Tahoe Ice Grave

by Todd Borg

  Passion.

  “Those are my boy and girl,” Jasper said. “The best little kids you could have. But then, kids have a way of growing up on you. Do you have kids?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you can never predict what will happen to them when they grow up. Every parent eventually finds out that no matter how hard you try, there are some hard shocks coming down the road. You think you have it all figured out...” Jasper’s voice trailed off.

  I turned to see him staring, unfocused, toward the bulletin board.

  He gave a little jerk and resumed talking. “Believe me, you’re not ready for it when it happens.”

  I sat down in one of the wicker chairs as he got out two glasses, filled them with ice from a shallow bucket in the top compartment of an ancient refrigerator and then carefully poured yellow-green soda from a large plastic bottle. The soft drink fit well into the tropical color scheme of the room. Jasper brought the drinks out, handed one to me and, still listing sideways, sat down next to me in the matching wicker chair. We were side by side facing the dark screen of the TV.

  Jasper took a drink. “You said on the telephone that you’ve come to talk about my boy.”

  “Yes, sir, if I may.”

  “He was a good boy,” Jasper said, his words suddenly thick. He tried to clear his throat. “I don’t understand why...” He stopped and coughed and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “I’m sorry about Thos,” I said, turning in my chair toward him.

  Jasper was still facing the blank TV. He cried softly for a minute. “Is your drink okay?” he finally said.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “You said you are looking into his death. Why?”

  “Because your ex-wife hired me to. She thinks that I can concentrate on his murder in a way that the police cannot.”

  “Janeen,” he muttered softly. “I still love her. Every day I feel bad that it didn’t work out. I feel like not only did I cause her to divorce me, but that something I did set in motion a chain of events that led to Thos’s death.” Jasper was staring unfocused at the dark TV screen.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing specific. It just seems that if you traced back everything in Thos’s life you’d come back to me. If I’d done something different, given different advice maybe...” his voice was thick. “I don’t know.” Jasper shook his head back and forth.

  “Why didn’t your marriage work out?” I asked. I’d already heard Janeen’s side, but sometimes people have dramatically different views.

  “I never quite knew why. I tried hard to make her happy, but she said I wasn’t right for her. It tore a hole in me when she left.” He drank his soda pop. “Seemed like I didn’t do such a good job at work after that. The promotions I should have gotten went to other, younger men. They said they wanted me to stay on, but I knew better.

  “They made me a decent offer to take early retirement. Of course, social security is a lot less when you do that, and half my pension still goes to Janeen. But I don’t mind. She deserves it. She was a good wife while I had her and a good mother and I bear her no ill will. She is raising Shelcie’s child. It only makes sense that some of my money would go to that. Besides, this place is paid for and I don’t have need for much.

  “You said you were a detective, Owen. So maybe you know if I’m wrong about this. Some murders, maybe it is for money or something, and maybe it means the victim didn’t do anything wrong to become a target, right? From what I heard about Thos, getting shot in the lake, his wallet still in his pants on the shore, it sounds like he was involved in something bad, doesn’t it?” Jasper Kahale turned in his chair and looked at me. “Am I right?”

  “I don’t think that is the case, Jasper. From what I’ve heard Thos was a fine young man with a thriving business.” I sipped my drink. “Were you close to your son? Did you see each other much?”

  Jasper looked toward the wall. “Almost every Sunday night when he was on the island. We’d have dinner. Thos usually picked me up and he’d take me out to a restaurant. Sometimes he’d drive us up to the north side of the island where he lives. We’d stop at his place first for drinks, then go to a restaurant in Princeville. He knew them all, of course, because he sold them wine. Thos was a good son. It was a precious thing for me with so many of my old friends having gone to see Lono. Now Thos has made his journey, too.”

  “Lono?”

  “Lono is our god.” Jasper paused and seemed to disconnect from our conversation. Once again, he gave a little jerk of his head and resumed talking. “Lono comes from the sea and is responsible for all the good that Hawaiians have in their lives. The plentiful harvests, the fish, the perfect weather, even the sunsets. You may have heard of him in regards to Captain Cook.”

  “Sorry, my history of Hawaii is weak,” I said.

  “Lono comes twice a year, always from the sea. When Cook discovered Hawaii, as you white people say, his arrival coincided with Lono’s timing. And because my ancestors had never seen large square riggers or men with pale skin, they got confused and thought Cook was Lono.”

  “No doubt, that made things easier for Cook,” I said.

  “Yes.” Jasper drank more Mountain Dew. “Hawaiians are naturally peaceful and friendly anyway, but thinking Cook was our great god made my people very giving of favors, even down to our young women joining Cook’s men on his ships. In return, Cook’s men gave the islands venereal disease. In a few years V.D. had spread throughout the islands.”

  “What a legacy to leave behind,” I said.

  “Actually, V.D. was only one of several deadly diseases brought here by white men.” Jasper turned to look at me directly. “My family knew Captain Cook.”

  “Really,” I said.

  “When Cook discovered Hawaii, it was the island of Kauai he came to first. I always heard about it from my father. Captain Cook met one of my great, great, great, great grandfathers. My ancestors invited Cook and some of his men over to a big pork roast on the beach. Of course, they still thought Cook was the god Lono. Two days later Cook invited them onto his ship where he gave them a piece of tableware.”

  “You mean like a fork or a spoon?”

  “Right. Hawaiians never had metal. The only place they’d seen metal was nails in old pieces of wood washed up from distant shipwrecks. So any metal fascinated them.”

  “Could Cook’s tableware have ended up in the cliff shrine?”

  “How did you know about... Oh, Janeen told you.”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know what happened to Cook’s gift. But who would care? The only really valuable thing my family ever had is gone,” Jasper continued.

  “What was that?”

  “A gift from Mark Twain.”

  At this my doubts about Cook’s visit grew ten times stronger. “Your family knew Mark Twain?”

  Jasper nodded. “Twain came to Kauai about a hundred years after Captain Cook. My family was educated by then and spoke some English. They had heard of this young writer who was coming to Oahu in March. This was back in eighteen sixty-six. After Oahu, he came here to Kauai. They invited him to dinner and he accepted. The next day they took him up Waimea Canyon. He ended up staying with them for a few days. It was a big celebration.”

  Jasper’s stories were beginning to sound like one of Twain’s tall tales. Then again, I remembered reading about Twain visiting Hawaii. Further, unlike Captain Cook, Twain spent time in Tahoe while working for the newspaper in Virginia City. Mark Twain and the Kahale family shared that much, a connection to both Kauai and Tahoe.

  “Twain gave your family a gift?”

  “Yes. It was similar to when Captain Cook came to dinner. A couple days after Twain had spent time with my family, he returned with a thank you gift. I never saw it because it was lost a few years later. But I heard about it from my grandfather. He remembered it well.”

  “What was it?”

  “It was a leather notebook, dark brown with the letter
s MT embossed on the cover. Twain used the notebook for his newspaper letters that he sent back to California.”

  “Did you read that about Twain? That he wrote letters back to a California newspaper about his Pacific travels?”

  Jasper looked startled. “Me? I’ve never read anything about Twain. I just remember what my granddad said. My granddad was a boy at the time and he had admired the notebook when Twain came to dinner. So when Twain came back he had torn out the pages with the newspaper letters. He gave the rest of the notebook to my granddad. Of course, my granddad thought it was the greatest thing, getting a notebook that had belonged to a famous writer. What he didn’t realize until the next day was that there was writing inside.”

  “A letter?”

  Jasper shook his head. “No, a story.”

  FIFTEEN

  Jasper said, “Twain’s story was called The Amazing Island Boy And His Trick Wood. It was about a boy my granddad’s age who had a stick of Hawaiian Koa wood he claimed was magical. He could cast a spell with it. He used it to trick his gullible friends out of money by getting them to pay to be put under a spell.”

  “What happened to the notebook?”

  “My granddad kept the notebook in a little box next to his bed. The year he turned twelve a hurricane struck in the night. A storm surge flooded their thatched hut. They ran out and hung onto a palm tree as their house and possessions washed out to sea.”

  “Could your granddad have grabbed Twain’s notebook and held onto it as he escaped the hurricane?”

  Jasper looked startled. “I suppose so, but if he’d kept it he would have proudly showed it to everyone, wouldn’t he?”

  We were both silent for a moment. Finally, I said, “Jasper, did your son have any enemies that you know of?”

  Jasper shook his head. “No. None at all. Now don’t get me wrong. He wasn’t the friendliest boy. Once I told him he should get out more and he said, ‘Dad, I’m not a party animal like you.’ Then he told me he spent his spare time alone dreaming up the next phase of his business.”

  “What was that?”

  “He wanted to start a vineyard and winery in California. But he said he needed a lot of money first, so it was going to be awhile.” Jasper was silent for a moment. “I still don’t understand that, people who like to spend time alone. But then, look at me. I like to be around people, yet here I am almost always by myself.” His eyes went vacant for a moment, then his head jerked again.

  “Even so, I’m positive Thos didn’t have any enemies. I even wondered if maybe he stole some other boy’s girl. Thos was handsome and polite and could get a gal’s attention. But it wasn’t his way. No, whatever he got involved in, it was something else.”

  Jasper put his hand on my forearm. “My boy was a man of honor, Owen. I think he got into a moral dilemma. Maybe he learned something he felt he had to bring to the authorities. Maybe he got killed for it.”

  Jasper drained the last of his drink and chewed on an ice cube. “Or else someone wanted a piece of his business. Thos told me that some of the wine deals were real money makers. He said there’s a company that owns eight restaurants in Honolulu. They’d order five hundred cases at a time. Then Thos had the wineries in California, what’s it called? Drop-ship. Thos never touched the wine. But he made the sale and did the billing. He’d pocket something like ten thousand dollars on five hundred cases. That’s a lot of money.

  “And recently, he’s started his own brand. Pacific Blue. I forget exactly how it works, but he’s lined up a supplier, some big winery in Mendocino County. It’s called private labeling. Thos puts his Pacific Blue label on it. He’s even got a Polynesian logo, kind of an art thing.” Jasper was talking as if Thos were still alive.

  “Anyway, maybe someone wanted to take that business away from him.”

  “I don’t know, Jasper. It doesn’t seem like a motive for murder. I know from my small detective agency that the expenses generated by any small business are substantial. Ten thousand from a single sale would seem like a lot to a man on a salary, but it is just another opportunity to pay the rent, utilities and payroll taxes. I don’t think that kind of business is worth killing over.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

  “What happens to Thos’s business?”

  “He told me he was leaving it to me. I told him that was crazy. How could he die before me? But there it is. Thos wanted it that way. All because I was interested in what he did. Maybe I’ll give it to his employees. There’s a General Manager name of Brian Malone and a few workers. Malone’s a nice guy, but too meek to run a business if you ask me.”

  “Where does Malone live?”

  “Princeville. Not far from Thos.”

  “What about Thos’s townhouse?”

  “It’s to be sold with half going to Shelcie and half to a trust for her son Phillip.”

  “Jasper, what about the cliff where your family puts sacred items of the deceased? I’m wondering if someone might have forced Thos to tell them the location and then killed him to cover it up.”

  “Why? So they could sneak up there and steal knickknacks and such? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Isn’t there anything valuable in the family shrine?”

  Jasper took a long time answering. “I can’t say.”

  “You can’t, or you won’t?”

  “Both,” Jasper said. “I can’t because I’ve never gone through all the stuff left there over the centuries. But if I did know what all is there, I wouldn’t tell anyone. It would violate the rules. I explained them to Thos. But now that he’s dead, I had to take my nephew John junior to the shrine two days ago and explain it all to him.” Jasper’s voice was thick again. “It was difficult, let me tell you. I put Thos’s sacred things in the cave.”

  “Janeen said Thos didn’t designate any items.”

  “No. I had to choose. I took the three biggest surfing trophies because those were what he was proudest of. John junior carried them in a pack because they were heavy.”

  “Can you give me an idea of the kinds of things that are in the shrine? Would that violate the rule?”

  Jasper thought for a minute. “It’s mostly just junk up there. And it’s been pawed over by countless animals. Anything fabric rotted long ago. Some stuff’s been dragged away or half eaten. Little critters have made nests. It’s a mess if you want to know the truth.”

  “Is there any protection from the elements?”

  Jasper nodded. “Sure, if you mean rain and wind. It’s in a cave that goes back into the cliff about fifty feet. A volcanic tube from when the island was formed. The opening is overhung with jungle so no one would ever see it. There is a split in one side of the tube. Between the split and the main opening, some light gets in so you can see a little. Rain and humans are kept out. But animals and bugs and humidity and rot have been present from the beginning.” Jasper shook his head. “No protection from any of that.”

  “How long has your family had the shrine?”

  “As far as I know, it was started when my first ancestors arrived.”

  “Before Captain Cook came to the islands?”

  “Long time before. Cook came in the seventeen hundreds. My family arrived about five hundred years before that.”

  “From Polynesia?” I asked.

  “Yes. They built huge canoes for journeys that went thousands of miles across the open ocean. They were navigating by the stars and had settled most of the islands in the Pacific back when your ancestors were still in the dark ages.”

  “How did the Polynesians find Hawaii with it being the most isolated island chain in the world?”

  “Birds.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Jasper pushed up from his chair and refilled his glass. He gestured toward me with the bottle. “Want some more?”

  “No thanks.”

  Jasper came back and sat down. He sipped his drink. “My ancestors knew from their travels that the ocean to the north was largely empty. But there
were birds that flew that way. Even when the people were far out at sea they saw birds fly past them going north. They knew from the kind of birds and from the season that they weren’t migrating to a cold spot. That meant there was land to the north. Temperate land.

  “So they mounted a major expedition north and brought enough food and water and people to start a new colony. They also brought goats and pigs and all of their special plants. They sailed and paddled and navigated by the stars at night. Sure enough, they found the Hawaiian Islands right where they expected.”

  “Jasper, did the Polynesians have gold or other precious stones or metals?

  “You’re wondering if there’s gold in my family shrine? The answer is no.”

  “There must be some valuable jewelry.”

  “Like I told my brother John...” Jasper’s words faded. Then he gave his head a single shake as if coming out of a trance.

  “What did you tell your brother?”

  Jasper looked at me for a moment. “Nothing,” he finally said.

  “Jasper, it is important that I know if you gave anyone any information about the shrine or its contents. It could help me find Thos’s killer.”

  “I can tell you there’s nothing valuable there. Anyway, you’re asking too many questions about our sacred place. It can’t be laid bare for anyone. My ancestors deserve some privacy.”

  “Is there any way I could convince you to show me the shrine? I’d promise never to tell anyone.”

  Jasper shook his head.

  “I could go there blindfolded. That would guarantee its location would remain secret.”

  “No,” Jasper said.

  “But what if the shrine caused someone to murder your son?”

  “No. Showing anyone else would violate the sacred trust my father taught me about. And Thos would still be dead. Besides, I don’t believe that Thos was killed for any reason having to do with the family shrine.”

  I stood and walked over to the bulletin board and looked at the snapshots. One showed a young Thos and Shelcie standing with a weathered man in the stern of an old wooden fishing boat. He looked like an even wider version of Jasper. His height may have been greater than his width, but not by much. Yet, as with Jasper, his girth seemed less like obesity and more like the muscles of a Suma Wrestler. “This man, was he your father?”