Mike Befeler Paul Jacobson Geezer-lit Mystery Series E-Book Box Set: Retirement Homes Are Murder, Living with Your Kids Is Murder, Senior Moments Are Murder, Cruising in Your Eighties Is Murder

by Mike Befeler

  My stomach tightened again. On the next wave, I turned my head back and forth. Where were the lights? There. Off to the right. I corrected my course and kept kicking.

  My legs were tired. Would something suddenly grab them from the depth of the ocean and drag me under?

  I couldn’t think of a worse way to die. I didn’t want to drown.

  Got to get to shore. How much farther? Would I last?

  The aroma of steak filled my nostrils. I was hungry. Was this coming from a backyard barbecue that was close ahead? I sniffed again. Now only the smell of salt water.

  Keep kicking.

  What if the current carried me to either side of Lanikai Beach and I reached shore where it was rocky? What if the waves dashed me into the rocks? What if my legs gave out?

  I wanted out of this damn ocean.

  Kick.

  How much longer? Why did I do this? Was this worth dying for?

  Come on you old fossil. You don’t have much time left, anyway. You need to keep kicking and use those old legs. They aren’t good for much else anyway, so you might as well get to the beach and nail Harrison.

  If I were just able to reach shore. How much farther?

  Another wave and I popped up briefly, saw the lights ahead. Crap. So far still to go. Kick.

  What else was in the water with me? What else wanted to get me? Was there a shark circling, waiting to strike?

  Had to think positive. Had to take my mind off my fears. Count ten kicks. One, two, three . . . ten.

  Now what?

  Count again.

  A wave caught me unaware and water spilled over my head. I came up, spitting water out. Keep your mouth closed! I expelled more salty water.

  My hands were cramping. Couldn’t lose hold of the foam board, whatever I did.

  What if it were torn out of my grip? I’d be stuck out in the darkness. I’d never make it. Would I make it even if I kept holding the board?

  I imagined something brushing against my leg. The hair on my head would have stuck straight up except for being waterlogged. I shivered. Maybe I was developing hypothermia. Would my muscles quit? Would I fall into a coma and slip into the depths?

  I was in warm Hawaiian waters.

  Get a grip.

  I had run all the possibilities through my defective mind: sharks, other fish out to get me, current carrying me away, losing my foam board, cramping, passing out.

  Maybe I’d be hit by a meteorite. Damn. Maybe I’d even make it to shore.

  On the next crest, I peered ahead. Lights still there. Maybe even closer. I could do this!

  Then my right calf seized up in a cramp. I stopped kicking and my feet immediately sank. I reached down with my right hand to massage my calf.

  A wave hit me and my left hand slipped off the foam board.

  My chest tightened. I started thrashing.

  Where was the board?

  Another wave surged by and in the dim light I saw the reflection of white three feet away.

  I kicked and threw my arms toward it.

  Seizing the board, I brought it under my chin like the lifeline it was.

  Don’t do anything stupid!

  My cramp had turned into pain. I gritted my teeth.

  Keep kicking, you old fool.

  Would I make it? People swam out here all the time. I remembered years ago, sitting on the beach in the early morning after the sun had peaked above the horizon, watching a person in a bathing cap stroking along the shoreline some fifty yards out.

  Yeah. But that person was a good swimmer with consistent, strong strokes—like a machine. And it was daylight. Here I was in the dark, flailing, inefficient—a sinking machine.

  Keep kicking.

  On the next wave, the lights looked a little closer. Was there a chance I’d make it?

  Then my leg cramped up again.

  Uh oh.

  I moved my foot around in a circle trying to shake the cramp loose. I didn’t dare let go of the board again.

  My leg felt a little better. Then my side started to ache. I tried to stretch. Ouch. I felt a twinge in my neck. The old body was protesting.

  Keep kicking no matter what.

  I felt something brush against my arm. I jerked to the side, my heart pounding. Just some seaweed.

  How much longer?

  I could actually see a faint outline of the beach ahead.

  Just needed to be like Peter Pan. Think happy thoughts.

  There! I could make out a boat up on the sand. How shallow was the water below me? Could I touch? I stopped kicking and let my feet sink.

  Nope. Not shallow enough.

  I resumed my sporadic kicking. One more wave pushed me. I tried again. There. My feet were on sand and I could walk with my head out of the water.

  I stumbled forward. I pictured emerging from the ocean like a Japanese horror movie monster with baby sharks and moray eels attached to my clothes.

  I staggered up the beach and collapsed on the sand.

  So tired. . . .

  Chapter 27

  My eyes popped open. I had dozed off. Then, faint memories came back to me. I had been kidnapped. Meyer was still stuck on Mokulua. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. It was fortunate that Marion and I had been together last night or my defective brain would have been zotto. As it was, things were woozy enough.

  The phone. I needed to call Detective Saito. I extracted the still-dry phone from the Ziploc bag and dialed 9-1-1.

  “My name is Paul Jacobson and I’ve escaped from a kidnapping,” I said. “I’m lying on Lanikai Beach. Please get word to Detective Saito. Tell him Harrison Young murdered Marshall Tiegan and kidnapped me. Also, my companion is still on Mokulua. . . .”

  “No, I am not drunk, just exhausted from paddling to shore. Call Detective Saito.”

  After I put the phone down, I lay on my back and looked up at the stars. A wisp of cloud momentarily blocked part of my view, then blew past.

  I couldn’t move. My legs ached and when I tried to lift them, they felt like they were trapped under logs. The sand, still warm from the day, cushioned my sore body.

  Some time later, I heard footsteps and turned my head to see a dark shape emerging from the shadows and heading toward me. For a moment my mind played tricks on me. I imagined Harrison Young returning, but at closer range, I saw a uniformed police officer.

  “You call 9-1-1?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’m the one.”

  “Are you injured?”

  “Just tired. You need to get a boat out to Mokulua. My friend Meyer needs to be rescued.”

  “Is he injured?”

  “Hurt his shoulder, and he’s out there all alone!”

  The cop held his hand up. “Calm down. Let’s go to my squad car and you can make a statement.”

  I couldn’t stand on my own. He helped me to my feet, and I staggered until I could get my wheels going. Still limping, I followed him along the sand and through the narrow public right-of-way between a brick wall and a wire fence, leading to the road. After I recounted the events, I said, “Has Detective Saito been informed?”

  “Yes. He’s asked me to bring you in to the station house.”

  “Fine. Is someone going to get Meyer?”

  “A police boat has been dispatched from the Kaneohe yacht harbor.”

  “That seems like a long way to go,” I said.

  “It’s the closest place a boat is kept.”

  * * * * *

  The policeman drove to the Kaneohe police station, and I was led to a room. “Please wait here, Mr. Jacobson,” he said.

  After he closed the door, I stared at the blank walls for a few minutes. I closed my eyes but was too tense to fall asleep. Weird images of sharks swimming in the Kina Nani pool swirled in my head. Then someone shook my shoulder.

  “Mr. Jacobson?”

  I blinked.

  “Ah, Detective Saito,” I said to the short, stocky man who had awakened me. “For once I’m happy to see you.”


  “I thought you couldn’t remember who I was?”

  “I can’t. But you’re wearing a nameplate today.”

  He looked down at his chest, then back up at me, and smiled. “I understand you’ve had quite a night.”

  “You bet your sweet ass. Have you arrested Harrison Young yet?”

  “Hold on. Let’s go through everything that happened.”

  “It’s real simple. Meyer Ohana and I visited Harrison—”

  “And why were you going to see him?”

  “We found out he had a Swiss stamp collection to sell.”

  “You should have informed me.”

  “Well, Detective, I would have, but you never seem to believe anything I say.”

  He shrugged. “Go on.”

  “Did you get a message from Henry Palmer that Meyer and I were visiting Harrison Young?”

  “I received a strange telephone call. To paraphrase, ‘If you want to find two idiots trying to get themselves killed, go to Harrison Young’s apartment in Windward Passage.’”

  “Nice to know we had such solid backup,” I said. “Did you ever go over there?”

  “I was in the middle of another investigation on the far end of Kaneohe. By the time I arrived at Mr. Young’s apartment, there was no one there.”

  “Meyer and I suffered through all of this because you were busy?”

  “That’s the risk of amateur sleuthing. You could have informed me ahead of time.”

  “Would you have believed me?”

  “I don’t know.” He gave me a half-smile and opened his hands. “Guess it was kind of a Catch-22. Now, tell me about Mr. Young.”

  “Harrison kidnapped Meyer and me. The scumbag was Tiegan’s lawyer, killed Tiegan, and stole the stamp collection.” I reviewed our night’s activities.

  “So you drove around with an expired driver’s license,” Saito said.

  “Give me a break. I was being kidnapped.”

  “Probably not worth adding to your list of suspected crimes.” Saito smiled.

  “Thanks for being so understanding, Detective. Have you rescued Meyer yet?”

  “Yes. He’s on his way here. He had a short stop at the hospital, where his shoulder was taken care of.”

  “Good. He can independently confirm everything I’ve said.”

  “We’ll see if your story checks out,” Saito said. “And your memory problem?”

  “Once in awhile my memory gets jump-started, but most days it’s as solid as yogurt. Meyer also has a tape recorder. If the tape can be dried out, you’ll have some interesting statements from Harrison.”

  “You’re not off the hook yet, Mr. Jacobson. I’ll need you to stay here until I’ve talked to Mr. Ohana.”

  “All right,” I said. “Arrest Harrison Young before he destroys any evidence.”

  “In due course.”

  “Harrison’s planning to leave for the mainland in the morning.”

  “You’re a wealth of information.”

  “Just trying to help, Detective.”

  After he left, I closed my eyes again, but stayed awake.

  * * * * *

  I heard a sound and opened my eyes. Detective Saito shut the door and sat down across the table from me.

  “Mr. Ohana is back safely, and I’ve had a chance to talk to him,” Saito said. “There are a few more things I need to ask you.”

  “Fire away,” I said.

  “Describe the car Mr. Young kidnapped you in.”

  “It’s a gold Lexus. Front passenger side smells like pee.”

  Detective Saito actually smiled. “Mr. Jacobson, for a man with a poor memory, you remember the most interesting things.”

  I shrugged. “I do what I can.”

  “Mr. Ohana gave us the tape player, and we’ve been able to listen to the tape.”

  “It worked! I taped our encounter with the illustrious Harrison Young. He confessed to bumping off Marshall Tiegan.”

  “Sound’s not all that clear in spots, but we could decipher the gist of what he said.”

  “Did you find the stamp collection?”

  “A search warrant is being issued. We’ll check his place for it.”

  “Fiddle fart,” I said. “What you have to do around this place to get criminals off the street.”

  “Cheer up. You’re not my prime suspect anymore.”

  “Great. I’ll feel a lot better when you have Harrison behind bars.”

  “I also wanted to let you know that we arrested Mr. Maurice ‘Moki’ Iwana two hours after he left Mr. Ohana’s apartment.”

  “Good work,” I said.

  “He broke down and confessed to stealing money from the cash box in the Kina Nani business office, as well.”

  “Imagine that.”

  Saito stared at me and laughed. “You old fraud.”

  “Just trying to do my part to make Kina Nani a safer place to live.”

  “And there’s another question he cleared up,” Saito said.

  “He didn’t admit stealing some of my brain cells, did he?”

  “No, but he confessed that he had been breaking into the storage lockers in his off-hours. Seems he raided stuff that had been stored there, figuring most people never claimed items before they died anyway. That day you found him unconscious on the floor, he must have been breaking into a storage bin, fallen, and hit his head.”

  “There you are, Detective. I knew my golf swing wasn’t good enough to knock him out. I hate to be rude, but I’m kind of tired. Any chance I could get a lift back to my humble abode for a little shut-eye?”

  “Sure. I’ll have an officer take both you and Mr. Ohana back.”

  A baby-faced policeman gave us a ride back to our chateau.

  Meyer had his arm in a sling.

  “All the girls back at Kina Nani will fuss over you with that war wound,” I said.

  “I’m ready for a calm few days,” Meyer said.

  “Not you. You’ll be up pacing the hallways tomorrow.”

  Meyer put his good hand on my shoulder. “That was a pretty amazing thing you did, Paul, as much as you hate the ocean to swim across to Lanikai Beach at night.”

  “My once-in-a-lifetime experience. I’ll never do that again.”

  “I would have understood if you waited until someone came to rescue us,” Meyer said.

  “But Harrison might have returned first, and we needed to get word back to Saito.”

  “Still, that was really something. You managed to overcome your fear.”

  “Nothing’s changed. I’m sure I’ll have nightmares, but I won’t remember the details after a good night’s sleep or two.”

  He punched my arm. “That’s the advantage of your rotten memory. You don’t have to relive painful situations.”

  “I’ll write it up in my journal and be able to read it later as if it happened to someone else. Just don’t expect that I’ll swim with you and your lady friends in your water aerobics class.”

  “And I thought you were going to become the instructor,” Meyer said.

  I looked out the window at a used car lot as we zipped along Kamehameha Highway.

  “Could you turn on the siren?” I asked the driver.

  He gave me a brief sideward glance that communicated: “Are you nuts?”

  “Just kidding,” I said.

  “Quite a night,” Meyer said.

  “It goes to show that my dislike of lawyers was justified, present company excepted.”

  “We’ve definitely had our experience escaping all types of sharks,” Meyer said with a twinkle in his eyes.

  “Yeah. Not bad for two old fogies.”

  “We escaped from the bad guy and we’re no worse for wear, except for my shoulder. I know you hate the ocean, but I may never go near it again either.”

  “Cheer up,” I said. “You won’t be around that long, anyway.”

  He smiled. “Speak for yourself. I’m planning to live to be a hundred and ten.”

  “Right. Pacing around
blind and pissing in your pants. Give me a break.”

  Inside my apartment, I found my second wind, so I wrote in my journal.

  Later I tossed and turned, but finally zonked out at daybreak.

  When I awoke I had a vague memory of an island. It felt like a dream until I read my journal. I spent a few minutes matching the hazy memories with the written account. Yup, it had all happened. By concentrating, I could even bring up a faint image of Harrison Young, scar on his cheek, dark intense eyes.

  Not someone I wanted to encounter again.

  Just then the phone rang.

  “This is Detective Saito,” the voice on the other end of the line said.

  “Hello, Detective. I was reading what happened to me yesterday.”

  “I need to warn you. Harrison Young wasn’t in his apartment. We’ve been unable to find any sign of him, his car, or the stamp collection.”

  “So why call me?”

  “There was an article in this morning’s newspaper reporting Meyer Ohana’s rescue from the Mokulua islands. An overeager reporter on the police beat managed to get some of the information and wrote it up.”

  “So?”

  “When we searched Young’s condo, a newspaper lying on his table was open to that page,” Saito said. “I called Mr. Ohana, but there was no answer. I’ve sent an officer over to Kina Nani. In the meantime, don’t let anyone into your apartment.”

  Chapter 28

  As I looked up Meyer’s apartment number in the Kina Nani directory, I felt a gnawing concern in my gut.

  In front of his apartment, I heard a voice coming through the louvers above his door. I turned the handle and slowly opened the door.

  A voice from around the corner and out of view said, “And what did you tell the police?”

  A gasping voice said, “I told the police that I had been kidnapped.”

  I took a step forward.

  A man with his back to me was pointing a gun at a white-bearded guy lying on the floor.

  Within my reach stood a colorful vase on a high three-legged table. I quietly picked it up, raised it above my head, and brought it crashing down onto the head of the man with the gun. The vase shattered into a thousand pieces. Gray powder billowed around the room.

  Meyer gasped, “Not the vase.”

  The man with the gun slumped forward and collapsed onto the rug.