Gybe paused for effect.
“I have discovered that Jean has had female lovers in her past. At least, she did when she was at UC Davis.”
Elizabeth deflated as fast as the Hindenburg had.
“You want to tell me about it?” Gybe asked after a few moments.
Elizabeth revealed that yes, she had been involved with Jean at UC Davis. Although she no longer taught at the university, she would appreciate it if Gybe would keep it to himself. She was worried about the professor/student ethics problem.
Continuing, she explained that they had broken up when she moved to Moloka‘i. Elizabeth left Davis, moved here, and as Gybe knew the story, started GeNesRus, Inc. A few months before Jean took her orals for her Ph.D. in genetics, she contacted Elizabeth about a job. They were just friends.
The rest was predictable, Jean moved to Moloka‘i where she went to work for Jean. At first, the working relationship was uncomfortable, but as the weeks passed, the remembered sexual tensions eased. Both women were happy as friends.
“So, you and Jean never rekindled your love?”
“No. Besides, I wouldn’t let it happen. I had too much at stake. GeNesRus is the most important thing in my life now. We are a small company with good, dedicated people.” She paused.
“GeNesRus could not survive an affair between employees – especially between the boss and a scientist. I couldn’t let that happen.”
The intercom buzzed. Elizabeth listened on the handset, then told Lea to take a message.
“Anything else Gybe?”
“Back to Ray Wilson. You didn’t know that he and Jean were spending Saturday’s at her house?”
“I believe I already told you no. I didn’t know. What difference does it make?”
“Have you visited Jean’s house?”
“Of course, it’s a small island.”
Gybe’s blood pressure inched up a few millimeters. If he heard the phrase ‘it’s a small island’ one more time, he might coronary out. Except for Greenland, every fricking island was small. One could argue about England and Japan and some such places, but they seldom referred to their nation as an island.
“Wall to wall corn fills Jean’s greenhouse. Short corn with more ears than an Irish pub on St. Patrick’s Day. It looked ready to harvest. Why?”
“As I explained at our last meeting, any corn in Jean’s greenhouse has nothing to do with her work here. It’s illegal. For research, environmental, and business reasons, we maintain tight security here at GeNesRus.” Elizabeth crossed her arms just below her breasts.
“And you still don’t know Ray Wilson?”
“No. I never met the man.”
From Mongoose’s snooping, Gybe knew the specific goals of the trans-species genetic research conducted by GeNesRus. “I know that your company is perfecting a technique of on-demand or to spec plant-to-plant gene transfer. You intend to improve upon existing techniques by an order of magnitude. You hope to create new viable stock in one-tenth the time that it now takes. Isn’t that correct?”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened as she leaned forward across her desk. “How do you know that?”
He ignored the question. “What kind of genetic transfers was Jean working on when she was murdered?”
Elizabeth sat back from the desk; her eyes darted to the upper left. After several seconds, she asked Gybe what he knew about hemp.
Gybe knew that hemp had been an important product in America from revolutionary war days when farmers were required to grow hemp up through the First World War. It had been cultivated for use in a number of products. But, because of its association with marijuana, its production was nil in this country in the twenty-first century.
The U.S. Customs Service frequently confiscated imported hemp products. Their weak argument was that they couldn’t differentiate between hemp and marijuana.
She confirmed Gybe’s beliefs. Hemp can substitute for fibers, fabrics, paper, oils, soaps, and dozens of other uses. Almost anything made from petroleum, cotton, or timber could be produced from hemp. “Many applications are economical today.”
“Hemp offers boundless opportunities if and only if the government could disassociate the marijuana angle. Native strains of hemp contain minute traces of THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, the much sought-after hallucinogenic in what the islanders call pakalolo.”
Jean was developing a new strain of hemp by removing the genes that created the minute traces of THC. As a marker for the feds, so that they could tell the difference between a marijuana plant and a hemp plant, Jean implanted genes from cilantro, sometimes called Chinese parsley, to impart a distinctive aroma. “She also added genes from a variety of the jalapeño plant. If someone, a college student for example, tried to smoke the hemp – what college student wouldn’t try?” She smiled. “They might fly, but it would be to the nearest water fountain.”
“Sounds like a salsa recipe?”
Elizabeth smiled, but made no comment.
“Okay, but this seems to be more of an end product than a procedure. I thought GeNesRus was perfecting a procedure for spec’ing new genetically modified plants.”
“You’re correct. I founded GeNesRus to develop the techniques. But, reality is about financing. I ran short of money, so I reviewed our resources, and decided to develop this one product. The final test for the new hemp, we call it red bhang, will conclude next week. I have completed negotiations to sell the product to the largest agricultural conglomerate in the Midwest. The initial payment plus residuals will fund GeNesRus for several years. By then, we will have achieved our core goal.”
Outside the office, Gybe scanned the parking lot before he got into the ’vair. A silver Lexus with tinted windows filled the slot labeled ‘director’.
51
It was a quarter of twelve when Gybe entered the small café on the mauka side of Kaunakakai’s main street. Since it was early for lunch most of the seats were unoccupied. From his meeting with Dr. Miller, he had driven straight here.
A waitress motioned him to a two-person table beneath the front window. While scanning the board of daily specials, he noticed Lea, the secretary from GeNesRus, enter the café. Flyn entered behind her.
When he caught Flyn’s eye, he motioned her away with a slight shake of his head. He wanted Lea to join him at the table.
Lea had taken a seat at another table before she saw Gybe at the front of the restaurant. With a smile and a hand gesture, Gybe invited her to join him.
Flyn took another table.
Lea and Gybe chatted while they waited for their meal. Lea told him that she had worked with Dr. Miller almost from the beginning. She used to work in a real estate office.
“I prepared the lease papers for our building. Dr. Miller impressed me with her daring and confidence. On the lease application she had written a description of the new company, GeNesRus.” She chuckled. “At that time, GeNesRus WAS a description.”
Two days later during her lunch hour, Lea drove to the new company. “I talked Dr. Miller into hiring me. I think her confidence was sagging as she sat alone in the new office with all of the empty desks and labs.” Lea bragged that she was employee number two, just after Dr. Miller. Working at GeNesRus was far more interesting than working in a real estate office, she added.
She asked Gybe why he was involved. Hadn’t the police captured the murderer? Didn’t he think that Susan was the killer?
“No, I don’t. The case against Susan seems strong, but every argument is circumstantial. No one saw her kill them. Unlike the movies, there is no murder weapon or DNA or fingerprints. The victims drowned.” He didn’t mention the difficulty of swimming with a concrete helmet.
“But she coulda done it, right?”
“Yes. But so could someone else.”
Gybe defended his position. “Lots of evidence shows that Susan hated genetic engineering. The police arrested her several times for protesting the research companies. Furthermore, rumor says that she participated in the vandalism of a research field
east of town. But, it’s a big step from killing a corn plant to killing a human plant. Especially, when you consider the method used to kill Ray and Jean.”
The waitress returned with their meals.
Gybe changed the topic. “Tell me about yourself. Were you raised on the island?”
Lea had been born in Maunaloa on the west end of the island. She had the usual islander hobbies – surfing, diving, and fishing. Like many people who were raised in the islands, Lea was a regular paddler in a six-person outrigger canoe. “Our canoe came in second in the Na Wahine O Ke Kai last September.”
“The na wahine what?”
Lea repeated the name of the race. “Phonetically, it’s nah wa-hine oh kay kye”
“Let me guess. Na wahine means women, right?” A letter to the editor in a local newspaper had chided the editor for pluralizing a Hawaiian word by adding an ‘s.’ The writer stated that prefacing the word with ‘na’ was the correct way to indicate the plural.
“Very good. What does ‘o ke kai’ mean?”
“Kai means ocean or sea,” Gybe beamed, “don’t know the rest of the words.”
“Na wahine O Ke Kai means ‘women of the sea’.”
“My kinda women!”
The canoe teams from around Hawai‘i, the mainland, Canada, Australia, and other countries raced from Hale O Lono Harbor on Moloka‘i to a small pier near the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki on O‘ahu. The distance was over forty miles, much of it across the Kaiwi Channel and open ocean.
Lea never saw the sucker punch of Gybe’s subject change. “So, Lea, what can you tell me about Dr. Miller and Jean? …about their personal relationship?”
Caught off guard, Lea stumbled. “What do you mean – personal relationship?”
“Look Lea, you’ve been with Dr. Miller from the inception of GeNesRus. You are the second employee. You’re the secretary. Secretaries always know what is happening within a company, particularly a company as small as GeNesRus. What are there, twenty employees?”
“About that, nineteen.”
“I know that Elizabeth and Jean were once romantically involved.” Gybe paused for effect. Odds were that Lea would not betray her boss. That’s why he laid his cards face up.
Lea stopped chewing. Her eyes darted the room seeking an escape from this conversation.
“Whatever you say stays between us. Have you seen Jean and Elizabeth together?”
“Maybe.”
“And?”
She told how once, late – maybe seven o’clock - she had walked into Dr. Miller’s office to leave some papers. She thought Dr. Miller was back in the lab, but she wasn’t. Jean and Elizabeth were embracing. Lea retreated to the reception area, got her things, and left the building.
The next morning, Dr. Miller had suggested that whatever Lea thought she saw, it was between Elizabeth and Jean. Lea agreed. She had seen nothing else.
“What about talk? What have you heard?”
“I hear rumors sometimes. All sorts of crazy rumors. Some are fun, but most are bullshit. I never heard anything that I believed about Dr. Jean and Dr. Miller. I never saw anything except that one time. Whenever I saw them together, they were talking about business or research.”
Lea excused herself and said she had to get back to work. Gybe agreed to pick up the check and reassured her that he would not repeat anything she had told him.
Outside the window, Gybe saw the nervous young woman slide into the silver Lexus and drive away. Maybe Elizabeth had loaned her the car.
He dropped a bouffanted Jackson on the table and walked to Flyn’s table.
52
“New woman Gybe? She seems a bit young, even by your standards.”
“Jealous, Flyn? Besides, I checked the law. In 2001, the state Legislature overrode Governor Cayetano’s veto and raised the age of consent from fourteen to sixteen.” Gybe pulled a spinach leaf from her salad.
Flyn’s fork left three red impressions in the back of his hand.
Massaging his hand, Gybe repeated the details of his discussion with Dr. Miller. Still toying with her, he omitted any connection to his lunch guest.
“So, Jean developed salsa-hemp?”
“Yeah. And Dr. Miller denied any current romantic relationship with Jean. At least since she moved to Moloka‘i.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I did. Until lunch.”
The young lunch date, Gybe explained, was Lea, Dr. Miller’s secretary. She was the only secretary at GeNesRus. He summarized his conversation with Lea.
“Gybe, are we getting anywhere? One moment, you eliminate Dr. Miller as a suspect in the lesbian-lover theory, then you have lunch with the disloyal secretary and she shoots a hole in it.”
“You’re right. Did I also mention the secretary was driving Dr. Miller’s car, a silver Lexus? Or, as the old man across the street from Jean’s house who described a mystery car as a silver Jap job.”
“What have you learned about Les?”
“Mongoose has quite an Internet rig on Makani. He activated an account on his server so that I could Wi-Fi from my laptop. Working from my boat was more comfortable and I wasn’t interfering with him.”
“Your buddy is OK, but next time I meet him, I’m wearing one of my anti-lust T-shirts.” Flyn added.
“Anti-lust? Should I ask?”
“Probably the one that has an arrow pointing up and the words ‘I’m up here, needle-dick’ stenciled across my breasts.”
Flyn unveiled her discoveries regarding SynCorn. As they knew, Dr. Spooner had founded the company four years ago. He used his own money for seed capital, which covered the startup costs and the first year’s operation. When that money ran out, like most entrepreneurs he sought OPM or other people’s money to continue the research. Two Midwestern seed companies put up five million apiece. The ten million carried SynCorn for the next thirty months.
But, without clear signs of progress, the two benefactors refused to provide further financing. “This is where the money trail gets murky.” Flyn added. “About six months ago, a Swiss bank wired three million dollars into SynCorn’s operating account at First Hawaiian Bank.”
“Not so unusual. Isn’t there a large food conglomerate based in Switzerland? Nestle?” Gybe asked.
“There are both food and pharmaceutical companies with Switzerland as a base.”
“So?”
“There was no press release. For Nestle or another large foreign company, three million dollars was chump change. They could take it from the petty cash drawer.”
“Maybe they didn’t want to reveal that they were funding biotech?”
“Possible. But, bagging venture money from a large Swiss corporation is something that Les couldn’t keep quiet. He would strut and crow from the tallest volcano. But not a word, rumor, nor press release came from SynCorn.” Flyn said.
They talked about the source of the money for several minutes. For every question he asked, Flyn had an answer. Like the results of her reef investigation at UH, her research was thorough.
The waitress cleared the table and asked if they wanted anything else.
“That salad was excellent.” Flyn replied.
“Most of the vegetables are grown here on the island. You can buy them at the farmer’s market across from the library on Saturday mornings.”
Gybe and Flyn walked outside. “We should talk with Mongoose.” Flyn suggested. “Just before I came in for lunch, he told me that he had hacked into SynCorn’s server.”
Flyn had walked to town, so she folded herself in the ’vair’s shotgun seat.
When Gybe had parked, he had been unable to find a slot to roll into so that he could drive out. To Flyn’s surprise, he shifted into first gear, popped the clutch to lurch the car forward. As the front tires hit the curb, Gybe clutched again. Like a basketball on a backboard, the tires propelled the car backward into the street.
Gybe cranked the wheels to port and drove away.
“Nice driving Gy
be. You flunk drivers ed before the backing up lesson?”
“Theft deterrent. Two days ago I found the car half way into a convenience store.”
Gybe rolled off the island and onto the causeway. Up ahead it looked like someone had yelled “abandon island.” Vehicles and people clogged the pier and causeway.
He slowed, cut the wheels hard left, clutched as they hit the opposite curb, allowed the car to roll back, shifted into first and drove back towards town.
“A perfect K turn, Gybe. That drivers ed teacher would be proud.”
Gybe steered the car to the shoulder just before a cross street denying anyone the opportunity to park in front of the ’vair. They got out and walked towards the pier.
One hundred yards down the causeway, they met a man resting astride his bicycle. Behind him, Hong Kong style, rose a pyramid of toilet paper, paper towels, a huge box of diapers, and at Flyn’s estimation – a year’s supply of tampons for three to five women.
To their questioning looks, the bicyclist pointed towards the pier saying, “the Big Box Barge is here. Come once a month.”
“And the Big Box Barge is what?” Flyn asked.
He told them that Costco, Home Depot, Best Buy, … displayed their wares in modified forty-foot shipping containers. The containers were stacked three high with catwalks at each level.
The barge cruised among the Hawaiian Islands, stopping in ports where the stores did not have a land-based presence. It also visited other islands of the South Pacific – Kiribati, Marquesas, the Cook Islands.
“The barge will be there from noon to eight tonight.” He said. “I must hurry now so that I can return for another load.”
At the BBB, Flyn accompanied Gybe as he selected cases of black beans, diced tomatoes, V-8 juice, bricks of cheese, large loaves of bread, two cases of wine, and tortilla chips. It wasn’t often that he could dink to big box stores so he exploited this opportunity. As a rule, he stowed three to six months of staples aboard Ferrity.
Many experienced cruisers pooh-poohed this idea, commenting that the extra weight slowed the vessel and made her sluggish. Ferrity was a strong boat and built to carry a certain cargo. Gybe loaded her so that he never pressed the boat below her design waterline.
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