by Kay Hadashi
“Not really. You’re also a woman only three days past giving birth and having surgery. The defense lawyer would have a field day with that. You’re a hysterical housewife at home alone with the baby, and panicked when you saw a day hiker get picked up by his friend. Your meds are playing tricks on your mind, the anesthesia hasn’t fully worn off yet, whatever.”
“I’m not taking any pain meds because I’m breastfeeding Kenny, and the anesthesia was completely out of my system yesterday morning. And Detective, I hate to press the point, but I was in Special Forces for several years and currently work as a cardiothoracic surgeon. How does someone turn that into a panicky housewife?”
“The defense could also paint a picture of the mayor trying to find a scapegoat for the crimes, just to make herself look good. In fact, you’d look heroic, solving the crime on your own, just a few days after giving birth and having emergency surgery. How many extra votes would you get in the next election because of that?”
“What? The next election isn’t for another two years, and who said I’m signing up for this nonsense again?”
“I know, I know. Just relax. Those are the arguments any decent defense lawyer would use. Canned responses, but they work every time. If we picked those guys up with so little evidence, they’d walk in an hour.”
“That’s it, then?” she asked, feeling doubly demoralized that more things had been sold, and more had been stolen. They had suspects but there was nothing they could do about it.
“You can count on us stopping that vehicle if we see it. We’ll cite them for everything we can. Follow them home, or in circles around the island if we have to. They live somewhere. It might not be today, but we’ll get those guys in an interrogation room one way or another. But please, Melanie, stay out of the way.”
“Not like I’m going far with a sore back and a new baby.”
“Let me ask you one thing. Did the truck look familiar?”
“Not particularly,” she said. “A lot of pickups on this island.”
“Did you happen to notice what other vehicles were parked in the lot at Gonzo’s when you went there the other day?” he asked.
“If I remember correctly, the lot was empty. I wish I could tell you a red pickup was parked right in front, but I can’t.”
As the call ended, a young woman walked up the driveway to the porch where Melanie was standing. It was Anita, the first nanny applicant. The interview went quickly, and she was a solid candidate, even if she had never been a nanny before. Her only real experience with children was having a younger brother and that she had helped with his care as a baby.
“But you don’t have a car?” Melanie asked. “How did you get here?”
“A friend dropped me off at the resort across the way and I walked over.”
“Well, some of the duties we’d expect would be to run errands with the kids. We’d need the nanny to drop off Thérèse at preschool in the morning before doing errands. You’d have to take Kenny with you. When do you plan to get a car?”
“Oh, I don’t have my license yet.”
Melanie did her best not to sigh with exasperation. “Okay, well, we have other applicants to interview. We’ll let you know in a few days.”
“Not going to hire me, huh?”
“Afraid not. We need someone with solid driving experience. If they were your children, would you put them in a car with an inexperienced driver?”
“I guess not. Do you know of any other jobs on the island?”
“The resort across the way is always needing housekeepers.”
“Seems like a classy place. I’ve never had a hotel job before. I’m not sure they would want to hire me any more than you do.”
“Tell you what. Go over there right now, fill out an application, and put my name on it as a reference. Just tell the HR manager to call me. I’ll be glad to talk to them on your behalf.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“You have to start somewhere. I got my start working there a long time ago as a housekeeper. It’s a great place to work, the pay is good, and they treat employees pretty well. There are worse jobs to have, such as being nanny at our house.”
She walked the girl out to the porch but before she could leave, Melanie noticed some activity further up the slope. Someone was just coming through the gate that divided her property from the public access lands above.
“Anita, go in the house and stay there. I want you to call the police and have them come right away, but please stay with Kenny, okay?”
“The police? What for?”
“Tell them there’s a trespasser at the mayor’s house. Make sure you use the name Detective Nakatani when asking for the police.” Melanie reached for the broom that leaned in the corner. “Better tell them a fight has broken out. That’ll get them here faster.”
Anita did as she was told, taking Melanie’s phone with her to make the call.
Melanie had to hurry to limp down the steps to the ground level. Hiding behind the back of her pickup wasn’t easy since she still had a hard time crouching. She was able to watch through the pickup windows as the man came down from the trailhead, walking past the pea patch, and between the house and the carport. He hurried as he passed by, getting to the stretch of driveway that led down to the main road.
Just as he went past Melanie, she swung the broom with as much force as she could, catching him in the back of the thighs, hamstringing him.
Down the man went to his hands and knees, yelping in pain. Just as Melanie thought he would, he had a knapsack on his back.
Wincing from a jolt of pain in her back, she raised the broom over her head and sent it down across his rear end, laying him out flat. The broom handle broke, one end flying away, leaving her with almost nothing to fight with.
But the man stayed on the ground, still yelping, reaching for his back.
“What the hell!” he shouted, still trying to right himself and stand.
“Stay on the ground!” she shouted back.
Seeing an opportunity to keep him from running off, she set one foot on his wrist and rested her weight on it.
“Hey! That hurts!”
“Too bad.”
To keep him from thrashing around too much, she put her other foot on an ankle, resting the remainder of her weight on that. Now all he could do was pound at the dirt with his other fist.
“You can’t do this to me! I’m calling the cops!” he cried.
“They’re already on their way.” As if on cue, sirens blared in the distance. “That’s them now. But while we wait, what were you doing up there?”
“Nothing. Sorry I walked through your place, but it’s the only way to get to those trails.”
“You need to ask for permission. We have signs up with a phone number to call. What were you doing up there? What did you steal?”
“I didn’t steal nothing!”
As he writhed and cursed on the ground, she gave him a second look. He was just like the young men who had washed up on shore: young, athletic, bottle blond. Typical Maui beach bum, wanna be surfer.
“You know what those guys you work for would do to you?” she asked as the sirens got louder.
“What guys? What work?”
“I know what you’ve been stealing, and the police do, too. Why were you stealing Hawaiian artifacts? You must’ve known that carried stiff penalties as a felony, and is just plain wrong.”
Two officer-owned police cars made the turn up the driveway, the sirens being cut off but their blue lights still flashing.
“I never stole anything.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
He seemed to give his alibi some thought. “I was just out on a hike looking for stuff. Honest!”
Before she could continue her interrogation, officers leapt from their vehicles, guns in their hands.
“This the trespasser?” one asked.
“That’s him,” she said.
She stepped back while one of them cuffed
the kid, the other keeping his gun trained on the man’s back.
“Are you the homeowner?” one asked.
She took a couple more steps back, now that the man had his wrists cuffed behind his back. “Yes.”
“Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t you Mayor Kato?”
“That’s me!”
“What’d you do to him?”
“She gave me a beating!” the kid yelled.
By then, Anita had come out and was standing with Melanie.
“Is Kenny okay?” Melanie asked.
“Never woke up.”
“Is that true?” the officer asked Melanie. “You gave him a beating?”
“Gave him a couple solid whacks with a broom handle. Broke my broom, too. One piece is over there, and the other piece is under the porch.”
Moving the kid’s clothes around, they found the red marks across his rump and thighs. One of the cops laughed. “That’s just a good old-fashioned butt whoopin’.”
“Hey, aren’t you going to call for an ambulance?” the kid asked.
Melanie walked over to where one officer had his hand on the guy’s shoulder to keep him calm, while the other made notes in his notepad. “Dude, really? Three days ago, I gave birth and then had emergency surgery on my back, but you just had your butt handed to you with a stick, and you’re whining about wanting to go to the hospital?”
Detective Nakatani was just arriving then, his blue police light flashing. He was quickly filled in on what had transpired by one of the uniforms.
After a few more minutes of talking with the officer, he took Melanie by the arm and led her away.
“Look, the kid is saying he didn’t steal anything, and his knapsack is empty. About all we got on him is simple trespass.”
“What’s he doing here, then?”
“It doesn’t really matter. We’ll book him for trespass and let him go. He’ll come back to see the judge, pay some piddly little fine, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“He has to be one of them. Why have an empty knapsack if he wasn’t going to steal something? He even said he went looking for stuff but couldn’t find anything.”
“He’s denying that now,” Nakatani said. “He’s saying he knows nothing about relics or maps.”
“Should’ve figured as much,” Melanie muttered, glaring at the kid.
“Both you and he have said he was coming down from the mountains, and with nothing in his sack. There’s no crime in going for a walk on public access lands with an empty bag, for as silly as it is.”
“Come on, it fits the pattern we just talked about this morning and you know it.”
“Melanie, you’re lucky he isn’t pushing to cite you for battery. The second time in a week, I might add.”
“It’s my property, and there are signs. I was defending my family. Anybody got a problem with that, take it to City Hall.” She smirked. “Oh, wait. I’m City Hall.”
Nakatani gave her a wink and went to where the kid was having his rights read to him.
Anita got Melanie’s attention. “I should go.”
“Yeah, sorry about all this.”
The girl started to walk away but stopped. “You know, I’m glad you didn’t hire me. This isn’t what I thought being a nanny was about.”
Melanie tried to laugh, but her backache had progressed to pain. She turned her attention on Nakatani again.
“What’s your name?” Nakatani asked the kid, jotting notes of his own.
Melanie listened, just to know who would be getting let loose later, and to watch for his name in the police blotter section of the newspaper later.
“Kenneth.”
“Kenneth what?”
“Winston. W-I-N-S-T-O-N.”
That caught Melanie’s attention. “Kenny?”
“Yeah. How do you know me?”
Nakatani kept Melanie back. “Your name is Kenneth Winston? Also known as Kenny? Originally from Phoenix, Arizona?”
“Yeah, so? How do you know that?”
The arresting officer handed over the driver’s license that had been collected from the kid’s wallet.
“Your mother has been staying here at the house all week. She just went home today,” Melanie said.
“My mom? What was she doing here? How do you know my mom?”
“She came here to take your body home,” she said.
“My body? I’m not dead. Are you nuts, lady?”
Nakatani got in the kid’s face. “Knock it off. That’s the county mayor you’re talking to.”
The kid’s expression changed but not to respect. “What’s going on? I don’t understand.”
“Neither do we, son. All I know is I have a body in the morgue that looks a lot like you and was positively identified by a relative. But you also answer to the same description, and have a driver’s license with the same name. Can you explain that to me?”
“I don’t know. Why was my mom here?”
“We’ll figure it out at the station, but for now, it would be best to keep your mouth shut until the public defender sees you.”
Something occurred to Melanie. “Doesn’t he have to sign that report, Detective Nakatani?”
“Huh?” The detective seemed confused by the request but went along with it. “Sign the form at the bottom.”
He held up a pen for the kid to take. Even with his hands cuffed, he reached up and took the pen with his left hand and scrawled along the bottom. Nakatani led him to one of the officer’s cars and got him inside. After, he went to where Melanie was on the porch, now holding her crying son.
“Cute little guy.”
“Stow it, Nakatani. What’s the story with the kid? Is he Kenneth Winston or not?”
“We’ll run his prints to find out who’s who.”
“And his mother just went home today. She’s probably in the air by now.”
“You have any pictures of her?”
“We got a few while she was here. Why?”
“I’ll put her in a photo lineup with a few other pictures of women about her same age. If he can pick her out, he might be telling the truth.”
She used her phone to send several pictures of Addie to Nakatani’s phone.
“What was the deal with the signature?” he asked.
“He signed with his left hand.”
“So?”
“That first body that was discovered had the broken rib and jaw on the right side, something a southpaw would’ve done to him.”
“And only ten percent of the population is left-handed. You might be on to something, Mayor.”
“Plus, he looks a lot like that same kid. Young, fit, bottle blond hair.”
“How do you know it’s from a bottle?”
“His lashes are dark, as is his arm hair. He had that done in a salon, not a home dye job. Anyway, I’ve had the same color once or twice.”
“Maybe a lead. I’ll look into it.”
Once the baby began to fuss even more, she took him inside for a meal, letting the police do their work.
***
Trinh was just coming in with Thérèse as Melanie was getting Kenny tucked into his bassinet.
“Hi Momma!”
“Hey, look at you! The big schoolgirl! I missed you so much. How’d it go? Make some new friends?”
She heard all about a boy Thérèse had spent the day with, the games they played, and her competitive side rearing its head, how she was able to spell better than him.
“We saw police cars leaving here. What’s going on, Mel?” Trinh asked.
“Oh, nothing much. I saw a guy coming down from the hills and confronted him.”
“You’re not supposed to be going outside. You’re supposed to be resting in bed and doing PT, not confronting strangers.”
“I guess I forgot. Can you do me a favor? Change my dressing.”
“Didn’t Josh do that this morning before he went to work?”
“Yeah. I just need you to take a look at the incision.”
�
��What’d you do?” Trinh asked. “You did something to the trespasser, didn’t you?”
“I just gave him a whack with the broom.”
Trinh chuckled. “What are you, an old lady now, hitting strangers with your broom?”
“Just…”
“I saw it out there all busted up. It looked like you gave him more than a whack.” Trinh lifted Melanie’s shirt in back and peeled away the dressing. “The stitches are okay but maybe it’s opened up slightly. Mel, you can’t keep beating up guys for the rest of your life. Not right after you had surgery and gave birth to a baby.”
“Momma, you make another baby today while I was at peeschool?” Thérèse asked, watching closely what Trinh was doing.
“Preschool, and no. Still just Kenny. Why don’t you go say hello to him?”
“Can’t be dumb about these things, Mel. What if he had a weapon?”
“I already got that lecture from Nakatani. Was I supposed to let the guy go?” Melanie asked, while Trinh put on a new bandage.
“You’re supposed to follow your doctors’ orders and take it easy for a while, not go cage fighting. I don’t care if he was trespassing or stealing old stuff he dug up in the hills. You need to think about your family first. Who was this guy, anyway?” Trinh asked.
“Turns out, he might be Addie’s son.” Melanie explained about the kid having a driver’s license with the Winston name on it, and the possible misidentification at the morgue. “Nakatani is making sure he’s the right guy now.”
“Just let the police do their jobs, Mel. You don’t let other people do your surgeries, right?”
Melanie ignored her. “You know, there’s something awfully peculiar about the Winstons. I had Cassandra do a background check on them, and the mother is clean, but the son has a record back home in Arizona.”
“So?” Trinh asked.
“So, the son has supposedly been here on Maui for a while but the mother just got here a few days ago, right? But when I looked at her phone yesterday, she’s been using a local number for several months.”
“You looked in her phone? Is that legal?”
“As legal as when you and I did it with Harm’s phone that time. Even more so. It was in plain sight, turned on, and in my home. She never told me I couldn’t look at her phone.”