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“Everyone is occupied, so I thought I’d just stay on the ship.”
“Nonsense. I’m not occupied. You know if I were dating you, I’d treat you like a queen.”
My cheeks heat. “Wes.”
“I’m not kidding. Have you had the chance to visit the Iolani Palace? You know it’s the only royal palace in the entire United States.”
“I didn’t know that,” I marvel. “And no, I haven’t been.”
“Well, seeing this is one of the last opportunities we might have in Oahu for a while, why don’t I take you?”
“That’s right. I think Bess and Nettie mentioned something about the ship repositioning soon.”
“Next trip, we’ll be in Alaska.”
“I can’t wait.” I bite down on a smile. “And seeing that we won’t be back this way for a while, I accept your offer. Let’s go see the palace.”
We stand and he motions to the door. “After you, my queen.”
A smile twitches on my lips. With Wes by my side, I do feel like a queen. A queen who can get her subject to say just about anything.
If Wes knows any other details about Julia Edwards’ demise, I’m going to get them out of him.
The killer might be feeling free and royal at the moment, but thanks to the details I’m about to procure from Wes—soon enough they’ll be subservient in prison.
CHAPTER 11
Okay, so Captain Crawford wasn’t exactly the fountain of information I had hoped he would be.
He was more of a Magic Eight Ball with his flat, rather ambiguous answers to my many, many questions. In fact, I asked so many questions about the case I’m shocked he didn’t catch on Ransom was icing me out of the investigation. Nevertheless, Wes did provide me with one key fact in the case—Julia Edwards was indeed poisoned, and with cobra venom at that.
A new day has dawned, and this morning the ship has docked just outside of Maui. Most of the passengers have already tendered their way to paradise. Since Maui doesn’t have a port big enough to accommodate a ship this size, we’re left to take a water taxi to the island.
Ransom said he had to work this afternoon but offered to take me on a getaway tomorrow since we’ll be at the island for two days. He assured me it wouldn’t involve gravity-defying feats, but that he couldn’t promise that my heart wouldn’t try to beat its way out of my chest. Not an anomaly when he’s around anyway, so I was more than okay with that.
Bess, Nettie, and I ate a hearty breakfast—okay, so we ate two hearty breakfasts. The first culinary treats we started our day off with was at the Blue Water Café—and that was my famous, or rather infamous, croissant egg and sausage sandwiches with extra gouda. Okay, so I may have had two, but even those didn’t fill me up. Then we hobbled over to the formal dining room where I proceeded to indulge in the eggs and hollandaise sauce. And just to balance out the savory with something sweet, I threw in a couple of hazelnut crepes. A few of the pastry chefs on board the Emerald Queen are from France, so it’s practically criminal not to indulge in their specialties.
But we’re well past breakfast. In fact, we’ll need to be thinking about lunch soon enough, and we’ll take care of that on the island. Maui has some of the best restaurants in all of Hawaii and we plan on hitting them all, or as many as we can. We’ve done the beaches and the luaus during previous cruises, so we thought since this is one of our last trips here for a while we’d do a food tour. And since most of the restaurants we plan on hitting are situated along the water, we’ll have great views while noshing on our tasty treats.
“Hurry up.” Nettie turns around and yanks both Bess and me down the gangplank. “We’re going to miss the all-you-can-eat early bird deal down at the Pu Pu Platter.”
Bess grunts as we land on terra firma, “We can’t start off our food tour at an all-you-can-eat place.”
“I agree,” I say as I take in the warm sea air perfumed by a nearby plumeria tree.
“See there?” Nettie says to Bess. “She agrees with me.”
“She agrees with me,” Bess counters. “Go on, Trixie, set her straight.”
I’m about to do just that when I see a familiar-looking woman in a bright yellow hat climbing into the back of a maroon car with a rideshare company logo on the back window.
“Hey”—I pull the two of them close—“that’s Nadine Dixon getting into that car. She’s the next person on the list I need to speak to.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Nettie jumps ahead and gives a sharp whistle, prompting a sedan to pull up in front of us. “Let’s get moving. The Pu Pu Platter will have to wait. We’ve got a suspect to grill.”
The three of us hop into the back seat of our own rideshare sedan and Bess leans forward. “Follow that car,” she shouts, pointing at the maroon vehicle in front of us. She turns my way. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”
Nettie nods. “I said that once and ended up at a poultry farm. I came home with two dozen chicks and a man named Dogo.”
