It’s a woman!
A woman lying on her back with sleek black hair in a sharp bob, wearing an expensive black dress that’s now damp with seawater. A woman with a traditional leafy mailelei wrapped tight around her neck and twisted into an elaborate knot that’s clearly not decorative.
A woman whose eyes are wide open, staring sightlessly at the star-filled sky with her mouth agape in permanent surprise.
Alana won’t have to worry about staging any more Pinterest-perfect weddings.
Alana Kapahu is dead.
CHAPTER 4
Ascream erupts from my throat, so loud and strong, it could be heard by tourists in Honolulu.
It’s the kind of shriek that sends seabirds fleeing for the next island and makes the roosters run for cover. Even Spam, the one-eared orange menace, bolts from his perch by the pool like his tail is on fire. I scramble backward from Alana’s body as if she’s suddenly developed the ability to critique my hosting skills from beyond the grave.
Another spontaneous cry of terror rips from my throat and echoes off the water right back at me, which only makes me scream that much harder. Night has fallen and so has another body at the Coconut Cove Paradise Resort.
Koa appears so fast, I’m pretty sure he teleported. Either that, or he was lurking behind a hibiscus bush waiting for meto trip over another corpse, which honestly wouldn’t surprise me at this point.
“I told you to behave yourself,” he says, landing on his knees and checking the woman for a pulse before offering a grim look my way. He pulls out his phone while surveying the scene with professional calm despite the fact that his chest is heaving. “What did you do?”
“Technically, I didn’t do anything,” I pant, still on my hands and knees in the sand. “I just tripped over evidence.”
“I can see that.” He reaches over and picks up my hand. “Jinx, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I’m just a little shook up.”
“You’re doing better than her, then,” he says as he dials for backup. “This is Detective Hale. I need a full forensics team at Coconut Cove Paradise Resort. We have a homicide.” He pauses, listening to the response. “No, it’s not the same woman who found the last body. Well, actually, it is, but—” He quickly rattles off a quick synopsis of the scene to whoever is on the other end before tapping his phone and burying it in his pocket. “Do you have some kind of supernatural ability to find dead bodies, or is this just impressively bad luck?”
“I prefer to think of it as having a talent for uncovering the truth.” I wince. “Very dramatically and with a dead body or two for emphasis.”
He squints down at the maile lei wrapped around Alana’s neck like a deadly necklace, the waxy green leaves and thin vines—usually a symbol of respect and honor—twisted intoan elaborate noose. “Strangled with a lei. The killer either has a sick sense of irony or really poor cultural understanding.”
“Given that she spent the evening explaining how traditional Hawaiian elements were too ethnic for modern audiences, I’d say the irony is intentional.” Or not, but for some reason it felt necessary to point that out.
Koa looks up at me with one brow raised. “That’s disturbingly perceptive.”
“I’ve had practice. Dead people tend to be very educational about motives—especially after practically causing a scene with ten different people not even an hour ago.”
He frowns at me. “We’ll talk.”
Flip-flops slap against sand as Ruby and Lani run across the beach, then skid to a halt when they spot Alana’s corpse.
“Oh, Jinx,” Ruby gasps, “you killed the wrong person!”
Lani nods vigorously. “We were all rooting for you to throttle your ex-husband, not his business manager!”
“I didn’t throttle anyone!” I protest, struggling to stand as I brush the sand off my knees. “I just tripped over her.”
“Well, that’s disappointing,” Ruby says, adjusting her hibiscus-print caftan. “Although I suppose strangling Erwin would have been too obvious.”
“Drowning would have been my choice,” I say.
“But it would have been bad for business,” Lani adds. “Dead grooms don’t pay their bills.”
Koa pauses his investigation to stare at us. “Are you threeseriously discussing murder methods at an active crime scene?”
“Yes,” we say in unison.
