Free Murder in Honolulu: A Skye Delaney Mystery by R. Barri Flowers Page B

moment to collect our
thoughts before Natsuko asked: "Was he your first love?"
    "Yes," I told her.
    "And were you his?"
    "I think so," I said while thinking that
Carter had always hinted at that without coming right out and
saying it. Later, it made no difference one way or the other.
Especially when he decided that he had enough loving to go
around.
    "Did he want you back?" Natsuko asked,
moving to the other side of me so that she could see my eyes,
having apparently recovered from the shock of my marriage to
Carter.
    I made it easier for her by looking directly
at her. "No! He was married to someone else."
    Natsuko must have missed that in the paper,
judging by her reaction. Never mind the fact that their marriage
had hit a few bumps in the road of late.
    "I'll bet he never got over you," she said
mischievously.
    If that were true, Carter sure chose a
rotten way to make his point, I thought. I preferred to
believe—suicide or not—the circumstances went well beyond his
feelings for me.
    I told Natsuko: "We both knew going our
separate ways when we did was the best thing at the time. I doubt
anything had changed since then."
    Not for me it hadn't.
    "One thing has changed," Natsuko said
solemnly. "Your ex is dead—"
    I left the kitchen on that depressing note.
Natsuko followed, saying: "When the police came for my fingerprints
and told me what happened, I realized I had just missed him—"
    I regarded her with a raised brow. "What
makes you say that?"
    "I remember passing his car when I left,"
she said. "He almost hit me. I wondered why he was in such a hurry
to—" She stopped on a dime.
    "How do you know it was Carter?" I asked
bluntly, knowing I was grasping at straws here.
    Natsuko looked at me as if it were obvious.
"He was driving a silver Cadillac DeVille like he owned the road or
something. The police described his car to me."
    "I see." After sucking in a deep breath, I
told her unenthusiastically: "I think it's time we got to work in
here."
    For the next three hours, we cleaned up
everything the police had left in disarray, and then some. But
there was no cleansing away the memory of Carter in the bathtub.
Whether the house could ever truly be the same again remained to be
seen.
    Natsuko had disappeared to who knows where
when the doorbell rang. Since I felt relatively safe answering the
door in broad daylight, in spite of being unarmed, I didn't bother
to check to see who it was before opening it.
    Standing before me was Carter's widow...
     

 
    CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
     
    Observing her up close, face to face,
Darlene Delaney was thinner than I realized, but definitely not
gaunt. There were no outward signs of drug abuse. In fact, she
appeared remarkably healthy, with a clear and enviable complexion,
while sporting her new haircut. She was dressed rather
ostentatiously in a paprika skirt suit with a matching hat, an
off-white French cuff blouse, and high heels. The shoes made us
about the same height as I stood there in flats. At the
moment—wearing my cleaning jeans and a baggy old tee shirt—I felt
somewhat diminished in stature.
    "You don't look like a private
investigator—" Darlene said as we stood on opposite sides of the
entryway.
    It sounded more like an accusation than an
observation.
    I sneered, thinking sarcastically: Well,
y ou don't look like a woman in mourning. Or, for that
matter, an adulteress and drug abuser. Obviously, looks can be
deceiving. Or maybe not . "PI's come in all shapes and sizes," I
told her.
    She touched the brim of her hat. "I
guess."
    I studied Carter's widow, curious as to the
nature of her visit, which she revealed before I could beat her to
the punch.
    "I could never do that sort of thing,"
Darlene told me. "Carter wouldn't have allowed it, even if I'd
wanted to. It wouldn't fit his idea of the 'good little wife'...at
least not the second time around—"
    The man hadn't been dead for forty-eight
hours and his widow was wasting no time drawing unflattering
comparisons between