Unknown Victim by Kay Hadashi (top 10 books of all time txt) 📗

the group chatting in their language, and Gina wondered how much of a mistake it was to divulge that. It took another hour of chatting about her basic work schedule for the first week, and the overall plan for the estate, before they began to pack up to leave for the night. Even though they were still grumbling over having to use hand tools, they weren’t talking about going on strike or asking for more money.

Felix and Flor, who was emerging as something of an assistant to Felix, found Gina before they left.

“We’ll get here early each day and start work as soon as it’s light. Pau hana is two o’clock.”

“Pau hana?”

“Stop work.”

“What about overtime or a special project to do? Do you guys like to work extra?” she asked.

“We work five days a week, eight hours a day, and never on holidays,” Flor said while walking away. “No more, no less. If we don’t get paid on time, we don’t work. Simple as that.”

Felix stuck around as the others drove off.

“Hey, don’t start asking these guys to work haole kind way or you’ll have trouble.”

“Haole is mainland person, right? Work is the same here as there, isn’t it?”

He shook his head. “Just like pau hana at two o’clock, they only do certain things. Flor only takes care of the trees, Gabriel only works with the dirt. Clara will work in the kitchen to make us lunch. Don’t try to get extra work from them unless you offer a lot of overtime pay, in cash. No one likes to work in the afternoon. These guys, self-starters. They know what to do. Your job is to make a plan, and their job is to make the plan work.”

“Okay, fine. But I don’t have much food in the house for Clara to make lunches for everyone.”

“No matter. She knows what we like and will bring what she needs every day.”

“Do I need to do anything at all?” Gina asked.

“Yeah, supervise!”

Chapter Seven

Gina had set her phone alarm to chime extra early on Monday morning. It had rained for a while during the night and she wondered how that might affect her work schedule for the day. All she really wanted was to finally get a decent start to the Tanizawa estate project.

After heating tea water, she burnt some bread over the electric stove element rather than wait for the toaster. She wasn’t going to give the eggs another chance to mock her like they did the day before. Getting everything she needed to work that day situated in a knapsack, gloves, hat, sunscreen, a bottle of water, her pad of notes, and most important, the credit card from Millie, she decided to wait in the dark on the front porch for her crew to show up.

Gina had been learning the lesson of the necessity for cross-flow ventilation in the tropics. She propped the front door open to air the house, and for Clara to go in and out, and probably the kids also, the way they always insisted on running in and out of open doors. But when she pushed the screen door outward, it hit something. With a closer look, she saw someone sleeping on his side.

“Hey! Wake up! Time to go to wherever it is you go every day.” She gave the squatter a couple solid whacks with the door. From the way he was dressed, it looked like the same guy as the two previous mornings, except without the windbreaker. Giving him a few more whacks with the door, he still didn’t budge. “Really tied one on last night, didn’t you?”

The only way she could get out was to shove the screen door against him and push him away enough so she could squeeze out a gap. She had to step over him, and once she had her things set on a chair, she saw the same black cat that had showed up on other mornings. She wondered if the cat was somehow a pet of the homeless guy that had taken up the habit of using her front porch as his personal bedroom. This time, the cat had something in its mouth.

“Look what you’ve done. You’ve brought me a rat. Aren’t you considerate?” Gina got a tissue from her knapsack, and using that like a glove, she got the dead rat by the tail and carried it out to the weeds near the stream. The cat tagged along right behind. Once the rat was dropped, the cat went about disassembling its meal. “At least you know how to feed yourself and don’t need me to.”

She went back to the man on her porch. When he still didn’t respond to her voice, her police training kicked in. Knowing better than to kneel down and wake a stranger close up, she gave his hip a nudge with her foot.

“Sleepytime’s over, pal. Time to get lost.” When he still didn’t budge, she knelt down and gave him a thorough shake. She was sure he was the same man as previous mornings, but something was different about him. “Hey, wake up. You need to go. If I can’t sleep in, neither can you.”

That’s when she noticed his breath was worse than bad, and when she pushed, he stiffly rocked back and forth rather than flop around.

“What the…”

When she rolled him onto his back, his arms and legs stayed in the same positions as though they were stiff in the joints. There was the impression of wood grain from the porch deck on his cheek. His eyes were open, but not looking at her.

Or anything else.

Gina took a step back and crossed herself. She knew she had to go back and check for a pulse, part of her old police training. Groping his neck on both sides, and then feeling his wrists, there was nothing that felt like a pulse. She stepped back and crossed herself again.

“Definitely not on today’s schedule,” she said, getting her phone from her pocket. She assumed calling