“They planned to stop at Hanakapi’ai Beach for a couple of nights first,” Trish said. “I’d hike in and look for them tomorrow morning, but I have a wedding to shoot at two.”
“One of Kiki’s events?”
“Yeah. A real blowout. The bride and groom are getting married underwater.” Trish rolled her eyes.
When David Letterman started shrieking again, Trish levitated a foot off the sofa and shoved her fingers in her ears. Photos scattered all over.
“Poison! Poison!” The macaw screamed. “Take it away!”
“Sorry. Sorry, Dave.” Louie was frantically trying to unclip the water cup from the side of the cage. David Letterman started to go for his hand.
“He’s nuts,” Trish whispered.
“Louie or the parrot?” Em whispered back.
“Both.”
“That’s why I’m here, remember?” Em said.
“So can you hike in there tomorrow? Try and find these two?” Trish handed her the photo of the hikers. The young woman was smiling. She had long red-gold hair that hung in rippling waves past her shoulders. She would have been beautiful if her skin wasn’t the color of a carrot. The man was older. Tall and lanky with round John Lennon style wire framed glasses. His long gray hair was pulled back into a ponytail.
“I could use an outing, that’s for sure.” Em had hiked to Hanakapi’ai only once before, shortly after she’d arrived on island. She’d been looking forward to doing so again but hadn’t made time.
Just then, Sophie walked in carrying the cash box. She waved at Louie and headed for Em and Trish. Em felt a wave of relief and smiled.
“You can set that on the desk,” Em waved toward the old battered wicker desk on the far side of the living room. “Want anything to drink?” She offered.
Sophie watched Louie putter behind the bar. David was still spitting patooies. Sophie shook her head. “No, thanks. I don’t think so.”
Em could see the girl was uncomfortable. “Have a seat,” she said.
She thought Sophie was going to decline but then she sank into the rattan chair across from the couch Em and Trish occupied.
Em filled her in. “Trish may have found a couple of witnesses.”
“If they’d seen someone kill Harold, don’t you think they would have told somebody?” Sophie frowned and locked her fingers between her knees.
Trish nodded. “One would hope. They may not have seen the actual murder, but they might have seen something that, on hindsight, might have been a little suspicious. It’s worth asking them.”
“Did you tell Roland yet?” Sophie looked concerned.
“Not yet.”
“I don’t know.” Sophie shook her head. “It’s pretty far to go just on a hunch that they saw something. Why not wait until they hike out?”
“It could be weeks before they come back and it’s only two miles.” Trish said.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Em said. “I’ll leave as soon as it’s light in the morning.”
Sophie looked even more uncomfortable. “You shouldn’t have to go up there. Let me go. I really don’t mind.”
Trish shook her head. “You shouldn’t be seen on the trail to Kalalau. Somebody gets word of it and pretty soon everyone will think you’re on the run and that you’re going to hide out in the valley like Ko’olau the Leper.”
“Who?” Em asked.
“Ancient history. Forget it,” Trish waved her off.
“At least let me go with you, Em,” Sophie suggested.
Em leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I don’t want Louie working the bar alone all day. Every time he’s there by himself, we lose money. I need you here. I’ll be in and out of there in a few hours. If I leave early, I can be back by noon, one at the latest.”
Trish stood up. “Speaking of going, I hate to break up the party, but I’ve got to get home.”
Em helped Trish gather the photos, keeping the one of the professor and his carrot-colored companion. She promised to call Trish as soon as she returned.
With a glance at Uncle Louie who was frantically making notes in his Booze Bible, Em went back to the couch and slouched down again.
Sophie sighed, leaned forward and dropped her voice. “Thank you for trusting me.”
“I do trust you. That’s why I’m going to do everything I can to find out who really killed Harold so we can clear your name.”
For the first time since last night, Em saw Sophie smile.
10
The Raw Eaters
Em left at dawn, drove to the end of the road and parked. When she got out of Louie’s black Toyota pick-up, she made sure to leave the doors unlocked so the bums who broke into rental cars parked at the trail head wouldn’t have to break her windows.
The truck looked pretty local, so she wasn’t all that worried. She signed into the log book at the bottom of the trail and started up the steep, rock lined path that canted up the mountainside.
She picked her way along a packed red dirt trail that was as slick as marble in some places. Roots formed two-and-a-half foot steps on steep slopes. Natural booby traps of woody vines thick as her wrists protruded from the ground here and there. The trail was only three feet wide at the most. In some places there wasn’t a bush or a blade of grass to break a fall over the cliffs to the wave battered rocks below.
A wide expanse of golden sand was edged by a strong shore break. A sign on the beach posted the latest drowning body count but rarely kept swimmers out of the water. A cliff with a wide mouth cave was cut into the far end of the beach.
By the time she reached Hanakapi’ai, muscles Em didn’t remember having were screaming. She’d polished off all her water. Sweating and parched, she still had to cross a clear running stream to reach the sand. Though dying for a sip of water, she didn’t dare take a drink. She’d heard enough horror stories about the dreaded leptospirosis bacteria and flesh eating disease that lurked in some of Kauai’s streams and rivers.
Scanning the beach, she saw a handful of tents set up here and there. Nude men and women basked on the sand like sleeping monk seals.
There were plenty of drop outs on the North Shore and a few were the real deal. Others were wanna-be-hippies who were actually retired dot-comers, former day traders, or merely spoiled brats the locals had nicknamed trustafarians—kids living off of trust funds. They “survived” on overpriced organic food and bottled designer juices and water from the local health food store.
At least her folks’ generation boasted real hippies who fought for causes like world peace, ending the draft, or at the very least, burning bras to liberate breasts.
She easily found her hikers sitting under a huge plum tree near the cave on Hanakapi’ai Beach. They’d put up a tent and stripped down to their birthday suits. The man was tall and even thinner than he appeared in Trish’s photo. Behind his round granny glasses, his eyes were unusually bright and glassy. A benign smile curved his lips.
Em would have recognized the young woman anywhere. She was the color of a papaya, a lovely pale orange all over. A pile of fruit was stacked on the ground before her. Nude, she looked like Eve contemplating not just an apple but a whole fruit salad. Em smiled back.
“I’m Em Johnson and I run the Tiki Goddess Bar in Haena. Our photographer said that you stopped by our luau two nights ago.”
The man offered his hand.
“I’m Professor Nelg Nelson, Chairman of the Anthropology and Archeology Department at the University of North Carolina.” He turned to the young woman beside him. She was half the professor’s age. Probably a student, Em guessed.
“This is Namaste,” the professor added. “Have a seat.” He indicated one of the large flat rocks near the front of their tent.
Em sat and tried to keep her gaze from drifting south toward the professor’s flaccid penis. It looked a lot like a baby turtle’s head peeking out of a thatch of kelp.
“Nelg is an interesting name,” Em had no idea how to segue into a conversation ab
out Harold’s murder. “Is it Swedish?”
“Actually, it’s Glen backward, but I think it adds a certain flair.” He smiled over his glasses, reached for his backpack and pulled out a joint. “You don’t mind if I smoke?”
“Not at all.” Em figured she’d better start asking questions before the professor got any higher. Before she could begin he said, “I find the custom of the luau quite interesting and a bit sad in its current format.”
She took a deep breath and quickly cut him off before he could go on.
“Actually, Professor, I’m here because someone was murdered on luau night. His body was found in our imu. Since you were there…”
Namaste spoke for the first time. “Surely you don’t think we killed someone.”
Em shook her head. “Of course not. I was just wondering if you may have seen anything out of the ordinary, anything that, in hindsight, might seem suspicious. Since you didn’t actually come inside, it’s possible you might have crossed paths with the murderer.”
Namaste shivered. The professor took a hit off the joint and offered it to Em. She shook her head no and he passed it on to Namaste. Em decided pot smoke evidently qualified as raw enough.
Nelg Nelson held his breath for what seemed an impossible amount of time. Finally he coughed, blinked and stared at Em.
“The victim lived in a small green house to the right of the parking lot,” she prodded.
“Ah.” He nodded and smiled over at Namaste. “The place with the sculptures in the yard.”
“If you want to call them that, yes,” Em said. Harold had a penchant for collecting junk and turning it into what he liked to call yard art.
Nelg shook his head. “I can’t recall anything out of the ordinary. Lots of people. Tourists. Cars.”
Namaste finally spoke up. “The smell of smoked pork was making me nauseous. I had to leave.” She started nibbling on a papaya as if it were an apple. Em had never seen anyone eat the skin before.
A Boy Scout troop appeared on the trail, crossed the stream and fanned out along the beach. Four of them broke from the main group and soon became more interested in staring at Namaste’s exposed female anatomy than exploring the cave or beachcombing. Em figured a fresh Brazilian wax trumped flora and fauna every time.
“Doesn’t it bother you to have them staring like that?” Em whispered to Namaste.
“Body parts are natural. I have nothing to hide.”
“You can say that again,” Em mumbled.
“The professor and I believe in the purification of the body through Tantric yoga, the consumption of raw foods, and plenty of water.” The young woman reached over, grabbed the professor’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t we, Nelg?”
Em was fairly certain the professor would agree to anything Namaste wanted him to if it gave him access to her orange tinted portal.
“Would you like a drink?” Nelg handed Em a bottle of Fiji water. He obviously didn’t notice the contradiction in the fact that their water of choice flowed from plastic.
“You’re certain you can’t recall anything out of the ordinary Friday night?” Em hoped something might break through the professor’s ganja haze. The joint had disappeared. The Boy Scouts were motionless, mesmerized and barely breathing by now. Nothing like a good fantasy and a contact high.
Em glanced at her watch. She reached into her pocket for a Tiki Goddess business card. “If you think of anything, anything at all that might help, don’t hesitate to call.” She thought for a moment. “You do have a cell phone?”
“And a computer. Though neither works back here,” Nelg told her.
“How long do you plan to stay in Kalalau?” Em asked.
“As long as we can sustain ourselves on the wild fruit that grows in the valley. I’m here doing research on a Lost Tribe that legend says lived in the far reaches of the Kalalau Valley, trying to connect them to the tales of the Menehune, the little people who supposedly lived here before the first wave of Polynesians arrived. Most people discount the tales as mere legend, but recently skeletons of miniature people have been excavated from the floor of a cave on Flores, an island near Bali. This new species, homo floresiensis is a fantastic find. They were hunters who used stone tools and so I’m searching for evidence of their existence here—hoping to prove they were the reality behind the mythical Menehune.”
As he spoke, the professor opened his back pack again and this time he rolled a joint the size of a hefty cigar. He urged Em to take a hit. She stared at the joint, recalled she’d been smoking pot the night she met Phillip. She’d wound up dancing on a table in a club in Newport, riding around naked on the back of a flatbed truck and woke up the next day engaged and remembering none of it.
She stared at the joint in the professor’s hand and thought, why the hell not? Em took a drag. She held her breath, her eyes bugged out and eventually she fell into a coughing fit but the euphoria that eventually followed was worth it.
A few tokes later, when Nelg suggested they go all soak in the huge tide pool trapped in a low spot on the beach, she pulled off her tank top and shorts and stripped down to her designer thong and bra—leftovers from her former life. She followed Nelg and Namaste down to the pool and slipped out of her undies.
She savored the caress of a gentle passing shower on body parts that hadn’t been bared in public since the time she and Phillip checked into an exclusive adult beach club outside of Puerto Vallarta.
Lolling in the warm salt water was as good as a massage. The sun was warm, the air velvet. The Boy Scouts earning Voyeur badges had doubled in number. When Namaste invited Em to partake of their raw feast of papaya, squash, mountain apple and peanuts, Em said yes.
She’d been working nonstop since she arrived on Kauai and now, and despite that fact that she was on a mission, she realized she hadn’t been this carefree in months. It didn’t take much to convince herself that it would be good for her spirit, good for her soul, and definitely good for her aching muscles to hang out a while longer.
So what if she wasn’t back by afternoon? Sophie was safely out of jail and tending bar with Louie. And Harold wasn’t getting any deader.
11
Meanwhile Back at the Goddess
The next morning, the inside of Em’s mouth tasted like the bottom of a bait tank by the time she finally got home. She’d stayed in Hanakapi’ai far longer than she’d intended. The day got away from her and since it was too dangerous to hike back down the trail in the dark, she’d spent the night.
Her eyes were dry, her head felt stuffed with coconut husks. Now and then she experienced flashes of a weird dream she had while sleeping in Nelg and Namaste’s tent.
She’d been standing at the podium during one of the O.C. fundraisers she used to chair for the Women’s League—stark naked. Harold Otanami suddenly appeared and arm wrestled her for the microphone. He won and started to belt out “Great Balls of Fire.”
As Em ran from the banquet hall nude, she grabbed a table cloth off a nearby table, whipped it off and sent place settings and food flying. Phillip and his latest love toy were fortunately at that very table. They ended up dripping raw fruit compote. Just as she reached the door, a ten foot high pile of miniature skulls and bones appeared and blocked the exit.
“And that, Emily Johnson, is why you quit smoking pot years ago.” She admonished herself aloud as she skirted the Goddess parking lot. It was only 9:30 a.m. and already the Hula Maidens’ cars were there.
She pulled around the back to avoid being sighted and slipped into her uncle’s house. Em expected David Letterman to start shrieking—as a watch parrot he was better than a Rottweiler—but this morning he was silent. She found him lying on the floor of the cage, belly up, sleeping one off.
Louie had finally perfected his Balls of Fire concoction.
She quickly showered, changed, brushed her teeth three times, and headed for the bar.
Before her eyes adjusted to the dim light, the Maidens who were present accosted her.
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“Where have you been?” Lil whined, her hair looking exceptionally pink. “We thought you were dead. Or worse.”
“I was—”
“There’s a murderer running around loose, you know?” Kiki was furious. “Nice of you to call and tell someone you were all right.”
“Cell phones don’t work in Hanakapi’ai.”
“We just called the police,” Flora confessed.
“You didn’t.” Em had enough of the police already. From behind the bar, Sophie’s pained expression said she felt the same.
“We didn’t call 911. We only called Roland,” Kiki clarified. “We thought you were dead, but he wasn’t convinced.”
Sophie came out from behind the bar and handed Kiki a fresh glass of chardonnay.
“Did the hikers see anything?” Sophie asked.
Em pictured Professor Nelg and Namaste naked as Adam and Eve beneath the plum tree.
“Nothing out of the ordinary. At least nothing they can recall. With as much pakalolo as they smoke, I don’t know how they remember their own names.” Then again, the professor did pronounce his backward.
“I know one thing,” Kiki said, “Roland and the KPD boys aren’t any closer to solving this thing than they were before. I say we all pitch in and find the real killer. Take the heat off of Sophie.”
Kiki had no idea how much heat really was on Sophie. Em feared Roland may have stopped looking for the killer to focus on the girl. All he needed was enough proof to haul her in.
“I agree,” Em said. “It won’t hurt to try.”
The Maidens in attendance ambled back to the stage. Trish and the Estelles were not there but Suzi Matamura, the Realtor, was back from a week on Maui. A perfect size six and just five feet tall in her bare feet, Suzi was the most diminutive of the Maidens. And the most coordinated. At the moment she was apparently spearheading an overthrow if Kiki didn’t design a different costume for the Slug Festival.
“I just don’t think we should wear ti leaf skirts,” Suzi told Flora, Kiki and Lil.
Mai Tai One On Page 6