Murder at Makapu'u

by Chip Hughes

  My phone chimes.

  A text from my client. Marie says she’s on an airliner being pushed back from the gate at Honolulu International Airport. “Pierre’s service is this week in Paris. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Aloha, Marie.”

  “Did you tell Fernandez you’re leaving the island?” I text back.

  “No time for that,” she replies.

  “What about Kula?”

  “I hugged him before I left,” she responds. “Key to Vivienne’s house under doormat.”

  Before I can reply comes this: “Gotta go. We’re taxiing to the runway.”

  That’s the last I hear from her.

  I scoop up all my tax forms, get my car, and head over the Pali Highway to Kailua. I pull into the driveway of Vivienne’s home to the gregarious bark of the golden retriever. I step onto the front lānai and find the house key under the mat. I barely open the door and Kula bursts upon me—barking, wagging, his feathers aglow.

  “Hey boy!” I wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his sunny coat. “I’m here for you.”

  I raise my eyes and see the kitchen waste basket tipped on its side and rubbish scattered across the floor. Not like Kula. I investigate. Quickly I understand.

  An empty Spam musubi wrapper tells the story. Kula was hungry.

  Marie had given him a taste of her musubi on the day her stepfather died. So how can I blame the retriever?

  Picking up the musubi wrapper and assorted garbage I find an envelope. It’s damp and stained, but the handwriting on the front is clear. Marie.

  The same envelope I delivered to her in Paris that she said she promptly discarded? I look more closely.

  Yes, the same.

  I recall Dr. Grimes telling me the contents were for Marie’s eyes only. But the doctor is now dead under suspicious circumstances and his stepdaughter Marie, at whose hands he died, has lied to me. I feel no qualms now.

  I open the envelope and remove what appears to be three or four folded sheets and a return envelope, with international postage affixed, addressed to Dr. Grimes. The first sheet is a letter from the doctor to his stepdaughter,

  Dear Marie,

  I have tried to get in touch with you in Paris in every way I know how, but failed. So now I resort to having this letter delivered to you by hand. I would ask you to set aside your past feelings for me, whatever they may be, and to consider carefully what I am about to propose.

  You no doubt recall that as a stipulation of your mother's will I was granted the right to occupy your family home for the rest of my life, the only benefit I received when she died. I am willing to waive that right so you can return and reclaim the home for yourself. The enclosed document sets forth the terms and conditions, and the consideration I would ask from you in return. I expect you will find the arrangement fair and equitable, and that it puts no strain on your considerable wealth.

  Please sign and return the document in the enclosed envelope and instruct your bankers to render the sum to me.

  Papa Gordon

  As I'm reading this I'm wondering what sum Grimes is asking of his stepdaughter to reclaim her home. I thumb through the three-page document, which to me looks like legal boilerplate, until I come to the nub. Five hundred thousand dollars. Plus Marie must sign away her right to discuss publically details of this agreement and of her relationship with her stepfather. A gag order, in other words. Marie gets the house back, but it costs her a half million and also the right to expose his abuse.

  And I ask myself why a medical doctor, a successful psychiatrist who conceivably makes lots of money, would give up living in such a beautiful oceanfront estate. Even for five hundred thousand bucks? The obvious answer: he needed money.

  Then I remember Fernandez mentioning the recent sexual assault allegation against Dr. Grimes by one of his patients, not the first time in his career. I can only imagine that the cash the doctor suddenly needed enough to compel him to vacate the lavish seaside home had to do with that allegation and that patient. Either a pending suit or maybe even blackmail. And that also could be why he sold his beloved speedboat, Sea Ya Later.

  The letter and document supply another motive for the doctor’s murder. Instead of paying a half million to regain possession of her family home, Marie gets it for free. Not to mention revenge for his abusing her. I wonder again if the saying “the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree” applies to stepchildren.

  “For Marie’s eyes only” is now out the window. It’s time to put this evidence before the eyes of Frank Fernandez.

  fifteen

  A few weeks later, on Monday, April 29, I’m driving through Waikīkī and see a couple of small sets rolling in. Hardly epic. But that keeps the crowds down.

  I put my board in the water and paddle out to Pops, offshore from the Sheraton. The waves are only waist high. But conditions are clean and the right-breaking curls are sweeping all the way to the Royal Hawaiian. Before long I’m tucking into one of these turquoise curls and riding for what feels like forever.

  On the long return paddle to the lineup my mind drifts back again to my unlikely case in Paris and its aftermath.

  Marie Ho has not yet returned from Paris, despite repeated requests by Frank Fernandez. Marie claims that the late Pierre Garneaux’s memorial service has been delayed for various reasons, but once it occurs she will come back to Honolulu. Frank gave up grousing to me about her when I announced that the heiress was no longer my client.

  After I explained to Marie on a rather difficult long distance phone call that I found the envelope from her stepfather and turned it over to Fernandez, she refused to pay me. Bad move not to take those euros when she offered them. Then I told her if charges were brought there was only a slim chance, giving the lack of witnesses, she would be convicted.

  “Convicted for what—a crime I didn’t commit?” she replied. “And don’t forget my stepfather killed my mother and he killed Pierre.”

  “He didn’t,” I said. “Not either one. You must know that by now.”

  She hung up.

  After that phone call I began to wonder if there was any justice—moral or otherwise—in Dr. Grimes’ traumatic end. He had allegedly molested his stepdaughter, cheated on his wife, and sexually assaulted more than one of his own patients. He was no doubt a despicable man, as my former client contended. But did his being despicable justify his death?

  Frank Fernandez hasn’t let a potential murder case get in the way of his wedding plans. He and the pet detective were married in a small ceremony only days after the heiress’s surprise departure. I wasn’t invited, but didn’t expect to be. Since then Maile and I have arranged for her to visit Kula regularly—without Blitz.

  Kula, meanwhile, couldn’t be happier in his new home—Vivienne’s home. I’m enjoying camping out with him until Viv’s return on the first of May. We’ll make an odd couple—a French professor and a surfer and PI. Time will tell.

  Back in the lineup I see a set rolling in. I paddle into position for the first wave, then watch another surfer take it. I let the next wave go by too. The third is the one I want. Glassy and almost chest high. And all mine.

  I take off, tuck into this turquoise dream, and ride clear to the Royal Hawaiian.

  Driving later to China town, still stoked from my session, a kind of darkness suddenly descends on me. I can’t seem to shake it. The darkness follows me to my office above the lei shop. I’m just about to put my finger on it when my phone rings. Caller ID says, TOMMY WOO.

  I pick up.

  Before I can say hello my attorney friend says, “Hey, Kai, did you hear the one about the Paris can-can dancers?”

  “Can it, Tommy,” I shoot back. “I’m in no mood for jokes about Paris.”

  Tommy hears the down tone of my voice, I guess. He’s uncharacteristically quiet. Then he says, “What’s the problem, Kai?”

  “The Paris case,” I explain. “Actually, what happened afterwards.”

  “I’m listening,” Tommy says.
<
br />   This is rare. I better talk while I can. “I think I was a witness to murder.”

  “You think you were a witness to murder?”

  “Well, I didn’t see it exactly. That’s the problem.” I fill him in. Tommy has already heard about Dr. Grimes’s fall. But he knows little about Marie’s connection to it. And mine.

  “What makes you think she did it?” Tommy asks.

  “She had the motive and the means and the opportunity. She told me all along he deserved to die. Trouble is, I had no idea she herself would do the deed. If I did her stepfather might still be alive.”

  “Why don’t you stop kicking yourself and let law enforcement take it from here?”

  “I’m kicking myself because I’m the only person who could ID her. But I can’t since I stepped away when it happened.” I explain about chasing Kula who was chasing a mongoose. “That was her opportunity. And she took it.”

  “You didn’t see a thing?’

  “No. When I came back he was gone.”

  “What does Marie say?”

  “She says she was defending herself. And Fernandez will be hard pressed to prove otherwise.”

  “You think she’s lying?”

  “She lied to me. Why not lie to Fernandez too?”

  Tommy is quiet again. “So how can I help, Kai?”

  “I don’t know, Tommy.” I give it a quick think. “What about justice? Will Marie ever pay for what she did?”

  “If the law doesn’t get her,” he says, “maybe her own conscience will.”

  “Not if she thinks he deserved it.”

  “She can try to go on as if nothing has happened but, believe me, her old familiar and comfortable places won’t be the same.”

  “She’s got enough money to leave her old life behind—and go anywhere in the world.”

  “But she’d be living in exile,” Tommy says.

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “You’re still kicking yourself,” Tommy says. “What do you think you could you have done differently?”

  “That’s easy: Not go along with a client’s demands that run counter to my best judgement. But it’s tough when the client is an heiress who has just treated you to a first-class flight from Paris.”

  “We all face temptations,” Tommy says. “You can be forgiven.”

  “Still I wonder, will justice ever be served?”

  “Justice?” Tommy says. “Let me leave you with a good one: ‘In the Halls of Justice’—said the late-great Lenny Bruce—‘the only justice is in the halls.’”

  I’m not as cynical as Tommy, but don’t say so.

  “Now stop kicking yourself, Kai.” Tommy hangs up.

  The dial tone buzzes in my ear and I set down the phone. While I’m grateful for Tommy’s absolution, I know I could have done better.

  Next time I’ll be less reluctant to say no.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chip Hughes taught American literature, film, writing, and popular fiction for nearly three decades at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His non-fiction publications include two books on John Steinbeck.

  An active member of the Private Eye Writers of America, Chip launched the Surfing Detective mystery series with Murder on Moloka‘i (2004) and Wipeout! (2007), published by Island Heritage. The series is now published exclusively by Slate Ridge Press. Other volumes include Kula (2011), Murder at Volcano House (2014), Surfing Detective Double Feature, Vols. 1 & 2 (2017), and Hanging Ten in Paris Trilogy (2017).

  Chip and his wife split their time between homes in Hawai‘i and upstate New York.