4 Kaua'i Me a River (24 page)

 I put
my hands up to cover my mouth. They were ice cold.

“Uncle
Robby killed my mom?”

“I’m
afraid so.”

“And
then…” I knew what was coming.

“And
then he killed himself,” she said. “Phil tried to stop him, but it was too
late.”

CHAPTER 29

I was
in the
ohana
when my phone rang. The caller ID said,
Unavailable
,
but cops don’t want you to know they’re calling so I wasn’t surprised when it
turned out to be Detective Wong.

“Am I
catching you at a bad time?” she said.

“No,
it’s fine.” I said. Actually, I couldn’t recall a worse time, but there was no
turning back. I was eager to hear if Wong had found anything to verify Sunny’s
bizarre story.

“I did a records search and
found the incident report. My boss says he’s willing to let you take a look at
it.”

“Can I get a copy?”

“No, the file stays here. But if
you’ll come in, you can go through it.”

I left the compound without
telling Sunny. It was weird enough having a step-mother five years younger than
me; no way would I play the role of step-child.

I drove to the Lihue police
station. The same hunky desk jockey was at the front. I wondered if the guy was
a street cop who’d messed up and was doing penance.

“You’re here for Detective Wong,
right?” he said.

I thought the Wong/right thing
was funny but had a hunch he wouldn’t see the humor.

“Yeah.”

 Kiki Wong took me to the
interview room and set a thin manila file folder in front of me.

“This is it?” I said. I’d
expected a big white box like you see on TV. I mean, after all, it involved a killing—accidental
or not.

“There wasn’t much to report. The
investigating officer ruled it an accidental death. And then the alleged assailant
committed suicide. Seems he jumped from Kalalau.” She shrugged, then seemed to
realize how disrespectful that looked and said, “Look, I’m sorry. I know this
is regarding your mother. Take your time, but please leave everything in the same
order you found it.”

 She left and I flipped the file
folder open. The first few pages included the final incident report,
typewritten and stapled together. In narrative form, it described the arrival
of the police, the subsequent arrival of an ambulance, and the later search for
the alleged attacker. It ended by saying an eyewitness had observed a man fall
from a cliff off above the Kalalau trailhead, and when the body was recovered
it was later identified as the alleged assailant.

The second set of stapled papers
included the witness reports. There were notes from interviews with Auntie
Mana—who was referred to by her real name, Maliana Kahele—as well as two other
people whose names I didn’t recognize. The witnesses seemed to corroborate
Sunny’s story. They’d heard a fight between two men, and called the police. When
the police arrived, they found my mother gravely injured in the
ohana
.
The men were gone, but no one witnessed them leaving.

 After that came the autopsy
report. I wasn’t ready to delve into that in great detail. There was an outline
drawing of the body with marks I assumed indicated wounds. The pathologist had
used a larger line drawing of a human head to pinpoint the location of the
fatal hemorrhage.

I leafed through the rest of the
file but didn’t see anything of interest. I did notice there were establishing
shots of the
ohana
and the yard outside, but no photos of my mother’s
body or even the murder scene itself and I thought that was odd.

 I shut the file and took it to
the front desk. The guy asked me to wait while he called Detective Wong. When I
handed her the file, she nodded but didn’t say anything.

“Don’t you want to check to make
sure it’s all there?” I said.

“I will. But I trust you.”
Seemed to me one thing cancelled out the other, but again, I kept it to myself.
Who knows how much trouble she’d had getting her boss to agree to let me see
it?

“I have a question,” I said.

“Certainly.” She looked down at
the desk clerk. “Would you like to talk in private?”

“No, that’s not necessary. I just
want to know why there’s no mention of the two men’s names.”

“I’m not following.”

“In all the reports and interviews
no one says who the guys involved in the fight might be. Doesn’t that seem odd?”

“Sorry, I don’t have an answer
for you. I’ll be honest. You probably noticed we cleaned up the file a little. For
instance, there are no crime scene shots or photos of the victim. No sense in you
seeing those. But beyond that, as far as I know, this is the entire incident report.”

“Sunny Wilkerson told me that
before my father died, he admitted he’d been there. He claimed he’d been the
intended target.”

“Well, according to this, he was
gone by the time the police arrived.”

“But nobody asked? I mean, even
if he wasn’t there, wouldn’t the responding officer ask if someone was staying
in the
ohana
? Don’t you think people would at least speculate who it
was? I mean, really. We’re talking Hanalei, not New York.”

“Witnesses are often unreliable.
And, from what I was told, back in the eighties there were clashes between
certain North Shore residents and the police. My best guess is no one was
willing to name names.”

I thanked her and went out to my
car. I sat there trying to decide where to go next. Once again I felt the same
weird sensation of someone watching me. I twisted around and checked the back
seat. Empty. Then I got out and went back inside the police station.

I told the desk clerk I had one
more question for Detective Wong. He shot me a little
stink eye
before
calling her back out front.

“I’m sorry to bother you again,”
I said to Wong. “But after all that, I didn’t make a note of the name of the officer
who prepared the report. I guess I was so busy reading the account I overlooked
it.”

She asked the desk clerk to
unlock the wooden gate separating the lobby from the working area of the
station. He buzzed her through and she touched my elbow, signaling I should
walk with her.

After we got outside and the
glass door had closed behind us she said, “It was Chief Chesterton.”

“Arthur Chesterton?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder how much Peggy knew
about this,” I said.

“Well, you certainly can’t ask
her now,” said Wong. “But maybe Mayor Chesterton remembers more than is in the
report.”  

“I thought he had Alzheimer’s or
something.”

“I don’t think so. I spoke with
him briefly at Peggy’s memorial and he seemed okay. He was devastated, of
course, but he managed to hold his own.
Hundreds
of people came to pay
their respects.” She held my gaze. I wasn’t sure if the stare-down was to shame
me for not showing up at my father’s ex-wife’s memorial or because she still
thought I had something to do with Peggy’s death.

“Do you know where I might find
him?”

“I can’t promise he knows
anything, or even if he’d be willing to talk to you if he does, but last I
heard he was down at Garden Island Manor. It’s an assisted living place.”

“
Mahalo
.”

I drove to Garden Island Manor.
From the outside, it looked like a cheery apartment building with a new paint
job, carefully manicured landscaping, and a little flock of colorful Kaua'i
chickens pecking contentedly in the flower beds. But once I stepped inside it
felt more like a fortress than a residence.

There was a woman behind a desk
guarding the entrance. Her name badge said, ‘Joy.’ She had frizzy red hair and
her face looked like a gargoyle, one of those scary mythical creatures with
buggy eyes and a pointy chin. In medieval days, builders positioned carved
gargoyles on the eaves of buildings to scare away intruders. This real-life
version seemed to be performing the same task.

“Sorry,” she said when I asked
if she’d call Arthur Chesterton’s room. “I don’t believe we have a resident by
that name.”

“Would you at least check your
residents’ list? I’m pretty sure he’s here. A detective at the police station
told me I’d find him here.”

 “We do not give out personal
information regarding our residents,” she said.

“I’m not asking for his mother’s
maiden name,” I said. “I just want to see if he’ll talk with me.”

“We only allow visitors on
Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.”

“Then I guess it’s my lucky day,
because today is Tuesday.”

She glanced at the page-a-day
calendar on her desk and scowled as she turned the page to the correct date.

“But are you expected? Our
residents deserve and require a certain level of security. We can’t just let in
anybody.”

“I’m only asking you to call
him. We can meet here in the lobby if he’s concerned about his safety.”

She deepened her scowl. “I will
allow you to leave a written message for the mayor. If he wants to see you,
he’ll let me know.” I found it amusing that everyone still referred to Arthur
Chesterton as “the mayor” even though he hadn’t been in office for a dozen
years or more.

“So, I guess he
does
live
here,” I said.

 She shot me a
don’t push
your luck
look as she handed over a notepad and pencil.

I wrote a note asking Arthur
Chesterton to call if he’d be willing to see me. I signed it, and under my name
I wrote ‘Philip Wilkerson’s daughter.’

I’d made it halfway back to
Sunny’s when my phone rang. The caller ID read,
A Chesterton
.

I pulled over to take the call.
After I answered, a reedy male voice said, “Phil told me you were smart. Seems
he was right.”

CHAPTER
30

Arthur Chesterton said he’d be
going to dinner in a little while so if I wanted to see him I needed to get
there
wiki wiki
. The clock on the dash showed three forty-five. I made
it back to Garden Island Manor in less than twenty minutes. When I came through
the door I gave the gargoyle an engaging smile, but she wasn’t having any of
it.

“So, Joy, seems the mayor is
really looking forward to my visit,” I said.

“Don’t flatter yourself. These
old farts run out to talk to the meter reader.”

I signed in and she pulled out a
yellow plastic ‘visitor’ badge on a lanyard. “You’ve got to display this on
your person at all times.”

I told her the mayor had said
he’d be in the music room and I asked where that was. She pointed a hooked
thumb toward a hallway on the other side of the lobby.

I walked down a closed-in hall that
smelled like Shalimar perfume and laundry soap. At the end was a large room,
painted an industrial shade of green and sporting a shiny speckled vinyl floor.
Inside, a stooped man with a fringe of white hair was playing an electric
organ. He leaned in toward the keyboard and then back out again as if he were
on a rolling ship. His eyes were closed.

“Excuse me,” I said,
interrupting an especially ambitious section featuring lots of chord changes
with the left hand and his right hand fingers rapidly moving up and down the
keys.

He lifted his hands from the
keyboard and opened his eyes, blinking in the bluish glare of the fluorescent
lights as if waking from a deep sleep.

“Do you play?” he said.

“No. I took
ukulele
lessons
in school, but I never mastered much beyond “My Dog Has Fleas”.”

He shook his head. “Don’t know that
one.”

“That’s okay. I don’t recognize what
you were just playing, either.”

“Scott Joplin.
The
Entertainer
,” he said. “Sounds better on a piano.”

“Sorry to interrupt, but you
mentioned you’ll be to dinner soon.”

“That’s fine. I have a good idea
why you’re here. I’d hoped to be long dead, but first it took Phil and then my
Peggy. Seems like some kind of comeuppance, you know?”

I didn’t have a clue what he was
talking about. Maybe the old guy did have dementia.

“Mayor Chesterton, like I said
on the note, I’m Phil Wilkerson’s oldest daughter.”

“I know; I can read. I may be
old but I’m not illiterate. Phil told me about you. He said he regretted never
meeting you.”

“My mother told me he left after
I was born. I guess he saw me when I was a baby.”

“Ah, yes. But that’s not the
same, is it? Babies are all alike. It’s when they grow up that you get to see
what you’ve created. Good or bad.”

“
Ohana
,” I said.

“Yes, that’s right,
ohana
.”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” I said. “I’d
really appreciate it if you’d tell me what you remember about that night.”

He hung his head. At first I was
afraid it meant he couldn’t remember. But then I realized he simply wasn’t
looking forward to talking about it.

“It’s been a long time,” he
said.

“Thirty years.”

“You better take a seat,” he
said, gesturing toward a folding chair. “This could take a while.”

 I dragged a gray metal chair
over next to the organ bench. “Are you comfortable there?” I said. “Do you want
me to get you a chair?”

“No matter where I sit I won’t
be comfortable talking about this.” He took a deep breath and then released a series
of dry coughs. “I’d only been police chief for about two months when a call comes
in about a domestic disturbance up in Hanalei. It wasn’t unusual. There were a
lot of drugs up there. We sort of let them be. If we’d try to bust every hippie
for every little sack of
pakalolo
we wouldn’t have had time to do
anything else.”

Another deep breath, another
series of coughs.