“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.
23
Sabina
The long period of kona weather finally ended on Friday. Sabina awoke to a cloudless sky of brilliant blue and a gentle offshore breeze. The temperature, as the day progressed, was a dozen or more degrees cooler. This at last was the Hawaii lauded by Twain and Stevenson — softly scented trade winds, cheerful natives swimming in balmy surf, the ocean placid and of a pleasing apple-green hue. Spirit-lifting, all of it.
She viewed the change as a good omen of things to come. And so it was, for John returned safe and sound late that afternoon. His journey to the Big Island had had positive results, though not quite as he would have preferred them to be. Lonesome Jack Vereen was dead, too — both he and Nevada Ned also victims of the “dying weather,” Sabina thought but did not say when told. John, fortunately, was not responsible. His account of how Vereen had died, of the nonexistent feathered cloak conjured up by Stanton Millay that had brought the scheming pair to Hawaii, of his harrowing experience in the ancient temple (the danger to him which he likely minimized to spare her), was related without his usual ebullience at the close of a difficult investigation.