Isle Be Seeing You (Islands of Aloha Mystery Book 9)

by JoAnn Bassett

  I flashed him a quick smile but kept quiet.

  “So, what you got there?”

  “Just a client contract. They need it right away.”

  “Why don’t you email it?

  “It’s signed in blue ink. Besides, I don’t have a scanner at my place.”

  He pondered my reply for a few seconds. “You know, you can jus’ take a pic with your phone and send it. Works the same.”

  In that moment I wished I’d thought of that. If word got out about the note, Doug’s control over its contents would be history.

  “Say, Timo, what’s this I hear about your mom winning that banana bread contest?” Luckily, I remembered a photo I’d seen in the Maui News of his generously-proportioned mother beaming as she held a brick-size banana bread with a ribbon stuck to it.

  “Oh yeah. Tha’ was ages ago. For Mom’s Day, eh? She was way proud of dat. Her sister not talk to her since.”

  I chuckled. “Sounds like a little sibling rivalry.”

  “Nuthin’ little ‘bout it. You hear ‘bout that show, ‘Cake Wars’? Well, in our ‘ohana we got ‘Banana Bread Wars.’ Those two been talkin’ trash for years.”

  I patted his beefy arm and was rewarded with a wide smile.

  “See ya around,” he said. He shuffled back to the candy and cookie aisle, leaving me free to resume my secretarial duties.

  “Hey, girl. I didn’t see you come in.” Farrah had sneaked up behind me.

  I whirled around, slamming the lid on the copier.

  “Hey, take it easy on the gear, girl. The repair dude was jus’ out here.”

  “Is it broken?”

  “Wasn’t a minute ago…” She reached over to lift the lid but I flattened my palm against it.

  “What’re you doin? I jus’ want to make sure it’s okay.”

  “It’s fine. I’m kind of in a hurry, Farrah.”

  “What’s the matter with you? You still got beef with me ‘cuz of the kahu thing? I already told you it’s my bad. I was in a tight place with Ono, eh.”

  “Sorry. I’m late for a meeting with James, Sifu Doug’s lawyer.”

  “Yeah, what’s happenin’ with that?”

  “Not much. He’s hoping I found something at the guan, but I’m afraid he’s going to be disappointed.”

  She scowled at the copier, then said, “Talkin’ about bummed out, how’d it go you’re your man Finn?”

  “It’s good.”

  “Fo’ real?”

  “Yeah. We’re good.”

  “What’d he say about asking Ono about a divorce lawyer?”

  “Ah, that. It was a misunderstanding. I guess a guy who works with Finn is having wife troubles.”

  “The guy live here on Maui? What’s his name?” Farrah’s got an equal opportunity gossip policy. Even if she’s barely heard of you, your personal life is fair game.

  “Finn didn’t say, but I don’t think it’s anybody we know.”

  “How you know that? I got a ton a’ people comin’ in day in and day out.” She looked perturbed.

  This is why I hate lying. It takes a lot of energy to keep the lie going, and I’m not very creative in coming up with believable stuff. Besides, James was probably already outside my door, expecting me to hand over the note that was trapped under the lid of the scanner.

  “Would you do me a favor? I haven’t had a thing to eat this morning and I’m starving. Would you mind grabbing me a mango yogurt while I finish up here? Like I said, I’m really late.”

  Farrah flashed me a “you owe me” look before heading back to the dairy case. I swiftly fed quarters into the machine and pushed the Copy button. After much grinding and whirring the machine spit out two pieces of paper which I snatched up, folded, and stuffed in my beach bag purse.

  I paid for my yogurt and went out the back door. Time for show and tell.

  ***

  Once I was back at my shop I pulled out my phone and took two fast snaps of the note before unlocking the front door. Sure enough, James was standing there with a surly look on his face.

  “Isn’t it bad enough you’re withholding evidence? Now you keep me waiting for nearly ten minutes. My time is valuable, you know. At my hourly rate you just burned through about fifty bucks.”

  I apologized and offered to make a fresh pot of coffee. He declined, taking a seat across from my desk.

  “This isn’t a social call, Ms. Moon.”

  I slid the creased suicide note across the desk and waited while he read it.

  He blew out a breath. “I’m speechless. And that’s not something we lawyers easily admit. How long have you had this in your possession?”

  “Not long.”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “I’d rather not. But I haven’t shared this with anyone but you and my husband.”

  “Your husband? Where does he figure in this?”

  “He doesn’t. But I needed to talk to a neutral party. And he’s about as neutral as they come.”

  “Please tell me he’s not a reporter or a cop.”

  “He’s not. He works for the government, in military intelligence.”

  James barked a staccato laugh. “An oxymoron if I ever heard one.”

  I didn’t join in his mirth. “He has a top secret clearance, and he just got home from working overseas messing with the cyber capabilities of our enemies. So laugh all you want. The guy’s an unsung hero as far as I’m concerned.”

  James pulled back his grin. “Yeah, well, bully for him. But that still doesn’t take away from the fact that you should’ve handed this over to me as soon as you found it. By the way, I’m assuming this came from that stash drawer Doug wanted you to clean out.”

  “It did.”

  James stood. “I need to get this in front of the judge. If Leilani committed suicide, they’ll have to release him.”

  I stood. “Whoa, not so fast. Don’t you think you should talk with Doug?”

  He glanced at the note, then at me. “Why? This is clearly a suicide note. It needs to be shared with the cops and the judge. As soon as this gets authenticated, it’ll be game over.”

  “But don’t you see the problem? Doug doesn’t want you to take it to the judge. He’s honoring her wish that no one learns she killed herself, especially her kids.”

  “Frankly, I don’t care what either one of them wants. This is a question of justice. If Leilani Kanekoa took her own life, there’s no way I’m going to sit back and let him take the fall. We’re talking a life sentence here, Pali. No hope of parole.”

  “I know. But it’s Doug’s life, not yours. What about attorney-client privilege?”

  “What about it? My brother isn’t thinking straight. I appreciate him wanting to go along with his dead wife’s request, but this is too much. Besides, if I don’t place this evidence before the court I’ll be guilty of obstruction of justice. That’s a fast road to disbarment.”

  “Look, all I’m asking is that you talk to Doug before you do anything.”

  He looked down. When he looked up again, he shook his head. “Sorry. No can do. Every minute I stall I dig the hole a little deeper. Pretty soon, there’ll be no way to crawl out.”

  “Just give me a day, James. Schedule a time for us to see Doug in jail and I’ll take it from there.”

  “Look, I know you mean well, but you’re way off base, Pali. I gotta go.” He started for the door.

  I crossed my arms. “James, do yourself a favor and don’t take that note to the judge.”

  He waved the note at me. “Sorry. There’s nothing you can say that will change my mind.”

  “I’m pretty sure there is.”

  He squinted at me like a dog waiting for his master to throw the Frisbee.

  I stepped between him and the door. “What you’ve got there will never be authenticated.”

  “Says you.”

  “No, says the state-of-the-art color copier it came out of.”

  CHAPTER 27

  James stomped ou
t in a whirl of fury. Before his departure he spent a few minutes threatening, then cajoling, me to hand over the original note but I stood fast. At one point I was a bit concerned he was about to resort to physical violence, but one of the upsides of having a black belt in martial arts is I’m supremely confident I can take almost anyone. As long as they don’t have a weapon. If they’re armed, my confidence shrinks to simply betting I’ll be able to escape.

  I went out back and hopped in the Mini. Next stop, Walmart. I’m not a loyal Walmart customer since I have mixed feelings about the big box behemoth they built in Kahului. On one hand, the store has brought low prices for thousands of things that were either unavailable or ridiculously expensive in our little corner of the world. On the other hand, it’s put more than a few local retail outlets out of business. Thus, I pick and choose what I will and will not purchase there.

  One thing nearly every local buys at Walmart is prescriptions. The prices are so much lower than anywhere else on the island it’s laughable. I don’t take a lot of pills besides a few supplements now and then, but when Farrah was pregnant with the twins she told me her prenatal vitamins were half the cost at the big retailer compared to the drugstores in Makawao or Wailuku.

  I got in line at the Walmart pharmacy drop off window and waited while the woman in front of me tried to wheedle a refill on painkillers. There’s a six-foot “privacy space” between the customer being served and the next person in line, but six feet is simply not adequate when the customer is bellowing at the top of her lungs at the weary clerk perched behind the sliding glass window.

  “But I’m in pain! Can’t you see? My doctor told me if I came here you’d fix me up.”

  I thought that last part sounded suspiciously like a clean-cut tourist trying to coax a reluctant pakalolo dealer to sell him some weed, but I averted my eyes and kept my mouth shut. After all, I was in the “privacy space” and wasn’t supposed to have overheard any of it.

  The clerk finally handed the woman off to the pharmacist at the “consultation” window. She probably figured since his professional status meant he made five times what she did she’d let him earn it.

  I stepped up to the window. The clerk shot me a thin smile as if hoping I wouldn’t turn out to be another junkie trying to con her out of narcotics.

  “Aloha. I hope you can help me,” I began.

  The smile dimmed.

  I soldiered on. “I picked up a prescription here a couple of weeks ago and lost my receipt. I was wondering if I could get a copy.”

  She squinted as if trying to recall my face.

  “For insurance purposes,” I said. “If I don’t provide a receipt, they won’t pay me back for it.”

  She seemed to take that at face value. “What’s the name of the drug?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t recall. Besides, you’ve got to have a degree in chemistry to pronounce most of these things, right?”

  She appeared to be warming to my dilemma. “Okay, then what’s your name?”

  “Leilani Kanekoa.” I was about to provide Lani’s Pukalani address, but held back. Hopefully, the clerk wasn’t a big local news fan, but even casual watchers might recall the name if they’d heard anything about the murder in Pukalani.

  “Birthday?”

  I rattled off Lani’s birthday. It was easy to remember since it fell on the Fourth of July, and she and Sifu Doug were born the same year. The clerk typed the information in her computer, peering at the screen as if trying to find Waldo in a cartoon drawing of a crowd.

  “Oh, wow,” she said. “I can see why you’d want to put a claim in on this one.”

  I nodded in solidarity, even though I had no idea what she was referring to.

  Behind her, a dot-matrix printer began spitting out paper. “Hold on. I’m afraid it’s got to do the whole thing. It won’t let me just print a receipt.”

  I waited. After nearly half a minute, she gathered up the pages, tore them along the perforated edges and stapled them together. Then she folded the thick sheaf in half and slid it across the window ledge with a tepid smile.

  “Mahalo for shopping at Walmart,” she said. In a softer voice she added, “And God bless.”

  I thanked her and slipped the papers into my bag. I didn’t want to appear eager to peruse the documents since supposedly I already knew what they said.

  I speed-walked out of the store and didn’t allow myself to take a deep breath until I was in my car with the doors locked.

  ***

  My Walmart run had provided me with everything I needed to move forward. I went back to my shop and got to work on the computer. It took seconds to look up the name of the doctor on Lani’s prescription and his medical specialty. Another few seconds yielded the uses and side effects of the extremely expensive drug she’d been prescribed.

  Armed with this new information, the rest of the puzzle began to fall neatly in place. Now the question was what I should do about it.

  One of Sifu Doug’s favorite quotes was from Albert Einstein. “Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.” Doug was referring to our responsibility as trained fighters to not allow bullying or criminal acts to go unanswered. But how would he feel about this?

  My morning of snooping had left me with a pretty good idea what’d gone on in the Kanekoa’s garage a week earlier, including how and why it happened. I also knew Doug loved his wife in a way most women could only imagine. From the looks of things he was willing to lie and take the fall for her desperate final decision even beyond “’til death do us part.”

  I’d been taught to value truth above all else. And yet, now my sifu, the father of two young motherless kids, was facing the rest of his life in prison.

  CHAPTER 28

  Visiting an inmate at the Wailuku jail isn’t a simple walk-in process. Late in the day I called to make an appointment for Wednesday and was advised only family members and legal representatives were allowed in for the first thirty days or until an inmate fills out a visitation list. Then the clerk advised me that no, Douglas Kanekoa hadn’t made such a list.

  That left me with a dilemma. Should I call James and beg him to reinstate me as his paralegal? If I did, I’d have to tell him what I knew. The result would be disastrous. But I couldn’t move forward until I had a chance to talk with Sifu Doug and since I wasn’t a family member—even I draw the line at trying to single-handedly lie my way into a locked facility—the only way I was going to be able to talk to him was to go with James.

  I pondered a possible negotiation. James was still angry with me so I had to hope he was more concerned about freeing his client than teaching me a lesson.

  I called his office and his secretary put me through.

  “James, it’s Pali Moon. Don’t hang up.”

  No sound came from the other end.

  “Okay, I realize you’re probably still pretty ticked with me, and I want to apologize. I wasn’t intentionally keeping information from you. I was just trying to figure out what it all meant and what I should do.”

  “It’s my job to figure out how to produce evidence to the court, not yours.”

  “Yeah, well about that.” I went on to explain my idea. James and I would meet with Doug to see what he wanted me to do with the suicide note. I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but there was no way to know if perhaps a week in jail had faded Doug’s resolve.

  “I don’t care what he wants,” James said. “There’s no way I’m going to let a client of mine go down for a murder he didn’t commit. We’ve got a bona fide suicide note.”

  It was a good thing we were talking by phone and not in person. James wouldn’t have appreciated my eye roll at his use of the word, “We.”

  “But it’s still unclear who pulled the trigger.”

  No comment.

  “Look, James. I’ve got something you want, and you’ve got something I want. How about we work out a deal? Can I come over?”

  He agreed and I drove to his office. It was late in the day.
When I walked in, his assistant was packing up her purse looking eager to head home.

  She scowled at me, then went to his office door. “You need me to stay, Mr. Kanekoa?”

  “Mahalo, Irene, but no. Go home. And tell that no-good husband of yours I’m all in for the Warriors by six against Boise State this year.”

  Fat chance, I thought. The University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors football team fought hard for every point but often came up short. Especially against a powerhouse rival like the Boise State University Broncos.

  James waved me in and I took a seat. He offered me coffee or a soft drink as if this were a casual consultation but I could spot a “tell” when I saw one. He was nervous.

  “So, Pali. What brings you here?” As if we hadn’t spoken less than ten minutes earlier.

  “Save the idle talk story chit-chat for your paying clients, James. You knew perfectly well why I’m here.”

  “Fine then. You go first.”

  In my Homeland Security hostage negotiation class the number one rule was to never mediate an unknown. That is, don’t offer anything until the suspect tells you what he or she wants. The reason is simple: if you offer a million bucks and a plane to Cuba and all the suspect wants is immunity from the death penalty, you lose. Big time.

  “Okay, let’s discuss the situation,” I said. “I’ve got a piece of evidence that will certainly clear your client. All I want in return is a few minutes of face-to-face time with him.”

  “But the suicide note isn’t irrefutable proof of who pulled the trigger.”

  “True. But it shines a whole new light on motive.”

  James shot me a sardonic smile. “You missed your calling, Ms. Moon. You should’ve gone to law school.” His reverting back to using my surname signaled he wasn’t going to make this easy.

  “I have a degree in Criminology, so I tend to look at things from the other side of the courtroom than you do, Mr. Kanekoa. If I’d gone to law school I’d have become a prosecutor.”