Right from the Gecko by Cynthia Baxter Page A

to mention the fact that you’re cold and heartless!”
    â€œWhat I am is somebody who’s supposed to be enjoying a relaxing and well-deserved vacation!”
    â€œCome on, you two!” Lokelani urged. “Put a little more sway into those hips!”
    â€œMaybe you can stand by without doing anything,” I whispered impatiently, “but I can’t.”
    â€œThen don’t expect me to sit around and wait for you while you’re off indulging your Nancy Drew fantasies,” Nick returned. “I plan to have fun while I’m in Hawaii!”
    â€œDon’t let me stop you.”
    â€œBelieve me, I won’t!”
    â€œAll
right
!” Lokelani exclaimed happily. “Great job, you two! Let’s have one more round of applause for Jessie and Nick!”
    I glared at him. He glowered back.
    â€œAnd because the two of you were such good sports,” Lokelani continued with just as much enthusiasm, “here are four free tickets to the Royal Banyan Hotel’s luau, any night you choose.
Mahalo,
and enjoy your stay!”
    How could we not? I thought grimly, aware that this Hawaiian vacation of ours was starting to feel an awful lot like instant replay.
    As Nick and I shuffled back to our seats, everybody else in the audience applauded loudly. A few let out yelps of appreciation. No doubt they were all demonstrating how grateful they were that
they
weren’t the ones who’d been dragged up on stage and publicly humiliated.
    Once we sat down, our fifteen minutes of fame already old news, I turned to him and said, “At least we got free tickets to a luau. We can even go twice.”
    Nick just grunted, his way of signifying that he’d heard what I’d said but had absolutely no intention of responding to it.
    Terrific, I thought sullenly, rearranging my lei to keep it from scratching the back of my neck. Here I am on a romantic getaway in paradise, and my significant other isn’t even speaking to me.
    True, I felt bad. But at the same time, I was already switching my focus to the next step in my unofficial investigation of Marnie Burton’s murder. My interest in finding her killer was as strong as ever, not only because of my desire to see justice done but even more because I still believed that I wouldn’t be completely safe until the murderer had been caught.
    I only hoped her boyfriend would be more willing to talk to me than my own boyfriend was.

Chapter 5
    â€œThe clever cat eats cheese and breathes down rat holes with bated breath.”
    â€”W. C. Fields
    I t was after nine by the time Nick and I settled into our new hotel room, one that looked identical to our first room but was a few floors higher up. Getting the manager to move us turned out to be harder than I’d anticipated. While at first he’d seemed quite concerned about the break-in, his attitude changed when I told him that the only thing that was taken was an envelope filled with booklets from the veterinary conference. He gave me a form to fill out, one I suspected would get stuck in some file folder, then begrudgingly handed me a new set of key cards.
    Since Nick and I were still not officially on speaking terms, as we unpacked we limited our communications to simple questions and curt responses. We topped off the evening by flopping into bed and falling asleep without any of our body parts touching.
    By the next morning, the air still hadn’t cleared. I was glad Nick decided to take advantage of the hotel’s free windsurfing lesson. I, meanwhile, had a task of my own: tracking down Marnie’s boyfriend and trying to decide whether he was someone who deserved a spot on my list of suspects.
    Thank heaven for the yellow pages, I thought after Nick took off, leaving me alone in our room. I ran my finger along the page with the heading
Auto Body and Collision Repair
and stopped when it collided with
Ace’s Auto Artists.
    The Plastic Surgeons of Car