The Big Kahuna

by Janet Evanovich

  “I don’t hear anything. A flash grenade just exploded ten feet away from me.”

  “I don’t hear anything either. I think they’ve gone.”

  Kate stood up and scanned the room. The receptionist was crouched behind the desk looking scared but otherwise unharmed. There were bullet holes in every wall and every piece of furniture. Not a single jar remained intact. Henna dye and shards of glass covered the floor.

  Kate stared at Nick, and Nick stared at Kate.

  “I’m covered from head to toe in glitter, aren’t I?” Kate asked. “The reason I’m curious is that you look like you just returned home from the front lines of the war to end all wars, between the fairies and the pixies.”

  Nick pointed to a spot on his face just below the corner of his mouth and gestured toward Kate.

  “That’s the only place I got it?” Kate asked, wiping the corner of her mouth with her index finger. “How do I look now?”

  “That was actually the only place on your entire body that didn’t have any glitter.” He gave Kate a glittery thumbs-up. “Good news. Now that spot is covered too.”

  Kate scrubbed at her face, adding an additional multicolored film of metallic flakes to the front of her hand. “Better now?”

  “Depends on whether you like this look. I think your face actually got even more glittery.”

  Kate looked down her shirt. “Good grief. It’s under my clothes too. How is that even possible?”

  The receptionist stood up from behind the desk. “It’s impossible to lose. Sticks to everything. I have to take four showers and vacuum my house twice every day when I get home from work.”

  “And that gets rid of it?” Kate asked.

  “Oh no. I’m still covered in glitter. It’s just that then I’m so tired I don’t care about it anymore.”

  Kate looked at Nick. “We lost Hamilton, and those two numbskulls escaped, again. I’m covered in glitter, and I’m half-deaf from that flash grenade. I need something good to happen. When is something good going to happen?”

  Nick leaned in to Kate and kissed her lightly on her glittery lips.

  “What was that about?” she asked.

  “I was hoping it was good. It’s all I’ve got right now.”

  * * *

  —

  Kate and Nick spent several hours with the Kauai police, filling out reports and giving them descriptions of Horace and Jasper. They were about to leave when the owner returned to the salon and told them she’d spent a couple of hours surfing with Hamilton in Kilauea before dropping him off in a Hanalei coffee shop.

  “Ordinarily, I’d go after Hamilton,” Kate said to Nick, “but I have to de-glitter.”

  “Good decision,” Nick said. “I’m all about a little flash when needed, but this is ridiculous.”

  11

  It was almost five o’clock by the time Kate, Nick, and Jake checked into their rooms at the Koa Kea.

  Kate stepped out of the shower an hour later, put on a hotel bathrobe, and answered her ringing cellphone. “Hi, Nick.”

  “Are you glitter-free?”

  Kate looked at herself in the mirror. Ninety-nine percent better, but her skin and hair still sparkled under the bathroom lights. “Mostly, but my bedroom floor looks like Tinker Bell lives here, and I’m going to have to burn my clothes. How about you?”

  “The same. I’m at your door now. I have your luggage.”

  Kate opened the door, took the suitcase from Nick, plopped it on the bed, and sorted through the contents. The bohemian chic maxi dresses had been replaced with jeans and T-shirts, and the cut-off shorts had been replaced with Fjällräven hiking clothes.

  “Thank goodness,” Kate said. “I was starting to get used to the overalls. Scary.”

  “Happy?” Nick asked.

  “You have no idea,” Kate said.

  “Maybe I should stay while you change. Make sure everything fits.”

  “Maybe you should wait outside and think about how to best fulfill your lost bet to me.”

  She pushed Nick out of the room, put on a pair of skinny jeans and a white T-shirt, and joined him in the hallway.

  “It’s easy to find the restaurant,” Nick said. “Just follow the trail of glitter footprints from your room to the pool deck to the hotel entrance. The restaurant is in the lobby.”

  Kate looked around. The three-story boutique hotel was set up in a U shape, surrounding an understated pool and opening to a family-friendly beach where gentle waves lapped the white sand.

  “Kauai feels more intimate than Maui,” Kate said.

  “Yeah, there’s a rule on Kauai that nothing is allowed to be built taller than a coconut tree, so you’re not going to find any skyscrapers like you do on Oahu.”

  They walked into the restaurant and sat down with Jake and Cosmo. Vicky and Larry were at the bar.

  “You look good with that glitter still in your hair,” Cosmo said to Kate. “I’m not supposed to get near glitter on account of all the Uno men are born cursed with abnormal amounts of static electricity, and static is what makes glitter stick to things, and every time I’m near glitter, it ends up in my eye and I get a scratched cornea, and I have to see the ophthalmologist, and he tells me ‘Cosmo, for the last time, no more fucking glitter.’ Also, I’m not supposed to get near balloons or wool socks. Do you know why? Static.”

  Vicky and Larry sat down at the table. “Have you found my husband yet?” Vicky asked Kate. “I heard you lost Hamilton today and demolished a tattoo parlor. Nice work.”

  “I prefer to think of Hamilton and the Kahuna as temporarily misplaced,” Kate said.

  Nick pulled a tourist map of Kauai out of his pocket. “Hamilton was last seen in Hanalei. That’s where we’ll look tomorrow.”

  Jake looked at the map. “What makes you think he’ll still be there?”

  “There’s nothing past Hanalei. It’s the end of the road. It wouldn’t make sense for him to go all the way there, unless he was planning on staying in the area.”

  “Hamilton was ready for some wilderness hiking. Hanalei is remote, but it’s hardly off-grid,” Jake said.

  Kate snagged a passing waiter. “We were thinking of going to Hanalei tomorrow. Are there any good hiking trails?”

  “Only the most famous one on Kauai, the Kalalau Trail. It’s eleven miles long and follows the Na Pali coastline. I wouldn’t recommend you hike more than the first couple miles, though. After that it becomes one of the most difficult low-altitude hikes in the world. Very dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing, and you officially need a permit to camp in the valley.”

  “How about unofficially?”

  “There’s kind of a makeshift community of hippies, free spirits, and dropouts living out there on this amazing beach. Every so often, the rangers hike in and try to clean the ‘residents’ out, but they mostly just scatter into the valley and wait for the rangers to leave.”

  Kate turned to Nick once the waiter had left. “Didn’t Hamilton tell us he’d stashed his dad somewhere with no roads and no cell service? I think his exact words were ‘It’s paradise for dropouts.’”

  Nick smiled. “It feels right. Who’s up for a dangerous, illegal camping trip?”

  “Now this is more like it,” Jake said. “If it wasn’t for the two homicidal maniacs trying to kill us, I would think this trip was going to be all glitter and hippies and stoners.”

  Larry looked from person to person at the table. “In case nobody has noticed, I’m a little accident prone. I say the Kahuna is probably just staying at a hotel. A nice, safe hotel where nobody will get beaten up, drowned, fall off a cliff, or set on fire.”

  “Jeez, Larry.” Vicky held up her thumb to her ear and her pinky to her mouth. “Ring, ring. Hello.” She handed the imaginary phone to Larry. “It’s for you. It’s your ball sack. He says he’s tired of be
ing empty and wants to know when you plan to grow a pair.” She hung up the phone. “Good grief. If my fifty-year-old husband and my pothead stepson can do it, we can too.”

  “Great. It’s settled,” Nick said. “We’ll leave Larry in Hanalei where he can snoop around, just in case we’re wrong about the Kahuna hiding at Kalalau. The rest of us should plan to check out of the hotel at five A.M., if we want to be at the trailhead by sunrise. We’re going to need every bit of daylight if we hope to make it there in one day.”

  “I’m going to need hiking shoes,” Cosmo said. “All I have with me are dress shoes and sneakers.”

  “We’re going to need a lot more than that in the way of provisions if we’re going to do this,” Kate said. “Tents and food for starters.”

  “No worries.” Nick got up from the table, walked to the front desk, and returned with a luggage cart full of backpacks. “Based on what Hamilton told us on Maui, I figured we might be doing some camping. I asked a friend of mine who works with Hawaii Forest and Trail to drop off six packs and all the gear we’d need for a three-day wilderness hike. We’ll have to redistribute some of the gear in Larry’s pack since he’s not going.”

  Kate sorted through the packs. Nick had name tags on each of them. “I see packs for the Colonel, the Weasel, the Cosmonator, Tricky Vicky, and the Smuggler, but I don’t see mine.” She narrowed her eyes. “All that’s left is this one marked ‘Snuggler.’”

  Jake looked at Kate. “First, you’re a hippie and now you’re a snuggler. You’re not turning into some millennial snowflake, are you?”

  “She lost a bet with Nick,” Cosmo said. “Now he gets to give all of us cool code names. Personally, I love mine. The Terminator is one of my favorite movies.”

  “I didn’t lose,” Kate said. “Let’s settle this once and for all. We need to find a neutral third party and let him decide who won.”

  “And the decision is final?” Nick asked. “No welching?”

  “Absolutely. We just need to find an impartial judge.”

  Larry raised his hand. “Back in high school, I was Bulgaria in the model UN.”

  “I guess, in theory, he is kind of a lawyer, per se,” Nick said to Kate.

  Kate blew out a sigh. “Let’s just get it over with.”

  Larry tented his fingers after he heard both versions. “It’s a difficult case. On the one hand, Nick failed to get the precise location of the Kahuna from Hamilton on the night in question. And, on the other hand, one could make an argument that his plan worked, vis-à-vis, you’re going on the Kalalau Trail tomorrow morning, where we expect to find the Kahuna.”

  “So who won?” Kate asked.

  Larry untented his fingers and leaned forward. “I have made my decision. You both lost, per se.”

  “We both lost? That’s not possible.”

  Larry looked doubtful. “Maybe you both won?”

  “Good grief. That’s no better.” Kate took the backpack and stared down at the name tag. “I’m the Snuggler, either way.”

  * * *

  —

  The sun was rising just as the caravan of cars transporting Kate, Nick, Cosmo, Jake, and Vicky pulled into Haena State Park and stopped in front of the Kalalau trailhead sign. Nick and Kate got out of their BMW SUV and waited for the others to join them.

  “I did some reading last night. In a couple hours, this parking lot will be filled,” Nick said. “It’s a popular day hike, but almost everybody stops in the first valley and turns around before getting to the really hairy parts.”

  Vicky joined them at the trailhead. She was dressed in a skintight, low-cut turquoise tank top designed to expose her midriff, brown short-shorts, white socks, and hiking boots. “Tick, tock. Let’s get a move on. I want to get some good selfies on the trail before the sun gets too high.”

  Jake walked through the parking lot and stopped next to Vicky. “What gives? You look like that character, Lara Croft, from my ten-year-old grandson’s video game.”

  Vicky looked down at her clothes. “Thanks. They’re from this movie I starred in before I met the Kahuna. I played a beautiful archaeologist who ventures into dangerous ruins around the world in search of priceless artifacts and ding dongs. Spoiler alert. I found them.”

  Jake shook his head. “I’m surrounded by cuckoos. All I can say is, I better get to stomp some bad guys pretty soon.” He turned and shouted back to Cosmo, who was struggling with his pack in the parking lot. “Let’s go. We’re burning daylight.”

  “I think these socks have some wool in them,” Cosmo said. “I’m pretty sure I’m breaking out in a rash. I might need Benadryl. Does anyone have Benadryl?”

  Jake took the lead, Vicky followed him, Cosmo followed Vicky, and Kate and Nick brought up the rear. They trudged up the steep, muddy trail and through thick green jungle, soggy with rain from the night before.

  Kate stopped for a minute to knock off a layer of the heavy red mud sticking to the bottom of her boots. “It’s not coming off. This stuff is deadly.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “Think of it as a souvenir. The desk clerk said everyone who visits Kauai goes home with at least some of their clothes stained red from the dirt.”

  “Kauai is the oldest of the Hawaiian Islands,” Cosmo said. “The volcanic rock has such a high iron content that, over millions of years, it’s literally rusted away and decomposed into red dirt. I read about it in my guidebook. I thought it would come in handy, so I packed it with my requisitions for travel expenses and per diem allowances. I practically know it all by heart already. If you have a question you can ask me. If it’s not in my guidebook I can google it, as long as I have cell service and my battery isn’t dead. I charge my phone every night so that almost never happens.”

  A light dusting of rain came and went and came again, before turning into a downpour. Little torrents of water drained through the underbrush and onto the trail, creating a stream of water than ran downhill toward them. Kate could see Vicky and Cosmo a short way off, struggling to stay upright in the soupy mud. Jake was in the distance, rounding a bend and disappearing from her sight.

  “Dad’s in his element,” Kate said. “I don’t think we’ll see him again until our regroup spot in the first valley.”

  The trail continued to climb through the rainforest, slowly growing less dense and offering spectacular peekaboo views of the bright blue Pacific Ocean hundreds of feet below.

  “We’re about halfway to the top,” Nick said. “The trail rises to around six hundred feet from sea level in just one mile.”

  Kate wiped the rain from her face as they caught up to Cosmo. He was lying on his back, trying to right himself, and covered from head to toe in red mud.

  “I might have slipped one or two or a hundred times. Are we almost there?” he asked.

  “Almost,” Nick said. “Only ten and a half miles to go.”

  “This is an eleven-mile trail,” Cosmo said. “We only walked half a mile, so far? Are we at least almost to the top?”

  “Absolutely. The good news is that, once we reach the summit, it’s all downhill to Hanakapiai Beach. The bad news is after that there are four more valleys to cross and five thousand feet more of total elevation gain before we get to Kalalau. And, what’s waiting for us past Hanakapiai makes this first part look like a walk in the park.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Kate and Nick were at the summit. Gusty winds coming from the exposed cliffside blew heavy rain at them, seemingly from all directions.

  “Even in this weather, it’s gorgeous,” Kate said, looking out over the cliffs at the ocean.

  They started their descent toward the first valley. Once they were back in the rainforest, the winds died down, but the steep trail was quickly becoming a muddy river of red glop.

  “This is pretty slow going. I think the way down might be even harder than the way up,” Kate said. “Hard to believe Ham
ilton did this in the dark last night.”

  “I’m sure he’s walked the trail before and is familiar with it,” Nick said. “And for that matter, we’re not sure he’s ahead of us. Or if he stopped halfway and continued on at first light. Have you thought about what you’re going to do if you find the Kahuna in the valley? He may not be cooperative. He probably has something to hide if he felt running was a better option than going to the police.”

  Kate held out her hands to balance herself as she stepped down over a slippery rock ledge. “Olga Zellenkova tried to kill his son. I’m hoping that will be enough to convince him that he needs help.”

  The rain was slowing to a drizzle and sunlight was beginning to peek through the clouds, revealing previously hidden hilltops and vistas. As the sun heated the wet canopy and grasses surrounding them, the humidity levels quickly skyrocketed, leaving Kate and Nick feeling wetter than they had in the morning downpour.

  “Have you checked in with Jessup?” Nick asked. “Your seventy-two hours ended today.”

  “I called him last night. He’s not happy.” Kate turned to look back at Nick. “Apparently, somebody has been buying haunted ice cream trucks and expensive bottles of wine using stolen FBI vouchers signed by an Agent Karl Ketchup, Los Angeles branch FBI field office manager.”

  “It’s probably just one of his top cops, having some fun. We cops love pranking each other.”

  Kate shook her head. “Anyway, between the vouchers, a blown-up tattoo parlor, and a tourist boat sunk to the bottom of the ocean, he told me not to bother coming back from Hawaii without the Kahuna.”

  “Ouch. What about me?” Nick asked.

  “He said you’re welcome to come back. He has a room at a federal penitentiary waiting for you.”

  “I guess we better find the Kahuna.”

  The path was beginning to flatten as they approached Hanakapiai Beach, and Kate could hear the sound of rushing water in the distance. “You know me,” she said. “I wasn’t planning on coming back without him anyway.”