Rip Tides

by Toby Neal

  Pippa’s big blue eyes instantly filled, and she covered her mouth with her hands, hunching as if from a blow. “Oh no,” she whispered. “No.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lei let a moment go by as the girl rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I need to know of anyone close to you and Shayla who might have a grudge against Makoa.”

  “Eli Tadeo. He’s Shayla’s ex. He hates Makoa. He’s threatened him plenty of times. Shayla’s been really stressed about it.”

  Lei noted the name. “Anything else you can tell me about Tadeo?”

  “Shayla’s been on the verge of taking out a restraining order on him. Tadeo’s never gotten over her. Leaves stuff in her mailbox, keeps calling. Trash-talks Makoa around town every chance he gets.”

  “Hmmm,” Lei said. “But that guy you saw drop in on Makoa wasn’t Tadeo?”

  “I don’t know. I was in the bathroom that whole time, so I missed it. I got back just when Shayla was realizing it looked like Makoa drowned.”

  “Well, let us break the news to her, okay?” Lei asked.

  “God, I can’t believe this. Give me a minute alone.” Pippa turned away, and when Lei glanced back, the girl had put her arms around the plumeria tree and was sobbing, her face pressed against the rough bark.

  Lei returned to the house. Shayla looked up from the face forming on the sketchpad. “Why does the other detective want to look around my house? Did this guy do something to Makoa other than drop in on him?”

  “Was this man Eli Tadeo, your ex?” Lei asked, tapping the emerging sketch.

  “No.” Shayla’s delicate, well-marked brows drew together in a frown. “This wasn’t an accident, was it?”

  Lei sighed. “No. It’s looking like he was drowned on purpose.”

  “Oh my God!” the girl wailed. “No!” She jumped up off the couch, her breasts threatening to escape the robe. Pippa ran back into the house just then and embraced her friend. They sobbed together. Finally, the blonde lifted her head, frowning at Shayla.

  “Shayla, you have to help the cops with the sketch. Maybe they can find him from that. You have to focus.” Pippa gripped her friend’s shoulders.

  “You’re right.” Shayla gulped down her tears, pulling herself together with an effort. “Let me get dressed. I’ll be right back and will do whatever I can.” She strode down the hall. Lei felt like she was watching a case study in the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining…Lei hoped that someday acceptance would come.

  Things went faster after that. Pono and Lei donned gloves and did a swift once-over search through the cottage, with Shayla and Pippa’s permission, since the girls shared the cottage. They found nothing of the surf star’s belongings but a few toiletries and clothes. Shayla, now dressed in a white T-shirt and cutoff shorts, worked with Kevin, and they both concentrated hard on the sketch while Pippa washed dishes and made refreshments, offering them all glasses of chilled lilikoi iced tea.

  When they packed up to leave, the few things that might be of interest in evidence bags, Lei turned to the girls.

  “Please don’t discuss this with anyone,” Lei said. “We need to have total confidentiality to move quickly and catch this guy.”

  Both girls nodded, and Kevin took a moment to hug each of them and leave his number “in case you need anything.”

  Lei narrowed her eyes at him as they got into the cruiser. “We’ll drop you in Kahului. Then we need to go to the van rental places with this sketch. Not a word to anyone or we’ll know who leaked this.”

  “Of course,” Kevin said, and Lei noted the respectful change in his demeanor.

  “Slick move, giving the girls your number,” Pono said. “But I think they like tan, cut surfer dudes.”

  “There’s always room for us creative types. We’re good with our hands,” Kevin said with a leer.

  Lei rolled her eyes as Pono put the siren on to save time.

  They dropped Kevin off at the station and hurried to the van rental place, only a few blocks away in downtown Kahului near the airport. The rental company was a dusty, windswept lot filled with parked vans surrounded by chain-link fence, a few scrubby kiawe trees providing patchy shade. The office building was a converted Matson container with an air conditioner chugging away and dripping condensation next to the steps. Inside, the customer service attendant hunkered over a sudoku game on an iPad.

  Lei and Pono held up their IDs. “Have you seen this man?” Pono slid the sketch across to the attendant, who set aside his game to look at it.

  “Could be the guy who returned a van today.”

  Lei’s pulse picked up. “What was his name?”

  “Just a sec.” He typed onto the iPad. “He gave his name as Clark. Stephen Clark.”

  Lei noted it. “How did he pay? Do you have a credit card?”

  “No. Cash.”

  “Can we see the van? We need to see if he left any prints. This man is wanted for questioning in a serious matter,” Pono said.

  The attendant’s eyes widened behind his magnifying readers. “Okay.” He tossed the glasses down. “I’ll take you to it. He only rented it for two days.”

  “Did you check the address on the license?” Lei asked as they followed him back down into the lot.

  “No. I just check that they have one. It’s over here.” He led them to a van with racks on top. It was in a row of identical vans. “He only left an hour ago.”

  “How did he leave?” Lei asked sharply. Pono had gone back to their vehicle to fetch the crime kits.

  “Called a taxi.”

  “Did you hear his destination?”

  “No.” The man frowned. “But I got the feeling he was in a hurry. My best guess is the airport.”

  “What kind of taxi?” A plan was forming in Lei’s mind. If it was only an hour, they might still catch the suspect on the island.

  “A-1 Taxi Company.”

  “Thanks.” Lei made a shooing gesture. “We’ll let you know when we’re done.”

  Reluctantly, the man headed back to his trailer as Lei broke into a trot, heading over to Pono.

  “Okay if I track down the taxi he took? I want to see where he went. We can cover more ground faster if you look for prints in the van. I’m betting ten to one that was a fake ID he gave the attendant.”

  “Sure. I’ll crawl around in the hot box van on my hands and knees with the dusting powder while you chase the guy.” Pono pushed his ever-present Oakleys onto the top of his buzz-cut black hair. “Get a move on, woman. You promised me laulau at the end of the day.” She’d told him about their six-thirty dinner appointment on the way over, and it was four-thirty now.

  “On it.” Lei ran back to the cruiser and called the taxi company. Sure enough, some minutes later she had verified that the passenger had ended up at the airport. She peeled out of the lot, and only minutes later had pulled up in front of the airport and was talking to security.

  It wasn’t long before copies of the sketch had made their way to every security person and checkpoint in the airport, and Lei was sitting in air-conditioned comfort, reviewing security cam footage, watching a young man with wiry build, dark wavy hair, and a Quiksilver T-shirt getting onto a Hawaiian Airlines flight to Oahu.

  “Did that flight land yet?” she asked.

  “Yes. It’s only twenty minutes to Oahu,” the security chief said regretfully.

  “What name was he traveling under?”

  Lei was able to verify that he’d gone to Oahu under the same name he’d rented the van with, and that name had come back to a fake ID. He’d paid cash for his ticket, too.

  “Dammit,” Lei said to the chief, having faxed the sketch and screen-grab captures of the video footage to Honolulu PD for distribution and initiated an all-points bulletin for the man on the other island. “Just
missed him.”

  Heading back out to the cruiser, she called her favorite detective in HPD, Marcus Kamuela.

  “Lei! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Hot case.” Lei spoke quickly, filling him in on the situation so far as she got back into the cruiser and headed over to pick up Pono. “I’ll come over if I need to. Find out if this guy has any connection to Makoa Simmons in the surfing scene on Oahu.”

  “Makoa Simmons. Man, that’s tragic,” Kamuela said. He had a deep voice with a husky edge to it. “I’ll check with my captain to see if I can get assigned to your case.”

  “That’s what I was hoping for. Appreciate it,” Lei said, pulling in to the van rental lot. Pono was waiting on the steps of the trailer, crime kit in hand. It was six p.m., and they would be able to take a break for dinner as she’d hoped. “I was just on the phone with Marcella this morning. Maybe I’ll be seeing you both soon. I’ll call tomorrow with any prints we’ve pulled off the van. The name the guy traveled here under was fake, so we’re gonna have to see what Pono turned up in the rental.”

  “Hope you find his ID. That will make everything easier on this end.”

  Lei hung up with Kamuela as Pono got into the cruiser. Her partner looked hot and annoyed. “You didn’t get him, I see,” he said.

  “No. He made it off the island under the same fake ID he rented the van with. I hope you were able to pull some decent prints.”

  “I pulled prints, all right, but there are so many, from so many different people who might have handled or been in the van, I have no idea what the right ones will be.”

  “Let’s grab some off the attendant so we can rule him out, real quick,” Lei said.

  “Already done.”

  They got on the road. Lei put Captain Omura, their commanding officer, on speakerphone as they drove out of town through the waving expanse of sugarcane fields toward Haiku. She and Pono caught the captain up on the case as they wove along the picturesque two-lane road, passing various ocean overlooks and beach parks, the sunset blazing over the nearby expanse of sea.

  “I want to go to Oahu tomorrow,” Lei said. “Detective Kamuela can help me hunt this guy over there. I suspect he’s going to have some connection to the pro surf circuit.” Lei told Omura what the girlfriend had said about harassment threats from rivals.

  “We have to get an ID on this suspect ASAP,” Omura said in her crisp voice. “I can authorize that trip. Pono, you stay back. You can reinterview the family and run down this Tadeo character. Though it seems a stretch that a jealous boyfriend would hire someone to drown Makoa Simmons…”

  “My best guess is that the man who drowned him was a rival,” Lei said. “Another pro surfer.”

  “Why didn’t anyone at Ho`okipa recognize him, then?” Pono asked. They had left the darkening sunset breaking through clouds over the West Maui Mountains and turned up the narrow road winding through stands of torch ginger, heliconia, and tree ferns toward Lei’s property. “If he was a well-known surfer, fake ID or not, he’d be recognized. So maybe he’s a small-kine surfer with a grudge, or a hired hitter of some kind.”

  Lei had turned on the radio, and the announcer broke in with a news bulletin about Makoa’s “death by drowning under suspicious circumstances” at Ho`okipa Beach Park. She snapped off the car’s stereo, agitated by the reminder of how big this case was, the attention it would get, and how tragic the loss to the whole surf world was.

  “Some cojones, going surfing with Makoa Simmons and drowning him in front of witnesses,” Lei said.

  “How do you plan to kill someone that way? It would take perfect timing,” Captain Omura said, her voice tinny in the radio feed. “Which leads to the idea that it was an opportunistic crime. But the fake ID, the cash rentals, the quick getaway all point to a calculated plan. In any case, we need to make a public statement. Circulate that sketch here on Maui, at all the airports throughout the islands.”

  “It’s circulating already.” Lei was glad they’d been able to get the artist and Shayla together and such a clear image worked up quickly.

  “Good. Come back downtown and I’ll call the TV station. We’ll do it at eight-thirty, so they can air it on the ten o’clock news.”

  “Okay. We’re grabbing a quick dinner at my house first,” Lei said. Thank God they were home. She’d have time to eat, change her shirt, and do something about her hair, whipped into disarray as if beaten with an egg whisk by the wind at the beach. Lei hung up and punched in the gate code.

  “Where are we all gonna sit?” Pono asked. He knew their situation intimately, having been at the house the night of the fire and all through the aftermath. He’d put in more than his fair share of hours working on the new house, too.

  As if in answer, they spotted the screen tent erected over a folding table and chairs, nicely set with a cloth and the replacement dishes Lei had picked up at Pier 1 in Kahului. A hurricane lantern with a thick candle cast an inviting glow. Standing on the porch of the cottage was Stevens, with Kiet in his arms.

  Lei jumped out of the cruiser. Keiki, her coat still rough and patchy since the fire, greeted her with happy butt wagging. She stroked the big dog’s head and hurried toward Stevens, smiling, her gaze running over his tall body.

  Looking at him never got old for her. His light blue eyes were intense under dark brows, shadowed with worry, as they often were, though he smiled back. The baby in his arms reached for Lei, burbling a greeting that never failed to lift her heart. “Ba-ba ba!”

  “It’s not far from ba-ba to ma-ma. He’s going to say it any day now,” Lei said. “How’s my happy boy?” She scooped the child into her arms and lifted her face for the quick, hungry kiss Stevens gave her—a kiss that said he was glad she’d made it to the house, wished she was staying longer, and promised more when they were finally alone.

  Short as the time was that she’d have with her family, Lei was glad they’d made it to dinner, too. She’d almost forgotten her mother-in-law was there until the woman rose from the rocking chair and came to stand beside Stevens.

  Lei assessed Ellen Rockford Stevens automatically: She was taller than Lei at around five foot eight, painfully thin at a hundred and fifteen to twenty pounds. Her bottle-blonde hair had dark roots and hung lank to her shoulders. Her mother-in-law wore a shabby but good-quality tunic top in a blue that matched eyes that must have been the striking shade of Stevens’s at one time but now reminded Lei of bleached sky over desert. Age showed in deep lines on a pallid face, in the loose skin of her neck, in liver spots on her hands. Her expression was pleading and sad.

  “Welcome to Maui.” Lei gave Ellen a one-armed hug that squished Kiet in close to both of them, feeling a surge of compassion for this fragile human being: Kiet’s grandmother and the one who’d given her beloved husband life. “It’s great to finally meet you.”

  Chapter 5

  Stevens gestured to Pono, who’d been taking his time getting out of the cruiser. “Come meet my mom. Ellen, this is Pono Kaihale, Lei’s partner and one of our ohana.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” Ellen smiled and shook Pono’s hand, then gave a little gasp as he took something from behind his back and draped it over her head. It was a kukui nut lei, the polished orbs glossy as black gems.

  “Welcome to Maui.” Pono drew her into a gentle hug. Stevens grinned at the consternation on Lei’s face.

  “How’d you get that, partner?” his wife exclaimed. “Showing me up!”

  “The van rental place had them, and you’d told me your mother-in-law was going to be here. Had to get her lei’d,” Pono said, with a twinkle in his eye that made Ellen laugh. Stevens realized he hadn’t heard that laugh in forever.

  Ellen smacked Pono’s arm playfully. “Now, that’s a proper Hawaiian greeting,” she said. “Guess I needed a real Hawaiian to remember it.”

  Wayne came to
the door, a big bowl of salad in his hands. “Looks like the family’s all here but one,” he said, and then the gate rolled open and Jared drove up in his truck loaded with ocean sports equipment. “Right on cue.”

  Stevens saw his mother falter at the sight of his younger brother getting out of his vehicle. He didn’t know what had gone on between them, but he suspected it hadn’t been pretty. When the transfer to Kahului Station came through, Jared had taken it. All he’d said to Stevens was, “I couldn’t deal with her anymore.”

  Jared came to the porch with his loping walk, his blue eyes cautious as he looked at their mother.

  “Mom.” Jared took her hands and bent to give her a kiss on the cheek. “You made it over here.” Stevens had to admire the phrase for its understatement.

  “I did.” Ellen let go of his hands and reached out to hug Jared. Stevens could see how stiff his brother stood. Everyone else had turned away and busied themselves with something: Pono was carrying the salad to the table, Lei was playing with the baby, and Wayne had gone back into the kitchen. “I’m sorry about what happened before you left.”

  “You’ll have a chance to make it up to me by staying sober.” Jared’s voice was low and hard.

  “I’m planning to.” Ellen’s words quavered, but Stevens could tell she meant it. He could also read that any revelations about her health were going to have to wait until they had more privacy.

  Stevens put a hand on their mother’s shoulder, giving her an encouraging pat. “Jared, why don’t you take her down to the seat of honor. I’ll help bring the rest of the food.”

  Soon dinner was underway. The pork laulau was delicious. It was Lei’s turn to feed the baby tonight, so she’d seated herself next to Kiet’s high chair and alternated taking bites of her dinner and working spoonfuls of baby food into their son’s mouth with a soft plastic spoon.