Aloha Betrayed (8 page)

‘O Ka Manawa Kēia No Ke Ko‘ala ‘Ana!
—
It’s Barbecue Time!

T
he scenery surrounding the road leading into the famed Iao Valley was lush and green, steep tree-covered mountains reaching skyward, shading the ground from the sun’s intense rays. I leaned back in Mike’s SUV and let the cool breezes coming in the open window soothe me. It had been a tense morning, starting with my call to Cabot Cove.

•   •   •

I had searched for the right words—gentle ones to soften the blow—to deliver the news of Mala’s death to Seth, but I had failed. Instead, thanks to a faulty telephone connection, I’d ended up shouting that Mala had fallen to her death.

“What do you mean, she fell on her hip?” came Seth’s annoyed voice.

“No, Seth. Mala fell off a cliff. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this. She was such a lovely young woman. She died from her injuries.”

“What did she lie about?”

When I finally got across the message that there had been a dreadful accident and that our mutual acquaintance had perished from her fall, there was silence on the line. “I’ll call you later,” he said. Even with the static interference, I could hear the grief and sadness in his voice.

After we hung up, I opened my laptop and quickly wrote Seth an apologetic note. It was morning in Hawaii but afternoon at home. Seth would probably be cooking an early dinner for himself. He might be poring over the sections of the Sunday paper he’d saved to give a closer read, or opening a book he’d been planning to start, or perhaps reviewing charts for patients he would be seeing in the coming week. These were his quiet hours, a relaxing interlude after a busy week and before another one began, a time I knew that he treasured. And I had broken into his peaceful Sunday with a grim announcement.

•   •   •

Our Sunday class hadn’t gone smoothly either. Perhaps resentful that the police department was co-opting their weekend, our class of police recruits was in a foul mood. I also sensed that many of them were suffering from the effects of a Saturday night spent in obviously more entertaining pursuits.

Mike and I struggled to keep their attention, reminding them to quiet down, doing a virtual song and dance to pique their interest until the former detective threw up his hands, parked himself in a chair in front of the whiteboard, and sat seething until the chatter died and an uncomfortable silence took its place.

“I would have been happy to sleep late this morning,” he finally said. “I’m sure Mrs. Fletcher would have, too. We didn’t need to haul ourselves over here to try to pound some valuable information into your hard heads. If you don’t want to be here, leave. Don’t waste my time, her time”—he pointed at me—“and yours gossiping about who passed out from too many jiggle shots.

“You’re supposed to be
cops
. Some people may say that word with derision, but I say I was a cop—I
am
a cop—with pride. A cop knows how to work a scene so it reveals its secrets. A cop knows who to watch and who can be ignored. Cops know, no matter how tough the situation, they can rely on fellow cops to watch their back, to support them, to face danger together, to protect the public.” He paused, and his voice, which had been rising, fell back to almost a whisper. “But I don’t want you at my back if you don’t have enough respect for the job that you whine about having to work on the weekend. Let me tell you something—those criminals out there, they don’t know about taking the weekend off. It’s maybe their favorite time to steal, to get drunk and punch someone, to wreck a car, to pull out a knife. So get used to it.”

Mike slapped his knees and stood, an ironic smile on his face. “I could tell you some really disgusting stories of stuff that goes down on the weekends, but I think I’ll let you find that out for yourselves. And now, if you think you’re grown-up enough to sit quietly for—” He made a show of looking at his watch. “For the fifteen minutes we have left in our class, I’ll turn it over to Mrs. Fletcher.”

All eyes turned to me.
Thanks a lot, Mike. That’s some act you want me to follow
. But I managed to get through the quarter hour remaining, going over the material to be covered and putting lists I’d prepared up on the board, grateful to hear the tapping of keys as the recruits took notes.

•   •   •

“Tough class today, huh?” Mike said as we drove through a thickly forested section of the steep road.

“I have to admit,” I said, “when I was a substitute English teacher in my former life, there were some days it didn’t pay to get out of bed. Today, it looked like it was going to be one of those days, but you managed to get them back on track. Of course, that was a pretty dirty trick turning them over to me after you had whipped them into submission.”

He chuckled. “I thought you handled it pretty well. You know, in a sense it was a really good lesson for them. You showed them how to hold tight to a goal under difficult circumstances. It’s a lesson they’re gonna have to learn pretty fast on the job. A cop’s best quality is don’t-give-upness.”

“You’re adding words to the dictionary?”

“It should be one. ‘Stubborn’ doesn’t quite cover it. Can’t tell them to ‘bird-dog’ it. These kids don’t know what a bird dog
is. In this business, you only get places if you don’t give up. Yeah, ‘don’t-give-upness.’ I like it. So do I call up Webster and tell him to put it in his next edition?”

“If you can call up Noah Webster, who’s been dead for a hundred and seventy years, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”

Mike Kane howled and pounded the steering wheel.

“Hey,” he said as he passed a slow-moving truck, “did you notice that I cleaned up this buggy for you?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” I said. “I’m flattered, although all the fast-food wrappers added character to it.”

“That’s what I always tell my wife, Lani, but she doesn’t see it that way. I’ll tell her what you said.”

“Please don’t,” I said. “I want her to like me.”

“Oh, no fear on that score. I’ve told her all about you. She’s dying to meet you.”

As we drove into the valley, I kept swiveling my head to take in the verdant landscape that rose majestically on either side of the road. It was like entering a primordial jungle, and I wondered whether dinosaurs once roamed here. We pulled into a parking lot shaded by trees, where Mike found a space at the end of a long line of vehicles. Families carried large coolers and boxes of food. One man carted a portable grill, his two youngsters following with bags of charcoal.

“Here we are,” Mike announced. “Iao Valley.” He pronounced the name “EE-ow.”

“From the way it’s spelled, I would’ve pronounced it ‘Eye-AY-oh,’” I said.

“You’ll get the hang of the Hawaiian language,” he said. “There’s Lani and our group over there.”

I looked in the direction he pointed and saw two dozen men, women, and children gathered around a large kettle barbecue on the banks of a wide, fast-moving stream. Dozens of other large groups also congregated around barbecue grills.

“You have a large family,” I commented as we walked in that direction.

“Not all blood relations,” he said, “neighbors, too. Everybody becomes family at the Sunday cookout.”

Mike’s wife saw us and closed the gap. She gave her husband a quick kiss on the cheek and extended her arms to me. “So this is the beautiful woman who’s been keeping my husband occupied,” she said with mirth in her voice. She wore a flowing, vividly colored yellow-and-red dress. Her inky black hair was worn short, her round face was free of lines, and her smile was high wattage.

“I’m afraid that I’ve been trying to spend as much time with your husband as possible to learn from him. His instincts are impressive.”

“Instincts about crime,” she said. “He’s not always so instinctive when it comes to more mundane things like picking up after himself around the house.” She winked at her husband and linked arms with him. “Come, join us, have a chi chi.”

I asked what a chi chi was as she led me to a table where two oversized thermos containers stood amid dozens of plastic cups.

“A classic Hawaiian drink,” Mike answered. “Vodka, pineapple juice, coconut cream, and a little sugar. You’ll love it.”

After handing me my drink, he turned in a circle, arms outstretched, and proclaimed, “Is this not the most beautiful place on earth?”

“It is lovely,” I said.

“Four thousand acres of untouched beauty,” he said. “Look over there. The Iao Needle.”

He pointed to a green-mantled rock that jutted straight up into the air.

“More than a thousand feet tall, taller than the Eiffel Tower. Hawaiians consider it a symbol of Kanaloa, the god of the underworld.”

I laughed. “There seems to be a Hawaiian god for everything.”

He laughed, too. “Part of our charm. With so many gods looking over us, we’re always safe. Come, meet the others.”

The next hours flew by quickly. It was a spirited group. The children were full of energy but well behaved, listening to their parents when they were getting out of hand. I never learned of the relationships between many of the people, but that didn’t matter. The warmth that prevailed was immensely satisfying, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The men in the group cooked enough meat on the grill to feed every Hawaiian god within miles, and a combination of the chi chi and food made me sleepy.

“I’m going to take a stroll,” I told Mike.

“Don’t go too far,” he said. “There’s a storm brewing at the headwaters of the stream. It can flood before you know it. We’ll be packing up soon.”

“I’ll keep you in my sight,” I assured him and set out along the streambed. A number of older children frolicked in the water, and some teenagers jumped from rocks into a spot where it widened and appeared deep enough for them to not be hurt.

I passed other “families” enjoying the pristine day and being together. Many waved to me and said, “Aloha,” and I returned the greeting, which now came naturally to me. The friendliness reminded me of Cabot Cove, where waves from both friends and strangers were frequent as one walked through town.

I looked back to see if Mike was summoning me, but he was busy tossing a Frisbee with another man. I went a little farther but stopped when I saw a familiar face, Charlie Reed, the owner and skipper of the
Maui Ocean Star
, on which I’d enjoyed my dinner cruise the previous evening.

“Well, hello again,” he said. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I’m here thanks to my teaching partner, Mike Kane,” I said. “He was good enough to invite me to join his family.”

“Oh, yeah, right. Kane, Detective Kane,” he said. “He’s supposed to be some sort of a legend on Maui.”

It didn’t sound as if he was impressed with Mike’s celebrated reputation.

“He’s quite a man.”

Reed’s nod was noncommittal. “Say,” he said, “I have your book in my car. I was going to send it over to your hotel. How about signing it right now?”

He fetched the book and I inscribed it to him, citing his magnificent catamaran and the cruise I’d taken on it.

“Thanks, Jessica. Are you, uh—?”

I cocked my head.

“Are you involved in some way with what happened to Mala Kapule?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘involved.’”

“Rumors are floating around—I mean, some people are saying—uh, that she might not have been the victim of an accident. The cops questioned me, too. That was annoying. Of course, I was out on the water, so I wouldn’t know anything about how she died.”

“Really? As I understand it, the police are labeling her death an accident.”

“That’s a relief. Mala was a pain to a lot of people, but to think that someone might have killed her is—well, it’s ridiculous. Don’t you agree?”

“As a matter of fact—”

A brilliant bolt of lightning slashing through the sky on the horizon was followed by a succession of thunderclaps. We both looked up.

“That’s some storm coming our way,” he said, tucking my book inside his jacket under his arm.

“So Detective Kane warned me.”

“You were saying,” he said.

“Oh, yes. It’s true that the police think Mala was the victim of a tragic accident, but I understand enough doubt exists to keep the case open.” I watched his face carefully.

“Doubt? Who has doubts?”

“I wouldn’t really know. I’m a newcomer here.”

He laughed. “Doubts! It’s absurd.”

“Is it? You said a moment ago that Mala was a pain to many people. I think that’s how you put it.”

“Sure. Everybody knows that. She and her group of bleeding hearts have kept the telescope project from going forward. They’ve been standing in the way of progress at every step. That telescope is good for Maui and for Hawaii in general—bring in lots of money, create jobs, do good things for the island, especially the native population—but nobody could get through to her. She was a pain in my a— Never mind. Every time progress was made, she and her lawyer friends would file another suit in court and everything came to a standstill again.”

“She was passionate in her beliefs,” I said.

“Obstinate, you mean, inflexible, like everyone else who agreed with her. We tried to talk sense into them, but it was useless, and—”

More lightning and thunder interrupted him, and a sudden strong gust of wind sent my hair flying.

“Mr. Reed,” I said, “when you say that ‘we’ tried to talk sense into them, who do you mean?”

“The committee,” he replied. “Everyone with a stake in the telescope belongs to it: our elected officials, the university, businesspeople, everyone. We’ve been fighting Kapule’s group from the beginning. Maybe now that she’s dead, things will ease up and it can go forward.”

The callousness of his attitude startled me.

Charlie must have sensed that his comments might be offensive and covered it with a laugh. “Now, don’t take me wrong,” he said, “I’m really sorry that she died. Beautiful girl. Aside from our differences about the telescope, I liked her, liked her a lot.”

“I’m sure she would have been happy to hear that.”

I heard my name called and looked back to see Mike Kane headed in our direction, waving his arm.