by Todd Borg
“I want you to know that John was a good pilot, Jasper. He flew well and was in no way responsible for what happened.”
“But why did the man throw the stick?”
“We’re trying to find out. To do that we need to know more about John and Thos. We need to talk to their friends. Can you give us any names?”
“I don’t know any of John’s friends. As for what was going on in Thos’s life, I don’t think he had friends who could tell you much about that. He was too private. You can check with them. Let’s see.”
Jasper seemed to disconnect for a moment. He twitched and then spoke. “Donny Kyono was one. I know Thos golfed with Donny. He lives in Princeville. And Tom Rypel. He’s an old surfer friend who lives on the coconut coast near Kapa’a. And Caesar... I forget his last name. Donny will know. Other than that, there were Thos’s employees. Brian Malone and the others whose names I forget.
“Call them,” Jasper continued. “I think you’ll find that Thos wasn’t the kind of boy who shared his concerns and troubles. He kept things to himself. Like his mother. Friends were people to go fishing with. Talk about wine. Nothing personal. I asked him once if there was a girl in the picture. ‘Thos,’ I said. ‘What do you and the boys talk about when you go fishing? Do you have girlfriends? You talk about girls?’ And he said, ‘No, dad, we just talk football. The last surf championship. Stuff like that.’”
Jasper poured soft drink in a glass and carried it to his chair.
“So I got nosier,” Jasper continued. “I said, ‘What about girls, Thos? Is there a girl you like?’ He said that he liked to date, but that there wasn’t any one girl he was special on.”
“No close friends,” I said. “No close girl. Do you think he confided in anyone?”
“Yes, I think so. But I don’t know who it was. Do they call them pen pals when it is email? Anyway, maybe he was close to that person, I don’t know.”
“A woman?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Jasper said. “A couple times here and there, Thos referred to his cyber friend. Most of the time Thos would just refer to guys. ‘This guy I know.’ Like that. So I thought maybe the cyber friend was a woman.” He sipped his drink.
“You never asked?”
“No. I kind of hinted around, but if you knew Thos, you knew not to push him on something private.”
“You couldn’t guess who this person was?”
“No,” Jasper said. “Would it be in his computer? You could look there.”
“You give us permission?”
“Yes. The cops have already been through his townhouse. Computer, too. Why not you? I’ll give you a key. If it’ll help you find out what happened to my boy, then I’ll be forever grateful. Janeen will be grateful, too.”
Jasper got up and rummaged through a kitchen drawer. He pulled out a key and a pencil. There was a small pile of bills on the counter. He opened one, pulled out the contents and set them aside, then wrote on the back of the envelope. Street was sitting closest to him. He handed her the key and envelope. “Here is his address.”
“We’ll go there now,” she said. “We have to catch a plane later. Is it okay if we mail the key back to you?”
“Of course.”
We tried to make some pleasant small talk with Jasper before we left, but it did not set him at ease. He grabbed my arm as we were leaving. “Owen, will you find Thos’s killer? John’s killer?” Jasper looked up at me, his dark, opaque eyes searching mine. “First my father dies of cancer, then my brother in an accident. These things are bad, but I accept that. Now this man is taking what’s left of my family, Owen. I don’t think I can take it.”
I took his hand. “I think we will find him, Jasper. We know his name and what he looks like. It is only a matter of time.” I tried to sound confident.
Street hugged Jasper as we said goodbye. We pulled out with Jasper standing in front of his house. He gave a little wave.
TWENTY-ONE
We drove from the arid south side of Kauai up to the wet north side. The change in vegetation from sparse and dry to lush and wet was matched by the sky. At Jasper’s the afternoon sun was intense in a blue sky. In Princeville the sky was overcast and a light drizzle called for wipers and turning on the headlights.
Thos’s townhouse was on a beautiful stretch of grass and garden adjacent to one of the famous Princeville golf courses. An end unit with a view of fairways and mountains beyond, it had a lush elegance that, for many prospective owners, no doubt more than made up for the reduced sunshine of the north side of the island. We parked on an immaculate blacktop drive and Street let us in with the key.
The inside of Thos’s home was excessively neat. “This place looks more like a show unit than a place where someone lived,” I said.
“Cleaning service,” Street said. “You can see the vacuum tracks on the carpet. I think they’ve come through since Thos was here. Even a fastidious guy isn’t this clean.”
We took a quick look through the downstairs. There was a large living room with black leather furniture and an entertainment system against one wall. Another wall was glass with a patio outside. The décor of the kitchen was modern, with stainless steel kitchen appliances. Upstairs were two bedrooms. The smaller back bedroom had a double bed, a dresser, and a bookcase made of polished black wood, dramatic against the off-white carpet. To one side was a chair, upholstered in black leather. The larger front bedroom with a view of the golf course was Thos’s office. A wrap-around desk, multiple filing cabinets, copier, fax, computer and color laser printer nearly filled the space.
“What can I do to help?” Street asked.
“I’m going to poke around in his computer and look for Thos’s email friend. If he has a phone index, you might look for the friends that Jasper mentioned. Or look in the phone book.”
“Donny Kyono, Tom Rypel and Caesar somebody, right?”
“Yeah. And Brian Malone, the manager of Pacific Blue Wines. Maybe poke around through his desk drawers, too, and see if you find anything that hints of trouble or stress or bad financial decisions.”
Street went to work, methodically searching Thos’s office and, eventually, the rest of the townhouse, while I tried to make a methodical search of his computer. Next to the monitor was a stack of new Zip disks and I put one in to make copies of anything potentially useful.
I started with his email program. Fortunately, he’d set it up to remember his password so I had access.
There were 137 emails in his inbox. They dated from three days before his death, presumably the last time he left Kauai. I started at the beginning and opened them one by one.
The majority came from an online discussion group affiliated with a wine-making trade group. Scanning them quickly, I saw a wide breadth of issues and concerns relating to every aspect of growing and harvesting grapes as well as making wine, marketing and distributing it. But none of the emails revealed anything about his murder.
The next biggest category of emails was the kind of ads and promotions that get through junk mail filters. I perused them quickly. Chamber of Commerce updates, airline specials, surfing newsletters and many more.
A third category was business correspondence. I learned nothing from it except for the general impression that Thos was quite successful with his wine distributorship. And he was beginning to get inquiries about his own Pacific Blue line of wine.
The smallest group of emails was from friends, a total of seven. I read through them carefully.
From Jimbo at an AOL address:
“Hey, Thos, you were right about recommending that Merlot. Awesome. Yes, definitely try to pick up that account. Then can I get it cheap by the case through you? Just kidding. ;-) As for the surf on Miami Beach, let’s just say I have more fun in my bathtub. Later.”
From Tammy at a .com address:
“No thanks, hon. Last time was pretty trippy, but I don’t think you can replicate it a second time again. A second time again is redundant, right? You’re always so careful
with words. Where is the backspace key? Love you.”
From William Jones at a ca.us address:
“Dear Mr. Kahale, I received your email and am pleased to inform you that we do know of an antiques contact working in your subject area. He is in the Reno area. His name is Avery Ginsberry. Unfortunately, we don’t show a phone number for the listing. But he teaches at the Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, so you can find him easily enough. I’m glad I could be of service. And, yes, I do enjoy an occasional glass of wine.”
From RogerThat at a local ISP address:
“You kill me, surf dude. 1st you’re all campfires-on-the-beach-and-smoke-some-good-weed-laid-back. Then U grow up and become a killer biznessman. Good 4 U. Glad we bumped into each other again before we got ancient or something.”
From an msn.com address:
“Hi Mr. Thos, Let me know your plans ASAP. I have a busy schedule and I need to figure out times. Looking forward to your arrival. Hermes.”
From Donny at a local ISP address:
“Hey man, I think you are on the plane to CA, so here’s a calendar note. First Saturday in Feb. I’ve got an Andrew Jackson per hole on a rematch. Good luck cuz you’re gonna need it this time.”
From Suz at a local ISP address:
“Yes to both. See you at 5:30. Suzy.”
Appended below it was: “Original message: Hey, Suzy, just finished my paperwork, but it’s too late to call (2:00 a.m.). So while you snooze, Suz, I’ll make some reservations for Friday. I know I can count on you for the hop to Honolulu and dinner up above Waikiki. But would you like to hit some clubs afterward or take a quiet beach walk? (A clothes horse like me needs to know which shoes to wear.) Either way, plan to be ready by 5:30. Thos.”
I saved all of the messages to the Zip disk.
Next, I opened Thos’s draft folder. There were three letters in it, all business correspondence, nothing revealing.
All that remained was his address book. There were several dozen addresses. He’d put in a comment here and there after some of them. But only a few of them had names and phone numbers, and most appeared to be vendors and clients. There was nothing that would suggest a confidant. I made a copy of the addresses for further use.
Next I opened Internet Explorer. There were no bookmarks or history bar records. He obviously didn’t use the browser. I tried Netscape and found lots of both. I made note of his bookmarks and the records of websites he visited most recently. None of them seemed revealing. The cache files from the previous months contained hundreds of images, too much to copy them all. I opened four different images at random and got a picture of a wine label, a map of a Napa Valley winery, an ad for his wine distributorship and a picture of a square-rigger sailing ship.
The old ship was the odd item, so I continued to sample his cache files for something else similar or equally odd, hoping to find anything that could provide a window into Thos’s personal interests. But I found nothing other than more wine-related items.
I saved the image of the sailing ship and several other images at random from his cache files.
I opened Microsoft Word and looked at a couple dozen files. They consisted of typical business documents, letters and bids to his clients and vendors, notes to himself, ad copy ideas and other miscellany.
I was running out of ideas of where to look. There was a spreadsheet program and on it were his cash-flow charts and sales records. From what I could see he had a good business going. But nothing stood out as being worth investigating.
His checkbook program was as neat and orderly as his townhouse, same for his receivables and payables.
When I was done I had the clear sense that I’d come across nothing worth pursuing. There was nothing in Thos’s computer that would help me conjure up suicide and murder and intrigue involving secret shrines. To all appearances, he was simply another hard-working small businessman.
When I was about to shut off the computer I had another thought about the emails. None of the emails in his inbox had been opened before I found them. Everything prior to that had been deleted. I understood deleting many or even most of the incoming emails. But all of them? It seemed unlikely that there were no emails Thos would want to save. Of course, it was possible that Thos printed out any important messages and saved the hard copies. There was only one other explanation I could think of.
After Thos made his last and final flight to California, a visitor like the Viking could have entered Thos’s townhouse and gone through his email just as I had. If the Viking found anything useful he may have erased all of the emails so that no one else could learn the same information.
I was ruminating on that when Street walked in.
“I have a question,” she said.
“Hmmm?”
“I’ve found nothing revealing of anything unless piling surfing trophies in cardboard boxes in the back of a closet means something. I did get the phone numbers for the friends Jasper mentioned. Would you like me to call them? Or do you think it would be better if you do it?”
“Actually, your impression of them will be more accurate than mine, anyway. So yeah, that’d be great if you’d do the honors.”
“Any particulars you want me to pursue?”
“I’d just touch on whether Thos had talked to them about the secret shrine or recent troubles. That sort of thing. And whether he was romantically involved with anyone. If one of them knows the more personal side of Thos then we’ll be able to call him back when we have more specific questions.”
“Got it. I’ll do the calling downstairs.”
I went back to the computer, deciding to take a blind shot and send an email to all the people in his address book hoping to flush out a confidant if in fact one existed.
In the subject line I wrote: “Regarding Thos’s untimely death.”
The body of the message was:
“Dear friends and associates of Thos Kahale,
My name is Owen McKenna. I am a private investigator working for Thos’s family. You may be aware of Thos’s recent murder in Lake Tahoe. My deepest sympathies to all of you.
I’ve been hired to find Thos’s killer and am working in conjunction with the authorities in Tahoe and in Kauai.
We have reason to believe that Thos had a friend in whom he confided, and that this friend and he communicated by email. If one of you could be that friend, please email me as soon as possible.
Even if you believe you know nothing that will help with our investigation, if your contact with Thos was about anything other than routine business transactions, please contact me anyway. Thank you.”
I concluded with my own email address and sent it out to everyone in his address book.
I turned off the computer, put the Zip disk in my pocket and went downstairs to find Street. She was just hanging up the phone.
“It was just as Jasper said,” she said. “They all told me that they never spoke to Thos about anything personal. They golfed and fished and that was about it. One of them, Caesar, whose last name is Fernandez, said he tried to get to know Thos better, but that Thos was kind of a cold fish. His words.”
I nodded and summarized what I’d found in his computer, which was basically nothing. “How long do you figure we have before our flight?”
Street looked at the time. “With car rental return, we should leave here in a little over an hour.”
“Enough time for me to try Janeen again.”
I dialed, but there was no answer and she hadn’t turned on her machine.
We were about to leave when I went back upstairs and took another look in the smaller bedroom. I went in and eased myself down onto the chair.
Although it was now twilight, I could see out the window to a lush green mountain with two waterfalls cascading down through the jungle. Street came in and sat on the bed. I turned my gaze to the dresser. “Did you check in the drawers?”
“Yes. Underwear, some brand new shirts still in the wrappers, towels and more sweaters than you’d ant
icipate needing in the tropics, but they were probably for his trips to the mainland.”
I looked at the bookcase. The top shelf had a few photos in frames. There were some of family members along with pictures of young men and women playing volleyball on the beach and sitting around a campfire. The middle and lower shelves were two-thirds filled with books, their spines neatly lined up with the edge of the shelves and held in place with bookends that were bronze sculptures of surfers riding a big wave.
I got up and went over to look at the titles. The books were mostly hard-bound and about wine: its history, its impact on civilization, its complex chemistry and its role in the economies of California and many countries around the world.
Aside from books on wine, there was a scattering of other reference and business books. The only fiction in the bookcase was a collector’s edition of the complete works of Mark Twain. I pulled out one of the volumes. It was leather bound with gold embossed lettering and had gold leaf applied to the edges of the pages. I flipped through stories I’d read many years ago: The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The Stolen White Elephant, The Mysterious Stranger.
“A sudden urge to read a tall tale?” Street said.
“I was just remembering something Jasper told me. He said that when his grandfather was a young boy he met Mark Twain. Twain supposedly gave Jasper’s grandfather a handwritten manuscript in a leather notebook. It was a short story called The Amazing Island Boy And His Trick Wood.” I explained to Street what Jasper had told me about Twain and the gift and the hurricane that swept it away.
“You think Twain really made the gift of a story?”
“I don’t have any idea. But when I see this Twain Collection in Thos’s bookcase it makes me wonder.”