O'ahu Lonesome Tonight? (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series #5)

by Bassett, JoAnn

  “I’m not sure; but I have a good idea.”

  “Where?”

  “With her boyfriend.” She said the last word with so much disdain I wondered if Natalie had stolen the guy away from her.

  “You know, I just realized I don’t know your name. I’m Pali Moon,” I reached my hand across the counter to shake hers.

  “I’m Yvonne,” she said. “I know. It’s not the right name for me. But my sister started calling me that when she brought me here. Now I’m sort of stuck with it.”

  “So, back to the boyfriend. Do you know who it is?”

  “No idea. He never calls; he just texts. I sneaked a peek at her phone once but she’s got him in her contacts as just ‘BT’.”

  I ran the initials through my mental data bank but came up blank.

  It was barely noon but already the day was shaping up to be more than I could handle. I thanked her for putting up with me for the entire morning and I gave her my cell number.

  “Please call when Natalie comes back.”

  “What will you do if she doesn’t come back?” Yvonne said.

  “Do you think that’s a possibility?”

  “I’m from China. To us, anything is possible.”

  ***

  I got back to the apartment and flopped down on the bed. It seemed I was becoming nocturnal. I normally never slept in the middle of the day but now all I wanted to do was shut my eyes and hide from everything that had transpired in the past twelve hours.

  But I couldn’t sleep. A parade of disturbing thoughts marched across my brain, thumping out any effort I made to relax and drift off.

  Natalie was having an affair. Who was the mystery man? I considered Jason; he certainly would be my first choice. But then I recalled seeing them in the courtyard together. Natalie certainly didn’t treat him like a lover. She put him down at every opportunity. Like he was an irksome employee she didn’t have the authority to fire.

  And what about Wendi Takeda? Was she right? Had Stu been the victim of a public relations cover-up by the City of Honolulu? Did I have an obligation to play the outraged family member and demand they own up to their role in my brother’s death? Maybe a lawsuit was in my future after all.

  I scrunched my pillow under my neck and tried a new position but after a few minutes I knew it was hopeless. I wasn’t going to get to sleep.

  I dug through my purse and found Wendi’s card. When she answered, I apologized for calling her on her day off.

  “We just saw each other ten hours ago,” she said. “And, for the record, I don’t have days off. News happens twenty-four seven.”

  I thought it sounded like a TV news tagline but I knew better than to tell her that. After all, she was a ‘journalist’, not a lowly TV reporter like her twin sister.

  “My brother’s funeral is Wednesday,” I said. “I don’t want this to blow up into a media circus that overshadows our family’s grief.”

  “Too late for that, I’m afraid.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Haven’t you seen this morning’s Journal-Dispatch? It’s the lead story. And it’s been picked up by all the major news outlets: Reuters, Blumberg, the AP.” She said it with the same pride as a mother pointing to a “My Kid Is An Honor Student” bumper sticker on her mini-van.

  “Oh no.”

  “Pali, this is good. Your brother shall not have died in vain.” Now she’d lapsed into preacher-speak. Oh joy.

  She continued. “I’ll meet you wherever you want. Your place, a coffee shop, you name it.”

  It grinded on me that she sounded so chipper, but I wanted to learn what information she had so I had to play along.

  “How about meeting at the Starbucks in Waikiki? The one down on Lewers. It’s a block makai from Kalakaua.”

  “Give me some credit,” she said. “I know where the Starbucks is. I’ll see you there in fifteen minutes.” She hung up.

  Well, missy, I thought. Give me some credit. There’s at least three Starbucks in Waikiki. How would you know which one I was talking about?

  I washed up and put on a little lipstick. No sense in looking as bedraggled as I felt. I made my way up to the Starbucks and ordered a large coffee. I thought about getting espresso, but then I’d probably never get to sleep.

  Wendi showed up a few minutes later. One good thing about her was she was easy to spot in a crowd. Everyone else in Waikiki wore bright colors and flowered prints so Wendi’s black and white get-up really stood out. She looked like a bartender at a bar too cool to acknowledge it was in Hawaii. Like it was trying to channel a New York vibe for tourists who’d grown tired of mai tais and ukulele music.

  “Good,” she said. “You’re here. I didn’t know if you’d keep me waiting.” She shot me a shaka sign. “You know, island-time.”

  “Let’s dispense with the stereotypes, okay? I’m a wedding planner over on Maui. I own the business as well as my own home. And, I’m trained in martial arts. You treat me with respect and I’ll do the same for you.”

  “Got it,” she said. She pulled out a reporter’s notebook and pen and then laid a tiny black machine about the size of a cell phone on the table. “Do you mind if I record this? It helps later if I want to pull quotes.”

  “Wendi, let’s get one thing clear. I’m not here to further your career. I’m here to find out what happened to my brother and see if there’s anything I should do about it.”

  “Fair enough. But, let me also be clear. While I sympathize with your loss—and I do—I want you to understand that I’m willing to help you only if you help me. This isn’t going to be a one-way street.”

  We stared at each other for a few seconds. I picked up my coffee and took a big gulp.

  “So,” she said. “You okay with the recorder?”

  I nodded and we got down to business.

  CHAPTER 28

  Wendi and I reviewed what each of us knew about my brother’s accident. I kept calling it an ‘accident’ while she referred to it as ‘the precipitating event.’ I stuck with ‘accident’ because it took less effort to say.

  In the end, we both added information to piece together a more-or-less complete scenario. My brother had gone to the yacht club for a meeting with his business partner and had ended up closing the place down. He’d driven to the meeting, but apparently he hadn’t made it back to his car before he was either pushed or fell into the Ala Wai Canal at around midnight. Wendi told me a passing Good Samaritan had heard the splash and a scream and had called 9-1-1. There’s no record of whether the citizen had fished my brother out of the drink or if he’d managed to get out on his own, but the paramedics told the hospital staff that the witness had mentioned seeing a guy in a dark-colored baseball cap running from the scene.

  “Did the paramedics get the name of the Good Samaritan?” I said.

  “Seems they only got a first name. Anyway, that’s all there is on the incident report.”

  “How’d you see the incident report? Isn’t that police business?”

  “It is. And it’s going to cost me some big-time payback. But any good investigative reporter’s got eyes and ears at the police station and in the hospitals.”

  I told her about meeting Stu’s business partner and hearing from Moko that the boat yard was in some kind of financial trouble.

  “What’d you think of the partner?” she said.

  “He seems like a guy who’d eat his young to make a buck,” I said. I immediately regretted it and glanced down at the recorder.

  “Don’t worry, I don’t want to get sued for libel. That’ll never make the paper.”

  “The guy was a good friend of Stu’s dad. Actually, Stu’s dad and my dad were the same guy, but I didn’t know it until after my father died. Seems when our father got sick, Stu stepped in and got involved with the boat yard business.”

  “Okay, let me see if I’ve got this right. Your father was Phil Wilkerson?”

  I nodded.

  “Mr. ‘Got Bucks’ Phil Wilkerson?”


  Again, I nodded.

  “But you didn’t know it.”

  I shook my head.

  “Seems like you don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

  I let my silence speak for itself before going on. “Anyway, Stu started working with Barry Salazar—that’s the partner—when his father, that is, our father, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. About two years ago.”

  “And your other brother, the one who was with you at the hospital—”

  “Moko.”

  “Yeah, Moko,” she said. “He told you the boat yard’s in financial trouble.”

  “Correct.”

  “So, back to your brother, Stuart. Has the hospital admitted, either verbally or in writing, that they’ve linked your brother’s infection to the sewage in the canal?”

  I thought back to what the doctor had said. Nothing came to mind.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Well, we need confirmation on that. We need to prove that the sewage caused your brother’s death. That’s the nut of the story.”

  “Not for me,” I said.

  She looked skeptical. “What else is there?”

  “We both know Stu died from a bacterial infection. The doctor said the infection was probably triggered by exposure to ‘fecal matter.’ So I think it’s safe to assume he got sick from the crap they dumped in the canal. So, the ‘precipitating event’, as you like to call it, wasn’t the sewage in the canal. It was who or what caused Stuart Wilkerson to be in the Ala Wai Canal in the first place.”

  “But if there hadn’t been sewage in there he wouldn’t have gotten the infection,” she said.

  “Yeah, but if he hadn’t been pushed in, it wouldn’t matter what was floating in that water. And according to my brother Moko, Stu couldn’t swim. He could’ve drowned.”

  “But he didn’t drown. He died from fecal contamination. Look, Pali, I think we need to agree to disagree,” she said. “The police are treating this as an accident. The report says your brother had been drinking and he came out of the bar and fell in the water.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe what you want. You’re not going to convince them otherwise unless you find evidence to the contrary.”

  “Okay. But let’s agree on one thing.” I paused to check for her buy-in. She nodded. “We won’t hold anything back. Whichever way this goes, we’ll help each other. I’ll help you poke your finger in the eye of City Hall and you help me find whoever it was who pushed my brother into that canal.”

  “Fine,” she said. “This feels like a ‘buddy promise’ from grade school. Say, you want to pick and scab and become blood sisters or something?”

  “Nah,” I said. “There’s already too much flesh-eating bacteria floating around this city.”

  She gave me a hard stare as if contemplating whether I’d just dissed her. I told her I’d be in touch and I got up and left.

  ***

  Natalie finally showed up late Sunday afternoon. Yvonne called me and whispered that when Natalie came in she’d try to ask her where she’d been but Natalie told her to mind her own business. Natalie didn’t tell her that Stu had died and she gave Yvonne no hint of where she’d been for the past twelve hours.

  “But that’s how it is with my sister and me. She keeps me in the dark and I do the same with her.”

  “Does she know you speak English?”

  “No. She talks to me in Cantonese. It’s fine with me because it helps me keep up my skills. But I can hardly wait to get out of here. I’ve only got six more months to go.”

  “That was the deal when you came over here?”

  “Yeah, she sponsored me; even paid my airfare and everything. Then she goes off and marries your brother.”

  “Was that a problem?”

  “I probably could’ve talked Natalie into letting me go out on my own a little earlier. I hoped maybe she’d even help me with trade school—you know, like paralegal or court reporting. But Stuart was hard-core. He demanded I stick to the original commitment.”

  “Or what?”

  “He threatened to make things hard for me. He actually said, ‘I’ll make sure you never find honest work in this town’ or something crazy like that.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I guess I was someone he could control. Since his father died things haven’t gone so well for Stuart. He’s got to maintain appearances, you know.”

  I wondered how much Yvonne chaffed at being at her big sister’s beck and call. Was it enough to try to get rid of the one person who stood between her and freedom?

  Before I could say anything more, there was a small commotion on her end of the line. Yvonne said, “Joigin,” and hung up. Seems I’d just learned how to say ‘good bye’ in Chinese.

  ***

  After so much gloom and doom all day I was happy to see Farrah’s name pop up on my cell phone later that night.

  “Hey,” she said. “How are you doing? I heard about your brother on the news. I’m so sorry. I wish I could come over there and give you a hug, but I’d have to swim.”

  “Mahalo for thinking of me, but I’m fine. How about you?”

  “I’m totally good. I’m psyched about getting started on the wedding planning.”

  “Me too. I wish I could come home right now,” I said. “But I’ve got to stay for the funeral, and then I’ve got to tie up a few loose ends.”

  I wanted to tell her I’d vowed to track down the truth about what had happened to my brother but she’d probably insist we consult her Ouija board. No way I was willing to go down that path.

  “Well, just so you know, I’m eye-balling the bridal magazines here in the store,” she said. “So when you get back we can blast off like a rocket.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “I miss you, Pali.”

  “I miss you, too. I’ll be home as quick as I can.”

  The clock was ticking. I had only five more days in the apartment. By Friday, I needed to come up with something. If I didn’t know any more by then what had happened to Stu, I’d be forced to let it go. No way I’d disappoint my best friend of twenty-five years chasing down ghosts for a dead half-brother I’d only known for a week.

  CHAPTER 29

  Moko’s wife, Kepola, kept her promise to handle all the arrangements for Stu’s funeral. Everyone kept referring to it as a ‘memorial service’ and I think Stu would’ve liked that. It sounded more upscale. From what I could gather, it promised to be a blow-out event. I hadn’t known my dad when he died, but I guess the family had put on quite the big show. Seems the Wilkersons prefer to bury their dead like pharaohs.

  With the funeral plans underway, I had time to track down the people I wanted to talk to. I went to the yacht club and asked for Jason but they said he didn’t come in until six.

  “He called in sick yesterday,” said the bartender. “You may have heard about the guy who fell into the canal? Stu Wilkerson? He was Jason’s best friend.”

  I didn’t let on he was my brother. The less said the better. I didn’t want the guy tipping off Jason that I was looking for him. Jason was front and center on my radar. After all, I was pretty sure he was the last person to see Stu before he got fished out of the canal. And Jason had been strangely absent from the ICU waiting room during Stu’s last days.

  From the yacht club I took the Farrington Highway down to the Barbers Point boat yard. It wasn’t the easiest place to find. It was at the end of a long road that wound through an industrial area bristling with warehouses and trucking companies. When I got to the boat yard I could see why Natalie was underwhelmed with the whole operation. It was basically a smattering of corrugated steel buildings, one or two stories high, hemmed in by an eight-foot chain link fence topped with razor wire. Inside the yard, boats were lined up like cars at a used car lot. Most of them looked like they’d been there awhile and were waiting to be hauled off to a scrap yard. Even the signs at the entrance to the property looked cheap and worn
. “No Trespassing” and “Video Surveillance Cameras in Use,” things like that. The only sign that looked somewhat encouraging was a large wooden sign with ‘Barbers Point Boat Yard’ deeply carved in its surface. The sign hung to the right of the front door of the largest building on the property. Beneath it, a smaller sign warned ‘All visitors must check in at main office.’

  I drove in and parked. No one seemed to be around. I wandered around looking for someone to talk to, but all I found of interest was a giant steel crane straddling a wooden dock where the land met the sea. The crane looked like it’d seen better days. It had once been painted blue but now most of the paint was faded and chipped and in more than a handful of places the crane had gaping holes where either saltwater or rust had eaten away the metal.

  I made my way back to the main building. When I tried the door it was locked. I knocked. A few seconds went by and then a female voice said, “Leave it at the door. I’m on the phone.”

  I waited another minute and knocked again. A voice called, “Okay, okay. I’m coming.”

  A very ‘large statured’ woman with shoulder-length bleached hair that could’ve used an entire bottle of conditioner pulled the door open with a grunt.

  “What is it?” she said. She looked me up and down as if deciding if she should shut the door in my face, then said, “Who sent you?”

  “No one. I’m here to talk to Barry Salazar.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “When do you expect him back?”

  She laughed. “You tell me, sista. Payday came and went last Friday and no sign of him. No paycheck either.”

  “Is that why no one’s out here working?” I said. I glanced back over my shoulder to see if maybe someone had shown up in the past couple of minutes, but the place was still deserted.

  “No one’s working because we got no work. And, besides, one of the owners died this weekend. You see on the news about that guy who fell into the Ala Wai? He was one of the owners.”

  “I know. He was my brother.”

  Her face softened a bit and she stepped back. “Oh, wow. I’m sorry. I didn’t know Mr. Wilkerson had a sister. I only knew his brother Moko. He used to work here.”