“You expect me to believe that? Get off my property! I’m not afraid to use this gun! Not when somebody’s trespassing on my land!”
“If you’d just let me explain—”
“Can’t you people read? This land isn’t for sale! Now get the hell out of here before I make you! And don’t think I won’t!”
I held up both hands, palms out, as if somehow that would enable me to ward off his anger if not any actual bullets that happened to come my way. “All right, Mr. Nakoa. I’m leaving. And, uh, thanks for your time.”
I turned and headed back along the path, this time moving a lot faster than I had on my way in.
As I opened the car door, I realized my hands were shaking. So much for the tough-girl act.
Still, once I was safe in my own car, I began to calm down. And to puzzle over Wesley Nakoa’s situation. On the one hand, it seemed to me that if the old man had a chance to unload this dump—for a tremendously inflated price, no less—he’d be crazy not to jump at the chance. There were definitely advantages to moving to an air-conditioned condo or some other modern residence that didn’t require constant care, especially since he didn’t seem to be up to it. On the other hand, this was his home.
Besides, maybe there was another side to it. Maybe he knew something about FloraTech. Or he could have simply been anti-progress or anti–big business or anti any number of things.
Of course, there was one more possibility: that Wesley Nakoa was just crabby and that there was no rational explanation for anything he did.
I was about to put the car into drive and take off when a loud rapping on the window made me jump.
I jerked my head around, expecting to see Wesley Nakoa’s angry face. Instead, a tense-looking woman stood hunched over the driver’s side of the Jeep, peering in at me.
“Excuse me?” she called. “If I could just have a minute…”
Curious, I rolled down the window. But only a few inches.
“I’m Lila Nakoa. Wesley’s daughter. I wanted to apologize.”
I could already feel myself relaxing. She didn’t look much older than I was, but the fine lines in her face and the furtiveness in her green eyes gave the impression that she’d experienced a lot more than I had. She was dressed in tight, low-slung jeans and a bright orange shirt. It was made of stretchy fabric and cut low enough to show ample cleavage, as well as part of a tattoo. I couldn’t quite make out what the image was, however. Her strawberry blond hair, piled up and fastened with a plastic tortoiseshell clip, was a bit too brassy to complement her dark eyebrows and medium skin tones. She’d applied makeup with a heavier hand than just about anyone else I’d encountered on the island.
“Sorry my father was so rude,” she said with a rueful smile. “I happened to be standing in the kitchen, and I overheard everything he said to you.”
“He seems pretty angry,” I commented, opening the window the rest of the way. “But I understand him being protective of his land.”
“He’s lived here his whole life.” Lila stood up straight, shielding her eyes with her hand as she gazed out at the field beyond the small house. “My dad’s one of those independent types. Never worked for anybody else, never had a desk job.” She laughed. “Could you see him selling insurance or working at Home Depot?”
I smiled. “Not really.”
“I mean, just look at the name he chose for his farm. Spirit of Pele. I think that pretty much says it all, don’t you?”
I shook my head to say that, as surprising as it may have seemed, I had absolutely no idea who Pele was or what the reference to his or her spirit was all about.
“Sorry. I guess I forget that not everybody is familiar with Hawaiian legends the way those of us who live here are. My dad’s been telling me the story since I was a little kid. The legend goes that there were two sisters named Pelehonuamea and Hi’iaka who lived in a volcano, Kilauea, on the Big Island. Pele sent her sister to find her lover, Lohi’au. After this long, terrifying adventure, filled with battles and demons and all kinds of obstacles, Hi’iaka finally found him—and fell in love with him herself.
“When Pele found out, she killed her lover and destroyed everything her sister loved. That included burning down the ’ohi’a trees, which have bright, beautiful flowers. Then Hi’iaka learned what Pele had done and finally got the strength to stand up to her sister.
“According to legend, the fight between the two of them continues to this day. Pele is still angry, and she keeps shooting lava out of the volcano, which destroys everything it touches. But when the lava cools, it creates lava beds where new ’ohi’a trees grow. So Pele and Hi’iaka symbolize the cycle of destruction and rebirth.
“In other words, Pele is all about anger.” She smiled apologetically. “Look, I know my dad comes across as a mean old goat. But don’t take it personally. He acts the same way whenever those men from FloraTech come around too. Of course, they have a totally different agenda.”
My ears pricked up the same way my dogs’ ears do whenever they hear something of interest. Only in their case, it’s usually the crinkling of the plastic wrap on food or critical words like walk or ball. “Do you know what they talked about?” I asked Lila.
“Buying his land, of course. They’re desperate to get their hands on it. Apparently they discovered that hibiscus has some medicinal value, and they plan to make a bundle off it. They need as much room to grow it as they can get.” She shook her head, grinning. “But when it came to my dad, they had no idea what they were dealing with.”
“What about you?” I asked. “How do you feel about your dad holding on to this land? Aren’t you anxious to keep it in the family?”
“Oh, I don’t live here anymore,” Lila told her. “To be perfectly honest, after growing up on this farm, I’ve had enough of it. Nowadays I got a place of my own over in Wailuku. I work at the Maui Sunrise Hotel. I’m a hostess at the lounge over there, the Silver Surf.” She thought for a second, then added, “I keep telling him he should sell it. Especially with everything that’s been going on around here.”
The hardness in her voice startled me. “What do you mean?”
Once again, she reacted with surprise. “I guess you haven’t heard about the heavy-handed tactics those FloraTech people have been using.”
I wondered if I should mention that Makiko Cooper seemed to feel they were pretty fair when it came to buying her farm. But I just shook my head.
“It’s hard to know how much of it’s true, of course,” Lila commented. “Sometimes people exaggerate, especially some of the older folks. My dad’s not the only person around here who feels strongly about holding on to his land. But I heard one story about FloraTech sending a bunch of goons to drive heavy vehicles over one man’s farm in the middle of the night, destroying his papaya plants. Somebody else insists FloraTech sprayed some kind of poison on their land.”
Before I had a chance to exclaim with surprise, she shrugged and added, “Like I say, it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. But all that aside, there’s no excuse for my father to act like that.” Glancing back over her shoulder at the house, “Sometimes I wonder if I should find a way to make him sell the land and send him someplace else to live. Someplace where there are people who can take care of him. If they could put up with him, that is.”
“What about Marnie Burton?” I asked. “She’s the reporter from the Maui Dispatch who was murdered. I understand she spoke to your dad just a few days before she was killed. Do you know why she was interested in your father—or why she was interested in FloraTech, for that matter?”
“Beats me,” Lila replied. “All I know is that a large biomedical company like FloraTech setting up shop on Maui is a big deal for most people. It represents a lot of the stuff people live here in order to get away from. I guess she was interested in writing about that.
“Of course, it could have been something much worse,” she added, sounding as if she was speaking more to herself than to me.
“Like wh
at?” I asked cautiously.
“Maybe she was—I don’t know, trying to defend them.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“The newspaper she worked for, the Maui Dispatch?” Lila said. “Over the past few weeks, it’s published a few letters from readers, saying that FloraTech coming here was the best thing that ever happened to Maui, blah, blah, blah. Let’s hear it for progress and big business and all that. A lot of people got angry over the way the newspaper seemed to be defending FloraTech. So the fact that Marnie Burton was working for the paper kind of made people distrust her.”
“Including your dad,” I observed.
“Exactly.”
Of course, there are two sides to every story—which is especially important for people in the newspaper business. I wondered if the Maui Dispatch had really come out in favor of FloraTech or if Richard Carrera was just trying to be fair by allowing people with different viewpoints to air their opinions. After all, I’d expect that was the responsibility of a newspaper’s managing editor.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t say the same for Marnie. Given what I’d heard about the ambitious young reporter’s determination to ferret out corruption and expose scandal, it didn’t seem unreasonable to assume that that was precisely what she’d been trying to do in this instance—whether her efforts were warranted or not.
Even so, had the mere fact that she wrote for a newspaper that, at the moment, was less than popular made certain people see her as the enemy?
Or maybe even a target?
I encountered some serious traffic as I headed south along Mokulele Highway, but I was glad to have the chance to think—mainly about FloraTech. I couldn’t help suspecting there was a connection between Marnie’s determination to pursue a story about the new biotech firm and her death. FloraTech was more than just a new company that was setting down roots on Maui. Given the way it was aggressively buying up land, the firm’s arrival was having a tremendous effect on the island’s residents. And Marnie appeared to be smack in the middle of it—or at least trying to put herself there.
Besides, she must have sensed that she was in danger, I thought, speeding up to put some distance between me and a tailgater. Why else would she have hidden in the freezer her list of the people whose land FloraTech had attempted to buy?
I was still absorbed in my own thoughts when I noticed a small cluster of office buildings up ahead. The reason they caught my attention was that a half dozen cars were parked haphazardly on the grass that separated them from the road.
I stepped on the brake when I noticed that one of them was a silver BMW. And when I spotted a big sign that read PRESS stuck in the windshield, I turned abruptly and entered the parking lot.
That car could belong to only one person, I concluded, thinking back to my conversation with Richard Carrera. And that was Bryce Bolt.
On impulse, I pulled up behind the BMW, turned off the ignition, and waited, keeping my eyes glued to the doorway. There was a question that had been nagging at me for days, and I wondered if he could answer it for me.
Only about ten minutes passed before people started straggling out of the building. Some carried notebooks or laptops, others had cameras, and almost all of them were talking on cell phones.
Sure enough, Bryce was among them. I spotted him strolling out of the building, exhibiting a distinct cockiness even in the way he walked. I waited until he had made it to his car before popping out of mine.
“Bryce! Remember me?”
He glanced up, looking surprised. And puzzled.
“Jessie Popper,” I reminded him, walking over to him with a big smile on my face. “Marnie’s friend.”
“Oh. Sure. It took me a second to place you, that’s all. How’s it going?” I guess he finally did remember me, because he suddenly frowned. In a much less cordial voice, he demanded, “What are you doing here?”
“I was driving by and I noticed all the commotion,” I replied cheerfully, gesturing toward the last few reporters and photographers who were straggling out of the building. “Obviously something big was happening here, and I couldn’t help wondering what it was.”
“Just a press conference,” he said, eyeing me suspiciously.
“Really? For what?” I persisted.
“The Maui Visitors Bureau. They reported the usual statistics about how tourism is up, business is booming, the environmental impact is devastating…. They hold these things a few times a year. Not exactly front-page news.”
“Actually,” I said, trying to sound casual, “I wanted to ask you something that’s kind of related. To front-page news, I mean. Or at least to the newspaper business.”
“Okay,” he replied warily.
I hesitated. “I wanted to ask you about Holly.”
He stiffened. “Holly Gruen? What about her?”
“She and I got together a few days ago. I think having the chance to talk about Marnie made us both feel a little better. But there’s something that keeps gnawing away at me.”
“What’s that?” he asked uneasily.
“Holly wouldn’t tell me why she left the Dispatch. I was hoping you would.”
He glanced around nervously. “You know, I really shouldn’t be talking about this. In fact, I feel kind of funny talking to you at all.”
I could see that he did. In fact, Bryce suddenly seemed to be having difficulty making eye contact.
“Of course you do,” I agreed with the same heartiness. “Who could blame you? And I know that it’s none of my business. At least, it wouldn’t be if this…this terrible thing hadn’t happened. To Marnie, I mean.”
“I don’t see what it has to do with Marnie,” he commented, still acting kind of edgy.
I decided to go for broke. “Bryce, what do you know about the rift between Holly and Marnie? It sounds as if the two of them were close, and then all of a sudden Holly just completely shut down.”
He looked stricken. “Who told you about that?”
“I’ve been asking around, that’s all,” I answered vaguely.
Bryce sighed. “Okay. What I can tell you is that from my perspective, it was all about two major egos butting heads. You know, both Holly and Marnie vying for the chance to cover the biggest stories, knocking themselves out to outshine each other, that kind of thing. And the last straw for Holly was when Marnie won that award from the Association of Professional Journalists.
“Yeah, that was the real turning point,” he went on, gazing off into the distance as if he was looking back in time. “That was when Holly really started resenting Marnie. In fact, I heard it got so bad that one day they had a huge blowup, right in the office. They both acted pretty unprofessional, I guess. Screaming at each other, making all these accusations…”
He hesitated, as if he was considering whether or not to continue. Finally, with reluctance, he added, “I probably shouldn’t go around repeating this, but apparently Holly threatened Marnie. She actually said something about how she was going to kill her.” Shaking his head slowly, he added, “Right after that, Holly handed in her resignation.”
It took a few seconds for the meaning of his words to sink in. “Did Marnie file a police report?” I finally asked.
Bryce shook his head. “I don’t think so. I guess she figured it would just blow over. Or maybe she didn’t want to involve the paper. She was pretty loyal to the Dispatch, always talking about how she wanted to do the right thing to preserve its integrity and all that. I’m sure she wouldn’t have wanted to air two employees’ dirty laundry in public.”
“Bryce, how do you know about this?” I asked, thinking surely it couldn’t have been Richard Carrera who told him. “After all, it must have happened before you were working at the Dispatch.”
“I heard about it from a couple of other employees,” he replied. “After Holly left, two of the women who work in the office, Karen Nelson and Peggy Ehrhart, used to talk about it. Only when Marnie wasn’t around, of course.
“According to them,
their feud got even worse after Holly left. Apparently she just assumed she’d fall into some other job, maybe with the Maui News, the bigger paper here on the island. But for whatever reason, that didn’t work out. So in the end, Marnie ended up doing just fine in the newspaper business, while Holly was left out in the cold.”
“I see,” I told Bryce noncommittally. By that point, most of the other cars had driven off. “Listen, I’d better let you get back to work. Thanks for your time—and the information.”
“No problem,” he replied, turning and heading toward his BMW.
As I walked back to my own car, I wondered why Karen Nelson hadn’t mentioned the screaming fight Marnie and Holly had in the office. She had been so forthcoming, yet she hadn’t said a word about that particular incident.
I was also curious about whether that final showdown between the two reporters was the reason Holly had left the Dispatch so abruptly. She clearly had reason to be angry with Marnie. According to Karen, she’d developed an attachment to her that bordered on pathological, then felt betrayed when Marnie grabbed the award Holly was convinced she was entitled to.
The question was whether Holly was disturbed enough to have followed through on her threat.
As soon as I walked into my hotel room, I scooped up Moose and nuzzled his soft fur. It was so nice coming home to a sweet, loving pussycat that I found myself desperately missing my own menagerie back at home.
My two dogs—Max, my eternally energetic Westie, and his sidekick, Lou, a gangly Dalmatian—gave me a hero’s welcome every time I walked through the door. Even though Max’s tail was nothing but a stub, a legacy of his former owner, he would wag it so hard his entire butt would shake. Lou tended to hang back a bit, since his own past, which included losing one eye, had left him on the timid side.
My two cats, serene Catherine the Great and Tinkerbell, an orange-and-white tiger kitten with attitude, were more controlled, but always just as happy to see me. The same went for my blue and gold macaw, Prometheus, who invariably started squawking some nonsense designed to capture my attention. Leilani, the Jackson’s chameleon Nick and I had shanghai’d during our last trip to Maui, didn’t show much emotion, but I suspected she was glad to see me too.
Right from the Gecko Page 20
