“Good luck with that. I haven’t been able to find anything.”
I pored over the names and numbers on the list. Lots of different area codes. Some names were checked off. “What are these check marks?”
“I checked off all the ones I’ve called. Some I couldn’t find a phone number or address, but I was able to get an e-mail address. I’ve checked off those I’ve contacted already. No one seems to have a clue! I’m getting nowhere!” She stroked at her forehead with her fingers and seemed to age five years.
She looked again toward the horizon. This time I followed her gaze. “We weren’t … getting along.”
“And why was that?” I folded and pocketed the sheet of paper.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t think of any woman my age who doesn’t have problems with her grown-up children.”
“Does Caroline have any known vices? Chemical dependency issues?” Crystal meth had become a huge problem in the islands. Among its victims were an up and coming state senator, a beloved musician, and a former Miss Hawai‘i.
“I know she smokes pot—she doesn’t try to hide that—and she likes to have a glass of wine now and then. But that’s about it.”
“Nothing unusual, then.”
“What’s unusual is that she’s disappeared. Without a word.”
“Her full name is—”
“—Caroline Ku‘uleilani Johnson. She also goes by Lei, short for Ku‘ulei. Her aunts, uncles, cousins all know her as Lei-girl. Since high school, friends have taken to calling her Kay.”
Caroline Johnson. About as rare as John Smith. “If you and your daughter are estranged, how do you know she’s missing?”
“I didn’t say we were estranged. I just said we didn’t get along … sometimes. You know, we bicker on the phone, about her boyfriends, career choices. I’m her mom, for god sakes!”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“I usually hear from her two, three times a week. No matter where she is. She always calls. It’s been more than two weeks since I’ve—!”
I had to deal with the elephant on the deck before the boat capsized: “Did you notify the police?”
“Police?”
“Did you file a missing person’s report?”
She looked at me straight. A lot was said in that look.
“You have any idea what it’s like to be forever known as Mrs. Lino Johnson? Of course I reported her missing. Over a week ago! They haven’t done shit! I told them she went on a trip with her boyfriend and, big mistake, ’cause that was the end of it.” She stopped. Put a hand to her chest. “I’m sorry. I’m just—”
“You’re allowed.”
She looked up at me. “When I talked with the guy at missing persons, Sergeant Lim, all I got from him was that an adult has the right to go somewhere without telling anyone.”
I knew the mantra all too well: The police department will determine if the individual truly is a threat to himself or others or is a vulnerable adult. If he is, the person’s name can be entered into the national database.
“Well then,” I said. “Better get started.”
She got up. “Thank you.” She reached over and squeezed my hand. “Thank you so much.”
She released my hand. I reopened the photo book and turned again to the last 4 × 6. I pulled it out if its sleeve, then shook it lightly. “Could I hang on to this one?”
“Of course. I have duplicates. Let me write you a check.”
“A thousand up front is all I need. That’ll cover ten days. If I find her in five, I’ll give you a refund.”
She wrote out a check for a thousand like she was used to it, and handed it to me. She got up. I held her hand as she stepped from the boat to the dock. “By the way, how’d you find me?”
“I asked around and your name came up. Then I saw your business card outside of Times.”
“Beretania?”
“No, the one near Kahala Mall. I started going there when Star Market closed.”
“Star closed?”
“It’s been in the news.”
“Oh.” How’d I miss that? “You live around there?”
“I live just off of Kilauea Avenue. Near the elementary school.”
Hmm … diamond earrings, jade bracelet, a Kahala residence…. This one might be loaded. I pocketed the check.
• • •
I dropped off my Corolla at a repair shop in Kaka‘ako. It needed more than a tune-up, but that was all I had time for. I took in a quick but hearty lunch at Ryan’s, washing my sandwich down with iced tea. I scribbled my thoughts, hunches, key things she said about people not getting along. Wrote the words “film career” and “lifeguard,” and began laying out a search plan. As I sat near a window overlooking Ala Moana Park and the beach beyond, I saw the occasional lunchtime jogger lurching by. Then there were those I wouldn’t call joggers, those who really ran, with abandon, bareback in the brutal noonday sun. Reminded me of something I had lost.
After eating I crossed over to Ward Theatres. I was checking out the current showings and upcoming features, resisting the urge to buy a ticket and settle down in a cushioned seat in air-conditioned splendor when my cell phone went off. The car was ready.
I trekked down toward Kamake‘e, passing a Starbucks and the slew of stores hawking everything from beachwear to ice cream. Condos loomed nearby—blue-windowed buildings affordable only to those with NBA player salaries. Upscale, in-town living was the burgeoning trend. Endless shops, restaurants, movie theaters, and, Hey, let’s throw in a beach. That’s what set this place apart. Not only was everything within arm’s reach, it included a goddamned beach, an ever more crowded beach. The old hole-in-the-wall places where you could find great cheap food were getting scarce, or already a dim memory, replaced by eateries that served crab-filled sausages, corn-fed beef, and arugula.
I paid the mechanic, stopped at a service station on Vineyard, gassed up the car, and headed up the Pali Highway, the scenic drive carved through a forest that would take me to the part of the island that was so beautiful it hurt.
The Pali Tunnel is actually two distinct tunnels, a few breaths apart. As I drove through the first I was projecting scenarios: kidnapping, murder, a woman trapped in a warehouse or basement, a couple who had gone on a hike and had slipped into some deep crevasse…. The possibilities were endless, the routes exponential, leading every which where.
As I came out of the second tunnel and headed for that sharp, near-360-degree counterclockwise turn, one especially dangerous when wet, I slowed down. No need to tempt fate when she held all the good cards.
2
DANGEROUS CURVES
You gotta love Lanikai. A cozy, exclusive, residential enclave within walking distance of the beach, Lanikai’s a rich man’s dream. And as with those other exclusive habitats where you’d be hard-pressed to find anything indigenous except for the plants, Lanikai is so white bread you’d think you were in an upscale beach town along the California Central Coast. If there was any mixing going on it was the occasional Hawaiian family living in a rundown house, paying ever-increasing property taxes to hang on to a piece of kuleana land handed down from an ali‘i ancestor. Here they rubbed shoulders with those fortunate enough to buy when land was dirt cheap and those whose wealth was off the charts. And it was the latter who were now infiltrating, one house at a time, rebuilding shaky structures, or building castles on prime land upon and against the hilly backdrop.
On this quiet, terminally breezy—the trades were back, all right—and sunny afternoon, I parked on Mokulua Drive just past Mokumanu and took the access path to the beach. It led to a wide expanse of turquoise green water, topped with white foam. Here the northeast breeze blew even harder, and without pause. I removed my sandals and dug my toes into the sand.
The beach had shrunk. Canoes and kayaks were parked in rows, taking up valuable real estate on this ridiculously narrow beach. I didn’t expect a concession serving hot dogs and sodas, but there weren’t even
showers, or restrooms, or a lifeguard stand. Made me wonder why Caroline liked this beach. I remembered it being wider, way back when, and I had heard all those stories about homeowners building walls to keep the riffraff out, inadvertently causing major beach erosion. It was one thing to read about it, but to see it….
A few people were scattered about, so few that I immediately knew I couldn’t be discreet. Up by one of the canoes I saw a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman lying on her belly with her back arched, her elbows propped on her towel, so she could mark the pages of what seemed to be a voluminous manuscript, its pages tightly adhered to a clipboard. She glanced at me over her shades.
“Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but I’ve been hired to find a missing woman.” I pulled out my PI license and Caroline’s picture. The woman grabbed the photo and license, took too quick a look at both, then shook her head no. She wanted to get back to her manuscript.
No success either with the gray-sideburned chap who sat on a beach chair some thirty yards away. His Maui Jims rested on top of his head, above his reading glasses. He was reading one of those legal thrillers.
“You a lawyer?” I asked.
“What makes you say that?”
“A lawyer friend once told me that Turow writes for his peers, likes to get into the subtleties of the law. Guys like Grisham and Martini, they write for the masses—”
“Their clients, in other words,” he said with just a bit of smugness.
“You might say that.”
“Well, I’m no lawyer, but thanks for the inside scoop.”
I showed him Caroline’s picture.
“I’ve been hired to find this woman.”
He took the photo, stared at it for a few seconds, then looked askance at me.
“You a detective?”
I nodded. “A private one,” I said softly. I flashed him my ID. He scarcely looked at it.
He took another look at the photo. “She’s quite a looker. I’ll tell you the same thing I told that woman who showed me this same picture a few days ago. If I had seen her, I’d remember.”
Minerva had been here, all right.
“You see a lot of them types around here,” he went on. “In fact, Michelle Pfeiffer lives around here, you know. Never seen her on the beach, though.”
I gazed further down, as if in my gazing she’d materialize.
“I’m sure she has a pool,” I told the reading man.
“This one,” he said, looking at the picture a third time, “I wouldn’t have missed this one.” He handed the photo back to me and removed his reading glasses. “Sorry.”
“I’m sorry too. Been coming here long?”
“Not really. I used to favor Kailua Beach, but it’s too damned crowded, with all the kayaking and windsurfing and kite-surfing and now paddle-boarding and every damned thing under the sun. Way too much action for me.”
“Yep. Busy place.” I began to walk away.
“Say, what do real private eyes read?” he said to my back. I turned to him.
“Books, you mean?” Like I have the time.
“You guys prefer Hammett? McDonald?”
“Depends which McDonald you’re talking about.”
“Well, I don’t mean Ronald.”
“Didn’t know he wrote. But since you asked”—I hooked the belt loops of my knee-length shorts with my thumbs—“I do like Hammett. He walked the walk, after all.”
“The real deal, huh? Ever read Mamet?”
Hammett, Mamet. Oh, now we’re playing rhyme games. And what’s all this shit about real. “You mean the playwright?”
He nodded.
“Never read the guy. Think I’ve seen a couple of his films, though.”
He tapped his reading glasses against his knee. “I just read some comment about how he writes like James Cain channeling Harold Pinter. Got me curious.”
“Hmm.” The reverse chronology bothered me, as if the Beatles had influenced Beethoven. “I think I’d rather see it as Pinter channeling Cain, if you ask me.”
“Hear they’re doing a Mamet play at Diamond Head Theatre.”
“You mean the old Ruger Theatre? Is that what they’re calling it now?”
“Only for the last decade or so.”
I had it now. Mr. Snappy Repartee is a drama professor who teaches Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sits on the beach on his off days, dreaming of hitting it big with a screenplay, partly written in alliterative blank verse, with just enough internal rhymes and literary allusions to appease the literary crowd, but mostly filled with action and clever word play that thrill the masses, so he’d get the big paycheck and spend even more days on the beach, because three days off in the workweek just aren’t enough. And the woman I passed earlier? I bet she’s critiquing his draft. I glanced her way; she was watching us discreetly. I gave her my broadest smirk. She turned her head away.
Then I heard Mr. Snappy saying, “If I see her, is there any way I can reach you?”
I handed him my business card.
“David Kawika Apana. Great. If I see her I’ll give you a call.”
Sure you will. I thanked him and continued on.
It was really just a typical Monday afternoon: sunbathers reading paperbacks or dozing off, couples watching their kids as they splashed along the shore, some body boarders … a canoe crew out paddling in the distance. Minerva had been here, but the crowd is never the same. And I just needed one person, one fricken lead.
None of the people I approached seemed to recognize the photo. A couple of sunbathers said it looked like somebody’s cousin or sister. In other words, Caroline Johnson, the most generic of names, was your generic local girl.
It’s one thing to be called on a case immediately after someone disappears. But this one’s been gone for a while now. Or so it seems. Minerva hadn’t seen or heard from her daughter, but that doesn’t mean others on that contact list hadn’t. I held on to that hope. And I reminded myself of the cardinal rule in every investigator’s playbook: Keep moving, keep digging, turn over every rock, and shake every can. Something’s bound to reveal itself. After slogging around on the hot sand and showing the photo to every individual on the beach, I had worked up quite a sweat. My lower back ached. I figured I could use an ocean break.
I took the access path back to the street, walked over to my Corolla, and after checking to see that no one was looking, pulled off my multipocketed cargo shorts and slipped on a pair of swim trunks. I took off my shirt, grabbed a beach towel and swim goggles. I locked my “work clothes” and my wallet in the trunk, making sure the alarm was not only on, but loud, and headed back to the beach.
I jumped into the ocean and quickly caught a few small waves. Immediately I felt transformed, revitalized. I watched a haole kid with long and curly sun-bleached locks ride his body board to catch some longer rides. Playing hooky from school? On that wide stretch of mostly uninhabited beach, only he and I had gravitated to the spot where the better waves were breaking.
I swam and rode waves for a good ten minutes, managing to latch onto a couple of choice ones. Of course, the kid fared better, riding his board to the sandy shore with the ease that comes from a combination of recklessness and familiarity.
Back on the beach, ready to call it a false trail and start over, I wiped myself down and headed back to my car. As I debated whether to change into my dry clothes or remain in my wet shorts I saw the same kid come walking by with his body board tucked under his arm. Having been in the water during the time I walked the beach, he was the only person I hadn’t shown the photo to. I quickly opened the trunk, grabbed the photo of Caroline, held it up and shouted, “Hey, you ever seen this lady?”
He came over, gazed at the photo, looked at me and said, “Dass Auntie Kay.”
“Auntie Kay?” I knew she was no relative. Every familiar adult was “Uncle” or “Auntie” to most local kids.
“Yah. Auntie Kay.”
“How do you know her?”
“She always hang around da bea
ch. Her an’ Uncle Matt.”
“Matt?” Bingo.
“Yeah. He one lifeguard at Kailua Beach. He da one teach wen’ me how fo’ slice.”
“Is Uncle Matt still around?” I had to admire the kid’s aloha print board shorts. He wore them low at the waist and they ran a bit past his knees. They were loud; they were appropriate. A house key was pinned to his side pocket.
“I dunno. Nevah see ’om long time.”
“Long time? How long?”
He looked like he was thinking about it, then said, “Maybe couple months.”
“Couple months? You mean March?”
“Aroun’ dere. He said he was goin’ Tahiti. He said get some awesome breaks ovah dere.”
“Did Auntie Kay go with him?”
He shook his head. “Nah. I saw her aroun’. I tink he went by himself.”
“When did you last see Auntie?”
The kid searched his memory. “Two, chree weeks ago, maybe. I dunno. She was wit’ one adda lady.”
“You know who that lady was?”
He shook his head.
“You know what she looked like?”
“Oriental … Japanee, I tink. I dunno.” Here was my best lead, a kid with a penchant for two phrases: I tink and I dunno.
“You know anything else about Auntie Kay or Uncle Matthew?” I placed the picture back in the trunk. He eyed me suspiciously. “I’m trying to help their family find them. I’m a private detective.” I grabbed my wallet and pulled out a business card. Handed it to him.
“Hoh. Ja’like Thomas Magnum, eh?”
“Yeah. Ja’like.” Is that damned show still on?
“Uncle dem used to stay at da big pink house on Ko‘oho‘o Place. Dass one Hollywood directah’s house.”
“How far is that from here?”
“I dunno. Less dan one mile, I tink.” He pointed west. “Go down dis street and hang one lef’ on Kaelepulu, den hang one adda lef’ on A‘alapapa … den, aftah you pass Kaiolena, you gon’ see ‘om on your right.”
“Kaiolena.”
“Yeah. Jes’ go up da hill.”
For a Song Page 3