by Kathi Daley
“I will. Have a good night now.”
I waited until we were driving back to the condos before filling Shredder in on what I’d learned. Other than to confirm the fact that Samantha had hired Walter to pilot her clients between countries undetected, I didn’t have a lot.
“Samantha confirmed that she recruited Walter to provide air service for those needing to travel discretely. They’d been working together for a while, which I imagine accounts for all the travel he has been linked to. Most recently, she hired him to provide transportation for Tatsuo. Initially, it looked like any other job, but Walter had a problem with the arrangement after he found out that his cargo consisted of women who had been kidnapped. When Evans found out that his passengers were not heading to LA willingly, he quit. Samantha suspects that it was Tatsuo or a paid assassin that killed him, but she has no evidence to back that up.”
“And Vinnie?”
“She said that she’d met Vinnie briefly when he was here to speak to the Dolphin Bay Resort’s management team, but she hadn’t been working with him.”
“And Ano?”
“I don’t know,” Shredder answered. “When I asked about him, Samantha said she didn’t know him. When I told her that we had a witness that had seen her with Ano before he died, she insisted my witness was mistaken. I don’t know why she would tell me everything she knew about Evans and then clam up when it came to Ano, but I think we need to dig deeper. The answer to that question might actually tell us a lot.”
“I agree. It does seem like Tatsuo is behind most, if not all, of what is going on. I still don’t know why the bodies were left for me, but I suppose we are getting closer to figuring that out as well.”
The conversation stalled as Shredder pulled into my parking spot at the condo.
“Did Samantha happen to know anything about Mrs. Palakiko?” I asked.
“She hadn’t heard that she was missing, but she did say that if Tatsuo has her, she is probably dead or would be dead soon. She didn’t think the man would mess around with a hostage for any length of time.”
“If she is alive, we need to find her.”
Shredder got out of the Jeep. I slipped out of the passenger side.
“I have an idea to find out if she is dead or alive, but this is something you can’t be involved in.” Shredder walked me to my door and kissed my cheek. “I’ll talk to you in the morning. Hopefully, by then, we’ll know one way or the other.”
Chapter 11
Friday, June 28
Normally, Friday would be a workday at Pope Investigations, followed by Saturday at the Dolphin Bay Resort, and then a day off on Sunday, but this weekend, between the doctor imposed instruction to stay out of the sea and Dad being in the hospital, it looked like I was going to have the full long weekend off. It had been a while since I’d had even two days off in a row, so in spite of the fact that I wasn’t thrilled about the reason for my free time, I decided I was going to enjoy it to the fullest extent possible.
“Are you going somewhere?” I asked Kekoa after emerging from my bedroom to find two suitcases sitting near the front door.
“LA. Cam called last night, and we had a long talk. I tried to break things off nice and clean so we could both move on, but he convinced me to come to LA so we could talk in person before ending things completely. I no longer have my job at Dolphin Bay to worry about, and I knew Pope Investigations would be closed for a few days while you and your dad heal from your ordeals, so against my better judgment, I found myself agreeing to a short visit.”
“Against your better judgment?” I asked.
Kekoa let out a long, tortured breath. “I know it’s over. Over really is the only place for us to go at this point. I love Cam, but Cam loves his job, and I don’t want to live in LA, so no matter how you slice it, there really isn’t a future for us. I think we should just say goodbye and be done with it. It seems like spending time with Cam will only make it harder to do what I know needs to be done. Every time I see him, I am reminded of how great things used to be. I am reminded of the plans we made that will never be realized. The whole thing is just so depressing, but Cam insists that our relationship is too important to end with a phone call. He made a fairly compelling case that after everything we’ve had together, we owe ourselves a face to face conversation. I know this trip will only bring pain to my life, but somehow he managed to convince me to do it anyway.”
I hugged my cousin. “I’m so sorry, and I totally understand what you are saying. Seeing him is going to make it harder. Still, I guess this visit will give you the opportunity to say what you need to say in order to have closure.”
“I guess. I’ll probably be a soggy mess by the time I get back.”
“I’ll stock up on tissues and wine.”
Kekoa grabbed her keys from the peg. “Are you going to be okay on your own? With your injuries and all.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sean and Kevin leave today for a two-week shift with the airline so they won’t be around either.”
“Shredder will be here, and if I need something, I can always go to Elva.”
Kekoa slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder. “Okay, then I won’t worry about you.” She hugged me. “Take it easy while I am away and don’t overdo.”
“Yes, mother. And try to have fun. Try to use these days to do what needs to be done so you can move on if that is what you are sure you need to do.”
“It is, and I will.”
After Kekoa left, I made a pot of coffee, clipped a collar on Sandy, and took a full mug out onto the lanai. Sandy looked longingly toward the beach, but there would be no surfing or long leisurely walk today. I tossed a ball which sent my lab running. It was a beautiful morning: warm, but not hot, with a nice breeze to keep things cool. Sandy returned with the ball, so I tossed it again. I knew he could do this all day, and it was a way to get him the exercise he needed while my feet mended. I hoped I’d be back to my old self sooner rather than later. It had been less than twenty-four hours since I’d had them treated, but they already felt a hundred percent better than they had when Shredder had first found me.
Putting my feet up on a stool, I leaned back in my chair. It was quite this morning. With unit three still empty and Carina from unit four all but living with her fiancé, the place was quieter overall than it once had been. Sean and Kevin were away more often than they were home, and until the past couple of days, Shredder had been gone for months. Elva was the consistent neighbor. She rarely went anywhere and was always happy to sit and chat with Kekoa and me. With Elva around, we never felt alone.
“Morning, Lani. How are your feet?” Elva asked, after sitting down next to me.
“Much better actually. I won’t be able to jog or surf or resume physical activities for a while, but I am able to walk without pain today, so that’s something.”
“That is something. I guess if Shredder hadn’t found you, things might have been a whole lot worse.”
“Yes, they very well might have been.” I tossed the ball for Sandy again. “So what are you up to on this beautiful day?”
“Actually, I’m going to Maui for the weekend.”
I raised a brow. “Really? Are you visiting a friend?”
She nodded. “One of the women I play bingo with has a daughter who lives on Maui. The daughter just had a baby, so she is going for a visit and invited me to come along. It’s just for a few days. She is picking me up in a little while, and we’ll be home Monday evening, but I’m excited about it. It’s been a while since I’ve been anywhere.”
“Well, I hope you have a wonderful time. Take photos of this new baby to share with all of us when you get home.”
“I will.” Elva looked up. “I guess I should finish packing. I just wanted to let you know my plans, so you didn’t worry when you noticed I was gone.”
“I appreciate that. And yes, I would have worried.”
Elva smiled at me. “It’s nice that we look out for each other t
hat way.”
It was nice, I realized. I had a mother with whom I shared a good relationship, but in many ways, Elva was like a second mother to me. I spent a lot more time with her than I did with my own mother, and if I really stopped to think about it, she knew a lot more about my life than almost anyone, except Kekoa.
After Elva went inside, I glanced toward Shredder’s condo. It looked like it would be just the two of us for a few days, provided he stayed on the island for a few more days as he indicated he would. I supposed that might be for the best. By digging around the way we were, I had to assume we’d made ourselves targets and I’d hate for anyone to get caught in the crossfire if things turned ugly.
I had to admit to being curious as to what Shredder had found out after dropping me off the previous afternoon. I was tempted to pound on his door, but I hated to wake him in the event he’d gotten in late last evening. I hadn’t heard him leave after he’d dropped me at my door, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t simply left quietly.
Tossing the ball for Sandy one last time, I finished the last of my coffee. Having an entire day off was such an unusual occurrence that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. Normally, if I had a day off, I’d go surfing, hiking, or paddle boarding, none of which was an option given my current situation. Maybe a drive? Not that there was anywhere I particularly wanted to drive to, and even if there was, I couldn’t drive with my feet in their current condition. If Shredder hadn’t been able to track down Hoku Palakiko last night, then perhaps I’d go into the office and see what I could do to find her.
When I saw Shredder and Riptide coming in from the beach, I realized I should have known he wouldn’t waste the chance to catch a few waves. I waved to the man while Sandy greeted Riptide. “How’s the water?” I asked.
“Fair. The waves are pretty tame, but it’s nice to just be back in the rhythm of the islands. I know I’ve said this before, but I’ve really missed this.”
“And we’ve missed you and are happy you are home.” I reached over to give Riptide a scratch behind the ears. “I know it’s early, and you are trying to ease into your day, but I have to ask if you managed to track down Hoku.”
Shredder frowned. “No. It seems as if both Kinsley and Hoku have disappeared without a trace. I have people working on finding them, but neither Mr. nor Mrs. Palakiko has used their phone, credit cards, or the ATM. Hoku’s car is still at her estate, so it seems she left with someone else. We don’t even know for certain that she was kidnapped; only that she was speaking to your dad, he was knocked out, and by the time you arrived, she was missing.”
“Sounds like a kidnapping to me, which I suppose might make sense if her captor wanted to use her as leverage with her husband, but how does my being kidnapped from the Palakiko home fit into this? How did this man even know I would be there? I had no plans to visit the home prior to my mother coming by and asking me to track down my father.”
“I think that was a fluke. I suspect that Tatsuo sent someone to kill or kidnap Mrs. Palakiko. I suspect that when Tatsuo’s man arrived, he found your father already there, so he knocked him out. I don’t know why whoever grabbed you was still there when you arrived since, Mrs. Palakiko seemed to have been gone by that point, but maybe someone was looking for something they felt Palakiko might have left in his office and you showed up before they were done.”
I supposed it might have happened that way, but my gut told me there was more going on.
Chapter 12
Shredder and I sat in silence for several minutes. I suppose we were both working things through in our minds. I was about to ask Shredder about his prior run-ins with Tatsuo when my phone rang. “What’s up, Jason?”
“We found Vinnie Travano’s killer.”
“Does that mean you found the person who killed Walter Evans and Ano Hanale as well?” I asked.
“No. I don’t think so. It turns out that a man named Preston Flanders runs the nightclub that recently opened in the resort down the road from the Dolphin Bay Resort. Flanders has made millions on the mainland opening nightclubs inside casinos. He has clubs in Vegas, Reno, Atlantic City, and other gambling hubs around the country. His company recently decided to expand its enterprise to clubs contained within resorts. The resort on the North Shore is one of the first of this type, but it turns out that Flanders has plans to open clubs in Waikiki and Honolulu as well.”
“Okay, I’m following so far. What does this have to do with Vinnie or with me?”
“Hang on. I’m getting there. It turns out that the management team of the Dolphin Bay Resort was approached by Flanders about opening a club where the large conference room is currently located. The Dolphin Bay Resort folks turned him down, so he moved on to the resort down the road. I guess the new nightclub is siphoning a lot of customers from Dolphin Bay, so the management team at Dolphin Bay is reconsidering their stance. A representative from Dolphin Bay approached Vinnie about opening a club on their premises. I found a contract where Vinnie had agreed to work on the logistics of such an enterprise. In addition, I found a document indicating that Vinnie was looking at a plan to partner with Dolphin Bay to approach the resorts Flanders planned to work with in Waikiki and Honolulu about contracting with them instead of Flanders in an effort to keep it local.”
“So Flanders felt threatened and killed Vinnie?”
“As part of a plea deal to reduce his prison time, a man named Roland Davenport has confessed to killing Vinnie. He works for Flanders as a fixer of sorts, and has stated that he was acting on Flanders’ orders when he shot and killed Vinnie Travano.”
Okay, this was surprising news. “So if Davenport killed Vinnie, why involve me?”
“He didn’t. At least not intentionally. It is true that the lifeguard tower where Vinnie’s body was left and posed after he was shot is the tower most often used by you on Saturdays, but according to Davenport, Vinnie’s body was meant to be a message to Dolphin Bay Resort’s management to reconsider their idea to get into the nightclub business and really had nothing to do with you. It just happened that Vinnie was killed on a Friday night and that you found him when you went to work on Saturday morning.”
That actually made sense in terms of a motive, but it totally destroyed the theory that the murders of Evans, Travano, and Hanale were all connected. “So if Vinnie wasn’t killed by the same man who killed Evans and Hanale, does that mean their murders aren’t connected either?”
“I don’t know. What I do know is that I need to widen my investigation. I want to pick your brain about exactly what you saw when you stumbled upon Evans’ body. Can you stop by my office later this morning?”
“Yeah. I’ll be there.”
After I hung up, I filled Shredder in on what Jason had told me. The deepening furrows between his eyes indicated that he was as thrown by the whole thing as I was. When we were looking at a single killer for all three men, Tatsuo made sense, but if the three men were killed by different people, that theory went right out the window.
“Jason wants me to come by his office so he can pick my brain about what I may have seen or not seen on the morning I found Evans’ body. You are welcome to come along if you want. It seems like it is just the two of us this weekend, so maybe we can grab lunch after.”
“Yeah, I’ll come. I need to grab a shower. Do you want to meet up in a half hour or so?”
“Works for me,” I confirmed.
It only took me twenty minutes to shower and dress, so I used the extra ten minutes to call my dad and see how he was doing. He confirmed that he was being released later that morning and that he planned to take the weekend off to keep my mom happy. He was concerned about the whereabouts of Hoku Palakiko, but I let him know that I was working on finding her and that I would call him with updates as I received them. Dad didn’t know about Shredder’s superspy identity and, in fact, only knew him as my vagabond surf-chasing friend, which was too bad, since I think he would have found it comforting to know that Shredder was working on it
as well.
I was just hanging up with Dad when Shredder knocked on the door. Riptide was with him, so I decided to take Sandy along as well. We could eat in an open-air restaurant since most allowed dogs, and if Jason didn’t want the dogs in his office, he could come outside to talk to us.
As it turned out, Jason offered to buy us lunch if we could talk while we ate.
“I want you to walk me through the morning you found Evans’ body on the beach.” Jason jumped in after we’d all ordered.
“It was early. The sky was just getting light, but the sun wasn’t up. I wanted to get a few runs in before I had to get ready for work, so I grabbed Sandy and my board and headed out. Sandy ran ahead of me as we approached the beach. When I arrived, Sandy was standing over the body. I checked for a pulse and then called your cell. When you didn’t pick up, I called 911.”
“Did you see anyone else in the area? Anyone walking on the beach? Maybe other surfers or even a boat?” Jason asked.
“No. I was the only one out and about that early.”
“What did Evans have on when you found him?”
“Khaki pants and a Hawaiian shirt. Both were covered in blood, although there wasn’t any visible blood on the ground. There may have been blood beneath the body, but I was asked to leave when HPD arrived, so I wasn’t around to verify that one way or another.”
“Did Evans have shoes on?”
“No,” I answered. “His feet were bare. He did have a chain around his neck. Silver. I think he wore dog tags.”
“Did you touch the body? Perhaps you looked through his pockets in order to find an ID?”
I glared at Jason. “Do you actually think I am so dumb as to touch evidence without gloves? I didn’t touch anything other than the man’s neck to confirm he was actually dead. I guess I knew he was dead based on his pale complexion and the blood all over his clothing, but I still felt the need to verify that he was beyond saving.”
“How far from the water was the body found?” Jason asked.
