A Moonlit Murder

by Kay Hadashi

  “Not much goodwill toward mayors and I doubt there’s going to be much peace today.”

  Melanie got the newspaper from them. There it was in full headlines:

  Fraud in City Hall

  Maui County mayor being investigated for fraud and corruption?

  “What the heck is this?” she said, beginning to read the lead article in that morning’s paper.

  Somebody turned on the lunchroom TV and found the local news channel. Another thorn in Melanie’s side, Jenna Harkins was reporting as news anchor.

  “It has been disclosed to our reporters that Maui’s Mayor Melanie Kato isn’t all she claims she is. Several accusations of fraud have been leveled against her by the administration of the hospital she works at, along with several other acts of deception and statements of mistruths. Please watch this video, taken only yesterday.”

  The video shown was the scene at the pool the day before taken by a cell phone, with Melanie getting dressed down by Andrew, his face and body blurred. With the way it was edited, she looked to be nodding and accepting guilt over what he said. It was so thoroughly edited, it rearranged much of the dressing-down, showing only the most incriminating portions of Andrew making his claims about her being a selfish mother and wife, that her education and degrees weren’t authentic, and how she was using the office of mayor for her own benefit. It was perfect journalism if the intent was to publicly crucify someone.

  “In another disgusting act of selfishness, the mayor didn’t even bother to deny the accusations made by one of Maui’s most prominent and respected citizens, only walking away, reportedly going to a bar with her Vice Mayor, Trinh Park.

  “I for one have had enough of this so-called Mayor Melanie Kato, and would gladly report on her professional demise, as mayor and as doctor. Good riddance, I say. And that’s this morning’s editorial comment. Thanks for watching, Jenna Harkins.”

  “How nice. She was able to trash Trinh’s rep also.” Melanie phone rang and she knew who it was from before answering. The first thing Trinh said on the call was a profanity. “My sentiments exactly.”

  “Can’t let them say that stuff about you, Mel.”

  “About either one of us.”

  “You have a lot more to lose than I do. The hospital can’t fire me just because somebody else lied, but your career hinges on your credibility. If that Harkins keeps saying that stuff, she’ll wreck your career, even if you never did anything wrong.”

  One of the nurses came by to tell Melanie they were ready for her in surgery.

  “I know, Trinh, but there’s not much I can do about what she reports. I could bring a lawsuit, or a cessation order, but that would just make more trouble, and cost a lot of money. She’s just trying to bully me. What I don’t like is her trying to bring you in on whatever her personal psychotic fixation with me is.”

  “Mel, we still need to talk about some of the things Andrew said.”

  “I know. I was thinking of coming over tonight.”

  “Harmon’s coming to help me pack.”

  “Good. He can confirm some of the things I want to talk about.”

  Melanie had four complicated surgeries scheduled for that day, and they all went quicker and easier than expected. That allowed her to retreat to the quiet of her private office in the clinic. Getting onto the internet, she checked her email and found one from Bruce at her father’s old intelligence company.

  There is not much on that Cabrera character other than what the police already know. Fourth generation Filipino, born and raised on the Big Island, he spent some time in the Las Vegas area as a teen and young man. Everything in his history before then is clean. I figure that’s where he learned the basics of the drug trade. There is even some evidence that his products are being shipped to Nevada and distributed from there, possibly by private aircraft out of Honolulu. But there is something else you need to know.

  “Please tell me Ozzy Simpson is an associate of his,” Melanie muttered while reading the email.

  Even though Andrew Carson is native to LA, as you already know, he has private business ties to the Las Vegas area, and apparently runs a company named Desert Wind Enterprises of Las Vegas. I can’t find exactly what their enterprises are, which makes me believe it’s illicit. I’ll keep looking, though. Looking at satellite images of the place, it’s out in the desert with a longitudinal and flat area nearby which looks an awful lot like a private runway. Give me another day to send an asset there to check things out in person. I’ll be in touch—Bruce.

  “So, one of Hawaii’s biggest meth makers has distribution connections in Vegas, and it just so happens that Andrew runs some sort of enterprise in the Vegas area that has a secret runway. That sure is coincidental and I don’t like coincidences.”

  Giving it some thought, she sent a return message to Bruce.

  Please add one more name to investigate: Jenna Harkins.

  She called Detective Nakatani, hoping he would have time to talk with her.

  “Saw you on TV this morning. Made yourself famous again, Mayor.”

  “Not that I want to be famous at all, but if I were to go about it, I’d definitely not let Jenna Harkins be my social media manager.”

  “What does she have against you, anyway? Is she someone else you went to school with and somehow pissed off?”

  “I’d never heard her name or seen her face until I came back to Maui a few years ago. But for some reason, she has latched onto me like one of those parasitic fish that attach themselves to sharks, and the shark can do nothing about it.”

  “I’m not sure I’d consider you a shark, though.”

  “Thanks. I need a compliment today. Hey, the reason I called was something I keep forgetting about. Remember the signature in the logbook for that pharmaceutical company vendor that looked like Sampson or Simmons? Didn’t you say it was swirly looking?”

  “Yes. So? I don’t have time to go back and look at one little signature again.”

  “The thing is, I looked in one of my old high school yearbooks and made a couple of little discoveries. First, I had a classmate back then named Kathryn Simpson. For some reason, she even signed my yearbook, even though I have a very vague recollection of her.”

  “Don’t tell me. Her handwriting was swirly?” Nakatani asked. “All teenage girls have swirly handwriting.”

  “Not mine. I printed, mostly. Most girls outgrow that cutesy handwriting stuff by the time they’re in high school.”

  “I should’ve figured you were a printer rather than a cursive swirler.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t understand everything there is to know about handwriting analysis, but I have learned that cursive handwriting tends to change and mature along with the individual. Depending on how it leans one way or the other, or how swirly it is, reflects reasonably predictable things about their personality. That’s rather complex. But printers like you tend to be analytical and precise. People who work in technology and the sciences tend to be printers much more than cursive writers. They use precision and clarity to great extent in their daily lives. That’s the upside about printers.”

  “What’s the downside?” she asked.

  “Printers often repress their feelings, especially when trying to express them through writing. They strongly need to have everything organized in a clear and meaningful way or they’re dissatisfied.”

  “Good or bad, that’s me. What about the people who write in swirly or fanciful ways? You know, with the little hearts over lower case ‘i’s and long flourishes on their signature?”

  “The cursive swirlers tend to be in the creative and emotive arts. Visual artists, poets, writers, fashion design. Occupations where rules are much less important.”

  “So, how did that Katie Simmons or Sampson, whoever signed that pharmacy log book, end up working for a pharmaceutical company?” Melanie asked. “There’s nothing particularly creative about doing managerial stuff for a drug company.”

  “If she is treating
it as a career,” he said. “Or even works for them. You’re wondering if she was involved in that large amount of ephedrine that was diverted?”

  “Right. An incident report was filled out about it and sent to…” Melanie swore.

  “You were going to say Andrew Carson in hospital administration?”

  “Right.”

  “That shifts him from being insinuated in the possible thefts of those drugs to being implicated.”

  “But not implicated because of Katie Simpson. Remember, Andrew is not a lifelong resident of Maui,” Melanie said. “There’s no reason to think he and Katie know each other, unless they’ve crossed paths at the hospital, which I think would be highly unlikely.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Acting as a vendor, Katie would go to the pharmacy and unlikely anywhere else in the hospital. The pharmacy is one of the many places in the hospital Andrew would unlikely visit. I doubt he’d be able to find the place without help. And it would be even more unlikely Andrew and Ozzy would ever cross paths. I simply can’t see that happening at all,” she said.

  “You said there were two things you wanted to tell me?” Nakatani asked.

  “Given five more minutes, I think you would’ve had it figured out. The Katie Simpson that signed my yearbook is a twin to Ozzy Simpson.”

  “Your Ozzy Simpson? How do you know that?”

  “That’s also in the yearbook. They have one page for naming the pairs of twins at the school. Katie and Ozzy were one of four pairs.”

  “I’d like to see this yearbook, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’m eating dinner with Trinh this evening. If you want to come over then, I’ll have the books for you.”

  “I could take them to have photocopied?”

  “You could pitch them in the garbage dump for all I care.”

  “Too many ghosts popping up from the past?”

  She laughed. “Ghosts would be easier to deal with than these guys!”

  ***

  Melanie still had a few minutes when she got home from work before expecting any of her family to get home. She took advantage of the spare time not to get the nap she really wanted but to go for a walk. As usual, that led her to the bench that overlooked the beach and ocean.

  “You around, Mom? Or are you pissed at me too?”

  “I’m not pissed at you.”

  “At least you’re not.” Melanie looked at her new bench mate. Her mother had appeared in another of her many odd incarnations, something Melanie had never gotten used to. This time her mother was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed teenager dressed in plaid and white parochial school clothing but used the mature voice Melanie knew growing up. “I really made a jerk of myself yesterday.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “How do you know? You weren’t there.”

  “We were all there yesterday, Honey.”

  “You saw? I didn’t see you.”

  “The crowd that gathered. That was us. Your father was quite impressed with how well you handled the situation.”

  “Dad was there? He would’ve blasted Andrew.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. He said you did perfectly in just listening and then walking away to live to fight another day.”

  “What do you think I should’ve done?” Melanie asked.

  “I was waiting for you to slap him. In another time and place, I would have.”

  “I sure wanted to.”

  “But you didn’t. Instead, you were compassionate and peaceful about it, even if you had to walk away feeling embarrassed.”

  “I learned that from you.”

  “Maybe,” her mother said.

  “They have all this stuff on the news about me and Trinh. I hate what they’re saying about Trinh. She doesn’t deserve it.”

  “Neither of you do. Just weather the storm. It’ll blow over. You’ve been in tougher spots than this. And I can guarantee it won’t get any easier if you stay in the public eye.”

  “Weather the storm. Half the things you ever told me while growing up were to weather the storm. I’m getting pretty sick of stormy weather.”

  Her mother laughed. “You created the gigantic life you’ve built for yourself. There would be nothing wrong with taking a step back if it’s grown too big. But I also know you can handle a lot more than this.”

  “Maybe. I seem to be screwing up a lot more than you ever did.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You were always steady, firm. I could rely on you. I can’t think of a better mother than you. Thinking about what Andrew said yesterday…” Melanie shrugged. “Maybe I really am a fraud as a mother.”

  “Mel, you need to get over believing all that. There’s no way I was ever half the mother you’ve turned me into. You have me up on some sort of pedestal where I don’t belong.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this, Mom.”

  “We have to. You’ve had me on this pedestal for so long, you’ve given me saintly status, something I don’t deserve.”

  “Maybe you do. You retired early to spend more time with me, instead of spending so much time at the hospital. You have no idea how much I appreciate that.”

  “That was the spin that was put on it then. To be accurate, I retired because I was too worn out from the chemo I got during my cancer treatment. I never fully rebounded from that, and I knew I’d never be able to keep up the pace demanded of a surgeon. And don’t forget, I spent almost as much time working at the restaurant as I did at the hospital.”

  “But you were able to take days off sometimes so we could go places together. You wouldn’t have been able to do that while working at the hospital. Getting those breaks on our little trips around the islands was exactly what I needed to get away from schoolwork and swimming, even if it was just for a day or two.”

  “And it should’ve been for a week or two. I didn’t do you any favors by allowing you to work so hard. How many times did you collapse into bed at the end of swim season or the end of a school semester?” her mother asked.

  “Ha! Every one of them.”

  “Yes, and the very next day, I’d watch as you went to work at the resort, or came to the restaurant to waitress for a few hours. I never said anything when you insisted on reading your textbooks or redoing your school papers, even after the quarter was over.”

  “Mom, everything I’ve accomplished in life I owe to you.”

  “Unfortunately. I allowed you to develop a twisted sense of success that relied on perfection in every little thing you do. That did you more harm than good.”

  Melanie was confused. “What are you trying to say? That success isn’t good?”

  “I’m trying to say that believing the only outcome in something has to be perfection is not good. Even the things you love the most are no longer enjoyable to you because if they aren’t perfect, you don’t want to participate in them.”

  “Like what?”

  “Surfing, for one. When was the last time you went?”

  “The surf hasn’t been good in a while,” Melanie said.

  “There you go. You used to go no matter how good or bad it was. Just catching one or two waves was good enough for you. And taking closing sutures away from your assistant and doing it yourself, just to make sure you thought it was done right.”

  “Harm was working too slow. We had two more cases to do that day.”

  “You’re not a plastic surgeon, Mel. A thoracotomy closure doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to work. Another thing. Taking the diaper away from Dottie the other day was pretty rude.”

  “She was putting it on him backwards!”

  “What difference does it make? Either way around and it’ll absorb. But taking it out of her hands and doing it over again right in front of her wasn’t very kind. You could’ve waited until she was out of the room.”

  “So, I really am a jerk.”

  “You’re not a jerk, not even close. You just need to lighten up.”

  “With my schedule?” Melani
e’s shoulders slumped and she felt her eyes get wet. “When I go to bed at night, I can’t fully relax. It’s easier to stare at the ceiling and gripe to myself, thinking about everything I did wrong that day. Then I think about the next day’s schedule, and what I can screw up then. I’m terrified I’ll screw up during surgery, that the patient will die and it’ll be my fault. Or I’ll misdiagnose someone. Or not find a disease that’s rampaging someone’s body. I can’t relax, I can’t sleep, I don’t like getting exercise, food doesn’t taste good anymore. I hate my…”

  “You hate what?” her mother asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You can hide it from me but you can’t hide it from yourself, Mel.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Whatever it is, you’ll have to do it without me.”

  “What do you mean?” Melanie asked.

  “I can’t keep coming here. It’s time for me to move on, Honey.”

  “When? Today? Now?”

  “Not today, but soon.”

  “Will I know when?”

  When she didn’t get an answer, she looked at where the teenage girl had been sitting.

  “Mom?”

  Melanie looked out at the ocean and shook her head.

  “It’s the same thing every time. As soon as I’m getting some answers, Poof! You’re gone.”

  ***

  After eating dinner with her own family and giving Thérèse and the baby their baths, Melanie went next door to Trinh’s house. She and Harmon were just finishing their dinner, a meaty meal Melanie wouldn’t have eaten.

  “Harm, go help Wilson with his homework. Trinh and I want to talk for a while.”

  “I thought I was involved?” he asked.

  “If we need a referee, you’ll know it,” Trinh said. Once he and her son were closed in his room, Trinh set her eyes on Melanie. “I have questions for you.”

  “I kinda thought you might.”

  “What’s this stuff about you talking me into joining the Air Force? What did Andrew mean by that?”

  “Look, all I did was have my mom and your dad work on you a little about joining. I hated the idea of you spending your life working at the resort or waitressing at Mom’s restaurant. You had so much more going for you at the time. Whatever they did or said to you, I left up to them.”