A Wave of Murder

by Kay Hadashi

  Turning on the baby monitor, she left him to his dreams and went out to the backyard pea patch, taking the monitor receiver with her. Trying to crouch the best she could without straining her back, she pulled a few carrots and onions, tossing those into her basket. Checking the tomato plants, nothing was ripe. She found one pepper, all she needed for the soup she was planning for dinner. The morning was turning out to be quiet, almost too quiet for her tastes, but in a way, she was enjoying the nothingness of the day.

  Until her phone rang. It was a police department number but didn’t have a name attached to it.

  “This is Mayor Kato.”

  “Mayor, this is Keanu Kalemakani. How have you been?”

  “Fine, thanks for asking. How is your part of the investigation going?”

  “Quite well. But there is something you should know. Sometimes these investigations strike a little close to home, as do the perpetrators of the crimes.”

  “Yes, we’ve learned that the hard way with all these trespassers on the property. Any suggestions of what we can do to curb that a little?”

  “Only to keep a close safeguard on what is most valuable to you. Often, dishonest people are much closer than you think.”

  The line went dead, maybe the call being dropped. Waiting for a moment for him to call back, she put the phone back in her pocket.

  “Closer than what I might think? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Looking at her basket of vegetables, she figured she needed more. The baby monitor had been silent, so she checked it before going back to her gardening.

  “Crap. I’ve had the stupid thing turned off.”

  She switched it on and turned up the volume. Right away, there was noise.

  “What’s that?”

  She turned it up a little more. When she distinctly heard footsteps in the house, she tossed down the monitor and took off for the back porch as fast as her back would allow.

  No mother would go anywhere but to her baby in such a situation, and that’s exactly where she turned to. Kenny was crying, really putting up a stink about something, easily heard from the far side of the house. Just coming out of the master bedroom where Kenny had been sleeping was a man. In his hand was a framed picture of something.

  It didn’t matter to her what it was he was stealing. All she knew was that the man she’d subdued and called the police to come and get only two days before had come back. Kenny Winston was just coming from the room where her baby was crying.

  “Why are you here?” she screamed. “What are you doing in my house?”

  “Not doing nothing to your precious baby.”

  “I knew you were dirty for something. I just can’t figure out what. But this time, that trespass arrest is going to stick! And anything else I can think of to have you charged with.”

  He laughed. “You really are stupid, you know that?”

  Hearing the baby kick up an agitated wail, she reached into her pocket for the phone. With two taps on certain buttons, she sent the emergency signal to Cassandra’s phone that she needed the help of Secret Service. She didn’t wait. Instead, she stomped down the hall straight for him. “You messed with the wrong mother, dumbass.”

  He stood still, laughing. “What’re you gonna do? Beat me up? You don’t got your broom this time.”

  “You’ll be lucky if that’s all I do to you.”

  He looked surprised, but when he balled his left hand into a fist and raised it, she struck first with a stout kick to his crotch. The framed picture flew from his hand and hit the floor, the glass shattering. Dropping to his knees, he clutched at himself in a protective pose and moaned.

  “Why are you in my house? What did you do to my baby?” she screamed.

  “What’d you do to my baby?” he said in a mocking falsetto, standing up again.

  The baby continued to wail from his bassinet.

  When he threw a left hook, Melanie dodged it. Her hands balled into fists, she jabbed once before sending home a right cross. That knocked him back but not enough for her tastes. He was still on his feet. Throwing another right cross, he fell back against the wall. Still not going down, she planted one last punch to his face, sending him to the floor.

  “Melanie!” someone shouted from behind her.

  She glanced to find Dottie, but Melanie barely paid attention. She went after Kenny on the floor, trying to get his arms and hands working again. Blood ran from both his nostrils.

  Dottie called her name again.

  “You picked on the wrong woman, you pathetic…”

  Just as she was raising her fist to continue the beating, Melanie’s arm was wrenched back.

  “Stop, Melanie. He’s had enough.”

  Melanie tried getting free from her mother-in-law. “He was in there with Kenny.”

  “You’ve done enough. He’s learned his lesson.” After pushing Melanie down the hall to get her away, Dottie went back to where the man was struggling up from the floor. She already had her phone out, dialing the police number. “I don’t know who you are, but you better stay down, or I’ll slap you into next week,” she said to the man.

  Kenny seemed to gladly sink back to his knees, and then to a sitting position, as Dottie stood over him while speaking to the police dispatcher. By then, Cassandra was there, slapping handcuffs on him.

  Watching as Dottie gave the man a verbal browbeating, Melanie held the crying baby in her arms, and Trinh had come over after hearing all the noise. Twenty minutes later, with Cassandra standing guard over the man the entire time, Dottie continuing to go off on the man, and Melanie pacing back and forth with Kenny held close to her chest, Detective Nakatani and two police officers exchanged Cassandra’s handcuffs for theirs and led Kenny out.

  “Remind me to never piss you off, Melanie,” Nakatani said, as the group sat in the living room a few minutes later. Dottie and Cassandra were giving witness statements to police officers. Trinh was attending to the broken skin on Melanie’s knuckles while Melanie cuddled Kenny. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine. Just needs to be put down. It can wait, if you don’t mind a little crying.”

  “And your hands?”

  Trinh had Band-Aids on her knuckles by then. “They’re fine.”

  “I was actually headed here to talk with you when I got the emergency call, Mayor. I was also hoping Mrs. Winston might be here to talk to also.” He read back the statement she’d already given him about what had happened in the house. “You’re absolutely certain you gave no indication that you might be welcoming him into your home?”

  “None. The first I saw him, he was coming out of the room, the baby crying.” Melanie kept cuddling her baby, as much to comfort herself as to comfort him. “Sure, his mother lives here with us now, but that doesn’t give him permission to come in uninvited, or go near the baby. If he had knocked on the back door, I easily would’ve heard him. But he didn’t.”

  “But what was it that made you mad enough to beat the crap out of him?” Trinh asked.

  “Made fun of the baby.”

  “What? How could he do that? His mother is your nanny,” Trinh griped.

  “Not anymore. She doesn’t know it yet, but her butt’s been fired.”

  “I’ll be glad to drive her to the airport,” Trinh said.

  “She’s already there,” Dottie said, joining the others.

  “What?” Nakatani asked.

  “She said she needed to be dropped at the airport to look for her luggage, and that I didn’t need to wait for her, that she’d give Josh a call to bring her home later.”

  Nakatani made a quick call, sending officers to the airport for the woman.

  “What was in the picture frame that broke?” Nakatani asked.

  “A picture of my parents on their wedding day. I don’t know why he wanted that. Not worth anything. Just sentimental value to me.”

  “Probably just trying to piss you off.”

  “It worked. What happens to him now?”

  “
He’s in a world of trouble, be sure of that. We’ve found partial prints in both the museum and in the library that match his. We’ve also recovered a few pieces of Hawaiiana from the auctions, which also had partials on them that match his prints.”

  “That’s something, anyway.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. We found four boats with propellers that match the kind and size that killed the second man, Angelo Davis. Three of those boats checked out as not being out of their slips in more than two weeks. But the fourth was found moored in the Lahaina small boat harbor with a tarp over it, as though someone was trying to hide it. When crime scene techs collected prints and evidence, they found prints belonging to guess who? Kenny Winston. They also found fragments of red feathers that we think were tracked in on the soles of someone’s shoes. We don’t know quite yet, but we’ve sent them to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu to see if they can match those feather fragments to the feathers on the old kahili in their museum.”

  “It wasn’t their kahili that was stolen,” Melanie said. “It was the one from the Maui Museum.”

  “You explained it to me yourself a few days ago. There were very specific types of birds they got those red feathers from and never dyed them. To us, that would be very incriminating. We should hear back from them in a few days, but if they match, this guy and his accomplice are going to prison for a very long time.”

  “Does the boat tie them to the deaths of those other young men?” Melanie asked.

  “It could. The crime scene techs removed the propeller and have done a cursory exam in the lab, and found some damage on one blade. If you remember, Doctor Benson said according to what he found on the wounds on the neck, there might be damage to the edge of a propeller blade.”

  “That’s not enough to bring charges against this Winston guy?” Trinh asked. “You have his fingerprints on a boat with a damaged propeller, and a dead body with wounds made by a damaged propeller. It seems pretty incriminating to me.”

  “I need to lean on him to get the names of his accomplice, and see what kind of alibis they have, but yes, between the prints and feathers on the boat, it should be enough for the ADA to bring charges.”

  “How do you know he has an accomplice?”

  “Because we found another set of fingerprints and we have a positive ID for them. We just need to find the person that has been helping Winston.”

  “You keep talking about an accomplice as though you know who it is,” Melanie said.

  “We do. I’m quite glad you’ve fired Mrs. Winston, because it saves us the trouble of doing it for you.”

  “Addie is his accomplice? What are you talking about?”

  “It was her fingerprints on the boat, and her partials on the recovered artifacts. We also were able to confiscate her luggage at the Phoenix Airport. Inside were several more pieces of Hawaiiana that look authentic, according to the Phoenix police. That’s why I was headed here a little while ago, to take her in for questioning.”

  “Wait. You’ve known all along she and Kenny were the perpetrators?”

  “Not until two days ago, when we finally started getting matches on all these fingerprints. Those pictures you received yesterday helped confirm the victims’ names, and ruled them out as suspects, or at least complicit in being the ringleaders of the little gang that has been stealing historical artifacts in four states. It might turn out that they did some of the legwork of stealing things, but they were the ones running the operation.”

  “Now I really am confused,” Melanie said, holding the dozing baby in her arms.

  “It all came together this morning when I talked to the Phoenix PD about Mrs. Winston’s luggage, and what was inside. They confirmed that the Winstons have been stealing historical artifacts in Arizona, Nevada, and California for years, then turning it over for a profit by using the internet as a fence, but they’ve never been able to catch them with the stuff, or confirm their identities from the internet auction sites. When the pressure got to be too much there and the police got too close, the Winstons moved their show here and focused on Hawaiian treasures rather than Indian.”

  “Same scheme, different legacy,” Cassandra said.

  “But she just asked me to drop her at the airport so she could get her luggage,” Dottie said.

  “It appears she’s been lying to us every step of the way,” Melanie said. “Sorry you had to get mixed up in all this, Dottie.”

  “So, you just need Mrs. Winston,” Trinh said.

  “It won’t be long,” Nakatani said.

  “How did everybody get here so fast?” Melanie asked.

  “Good thing we did,” Dottie said. “You were pissed and then some.”

  Cassandra took over. “Detective Nakatani and I spoke last night. We decided it would be a good idea if I watched your house a little more closely than usual for a while, from right across the road, just to keep tabs on Mrs. Winston’s movements, and on your house. When she and Dottie went out, I remained close. We were expecting the Winston kid to show up again, but to look for artifacts in the hills, not come into the house. I had positioned myself to watch the trail, not the house.”

  “That’s how you got here so fast.”

  “But I never saw him go in,” Cassandra said. “I need to figure out how he did that without me seeing him.”

  “Well, I was just getting to like that Addie. She was fun to talk to,” Dottie said.

  Melanie rubbed a knuckle into the tic that started in her eye. “For a murderer and thief.”

  ***

  The next day, Trinh took Melanie to the police station to give one last witness statement, albeit a long one. Dottie came with them, watching over the baby while Thérèse stuck to Melanie every step of the way.

  “Nother place you work, Momma?” the girl asked while the group waited in the public area for someone to come get Melanie.

  “This is where Detective Nakatani works, when he isn’t at our house arresting people.”

  “Why everybody being nice to us?”

  Melanie didn’t know how to answer, that being the mayor, she was their boss.

  “Police officers are very nice to honest citizens,” Dottie said.

  Maybe the girl understood, maybe not, but she still had more questions. “Momma, is Addie coming home soon?”

  “No, Sweetie. She has to go away.”

  “Where she have to go?”

  Melanie sat her daughter on her lap. “It’s very complicated. Addie was a very bad lady and broke some important rules, and now she has to be punished.”

  “Rules like ghost and magic rules?” the girl whispered into Melanie’s ear.

  “Even bigger rules than those. Super duper big, the biggest of all rules.”

  “She broke your rules?”

  “She broke everybody’s rules. And you know the worst thing? She broke our biggest rule at home. You remember that one?”

  “Never tell the lie?” the girl asked.

  “Right. She told us many, many lies, just so we’d like her.”

  “She cheated at the game,” the girl said, quite matter-of-factly.

  “Exactly. That’s sad, huh?”

  The girl touched Melanie’s eyelids. “Momma’s sad? Gonna cry?”

  “Maybe later.”

  When Nakatani came to get Melanie, Thérèse begged to go with her.

  “It’s okay with me if it’s okay with her,” he said.

  Melanie took the girl’s hand as they followed the detective to a desk in the squad room. An hour later, Thérèse had drawn several pictures and Melanie completed her formal statement.

  “What did you draw?” Detective Nakatani asked, looking at the drawings.

  “Addie. We don’t like her anymore.”

  Melanie would’ve laughed had the images not been so sad. On each sheet was a rough drawing of a face, with Xs scratched across each.

  “I have her in an interrogation room, if you have anything to ask her.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to
ask. I’d just end up giving her a piece of my mind.”

  “If you promise not to go off like you did with her son, I’ll let you have two minutes.”

  “The blinds closed, no cameras and all recording devices turned off?” she asked.

  “You alone in a room with a Winston? I don’t think so. I’d have to be there with you.”

  “Sweetie, you want to say goodbye to Addie?”

  The girl gave it some thought before nodding her head.

  He led them past desks where officers were writing reports and working on computers, hearing several of them greet her politely as Madame Mayor. Melanie picked up Thérèse when Nakatani unlocked the interrogation room door.

  Addie was inside, her hands cuffed together. When Melanie went in carrying Thérèse, she hid her hands in her lap and smiled at the girl. “Hi Thérèse! Did you come to see your aunt Addie?”

  Melanie glared. “Shut your f…”

  Nakatani tapped her shoulder to calm her. Before Melanie could gather her wits, the girl spoke up.

  “Why you lie to Momma? You not a nice lady. Nice ladies no lie to my momma and daddy. You make my momma sad. You a mean lady. I no like you anymore.”

  Nakatani tapped Melanie’s shoulder, letting her know their visit was done. When she looked at Addie one last time, their eyes met.

  Addie sneered. “Get your little witch away from me.”

  Once they were outside the room, Melanie gave Thérèse’s cheek a kiss. “Never mind her.”

  “Sorry, Momma. Maybe I say something wrong.”

  “No, you said the perfect thing, Sweetie. You were very brave to say those things.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Three days later, Melanie sat at the back of the courtroom during the preliminary pretrial hearing for Mrs. Adelaide Winston and her son, Kenneth Winston, listening to the evidence that was being brought against them. After the hearing, and having a strong assurance both were going to prison for a very long time, they were led out, still in their shackles and simple jail outfits.

  There was a pause before the bailiff called for the next case to start, another that was just as close to Melanie’s heart. Five suspects were led in and seated at the same desk as the public defender. After paperwork was handed back and forth between the public defender, the prosecutor, and the judge, the charges were read. Multiple counts of the manufacture, trafficking, and sale of drugs were heard, and with a swift slap of the gavel, the judge made his decision to hold all suspects without bail pending their trial. Melanie wasn’t familiar with this particular judge, but he seemed particularly stern with the owner and employees of Gonzo’s Surf Shop.