4 Kaua'i Me a River

by JoAnn Bassett

  He sat up straighter. “Okay. Then you should probably talk to a detective.”

  He looked down at his console and punched in some numbers. Then he turned in his chair so he no longer faced me and spoke quietly into his headset. Did he think I could read lips? Or maybe he was telling them he had a nutcase out front. After a few back and forths with the person on the other end he swiveled back around.

  “Sorry. I forgot to ask your name.”

  “Pali Moon.”

  He returned to his nearly inaudible conversation and after another half-minute he returned with a verdict. “Detective Wong says she can be back here in fifteen to twenty minutes. She’d like you to wait.”

  I took a seat in the all-beige waiting room. People refer to cops as the ‘thin blue line’ but in my experience, beige is the operative color.

  Half-an-hour later, Detective Kiki Wong came into the waiting room from somewhere in the back. She led me to the same nondescript interview room I’d been in when I’d been questioned about Peggy Chesterton’s accident. She pointed to a seat at the table and then sat across from me. The room was spooky quiet. All I could hear was the low shush of the air conditioner fan.

  “Sorry to make you wait. We’re working a burglary in Nawiliwili.”

  “Any news on the Peggy Chesterton accident?” I said.

  “Not much. Are you here to enlighten me?” She perked up, as if hoping I was there to unburden my soul and fill in the blanks.

  “No, sorry. I’m here about a cold case.”

  She squinted, as if getting ready to blow me off with, ‘Not my job.’

  “I think the Kaua'i Police Department was involved in covering up a brutal murder in 1981,” I said. Nothing like leading with a sharp jab.

  “That’s a pretty serious allegation,” she said.

  “Yeah, well it’s a pretty serious offense.”

  “What leads you to believe this, Ms. Moon?”

  “My mother lived in Hanalei in 1981 and on the night of April 16, 1981 she was beaten to death. The police called it an accident. They didn’t even investigate it.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “What? Am I sure my mother was beaten to death? Or sure the police didn’t investigate?”

  “Both,” she said. She leaned back in her chair. I had a hunch she’d much rather have been dealing with the burglary in Nawiliwili.

  I pulled out my mom’s death certificate and slid it across the table. Then I told Wong the story I’d heard from both Joanie Bush and Sunny Wilkerson. She listened, but hardly lifted her eyes from the certificate.

  “Is that it?” she said when I finished.

  “Isn’t that enough?” I’d implicated AJ Chesterton, big-time, and from where I was sitting it looked as if she was struggling to decide what to do with my allegations.

  “I’d like to take this one step at a time. Let me make a copy of the death certificate and see what I come up with regarding this incident. Obviously I wasn’t on the force at the time and many of the people who were are retired.” I figured she was referring to AJ’s father, Arthur Chesterton. The Chestertons had just held Peggy’s memorial service so the timing was about as lousy as it could be.

  “Are you staying on the island?” she said.

  “Yes. Up at Sunny Wilkerson’s,” I said.

  “Good. We’ll be in touch.”

  She led me out to the lobby. As I was about to go outside, she said, “Oh, and Miss Moon? I’d prefer you keep this to yourself for now. The Chestertons are…well, you can imagine.”

  I nodded.

  I drove up to Sunny’s. She remotely opened the gate and I made my way through the thick foliage. As the branches scraped the sides of the rental car I once again felt as if I was being watched. It was the same feeling I’d had up at Taylor Camp. Creepy, but somehow encouraging at the same time. Like when Farrah talks about communing with her guardian angel.

  Sunny came out to greet me. “Did you have trouble finding the place on your own? I was beginning to worry. I expected you an hour ago.”

  “Oh, sorry. I stopped off at the police station,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to talk to the police.”

  “About?”

  “About my mother’s death.”

  “Oh Pali. Let it go. It was such a long time ago. I’m sure your mother would want you to—”

  “I doubt if you have the slightest idea what my mother would want. Getting to the bottom of this is as much for me and my brother as for my mother. We want to know what happened.”

  “Suit yourself. Why don’t you take your things to the ohana and come back and join me for a glass of sun tea?”

  I parked in front of the guest house. When I went inside I felt like calling Sunny and telling her I needed an hour to freshen up and then tearing the place apart looking for—what? I had to make do with testing her reaction to the evidence I already had.

  When I went over to the main house Sunny was outside waiting for me. I sat down and she handed me a glass of sun tea.

  “This is good,” I said, taking a sip.

  “It’s my personal blend. I get it at an organic tea shop in Waipouli. So, tell me what’s going on,” she said. “I can’t believe the police had much to say after all these years.”

  “My father’s name was Philip James Wilkerson, right?

  “That’s right. Well, technically, Philip James Wilkerson, the Third. He was named after his father and grandfather. I guess when he was little everyone called him ‘PJ’. He hated that.”

  “And what was his brother’s name?”

  “Robert. Phil said his brother was named for your mother’s father.”

  “Robert Allen?”

  “Yes, I think that’s right.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why do you ask?”

  I pulled out the certificates I’d received from Vital Records and handed her the marriage certificate. She took it, gave it a quick glance and then dropped it on the table between us.

  “Huh. Well, I guess now you know,” she said.

  “My mother was married to my uncle?”

  “It was kind of a mess,” she said.

  “I’m sure. But I want to know.”

  “Okay, as you already know, Phil and your mother lived up at Taylor Camp in the mid-70’s. Right after you were born he ran out of money and his father made him come home and go to college. He promised your mom he’d come back after he finished. He told me he wrote to her while he was gone but she never wrote back.

  “So, anyway, when he graduated from the University of Oregon he came back to Kaua'i. By that time Taylor Camp had been burned down and everybody had moved. He found your mom living in an ohana on some other woman’s property.”

  “My Auntie Mana?”

  “He didn’t say. Anyway, when your dad came back…” she stopped and chewed on her lower lip. In the silence that followed I picked up the fragrance of a nearby plumeria tree.

  “Don’t stop now,” I said. “What happened when he came back?”

  “Are you sure you want to hear this? I mean, when Phil told me I thought maybe the drugs were messing with his head or something.”

  “Go on.”

  She blew out a breath. “Okay, so your dad comes back and finds your mom. But by then she had another kid. He couldn’t believe it.”

  “My brother, Jeff.”

  “Yeah. Trouble was, it was also his brother’s.”

  “Okay, you lost me there.”

  “Your mother had hooked up with Robert, your father’s brother, while Phil was away at school.”

  “So, Uncle Robby really was my uncle?”

  “I guess so. Robert had come to Kaua'i to visit Phil after he got out of the Army. When Phil went back to Oregon, Robert told him he was moving to Honolulu to look for a job, but he didn’t. He stayed. Then Phil showed back up.”

  I was trying to put the pieces together but some didn’t fit.

  “Okay, so my mom started living with Phil’s bro
ther after my dad left for college?”

  “Yeah, but Phil thought she didn’t know.”

  “Didn’t know what? Didn’t know that Robert was Phil’s brother?”

  “No, of course she knew that. Phil thought she didn’t know he was planning to come back. Phil said he sent his letters General Delivery to the Hanalei Post Office. And he said Robert must’ve intercepted his letters to your mom.”

  I squinted. “That’s just weird. Why would he do that?”

  “Who knows? The guy had been wounded in Vietnam. He had a drug problem. Phil invited him to come over to Kaua'i to relax and get his head on straight. It never dawned on him his own brother would put the moves on his girlfriend.”

  “Why did Phil think Robert had taken the mail?”

  “Because after Robert died, Phil found the letters. He said Robert had hidden them.”

  “So, Phil and Robert got in a fight?”

  “Yeah. Phil said a few nights after he came back to Kaua'i his brother sneaked in his room while he was sleeping. Robert was drunk or high or something and he made so much noise crashing into the room that it woke Phil up. Robert was carrying a baseball bat.” Sunny took a sip of tea. “What happened that night haunted your dad ‘til his dying day.”

  I shot her a skeptical look.

  “Anyway, Robert took a swing at Phil but he was so messed up he missed. Right about then your mom showed up and tried to break it up. I guess when Robert raised the bat again, your mom was in the way.”

  I put my hands up to cover my mouth. They were ice cold.

  “Uncle Robby killed my mom?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “And then…” I knew what was coming.

  “And then he killed himself,” she said. “Phil tried to stop him, but it was too late.”

  CHAPTER 29

  I was in the ohana when my phone rang. The caller ID said, Unavailable, but cops don’t want you to know they’re calling so I wasn’t surprised when it turned out to be Detective Wong.

  “Am I catching you at a bad time?” she said.

  “No, it’s fine.” I said. Actually, I couldn’t recall a worse time, but there was no turning back. I was eager to hear if Wong had found anything to verify Sunny’s bizarre story.

  “I did a records search and found the incident report. My boss says he’s willing to let you take a look at it.”

  “Can I get a copy?”

  “No, the file stays here. But if you’ll come in, you can go through it.”

  I left the compound without telling Sunny. It was weird enough having a step-mother five years younger than me; no way would I play the role of step-child.

  I drove to the Lihue police station. The same hunky desk jockey was at the front. I wondered if the guy was a street cop who’d messed up and was doing penance.

  “You’re here for Detective Wong, right?” he said.

  I thought the Wong/right thing was funny but had a hunch he wouldn’t see the humor.

  “Yeah.”

  Kiki Wong took me to the interview room and set a thin manila file folder in front of me.

  “This is it?” I said. I’d expected a big white box like you see on TV. I mean, after all, it involved a killing—accidental or not.

  “There wasn’t much to report. The investigating officer ruled it an accidental death. And then the alleged assailant committed suicide. Seems he jumped from Kalalau.” She shrugged, then seemed to realize how disrespectful that looked and said, “Look, I’m sorry. I know this is regarding your mother. Take your time, but please leave everything in the same order you found it.”

  She left and I flipped the file folder open. The first few pages included the final incident report, typewritten and stapled together. In narrative form, it described the arrival of the police, the subsequent arrival of an ambulance, and the later search for the alleged attacker. It ended by saying an eyewitness had observed a man fall from a cliff off above the Kalalau trailhead, and when the body was recovered it was later identified as the alleged assailant.

  The second set of stapled papers included the witness reports. There were notes from interviews with Auntie Mana—who was referred to by her real name, Maliana Kahele—as well as two other people whose names I didn’t recognize. The witnesses seemed to corroborate Sunny’s story. They’d heard a fight between two men, and called the police. When the police arrived, they found my mother gravely injured in the ohana. The men were gone, but no one witnessed them leaving.

  After that came the autopsy report. I wasn’t ready to delve into that in great detail. There was an outline drawing of the body with marks I assumed indicated wounds. The pathologist had used a larger line drawing of a human head to pinpoint the location of the fatal hemorrhage.

  I leafed through the rest of the file but didn’t see anything of interest. I did notice there were establishing shots of the ohana and the yard outside, but no photos of my mother’s body or even the murder scene itself and I thought that was odd.

  I shut the file and took it to the front desk. The guy asked me to wait while he called Detective Wong. When I handed her the file, she nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t you want to check to make sure it’s all there?” I said.

  “I will. But I trust you.” Seemed to me one thing cancelled out the other, but again, I kept it to myself. Who knows how much trouble she’d had getting her boss to agree to let me see it?

  “I have a question,” I said.

  “Certainly.” She looked down at the desk clerk. “Would you like to talk in private?”

  “No, that’s not necessary. I just want to know why there’s no mention of the two men’s names.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “In all the reports and interviews no one says who the guys involved in the fight might be. Doesn’t that seem odd?”

  “Sorry, I don’t have an answer for you. I’ll be honest. You probably noticed we cleaned up the file a little. For instance, there are no crime scene shots or photos of the victim. No sense in you seeing those. But beyond that, as far as I know, this is the entire incident report.”

  “Sunny Wilkerson told me that before my father died, he admitted he’d been there. He claimed he’d been the intended target.”

  “Well, according to this, he was gone by the time the police arrived.”

  “But nobody asked? I mean, even if he wasn’t there, wouldn’t the responding officer ask if someone was staying in the ohana? Don’t you think people would at least speculate who it was? I mean, really. We’re talking Hanalei, not New York.”

  “Witnesses are often unreliable. And, from what I was told, back in the eighties there were clashes between certain North Shore residents and the police. My best guess is no one was willing to name names.”

  I thanked her and went out to my car. I sat there trying to decide where to go next. Once again I felt the same weird sensation of someone watching me. I twisted around and checked the back seat. Empty. Then I got out and went back inside the police station.

  I told the desk clerk I had one more question for Detective Wong. He shot me a little stink eye before calling her back out front.

  “I’m sorry to bother you again,” I said to Wong. “But after all that, I didn’t make a note of the name of the officer who prepared the report. I guess I was so busy reading the account I overlooked it.”

  She asked the desk clerk to unlock the wooden gate separating the lobby from the working area of the station. He buzzed her through and she touched my elbow, signaling I should walk with her.

  After we got outside and the glass door had closed behind us she said, “It was Chief Chesterton.”

  “Arthur Chesterton?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder how much Peggy knew about this,” I said.

  “Well, you certainly can’t ask her now,” said Wong. “But maybe Mayor Chesterton remembers more than is in the report.”

  “I thought he had Alzheimer’s or something.”

/>   “I don’t think so. I spoke with him briefly at Peggy’s memorial and he seemed okay. He was devastated, of course, but he managed to hold his own. Hundreds of people came to pay their respects.” She held my gaze. I wasn’t sure if the stare-down was to shame me for not showing up at my father’s ex-wife’s memorial or because she still thought I had something to do with Peggy’s death.

  “Do you know where I might find him?”

  “I can’t promise he knows anything, or even if he’d be willing to talk to you if he does, but last I heard he was down at Garden Island Manor. It’s an assisted living place.”

  “Mahalo.”

  I drove to Garden Island Manor. From the outside, it looked like a cheery apartment building with a new paint job, carefully manicured landscaping, and a little flock of colorful Kaua'i chickens pecking contentedly in the flower beds. But once I stepped inside it felt more like a fortress than a residence.

  There was a woman behind a desk guarding the entrance. Her name badge said, ‘Joy.’ She had frizzy red hair and her face looked like a gargoyle, one of those scary mythical creatures with buggy eyes and a pointy chin. In medieval days, builders positioned carved gargoyles on the eaves of buildings to scare away intruders. This real-life version seemed to be performing the same task.

  “Sorry,” she said when I asked if she’d call Arthur Chesterton’s room. “I don’t believe we have a resident by that name.”

  “Would you at least check your residents’ list? I’m pretty sure he’s here. A detective at the police station told me I’d find him here.”

  “We do not give out personal information regarding our residents,” she said.

  “I’m not asking for his mother’s maiden name,” I said. “I just want to see if he’ll talk with me.”

  “We only allow visitors on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.”

  “Then I guess it’s my lucky day, because today is Tuesday.”

  She glanced at the page-a-day calendar on her desk and scowled as she turned the page to the correct date.

  “But are you expected? Our residents deserve and require a certain level of security. We can’t just let in anybody.”