“One more thing. If I wanted to pay a visit to Oleen Akamu, where would I find her?” I asked.
“She has an apartment in Kihei,” he said, and he gave me the address.
“How did you find that out?”
“Mrs. Akamu sensed Oleen was about to do something. She just didn’t know what. She had me follow Oleen. I saw her in the leasing office. She got the keys to the apartment a month ago.”
“Why didn’t Mrs. Akamu step in and try to keep her from leaving Tavii?” I asked.
“Two reasons. She didn’t blame Oleen.”
“And the second?”
“She hoped that Oleen’s departure would scare Tavii into making changes. She obviously didn’t see this murder charge coming.”
“Thank you, Samson. You’ve been of tremendous help.”
“There’s one more thing. I need you to do something for me.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“If and when you find out who committed this murder and framed Mrs. Akamu, I need you to tell me first.”
I didn’t respond.
“Mrs. Akamu’s father gave my family a second chance. We were homeless when he hired me to look out for his daughter,” Samson continued.
“How did that happen?”
“I found a young girl being beaten by three boys. I saved her.”
“That girl was Mele Akamu.”
Samson nodded.
“The boys were sent by one of her father’s rivals. It was meant to send him a message.”
“What did you do to the boys?” I asked.
“After I helped her get home, Mr. Akamu paid me to find the boys and to put them in the hospital.”
“He sent a message of his own.”
“I’ve never left her side since. The Akamu family took care of mine and we were never homeless again. I owe her everything. Someone is trying to destroy her. I can’t allow that to happen.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“I do, but I need to make something clear. I’ll get you both out of here if I can, but I can’t help you beyond that. I’m not going to be responsible for anyone else getting hurt. If the police ask me about it, then I’ll tell them the truth of what I know.”
“I think we understand each other well.”
I stood.
“Thank you again.”
“Thank you, Mr. Rutherford.”
I said goodbye to Samson and left the jail. I phoned Foxx on the way to the car.
“Hey, buddy. How did the conversation with the butler go?” he asked.
“I’ll fill you in when I see you in Kihei.”
“Oh, yeah? Why are we meeting there?”
“Samson told me where Oleen Akamu lives. Apparently, Mele Akamu had him follow her a while back.”
“Glad you found her address because I struck out with my contacts.”
“Let’s meet in a couple of hours. I have another stop I need to make first,” I said.
“Where’s that?”
“I want to have a quick chat with Bret Hardy.”
“The lover in the Guy Livingston case? What makes you think he’ll want to talk to you?”
“That’s the whole challenge. Most of these guys don’t want to talk. I have to come up with a good reason to convince them to change their mind.”
“And what reason are you going to use with Bret Hardy?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll think of something.”
18
The Blame Game
I already knew where Bret Hardy lived since I’d followed him for a few days during the original Guy Livingston case. His home wasn’t that far from Guy’s, which explained one of the reasons they’d become friends. They’d met at a nearby golf course where each of them played. Those games turned into invitations to dinner, which eventually evolved months later to Bret’s affair with Lucy Livingston.
I’d also discovered during my investigation that Bret had a bit of a gambling problem. That was one of the sources of his financial difficulties. As I’m sure you know, Maui is an expensive place to live. It’s easy to fall behind on your bills and that often leads to people seeking alternative ways to catch up. There are only so many hours a day one can work, though, and most island jobs don’t pay enough to dig yourself out of a deep hole. Hence, Bret’s turn to gambling.
He was a decent golfer, at least that’s what some of the other players at the club told me. He’d wagered with some of the players, betting big money on each hole. Although Bret was talented, he apparently wasn’t as good as the guys he’d bet against. I’m sure you can guess what happened next. His money problems got worse, and he turned to Lucy Livingston for help. Lucy allowed him to steal her jewelry, with the word “steal” in obvious quotation marks.
Don’t ask me why Lucy would stray from her marriage to be with a man who had such noticeable problems. Forgive me if it sounds like I’m judging the deceased, but it’s important to ask as many questions as possible if one is to discover the whole truth. That sometimes involves making indelicate statements about the victims.
Lucy’s affair with Bret and her false report to the police were stains on her character. That could have certainly been a sign that she wasn’t the angel the prosecutor made her out to be. I don’t mean to imply that she deserved to be murdered. Far from it. But there was the possibility that she’d been in more trouble than I knew, and the source of that trouble might have been the true perpetrator of the crime.
Foxx had asked a good question when he’d inquired how I intended to get Bret Hardy to talk. I’d seen him in the courtroom on the day that I’d testified against Guy Livingston. He’d even glared at me in the hallway afterward. What would his reaction be when I knocked on his door? I think you already know the answer to that question.
By the time I parked my car in front of his house, I still didn’t know what I was going to say. I climbed out of my car and walked up the driveway to his covered porch, which ran across most of the front of the house. I hoped along the way that a brilliant idea would come to me. It didn’t. I knocked on the door anyway, and a moment later, Bret Hardy answered.
Bret is a tall man, maybe just an inch or two shorter than me. I guessed his weight at around two-thirty, which gave him a decent weight advantage on me. He has short, dirty-blonde hair, blue eyes, and tanned skin. He looked like a former surfer who’d turned to golf and gambling and had gotten a bit puffy around the mid-section as a result.
“You! What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.
“Mr. Hardy, my name is Edgar Rutherford. I’m–”
“I know exactly who you are,” he said, cutting me off. He stepped onto the porch. “You’re responsible for getting Lucy killed.”
“How do you–”
Before I could finish my question, Bret threw a punch at me. In hindsight, I should have seen it coming, but I suppose that my brain was so preoccupied with finding some reason for him to talk it never occurred to me that he’d actually assault me.
Fortunately, he was not an accomplished fighter. Most guys aren’t. By the time they hit forty, the age I guessed Bret Hardy was, they probably hadn’t been in a fistfight for twenty-five years or more. Bottom line, they’re out of practice, even though they still think they can take most guys in the room. Blame male arrogance for that overconfidence.
One of the benefits to getting beaten up as much as I have during these investigations is that it makes you more alert to physical attacks. My response time has improved over the years, and I was able to move my head back, and at the same time, put a hand up to deflect Bret’s wide and slow swing.
He’d left his midsection wide-open for a counter punch, but I didn’t take it. Bret was too enraged to notice my act of kindness, and he took a second swing. This one was more of a lunge combined with a punch. Sorry if that doesn’t make much sense, but it was such an off-balanced attack that I wasn’t sure what he was doing.
I shifted my weight again, but instead of de
flecting the blow as before, I grabbed his wrist and used his own momentum to toss him to the ground. It wasn’t the most graceful move on my part, but it did the trick. He tumbled off the front porch and landed belly-first onto the grass.
“Stay down, Bret. I just want to talk.”
As I am often a naïve fellow, I assumed that would be the end of his physical assault. It wasn’t. I failed to mention this earlier, but there was a portable workbench in the yard with a stack of wood placed on top. There was also a DeWalt circular saw and a rolled-up orange extension cord.
Bret grabbed one of the two-by-fours and walked toward me. I stepped back toward the front door and positioned my body close to one of the wooden columns that supported the roof of the porch. Bret swung the piece of lumber at my head. I jumped back and the wood banged against the column. Before he could take another swing, I moved forward and kicked Bret between the legs. I heard a loud, “Ooff,” and he dropped to his knees.
I could give a more detailed account of the positioning of my foot during the kick, but there’s no reason to cause phantom pains with male readers. I will mention this for clarification. I played soccer growing up and I could kick a ball well past the mid-point of a sports field. If anything, my leg strength had improved with all of the jogging I’d done while on Maui.
The point of all of this is to say that my kick to Bret’s you-know-what was devastating, and it also explained how the man almost lost consciousness. After resting on his knees for a few seconds, he fell forward and rolled onto his back. He instinctively pulled his legs up toward his midsection in an attempt to protect himself from another kick. He needn’t have bothered. I wasn’t going to hurt him a second time.
His discomfort (yes, I know, that’s not nearly a strong enough word for it) gave me more than enough time to grab the orange extension cord from the workbench and tie Bret to one of the front porch columns. I wrapped the cord around his torso several times, then secured it with a triple knot in the back. There was no way he was going anywhere.
It took Bret several minutes to regain some level of composure. I felt a little guilty for the damage I’d done, but the man had tried to bash my head in with a piece of wood. I mean, what would you have done if you were in my position?
“You good to talk now?” I asked.
“You’ll pay for this,” he said, but he struggled to get the words out.
“Hardly. I record all of my interviews. I had the record app on my phone running when I knocked on your door. It captured you assaulting me. It was a completely unprovoked attack, I might add. If anything, you’re going to jail.”
You may be wondering if I was making that up. I was, but Bret didn’t know that.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Just a few questions and then I’ll be out of your hair. Whose idea was it to pretend to steal the diamond necklace and bracelet?”
“Hers.”
“You told her about your money problems, and she volunteered to help you out?”
“Something like that,” he said.
“What do you mean ‘something like that?’ It either was or it wasn’t.”
“Lucy didn’t have any money. The only thing she had of value was the jewelry. The necklace and bracelet were the most expensive items, but she wore them every day. She couldn’t very well sell them without Guy noticing.”
“She offered them up and also suggested you cook up the fake robbery? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes.”
“Did she know about your little gambling addiction?” I asked.
Bret looked away.
“Oh, you didn’t tell her. That’s interesting. Bad assumption on my part.”
Bret turned back to me.
“Lucy loved me. It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“I know you don’t really believe that. Otherwise, you would have told her. Did she ever tell you about the times Guy hit her?”
I studied Bret for a reaction. I got one, but it wasn’t a look of anger. Instead, it was confusion.
“Another interesting reaction. She didn’t tell you, which probably means it didn’t happen.”
“What difference does that make? It doesn’t mean he didn’t kill her,” Bret said.
“No, it doesn’t. Still, it’s intriguing. I don’t know the statistics, but I’d imagine that a man who’s willing to shoot his wife might have raised a hand to her sometime before that. Why did she cheat on her husband?”
“What do you mean why? She hated him. She thought I could make her happy.”
“Why did she hate him?”
“Because he cheated on her. She told me that he’d had an affair before they moved to the island. They were separated for a year, but then she took him back.”
“They lived on the island for a few years. What changed? Did she suspect he was cheating again?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“With who?”
“She didn’t know. She said she started monitoring his email. She checked his text messages and calls too. She even installed software on his phone so she could track his movements.”
“But she still didn’t know who he was cheating with? Maybe she was wrong.”
“She swore she wasn’t,” Bret said.
“Okay, so she thought he was cheating, and she jumped right into your bed to get even.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Here’s what I think happened. She finally came to the conclusion that she’d guessed wrong about the affair and she felt guilty for giving you the jewelry – jewelry that her husband had given her for their wedding anniversary. She came to you and broke off the affair. You got mad and you’re the one who killed her.”
“That’s crazy. I never would have hurt her. We were going to move back to the mainland together. I’d already contacted a real estate agent about selling this house. You can check with the agent if you don’t believe me.”
I looked around the yard and then turned back to Bret.
“I don’t see a ‘For Sale’ sign anywhere.”
“That’s because I decided not to go through with it after Lucy was murdered,” Bret said.
“Did Lucy give you the four-digit code to her front door?”
“No, why would she do that?”
“Have you ever been in her house?” I asked.
“A few times when they asked me over for dinner.”
“Wow, you ate dinner at the man’s house, and the entire time, you’re sleeping with his wife.”
“That was before the affair. I never went back after we started up.”
“Was Lucy scared of anyone?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean, was she scared of anyone? Did she ever tell you about a fight she had with someone, maybe at work or someplace like that?”
“No, never.”
“Were you the only one she ever had an affair with?”
“How should I know? I didn’t ask.”
“No, but you suspected, didn’t you?”
Bret looked away again.
“You know something, Bret, you’re not very good at hiding your emotions,” I said.
Bret hurled an insult at me, one that I don’t intend to mention here since it was so vulgar. I will say that as far as insults go, it was entirely predictable, and I felt a little disappointed that he hadn’t come up with something more original. I know, I know, that’s strange of me.
I reached behind him and undid the triple knot.
“It may take you a while, but you’ll eventually work yourself free,” I said, and I stood.
He insulted me again, which was an exact repeat of what he’d said a moment before. I was tempted to mention that, but I managed to restrain myself. My ability to be a smartass does have its limits.
I turned from Bret and walked back to my car. I climbed inside and started the short drive to Oleen Akamu’s apartment. With any luck, she wouldn’t try to beat me with a piece of lumber.
19
I got to Oleen’s apartment in Kihei about twenty minutes before Foxx did. It gave me time to mentally prep for the interview. Like many things in this investigation, it seemed like Oleen’s actions came down to two possibilities. She either saw Mele Akamu and Samson murder Eric Ellis or she didn’t. You may be inclined to think that I assumed she hadn’t seen it. I didn’t. The truth is that I didn’t know what to believe. I thought there were compelling arguments that could be made for either possibility.
That said, if she was lying about it, then it wasn’t hard to figure out her motivation. Tavii had hurt her and she wanted her revenge. Taking out his grandmother and destroying the family business was a good way to do that. She also had to know that he was finished as a politician.
Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about something Samson had said to me earlier in the day. He’d told me that Tavii and Oleen relied on Mele Akamu to take care of them. Oleen apparently didn’t have money of her own, so Samson couldn’t figure out why she was willing to go as far as she apparently was.
It’s one thing to be broke in your youth. It’s quite another to be willing to walk into poverty in your forties, which was the age I guessed Oleen was. The last thing someone at that age wants to do is live in some crummy apartment when they’re used to living in a large, well-appointed house.
None of this is to say that I was surprised that Oleen had left Tavii. I wasn’t. If anything, I was shocked that she’d stayed with him as long as she had. On the other hand, I’d come across numerous people during my cases who were more than willing to put money and status above love. According to Samson, Oleen had been willing to look the other way too. I suspected there was a piece of the puzzle I wasn’t seeing, though, and I had no idea where to look.
As readers of my last tale will testify, I’m a fan of the game of poker. It relies on multiple things: an understanding of the mathematical odds of the cards being dealt, a courage to risk everything you have, and the ability to tell when your opponent is bluffing.
There is one other thing. You have to know when and how to bluff with your own hand or lack thereof. Bluffing is an art unto itself. You can’t come across as too confident because then your opponent will see right through you. If you appear too weak, then your opponent will sense that something is up. It’s a delicate balance, which also depends on reading the other person’s personality and knowing how to go after them.
Poe's First Law: A Murder on Maui Mystery Page 14
