When
he finally left, my anxiety level dropped a notch with each of his footfalls on
the outside stairs. I worked my jaw back and forth a couple of times to loosen
it up. My concern over Crystal’s welfare had been a heavy burden I was happy to
hand off. The authorities had what they needed to start looking for her,
freeing me up to concentrate on the task at hand: Keith and Nicole’s
fast-approaching Saturday wedding.
I
locked up and skipped down the stairs feeling ten pounds lighter.
CHAPTER 12
It
was a little after eight when Wong left—not too late to call Hatch even on a night
before he’d be going back on shift. Not even too late to drop by if he was
around. I wanted to share my cheerful mood after being relieved of the Crystal
dilemma.
Hatch
picked up on his cell number after two rings.
“Hey,
are you home?” I said.
“Yep,
I gotta go to work tomorrow morning.” His voice had an edge I hadn’t noticed
before.
“Can
I come by for a few minutes? I won’t stay long.”
“It’s
a free country,” he said. Then, as if he realized how snippy that sounded, he
continued, “No really, come on over. I’ll be up ‘til ten.”
Hatch
lives in a swanky neighborhood called Sprecklesville. Not a very
Hawaiian-sounding name, the area was established over a hundred and fifty years
ago as a thriving sugar mill operation owned by “boss man” Claus Spreckles. Now
the sugar refinery is gone, and what’s left is a pristine beachfront community
of multi-million-dollar homes. Hatch’s cottage sits at the entrance to a
sprawling property owned by an Australian film producer. The movie guy and his
entourage show up a few times a year. The rest of the time Hatch pretty much
has the run of the place. He’d become a de facto “boss man” himself, managing a
small army of landscapers, housekeepers and maintenance people who troop
through, day after day, keeping up the main house, three guest houses, two
pools (salt- and freshwater) and assorted outbuildings and gardens. The
property even boasts a heli-pad and an observatory complete with mini-Hubble
telescope for stargazing.
As
I was making my way through the West Maui hills, my cell rang. I’m usually good
about not taking calls while driving, but I was concerned maybe it was the
weird guy who’d left the threatening message. I didn’t want to miss talking
with him in person.
“Ms.
Moon?” I was wrong, it was Wong.
“Yes,
Detective.”
“Good
news. Our forensic tech worked late tonight and I was able to catch her before
she left. I showed her those fingernails. Seems they’re fake. She said they’re
called ‘silks,’ made from a silk fabric which is applied over a woman’s natural
fingernails. Manicurists use them to strengthen the living nail and make the
fingernails stronger and appear longer. They’re easily removed with acetone and
are believed to be easier on the nail bed than acrylics.”
Did
he call to give me a beauty school lesson?
“Anyway,
I think the prankster is still just messing with you,” he said. “Are you sure
you can’t think of anyone who might be behind this? Maybe someone who’s faking
foul play to get you to drag the police department in on the joke?”
He
didn’t wait for me to answer before going on. “You know, if we had any cause to
believe this was for real, we’d be hard at it. But seventeen years on the job
tells me we’ve got a practical joker here. You see what I’m saying?”
“No,
I don’t, Detective. Look, a woman is missing. Whether the hair and fingernails
are real or fake doesn’t change the fact that Crystal Wilson vanished nearly a
week ago.”
“We’ve
gone down this road before, Ms. Moon. Right now we’re working at least a dozen
complaints involving visitors. We’ve got some who racked up big hotel charges
using phony credit cards. We’ve got abandoned rental cars. We’ve got one case
that’s similar to yours where the so-called boyfriend took off and left his
girlfriend stranded here with no money and no plane ticket home. Tourists pull
the disappearing act all the time.”
“So
that’s it?”
“For
now. But don’t hesitate to call if something new turns up.” He said it the same
way a shop clerk would chirp
Have a nice day
.
I
turned off the Hana Highway at the sign marking the entrance to the Maui
Country Club. Then I made a sharp left into a leafy lane that winds around the
backside of the golf course. Hatch was sitting on his front lanai when I pulled
up. He gave me a wave and pointed to a spot where I could park the Geo. When
the owner was in town Hatch liked me to park out on the road, preferably a
block or two out of sight of his landlord. Not that the TV producer was a prude
about Hatch’s love life; I think it had more to do with the aesthetics—or lack
thereof—of my trashy-looking ride.
I
got out of the car and took a deep breath. This area smelled like the exact
opposite of my funky shop over the fish restaurant. Here, the wind carried
scents of plumeria, gardenia and freshly cut grass. The hush of on-shore waves
beyond the foliage was accompanied by lungfuls of oxygen-rich ocean air.
I
approached the cottage and Hatch’s Jack Russell-mix pup came charging through a
hole in the screen door and out onto the lanai in a hail of high-pitched
barking. Wahine—the Hawaiian word for ‘lady’—never let physical barriers slow
her down. She’d been known to leap from a moving boat to take a swim, and once
she’d chewed through an inch-thick rope in mere minutes when Hatch tried to tie
her up outside.
“She
thinks getting tied up is like working a Sudoku—it’s just a puzzle begging to
be solved,” Hatch had said.
When
Wahine clearly saw me, or smelled me, or whatever means she used for ID’ing
humans, she abruptly stopped barking and her tail went into overdrive.
“Hey,
sweetie.” I bent down and rubbed her chin, then moved to her chest, while she
attempted to lick every trace of sea salt residue from my neck. I’m not a
dog-person, per se, but I make an exception for ‘Heen’, Hatch’s shortened-up name
for her.
When
I looked up, Hatch was waiting for me on the lanai. He was holding two wine
glasses—white for me, red for him.
“Bed,”
he said in his daddy voice, and Heen trotted over and plopped down on a
wadded-up blanket near the door.
He
kissed me lightly on the lips, then handed me my wine.
“When
you didn’t call me back yesterday I thought maybe you’d decided to dump me but
forgot to clue me in,” he said. His voice was teasing, but in the meager glow
of the yellow bug light I noticed a tight line across his forehead.
“No,
I’m sorry, I was working. You know that guy, Ono, whose catamaran you
recommended for this weekend’s wedding? Well, his cabin girl got sick so he
asked me to help out with a gig he had over in Honolulu.”
Hatch
raised his glass and took a long time, sniffing and swirling. He was no wine
connoisseur, and chances were good the wine had come out of a box, so I figured
his sommelier act was more a stalling tactic than an attempt to impress me with
a newfound interest in oenology.
“You
have a good time over there?”
“It
went fine. I stayed with the woman who owns the boat. She’s a really nice lady,
and her condo is spectacular. She even gave me a silk bathrobe.” Okay, I was
laying Tomika’s gender on a little thick, but I didn’t want Hatch leaping to
conclusions about the sleeping arrangements.
“I
thought we had a date for Sunday. You didn’t even bother to call and let me
know you wouldn’t be around.”
“Again,
I’m sorry. We left really early Saturday morning and then the weekend just sort
of flew by.”
“But
I called you Halloween night and told you I would be off on Sunday. In fact, I
left you a bunch of messages.”
I
only remembered one message, but I was already in the wrong so I didn’t want to
quibble. “I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you. It took a day to get over there
and then we had to get ready for the party, and then it took another day to get
back. All I can say is I’m really sorry.”
He
started the wine swirling thing again.
“Look,
Hatch. I don’t know what else to say except ‘I’m sorry.’ You’ve been busy,
too—going out fishing and all. Can’t you just accept my apology? It wasn’t as
if I purposefully didn’t call you.”
“So,
what’d you think of Ono Kingston? Quite a guy, huh?”
I
know a loaded comment when I hear one. “He’s fine. He keeps the boat really
clean and he’s a good sailor. We made the crossing to O’ahu in about twelve
hours.”
“Did
you get seasick?”
“Not
really. I kind of liked the rockin’ and rolling.”
“Oh,
I’m sure you did. And I’ll bet he did too.” By now my eyes had grown accustomed
to the dark and I couldn’t miss seeing his clenched jaw working a muscle in his
cheek as if he was a cow chewing its cud.
“What’s
wrong with you? If you have something to say, then say it. I’ve already
apologized for not calling. But I earned two hundred bucks for helping out with
a boat party for the owner’s business associates. That’s it. If you’re implying
it was anything more than that, then say so.”
“Pali,
Pali.” He said it as if he was talking to a kid caught playing with matches.
Hatch had been a cop for seven years before switching to firefighting. He acted
liked a fireman but often still thought like a cop.
“What,
Hatch?” I sounded cranky, but I’d groveled enough.
“I
don’t have a problem with you doing stuff on your own. You’re free to come and
go, no problem. But in the case of Ono Kingston I feel kind of responsible for
your safety since I’m the guy who gave you his name.”
“My
safety
?”
“Look,
I don’t want to dis him or gossip or whatever you call it in Hawaiian—”
“
Ka’ao
.
Gossip is called
ka’ao
.”
“Anyway,
it’s just that although he seems like a stand-up guy, there’s more to his life
story than meets the eye.”
“You
mean about his drinking?” I felt a twinge betraying Ono’s confidence, but I
wanted to put the brakes on Hatch’s holier-than-thou lecture before it really
got rolling.
Hatch
downed his wine. He crossed the lanai, settling into one of two sling-back
chairs set on either side of a massive square ottoman. He pointed to the second
chair in an unspoken offer for me to join him. I weighed my options.
“C’mon,”
he said after a few moments. “I’m the good guy here. It won’t kill you to hear
me out.”
I
plopped into the chair and put my feet up. The
shush-shush
of waves
rolling in on the nearby beach tempted me to close my eyes and drift off. I was
beat after the long day of sailing. If I hadn’t been obliged to stick around as
payback for blowing him off on Sunday, I’d have given Hatch a peck on the cheek
and gone home. Instead, I braced for a sermon.
Hatch
had only gotten a few words out when a wide-body jet on final approach to
Kahului airport roared overhead. It was so low I could count the tires on the
extended landing gear. The deafening din of the turbine engines rattled our
wineglasses on the side table. As Farrah would say, the airport noise was
karma
in action. The swanky community sits smack dab in the flight path, only a few
miles from the main runway. Usually, the planes come in from the other
direction, over the cane fields. But when the wind shifts, they switch and come
in over Sprecklesville. Each of those wide bodies is bringing in tens of
thousands of tourist dollars, so the locals’ calls for noise abatement
procedures mostly fall on deaf ears. As the Maui Tourist Board likes to remind
us,
It’s not noise, brudda, it’s the sound of full employment
.
“As
I was saying,” Hatch continued. “Overall, Ono’s a good guy, but he’s got a
dicey side. I’ve heard some things. Try to avoid being alone with him when
other people aren’t around.”
I
wanted to laugh. Doesn’t
alone
pretty much mean that other people aren’t
around? But decades of martial arts training had taught me to keep my
emotions—and my smart-ass remarks—in check. I kept quiet.
We
sat in silence for a long minute.
“Okay,”
he said. “I know, it sounds like I’m jealous or something. But that’s not it. I
swear.”
Again,
I didn’t respond.
“You
see,” Hatch went on, “Kingston was a hot-shot architect over on the mainland.
He was used to getting his way and having other people clean up his messes.
Then his wife died and the guy went nuts. The doctor who’d misdiagnosed her
cancer died from poisoning three days after her funeral. The police had
Kingston in their radar, but they couldn’t prove anything. Then, he started
drinking, which I guess he told you about. But he wasn’t just drinking. They
were investigating him not only for the poisoning but for drug dealing,
smuggling stuff down from Canada, all kinds of crap. Trust me, he may keep a
clean boat, but he’s one unstable dude.”
“Hatch,
I appreciate your concern, but it’s unnecessary. First off, we were never
alone. The first mate, Chico, was there when we were out on the catamaran, and
when we got to O’ahu we stayed at the owner’s place and she was home the entire
time. So, even if Ono had nefarious plans in mind, he had no opportunity to act
on them. Okay?”