Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout

by Hughes, Chip

“Corky told me the map is inside a sunscreen bottle.”

  “Eight miles, and we’re looking for one sunscreen bottle?” I couldn’t help but sound exasperated.

  “There’s more . . .” Maya paused. “Corky told me to walk the beach to that stranded Navy ship—the huge one that ran aground offshore.”

  “That narrows it down some,” I said, a trace of exasperation still in my voice.

  By noon Maya and I were twisting down the sun-bleached highway to Shipwreck Beach in a Jeep Wrangler—rear-view mirrors, for the moment, empty. A conventional car would have done us little good on this rugged island, whose roads other than this narrow paved highway were mostly sand and dirt and mud. Soon we would need all four wheels pulling.

  The road wove down six miles to the blustery windward coast of Lana‘i. This remote wind-swept slope would be a great place to get lost. And never found. There were few signs of civilization here, not even such beginnings as lines for electricity, telephone, and cable TV. The sloping terrain, like the bleached highway, looked scorched. Stunted kiawe and red rock—that was it. Over the craggy landscape the wind howled.

  Before long Maui and Moloka‘i lay in the distance on the blue sea. Then the rusty hulk of the grounded ship came into view, listing and battered into a bare skeleton. Many years ago the Navy tried to sink the mammoth World War II liberty ship in the channel between Lana‘i and Maui. But the vessel had a mind of her own. She ran aground and all attempts to remove her failed. Today she still haunts the beach like a rotting corpse yet unburied by the sea.

  Unreal. As unreal as the likelihood of our finding a sunscreen bottle on eight miles of beach presided over by this hoary wreck.

  As the highway bent down to the shore and the pavement turned to sand, we found ourselves driving along the beach on a powdery path bordered by kiawe thickets. The wind swirled a sand contrail behind us as the Jeep got squirrelly. I shifted into four-wheel-drive.

  Another mile brought a huddle of fishing shacks, erected of timbers washed ashore from capsized vessels, and the first human faces we’d seen on this desolate coast, two local fishermen mending a net. Beyond the shacks where the path ended, I did a U-turn and stopped, pointing the Jeep back toward the highway in case we needed to leave in a hurry.

  “The ship is about a mile down the beach.” I broke the news to Maya. “We’ll have to hike.“

  As we stepped from the Jeep, grains of wind-blown sand bit into our bare limbs like a swarm of mosquitoes. Gusty Trades. The tide was high and getting higher, leaving a narrow strip of beach bordered by thorny kiawe and littered with fishnets, ropes, Pepsi and Bud cans, driftwood, crab skeletons, rocks, and plastic containers of every color and shape. The sand literally blasted our every step as we fought our way down the inhospitable beach.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, two more Jeeps, kicking up a cloud, came flying down the sandy road.

  “We’ve got company.”

  Maya glanced back, saying nothing.

  The Jeeps stopped well short of ours and as I watched the sand cloud settle, two men in dark suits piled out of one and began striding slowly toward us. Another one or two remained behind in the other Jeep. Frank O. Sun? A good hundred yards stood between them and our own Jeep, which was beginning to look dangerously far away.

  “Let’s turn around.”

  “Turn around?” Maya arched her brows. “What about the map?”

  “If we find it, Sun is going to want it too . . . . We better head back to Lana‘i City, where there’s safety in numbers.”

  Maya nodded and we jogged to our Jeep, hopping in before the suits came close enough to do us harm. I cranked the motor and mashed the pedal down. Sand swirled behind us, spraying tiny shrapnel on the two men as we whizzed by. I sucked in a deep breath and held it, hoping they weren’t going to start waving guns. I recognized the white hair of the man who had visited my office; the other man was dark.

  We flew past the Jeeps. One had a suit-and-tie now standing beside it, and inside sat an older man in dark glasses and a Panama hat.

  When the sand settled behind us, the odd couple had shrunk to tiny stick figures in the distance running for their Jeeps. Before long the two Jeeps were filling our rear-view mirrors, where they stayed all the way back to Lana‘i City.

  Seventeen

  When I swung into the pine-lined drive to the Lodge at Koele, one of Sun’s Jeeps swerved in behind us and almost spun. At remote Shipwreck Beach Maya and I were easy targets. But here at the Lodge, it would be harder to avoid witnesses.

  The Lodge at Koele rambled over acres of highland woods and tropical gardens and expansive lawns. Though its patina copper roof, cozy dormer windows, and wide shaded lanais echoed the plantation-style architecture of the humble village below, this palace was definitely not humble. The portico over the grand entrance displayed a larger-than-life hand-painted golden pineapple, the Hawaiian symbol of hospitality.

  With Sun at our backs, I was pinning my hopes on that legendary hospitality right now. Since there was no way to get back to Shipwreck Beach before nightfall without being followed, we’d best get a room.

  At the reception desk a bow-tied local woman greeted us cordially, with well-trained “Aloha.” It was Friday in prime season—when the American heartland was buried in snow—and we had no reservation.

  Predictably all standard rooms were booked. She straightened her tie, apologized, and then explained that the Lodge was happy to offer us, instead, some of its more luxurious accommodations. We could score a spacious “plantation” room with king-size poster bed for nearly four bills, or a two-bedroom suite for a grand. Ho!

  “We’ll take the plantation room,” I said, without even glancing at Maya. I handed the receptionist my credit card and signed in: “Mr. and Mrs. Cooke.” Never mind that I had no wedding ring; my companion did.

  “A porter will assist you with your luggage.”

  “Thanks, we can manage.” I pointed to Maya’s overnight bag and then mumbled some line about preferring to travel light.

  We passed through the Lodge’s Southwest-inspired “Great Room,” an open-beamed expanse whose sunny skylights glowed on countless wingback chairs and sofas and oriental rugs, then across a wicker-chaired verandah. Out of the corner of my eye I saw two Jeeps pull under the Norfolks at the Lodge’s entrance, then one man jumped from each Jeep, both as overdressed and out of place on Lana‘i as they had been on O’ahu.

  “Company again.” I turned to Maya, who I began to notice was rather accomplished at being unfazed.

  The two men stepped into the Lodge, leaving one man inside each Jeep. Even at this distance, inside the trailing Jeep I could see the Panama hat.

  “Sun seems to think we know something he doesn’t,” I said. “Did Corky tell him about the map?”

  “No, that’s why Corky was killed.”

  Maya said “killed” nearly as dispassionately as if she were referring to a cockroach. Now I’ve seen more than my share of grieving widows and lovers. And, hands down, Maya was the coolest of all. When it registered that this was the first she’d referred to her boyfriend’s death since leaving Maui, I wondered again what else this forty-six-year-old redhead wasn’t talking about.

  Our airy, pale blue room had enough soft angles and plush furnishings to put one in the mood for relaxation. The king-size bed, a four-poster of knotty pine, reigned over the spacious room, but left plenty of extra territory for overstuffed chairs and lounges and billowy blue curtains framing bucolic views. We had everything anybody might need: a wet bar, a safe, color TV and video player, two phones, a koa ceiling fan, and our own personal lanai overlooking our own personal banyan tree.

  I stepped onto the teak-furnished lanai and watched Sun’s two Jeeps, drivers only, pull into the Lodge’s parking lot. Maya reclined on the four-poster bed, each post topped with a carved miniature pineapple resembling a hand grenade.

  “Lovely.” Maya ran her fingers over the powder-blue comforter. “Try the bed, Kai.”

  As s
he oozed admiration over our temporary lavish surroundings, I couldn’t help observe, “You don’t seem too broken up over your boyfriend.”

  “Husband,” she corrected me. “Anyway, I had my cry.” Fluffing a downy blue pillow, Maya turned her wandering grey-green eyes to me. “What do we do now?”

  “Wait.”

  “For what?” She stretched her lanky limbs on the bed like a cat.

  “Darkness,” I said. “In the mean time, you can make yourself comfortable.”

  “I will.” Maya continued her feline stretching. Her copper hair glowed against the blue pillows. She made that poster bed look awfully inviting. So I made myself turn away and walk over to the desk.

  Paging through the Lana‘i phone directory, I searched for the number of a surfing buddy whom I had first met years ago in the lineup at Cunahs in Waikiki. I hadn’t seen Conrad Figueroa recently, and I didn’t even know if “Rad” or his family still resided on Lana‘i. But having just one friend on this island might be a lifesaver.

  I tried dialing “Angel Figueroa,” the first of two “Figueroa” entries in the tiny book. The phone rang and rang. On the sixth ring an out of breath young woman gasped “hello.” I explained why I was calling.

  “Rad?” she said excitedly. “You’re a friend of Conrad? Rad’s my big brother.”

  Catalina told me she lived in the family home in Lana‘i City with her two children, Felipe and Maria, and their grandfather, Angel, who worked the early morning shift in the kitchen at Manele Bay Hotel. She didn’t mention the father of her two children.

  “Come visit us,” Catalina said with warm and sincere Filipino hospitality. “Felipe and Maria would love to meet you. And Papa too. He’s napping now. He goes to work every morning at five.”

  She gave me directions to their house on ‘Ilima Avenue, and we hung up. If Maya and I ran into trouble, Catalina might just become our new best friend.

  I then phoned Leimomi and left a message that I was working a case on Lana‘i and was very sorry to miss our date tonight. I left neither a phone number nor said at what hotel I was staying—I didn’t even want to think about what kind of explaining I’d have to do if Leimomi called and Maya answered.

  Maya and I stayed in the room most of the afternoon, her watching info-mercials about age-defying miracle beauty cures, me sitting on the lanai keeping an eye on Sun’s Jeeps in the Lodge’s parking lot. Around four, I took a walk to the sundry store and bought two penlights.

  As I was leaving, I saw my albino friend in the cavernous Great Room sunk into an overstuffed leather sofa with a newspaper in front of his nose. He acted as if he didn’t see me, but as I passed he peered at me over his New York Times and then pulled a cell phone from his shirt pocket.

  When I returned to our room, Maya’s impression remained in the blue comforter, but she was gone. I knew I shouldn’t have left her alone.

  Ten minutes passed. I imagined as many scenarios in which she played victim to Sun’s goons, as those in which she played their accomplice, compliant with their plots to an extent that did not threaten her “widow’s” inheritance.

  When she finally let herself in, I asked where she had been.

  “Reliving beautiful memories,” she explained, reclaiming her comfy spot on the poster bed.

  “You and Corky stayed here?”

  She nodded, her smile becoming annoyingly serene.

  I walked over to the phone, definitely feeling more relaxed at the thought of Maya not being one of Sun’s pawns. “I hope you liked the food then, because I’m about to make reservations for dinner. Seven suit you?”

  She nodded.

  I phoned in the dinner reservation, then pulled a frosty Heineken from the wet bar and offered it to Maya.

  “I don’t drink.” She said, recovering her voice.

  I popped the cap and began to down the Heineken myself. As I was nearing the bottom, the phone rang. I let it go.

  Maya looked at me as the phone rang and rang. “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

  “No.”

  I sat silently and watched Maya. She didn’t move. Finally the phone stopped ringing. A message light began blinking.

  I picked up the handset and played the message.

  “Kai . . . ?”

  Leimomi had tracked me down. And she sounded desperate

  “I did what you asked. I bought a pregnancy test kit. We need to talk. I can’t bear this alone.”

  Pilikia. I shook my head. Trouble.

  “And, Kai, why did the hotel operator say she was connecting me to the room of ‘Mr. and Mrs. Cooke’? Who’s Mrs. Cooke?”

  “What’s the message?” Maya was asking in my other ear.

  “Wrong number.” I hung up the phone.

  Maya rose abruptly from the poster bed. “I’m going to take a bath in that blue tub. Do you mind?”

  “Why should I mind?”

  Maya said nothing more as she ambled toward the gleaming tub, leaving the door partway open behind her.

  I could see her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Behind her, powder blue was the dominant hue, with soft, indirect lighting and fixtures of polished brass. Gauzy shower curtains, draped from a brass rod the size of a canon, fell into sweeping festoons with plenty of pomp and circumstance. Cream-colored throw rugs and fluffy terry towels made the scene that much more luxurious.

  Maya began to undress, revealing the shapely breasts I’d been glimpsing at all day. The freckles on her face, I discovered, had cousins elsewhere. And they were sexy—each and every one. She definitely didn’t look her forty-plus years. Her slender limbs were smooth and gracefully sculpted. Only around her neck could I detect the first faint lines that someday would show her age, but not yet. When she shed her panties, the triangular puff of copper hair between her legs sent shock waves through my brain.

  “Join me in the bath?” Maya’s voice snapped me out of my reverie. Say what?

  Maya bent, gorgeously naked, toward the brass tub faucets and cranked on the hot. A steamy flood poured into the deep blue tub. There was something more than a little unsavory about climbing into that steaming tub with the redhead whose “husband” had just died violently only hours before. Then there was Leimomi, whose looming pregnancy had my future hanging in the wind.

  I watched as Maya sprinkled in a packet of bathing crystals. A rich, dewy, seductive scent instantly perfumed the room. Jasmine. I could see the hot water rising, bubbling and shimmering.

  Maya swung one long bare leg over the baby blue tub rail, then another. She slipped down into the steamy bath. Soon only her slender neck and fiery hair showed above the rising water.

  “Ahhhh . . .” was all she said.

  I don’t know how it happened exactly. It wasn’t a decision I consciously made. When I slid in behind her, she didn’t say a thing. She turned and glimpsed the shark teeth marks on my chest. But even they didn’t move her to speak. The water was almost too hot—on the edge of scalding. But before long I got used to it. I breathed in deeply and the jasmine sent of the bath oil filled my lungs. I cupped my hands around her breasts as she eased up onto me. Instantly she was moving and communicating, not with words, but with sighs.

  We climbed higher and higher, taking each other up to an invisible summit. When we finally tumbled down together, Maya screamed and grabbed my thighs so tightly that her nails left deep red impressions. I felt the sting, but didn’t care. By then I was floating on a blue cloud.

  Making love with someone I’d just met was kind of crazy. Or maybe schizo? There was a sense of knowing her intimately—the warmth of her touch, the taste of her skin and hair and private places, and the exquisite feel of her love—yet I hardly knew her at all. Who she was, how she lived, or what she lived for.

  Before the jasmine-scented euphoria of the blue bath faded, there was a knock at the door. “Room Service” said a male voice.

  “Did you order Room Service?” I whispered into drowsy Maya’s ear.

  “No, sweetie, I didn’t order a
nything,” she cooed back.

  I stepped dripping from the tub, wrapped a fluffy towel around me, and headed for the door.

  “Who are you looking for?” I asked through the thick wood.

  No reply.

  I heard a tray settle to the carpet and some china and silver clinking. Then I heard footsteps—not one pair but two or three—quick footsteps making tracks down the hallway from the door.

  I dialed Room Service. “Did you send a tray to our room?”

  “One moment, Sir . . . No, sir, Mr. Cooke. Nothing was sent to your room. Would like to order from the Room Service menu?”

  “No, thank you. A waiter apparently left a tray by mistake at our door. You might want to send someone for it.”

  “Yes, sir. Immediately.”

  As I slipped back into Maya’s warm blue world, I got to thinking. What was on that tray?

  Eighteen

  Inside the dimly lighted Lodge dining room the ambiance was Old World, island-style: crystal chandeliers glinting against dark paneling of koa and mango; landscapes of Provence hanging beside Hawaiian quilts and a lava rock fireplace. When the maître d’ seated us, the pearly twilight was fading to grey and I was just hashing out my plan. It wasn’t an elegant plan—not so elegant as this high-toned eatery. No matter. So long as the plan worked.

  Smelling fresh from her jasmine bath, Maya hardly glanced at the menu and announced, “I’m a vegetarian,” then ordered portobello mushrooms with Waimanalo greens. Whatevahs. The four-star Pacific Rim establishment boasted on its menu fresh island ingredients with Continental flare—Moloka‘i venison capriccio, Lana‘i mixed pheasant and quail sausage with pinot noir sauce, Onaga and Kahuku mashed potato, and fancy wines starting at seventy clams. I went with the catch-of-the-day—fresh Opakapaka—grilled solo with no sauces, chutneys, salsas, or other fussy stuff. Just the way I like it.

  If Sun were watching us dine, which I’m sure he or one of his suits was, he kept himself hidden through the entire meal.

  The dinner check took my breath away. Oh, well, Sun’s money. I put the meal on our hotel tab and we strolled arm-in-arm back toward our room, past illuminated orchids and lily pads and cascading bougainvillea. Beyond the lighted pathway were bubbling blue spas, and beyond the spas were darkened golf links and hills and woods. Suddenly sensing someone behind us, I stopped under a torrent of bougainvillea and drew Maya to me. I whispered, “If we can make whoever’s following us think we’re heading back to bed—too involved with each other even to turn on a light—maybe we can slip them. Let’s put on a show.”