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

she pulled out into the quiet street and drove in the opposite direction.

“You really do need to get checked over by a doctor, Holly.” Gina touched her cheekbone, which was beginning to throb. “I wouldn’t mind having someone look at me, too.”

“Okay, but can we get something to eat first?”

“Yeah. We’ll find a place.” The last thing Gina wanted was a meal. She wanted information instead. She knew Hughes was dirty for at least trying to have his way with Holly, who looked a little too young to be served alcohol. “Maybe we should call your parents so they can come pick you up?”

“They’re back home on Kauai.”

“Who do you live with here?”

Holly waited a moment before answering. “I got a roommate. I’m a student at the university and live in a dorm.”

“It might be better if you stay with me tonight so we can keep an eye on each other.” Gina pulled into the lot of a family restaurant. When the waitress tried showing them to a booth at a window, Gina asked for something in a corner away from the street. Even though she’d skipped dinner, Gina wasn’t hungry and ordered only coffee. Holly ordered a breakfast omelet.

Holly was pretty, in a pick-up bar sort of way. Her face had delicate Asian features, but large occidental eyes. She had too many facial piercings for Gina’s taste, and one had a spot of blood around it left over from when she’d been hit by Hughes. What had been a large blonde mane glued together with hair spray was a topsy-turvy wreck.

“Tell me what happened in the car with Hughes,” Gina said to her companion. She held her glass of ice water to her cheek to cool what surely going to be a bruise in the morning. “That was his name, right? The dayshift bartender at Bunzo’s?”

“I knew you were going to ask a bunch of questions. You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

“You’re not in trouble, Holly. I’m just trying to figure out what happened, more for my sake than anything else.”

“Can I go to the bathroom first? I want to clean up a little.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

While she waited for Holly to return, Gina made a few notes on a napkin with a pen she borrowed from the waitress. She had a rudimentary timeline of what happened, and a description of Hughes’s car. When the omelet was brought to the table, Holly still hadn’t come back.

“Have you seen the girl I came in with?” Gina asked.

“Not since she ordered,” the waitress said. She looked a lot like many of the people Gina had been meeting, with dark skin, Asian eyes, prominent cheekbones, and black hair ironed straight. Most noticeable was the overdone makeup and false eyelashes that looked more like window awnings. If she’d been wearing a miniskirt while standing on a street corner in Little Italy, Gina would’ve rousted her out of the neighborhood. “Why’d you come in here with her?”

“What do you mean?”

“You look like a decent gal. Not like her type, anyway,” the waitress said as she walked away.

Wondering if she was being played for a fool, Gina went to the restroom in search of Holly. When she found it empty, she had a couple of choice curse words of her own. Back at her table, the omelet was waiting, along with a refill of her coffee.

She pulled the plate to her side of the table. “I’m finally getting that omelet I’ve been wanting all week.”

***

When the waitress brought the check, Gina was pressing the glass of ice water to her cheek again. “Can I get some more ice, please?”

The waitress came right back with some. “Every time that girl comes in here, she’s a mess.”

“Who? Holly?”

“Is that her name this week? Last time it was Ivy. One other time it was Rose.”

“I sense a trend. What do you mean by being a mess?” Gina asked. She finally looked at the waitress’s nametag: Angela.

“Crying all over the place, clothes torn, hair in tangles. Real mess, I tell ya.”

“She’s here a lot?”

“Every Saturday evening. Anything else? You want some dessert? We have plenty of pie.”

“Pie after an omelet?”

“People like our pie,” Angela said, walking away again, taking her pen and sense of style with her.

Gina left money on the table to pay the bill and left. She went through the complicated routine of starting the Datsun’s engine. While letting it idle for a moment, she rubbed the goose egg on the back of her head. “So, this is what people do for fun in Honolulu on a Saturday evening. Not much different from home.”

Chapter Twenty

When Gina woke on Sunday morning, it was to a bulldozer rolling over her head. Without lifting her head, she felt the goose egg at the back. It was still large, and that wasn’t making her head feel any better. Touching her cheekbone brought her the same results, of being puffy and tender.

She didn’t want to see how big of a shiner she had, so she avoided the mirror in the bathroom on the way to the kitchen. The omelet she’d had the evening before at Jack’s Restaurant had sat heavily, and she was hungry only for coffee that morning. Sitting at the kitchen table with the first mug, she let the steam rise to her face.

She was just deciding to go back to bed when there was a knock at her front door.

“This is Sunday morning. No reason to bother people so early on a day off.” She went to the door but didn’t open it. “Who is it?”

“Me.” It was a low voice that she recognized. It was the roofer, or electrician, whatever he was this week.

“Not doing any plumbing today. Thanks, though.”

“Not here for water. Here for walls.”

There was as much banging going on inside her head as she figured there would be with nails and his hammer on wall paneling.

“So early?”

“Sooner started, sooner done.”

Gina muttered the same answer to herself, only with a sense of sarcasm. “It’s