Sinking Suspicions (Sadie Walela Mystery)

by Sara Sue Hoklotubbe

  The plane broke through the clouds and Sadie could finally see land. The woman sitting next to her pointed out the left window.

  “That's Haleakalā,” she said, emphasizing the final syllable. “If you're going to be here very long, you should drive to the top for sunrise. It's an experience you'll never forget, seeing the sun come up above the clouds.” The woman then gestured out the window to their right. “Those are the West Maui Mountains. My family lives in Lahaina on the other side of those mountains.”

  Sadie smiled and nodded, continuing to gaze out the window. As the plane circled and began its descent into the Kahului Airport, she could see odd-shaped rectangles of sugarcane fields sprawled on the valley floor below. Houses sat clustered closely together high up in the crevices of the West Maui Mountains. Sadie, so used to wide open spaces, wondered if these people had any privacy at all.

  As the plane moved closer to the ground, Sadie craned her neck toward the window, trying to see the airport. After barely clearing a highway, the plane suddenly dropped onto the runway. The pilot slammed on the brakes, and the knot in Sadie's stomach cinched her chest to her throat as the small airport flashed by on her left. The plane came to a jolting stop that made Sadie glad she hadn't loosened her seat belt. The pilot maneuvered a U-turn and taxied the aircraft back toward the terminal.

  Sadie let out a long breath and looked at the woman seated next to her. “Good grief,” she said. “That was quite a landing.”

  The woman smiled and said, “Welcome to Maui.”

  “I don't know why we had to stop so suddenly.”

  The woman unlatched her seat belt. “Because if we hadn't,” she chuckled, “we'd be swimming in the ocean right now.”

  As the plane emptied, Sadie pulled her carry-on bag out of the overhead bin and made her way off the plane, through the Jetway, and into the airport. Hawaiian music filled the air, instantly infusing her tired muscles with energy. As she rode the open-air escalator down to the baggage claim, the warm trade winds blew her hair across her face, and she smelled an unfamiliar fragrance of flowers. This really is paradise, she thought.

  She stood with the other passengers and patiently waited for the luggage to arrive inside the terminal. The carousel jolted to life and she stood nearby, waiting for her bag to fall onto the conveyor belt. Finally, it did, wedging itself into the parade of identical black bags moving around the huge oval. She grinned and shook her head when she recognized the piece of silver duct tape Lance had insisted on attaching to the handle. He had been certain no other Maui-bound traveler would apply the sticky fix-all tape to their bags and she would be able to spot her bag instantly. He had been right on both counts, for which she was grateful.

  After securing her bag, she retrieved her cell phone from her purse and turned it on. To her amazement, the signal indicator climbed to full strength. A few seconds later, the phone beeped, indicating that she had two messages. They were both from Lance.

  She smiled while she listened to his message. She could see him push his cowboy hat off his brown, chiseled face while he spoke, his penetrating, coffee-colored eyes searching the horizon for some bad guy to take off after. His voice reflected his personality, strong and confident, yet gentle and calm. Don't worry about anything, he'd said. He would check on the house daily and make sure her dog and horse were okay. He missed her already. Would she please be careful and come home soon. She saved the message so she could listen to his voice again later and waited for the second message to play.

  Lance's voice had changed to an official business tone. She switched the phone to her other ear so she could hear better. Her neighbor Buck Skinner was missing, and since she knew that part of the country better than anyone he could think of, and if she got this message in time, could she call and tell him where to look?

  Surely he couldn't be serious. She followed the other passengers outside, found a place to sit, and parked her bags on the sidewalk next to her. Perched on the edge of a concrete planter, she dialed the familiar number. While waiting for the connection, she calculated the five-hour time difference. It would be about 8:30 p.m. in Oklahoma. Lance's voice mail answered after the first ring. That meant either he had turned off his phone or he was somewhere void of cell phone service, which was most of the Eucha area—and that's where he would be if he was still searching for Buck. She left a message and promised to call back as soon as she settled in to her vacation rental, a condo in a place called Ma‘alaea.

  She looked up and saw a beautiful middle-aged woman, a flower securing her long black hair behind her left ear. The woman held a purple and white lei in one hand and a sign with Sadie's name on it in the other. Sadie gathered her things and walked toward the woman.

  “Hello,” she said. “I'm Sadie Walela.”

  “Aloha,” the woman said. “My name is Pua Keola. Mr. Yamaguchi sent me.” She smiled and placed the lei around Sadie's neck. “Welcome to Maui.”

  “Thank you,” Sadie said, holding the flowers to her face, inhaling the delicate fragrance. “These flowers smell wonderful.”

  “It's the white tuberoses. They are heavenly, aren't they?”

  “They are.” Sadie nodded and adjusted the strap of her purse so it wouldn't interfere with the lei.

  “I came to offer you a ride,” Pua said.

  “Oh my. How nice. But I've made arrangements for a rental car if I can figure out where to find it.”

  “No problem. I'll help you.”

  As the two women strolled down the sidewalk toward the car-rental windows, Sadie drank in the sunshine, the nearness of the emerald green mountains, and the tall palm trees bending ever so slightly in the pleasant August breeze. When she arrived at the car-rental counter, Pua conversed with the attendant while Sadie fished in her purse and presented her confirmation number. Soon, she waved at Pua as a shuttle whisked her down the street to pick up her car. The personal attention surprised Sadie, and she wondered if everyone who arrived on Maui was treated like royalty. It was nice. She liked it.

  The car-rental attendant gave her a map of the island and politely pointed out the route she should take to Ma‘alaea. It looked pretty straightforward on the map. She hoped it would remain so when she got on the road.

  She placed her bags in the backseat and maneuvered the economy car onto the highway, following the flow of traffic away from the airport. She drove past throngs of tourists with luggage piled high in convertibles, SUVs, and vans. Just think, she thought to herself, I bet all these people have travel agents back home.

  As she drove, she found it hard to read road signs and dodge moving vehicles at the same time. Suddenly, she felt very alone. Why had she come all the way to this magnificent place by herself?

  Sitting in traffic at a very long red light, her thoughts turned to Lance. He had told her more than once that she was the most stubborn Cherokee woman he'd ever met. They were both strong-willed people. Maybe that was the attraction. She knew he loved her independence, and his strong personality made her feel safe, but she wasn't sure two headstrong people could ever settle down together and be happy. She loved him, but the conflict was ever present.

  Maybe it was the age difference. Having just turned fifty, Lance was thirteen years older than she was. He'd been falling in love in Vietnam when she was throwing rocks at boys in elementary school. Was that the problem? A generation gap? Did their tastes, values, and outlook on life differ that much? She didn't think so. Besides that, she believed that love, their love, could conquer all obstacles, including a few extra years.

  Her thoughts moved to her neighbor, Buck. Like Lance, Buck was a strong Cherokee man. She had known him since she was a kid and always believed he could do anything. His age had nothing to do with it. He would be strong and resilient until he took his dying breath. That's just the kind of man he was. Thinking he could be lost somewhere was absurd. Then a wave of fear engulfed her. Even a strong man like Buck could get into trouble in triple-digit heat and humidity if something unforeseen had happened. S
he quickly convinced herself he was all right.

  As the traffic light turned green, she surged ahead once again. The attendant's instructions were clear: Go straight at Costco, straight through the light at the big church, left at the T intersection, exit left when she got to the Ocean Center, turn onto Hau‘oli Street, and look for her condo building on the right—the building with all the plumeria trees in front, he had said. When she told him she had no idea what a plumeria tree looked like, he laughed and told her to look for a row of trees covered in white and pink blossoms.

  The trees turned out to be unmistakable. She turned into the Ma‘alaea Banyans's parking lot and found a place to park.

  Inside the open-air lobby, Sadie picked up her key from the young woman at the front desk. Like Pua, the woman exuded such welcoming kindness that Sadie felt sure this must be what her grandfather had been trying to describe as the “aloha spirit.” Sadie slung her carry-on over her shoulder and pulled her other bag into the elevator. When she found her room, she let herself in, dropped her purse on top of her bag, and gasped. She walked straight to the patio door, slid it open, and stepped out onto the balcony. The view took her breath away.

  She stood and stared at the palm trees swaying slightly in the breeze, the ocean sparkling in the sunlight, and the grandeur of the dormant volcano—the woman on the plane had called it Haleakalā—its flanks sliding into the water and curving around the bay. The colorful shrubbery looked familiar, but completely unlike anything that grew in her garden back home. Children laughed and splashed in a nearby pool, and a young couple held hands while they dipped their toes into the surf. A boat filled to capacity with sunburned tourists sailed toward the harbor, and several surfers bobbed in the water, waiting for a wave to ride to shore.

  “Oh, Lance, where are you?” she whispered.

  Chapter 2

  Lance stood next to his truck and searched the simmering horizon for some kind of a sign that Sadie's neighbor Buck Skinner was still alive. If he was, he wasn't moving. Not that Lance could see, anyway.

  On the northern slope, a small herd of white-tailed deer entered the pasture. One by one, they bounced over the fence and congregated. From his position, Lance could distinguish four does and two fawns. They gathered near a bare spot in the tall grass and began to eat. Lance shook his head and chuckled when he realized Buck must be providing corn for the deer. Only someone with too much time on his hands would indulge in such a pastime in northeastern Oklahoma, where natural food for animals was plentiful, thought Lance.

  A large buck bounded over the fence and cautiously approached the herd. One of the does faced the intruder and stomped her front hooves on the ground. The male obliged and retreated to the edge of the fence, as if waiting for the females to finish eating before approaching again.

  Suddenly, the entire herd scattered in two directions and disappeared before Lance could see what had startled them. He retrieved his binoculars from the front seat of his truck and searched the area. He could see nothing unusual, but that was more movement than he'd seen since he and the others had started this search.

  Lance wished Sadie was there. She would know exactly where to look. In his mind he could see her jump on her paint stallion and ride off in a gallop with her wolf-dog Sonny running out front as point. Her property joined Buck's, and she probably knew every hill and valley as well as she knew her backyard vegetable garden. But she wasn't there. Not even close.

  He had dropped her off at the Tulsa airport earlier that morning for a flight that would take her thousands of miles away, across the Pacific on an unnecessary trip he was still unhappy about. He couldn't imagine why she wanted to be a travel agent, but he wasn't surprised. Right after college, she'd started out in the banking business. After she quit banking, she'd decided to go into business for herself and ended up buying and selling a restaurant in less than a year. Here she was, once again, searching for a new direction in life. She danced to her own drum, and he supposed that was why he was so crazy about her.

  They had both been hurt, suffering in their own way. He had never been able to completely silence the crashing sounds of artillery that took his lover's life in Vietnam. It would have been so much easier if he could have died with her. But he didn't. Instead, the smells, the sounds, the feelings of utter helplessness from that awful night frequently came to him in the dead of the night. He hoped someday the memories would subside.

  He knew Sadie had her own nightmares. He had met her right after she'd survived a deadly bank robbery where her coworker had been killed. It wasn't long after that he learned of the mental and physical abuse she'd endured from her jailbird ex-husband, a drug dealer who had died a violent death not far from her property. Then she'd been deceived by a man she thought loved her, a man whose whole existence was nothing more than a lie, including his love for her.

  All this had made Sadie as leery of men as he was of women. Even so, they both waltzed around their anxiety and misgivings, trying to build a trusting relationship.

  Everyone has baggage, he thought, but he didn't want a little unfortunate history to ruin their future together. He wanted to be the man who could convince her to overcome her fear. If she could do it, then he could, too.

  Sometimes he thought she just wanted to assert her independence, push him away. He had felt the strain between them when he kissed her good-bye. He wanted to marry her, something he was sure she knew, even though he had never actually uttered the words. And now that he thought about it, that's probably why she had fled like a hummingbird, zipping away after stealing nectar from a blood-red flower. He was the flower.

  He thought about saddling Sadie's horse and using him to search for Buck, but decided against it. Joe was a gentle giant around Sadie, but the stallion had a tendency to turn his head and flatten his ears every time Lance came near. Lance figured the big guy might not take kindly to an impromptu ride by anyone other than Sadie.

  Sheriff Percy O'Leary and numerous volunteers had been searching for hours on foot and on horseback but had found no sign of Buck. The sheriff had assigned volunteers to the wooded ridges that lined both sides of the valley between Buck's home and the abandoned house where Buck's truck had been found. Lance thought O'Leary's theory about Buck's whereabouts seemed unlikely, so he decided to search the upper pasture alone, where he could spend some time trying to sort out his thoughts. All he had to do was put himself in Buck's shoes for a little while, he thought, and then maybe he could figure out what the old man had been thinking when he disappeared. He ran what he knew through his mind.

  They were looking for Buck because a hysterical woman had called from California and reported that she hadn't been able to reach her Uncle Buck on the phone. Once O'Leary had ascertained that Buck was indeed missing, he moved unusually fast to get the word out, simply because of the brutal August heat. If some calamity had befallen the old man, time was not on their side.

  Lance had volunteered to help because of his proximity to the search. Even though Sadie had assured him that her wolf-dog Sonny and her stallion Joe would be fine on their own, he had driven from the airport back to Eucha instead of home to Liberty to make sure everything at Sadie's place was okay. It was, except that her elderly neighbor wasn't where his niece thought he should be.

  Before heading out onto acres and acres of densely wooded land, Lance and the sheriff had searched Buck's house. The door was unlocked, which wasn't unusual for the area. Nothing appeared to be out of place, and there was no sign of foul play. However, a stack of envelopes on the kitchen table, all from the IRS, caught Lance's eye. He couldn't imagine Buck having trouble with the IRS, and the letters seemed irrelevant to finding Buck, so he moved on.

  The sheriff asked about Sadie, echoing Lance's own thoughts that she would know more about her neighbor than anyone else around. The only information Lance could offer was that she wouldn't be home for a few days, and that he had already left her a message. Finding nothing of any interest, the two lawmen had left the house and joi
ned the other volunteers in their search of the property. So far, their efforts had been fruitless.

  Lance leaned against his truck and continued to think. Buck appeared to be an independent old man, who could be anywhere from fishing in Lake Eucha to looking for horses in a neighboring state. Lance doubted that Buck thought he had to answer to anyone, including a relative who lived fifteen hundred miles away. Buck could've simply gone on an out-of-town trip and not bothered to mention it to anyone. The only problem with that assumption was that Buck's old truck had been found that morning on the property. If he'd gone fishing, how did he get there and who did he go with?

  Lance got into his vehicle and drove across the pasture, rolling to a stop next to Buck's worn-out Chevy truck. It sat near a springhouse in front of a dilapidated farmhouse that appeared to have been uninhabited for decades. Lance got out and glanced into the truck. He could see nothing unusual. But why exactly would Buck leave his truck there? Maybe it wouldn't start. The keys were missing, so there was no way to know whether the truck was operable without getting a mechanic to come out and test it. Then again, maybe Buck thought the old truck deserved a nice final resting place, and that spot was as good as any.

  Lance walked over to the springhouse and went in, taking pleasure in the coolness of the rock building. He squatted by the stream that flowed through the structure, scooped some fresh water with his hand, and splashed it on his face. It felt good. He lifted another handful to his face, sipped, and relished the iciness of the water. After a few minutes, he returned to the sunshine and slowly turned in all four directions, trying to imagine the path Buck would have taken if he had chosen to walk home from there.

  Lance decided the worn trail in front of the house that ran east back toward Buck's house seemed the most logical. He would retrace it, spreading out in both directions. With the heat index inching higher, closing in on triple digits, there was no time to waste. Buck could be dehydrated and disoriented.