by Chip Hughes
Yu ambled from one rare flower to another, softly uttering their Latin names. He then mumbled something about his business and pointed to an elaborate office with numerous electronic gadgets–a fax, photocopier, two computers, several phones with caller ID units, a cb radio, and a police scanner that crackled with distant voices. It seemed like far more equipment than a former computer consultant needed and certainly more than that of a fledgling orchid grower.
I handed Yu my card and asked him to call me collect if he remembered anything else about Sara’s death, though I doubted he would. His phone rang. He answered it as I found my own way out, snooping as discreetly as I could.
Parked behind the cottage was a new Range Rover–black on black–a luxury four-wheel-drive dream wagon for the outback. I peeked inside at the leather seats, cell phone, scanner, and radar detector. Pretty high-tech for an orchid guru.
By three I was driving back toward Hilo. Milton Yu had given me something new to go on: Sara’s lecture at the health food store in Kaunakakai. My background check on her had turned up no prior speeches or articles about either health food or vegetarianism. What would have been her subject?
I believed Yu was telling the truth about Sara, but not about his own occupation. His possible connection to the islands’ drug underworld would require some further investigation.
Back in Hilo I made a call to the health food store, but the manager there told me that Sara had only alluded to the topic of her speech as “a matter of concern to all Moloka‘i residents.” Her reputation, if not celebrity, must have been enough to draw a crowd.
I then checked into Uncle Willy’s Hilo Bay, and drank a beer in front of the evening news. The lead story was about a Honolulu man who had disappeared while fishing from a rock ledge at Bamboo Ridge, near the Hālona Blowhole on the southeastern tip of O‘ahu. The twenty-three-year-old law student, Baron Taniguchi, still hadn’t been found. Sipping my beer, I wondered if Taniguchi had ever taken a course from Sara Ridgely-Parke.
eleven
At sunset on Sunday evening I met Adrienne for drinks at the Halekūlani. More than a few rungs above Uncle Willy’s, my client’s hotel was the ritziest on Waikīkī Beach. I was surprised she had agreed to cocktails at this violet hour, but she sounded anxious to hear the details of my recent interviews. We had planned to meet early, since the next morning I would fly to Los Angeles to interview the last witness, Emery Archibald. Only he had been in a position to observe Sara’s fall. Would Archibald shed light on what was beginning to seem a very suspicious accident?
Adrienne arrived wearing a baby blue dress that deepened the color of her eyes. I followed her subtly alluring scent to a table under the spreading boughs of the century-old kiawe tree that reigns over the Halekūlani’s outdoor lānai. Named “House Without a Key,” after the Charlie Chan mystery, this seemed an appropriate place to discuss our potential murder case. As the cocktail waitress brought us Maui chips and took our order, I noticed the sweet sound of a slack-key guitar tune coming from the lānai’s small stage, backlighted by red-gold arcs of the setting sun.
“So tell me,” Adrienne said while we waited for our drinks, “do you have enough evidence to indict Greg Parke for the murder?”
“We have a ways to go before we can indict anybody, Adrienne. Parke included.”
“I told you, no one would want to kill my sister more than her ex-husband.”
“We’ll see. I have an interview Tuesday in L.A. with the travel agent who rode behind Sara when she fell. If anyone can provide us more clues, it’ll be him.”
“How many witnesses besides the mule guide recognized Greg’s photo?”
“Two. One admitted knowing him, the other didn’t.”
“One lied?”
I nodded. “The one who admitted knowing Parke is Milton Yu. He used to sell computers in Honolulu. Now he grows orchids on the Big Island, but that’s just a cover for pakalōlō. Yu may be deep into the drug trade, or just a small supplier.”
“What could he have to do with Sara’s death?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”
“And the witness who lied?”
“Heather Linborg, a Maui masseuse. She winced when she saw Parke’s photo. It would be interesting to find out why.”
The waitress appeared with two Chi Chis, tall goblets frothing like milkshakes. They even tasted like milkshakes, with a coconut and pineapple sweetness that masked double shots of vodka. I raised my glass to Adrienne, stifling the impulse to make a toast, since this was hardly a date. Our glasses clinked.
“Let’s look at what we have so far.” I took a swallow of the icy drink and set my glass down. “If Parke had your sister murdered, who would he have hired to do it? And how would he have gotten the mule to cooperate?”
“What about the mule guide?”
“Kaluna’s a paniolo. I don’t think he’d harm a mule to kill anybody.”
“And the doctor?”
“Dr. Goto didn’t look like the type to handle mules. He told me he’d always wanted to do medical research at Kalaupapa, yet put off his first visit a dozen years. That makes me wonder. Though I doubt he conspired with Parke.”
“Why not?” Adrienne sipped her Chi Chi.
“Goto doesn’t know Parke. I could tell by his response to the photo.”
“That leaves the Californian. Archibald has got to be the one.”
“We can’t write off the others just yet. Yu and Linborg both know Parke, and both are hiding something. Which reminds me, Yu said Sara planned to give a lecture at a health food store in Kaunakakai that same night. Any idea what that would have been about?”
“Sara gave public lectures all the time,” Adrienne replied coolly. “She didn’t bother to tell me the subject of each one.” Adrienne turned her chilly gaze to the dying sunset, as if she was searching for something.
That was an unexpected response to what I thought was an innocuous question. I watched Adrienne’s frozen expression, but it didn’t change. I swallowed the last of my Chi Chi and ordered two more when the waitress passed by. Then I remembered a burning question I had neglected to ask Adrienne on our first meeting.
“When did you last speak with Sara?”
Adrienne kept looking into the twilight, as she sipped the last of her drink. “I can’t recall.”
“A few days? A month?”
She gazed down into her empty glass, then spoke in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. “Five years.”
“Five years?” I stared at her. “You told me you and your sister were ‘very close.’”
“We were close. But Sara was strong willed and so am I. Before she moved to Hawai‘i we had a disagreement.”
“So you never came to the islands to see her?”
“No.”
“She never came to Boston to see you?”
Adrienne shook her head.
“And you never wrote or talked on the phone?”
“No.”
This wasn’t making any sense. “But you inherited her entire estate–four million dollars?”
Adrienne glanced up at the approaching cocktail waitress and smiled wryly, as if relieved for the interruption. The waitress gathered our spent drinks, set down fresh napkins, then placed frothing new goblets on them.
Adrienne waited for the waitress to leave. “Things happen between sisters that a man wouldn’t understand.”
She looked out again toward the darkening ocean, her lips set in a tight line. I decided not to press her further on what seemed to be a sensitive issue. The time would come.
As we reached the bottom of our second drinks, the moon was rising over Diamond Head. The singer crooned “Blue Hawai‘i,” his voice as gentle as the soothing tropical breeze: “Come with me when the moon is on the sea …”
Despite my objections, Adrienne put the Chi Chis on her hotel tab. When we stood I felt a bit wobbly. I wondered where her idea of the evening ended.
“Walk on the beach?” I suggested. “The m
oonlight is magic on the water.”
She looked hesitant a first, then seemed to make an instant decision. “That’d be perfect.”
I let her lead us to the shore, where she took her heels off and stepped onto the sand. A few off-balance strides put us at the ocean’s edge. I steadied her by putting my hands around her slender waist.
Being that close to her, touching her, breathing in her perfumed scent made me almost dizzy. I wanted this woman. I had from the start. She looked at me with those eyes that kept turning from steel grey to baby blue.
By the time we returned to the Halekūlani we were strolling arm in arm like lovers. In the elevator she pressed “12,” the doors closed, and we kissed. Before the doors opened again, we had abandoned ourselves to our Chi Chi-inflamed passions.
Down the hall, Adrienne hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the door of her oceanfront suite. I opened the lānai doors and let in the moonlight. She slipped off her dress and lay on the bed in the moon’s buttery glow. As I unbuttoned my aloha shirt, Adrienne’s eyes opened wide. The welts on my chest. I started to explain–but she stopped me. With a whisper-soft touch she drew me down on her.
twelve
Before leaving Adrienne’s suite by the waning moonlight, my head still spinning, I had somehow managed to ask her to phone the University of Hawai‘i Law School about Baron Taniguchi, the missing fisherman. Could he have been one of Sara’s former students? Adrienne had agreed to call while I was in Los Angeles.
Five hours later, I was dragging myself aboard a crowded DC-10. Booking a last-minute fare had landed me in the cramped middle section of the coach cabin. I desperately needed sleep, but every time I tried to snooze, another passenger crawled over me to stretch or use the lavatory. Every time, I awoke with an aching head.
The airliner touched down in Los Angeles just as the setting sun tinted the hazy gray sky. I couldn’t help thinking of Niki as we taxied to the terminal. I decided to call her that night from my hotel.
In the darkening twilight I picked up a car and crawled through Monday rush-hour traffic toward the suburb of Glendale. I checked in at the Red Lion Hotel, about a half mile from Archibald’s travel agency, Island Fantasy Holidays. Archibald had agreed to see me the next morning at nine. Still spent from my late night and long flight, I ordered dinner in my room. Then I slipped between the crisp king-sized sheets, all too reminiscent of Adrienne’s moonlit bed at the Halekūlani.
I reached for the nightstand phone and started to dial Niki’s number. I put the receiver back in its holder. Why not just drop by tomorrow on my way back to the airport? Maybe I’d discover the truth about what she’d been doing when we were apart. Hopefully she wouldn’t have flown off to Denver or Indianapolis.
I fell asleep, reminiscing of those first few nights Niki and I spent together.
Tuesday morning I pulled up to Island Fantasy Holidays, which, according to a mauve marquee, specialized in Hawai‘i vacations. The agency occupied one of several units in an upscale strip mall along Glenoaks Boulevard. The outer office smelled of new carpet and paint, which were both in soft pastels and illuminated by indirect lighting. New Age music wafted through speakers in the ceiling. The agency looked prosperous.
A twenty-something blonde, reminding me too much of Niki, directed me to an inner office, its wall lined with brass plaques. As I entered, a slim, elegant man in pinstripes rose behind his desk. His maroon ascot and tortoiseshell glasses gave him a dapper, almost flamboyant look. His full head of wavy copper hair had greyed handsomely at the temples. He was probably pushing fifty, but looked younger. Reaching for his offered hand, I whiffed the spicy aroma of his aftershave.
“Mr. Archibald, thank you for seeing me.”
“Call me Emery.” He winked. “Emery Archibald, the third. Grandfather started this travel business a half century ago. I’m his namesake.”
“You’ve kept the business in your family a long time. You must be proud.”
“We are.” With an aristocratic flourish of fingers, Archibald straightened his tortoiseshell glasses. His gold wedding band gleamed. “I hope you didn’t fly all the way from Honolulu just for this interview.”
“Don’t worry,” I reassured him. “I have other business in Los Angeles.”
“I’m relieved, since I can’t tell you anything about the accident that I didn’t already tell the police.”
“Then I hope you don’t mind going over the same territory again, for my client’s peace of mind.”
“Not at all.” Archibald ran his fingers through his copper hair.
“May I ask you first why you were on Moloka‘i the day of the accident?”
“Certainly.” Archibald again straightened his glasses. “Let me give you some background. A few years ago, I changed the name of our agency from ‘Archibald’s’ to ‘Island Fantasy Holidays.’ The original name sounded a bit old fashioned; besides, Hawaiian vacations had become our bread and butter.”
“From those awards on your wall, it appears you’ve been very successful.” I gestured to the armada of plaques from the Hawai‘i Tourism Board, United Airlines, Hertz, Hilton, Sheraton, and a dozen others. Next to those hung a photo of him with a cozy group whom I guessed to be his wife and children.
“Hawai‘i has been good to us, though the future looks cloudy.”
“Why’s that?”
“The airlines have cut our commissions.” Archibald began toying with a maroon fountain pen. “It’s tough. Very tough. Some smaller agencies have already gone under.”
“But you’re hanging on?”
“We book vacation packages–hotels, rental cars, tours– whole trips in tickets and coupons. That’s what saves us. That’s what took me to Moloka‘i.”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“To keep abreast of island tours available to our clients, I actually take them myself. I can sell a tour better if I’ve been on it first …” He leaned back in his leather chair. “Moloka‘i is on the verge of a tourism boom. What’s happening on Lāni‘i is nothing compared to what you’ll see soon on Moloka‘i. More hotels, more resorts, more daily flights.”
“Why do you believe tourism will boom?”
“Simple. Once Kalaupapa becomes a fully operational National Park and that new Chancellor Trust resort goes in on the cliffs above it, the sky’s the limit.”
“So you took the tour in hopes of developing new business for your agency?”
“Precisely.”
“Did you go alone, or did your family join you?” I nodded toward the portrait on his wall.
“The two boys had a swim meet here.” Archibald again preened his copper hair. “Martha stayed home with them and our daughter. I went alone.”
“About the accident …”
“Terrible. She was a lovely woman.”
“You knew Sara Ridgely-Parke?”
“Oh, no–that is, not before this trip. We just got to chatting and she had these marvelous ideas about ‘ecotourism’–you know, packages that stimulate nature lovers to travel, which of course would boost our business.”
“Ecotourism was apparently a favorite theme of hers.”
“She seemed to be a brilliant woman. Brilliant. That makes her passing all the more tragic.”
“During the mule ride when Sara fell, where were you riding in relation to her?”
“I rode behind her by about ten feet. The mule stumbled, I heard her scream, and the poor woman hurtled over the cliff.”
“Just like that?”
“Everyone was shocked. There seemed no reason for it to happen. Least of all to her, the only one of us who had experience riding, except of course for the guide.”
“Before the mule collapsed, did it do anything out of the ordinary?”
“Well, let me think.” Archibald rocked back in his chair. “It passed some gas.”
“Farted?”
Archibald cracked a smile.
“Ah, did anyone feed it anything or behave suspiciously around it?”
“Did all five riders take the bus tour?”
He nodded. “Only the skinner stayed behind with his animals.”
I pulled out the photo of Parke and set it on his desk. “Recognize this man?”
Archibald puzzled over the image. “Should I recognize him?”
“Not necessarily.”
“I’m drawing a blank.” He returned it, his expression suggesting he was telling the truth.
As I put the photo away, a muscular adolescent ambled in wearing a canary yellow tank top that said, “Gold’s Gym.” His biceps bulged, as if he had just pumped them up. On one muscular arm a bloody dagger was tattooed. A rebellious son?
“Stephan here is my assistant.” Archibald handed his boyish helper some airline tickets. The two exchanged glances. A current of energy seemed to flow between them. I couldn’t imagine what it might mean.
After Stephan departed I gave Archibald my card and asked him to call if he remembered anything more about the accident. Except for his fussy appearance and odd interchange with the boy, I found little reason to suspect the travel agent of anything. Nor had he provided me with much new information.
Had I flown all the way to Los Angeles to learn only that the victim’s mount had passed gas? A five-hour flight for a mule fart?
By ten that morning I had checked out of the Red Lion and was heading back toward the L.A. airport. My flight to Honolulu didn’t depart until two, so I had plenty of time to visit Niki.
A few mile’s drive north of the airport on Pacific Coast Highway brought Marina Del Rey, a pleasure-boat harbor where sun-loving pilots and flight attendants reside. Niki lived in a condo called La Casa Nova, a pink stucco complex surrounded by a wrought iron fence. Since I wanted to surprise her, I didn’t use the intercom to clear the security gate, but waited for someone to come along with a key.
The lushly landscaped Casa Nova consisted of several wings built around a heart-shaped swimming pool. Niki’s apartment was 309-F. I hoofed up to the third floor of the F wing, then flew past a dozen apartments. My breathing was fast by the time I reached 309.