by Frankie Bow
“Yeah, I know. So much for my street cred. Well, we all have to grow up sometime.”
And before he could return fire, I slipped out the door.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Lehua Inn, one of the Hanohano’s competitor establishments on Hotel Drive, used to boast magnificent mountain and ocean views. Now the floor-to-ceiling dining room window overlooks the service entrance of Jimmy Tanaka’s New Hanohano Hotel. The mildew-streaked monolith blocks the ocean view and the sunlight, so that no matter what time of day it is, the Lehua’s formerly cheery dining room sits in perpetual twilight. I spotted an unoccupied table in the rear and took a seat with my back to the window.
I generally occupy myself by catching up on my journal reading until the formal program begins. I like either Administrative Science Quarterly or Academy of Management Review. They’re both great at scaring off small-talkers. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to bring either one with me today. All I had was the copy of Island Business that Pat had taken from Jimmy Tanaka’s suitcase.
I turned to the cover story and skimmed over the slice-of-life opening paragraph. Next was a flashback to Tanaka’s childhood, an anecdote illustrating Tanaka’s incipient entrepreneurial talent. After that came a description of his early career and a mention of the brief marriage that buckled under the stress of starting up a business. The writer was clearly doing his utmost to present Jimmy Tanaka as a sympathetic character.
The tables around me were filling up, which caused me a twinge of anxiety. There was a real possibility that someone was going to sit with me before the formal program started. I directed my gaze back to my magazine, to avoid eye contact with any potential tablemates.
You might wonder why I joined an organization like Business Boosters when interacting with strangers causes me so much stress. The simple answer is that I didn’t really have a choice. Every faculty member in the College of Commerce is expected to join at least one local civic organization. I’d settled on Business Boosters because the meetings are highly regimented, leaving little time for unstructured socializing. First, we stand and sing the official Business Boosters anthem. Then, we eat lunch while we watch a presentation related to some project in the community. Finally, we stand again and recite the Business Boosters creed. Then we all go back to work. As these things go, it’s relatively painless.
A waitress came by and filled my coffee mug. I thanked her and turned my attention back to the magazine, where I read this:
Jimmy and his former wife, Mercedes Yamashiro, remain good friends to this day. Mercedes is an entrepreneur in her own right. She runs the renowned Cloudforest Bed and Breakfast, where Jimmy is a frequent guest.
Someone sat down next to me. From the jangle of jewelry and perfume I knew it was Mercedes, even before I turned to look.
“Wow, hey. Mercedes!” I exclaimed. “Wow!”
That wasn’t the best way to open a conversation, but in all fairness, she had startled me. Also, the blond hair was kind of a surprise.
“They had to process three times to get the brassiness out,” she said, holding up three be-ringed fingers for emphasis. “I thought I wasn’t going to make it here on time!”
“Mercedes, I’m so sorry. About Mr. Tanaka.”
“Well. Poor Jimmy had a way of finding trouble. But let’s count our blessings, Molly. He had a full life.”
“Oh, that’s putting it—I mean, I suppose you’re right.” I gestured to the open magazine on the table. “You’re in Island Business magazine!” I said.
“Can you believe it, Molly? They interviewed me for two hours, and all I get is three sentences. Well, that’s show biz!” She laughed.
“That’s amazing that you stayed friends,” I said. “It must be hard to do that. Stay friends with an ex.”
“Oh, it’s not that unusual. Like you and your Stephen, yah?”
“Stephen and I have sort of an arms-length relationship these days.”
“I think Donnie is a better match for you anyway,” she said. “If you don’t mind my saying so. Anyway, it was easier after the divorce, to tell you the truth. Jimmy’s bad habits were not my problem anymore. Also, better to have a friendly business contact than an unfriendly ex-husband. We all have to get along, you know. No point in having enemies.”
“No point in having enemies,” I repeated. “I guess that makes sense. Who needs enemies, right?”
Why did she say no point in having enemies instead of no point in making enemies? I wondered if the magazine interview had opened old wounds for her.
“Molly,” she said, “I wanted to tell you, I’m so happy with my interns this year. Your college is doing a great job.”
“That’s nice to hear!” I was grateful for the change of topic. “Business is good?”
“Yes, you’d be surprised! It’s not our usual high season, but we have a big group in this week from New Zealand. They’re lovely people. Very interested in sustainability. They told me I should install composting toilets. I don’t think all of my guests are quite ready for that, but it was nice to see that people are thinking about that kind of thing. Oh, and they love the little goats.”
“You still have the goats? I didn’t see them when we came down.”
“I let them out once a week to mow the grass. Mostly I keep them away from the guests. After what happened to you. Remember? When you were staying with me?”
I certainly did remember. As I was making my way from the main building to my cabin, hands full of luggage, a little goat came skipping toward me. I thought it was adorable until he playfully head-butted me in the stomach. I went to my campus interview the next morning with bruised ribs.
“Oh, it was fine,” I said. “I got the job, so no complaints.”
“Well, you were very nice about it. Molly, that girl Margaret has been so good, helping me out with everything. Even the slaughter and butchering!”
“Slaughter? Margaret Adams?”
“The little goats. For the Cloudforest’s famous goat stew. They don’t cook themselves, Molly!”
“You do that on site?”
“Margaret really surprised me, you know. I was afraid she was going to be one of those fussy haole ladies. No offense, Molly, you know what I mean.”
“Sure.”
“But she turned out to be so good! Much better than Nate! That poor boy just turns green and has to go lie down.”
By this time a few more people had joined Mercedes and me at our table, and it was time to stand up and sing. I tried to concentrate on the words to the Business Boosters anthem, but I was thinking about Mercedes’s delicious goat stew. I couldn’t shake the image of Jimmy Tanaka as a spry little satyr.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I walked in to my office to find my phone ringing. It was Donnie.
“It was nice to see you last night,” Donnie said. “I had a good time. I’m glad you stopped by the Drive-Inn.”
“Me too. Sorry about Pat and Emma barging in. Hey, I’ll see you this Saturday too, right? The CCCC meeting?”
“You’ll get sick of me,” he laughed.
“Impossible,” I said. “In fact, didn’t you say you’re in Business Boosters? I didn’t see you at the meeting today.”
“I’m in the Tuesday group. Listen, you asked me about Jimmy Tanaka’s will that other time at the Pair-O-Dice.”
“I did?”
“I found out some things for you.”
“Really! Well, don’t keep me in suspense!” Emma was actually the one who had asked, but I was dying to hear what Donnie had to say. I looked in my bag for something to write on. I had misplaced my yellow pad, but I had a Student Retention Office publication in there, and it looked like it had a lot of white space. I wrote while Donnie spoke. My hand muscles cramped as I tried to get down the names of all the organizations that were about to benefit from JimmyTanaka’s posthumous largesse.
“Animal shelter, art museum, cultural center . . . you think he was trying to buy himself some karma?” I asked.
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“There’s quite a bit more here.” Donnie continued reading and I scribbled madly, trying to keep up. Then he read:
“Two hundred thousand dollars to Mercedes Yamashiro.”
“Sorry, what was that? Did you say Mercedes?”
“He left two hundred thousand to Mercedes.”
“Did you know that Mercedes used to be married to Jimmy Tanaka?”
“Sure.”
“I just found that out. I read it in Island Business. Why doesn’t anyone tell me anything?”
Donnie laughed. “I’m telling you things right now.”
“So you are. How did you find all this out?”
“My attorney was doing some research, and he happened to come across this. I think you’ll be interested in the next item.”
Emma slipped in and sat down. “Hey, Moll—” She clapped her hand over her mouth when she saw I was on the phone, and then sat and fidgeted while I listened and wrote.
“You won’t believe this,” I said when I’d hung up. “Jimmy Tanaka left a pile of money to the College of Commerce.”
“More than what he already donated?”
“Much more.” I told her the amount.
“What? No way. What’s the catch?”
“We’ll be known as the . . .” I glanced at my notes. “The James Hisashi Tanaka College of Commerce.”
“You’ll have to spend some of that money to hire security,” she said. “Anything with Jimmy Tanaka’s name on it is gonna get vandalized. You know, it’s ironic. Hisashi means ‘long life.’ Hey, there’s your motive for Bill Vogel.”
“What, his name? I don’t understand.”
“No, not his name, dummy. If Vogel knew about the will, maybe he wanted to get the money now instead of waiting for Tanaka to die on his own. He killed the golden goose!”
I opened my mouth to say something, but Emma steamrollered on.
“Look,” she declared, “if your college gets thirty million dollars while Bill Vogel is in charge, think how good that would look for him! He’d be able to get a job anywhere!”
“Sure,” I said, “as long as no one found out about the murder.”
“Well it’s not like Vogel would put that on his resumé.”
“Anyway,” I said, “it’s the goose that laid the golden eggs, not the golden goose.”
“No, it was a golden goose. That’s why it had golden eggs.”
“It was not a golden goose,” I said. “That was the whole point of the story. It was a regular goose that happened to lay golden eggs.”
“That’s crazy,” Emma said. “Why would a regular goose have golden eggs?”
“Because that’s the whole point of the story. Once the goose’s owners got greedy and killed it, it was just a worthless, dead, ordinary goose. If it was a golden goose then it still would have been worth something when it was dead.”
“Molly, that’s the saying. Killing the golden goose. Not killing the ordinary goose that for some unexplained reason laid golden eggs.”
“Well, a solid-gold goose wouldn’t be able to lay eggs at all, right? It would just be a chunk of metal.”
Emma opened her mouth to interrupt, but I wasn’t about to let her derail me any more than she already had. “Anyway, if Vogel is this brilliant mastermind, why would he make it so obvious that Tanaka didn’t die of natural causes? If he was really smart he’d have made it look like a heart attack or something.”
“Yeah, maybe,” she said.
“There was something else Donnie told me,” I added reluctantly, “Tanaka left money for Mercedes. A couple hundred thousand dollars.”
“Mercedes!” Emma exclaimed. “You think she killed Jimmy Tanaka for the money?”
“No, I don’t think that at all. I’m just telling you what Donnie told me. Here’s the list of all of his beneficiaries.”
I handed Emma the magazine.
“Mercedes is so nice!” she exclaimed as she scanned the list of Jimmy Tanaka’s bequests. “Remember that time you brought us down to the Cloudforest for brunch? She wouldn’t even let us pay!”
“I thought you didn’t like the goat stew. You said it was like eating meat with body odor.”
“Yah, but it was still nice of her to invite all of us.”
“She just told me she slaughters the goats right there at the Cloudforest,” I said.
“Didn’t you know that?”
“No! I always thought of the Cloudforest as a charming bed and breakfast, not some kind of blood-soaked goat abattoir.”
“So you think Mercedes needs the money?” Emma asked.
“I know she likes to ‘go Vegas’ a few times a year. I wonder how the Cloudforest’s cash flow is these days.” I felt traitorous even saying that out loud.
“Maybe you should look into it,” Emma said. “Just to rule Mercedes out. Hey, can I keep this magazine? I already threw mine away. I didn’t realize they had an article about the biology department.”
“Be my guest,” I said. “I was just using it for scratch paper.”
Margaret Adams made one of her frequent visits to my office later that day. After we went over her draft assignment several times and she was satisfied that she was on track to get an A, I decided to work the Mercedes question into the conversation.
“Margaret,” I said, “I have to tell you how much I appreciate your contributions to the classroom discussion. You come prepared, and it definitely shows.”
“Thanks, Dr. Barda! I really enjoy the class.”
“This must be a busy semester for you. The drive down to the Cloudforest takes, what is it, forty minutes? Each way?”
“When there isn’t traffic. It can be an hour and a half if I start out at the wrong time.”
“Mercedes tells me you’re doing very well,” I said. “It sounds like you’re learning all aspects of the business.”
“Oh, Mercedes is great! I’m learning so much more with this internship than I could in any classroom. No offense to the professors, of course.”
“No, I understand,” I said. “So how is business? Lots of guests? Good cash flow?”
“The Cloudforest is doing so well!” she said. Her straight hair popped out from behind her ear; she tucked it back into place. “We have purification ceremonies booked every week through February, and the sweat lodge isn’t even built yet!”
“Who’s your internship advisor?” I asked.
“Professor Legazpi. I was so lucky to get him!”
Iker Legazpi is probably the sweetest man I’ve ever met. The only bad thing about Iker is that his sunshiny personality makes me feel like a black-hearted misanthrope by comparison.
“Well, I’ll make sure to tell him not to work you too hard,” I said. “I want you to concentrate on my management classes.”
“Oh, he’s a teddy bear!” She laughed. “But thanks, Dr. Barda.”
Not two minutes after Margaret left, I was in Iker Legazpi’s office.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
A putty-colored topcase sat on Iker Legazpi’s desk next to the exposed guts of his computer. Iker was pulling black fluff out of the fan vent with plump pink fingers.
“Hello, Molly!” He paused long enough to beam at me. “To what do I owe this honor?”
I could see why Margaret might describe Iker as a “teddy bear.” He had a smooth round face, a sunny demeanor, and side-parted brown hair so fastidiously groomed it looked injection-molded.
“I tried taping a coffee filter over mine,” I said, gesturing at the dismantled computer on the desk. “It didn’t help. The dust still gets in.”
“I find I do this often,” Iker said. “I have become quite skilled. Perhaps I should hire out my services.”
He gestured for me to sit on one of the two matching visitor chairs.
“Very nice,” I said. “Black and chrome. Looks like real office furniture!”
“Free super-saver shipping,” he twinkled and resumed working on the computer.
“So I was just talking
to Margaret Adams,” I said.
“Oh yes! Margaret!”
“She’s doing well this semester? I know the internship must take a lot of her time.”
“She is doing splendidly. Her grades speak by themselves.”
“That’s good to know,” I said. “I really wanted to find out a little more about the Cloudforest’s business model, if you wouldn’t mind. I was hoping to get an idea of how a real local business is surviving in this economy.”
Iker placed his elbows on the table and rested his pink cheeks in his hands. Wet stains spread under the arms of his dress shirt. This humid indignity did not seem to affect his cheer.
“The Cloudforest is very beloved,” he said. “It has many raving reviews. Margaret tells me that in the recent months it has plummeted to the top of the travel sites.”
Iker gestured expansively, which sent the screwdriver rolling off his desk. I caught it before it hit the ground and handed it back to him.
“Listen, Iker, I know how important cash flow is, especially for a small business. Can you tell me how they’re doing with that?”
I worried that I had pushed my inquiry too far, but Iker obliged me with a thorough description of the Cloudforest’s financial position. Occupancy rates were high, and their added services (sessions in the crystal bed, half-hour blocks in the meditation chapel, sweat lodge ceremonies) provided extra revenue for very little variable cost. Their social media presence was solid. The Cloudforest’s organic garden was tended by unpaid lodgers, which helped contain costs.
“Mercedes gets people to work for nothing?” I asked.
“Young people work in exchange for room and board,” Iker said. “The Cloudforest is only one of the available destinations, and it is a very popular one.”
“Does she actually get people to sign up?”
“Oh, yes indeed. One can stay in the most beautiful places in the world, for very little money. Hardly more than the cost of their airfare, in many cases. They meet other like-minded young people.”
“Okay, I can see that. And Mercedes pays herself a regular salary?”
