Crazy Lady

by James Hawkins

  “Aloha,” welcomes the smiling face of a young Polynesian girl as Craddock, together with a couple hundred other sun-seekers dragging suitcases of winter woollens into summer, walks into a wall of humidity.

  “No thanks,” mutters Craddock gruffly as he sidesteps the young woman when she tries to throw a plastic lei around his neck.

  “Aloha,” she calls to the next in line and gets a smile in return.

  “I want a hotel,” he says to the plump-faced Chinese woman at the wheel of a cab and she turns, confused.

  “Which hotel?”

  “Something cheap.”

  “This is Hawaii, mister. Not cheap. You want cheap you go to China. China cheap.”

  “Fine,” he says. “Just not too expensive.”

  “Waikiki,” she says setting off at a quick pace. “All of Waikiki is hotels. Plenty hotels. You find cheap.”

  “Where will we stay?” questions Daphne as she and Trina race back to the airport with hastily packed suitcases.

  “The Sheraton on the beach at Waikiki is very nice,” says Trina from experience. “Although I bet Craddock will be slumming in a backpacker’s hovel.”

  “Are you sure you can afford this?” queries Daphne suddenly aware that Trina has footed the bill for everything, including her flight from England.

  “Not me,” laughs Trina. “This is Rick’s treat.”

  “That poor man,” laughs Daphne.

  “Like I said, he loves me.”

  “The RCMP and Vancouver Police are keeping mum about a major incident in the city today…” says the newscaster on the citywide evening news as the camera pans the crowd outside Craddock’s house. “So let’s go live to the scene for an update.”

  “As you can see,” says Graham Jarvis the reporter, doing his best to sound enthusiastic, even excited, “a very large crowd of anxious neighbours have gathered outside this rather ordinary looking suburban house where teams of tight-lipped forensic experts have been furiously working since lunchtime today.”

  The camera continues to sweep the crowd, now held behind police tapes that cordon off an entire section of the street, as a taxi pulls into view. The cameraman cuts back to the house, but heads in the crowd turn as one to view the new arrival.

  Joseph Creston taps the driver on the shoulder, demanding, “What’s going on?”

  “No idea,” says the driver with a nod to Craddock’s house. “But I think that’s the address you asked for.”

  “Wait here,” orders Creston as he gets out and makes his way towards the crowd.

  Two minutes later he’s back, sitting in thoughtful silence for a few moments before pulling out his cellphone.

  “J.C. It’s three in the morning,” complains Mason bitterly.

  “I don’t give a shit…” starts Creston, and then he backs down. “Look. Something’s happened to Craddock. The police are swarming all over his house and nobody’s saying anything. Get a hold of your man at the Yard. Tell him I want to know what’s happening.”

  “It’s three in the morning,” emphasizes Mason, but Creston isn’t looking for any excuses.

  “Double what you offered him,” he screeches into the phone. “Whatever it takes. I want to know what’s happening and now — all right?”

  “You’re the boss.”

  “You’re damn right I am.”

  “Do you think we’ll see the volcanoes?” Daphne wants to know as the 757 lifts through Vancouver’s clouds into the star-filled sky over the Pacific Ocean.

  “Wrong island,” says Trina, shaking her head. “Although we might end up there. Anyway you’ll like Honolulu. Lots of palm trees and sandy beaches. We can watch the surfers.” Then she nudges the elderly woman playfully. “Hey, maybe you and me could catch a few waves.”

  “I don’t think I packed my costume,” murmurs Daphne. “Although this looks fun,” she adds as she skips through the in-flight magazine and finds a picture of a catamaran sailing across a serene bay.

  “You’re on,” says Trina, flipping her baseball cap back to front again. “Hawaii here we come.”

  The Ohana hotel sits a few blocks off the beach at Waikiki. It’s not as cheap as Craddock would have liked, but it’s cheerful enough with its high-rise towers looking over the green Koolau Mountains to the north and glimpses of the rolling surf hitting the reef off the beach to the south.

  Craddock’s room on the sixteenth floor has turned its back on the beach and faces into the perpetually cloud-shrouded mountains. But it suits his mood.

  “Who knows, a few days, a week at the most,” he told the quizzical receptionist with a note of exasperation when he booked in without luggage. “Just until they find my bags.” But he knows that Davies’ credit card will only stretch so far. What then? he questions gloomily as he unpacks his jacket pockets. Get a job perhaps. He’s deluding himself and he knows it. In reality he’s praying that Janet will recover sufficiently to be certified insane, and he’ll be out of the woods.

  “So,” says Daphne, once their meal has arrived. “How are we going to find him?”

  “No idea,” admits Trina unconcernedly. “But we’ll have fun trying.”

  Daphne pauses with a piece of chicken halfway to her mouth and gives Trina a confused look. “Why are we doing this?” she questions as if the illogic of their actions has just struck her.

  “To help Janet,” offers Trina between bites.

  “I know that,” says Daphne, “but I’m just hazy about why we need to find Craddock. After all, Janet’s safe now.”

  “Look,” says Trina waving her fork at Daphne to emphasize her point. “This isn’t about Craddock or to save Janet’s life. This is about us. You and me. Lovelace and Button, International Investigators Inc. Just remember, we’ve never lost a case yet.”

  “Trina,” laughs Daphne at the younger woman’s bouncy enthusiasm. “We’ve never had a case yet. How could we lose one?”

  “That’s not the point. Someone murdered those little kiddies; someone locked Janet away for most of her life with a whacko religious freak; someone covered up the deaths of her kids; and someone is doing his best to stop us finding out the truth.”

  “Therefore?”

  “Therefore, we have no choice. I’m sure your friend David Bliss would understand. He knows all about determination. He nearly got himself killed to save us when we got lost in the States last year.”

  “I know that…” starts Daphne.

  “No more questions then,” says Trina, giving a military salute. “We will be the Mounties. We will get our man.”

  David Bliss’s determination to win Yolanda back has been unflagging in recent days and it takes a sharp upward turn when he realizes that his manuscript has grown to nearly thirty thousand words. It won’t be long, he tells himself as he sits atop the Eiffel Tower watching the cruise boats ferrying a few hardy visitors past the Louvre and various other monumental buildings that served as palaces to the line of Bourbon kings.

  “Your château should be the most magnificent château in the whole world,” writes Bliss in the voice of King Louis as the con man coaches his willing prisoner, the besotted Prince Ferdinand of Hungary, and goes on to detail the architectural features that the devious monarch wants incorporated into his prize. “ Corinthian pillars with acanthus leaf capitals should support an enormous shell canopy over the entrance; soaring turrets surmounted by roofs of copper should pierce the Provençe sky; a flight of Carrara marble steps, purer than snow, will lead your loved one into a great hall befitting her status as your wife; and fountains… fountains and waterfalls cascading all the way down to the beach will take her eye across the bay to your home on the island.”

  I wonder if Yolanda would like a place like that, Bliss daydreams as he stares across the mist shrouded river to the Tuilerie gardens where another of Louis’ great palaces once stood, then he pulls himself together. I know, I know. Just keep writing. Don’t think about her, it’s too painful. Just have faith. She will come back. Just keep plodding on;
you’re almost halfway there.

  “Aloha,” says the Polynesian greeter as Daphne and Trina emerge from their plane in Honolulu, and Daphne beams as she is lassoed by a vibrantly coloured lei.

  “It’s late,” says Trina putting her watch back two hours to local time, and by the time they reach the Sheraton it’s almost 2:00 a.m. in Vancouver.

  “Janet’s in hospital, J.C.,” says Mason when he finally gets word from his old school chum. “Mike Edwards had to pull pretty hard to get the information. Apparently Craddock is an ex-cop and his buddies are covering for him.”

  “What the hell did he do to her?”

  “I dunno. But according to Edwards there’s a round-the-clock guard on her door and there’s an all-ports warning out for him.”

  “You said he was a pro,” seethes Creston. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “Sorry J.C.”

  “I should think so. Now which hospital?”

  “Lets call it a night,” says an exhausted Mike Phillips once he’s debriefed his officers. “We know she was in his house, we know the hotel, we’ve got his car, and we’ve got her. I don’t think we can do anything else tonight.”

  “All we haven’t got is him,” mutters one of the sergeants, and Phillips looks up.

  “Give it time, Leonard.”

  “He could be anywhere by now,” suggests the officer tiredly.

  “Well, we’ve checked all flights leaving since lunchtime. His name didn’t come up.”

  “What if he used an alias?”

  “Then we might never know what happened to him.”

  Anxiety-induced insomnia and the need for a strong drink force Craddock out of his hotel in the early hours. The sidewalks and back alleyways of Waikiki are alive with music leaking from the late-night bars. Neon signs screaming “All Totally Nude” blaze appealingly from dozens of dark corners and are reflected off the tropical clouds that have drifted in from the mountains. The heavy sky is alight with the glow of the perennially partying city, but it will take more than flashy lights to lift Craddock. The sultry air drags him down further as he wanders the streets seeking a corner away from the spotlight.

  Bogus hula dancers with fake coconut bras and fake grass skirts grind to raucous disco pumped through a sixties amplifier; a one-man band sings “On the Beach at Waikiki” in a distinctly Australian accent; and an army of flesh vendors yell, “Hey Joe. Come in. See the girls. All nude,” as Craddock looks for a quiet spot. But he’s a natural target for the pimps; single Caucasian male with a beer gut and a glum look.

  “You want love?” asks a partly-dressed pretty Polynesian woman in her thirties.

  “Don’t we all, dear,” he replies seriously. “Don’t we all.” The bar he finally chooses is so far back off the beach that it’s mainly filled with all-night cabbies and other diehards who are more interested in the prices than the paintwork.

  “Rum — make it a triple,” he orders, and the rotund barman gives him a knowing look.

  “Hey, man. You look like you got woman trouble,” says the dusky-skinned local as he pours the shots.

  “Yeah,” agrees Craddock. “Woman trouble.”

  The Canadian PI actually has women trouble, though he doesn’t yet know it. Daphne and Trina are just a few blocks away in their room at the Sheraton. However, he’d never recognize them even if he bumped into them on the beach. The two women detectives, on the other hand, have a distinct advantage. In addition to his photograph they also know the alias he used to book his flight.

  “First thing in the morning,” Trina says as she and her friend prepare for bed. “We’ll split up and do every hotel in town.”

  “And after that we could go sailing or even take a submarine ride,” enthuses Daphne, picking through the glossy pamphlets by her bedside.

  chapter fourteen

  “Nothing would be more wearisome than ceaseless pleasure,” King Louis XIV reportedly proclaimed to his court in the seventeenth century, but it is a truism that is yet to be grasped by many of the Sheraton Hotel’s coddled visitors as they surface to another day of luxury in the warm, hibiscus-scented air of Hawaii.

  The hotel’s full name, the Sheraton Moana Surfrider, is as pretentious as the beachfront building itself: a building with half a dozen fluted columns supporting a soaring canopy over the front entrance that stands sentinel in the centre of Waikiki bay and fights the less fortunate off the golden sand beach with ropes and with signs declaring, “Registered Guests Only.”

  “Our hotel is known as the First Lady of Waikiki,” says Tony, the morning maître d’hôtel, as he escorts Daphne and Trina through the colonnaded entrance hall to the Banyan Veranda where breakfast awaits.

  The Sheraton, built more than a century ago to cater to colonialists, retains much of the Victorian elegance of a plantation house, although it is far larger than any that graced the tobacco or cotton fields of the Carolinas or Virginia.

  “Breakfast under a banyan tree,” exclaims Daphne in delight as she and Trina take their seats under a monster whose branches radiate like the arms of a cartoon octopus.

  “This tree is just a few years older than the hotel,” explains Tony with a toothy smile as he pulls out a chair for Daphne under the 115-year-old giant.

  “Oh, look at the sea,” exclaims Daphne in delight as she spies the early morning bathers riding the gentle rollers into the cerulean bay.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to try surfing?”

  “Maybe,” jests Daphne. “Once we’ve found Craddock.”

  Joseph Creston would also like to find Craddock, but he’s way off his mark as he returns to the private eye’s last known place of abode in Vancouver. The police tape is still in place, though the crowds and media have melted away overnight, and a lone uniformed constable now patrols the perimeter.

  “Can I help, sir?” asks the officer noting Creston’s interest.

  “I think I know him,” suggests Creston with vague wave to the house, but the officer eyes him warily.

  “Know who, sir?”

  “Mr. Craddock,” replies Creston with nothing to lose. “He’s a private investigator, isn’t he?”

  “Is he?” questions the officer with a deadpan face. “You didn’t know?”

  “I’m only a constable, sir. I’m not paid to know,” the officer continues, still playing the Englishman, but the arrival of a cruiser takes his attention and he steps aside and lifts the tape to let it through. “That’s the inspector,” he carries on as Mike Phillips parks on Craddock’s driveway. “He’s the one who’s paid to know.”

  “Inspector,” calls out Creston. “Could I have a few words please?”

  Mike Phillips wanders inquisitively towards the tape with “No comment” readied on his lips when his would-be inquisitor thrusts out a manicured hand.

  “Joseph Creston.”

  Mike Phillips keeps his hands in his pockets. “And…?” he queries.

  “Creston Enterprises — chocolates,” continues the magnate.

  “Oh,” says Phillips, patting his gut. “Try to avoid them myself, but what can I do for you?”

  Here goes, thinks Creston. “I just wondered if there was any news on my wife.”

  “Wife,” queries Phillips, quickly putting two and two together. “Do you mean Janet?”

  “Yes. That’s right, Inspector. She is my wife.”

  “You’d better come in then,” says Phillips, lifting the tape.

  “Oh my sweet Jiminy Cricket. Just how many hotels can there be?” moans Trina two hours later as she and Daphne rest under a shade tree on the golden beach and massage their feet.

  “I must have done twenty,” complains Daphne. “But he might have another alias for all we know.”

  “I thought of that,” admits Trina. “And what if he paid cash and just picked a name out of the air?”

  “Or he could be somewhere else altogether. He might have flown on to one of the other islands,” agrees Daphne. “What will we do then?”

&nb
sp; “Well,” says Trina, paddling in a puddle under a drinking fountain to cool her feet. “We’ll do this one first and move on if we have to later in the week. You wanted to see volcanoes.”

  “Actually, I got an inquiry about your wife from someone at Scotland Yard late last night,” Mike Phillips tells Creston as they enter Craddock’s house, and Janet’s husband has no problem confessing.

  “Yes. I asked one of my staff to make some inquires. I was worried about her.”

  That’s interesting, thinks Phillips, eyeing the sharply dressed executive cautiously as they sit at Craddock’s kitchen table, realizing that he must have left England well before the alarm was raised. “So, when did you last hear from your wife?”

  Creston fidgets momentarily, but quickly stops when he sees the inquisitiveness in Phillips face and feels the jaws of a trap. “There’s no point in me lying to you, Inspector. The truth is that Janet and I have been separated for quite some time.”

  “But you still care.”

  “I still love her to be honest… always have. But she had one or two problems.” He puts his finger to his forehead expressively, adding, “Psychological problems.”

  “Well, she has other problems now,” says Phillips, and is intrigued by Creston’s apparent lack of curiosity as the man simply inquires, “Can I visit her?”

  Phillips shrugs. “I don’t see why not, if you’re her husband.”

  “I’ll do that then,” says Creston rising and he’s half out of the door before Phillips stops him.

  “Don’t you want to know which hospital?”

  “Oh. Yes. Silly of me,” says Creston, opening his pocket diary and using a monogrammed Waterman to take details. “Thanks,” he says, turning back to the door, when Phillips hits him again.

  “By the way, how did you know your wife had been here?” Creston stops, asking, “In Vancouver?”

  “No,” questions Phillips pointedly. “In this particular house, Mr. Craddock’s house.”

  Creston’s mind is clearly spinning as he fights for a plausible reply, but his mumbled response about putting two and two together lacks both credibility and conviction, and as the Englishman walks down the driveway towards the street and his rented car, Phillips pulls out his cellphone and arranges for a surveillance team to be waiting at the hospital.