Livin' Lahaina Loca (9 page)

“Of
course I think he’s wrong. I know something bad happened to that girl. And I
believe whoever left that hair in my car is one dangerous guy.”

“Or
gal,” he said.

I
squinted at him.

He
lifted his chin. “Hey, Ms. ‘Politically Correct’ Moon—crime’s an equal
opportunity employer, wouldn’t you say?”

CHAPTER 8

I
was boring Steve by rattling off everything I could remember about Crystal
Wilson when the phone rang. 

 “I’ll
get it,” he said. He banged through the swinging door to the kitchen, leaving
me wondering if maybe Wong was right and I was simply seeing bogeymen around
every corner. There was no denying fuchsia was an unflattering color for a
redhead like Crystal. 

A
few seconds later Steve pushed the door open about six-inches and said, “It’s
for you.”

“Is
it a guy?”

“I
think,” he said in a low voice. “But that Samoan woman who bakes your wedding
cakes has a voice like a guy so I can never be sure.”

When
I picked up the phone, a deep rumbling voice said, “
Aloha
, Pali.” It was
definitely not Keahou up in Kula.

“Oh
hi, Ono. How’re you doing?”

We
went through the usual pleasantries for half-a-minute before he got down to
business. “I have a favor to ask.”

“Okay,
shoot.” I thought that sounded a little tough, so I attempted to crank up the
femininity a tad. “I’d be happy to help in any way I can.”

“Great.
Here’s my problem: I’m headed over to Honolulu this weekend to do a sailing
party for the owner and my cabin girl is sick. Well, not actually sick—she got
a nasty infection from a dirty needle at a tat shop. Her back’s so puffed up
she looks like a beached turtle.”

I
didn’t say anything. Not that I didn’t feel bad for the poor girl, but I was
contemplating what I suspected was coming.

“Anyway,”
he went on, “I need a hostess to help serve drinks and food at a sailing party
I’m doing over there. My first mate can mix drinks and help me at the dock, but
I need a pretty face to make sure everyone has a good time.”

Again,
I was silent. The
pretty face
comment was working its way through my BS
detector.

“We’ll
only be gone a couple of days. Well, actually, three. We’ll go over early
tomorrow, then stay Sunday for the party, and then we’ll head back at
oh-dark-thirty on Monday morning. I know you’ve got this big wedding coming up,
so if it’s too much to ask, just say so. But you seemed so cheerful when you
came out to the dock yesterday I thought you might get a kick out of it. Oh,
and it pays a couple hundred bucks—not that you probably need the money—but
just in case you were wondering.”

Ha!
Little did he know how much I’d welcome an unexpected two hundred dollars.

“You’re
not saying anything,” he said. “Have I insulted you? Am I way out of line
here?”

“No,
not at all. It’s just that I’ll need to check my calendar. Can you give me an
hour or so and I’ll call you back?”

“Of
course. No worries. I just thought you might enjoy it. I stay at the owner’s
high rise when I’m over there and she’s the consummate hostess. First class all
the way. The first mate’s got some old high school buddies he hangs out with,
but Tomika always insists I stay with her.”

Lucky for you,
I thought,
but I’ll be hard pressed to
find
a last-minute hotel room in Honolulu that won’t cost me most of the two hundred
bucks.

“Well,
it sounds like fun,” I said. “Can I get back to you by noon?”

I
hung up the phone wondering why I hadn’t simply declined right away. Was I some
kind of masochist? Maybe I was way nosier than I admitted. Or was it that
slipping out to sea, sailing past Moloka’i, and over to O’ahu with a gorgeous
boat captain at my elbow and the wind in my hair made me think of that
king
of the world
thing?

Spending
three days with charming Ono, even though it meant coming face-to-face with his
love interest, was probably worth it. And besides, meeting his wealthy,
sophisticated girlfriend would most assuredly snap me out of my reverie and
make me focus on the task at hand: figuring out where I stood with fireman
Hatch Decker.

***

I
made the rest of my callbacks and soon it was almost noon. I went through my
to-do list for Keith and Nicole’s wedding and found only one item that still
required my attention—selecting the limo cars and drivers. I’d heard that on
the mainland wedding planners simply sign up with a reputable limo company and
they’re assured of clean, well-appointed cars that arrive at the right place at
the right time. The cars would be gleaming, inside and out, and the drivers
would be in freshly-pressed uniforms. Moreover, they’d be gracious and
accommodating—knowing such behavior would earn them a good tip.

On
Maui, it wasn’t that simple. I’d once used a limo company that had given me
good cars and drivers for months and then—without warning—disaster. Later, I
found out the owner had grown tired of the business and had handed it over to
his teen-aged nephew as a high school graduation gift. The next time I used
them, clueless nephew showed up half-an-hour late wearing a tee-shirt
splattered with plate lunch. Then, he tried to bum twenty bucks off my client
for gas. He had the radio blaring rap songs with lyrics that would have been
bleeped out on TV. The limo interior was littered with beer bottles, fast-food
wrappers and a girlie magazine. When my enraged client called me on his cell
phone, I contacted the limo service to demand another car and driver. They said
‘Take it or leave it’ as it was prom night at Lahainaluna High School and every
car for hire on Maui was already spoken for.

Now
I personally inspect all limos and interview the drivers the week before the
wedding. It takes about an hour, so I figured I’d schedule it for
Tuesday—Wednesday at the latest.

I
called Ono at five to twelve. “I’m in. Tell me what I need to do.”

***

It’s
odd that I’ve lived my entire life surrounded by water but I rarely go near the
water. For me, the ocean is like the sky—it’s just there. When I was an air
marshal and we’d take off from Honolulu and spend hours upon hours streaking
over the flat, blue-black Pacific I thought of it merely as space and time. It
wasn’t wet, or cold, or alive with creatures, it was simply something to
cross—a wide gap between Point A and Point B.

Standing
on the deck of the
Maui Happy Returns
as it slid out of Lahaina Harbor
at five a.m. on Saturday morning was an experience I won’t soon forget. The
motion of the boat felt odd, as if I was half-asleep and my perception was
slipping in and out of reality. The trade winds were blowing pretty strong, and
as we cleared the harbor area, Ono motioned to Chico, the first mate, to raise the
sail.

Chico
hopped up on the roof of the cabin and cranked the winch on the main mast,
releasing a huge expanse of white sail. It fluttered and caught the wind like a
colossal cupped hand, and before long we were flashing across the waves,
slipping down into choppy troughs and popping back up at a dizzying speed.

I
stood near the back of the boat, one hand shielding my eyes from the rising sun
and the other hand gripping the rail. Watching the glowing white sail bulge and
then relax against the wind was hypnotic.

“Pretty
nice, huh?” Ono yelled to me from his place at the stern.

“Fantastic,”
I said. I went up the four stairs to stand by him at the wheel.

“You
get out on the water much?”

“Never.”

“Yeah,
it seems like that to me too, sometimes. I can never get enough of it.”

“No,
I mean, I can’t remember the last time I was out on a boat, or even in the
water. Maybe back in high school.”

He
touched my shoulder and I turned. His face looked stricken, like I’d told him
my dog had been hit by a bus.

“Honest?
You live here on Maui and you never go out? I took you for a long boarder or
maybe a windsurfer.”

I
laughed. “Nope. I’m pretty much a land-based life form.”

“Well,
you’re doing great. This isn’t the easiest crossing. We’ve got pretty solid
seas today but it can really slam you around if you don’t watch the weather.
We’ll be in the lee of Moloka’i here in a bit. Until then, you’d probably be
better off down in the cabin.”

I
went back down the steps, gripping the handrail as the catamaran charged up a
ten-foot swell. By then, Chico had jumped down from tending the sail and was
busy getting soft drinks out of the refrigerator. He handed me a cold can.

“
Mahalo
.”
I’d been so busy getting my sea legs I hadn’t really observed Chico. His arms
were heavily tattooed from shoulder to wrist. A thick green sea serpent wrapped
around his left ankle and up his calf ending in a fierce-looking dragon’s head
above his knee. Chico was barefoot, with khaki shorts and a white cotton
strap-shirt completing the ensemble. No doubt there was more ink on his chest
and back, but I couldn’t see through the shirt.

“What’s
with the tattoos?” I said. “It seems everybody I know is sporting some kind of
body art.”

He
smiled and nodded. “It’s a sailor thing. All us sailors do it.”

“Yeah,
but it’s not just sailors. Everywhere I look it’s something—an ankle charm, a
tramp stamp, whatever. Every high school girl on the island has some kind of
goofy tat—a sea horse or a flower. I heard your cabin girl’s sick from getting
a dirty tattoo. So what’s with all the ink?”

“It’s
cool. Makes you special. Like this,” he pointed to a dolphin leaping out of a
wave on his brawny bicep. “This is for my dad, ya know? He loved dolphins. When
he died, I had this put on me to remember him by.”

“You
wouldn’t remember your father otherwise?”

He
shrugged and shot me a grin.

Ono
waved for Chico to take the wheel.

“Gotta
go,” said Chico. “You better hang on, it’s gonna get kinda rough.”

 After
an hour about a dozen dolphins showed up. They surrounded the catamaran in a
churning mass, racing alongside so close to the front of the hull I thought
we’d mow them down.

“How
do they do that?” I said. “They seem to know which way we’re going to go. They
turn just in time to avoid getting run over. You ever see them get hurt?”

“Trust
me,” said Ono. “These guys are way smarter than we are. They swim all day, play
around with the tourist boats and munch on little fish. You don’t see any of
them slumped in front of a computer screen or nailing roof tiles in the blazing
sun. Maintaining a safe course is pretty much their only concern.”

At
the mention of the word
concern
, Crystal Wilson’s disappearance flashed
in my mind. I wasn’t buying Wong’s Halloween prank theory, and Keith and
Nicole’s indifference—coupled with the memory of the hair lying across my back
seat—had me spooked. The further we got away from Maui, the more I became
convinced I should do something. But what?

For
five more hours we zipped across the water; the waves slapping the hull, and
then sending a blast of sea spray onto the deck. I spent most of the time
outside gripping the rail, but at lunchtime I made my way down to the cabin. I
pulled a sack of sandwiches out of the refrigerator to offer the guys.

Ono
was back at the wheel and Chico was alongside the mast, tightening a winch.
“Hey, Chico,” said Ono, “when you get done there, would you mind checking how
we’re doing for booze and mixers? We may need to go shopping in town.”

Chico
jumped down and banged through the cabin cupboards, counting bottles.

“We’re
low on gin and we could use a gallon of guava juice for the mai tais. Besides
that, it looks pretty good.”

“So,
speaking of booze,” I asked Ono when I handed him his sandwich, “will I be mixing
drinks? I’m kind of rusty. I worked as a waitress a few years ago, but mostly
it was just serving. My manager claimed the bar lost money whenever they let me
pour.”

“No
worries,” said Ono. “Chico’s the bartender. You just have to see that everyone’s
having a good time and make sure the food platters are full. You’ll be Tomika’s
‘girl Friday.’ Your main job is to make her look good and make sure the party
goes off without a hitch.”

“Right
up my alley.”

***

At
about four-thirty the island of O’ahu was dead ahead. The bumpy part of the
ride was behind us as the water changed from fierce chop to smaller rolling
waves.

“See
that point over there?” Ono pointed out a spit of land, topped with a steep
cliff. “That’s our heading. Just beyond it, we’ll tack north-northeast and slip
right into Ala Wai Harbor. Should be docking there in about an hour.”

My
hands clenched. I didn’t want the ride to be over; or maybe it was that I was
nervous about meeting Tomika. Whatever it was, I had to take a few deep breaths
and talk myself down from feeling panicky.