Unknown Victim

by Kay Hadashi

  Gina frowned and shook her head. “No idea. I’d like to know who he was so I could at least say a prayer for him, or light a candle at a church. What about the other shoe prints in the dirt? I noticed your CSI techs taking snapshots of my crew’s shoes. Any matches there?”

  “To three, yes. And they all have solid alibis for their where-abouts at the approximate time of the murder.”

  “Which was when?” Gina asked.

  “The stabbing took place four to six hours before you found him, which was just before six AM. Time of death was probably one to two hours before you found him.”

  “Okay, my investigative abilities aren’t very good. How do you determine if he was brought to my porch before or after the time of death?”

  “That’s something else I’d like to know,” Detective Kona said. “If he didn’t walk in, he had to be carried. But by whom, from where, and when are the main questions.” He scratched his head while flipping from one page to the next, scanning notes with a fingertip. “What makes no sense at all is why the man was left on your doorstep?”

  “Well…” Gina said, sighing. “You know my background, which means you know my training and experience is nothing like yours. But I have to tell you, nothing makes sense about this to me at all.”

  Gina watched as he flipped through several pages in his notepad. He found the pages he wanted, and made notes on them. To Gina’s eye, it looked like he was cross-referencing details. He even had a couple of diagrams, drawings of interlocking circles, with related notes jotted inside each.

  “What’s with the Venn diagrams?” she asked, still trying to make sense of his doodles.

  He shared his pad with her. “It sounds like you’re familiar with them?”

  “My understanding is that they’re a way of showing how different sets of data can be related. Each circle gets a list of data, and where they overlap is the shared information, which should answer the question being asked.”

  “Very good.”

  “You use diagrams to solve cases?” she asked.

  “I use them to organize ideas, clues being the data, and the question being asked is the identity of the perpetrator. Once I get clues that are related, it helps focus the investigation.”

  “Is this something other investigators do?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of. I’m still trying to develop it as a tool. I doubt it’ll become the be all or end all of crime investigation, but it’s an organizational tool that’s proving to be helpful.”

  “Whatever works, I guess.” Gina hadn’t noticed that the sky had gone dark with rain clouds. “What happens now?”

  “With?”

  “The investigation.”

  “Nothing that involves you, Miss Santoro. I’ve probably already told you too much about what I’ve found as it is.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t be curious, but I can’t help it, you know?”

  “Tell me what’s going on with the estate?” he asked. “Something about rebuilding it?”

  Gina explained how she’d been hired on a one-year contract to get the old family farm back to its original condition, so the Tanizawa family could open it as a botanical garden that included historical displays. “They want to keep it authentic to the period of time of the first generation of Japanese that came to Hawaii. The problem is, I know nothing about that.”

  “Is that a part of your job? To include that history into your work in the gardens?”

  “No, not specifically. My part is to get the vegetable plots and fruit trees growing again, and reconstruct the Japanese garden and koi pond. Pea patches and fruit trees I can deal with. The koi pond and garden will be trickier.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I’m not so familiar with them. I’ve been reading about koi, and I even had a goldfish in a bowl as a kid, but that’s a long way from knowing what needs to be done with a landscape pond.”

  “Dig a hole, fill it with water, toss in some fish, and you’ve got a pond. What’s so hard about that?” he asked.

  “That’s my feeling. The family wants it brought back to the original size and shape. That means I have to do something of an archeological dig to find the shape and then dig from there. Plus, I have to keep my crew convinced that it’s a good idea to dig a giant hole in the ground using only shovels on sunny days in the tropics.”

  Kona chuckled. “Don’t feel too sorry for them. Those guys are used to it. From what I’ve seen, those guys are living the life of Riley on this job rather than doing stoop labor on a farm.”

  “They’re doing manual labor, anyway. I’m not sure of the difference between what they’re doing here and stoop labor on a farm might be.”

  “Stoop labor is exactly that; bending over to pull weeds, plant seedlings, stake plants. They spend the day bent over, and for the entire day, sunrise to sunset. Here on this project, they’re working in morning hours, and you give them a break in the middle.”

  “Felix told me that’s the way it’s done here.”

  “Felix Reyes told you that?”

  Gina nodded. “You know him?”

  “We went to high school together.”

  “You make it sound like you have a problem with him,” she said.

  “No problem. He’s a good guy to have around. Who else is helping you out?”

  “A guy named Gabe. He’s the digger. He was also disappointed that all the digging would be done by hand, instead of with a backhoe or bulldozer. That seemed to be a surprise to him.”

  “Who hired him?”

  “I think Felix. The crew had already been assembled before I got here. I get the impression the whole group sticks together.”

  “Who else is there?” Kona asked.

  “A married couple named Flor and Florinda. They’re responsible for getting the fruit trees back in shape and producing fruit again. I thought you talked to the crew yesterday?”

  “Only briefly. You know their last name?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t know any of their last names, until now when you mentioned Felix Reyes. I still don’t know the first names of a few of them.”

  “Who hands out the pay checks?”

  “Millie Tanizawa, I guess. That’s something else I’m not involved in. I got the first half of my contract direct deposited in the bank, and when the project is done, I get the second half.”

  “You’re not involved in budgeting?”

  “Only with the capital budget related to the garden. Tools, plants, those sorts of things. Mille gave me a credit card for that.”

  “What about the house?” he asked.

  “I’m not responsible for that, other than keeping it clean. There’s a handyman named Kenzo that comes around to work on the house, and Felix is putting up the wallboard inside while his crew works on the farm.”

  “By the way, what they’re doing is called fieldwork. Felix is the foreman, and you’d be the project manager. The owner of the place is known as the farmer.”

  “Thanks. I’ve never worked on a farm,” she said. “How do you know so much about farming?”

  “Felix and I did fieldwork on a farm as teenagers after school to earn a little money. He made a career of it, but after a few summers of stoop labor, I knew I wanted something else in life.”

  “And that was to become a police detective?” she asked. She knew her father’s life story of how he became a police detective, and a few other family friends that were on the force back home, but it was interesting to hear about Kona’s life in Hawaii.

  “Among some other ideas. After college, I tossed my name onto several waiting lists for career training.”

  “How’d you decide on police work?” she asked.

  “Easy. Process of elimination. The police academy was the first place to offer me training, with a job at the end.” He pretended to look at his notes again. “Tell me about living in the house. Why here before it’s even been rebuilt and not in an apartment somewhere?”

  “Mo
re money in my pocket. I get to live in rent-free in the house for the duration of the contract. Plus, just last night, I got a pickup truck from Millie Tanizawa to use. With each passing day, things get a little better.” She chuckled. “Except for finding a dead body on the front porch.”

  He jammed his thumb in the direction of the old Datsun. “She gave you that thing?”

  “Yeah. I think it’s as old…historical as everything else around here.”

  “You have a Hawaii state driver’s license?” he asked.

  “Not yet. The only place I’ve been is the hardware store.”

  “As a resident, you have three months, and then you get a ticket. Are the vehicle’s license tabs current?”

  “I…” Gina felt her face flush red with embarrassment. It was an easy ticket to write to a driver with expired tabs, and she’d already been driving it without checking. “I’m not sure.”

  Detective Kona went to the old pickup and looked closely at the tab on the rear plate. “Good for six months. Don’t let it expire.”

  Gina wanted to make a wise crack about being an adult, and how the vehicle was a loaner, but she kept quiet about it.

  Kona seemed to switch gears with his thoughts. “About Flor and Florinda. They’re a married couple?”

  “That’s the impression I got.”

  “Do they wear wedding rings?” he asked.

  “I haven’t noticed. I guess my investigative skills are a little rusty.”

  “More like your skills as a gossip need some fine tuning. They never mentioned their last name?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. Why? This is starting to sound like a formal interview.”

  Kona took a deep breath through his nose, shook his head, and looked out at the farm again. “No, just curious.”

  “There’s something I’m still curious about. Did you ever ID the body?” Gina asked.

  “His fingerprints aren’t in the local or FBI data bases.”

  “Which makes him a law abiding citizen,” Gina said.

  “And never had a federal job that required a background check.”

  “What about the smear of blood on the pocketknife that we found in his pocket?” Gina asked.

  “We?”

  “Officer Iosefa and that blonde?”

  “That blonde’s name is Officer Davis.”

  “Good for her. What about the blood?” she asked.

  “Not a match to his. I’m having an officer check the emergency rooms for anyone that might’ve come in with a knife wound consistent with what that pocketknife might inflict. You got a problem with blondes?”

  “Only with the pretty ones. She has an accent like she’s not from Hawaii originally?”

  “She’s from LA. That’s where she did her academy training. Why?” he asked.

  “No reason. Just curious.”

  Kona grinned at her. “It sounds like there’s more to it than that?”

  “Kinda got under my skin.”

  “Her specifically or blondes in general?” he asked.

  “Both.”

  “Anything else you want to know about her?”

  “No, I think I’ve pushed my luck far enough for one day.”

  Detective Kona chuckled and shook his head as he went to his car.

  Chapter Twelve

  By Wednesday morning, the dead body on the front porch had been forgotten, at least by most of Gina’s work crew. Once again, Clara made a wide berth around the front porch on her way to the back door of the house. She seemed especially upset about something, and Gina needed to know if it had to do with the job.

  “Everything okay, Clara?” Gina asked, cornering the girl in the kitchen.

  Clara slammed closed a cabinet door. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Are you sure? You seem upset about something. Is everything okay with your job?”

  “It’s fine, okay?”

  Gina took a step back when Clara got a kitchen knife and began slicing vegetables with a butcher knife. She thought that as long as she had someone’s attention, or at least a private audience without too many other people asking questions, she got out her phone and found a picture.

  “Clara, we found this bottle cap the other day. Someone thought it might be a Philippine brand. Is that brand name familiar to you?”

  Clara looked surprised with only a glance at the picture. “Why are you asking me?”

  “Well, the others are sort of busy.”

  Clara stopped with the knife and glared at Gina. “I’m not busy?”

  “Of course you are. I keep forgetting to ask Flor and his wife. Do you know if it’s a Philippine brand?”

  “Yeah, from the Philippines.”

  “Is it a soda?”

  “Tuyo Beer. Where’d you find it?”

  “It was in the pocket of that man the other day,” Gina said. It was more of a test than to answer the question.

  Clara visibly shuddered, and missed the celery stick altogether when she took a swing at it.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Clara said, going back to work at the cutting board.

  “You seem nervous. Is there something about that brand of beer?”

  “Unusual here in Hawaii to find that beer. Not very good at all. Very cheap. Nobody drinks it.”

  Gina decided to push for an answer. “If it’s cheap, it seems like a lot of people would drink it. Anyway, that man had a bottle cap for it in his pocket. Somebody had to have drunk one.”

  Clara slammed the edge of the butcher knife into the cutting board, wedging it in place. “Okay, one loser drank one. So what?”

  “Is it something served in bars, or sold in grocery stores?”

  “All kinds of beer in stores around here,” Clara said, while prying the butcher knife from the cutting board. “There’s Budweiser, Coors, Pabst, all kinds. Just buy one of those if you want to drink beer.”

  “I’m not looking for beer. I want to know about that particular brand of beer. Can you tell me where I can find it?”

  Clara turned around. Her eyes were wet. “Does it matter? That guy is dead. Why don’t you leave him alone?”

  “Yeah, sure, I’m sorry,” Gina said, backing away. What should’ve been a simple conversation had turned into an angry pregnant woman holding a knife. “Didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I’m not upset!”

  ***

  Even if her crew worked only eight hours a day, Gina worked through to dinner. Her original idea for the estate upon first seeing it was to cut everything down to the ground and start over. When she and her crew found useful ornamental plants that had been in the old garden, and they were still healthy, she decided to do a more thorough search of the estate. That meant she needed to run a project that was almost an archeological dig, looking for things left over from the past. She was also able to put her investigative minds and abilities to work.

  She’d learned not to do manual labor in the heat of the afternoon, instead spending her time searching through grass and weeds for plants in the Japanese garden that needed preservation. That afternoon had been spent finding and tagging plants with bright pink surveyor’s tape. Her back tired and her arms sunburnt all over again, she gave up with her project for the day and retreated to the kitchen to make dinner.

  To say Gina’s mother spent a lot of time in the kitchen was an understatement. If her father taught her about investigative police work, her mother spent just as much time teaching Gina how to cook. She’d never developed the same skill in the kitchen as her mother, but there was one dish she was proud of, and that was minestrone.

  Whenever a family gathering or potluck rolled around, Gina was expected to bring her style of minestrone. When she arrived in Hawaii, she knew that her usual recipe wouldn’t be right for the climate, that a summer style was more appropriate.

  Searching her refrigerator, she had almost none of the ingredients she needed to make a pot of the famous Italian soup. After taking a shower, she coated her sunburnt a
rms and face with aloe, dressed in loose clothes, grabbed her wallet, and set off in the pickup truck in search of a grocery store.

  She needed to drive out of the university area to find a real supermarket. It felt good to perform the simple task of pushing a shopping cart through a store, finally doing something familiar. Going to the produce section was another matter. Everything seemed upside-down with prices. The most common foods, tomatoes, onions, celery, beans and carrots, were some of the most expensive produce, while citrus, bananas, and unusual fruits were cheap. The only things she found that seemed ordinary to her and that was affordable were cucumbers. Picking through the best produce, she got what she needed for her evening pot of soup before taking a lap through the rest of the store.

  Along with finding the usual American and European brands she was accustomed to finding at home, she found Asian and Philippine brands. Taking a risk on a couple of them, she continued on until she found pasta noodles.

  “At least they have Barilla pasta,” she muttered, taking two packages off the shelf. “Look at those prices, though.”

  It wasn’t Friday yet, the one evening of the week when her parents drank wine. She’d developed the same habit, having a glass or two at the end of a workweek. Knowing she’d need some to celebrate the end of her first week of working a new job, she went to the wine and beer section.

  “Okay, so, Italian wines are priced for millionaires, and California wines aren’t much cheaper.” She set a bottle of her favorite wine back on the shelf. “I wonder what the local wines are like?”

  Scanning the names on the shelves, there weren’t many offerings that were made in Hawaii, and those had unpronounceable names. Wondering how far she wanted to stretch her weekly food budget just for a bottle of wine, she grabbed the closest bottle of red.

  “Looking for anything in particular?” a man asked. He’d been stocking shelves.

  “Something I don’t need to get a loan to buy.”

  He came over, bringing something of a limp with him. Like every other employee in the store, he was dark-skinned and black haired. Maybe because he worked in customer service, he had an easy smile. Not bad looking, he had a job, and he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. “Red or white?”