by Maddy Hunter
“Excuse me,” I said to the woman whose ear he was chewing off. She wore an ID badge around her neck and was carrying an official looking clipboard. “I think there’s been a terrible mistake. Doesn’t he get his own helicopter?”
“Ladies, ladies, ladies,” Carl continued, draping a flabby arm around each of our shoulders. “This is your lucky day. You get every mouthwatering inch of me all to yourselves.”
In the next instant Shelly seized his wrist, spun beneath his arm, and in a quick, fluid motion, flipped him onto his back as if she were a short-order cook and he was Humpty Dumpty on his way to becoming a cheese omelette. The earth shook. Debris floated upward. “Don’t touch me,” she yelled into his stunned face, stabbing her forefinger at his nose. “Don’t ever touch me! You got that?”
She brushed off her hands and stormed to the other end of the tarmac, swinging her arms to loosen her muscles and muttering to herself. I stared after her, speechless. Wow. The only other people I’d ever seen execute moves like that were the Terminator and Nana.
Reminder to myself: Don’t get on Shelly Valentine’s bad side.
I walked over to her. “That was pretty impressive,” I said as she methodically cracked one knuckle after the other. “How’d you do it?”
She shrugged. “I signed up for a self-defense course at the university during my freshman year, and I keep taking refresher courses. Best thing I ever did. Not bad for an amateur, huh?”
Not bad for a professional, either.
“You!” the female official blasted, leveling her pen at the flattened carcass of Carl Leatherman. “Any more manhandling of the passengers, and you’re outta here. You!” she called to Shelly. “The World Wrestling Alliance moves belong in the gym. Understand? Okay, Valentine and Andrew in the front seat. Leatherman in the back. No eating or smoking allowed. Enjoy your flight.”
Subdued and grass-stained, Carl struggled onto his fat little feet, looking decidedly pouty. Ignoring us, he squeezed though the door of the copter and wedged himself into the back passenger compartment. Shelly and I strapped ourselves into the front seats. Our pilot climbed aboard next, a confident looking forty-year-old who, after introducing himself as Bogart, went to work with mute efficiency. He handed us protective headphones, checked his instruments, flipped some switches, powered up the rotor blades, and then, after a slow vertical liftoff, swooped into the air like a giant dragonfly off a lily pad.
We banked high to the left, my body vibrating from teeth to toenails, the whir of the rotor blades louder than New York jackhammers. My feet tingled with the sudden height, but I had to admit, the scenery unfolding before us was even more awesome than the sight of “60% OFF” stickers during Emer-hoff’s semiannual shoe sale.
I dug my Canon Elph out of my shoulder bag and began snapping pictures. A deserted crescent of white sand beach, washed by blue-green water and nestled within a leafy swath of emerald green jungle. A lighthouse perched on the lip of a rugged headland. A narrow-mouthed bay with a long finger of rocks forming a breakwater around a local marina. Sailboats. Powerboats. And there was our cruise ship! I wondered if I could pick out my cabin from here. I gave Shelly a little poke to point it out, but she still looked pretty miffed about the Carl incident and in no mood to take pictures.
As we flew over what looked like a huge resort hotel, I heard static over my headphones, followed by a few strains of some classical overture, and the voice of James Earl Jones on a prerecorded tape. “Directly below you lies the Menehune Fishpond, a nine-hundred-foot mullet-raising pond reputed to have been built in one night by a race of small, hairy people who inhabited the island prior to the Polynesians.”
I shot a picture of the pond, then glanced over my shoulder to see if Carl wanted me to move my head so he could get a picture, too. But Carl wasn’t looking at the Menehune Fishpond. Carl looked too frightened for sightseeing. He was clinging white-knuckled to a safety strap, his eyes pinched so tightly, he’d need a crowbar to pry them open again. Even his lips were quivering — or maybe he was mouthing a silent prayer. Huh. It seemed that after a lifetime of facing down needles, snakes, and dentists, he’d finally found something that scared the crap out of him.
More music played as we soared over razor-backed mountains with scrubby flanks and geometrically challenged fields in a patchwork quilt of pea green, celery green, moss green, and pistachio.
“The mile-long lane of trees you see in the distance is a stand of rough-bark swamp mahogany imported from Australia and planted by a local cattle rancher over one hundred and fifty years ago. It’s known as the Tree Tunnel and it shades the country road leading into Poipu.”
We swayed right and left and swooped off again toward the west, approaching terrain that was as fierce as it was uninhabitable. Towers of stone rose like the spires of a gothic cathedral, lacy with erosion, craggy with age. Water gushed through rock and cascaded over steep precipices, spilling into pools that looked peacock blue in the sun.
“To your right is the waterfall Steven Spielberg used in the opening shot of the movie Jurassic Park,” announced James Earl in his melodic baritone.
Angry gray ridges. Huge, inaccessible caves. Grassy plateaus. I snapped a picture of the waterfall for Jonathan and smiled to myself. My good deed for the day.
After a rousing interlude by Rachmaninoff, James Earl continued his travelogue. “Directly ahead of you is Waimea Canyon. Mark Twain once dubbed it the ‘Grand Canyon of the Pacific.’ Ten miles long, one and a half miles wide, thirty-six hundred feet deep, it borders the Alakai Swamp and is chiseled from red bedrock that eons of rain and sun have bleached to the color of an old clay pot.”
Even in direct sunlight, the colors of the canyon were muted into soft earth tones. Pale peach. Light pink. Soft coral. Warm beige. Deep valleys. Rocky pinnacles. Impossible waterfalls. Rivers meandering toward the sea. With Rachmaninoff blasting in our ears, we hovered over one waterfall, dipped into a valley, banked high over a sharp crest, and charged like a Valkyrie toward the open sea. I checked behind me to see how Carl was faring.
On the upside, he didn’t look so scared anymore. On the downside, he had the same “car sick” look my brother Steve used to get before he’d upchuck his lunch in the front seat of Dad’s pickup. Gray skin. Moist brow. White lips. Uh-oh.
“Are you all right?” I yelled at him.
He clung silently to the safety strap, sweating, eyes still clamped shut. I was obviously failing in my attempt to penetrate the racket created by rotor blades, James Earl Jones, and Rachmaninoff.
“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” I persisted. When he still gave no indication of hearing me, I turned back toward the front console. Ignoring the lure of the scenery for a moment, I glanced left and right for —
Aha! I grabbed a motion sickness bag from a pocket beneath the instrument panel and pivoted around to drop it onto Carl’s lap. There might be a supply in the backseat, but if he kept his eyes shut, they’d be as useful to him as the Weight Watcher’s point system. In fact —
I grabbed the rest of the bags and pitched them behind me, figuring he’d thank me when we landed. That Tommy Bahama shirt was probably dry-clean only.
“On the horizon is the famed Na Pali coast,” James Earl announced in my ear. “An impenetrable expanse of valleys and four-thousand-foot cliffs, sitting cheek to jowl with the pounding surf.” We swept out over the whitecapped ocean and looked northeast toward the successive waves of knife-edged rock that scalloped the towering cliffs. A petticoat of sea foam skirted the base of the cliffs, all swirly and frothy white. “The 1976 remake of King Kong was partially filmed in one of these valleys along the coastline,” James continued. “Valleys with names like Koahole, Awaawapuhi, and Honopu.”
We swooped toward the mainland like a pesky gnat, buzzing into the mouth of a primeval valley that looked like the land time forgot. Giant monoliths of stone, shaped like arrowheads and slick with centuries of moss, rose like skyscrapers before us. Lush greenery carpeted the valley floor. Boulder-strew
n streams sliced mean paths through the terrain, seaming the land like permanent scars.
I took a panoramic shot of the arrowheads as we circled around the valley, but as we headed back out to sea, I heard a thump, felt a lurch, then tumbled against Shelly as the chopper pitched wildly to port.
“Mayday,” Bogart fired into the mouthpiece on his headset. Shelly screamed as she slammed into the door. I struggled to push off her, but we were too far off-balance. I felt like a bug pinned to a display card; I couldn’t pull myself upright.
“Mayday, mayday,” Bogart repeated. Fighting the g force, I muscled myself high enough to peer into the backseat. My heart fluttered at the sight.
Carl lay in a huge, lifeless heap, all three hundred and sixteen pounds of him slumped against the window on the left side of the chopper, like a shifted load on a logging truck. He’d finally opened his eyes, but they were obviously blind to the sudden blur of scenery that whizzed past our windshield as we started plunging toward earth.
No! This was a mistake! Carl was the time bomb. His time was up, not mine! I exercised. I went to church. I ate my vegetables. THIS COULDN’T BE HAPPENING TO ME!
As Bogart fought to stabilize us, I clutched Shelly’s arm and closed my eyes, suddenly realizing why this was happening.
My hair. It had to be my hair. My shorter, sassier, ridiculously expensive, frizz-free locks. No wonder this was happening — God didn’t recognize me!
“I was sure it was motion sickness,” I confessed as I lobbed a stone over the edge of the bluff. It hit the rock-encrusted beach fifty feet below us and ricocheted toward the pounding surf.
Employing some pretty masterful maneuvers, Bogart had managed to set us down on the grassy headland at the valley’s entrance, a fairly level plateau overlooking a cliff face of sheer rock. The helicopter had sustained only minor damage, but it wasn’t going anywhere with Carl still in it. And neither were we.
“Cardiac arrest,” Shelly countered as she lobbed her own stone over the side. “Or a brain aneurysm. I knew that guy spelled trouble from the get-go. The mouthy ones are always trouble.” She spun around, shielding her eyes as she checked the sky. “That rescue copter sure is taking its time. I have a manicure scheduled for three o’clock. Look at this.” She wiggled her fingers in the air. “I broke two nails on that wild-goose chase yesterday. I was terrified I was going to break another one today.”
Shelly was happy she hadn’t broken a nail. I was happy I hadn’t broken my neck. This illustrated one of the great strengths of today’s college coed. She could quickly suppress the trauma of a near-death experience to face the challenge of an even greater crisis: the unrepaired hangnail. Yes, today’s collegians really had everything in perspective.
I tossed a look back toward the helicopter to find Bogart leaning against the body of the craft, carrying on an animated conversation by cell phone. I shook my head. “Bailey warned me about helicopters. Wait ’til she hears about this. She’ll be sooo happy she opted for watercraft rather than aircraft today.”
Shelly lifted her brows. “Are you friends with Bailey?”
“Passing acquaintances.”
“You seem to know a lot about her, for being a passing acquaintance.”
“I know enough to realize that, contrary to what Jennifer implied, Bailey is definitely warm-blooded. Or should I say, viviparous.”
Shelly grinned. “Jen likes to throw out those ten-cent words when she’s around civilians. Makes her feel intellectually superior.” She dug the toe of her sandal into the turf. “I suppose you’ve guessed by now that Jen isn’t a Bailey Howard devotee.”
“Because of the honors board thing. Yeah, Bailey brought me up to speed about that.”
“Well, Jen might not be one of my favorite people, but I can’t blame her for feeling the way she does.”
It was my turn to be surprised. “You don’t think she should have been called on the carpet for cheating?”
“I’m not talking about the cheating allegations. If she did cheat, she deserved the punishment she got. I’m talking about the other issue.”
Right. The other issue. “What other issue?”
She spent all of a nanosecond wrestling with the principles of ethics and confidentiality before filling me in. “This is Jen’s take on the matter, not mine, okay? But according to Jen, Dori had something that Bailey wanted. Unfortunately, Bailey didn’t have the patience to wait to come by it honestly, so she facilitated a way to acquire it more quickly. In the end, Bailey wins the ultimate prize, and Dori — Poor Dori gets a one-way ticket to the great beyond.”
I gave myself a mental V-8 Juice smack on the forehead. Oh, my God! Was she talking about the journal? Had Bailey wanted Griffin Ring’s journal? “But…but…Bailey needed Professor Smoker to sign off on her dissertation. Why would she jeopardize all those years of study by killing him before she had her degree in hand? I mean, for all she knew, the journal could have been worthless. And then what’s she left with? Absolutely nothing!”
Shelly frowned. “Journal? I’m not talking about a journal.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“She wanted his job!” Shelly looked shocked that I hadn’t figured it out for myself. “She wanted to be at his desk, in his office, at that university. It was her main goal in life, or weren’t you around her long enough to pick up on it?”
Why was this growing more confusing? I shook my head. “How can an unofficial Ph.D. who’s completely green behind the ears expect to end up in the chair vacated by the world’s leading expert on Captain James Cook? Come on. Talk about unrealistic expectations. That doesn’t happen.”
“Oh, doesn’t it?” She flashed a smug smile. “Budget cuts. The administration would have to hire an assistant professor to replace Dori, because with all the belt-tightening that’s going on, they wouldn’t have the funds to hire a full professor. And Bailey has made quite the name for herself on the Captain Cook front, so she’d probably be a shoo-in, especially with her degree so near completion. The campus paper called her the ‘best and the brightest’ graduate student in the history department. The adjective they failed to include was ‘most ambitious.’”
As the faint whir of rotor blades echoed in the distance, Shelly looked up and gestured toward a dark speck in the sky. “Our rescue copter. ’Bout time.”
As the chopper approached and circled overhead, I had a numbing thought.
If what Shelly implied was true, I might have sent my little group off today in the company of a cold-blooded killer.
Chapter 10
“Say ‘ah,’ ” the emergency room doctor instructed, tongue depressor in hand. He looked pure Hawaiian and could have been the poster child for Coppertone tans, BioSilk hair care products, and Rembrandt tooth-whitening systems. Back home the doctors were walking advertisements for Rogaine, Dentu-Grip, and Dr. Scholl’s Gel Insoles. They weren’t so easy on the eyes, but their lack of movie star looks was a whole lot less intimidating.
“There’s nothing wrong with my throat,” I objected impatiently, my legs dangling over the edge of the examining table. “Look, my cruise ship leaves port in less than an hour, and if I’m not on it, I’ll have to find my own way to Maui. They make that very clear in our travel documents. It’s our responsibility to return to the ship on time, and if we’re not aboard when the gangplank goes up, it’s adios muchachos.”
“Aloha malihini,” Dr. Akita corrected. “When in Rome.” He waggled his tongue depressor again, unmoved by my appeal. I finally gave in and opened wide.
“Ahhhh.”
He clicked on his Penlite. “You’re right. There’s nothing wrong with your throat.” He pitched the wooden depressor and returned his Penlite to the pocket of his lab coat.
“My being here is a waste of your valuable time,” I pressed on.
“Your helicopter crashed. It’s protocol.”
“It didn’t crash, it was more like a hard landing. My traveling companion didn’t even break a nail.”
“Have you seen the edema over your eye?”
“Old injury. I did that yesterday.”
He went through the mandatory routine of checking my heart and lungs and testing my reflexes, and when he was done, he scribbled something onto a clipboarded form, then turned back to me. “I’ll sign your release and you’ll be free to leave. I’ll also have the front desk call you a cab. Lihue’s impossible to get through at this time of day, so your taxi driver may have to gun it to get you back before your boat leaves.”
He shook my hand and smiled. “By the way, I hope you’re not prone to seasickness. The weather advisories are warning of a fairly significant squall forming southwest of here. If your next port of call is Maui, I’m afraid you may be heading right into it.”
“A storm?” I sagged with relief. “Thank God! That’ll give me more time to get back to Nawiliwili. The ship won’t leave port if there’s a storm brewing, will it?”
“Port is the worst place a ship can be during a storm. A vessel the size of your cruise ship is always much safer riding out a storm at sea.”
“You’re kidding, right?” The tidal wave scene from the Poseidon Adventure flashed before my eyes. The Poseidon hadn’t been safe at sea; the Poseidon had gone belly-up five seconds into the movie and all the important cast members drowned!
Dr. Akita regarded me indulgently. “The most dangerous thing a ship can run into during a storm isn’t wind, waves, or rain. It’s land.”
Land? “But what about that old saying? ‘Any port in a storm.’”
Dr. Akita grinned wryly. “I believe that applies mostly to birds.”
Ten minutes later, I sat on a bench outside the emergency entrance, waiting for my taxi to arrive and trying not to freak out about having only forty minutes left before the Aloha Princess sailed into the sunset without me. With most people, disasters happened in threes. With me, they seemed to happen in twelves. Was it simply old-fashioned bad luck or one of those annoying quirks of the new math?