Hula Done It?

by Maddy Hunter

  “Start focusing, Grace!” ordered Dick Stolee as he paddled hard to starboard. “Ram-ming speed!” he yelled, aiming his prow at the Teigs’ kayak.

  “What do you s’pose they’re doin’?” Nana asked curiously.

  “Reenacting the War of 1812,” said Tilly.

  “The whole war?” Nana shook her head. “I don’t think we’re gonna be here that long, are we?”

  WHOOSH! Back-paddling to a sudden stop, Dick Stolee dug his paddle into the river and rainbowed a tidal wave of water into the Teig’s kayak. “Take that!”

  “Oh, God. I can’t watch.” I covered my face and turned away. “Tell me what happens.”

  A strangulated shriek echoed up and down the river.

  “That was Helen,” Nana said. “Uh-oh. Looks like she’s just realizing what that water done to her treasure map. Lookit that. It’s all fell apart. Guess we shoulda used heavier stock.”

  “A minor setback.” Tilly said. “Wait until she sees what the water did to her eyebrows.” She sucked in her breath. “All right, Emily. It’s safe to look now. They’ve changed direction. They’re going upriver.” She paused. “Crossriver.” She let out a sigh. “Downriver.”

  “They’re paddlin’ in circles,” Nana declared. “You s’pose they’ll ever notice?”

  Oh, God. Shaking my head, I turned back to Tilly. “Okay, what were you saying about how we should go about identifying our killer?”

  Tilly parted her lips to reply, then suddenly froze, her eyes widening with alarm. “I do remember entertaining an excellent idea, but…I…I don’t recall what it was.” She thumped her walking stick on the pavement in frustration. “The two of you should probably go on without me. By the end of the day, I might not remember your names. Goodness, I might not remember my own name.”

  “Not a problem. Just lookit your name tag,” Nana advised, grabbing on to Tilly’s arm and dragging her toward the river. “The real problem is, if we don’t get our tushes into one a them boats, we’ll never get to the Secret Falls. You comin’, Emily?”

  That’s what I loved about Nana. No matter the situation, she always managed to stay focused.

  The last two-man kayak sat on the boat ramp, directly behind a banana yellow one whose nose was already in the water. An army of young people in Kauai Kayak Adventures T-shirts crowded the ramp, throwing out rapid-fire instructions as they eased the yellow kayak farther into the water for boarding. One of them separated himself from the group and jogged up to us.

  “Three of you?” He wore a Florida Marlins baseball cap and reminded me of one of the cheery youngsters who directed you to the proper car, tram, or space ship at Disney World. “You’re in luck.” He whistled down to his companions at the water’s edge. “Hold up launching that one! I’ve got another passenger for you!”

  After directing Nana and Tilly toward the two-man kayak, he hurried me to the end of the ramp where the yellow kayak sat bobbing in the water. A life jacket and double-ended paddle were shoved at me, and as I donned the jacket, I caught my first glimpse of the person who was snugged into the stern of the craft.

  My stomach slid down to my ankles. Oh, no. “Jonathan?” I noticed a fresh wad of duct tape spiraled around his little Coke bottle glasses, as if he’d recently walked through a doorway without opening the door first. He wore a full coverage canvas hat with a duckbill visor and ear flaps and neck flaps that would shield him from everything from UV rays to frostbite. The word Microsoft was embroidered in gold metallic thread across the bill, a blatant admission of where his loyalty lay in the computer wars. I saw some swirly lines in black Magic Marker beneath the gold stitchery, but I was too far away to read it. I did note, however, that he repeated the Magic Marker color theme in the black socks he was wearing with his brown wingtips and white walking shorts. I guess he’d need a little help before he hit the cover of GQ.

  “Emily! Hey, I didn’t know how I was going to do this with one arm in a sling, but you’ve saved the day. Hop in. Geez. This is so great! Maybe my luck is changing for the better.”

  If his luck was changing for the better, mine was definitely taking a turn for the worse. “Jonathan! What a surprise. I thought you might be holed up in your cabin…trying to contain your curse.” Or scrubbing Strasbourg pâté out of his trousers.

  A buoyant smile brightened his face. “You won’t believe it! Everything’s changed since last night. I had a long talk with the captain, and he really set me straight.”

  “He — uh — he convinced you that you had nothing to do with the incident yesterday?”

  “Better than that. He told me to get a life. And he strongly recommended island excursions as a first step. Beth used to tell me to get a life all the time, but it had more impact coming from someone in uniform. So here I am.”

  The captain probably wanted him off the ship to save it from sinking! Speaking of which — I eyed the kayak with sudden trepidation. “Um…” I held a finger up to the kid in the Marlins cap. “You know, I have a tendency to get miserably seasick and I just remembered that I left my Dramamine back on the ship, so maybe I should —”

  “The Wailua’s the tamest river in the world,” said the kid, as he and another guy muscled me down into the molded plastic seat in the bow. “Even the tour boats that cruise up to the Fern Grotto don’t make much of a wake. No one’s ever gotten seasick on the Wailua.” A skinny guy with a peach fuzz beard and aviator sunglasses handed me a small white box that I suspected was lunch.

  “Anything good?” I asked.

  He laughed out loud at my question, which I didn’t think boded well for those guests who were anticipating cucumber and watercress.

  “A few things before you head out,” said another guy with a long ponytail and freckles. “Around this first bend here there’s a fork in the river. Every time you see a fork, bear left. When you come to an island, paddle past the fallen tree and haul your kayak onto shore. Here’s a map of the trail to the Secret Falls.” He handed me a blue index card. “It’s not real detailed, but all you have to remember is to follow the path along the river until you come to a wide stream, then follow the stream inland. Don’t follow any of the smaller streams unless you’re an expert hiker. Those paths are pretty treacherous. The Secret Falls is probably a half mile from where you turn inland. Any questions, ma’am?”

  “Yeah, about those smaller strea —” I blinked in horror. Ma’am? He called me, ma’am? I stared at him, my question caught in my windpipe like a half-chewed Twinkie. To be a ma’am you had to have white hair, no waist, and a ruff of loose skin hanging from your throat and arms. Nana was a ma’am. I couldn’t be a ma’am; I was too young to be a ma’am!

  “Forget what you were saying, ma’am?”

  EH! He said it again!

  “Okay, you two.” He slapped our heavy-duty plastic hull. “We’re cutting you loose.” The whole crew gave us a shove that sent us skating away from the boat ramp into deeper water. I stared at my shoulder bag, wondering if I’d brought along anything sharp enough to cut through my wrists. Teenagers calling me ma’am? Why didn’t I just end it all now before I had to join the rush for support hose and orthotic inserts? I didn’t want to age gracefully. I didn’t want to age at all!

  “I hope you won’t think I’m being a know-it-all,” Jonathan apologized from behind me, “but that paddle isn’t going to work unless you stick it in the water.”

  When I saw that we were floating in the direct path of the Teigs’ kayak and about to be rammed, I muckled onto my paddle and dug it into the water. Right. Left. Right. Left. Aging was one thing; getting a close-up of Helen without her eyebrows was a whole other kettle of fish.

  With a stiff wind at our backs, I powered us through the water like the Energizer Bunny on a battery high. I hadn’t kayaked for years, but the rhythm and motion were coming back to me. I guess kayaking was something you never forgot how to do, like riding a bicycle. Or sex. Although I hadn’t had sex in so long, I’d probably need a diagram to remind me which body
parts went where.

  Left. Right. Left. Right.

  “You paddle like a real pro,” Jonathan called out. “I bet you’ve done this before.”

  “In college. The university was built on a lake.”

  “My vo-tech school was built right next to the city dump. Talk about great location. Anytime we needed a spare computer part, all we had to do was walk across the street and scavenge for it.”

  We were at the back of the pack, a hundred feet away from the next kayak, staying close to the snarl of water-hugging shrubs that lined the riverbank. I liked being close to shore. It seemed a lot less risky than the middle of the river, where the water was a lot deeper. My only major concern now was making sure I didn’t run out of sunblock.

  “There’s supposed to be an authentic re-created folk village around one of these bends,” Jonathan chirped behind me. “It’s only a bunch of huts, but an overhead shot of them appeared in one of the opening scenes of my favorite movie of all times. Outbreak. Did you see that one?”

  “I saw the trailer. You like medical thrillers?”Left. Right. Left. Right.

  “Not particularly. But I love it when Hollywood portrays someone as beautiful as Renee Russo falling for a loser like Dustin Hoffman. It’s like watching my life unfold on the big screen. We’re also supposed to pass the field where Harrison Ford was chased by those hostile natives in the first Indiana Jones flick.”

  Hey! Just like Captain Cook!

  “And the seaplane he jumps into was sitting on this very river. Doesn’t that give you goose bumps?”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “You sound like a big movie buff, Jonathan.”

  “I’m sorry. Am I talking too much?”

  “No, I think it’s intriguing.”

  “Really? Beth always told me I was really boring when I started talking movies. She was the interesting one. Boy, you should have heard her discuss her method for peeling tomatoes. It was absolutely riveting.”

  The more I heard about Beth, the more I began to think Jonathan had gotten the better end of the deal when she’d left.

  “Did you see that old John Wayne film, Donovan’s Reef?” he continued. “The weird water-skiing scene that’s supposed to take place on the open ocean was actually filmed on the Wailua. Probably back near the boat ra —”

  I nearly leaped out of the kayak at the sound of a horn blasting behind us. I swung around to find a flat-bottomed barge with a pitched canopy chugging down the middle of the river in our direction, looking like a supersized roadside vegetable stand without the vegetables. FERN GROTTO TOURS was splashed in big red letters across the side, and when the horn stopped blaring, I could hear Hawaiian music echoing out over their speaker system. Tourists hung over the sides, toasting us with icy beverages and waving giddily at the scenery. The floor space was crowded with beer-bellied men in T-shirts and shorts swirling their hips and jerking their arms as if they’d all been zapped with the mother of all stun guns. One guy got so out of control, he swatted himself in the face with his hand and went down like a bull elephant. I shook my head. This was what happened when you tried to teach the hula to a bunch of white guys whose main source of exercise was pressing buttons on the remote control.

  I waved as they passed, thinking how cool and refreshed they looked under the protective covering of the roof. The sun was sweltering.

  “Do you remember that old Elvis Presley movie, Blue Hawaii?” Jonathan continued as I quartered the kayak into the barge’s wake and met the foot-high waves head on. WHAP. WHAP. WHAP.

  “It’s the one set in a Polynesian resort surrounded by a grove of palm trees.”

  The waves sloshed against our hull and pitched us back and forth before rolling toward the shoreline and making a whooshing sound against the bank. Piece of cake — we didn’t even get swamped. The kid in the Marlins cap had been right; this was one tame river.

  “Do you realize we passed the resort where that movie was filmed when we turned off the highway? The Coco Palms. It’s been closed since ’92 because of hurricane damage, but Tattoo from that old TV show, Fantasy Island, used to drive his jeep through that very grove after he yelled, ‘De plane, de plane!’”

  “Hello, dear!” called Nana as she and Tilly glided effortlessly past us in their blue kayak. “I think the two Dicks are headin’ out to sea, so if they don’t show up at the Secret Falls, you’ll know where to look for ’em. Too bad your cell phone’s on the fritz. You coulda put the Coast Guard on speed dial.”

  My shoulders slumped involuntarily. Oh, God. They couldn’t possibly get lost at sea, could they?”

  “How’s that for a coincidence,” Jonathan piped up. “Did you know Gilligan’s Island was partially filmed on the island of Kauai?”

  I gave Nana a weary thumbs-up. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “You bet.” With barely a splash they propelled themselves forward, heads high, backs straight, paddling left and right in perfect unison. My mouth fell open as they sliced through the water at a pace that defied every speed record known to man for nonmotorized watercraft. Wow. They were really fast.

  “Where’d you learn to kayak?” I yelled after them. “The Senior Center?” The town had recently added an Olympic-size swimming pool to the complex, thanks to a generous donation from Nana. Windsor City now had the distinction of being home to the second largest body of water in Iowa, so anything was possible.

  “The Limpopo River in Africa,” Tilly shouted back. “A matter of necessity. The crocodiles were hungry. If I wasn’t fast, I was lunch!”

  “Did you ever see The African Queen?” Jonathan chimed in, as Nana and Tilly became a speck on the horizon. “That particular movie wasn’t filmed in Kauai, but Throw Momma From the Train was. And Body Heat. And Honeymoon in —”

  “So what’s been your favorite part of the cruise so far?” I cut him off. I’d obviously judged Beth a little too harshly.

  “That’s easy: the scavenger hunt. I collected more good junk than you can ever imagine. A dozen erasers. A bunch of paper clips. And I met scads of people who were really curious about my arm. I’ve got all their names here in my backpack.”

  I heard the distinctive zzzzt of a zipper being opened and some grunts that reminded me of the sounds I make when my cars keys get lost in my shoulder bag. “Here we go. Buford Whitelaw, indoor environmental consultant. Melissa Beard, certified transpersonal hypnotherapist. Raymond Robinson, Alpha vending services.”

  I peered over my shoulder at him. “What did you do? Make a list?”

  “They gave me their business cards. We only needed one for the scavenger hunt, but people were really willing to give them away, so I collected a whole stack. Cyrus Pittz, All faiths cremation service.”

  Uff da. Was he planning to go through the whole stack? Left. Right. Left. Right.

  “Vanessa Lyon, Globalcom Technologies. Percy Woodruffe-Peacock, Sandwich Island Society. Dennis —”

  “WHAT?” I turned around so fast, I heard my spine crack. “You have Percy Woodruffe-Peacock’s business card? Can I see it?”

  “You know him?” Jonathan asked as he handed me the card.

  “I’ve met him.” I stowed my paddle and allowed us to drift as I skimmed the card. “Name, address, and society affiliation. Not much help. You don’t happen to know what the mission statement of the Sandwich Island Society is, do you?”

  Jonathan shrugged. “Sounds like it has something to do with owning Subway Sandwich franchises. That’d be my guess.”

  Why hadn’t I just asked them on the bus? That would have been the smart thing to do. Nuts. “Thanks anyway,” I said, handing the card back. Taking up my paddle once more, I stroked quickly to angle away from the overhanging branches onshore, then heaved a sigh when Jonathan started chattering again.

  “Hey, Emily, did you see the writing on the back of the card here? Some words scribbled in ink. You want me to read them to you?”

  “Be my guest.” Left. Right. Left. Right.

  “At the top it says,
Hit Parade, and under that are two names. Dorian Smoker and Bailey Howard.” He paused. “Smoker. Isn’t that the name of the guy you were talking about at dinner last night? The one who got pushed overboard?”

  I stilled my paddle midmotion, my heart suddenly racing. “Yeah. It’s the same name.” Dorian Smoker’s name appears on a “hit parade,” then he conveniently ends up dead? Hit parade. Was that a deceptively innocent way of saying, “Hit List?”

  I suspected I’d just learned the mission statement of the Sandwich Island Society.

  “So a bunch of actors from the Jurassic Park movie were forced to ride out the hurricane in the ballroom of the Westin Kauai Lagoons in Poipu,” Jonathan babbled, his wingtips clomping close behind me, rustling the leaves that littered the ground. “That was back in ’92. I thought the first movie was much better than the sequels. Didn’t you?”

  I managed to tune him out as I blazed a trail in the direction of the Secret Falls, kicking leaves and twigs out of my way as I went. Our index card map was comically inadequate in the landmark department, but I wasn’t worried. Finding a waterfall in the woods should be child’s play for someone who’d found Victoria’s Secret in the Mall of America without having to consult the directory.

  I rolled to a stop, listening for sounds that might indicate a distant waterfall, but all I heard was chirping birds, creepy insect sounds, and the burble of water rushing over pebbles in the stream to our right. “Do you have any idea how far we’ve walked so — OOFF!”

  I skidded face-first into the leaves and underlying mud, air whooshing painfully from my lungs as Jonathan fell like a ton of bricks on top of me.

  “I’m sorry!” he yelped, elbowing my head and stepping on my shoulder bag as he scrambled to his feet. “I didn’t know you were going to stop. Are you all right? Did you break anything?”

  I opened one eye to find him crouched in front of my face, nose to nose with me, his head close enough for me to see that the mysterious black scrawl on his duckbill was in actuality the signature of someone by the name of — I squinted and tried to focus. Bowel Gas? Man, penmanship in the electronic age had really gone to hell in a handbasket.