by Susan Harper
“You look like a circus clown,” Pauline said. “You fall asleep on the beach or something?”
“Yes, that is what happened exactly,” Kendell moaned. “My whole front side is bright red, and my back is so white, it glows.”
Pauline snorted. “You poor girl. You would never make it in Georgia, would you?”
“I prefer New York and it’s freezing cold winters and cool summers,” Kendell said. “Direct sunlight doesn’t really like me.”
Pauline laughed, shaking her head. “Baking soda,” she said. “Use baking soda. Trust me.”
“Baking soda, huh? One of those old lady secret remedies?”
“Something like that,” Pauline said, laughing.
The two of them enjoyed their dinner, and Kendell listened to Pauline as she went over the next day’s itinerary. It was going to be a fun, busy day, so Kendell made sure to go to bed early that night to get ready for it.
7
The following morning, Kendell woke up to the sound of Dot barking outside her door. It was a sound that she was rapidly becoming used to. Dot was becoming more and more familiar with Kendell, so if she ever needed attention, the little pooch was never afraid to let Kendell know if Pauline was too preoccupied. She threw on some clothes before opening the door, only to have the little dog come sprinting into her bedroom and hop onto the bed. The little white ball of fluff tilted her head ever so slightly, tongue hanging out of her mouth and tail wagging a million miles an hour. “Well, good morning, Dot,” Kendell said, smirking. The little thing was really adorable when she wanted to be. She was friendly, but also calm enough for an old woman like Pauline to handle fairly well.
“Sorry!” she heard Pauline call from across their room. Kendell picked the little dog up and dipped out into the main room of the suite, where she saw Pauline, bag over her shoulder and wearing giant bug-eyed sunglasses. The woman looked like she was ready to go, but had a slight scowl as she eyed Dot in Kendell’s arms.
“She got away from you?” Kendell asked, petting the little dog between her ears. She could feel its tail wagging against her side. This little ball of fur is certainly in a good mood this morning, Kendell thought as the little thing licked her elbow.
“I was in the shower,” Pauline grumbled. “I left my bedroom door open. Sorry, Kendell. Did she wake you up?”
“It’s okay,” Kendell said, putting the dog down. Dot scurried over to Pauline, tail wagging, and stood up on her hind legs, begging.
“I don’t have anything for you, but the buffet downstairs does!” Pauline said, putting her purse carrier down. Dot climbed right in, and Pauline picked it up and held it swaying at her side. “Brandon headed out this morning to go be with his brother. He sounds like he is really worried about Nick.”
“Understandable,” Kendell said. “I can’t imagine going through something like this. Nick seemed to be so in love. It’s probably a good thing that Brandon and the rest of the family were down here when it happened so that they can be with him. He definitely could use the support right now, I’m sure. So, Pauline, what’s first on our itinerary today? I always look forward to whatever it is you have planned. You know how to have a good vacation.”
Pauline beamed, seeming quite proud that Kendell enjoyed her vacation planning. The woman seemed to always have something fun up her sleeve, and always planned some sort of local experience—a step away from something too touristy. If she didn’t have a local experience planned, she would always find one, like she had done with the luau. In London, Pauline had taken Kendell to see Macbeth at the historical Globe Theater, and Pauline and Lil had visited that village in Kenya. Yes, Pauline certainly always had something exciting up her sleeve. “I have booked us an aerial tour of the islands, and I am planning on going to the Pearl Harbor memorial as well,” Pauline said. “But, we have some time this morning first. I say we hit up the complimentary breakfast buffet and then go back to the scene of the crime where Makani was killed. See if there is anything suspicious.”
“We probably should have done that the day she was killed,” Kendell said. “By now, the police will have picked over everything or surfers would have stepped on any evidence…or even the tide could have swept everything out. Do you really think we will find anything useful at this point? I imagine everything’s gone.”
“True, but I think it’s worth the effort. You really never know. We might just find something to help the police crack this case wide open. Many eyes make a search seem smaller, so they say,” Pauline said. “Oh, and I called Ikaika this morning. Bane is still missing. No one has heard from him since that night at the luau.”
“He is starting to look more and more suspicious,” Kendell said. “Okay, we’ll head back to the scene of the crime. You never know, we might actually find something.”
The two women headed downstairs for breakfast. They dined on waffles, eggs, and bacon before heading out. They called for a cab to take them there, and Pauline asked the driver to wait for them. The man grunted slightly, but he perked up after Pauline told him she’d throw in a good tip. Kendell walked alongside Pauline as they crossed through the gravel parking lot and through the thick trees before coming out onto the private, local surfers only beach.
They could see several surfers out in the water, all hoping to catch a decent wave, but the water was fairly calm this morning. So, they were all just relaxing on their boards and cutting up in the water with one another. Kendell looked out across the sandy beach; the sand was smooth. Some children were playing in the shallow pool, occasionally waving at a parent sitting on a board out in the water.
“It’s like nothing happened here,” Kendell said sadly. She knew the news had traveled faster in some circles than in others, and she wondered if those surfers out on the water even knew.
Pauline tapped her shoulder, and Kendell turned to see what Pauline was trying to get her attention for. A young man was walking out toward the edge of the beach from the parking lot. He was stumbling a bit, and he knelt down near the trees. “Is that Mikey?” Kendell asked quietly. Why would Mikey, the homeless man Makani had been helping, be at this beach? It was a surfer only beach, and he was definitely not a surfer.
“That’s suspicious,” Pauline said, and the two of them stood back to watch for a moment. He remained kneeling on the ground, perhaps praying, before standing and hurrying back to the parking lot. The man was certainly in a hurry once he stood up, almost like he didn’t want to be seen out on that beach. Something was definitely up, Kendell decided, and Pauline seemed to agree. Had he been hiding something in the sand? Evidence, perhaps?
The two women scurried over to where he had been knelt down, and they discovered that a little memorial had been set up for Makani. Many people had been laying out flowers, leis, little toy surfboards, cards, and a few other items in her memory. There was even a magazine, the one Nick had mentioned Makani was in, set up against a rock. Kendell picked up a card that had yet to be covered in sand, an obvious indicator that it had not been sitting there for too long. It was a thank-you card from Mikey. You saved me, he had written in it, and Kendell felt a ping in her stomach. “Poor Mikey,” Kendell said. “Sounds like Makani’s death has really affected him. I doubt Makani’s killer would write something heartfelt like that to leave at her memorial.”
“Looks that way,” Pauline said. “Although, it could be because of guilt.”
“True,” Kendell said, nodding. “Let me run and see if I can catch up to Mikey.”
“Go right ahead. I’ll wait for you here. I’m too slow; there’s no way I could catch up having to walk through those trees,” she said, and Kendell watched as the old woman found herself a seat against one of the nearby stones some of the memorial items were propped up against. The woman wiped her brow and stretched her back, putting Dot’s carrier down. The little dog hopped out of the carrier and used the opportunity to stretch her legs, running around in the sand and taking a bathroom break.
Kendell nodded and hurried thr
ough the tree line toward the gravel parking lot, scanning the area for Mikey, but he seemed to have disappeared completely. The cab driver was sitting in the driver’s seat of his car, half-asleep. Kendell assumed he hadn’t seen Mikey. Deciding he was probably long gone, but making a mental note that Mikey was probably someone they should talk to soon, Kendell headed back to the beach where Pauline was waiting. She noticed Pauline snapping a picture of the memorial with her phone.
“What are you doing?” Kendell asked.
“Evidence,” Pauline said. “Recognize that?”
Kendell followed the direction of Pauline’s finger; sitting amongst the large collection of memorial items was an ugly carnival teddy bear. She recognized it instantly as the bear from the picture of Makani and Bane that Ikaika had behind his bar on the beach. “Looks like the breakup had been pretty rough,” Kendell said, pointing out that the teddy bear’s head had been ripped off and that someone had used duct tape to put it back on; it looked like the little bear had a neck brace on. In addition to that, its button eyes had been ripped clear off its face. She wondered what had happened to it, although she could make a few guesses. “Do you think Bane put that here?” Kendell asked Pauline.
“Who else?” Pauline asked, laughing slightly at the zombie-esc teddy bear. “And, considering the fact that Bane has been missing in action, how did he even know about Makani?”
“Unless he was the one who killed her and then decided to bail,” Kendell said, shaking her head. “I think we might be closing in on our perp. But, same question, why leave the teddy bear if you’re the one who killed her?”
“Same answer as with Mikey—guilt, or to cover your tracks and make it seem like you’re innocent. I too think we might be zeroing in on Bane,” Pauline said. “He has the motive. And he was a big fella. He could definitely have killed her easily with any sort of blunt weapon.”
“And since he was at the luau, he probably heard her talking about wanting to take an early morning surf,” Kendell said.
“And,” Pauline added, “since they had dated, he probably would have known that this was her go-to place for a morning surf. She wouldn’t have been concerned if he had approached her since she knew him, either, because it didn’t seem like she had fought back. He could have taken her by surprise too, though. Either way, Bane has motive from a number of different angles. The competition and the breakup.”
“We need to find Bane,” Kendell said, clapping her hands together like a big decision had been made final. She knew then that they did not really have any evidence against him, but he was most certainly looking guilty. Her hope was to talk to him—to see whether or not he could talk his way out of the suspicious hole he was currently buried in.
“Agreed,” Pauline said. “But not today. We have a schedule to keep, and we are on vacation, after all! So, let’s press pause on the whole super sleuth thing for a moment, dear. I’m ready for a little bit of adventure!”
Kendell smiled and followed Pauline back toward the parking lot. As promised, Pauline tipped the driver generously for waiting, and the man thanked her profusely. Kendell was excited for this aerial tour that Pauline had planned for them. Hawaii was simply beautiful; the sea tour with Johnny had been fun, but she imagined she would get a very good look at this lovely place from the skies. Plus, there probably would not be any sharks to worry about that far up and away from the ocean. She’d had her taste of seafaring adventures for the time being.
The vehicle drove along several long, winding roads, and Kendell truly enjoyed the scenic route they were taking. “This place is just beautiful,” she said as she gazed out the window. She had seen more of the world in these past few days with Pauline than she had in her five years working at the airlines. She really felt like it was such a shame that she had never bothered using her vacation days to explore all the amazing places she had been. She had always just worked. Get on a plane, stop off at the airport for dinner, take a flight home—all just working. Nonstop shifts. Go home just to sleep and get back up the next day to do it again. Kendell felt so relieved and so incredibly refreshed to just be out on an adventure, even if it was with a woman she had only met about a week before.
“Oh, absolutely,” Pauline said, then sighed. “This was probably the one place I think my husband would have liked to have gone with me. He used to talk about taking me all the time. The sandy beaches, the volcanos, the dancing, the people! He would daydream about it a lot, but we just never made it. I’m glad we’re finally here together to experience.”
“We?” Kendell asked.
“Oh, yes, dear,” Pauline said. “We.”
8
“I’m sorry, Pauline, but what do you mean by we?” Kendell asked hesitantly. Pauline was gazing out the window, her doggy carrier squished between the two of them in the backseat with Dot hanging her head out, panting.
“Oh, hold on, I’ll show you,” Pauline said, reaching for her beach bag.
“Show me what?” Kendell asked as Pauline continued digging through what was essentially a Mary Poppins bag of a random assortment you may or may not need on a beach.
The old woman whipped out what looked suspiciously like an urn, and it took Kendell all of ten seconds to realize that was indeed what she was looking at. An urn. “Oh, Pauline! Have you had that with you this entire trip?”
“Well, yeah,” she said, patting the top of the urn. “Sprinkled a tiny bit of him in the Globe Theater, and I tossed some down while Lil and I were in that native village in Nairobi too. But this is where I really wanted to bring him to spread the ashes. Hawaii. He always wanted to go here.”
“So…you’ve been toting him around in your bags and purses?” Kendell asked.
“Oh, heavens no!” Pauline exclaimed. “Only when we went where I wanted to put his ashes, sweetheart.”
“Wait, I thought you and Lil came across that village by accident?”
“Yes, well, maybe it was a little more intentional than I let on,” Pauline said.
“Pauline!” Kendell cried. “You and Lil were literally running from authorities, and you decided to make a pit stop at a native village?”
“So that I could spread some of my late husband’s ashes, yes,” Pauline said. “We always talked about seeing the world together. I wanted him to come with me. Although, after today, I won’t be needing this urn anymore.”
“You’re planning to spread your husband’s ashes while we’re on the aerial tour?” Kendell asked.
“That’s the plan,” Pauline said. “They’re going to take us all over the place. I want him to just spread all over Hawaii.”
I suppose with active volcanos, if it starts raining down ash, people won’t suspect anything, Kendell thought, cringing slightly. “Okay, Pauline, well, if that’s what you want to do, I’ll support you one hundred percent.”
“Thank you, dear,” Pauline said, gently tapping the top of the urn. As they drove up a long, winding hill, Pauline went ahead and tucked the urn back into her bag. They drove through some tropical forests, a path for vehicles having been cleared up what looked like a mountainside, until they reached a small parking lot overlooking some incredible scenery of beaches and tropical forests. Pauline paid the driver, and she and Kendell hurried out of the vehicle.
They were met by a friendly man coming out of a small building that acted as the office for the aerial rides. There were four helicopters seated nearby on various landing pads. Looking down the mountainside from the safe side of the protective wooden gates, Kendell felt her stomach drop. “Oh, wow, we’re really high up. I didn’t even realize how high up we had driven,” she said anxiously.
“Yes, it was all those trees,” Pauline said. “They blocked our view for the second half up the mountainside.”
“This is actually a volcano,” the man who had approached them said.
“Is it active?” Kendell asked.
“No, there are only three active volcanos in Hawaii, but there are a few so-called hills that used to be v
olcanos spread all throughout the islands,” the man said. “This is just one of them.”
“We should check out a volcano later,” Pauline said.
“You have already had me do shark diving and now you’ve got me jumping into a helicopter. Maybe we do a volcano tour another day?” Kendell suggested.
“I’ve spread out the terror,” Pauline teased. “One adrenaline challenge a day is good, I suppose.”
“You two went shark diving?” the man asked. He laughed and extended his hand. “You must be Miss Pauline? We spoke on the phone. My name’s Danny, and I’ll be your pilot today. Let’s get inside first to fill out the necessary paperwork, and then we can begin your tour!”
“Sounds wonderful!” Pauline said, and the two of them followed the man inside.
They sat in a little makeshift lobby, and Kendell had to admit that the rickety benches, the peeled paint, and the general dust made her nervous. “So, how long have you been flying?” Kendell asked, hoping this was a professional operation that would be taking her to the skies.
“Oh, my whole life,” the man said. “My grandfather started this company. He taught my dad how to fly, and my dad taught me and my siblings. I got my pilot’s license before I got my driver’s license. You’re in safe hands, ma’am, and we get a lot of business here. Our helicopters are well-maintained and top of the line. You won’t be flying in what my grandfather flew or anything like that.”
Kendell breathed a sigh of relief. She glanced around the room, enjoying some of the old photographs of fliers all over Hawaii, some of which were in black and white. “Is that your grandfather?” Kendell asked, pointing to an old photo of a pilot standing near an ancient-looking chopper.
“That would be him,” Danny said. “Now, I see you two ordered the deluxe package. You realize you’ll be up in the air for over an hour, ma’am? I know for some of our older patrons that gets to be a little rough on their backs?”
