Aloha Betrayed (15 page)

“I’ve met her aunt and some cousins. Did she have any immediate family?”

“No children or husband, if that’s what you mean. She never married, had no direct heirs. Her will is being probated as we speak, should be wrapped up tomorrow and become public record.”

“I may be out of line to ask, but who has she left her money and belongings to?”

“It’s ironic, really. She’d originally left everything she had to her uncle Barrett, but, as you know, he recently died. We hadn’t had a chance to update the will, but I think it will pass probate. Besides bequests to her aunt and quite a number of her cousins, her secondary beneficiary is the college where she taught, to establish scholarships for deserving horticulture students.”

“What a wonderful legacy,” I said. “Her uncle would be proud of her.”

“He was a great guy. Anyway, thanks for coming by this evening. I’m sure that Mala is appreciating it from where she is up there.” He raised his eyes to the heavens.

I said good night to some of the others and went to the lobby to call Elijah for a ride back to my hotel. Mala’s student stood just outside the restaurant’s entrance smoking a cigarette.

“Good evening, Dale,” I said.

“Hello.”

“We didn’t have a chance to talk during the meeting. I’m Jessica Fletcher. I recognize you from Ms. Kapule’s botany class. I stopped in there last week.”

“The course on invasive plants. Yeah, I saw you there.”

“Her death must have been a real shock for the class. Did she have a good rapport with her students?” I asked innocently. “I’ve done some teaching, and I know how difficult it is to establish a close relationship with students without crossing the line.”

He shrugged. “She didn’t want anybody to get close to her. Kept everyone at arm’s length. She was stuck up.”

“Oh? I’m sorry to hear you say that. She didn’t strike me that way.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not a man. She knew the effect she had, flaunted it.”

“She couldn’t help that she was beautiful,” I said. “But as your instructor, she probably wanted to maintain a professional distance.”

“Well, I won’t say any more. You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead.”

I hesitated before saying, “You didn’t like Ms. Kapule very much, did you?”

A bitter laugh escaped his lips. “Didn’t
like
her? I was in love with her. And she wouldn’t give me the time of day.”

He took a final drag on the cigarette, ground it out with his shoe, and walked into the night.

E Aha Ana ‘Oe?
—
What Are You Doing?

I
asked the front desk for a wake-up call at two the following morning and set my travel alarm for two fifteen as a backup. The instructions concerning the trip up to Haleakala and the bike ride down called for me to be in the lobby by three.

My head was spinning when I climbed into bed, and I did not look forward to having to get up at that dreadful hour, but as it turned out, I was awake for most of what was left of the night and was wide-awake when the room was filled with ringing and buzzing.

I hadn’t given much thought to what clothing would be appropriate for the excursion. Haleakala’s summit was 10,023 feet above sea level. I knew that the air would be thinner, making breathing more difficult, and I figured it was bound to be chilly at that altitude. I hadn’t brought warm clothes with me; it was, after all, sunny Hawaii. I dressed in the slacks I’d worn on the flight to Maui, a pale blue button-down shirt, and the only sweater I’d brought. Because I’d be biking down from the volcano, I wore sneakers. I also packed a small tote, managing to fill it with a waist-length tan Windbreaker, a Boston Red Sox baseball cap that I always threw in my luggage when traveling, my wallet, a couple of bottles of water, and a few toiletries that might come in handy.

I was in the lobby ten minutes early and sat on a bench waiting for the van. Evidently I was the only guest from that hotel taking the Haleakala tour that day. While I waited, the events of the evening occupied my thoughts.

Two details stood out in my mind.

Mala’s lawyer had provided information about her that I’d been unaware of—that she’d benefited from a consulting deal with a company that had provided what I gathered was a substantial financial cushion.
Good for her.
Offering her impressive scientific knowledge of horticulture to a commercial concern in return for being paid made good sense. I assumed that the company for which she consulted, Douglas Fir, was involved in some form of horticulture or agriculture, perhaps seed manufacturing, landscaping, or crop manipulation to increase farmers’ yields. I made a mental note to look into it further at a later date.

The second event from the evening that stayed with me was my brief encounter with Mala’s would-be suitor, Dale. Although a student having a crush on a teacher is nothing new, I felt sorry for him. Dale looked to be in his mid-twenties, perhaps a little older than the average undergraduate. Maybe he’d taken time off after high school to save up money or had traveled. Mala was a beauty, no question about that. But was there more to it than simply a student’s unrequited love? I was pondering that when the tour company’s van pulled up. A young man hopped out, confirmed my name, and took my hand as he helped me inside, where seven others sat, three couples and an unaccompanied man, obviously from other resorts nearby.

We made one more stop to pick up another couple before going to the tour company’s headquarters, where a buffet of breakfast sweets, juice, and coffee awaited us. Another young man joined our driver in giving us a safety briefing.

“There’s really nothing to be afraid of,” one said. “You’ll be provided with special pants and jackets, a helmet, and gloves, along with a backpack. This is a freestyle bike ride. You descend at your own pace. You can stop as many times as you wish to sightsee, to have something to eat at the few restaurants along the route, and to take pictures. Please do not try to take photographs while riding. Keep both hands on the handlebars and both feet on the pedals at all times while moving. We have some forms for you to fill out, including a release. Any questions?”

A man raised his hand. “I read that there have been twelve fatalities over the years, and that the bike ride now starts lower than the volcano’s summit because tour operators like you are banned from starting higher.”

One of the guides laughed. “There have been a few folks who ran into bad luck,” he said, “but it’s rare. When you consider how many thousands of people enjoy this event, the number of folks who have had a problem is minuscule.”

I wasn’t sure that I bought into his philosophy to explain away past incidents, but I understood his need to allay any fears riders might have.

Everyone filled out forms and signed the release.

“Okay,” said a guide, “let’s head out. We’re in luck. The weather should hold, so you’ll see the sun as it rises over Haleakala. As Mark Twain once said, ‘Haleakala is the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed.’”

“Did Mark Twain ride a bike down?” he was asked.

“I have no idea” was the reply. “Let’s go. We don’t want to miss the sunrise.”

I was tempted to ask whether “sublimest” was a real word, but who was I to challenge Mark Twain?

We piled back into the van and drove off into the dark, our destination the dormant volcano, a sacred site to the Hawaiian people and the center of the controversy that had been raging since plans to infringe upon its consecrated ground were first introduced. I was seated next to the unattached gentleman, perhaps in his mid- to late forties, a dour-looking fellow with a shaved head who sat with his arms tightly folded over his chest. He’d mumbled a greeting in response to my more effusive “Hello” and didn’t seem to be in the mood for conversation, which was okay with me. While most of my fellow passengers napped, I preferred to take in the scenery, as the glow of starlight cast a modicum of illumination, enabling us to see some of the things we passed. We were in farming country—the driver announced over the PA system that we were seeing protea and orchid farms. In a soft voice, in deference to those who wanted to sleep their way up the mountain, he pointed out vast groves of dark green macadamia nut trees. We then started up what the driver said was Crater Road. “You’ll notice how the temperature drops as we continue up this road, thirty miles of it with twenty-nine switchbacks, all on a six-degree incline. When it’s seventy-five degrees down in the valley, it’ll be forty-five up on the summit. But don’t worry. We have plenty of winter coats to keep you warm while watching the sun coming up.”

As we continued getting higher, a thick mist blanketed the rolling fields on the side of the twisting road. Unable to make out the details of the landscape, I focused on the road, on the line of headlights and taillights bracketing our van. While the volcano itself was the experience that everyone lauded, the ride to reach it was also memorable. Because of the hour, all traffic was uphill, a line of buses, vans, and cars filled with eager sightseers bound for a unique experience. Later, after everyone had enjoyed the sunrise, people would be heading down the flank of the volcano, creating two-way traffic on the narrow, twisting road while we rode bikes on that same road.

As we climbed higher, we found ourselves passing through clouds, and soon we were above them. To our right, the driver pointed out, was the West Maui Volcano, older than Haleakala. It was the merger of the two volcanoes that had created the island of Maui.

Everyone in the van, with the exception of the gentleman seated next to me, began expressing their excitement at what we were experiencing, and I was no exception. As we climbed to the summit and navigated switchback after switchback on what was billed as the steepest continuous road in the United States, one more glorious sight after another was feast for our eyes, suddenly coming into view, then behind us as a new vista emerged. There were short stretches of level road, but they didn’t last long. At times the ground to the side of the road sloped gently down, but other sheer drop-offs would suddenly appear close to the van, thousands of feet down, eliciting gasps from some of the passengers, all of whom were fully awake now.

“We’re almost to the summit,” the driver announced. “Haleakala is called ‘the House of the Sun’ for good reason. There’s nothing more beautiful than sunrise at Haleakala.”

Fifteen minutes later his claim proved to be true.

We pulled into a large parking lot where other tour company vans and their passengers had already arrived. We disembarked, drawing in the chilly air, the inside of my nose crackling in response. The clouds were all below us, filling the valleys and rolling away to the horizon. The clear air brought into sharp relief the vast sky, filled with millions of visible stars. Our guide escorted us to a railing from which we could look out over the majesty of the dormant volcano—three thousand feet deep, seven miles long, and two miles wide, a barren yet regal landscape like nothing I had ever seen before. Excited chatter surrounded us as other sunrise enthusiasts filled the spaces along the railing. I had to laugh when I heard the familiar, “Oh, Bob.” I turned to see Bob and Elaine Lowell standing with another tour operator’s group. They waved at me.

“Jessica, good to see you,” Bob said in his by now recognizable loud and cheerful voice.

I responded, “The same here. I wasn’t sure I’d find you in this crowd.”

I realized as I said it that he might not be aware that Elaine had told me about his run-in with the chambermaid and hotel security, but he laughed away that concern. “Did my sweetie here tell you about my little misunderstanding? These Hawaiians are supposed to be friendly, all that aloha stuff, but this gal I gave a hug to wasn’t friendly at all. I ought to sue them. What do you think, Jessica?”

“Oh, Bob, it’s over,” Elaine said.

“Let’s watch the sunrise,” I suggested, changing the subject.

There was an “ooh” from the crowd, and all eyes focused on the horizon to our east, where the black sky was melting into a softer blue. Fewer stars were visible now, but a rainbow arced over the valley. A sliver of the sun peeked over the horizon and continued to rise, casting a red and yellow glow over the scene that would put the best of Hollywood’s lighting designers and computer experts to shame. Oohs and aahs came from every witness to the event, and I realized that no matter what happened regarding Mala Kapule’s death, this moment would be forever etched in my mind, truly a life-changing experience.

The guides had been right. It was cold up there above the clouds, and the coats they’d handed out as we left the van were welcome. Once the huge orange ball had become fully visible, we milled about, taking photographs and searching for the perfect adjectives to describe what we’d been witness to. But eventually the guides beckoned us.

“Time to head down to the sixty-five-hundred-foot level at the base of Haleakala National Park,” one of them said. “That’s where we’ll give you your bikes and the appropriate clothing to make your descent more pleasant. The fun is just beginning!”

His exuberance was contagious. Coupled with the joy of having witnessed the spectacular sunrise, everyone got back into the van eager for the second part of the day’s adventure.

“We use special bikes,” we were told, “designed for downhill riding. They have disc brakes for that purpose, front and back, and the seats are oversized and padded. You’ll have plenty of time to put on your riding clothes and take a few spins around the parking lot to become familiar with your bicycle before heading down.”

We joined other tour company vans for the trip to the lower edge of Haleakala National Park, where dozens of bikes awaited us.

“These bikes are different sizes,” we were told, “so each of you will have one that’s the perfect size for you. Keep in mind that, because these bikes have been designed for downhill riding, they have only one gear and you’ll seldom have to pedal. Always ride single file and use the front and rear brakes together. You’ll be traveling almost thirty miles an hour at times, and if you use only the front brakes, you’ll end up going over the handlebars. Go into curves slowly.”

It occurred to me that this bike ride was going to be considerably more challenging than what I was accustomed to back home or the short rides I’d enjoyed since arriving on Maui. Had I made a mistake in signing up for it? Mike Kane had offered to drive me up to the summit the following day, an invitation I’d declined. I could still opt to forgo the bike and ride back down in the van, but that would mean giving in to unsubstantiated fears. I’ve always been comfortable on a bike; it’s my basic means of everyday transportation. Besides, I’d conquered any fears I might have had of flying in small planes by taking flying lessons and earning my private pilot’s license. Fear is to be conquered, not to be given into.

Along with the others, I was supplied with oversized, loose clothing to wear during the two-wheeled descent, including a helmet and heavy gloves. The outfit had snaps along the length of the pants and the back of the jacket to make getting into them easy.

“Okay, time to pick your bikes,” a guide announced. “You’re on your own schedules. Just remember to have the bikes and clothing back at our headquarters by four thirty.”

Across the large parking area, Bob Lowell was perusing bicycles, as was the taciturn man with whom I’d ridden earlier in the day. Elaine hurried over to my side, a look of consternation on her face.

“Jessica, maybe you can talk Bob out of doing this. He hasn’t ridden a bike since he was forty years younger and a hundred pounds lighter. I’m afraid he’ll get killed.”

Her husband managed to get on the largest of the available bikes. I didn’t know whether there was a weight limit, but if so I assumed that he was pushing the top number.

“I really don’t think he’d listen to me,” I said. “Can’t you convince him that it might be too dangerous?”

“I tried, but he’s stubborn, always has been.”

I walked to where Lowell was about to take the bike for a test run. He looked very uncomfortable on it.

“Bob,” I said, “Elaine is really worried about you doing this. She says you haven’t been on a bike in a long time and—”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he replied. “Heck, it’s just a bike.”

With that he started pedaling. He hadn’t gotten ten feet before he skidded into a line of riderless bikes, almost sending them sprawling and causing him to ram both feet into the ground in order to stop.

“Oh, Bob,” Elaine said wearily.

He answered by giving us a thumbs-up and continued his test run, his wife trotting behind. “Get on your bike, Elaine, or you’ll miss all the fun.”