by Toby Neal
“Anything else?” Gerry asked his cousin, who was now slurping a bowl of saimin noisily.
“No. Like I said, straightforward except for that land addendum.”
“Is there anything about the value of the land?” Lei asked.
“No. You’ll have to talk to a real estate broker.” He slurped some more.
Lei threw a twenty down on the table. “Thanks, Sal. Gerry, can you look into that? I want to swing by Ma`alaea Harbor and see if I can get any confirmation on our case.” She waggled her brows, not wanting to discuss the case any further in front of Gerry’s cousin. “We can meet back at the station if we hear that they brought in Miller, or when I’m done, whichever comes first.”
“Sounds good.”
She picked up the copy of the will. “Thanks again, Sal. Your saimin’s on me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Lei was relieved to be heading to the harbor by herself. Much as she liked Gerry, she didn’t quite have the comfort level with him that she did with Pono. Work with Pono had an ease and give-and-take rhythm of purpose that came from years of sharing cases. She drove down the straight freeway that bisected the middle of the figure-eight shape of Maui, toward the windiest harbor in the world.
Ma’alaea was quiet with the morning crowd of whale watchers and other boats out to sea. She parked her Tacoma at the utilitarian half-moon of harbor and took out a clipboard and pen, along with a photo of Danielle that she’d laminated at the office.
It was a full-body shot, much as Lei imagined Danielle must have looked as she got in the UH Zodiac and took it out toward Molokini. Danielle wore her long brown hair in a careless knot at the back of her neck, and a bright bikini peeked out from under her tank top. She wore nylon running shorts with it. Her tanned, athletic body was eye-catching and her smile memorable.
A lot of people were likely to know her down here. Lei took a pull of water from the bottle in her cup holder and hopped out of the truck. Gusts of wind tugged at the MPD ball cap she tugged low on her brow. The coconut palms surrounding the harbor swayed gracefully, their fronds rattling.
Canvassing was never boring. Lei talked to a woman at the snack shop who often saw Lani but hadn’t that day. She talked to one of the maintenance men from the docks, who expressed tearful regret over her passing but didn’t remember seeing her go out the day she died.
She found a witness at last, over at the gas pumps where boats pulled up for fuel.
“Yeah, Lani came by and filled up her gas tank that morning,” the grizzled older Portuguese man who ran the fueling station said. “It was early, only six a.m., and I’d just opened. There she was, carrying her can.”
“Tell me about her demeanor. How she was acting.”
“Nothing special. Said ‘Hi, Teddy. Fill ’er up. I’m heading out to Molokini today.’” The man took off his stained cap and scratched the thin greasy hair beneath it. “I didn’t know that was the last time I’d see her until I heard on the news.”
“So there was nothing different about when you talked to her?”
“She seemed happy.” Teddy fiddled with the gas pump mechanism, his mouth turned down with sadness. “I remember noticing that. I even said to her, “You’re in a good mood today.” She just laughed. Said she had some personal good news, but it was too soon to share.”
The pregnancy. Lei’s stomach twisted.
“Was there anyone with her?”
“No. But when I looked over at the boat, there was a guy in there, stowing stuff.”
Lei’s pulse picked up. “Anything you can tell me about him? Height, weight, ethnicity, anything?”
Teddy straightened, looked at the sky. Arched an obviously aching back. “The guy was bent over in the boat, sorting dive gear. Had a ball cap on. Not small, but I couldn’t really tell you more. I realize it’s important now, but at the time…” His voice trailed off, and his dark brown eyes gazed at her mournfully from pouched lids. “At the time I just remember thinking I was glad she had company, for once.”
Lei’s chest tightened in sorrow as well. She looked around the area. “Are there any surveillance cameras in the area?”
Teddy perked up. “Yeah, we have one aimed at the harbor’s main entrance. Coast Guard uses it to see who’s coming and going. It’s aimed to get the registration numbers, so I don’t know how much of a shot of them it will get, but it’s worth a look.”
“Thanks so much, Teddy.” Lei smiled at him with genuine warmth. “This has been very helpful.”
She continued her canvassing, to no avail. No one else there remembered seeing Danielle leave, nor anyone else in her Zodiac. Lei knew that she had to get the footage from the Coast Guard and come back early in the morning, when the boats would be loading and people who might have seen the couple would be there.
A call to the Coast Guard meant contacting Petty Officer Aina Thomas.
She wasn’t sure if the uptick in her heart rate was dread or anticipation as she dialed the contact number she’d stored for him. She went to her truck and got in, rolling down the windows before she made the call.
“This is Thomas.” The Coast Guard officer’s voice was brisk, all business.
“Hi. This is Sergeant Texeira from MPD, calling about the Lani Phillips case,” Lei said. “Hope it’s okay to call your cell phone.”
“Of course. What do you need?” Immediately his voice warmed, and she smiled, too.
“I have a lead I need to follow up on. Can you find me the surveillance footage from Ma’alaea Harbor on the morning Phillips was killed?”
“Sure. I should have thought to offer that,” Thomas said. “Got caught up in stuff here and never made that call. When can you pick it up? It’s all digital, sorted by day, so I can just make you a copy of that day on a stick drive.”
“How soon can you get it ready? I’m at the harbor now.”
The Coast Guard building was adjacent to the harbor, so she wasn’t surprised when he said, “I’m on duty, so I need to get someone to cover me while I go access the files. Give me a half-hour?”
“Sure.” Lei rang off.
Lei took the downtime to call in and update Omura. “This is the first confirmation we’ve had that she had someone with her,” Lei said. “It’s unlikely to have been Costa, whom she had a hostile relationship with. Perhaps it was the father of her baby, or Miller…or someone else we don’t yet have in the mix.” She filled the captain in on the financial motive they’d also uncovered through the will.
“I still think it’s the unknown boyfriend or the stalker,” Omura said. Lei could hear the captain typing in the background. “This also punches a hole in the theory that it was just one of the poachers she was photographing. If it was a crime of opportunity, where’s the man she went down with?”
“Maybe there’s another body,” Lei said. This was a whole new slant. “And we just haven’t found it.”
A long pause as they both considered this.
“That’s unlikely. There’s a lot of scuba and other traffic in that area. Even weighted, a body would probably have been found.”
“I don’t know, sir. You didn’t see all the shark action I did. If they shot the other diver and removed the tanks, then stuck the body under a coral head, it would likely be eaten by ocean predators. Might never be found.”
“Who else is missing in the community?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t been looking at that.” Lei pulled a loose ringlet impatiently as she gazed out the truck’s dusty window. “Like I said, this is the first confirmation we have that she wasn’t alone.”
She hung up and called Bunuelos next, updated him with the new information. “Where are you at?”
“Back at the station, sifting through leads. Want I should look for any missing persons in case there’s another body?”
“Yeah. Male, between twenty-five and fifty. I’d be willing to bet the father of her baby is somewhere in that age group, too.”
“On it.” Bunuelos hung up.
Stifling anxiety, Lei called Wayne next. She could hear the busy sounds of the restaurant in the background as her father answered: the clashing of dishes, voices, and a tinny sound of Hawaiian music.
“Sweets!” Her father greeted her cheerfully. “I have my junior sous chef here to say hi.” He handed the phone to Kiet. Her son’s voice sounded cheerful, too.
“I’m helping Grandpa,” Kiet said proudly. “I already chopped three big pieces of kalo.”
“It was cooked, I hope.” Lei thought of the purple tubers that were a staple of the Hawaiian diet. Cutting hard, dense raw taro root was hazardous even for adults.
“Yeah. They’re squishy and easy to cut,” Kiet said. “Grandpa is making them into hash browns.” Taro hash browns were a specialty of Wayne’s Hawaiian Grinds.
“Sounds yummy. How was school?”
“Fine.” He shut down at that question.
Lei sighed. “I’ll be home by dinnertime today, I hope, son. Put your grandpa on, okay?”
She firmed her return time up with Wayne and hung up, feeling lighter. She checked the time on her phone. The half-hour had passed. She started the truck and drove to the Coast Guard headquarters a few blocks away.
The brass on Thomas’s uniform glittered under fluorescent lights, and he smiled a handsome, three-cornered grin, already waiting for her, as Lei pushed the glass door of the Coast Guard building open. She felt her own face light up in an answering smile.
“I admit to being curious. I loaded the footage on a monitor. Want to take a quick look with me?” he asked.
“Sure.” Lei followed Thomas up a metal set of stairs to an office area filled with cubicles, officers at work all around them. He rolled a second chair into his cubicle for her and sat down, hitting a button on his computer.
“The day’s footage begins at midnight. Let’s fast-forward.”
“I think we should start watching beginning at around six a.m. The gas guy who told me there was someone with Danielle said he’d just opened the pumps and she talked to him.”
They both leaned forward as he scrolled. Lei’s shoulder brushed Thomas’s. She noticed the contact and shied away, rolling her chair farther back. He glanced at her curiously.
“I think we’re almost there.” Lei kept her eyes on the monitor.
The surveillance camera was angled so that it caught the bows and sterns of boats as they passed through. Thomas slowed the feed, and images flashed in the yellow glow of the lights at the portal of the harbor. Thomas slowed further, to real time.
Suddenly, there was the Zodiac, low enough in the frame so that they saw Lani’s face clearly as she sat in the stern, her hand on the tiller. Seated on the bench in the center of the craft was the distinct shape of a man. He was leaning forward, resting his hands on his knees, his gaze straight ahead. A ball cap was pulled low. All they could see of his face was the angle of a jaw, the hunched shape of his body, giving little away.
“Looks like he was trying to keep a low profile,” Lei said. “Replay that, will you? Let’s go frame by frame and see what we can see.” Lei couldn’t tell height, coloring, much of anything else in the black-and-white feed, other than that the figure was male. It was disappointing. She spotted a flash of something behind the boat.
“Replay that again, Sergeant. What’s that?” She pointed.
They both leaned in to look, but even with Thomas blowing up the frames, it was hard to make out. “Could be something tied to the back of the craft,” Thomas said.
“Like a kayak?” She looked at Thomas, her eyes narrowed. “If someone was with her when she died, he needed a way to leave the scene.”
“That makes sense.” They watched the recording again, but other than a blur of something behind the craft, there was no way to tell exactly what was being towed.
“Thanks. This isn’t the identification I was hoping for, but it definitely puts another person, male, in the craft with her, with a possible means of departure. And that’s something.”
Thomas saved the file to a stick drive, ejected it, and gave it to her. “Glad I could help.”
“Me too.” She stood. “Call me if you guys get anything more. The captain and I are now wondering if this man might also have been a victim and maybe his body just hasn’t been found. So for sure, call me if you find any trace, at Molokini or anywhere else.”
“Will do.”
Lei smiled and gave him a little two-fingered salute as she left. He grinned at her and stayed at his desk, but Lei felt his gaze on her all the way to the stairs.
Yes, she needed to avoid Aina Thomas. He wasn’t the only one feeling an attraction. The months of stress she and Michael had been under had definitely left her vulnerable.
Lei slid the stick drive into her pocket and headed for the station.
Kahului Station was beginning to settle into quiet as the shifts changed. Lei met Bunuelos in her cubicle. Gerry leaned back in Pono’s office chair, brushing his fingers through short black hair. “They still haven’t picked up Miller, but I dug into his alibi today. So far it’s holding up. I talked to several students who saw him in the tutoring center during our window.”
“Well, let me show you the footage that shows Lani was with someone the day she died.” She plugged in the stick drive and they reviewed the recording together. “Possible escape craft attached to the back of the boat, but no ID available off this. What do you think? Find any John Doe possibilities?”
“I did a quick scroll through missing persons. Nothing in that age bracket of men since the victim’s body was found.”
“So that’s a dead end at the moment, until we find something indicating that’s a possibility. And, as far as ID on the man in the boat, I can’t see Lani going out with Costa for any reason, especially since the gas guy said she was ‘happy’ that day.” Lei made finger marks to illustrate the man’s comments. “She and Costa didn’t get along. So that leaves Miller, the father of her baby, whoever that is, Frank Phillips, or some unknown perp.”
“Still too many suspects.” Bunuelos looked up at the clock. “My kids have soccer. My wife took them, but there are multiple games. If it’s possible for me to get off on time, I need to get home.”
“Yeah. I told my boy I’d be home for dinner. He’s having some problems since Stevens left.” Lei stood, turned off the computer. “Let’s call it a day. I’ll log this stick drive in, and we’ll get back to it tomorrow morning. I still need to interview the divorce lawyer and meet with Kevin about all the trace we collected. And then there’s the sample I dropped off at the morgue.” Lei told Bunuelos about the hunch she’d had about Lani’s friend Mark Nunes, the DLNR agent. “Be interesting if he’s the guy.”
“And if he isn’t, the field is still wide open,” Bunuelos said. It was unfortunately true.
Chapter Eighteen
Lei was chasing Stevens. He was looking at her from the back of a pickup truck as they raced across a desert, drawing farther and farther ahead of her, bound and on his knees. Clouds of dust rose behind the vehicle as she pursued on a quad, never gaining, the four-wheel drive vehicle hopelessly outmatched.
And then the truck swerved.
She failed to make the turn and went off an unseen cliff, spinning out into space, the emptiness of a vast, deep gorge swallowing her and the cartwheeling four-wheeler.
Lei woke, heart pounding, just before she hit the rocks at the bottom.
Beside her, undisturbed, Kiet slept on. She leaned over to check on him. He’d turned away from her on his side. His thumb was in his mouth.
She swung her legs out of her side of the bed and stood up. Her knees were wobbly from the adrenaline blast. Her hair was stuck to her neck with sweat. She padded out of the bedroom into the kitchen. Keiki and Conan lifted their heads to watch her, their eyes soft black gems in the dim light.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. Exactly as if they understood her, both dogs lay their heads down on their paws. But their eyes still tracked her as she went to the sink and
ran a glass of water. A draft of cool night air came in through the window, sliding like fingers across her loose breasts, teasing them awake.
It was almost too bad she’d reconnected with Michael on the eve of his departure. She’d have been better with her sensuality shut off, stuffed in that box where it had been before their night together brought it back to life. But it was too late now. They’d made up, physically at least, and now she missed him more than ever.
She was done waiting. She needed to reach out. Maybe the time difference was such that he’d get her call.
Lei unplugged the satellite phone from its charger and went into the office that had been her bedroom for months, closing the door so as not to wake Kiet. She dialed the number he’d programmed into the device. It rang and rang, a tinny buzzing that taunted her, finally ending in a beep. Not even a voice mail message comforted her with a trace of his voice.
“Michael, this is Lei. It’s the middle of the night and I had a bad dream. It’s silly, I know, but I’m missing you. Worried about you. It’s been five days. Surely you can call me by now? I’m living on a text message, and I have to tell you, it’s not enough.” She pushed a hand through her jumbled hair. “I love you. Please call me.”
She punched off. It felt like giving up. Sitting there on the edge of the bed, she shut her eyes and prayed for his safety.
The dream had left her with a sick feeling.
Kiet woke her in the morning. She’d slept in, and he was almost late for school. She rushed through their morning routine and dropped him off at the turnaround, finally having a moment to check the satellite phone as she pulled out of the school’s driveway. She’d slept with it beside her but had turned the ringer off. She’d missed his call.
“Damn it.” At least he’d left a message. She didn’t bother with the Bluetooth, simply put the phone to her ear as she pulled out of the school’s turnaround and onto Hana Highway for Kahului.
