad I won’t need a cab, but I will miss you.”

  “Me, too.”

  When I disconnected, Chance said, “Sorry, McKenna. You really perked up when she got here.”

  I thought about how different life felt when Benni was around. I didn’t need to solve murders when she was around. She just made everything—fun.

  “McKenna? You okay?”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, I’ve been happier since she got here.” A moment later, I fell back into a little world where only my thoughts existed. It wasn’t until we pulled into the parking lot at the Sunsetter Apartments that my brooding ended.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Benni greeted us at the front door. She had her case packed, and the moment I saw the roller bag, the realization hit me with full force. She was flying home. Right now. I’d intended to tell her tonight she could leave anything she wanted. I wished I’d thought to mention my intentions on the phone.

  In a flash, a debate ensued in my head. It was between the little demons I call Good McKenna and Bad McKenna.

  —You love her, tell her she can leave stuff.

  —You’re back in the saddle. What if you get a one night stand with a hottie?

  —Don’t be stupid, you want to have a relationship.

  —You’re the one who’s stupid, Good. We can’t have women’s underwear hanging around if we get lucky.

  I shook my head and gazed into Benni’s eyes. “I'm sure it's too late, but if you wanted to leave—um—anything, it would be okay.”

  Benni approached and stood before me. Chance took the handle of Benni's bag and stepped away. He leaned against the open door and alternated between watching the floor and whistling quietly as she wrapped her arms around my neck.

  She kissed me, long and slow. I think I popped about four blood vessels by the time she pulled away. “Next time.”

  Yowza, she'd said "next time." All I could do was grin like a kid with a crush and listen to my heart beat against my chest.

  When I caught Chance's eye, he smiled and gave me a quick thumbs up.

  A few minutes later, Chance entrusted me with the bag from the condo and they left. I was alone. Rather than thinking about Benni, I resolved to focus on finding Juliana. Who knows...if I solved this case right away...I could catch an interisland flight... Uh-oh. As Chance would say, I had it...bad But, right now, I had someone to find.

  Other than Juliana’s toiletries, we'd only found Juliana's sweatshirt and the brown bottle. When I pulled the sweatshirt from the shopping bag, I noticed a scrap of paper in the pocket. It was a receipt. So, we had an unlabeled glass vial of brownish liquid and a receipt from someplace called Wong’s. Why did it have to be such a common name?

  The receipt was a flimsy, off-white slip of paper. It was definitely old school. Whoever used this must still have the carbon copy from the sale. You could still buy these forms at an office supply store, but who would? It had to be a tiny business.

  The chicken scratch was illegible. I couldn’t even read the prices. No help there, either.

  On the back of the receipt, someone had written the name Haku. I compared the writing on the back to the front. The name was legible. Two different people had made those notations. At the time of purchase? Or later? Perhaps Haku worked at Wong’s. It was worth thinking about.

  The first thing I did was check the telephone book for businesses incorporating the name Wong. Sheesh. Twenty businesses with the name. I had to narrow down the results. I knew an Internet search would return about 40 million entries, but had to try.

  Oh, how wrong could I be? There were only 20,352,964. Scratch the online search. I’d have to rely on the good old, low-tech telephone book.

  Chance had found the brown bottle in the medicine cabinet. It was the kind where the eyedropper doubled as the cap and a dispensing mechanism.

  I compared the handwriting from the receipt with the label on the bottle. It was the same. Both were totally illegible. Even though I couldn’t read the writing, I suspected the bottle came from a store where they created potions, lotions, or drugs. It was the only thing that made sense. An apothecary? Sure enough, a Wong's Apothecary was in the phonebook, and it was in Chinatown. Where else would it be?

  I called the number and a man answered in Chinese. Communicating with him was almost impossible. Now matter
what I said, he didn't get it. And his responses were gibberish to me. No question. We had to make a field trip. I wondered if there might be something poisonous among the drugs the apothecary stocked.

  Wait a minute. I had the cart before the horse. I’d been looking for Juliana, but knew little about how Mrs. Kraft had actually died. I had Kai’s rendition, but what was the truth? An online search turned up two stories, both of which were sparse on facts.

  On June 14, the Star-Advertiser reported the death of Mrs. Trinity Kraft, owner of North Shore Nanny. They listed the death as being “under investigation” by the Honolulu Police Department. A few days later, the obituary said there would be no services and there were no known relatives. What I had was another big, fat nothing. Unless I was willing to accept Kai’s story of the victim being poisoned. No, not yet. I had to verify the cause of death independently.

  I dug further and found no business license listing for North Shore Nanny. There was a business website. It even listed a state business license number. When I went to the state's business record database to see who owned the business, I had another surprise. The license belonged to Juan Esteves Construction, not North Shore Nanny. Again, the phone book helped me out. I dialed and didn’t have to wait long, a man’s voice, deep and strong, answered on the second ring.

  “Esteves Construction.”

  “Hi, I’m doing a reference check on a business that used your license number on their website. North Shore Nanny.”

  “What?” He exploded. “They’re using my license? Is this a joke?”

  “No, no joke. Trinity Kraft listed your number on her nanny service website. Have you ever heard of her before?”

  “I got no idea who she is, brah.” He yelled something to someone, then returned to the conversation. “Who are you?”

  “There’s obviously something wrong. Sorry to have bothered you.” I hung up.

  Why would Trinity Kraft use a fake business license number on her website? The state required those numbers on websites. It couldn't have been an error. Which meant it had to be deliberate. And that meant she had no license of her own. Maybe I'm overly suspicious, but the fake number meant only one thing to me. Trinity Kraft had been running a scam.

  I returned to her website page and scrolled down the page. Slick. Too slick. Leaning back in my chair, I spoke to the computer screen. "If you stole someone’s business identity, why wouldn’t you do the same for your personal information? Who are you, Trinity Kraft?"

  CHAPTER TEN

  My search for Trinity Kraft began on social media. Sure enough, she had Facebook and Twitter accounts, but her activity only went back a few months. Her business page on Facebook was also new. A search in an online phone book turned up a Trinity Craft, but the name wasn't an exact match and I dismissed it. A general search turned up thousands of results ranging from Christian soccer players to porn stars. I labeled the avenue as fruitless after looking through three pages of results.

  I checked a couple of “people finder” sites and concluded “Trinity Kraft” hadn’t existed until a few months ago. So who was she? When disappearing, most people made some sort of mistake so the question became, how good was the mysterious Trinity Kraft? Had she left a clue?

  According to the domain name record, Trudy Kelsey of Kenosha, Wisconsin registered the name in January 2013. Four months before Trinity appeared here in the islands. The record also included a telephone number, which wasn’t an 808 area code. It was a mainland number in Wisconsin. Maybe I had my first break, and an opportunity to test out my new phone’s unlimited long distance plan.

  A soft-spoken woman answered. “Hello?”

  The soothing quality of her voice made me hate myself for what I was about to do. “Hi, I’m looking for Trudy.”

  The woman paused. “Lord, I wish I knew where she was. I haven’t heard from her in a couple of weeks.”

  “Did she move? I haven’t talked to her in months.”

  The woman sighed, then made one of those tsking sounds, the kind driven by frustration. “Yeah, she left about then. I wish she’d come back, but I don’t think she ever can. My baby girl's just so doggone mixed up.”

  “The thing she did? Catching up to her?”

  “Oh, you know about it. I still don’t believe she’s a criminal. You know, it was so stressful she had to take the medication to calm her down." More tsking noises. "Sometimes kids just lose their way I guess. When she moved back home she promised me she hadn’t done anything wrong.” The woman sniffed. “She’s my baby girl. If I hear from her, who should I tell her called?”

  “You can tell her Tom tried to get in touch. I’m sure we’ll catch up at some point.” The longer we talked, the more likely it would be for me to make a mistake, so I ended the call abruptly.

  So, Trudy, aka Trinity, had been on the run from the law when she came to Hawai‘i? It must have been serious for her to skip out on her mom. And her trial—she'd now have all kinds of public records.

  The online court records for Wisconsin were easy to find. Trudy Kelsey had been accused of possession of marijuana, passing fraudulent checks, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. There were two other cases in which she’d been convicted. One was for speeding, the other for disorderly conduct. A hit-and-run driving charge had been dismissed. On top of it all, there was now a fugitive warrant for her arrest.

  With the latest charges, Trudy must have decided it was time to break ties with the Heartland. I could tip off HPD, but they'd figure it out on their own sooner or later. Besides, they didn't need to know I was meddling again.

  A few minutes later, Benni called to tell me Chance was on his way back. She was, as she put it, trudging forward in an atrociously long TSA line. In the middle of our conversation, Chance called, so I said a quick goodbye and answered.

  “Package delivered.” He yelled over the roar of traffic, turbulence, and the Ferrari’s engine.

  “Thanks, I owe you one. I think I’ve found out where the brown bottle came from. We’re going to need a field trip to Chinatown.”

  “Want me to pick you up?”

  “You bet. It would take me almost an hour to get there on the bus.”

  Once we disconnected, I decided to check in on Alexander and Kai. After leaving the condo, they should have gone surfing. On the third ring, Alexander picked up.

  “Hey, buddy, I'm surprised you answered. I thought Kai would be teaching you some new moves by now.”

  “She taught me a new move, all right.”

  “She picked a wave too big for you, huh?”

  “No way. She told me she was goin’ to the bathroom with a friend of hers. They nevah come back. I went lookin' fo' her and found her friend, but she didn't know nothin'. Kai's gone, brah. Disappeared.”

  What a surprise. Princess Kai was on the loose again. "What beach are you at?" I asked.

  "Kai wanted to come to Sandy Beach. She said waves here was good today."

  "Are they?"

  "Kinda okay. Nothing special. What you thinkin', brah?"

  "She knew exactly where she wanted to go, Alexander. I'll bet she arranged for you to drive her to a beach where she had a friend so she could ditch you."

  Alexander snorted. "Where she gonna go, McKenna? She just a kid."

  Good question. Unless she learned something at the condo. "Look, I need you to give me a couple of hours to find her."

  "You got two hours, brah. Then I gotta call June."

  I went to the lānai, sat, and watched the ocean and the few people who were there. Small waves meandered toward shore. A couple of kids romped in the small surf. I let my breathing slow, my thoughts clear. Kimu always helped me solve cases, but his help only came when I was asleep. When my subconscious would accept help. For now, I was on my own. I whispered, “Where are you, Kai?”

  The stretch of beach in front of the Sunsetter Apartments was never what someone from LA would call crowded. Normally quiet, it did see some action from the residents. Some surfers came, dependi
ng on the height of the waves, but I'd bet they also lived nearby. Our little stretch of sand wasn’t hugely popular for one simple reason—the waves weren’t big and consistent like many of the other beaches. Sandy Beach, however, had a reputation. Which is probably why Kai chose it. Alexander would have known something was wrong if Kai hadn’t picked a beach with good surf.

  One of the kids down by the shore had a skimboard. He carried his two-foot long board, ran forward, and dropped it into the shallow water. He then hopped on and skimmed the surface of the water. When he lost momentum and the board slowed, he picked it up and started over. The kid was pretty good. Not as good as Kai, of course, which is why he was at a beach with tame waves.

  I'd be surprised if Kai didn't know conditions at almost every O‘ahu beach. She also knew the public transit system. I'd also bet she knew she could catch a bus into Honolulu from Sandy Beach if she had to.

  I dialed Alexander’s phone again. He picked up right away, and I asked him if he could remember Kai and Juliana being alone in the condo at any time.

  “No way, brah. They was never alone. Now, Kai, she had a couple of minutes in the bathroom.”

  The bathroom. Where Chance had found the bottle and the receipt. Maybe Kai found them, too. “Were you watching her the rest of the time? I know I was more focused on Juliana.”

  “I watched her pretty close except when she was guzzling down all that water.”

  The water. Of course. Juliana had been on the phone in the kitchen when we walked in. There was no wall phone in there. “Alexander, this is important. After you two left the condo, did you take your eyes off her at all?”

  “Nah—wait. Yah, in the lobby, she said she drank too much water. She said she hated the bathrooms at the beach, so she wanted to go one more time. She got the smallest bladder I ever seen for a surfer.”

  “No. She doesn’t. Remember, she stowed away on the Hawaiian Delight for a few hours. If she’d have gone to use the head, she would have been caught. Only one thing makes sense. She stole Juliana’s phone. She must have planned to have her friend give her a ride. If her friend didn't give her a ride, I'll bet she took the bus. It must have been her backup plan all along."