Vacations Can Be Murder: The Second Charlie Parker Mystery (3 page)

The man motioned toward his driver, calling
him over. He stood leaning over the young kid, shaking a finger in
his face. I couldn't catch the words, but his body language was
easily understood. The young driver cowered at the onslaught, and
the passengers inside looked uncomfortable.

A tug at my sleeve got my attention.
Paradise's helicopter had landed, and the previous passengers were
out and waiting near the van. I followed our shuttle driver, and
stood back as he opened my door for me. The tremendous whirl from
the rotor blades caught at the edges of my shorts, whipping the
fabric against my legs. Luckily, I hadn’t worn a skirt. I stepped
up, and slid into my seat. The pilot helped me find my seat
belt.

I had been given the front seat next to him,
while the Johnson family were lined up across the rear. I was
thankful that the noise of the rotor blades forced us all to wear
headsets. If I'd had to listen to one more plaintive demand from
Cory in the back seat I'd have decked him.

The twenty minute wait in the office before
heading to the airport had just about cinched my decision not to
have children. This one was a whiner and Joe and Brenda Johnson
apparently didn't believe in suppressing their child's natural
outspokenness.

I caught our pilot’s glance at the kid as
they were loading, and we exchanged a brief raised eyebrow. He
helped me put my headset on, while the shuttle driver assisted
those in the back seats.

"Can you hear me all right?" His voice was
low and soft, coming into my right earpiece. I nodded.

“I’m Drake Langston.” He introduced
himself.

“Charlie Parker,” I said, extending my hand,
“and no, I’m not the jazz musician.”

He laughed, a low and pleasant chuckle.

“No, I would have never mistaken the two of
you,” he said. “Charlie—I like that.”

There was something in the smile he flashed
at me that I found immensely attractive. Not to mention the touch
of gray in his dark hair, and the sureness with which he handled
the controls.

The muscles of his forearms rippled slightly
as he flipped a couple of switches. He wore a navy knit shirt with
the company logo on the chest, like Mack had worn earlier in the
day. His khaki slacks were neatly creased. I absorbed all this in
less than a minute before my attention strayed again to the other
helipad, where the angry pilot was still shaking his finger in the
other guy's face.

He had pulled his headset off now, and I
watched as the wind whipped his red ball cap off. That provoked his
anger all over again, and he ordered his driver to retrieve it. He
stomped back to his aircraft, jerking the door open.

"I'm sorry you saw that," Drake interrupted.
"His name is Bill Steiner. That guy is trouble all the way around.
Gives a bad name to the rest of us."

"What's he so upset about?"

"Who knows? With him it could be anything. He
just better hope there's not an FAA man out here right now. He'd be
busted for sure, leaving his passengers like that."

I wondered what makes some people need to
flaunt this kind of behavior in public. Perhaps they like the
feeling of control over others that it gives him. Behavior like
that does have a certain show-stopping effect.

Meanwhile, the rest of our group were buckled
into their seats, and the doors securely latched. With Mr. and Mrs.
Doormat and young Rowdy settled into the back seats, Drake began a
safety briefing. Cory promptly stuck his hand out the narrow vent
window the minute Drake mentioned this as a safety no-no. He
flashed Brenda Johnson a glare, and she grabbed her kid's hands.
Her eyes bored into the back of Drake's head with a look I once saw
on a female German shepherd with eight pups.

Drake had switched radio frequencies, and I
watched his lips move as he cleared us for takeoff with the tower.
The turbine engine whined and the ground fell away as the craft
rose straight up before it picked up gentle forward momentum.

It was fascinating to watch Drake fly the
machine. Both feet and both hands were working, each doing
something different. I envied his coordination and admired the
aircraft’s maneuverability. I watched as the airport fell away at
our feet, becoming miniaturized in just a couple of minutes.

Drake pointed out the sprawling Westin
complex with its golf course, half-dozen restaurants, and labyrinth
of canals as we passed over. Nawiliwili Harbor lay below, with tiny
boats moored in slips and a large freight barge off-loading orange
and brown containers. Beyond the harbor, Drake indicated the
Menehune Fish Pond.

Apparently, the menehune are the Hawaiian
equivalent of leprechauns, performing mystical feats in the middle
of the night. In this case, they had supposedly carried lava rocks
down from the mountains to dam up a section of river, forming a
pond. The wall looked about three hundred yards long. The little
guys really had a busy night of it. And, for this they were paid
one shrimp each. Talk about minimum wage.

"The primary crop on the island is sugar
cane," Drake's steady voice informed us. "We also commercially grow
coffee and macadamia nuts, which you see in the fields below us
now."

In the back seat, the missus attempted
resignedly to keep control over her rambunctious offspring while
her oblivious husband snapped pictures from his window seat.

I turned my attention back to the scenery. We
were approaching mountainous country, and I could see that Drake
was about to maneuver us in front of a triple deck frothy white
waterfall.

"Where's your camera?" he asked me. Again,
that smile, and the voice like velvet.

"I'm not much of a photographer," I answered.
In truth, I didn't want to miss out on the panoramic view by
looking through an undersized viewfinder.

He took us to two or three more waterfalls—I
was beginning to lose count—then headed toward Waimea Canyon. I
loved the way it felt like the bottom dropped out as we flew over
the edge.

Waimea Canyon is a mini version of the Grand
Canyon. I was amazed at how un-tropical it looked. The red earth
was dry here, and I even spotted clusters of cactus growing on some
of the ridges. We flew past a lookout point where tiny tourists
stood by a railing, looking up at us and pointing.

Shortly after flying through the canyon, we
broke out over the tops of the almost razor sharp ridges of the Na
Pali coast. The contrast was remarkable. The multi-colored earth
stratified throughout the canyon had been softly muted by time and
the river's flow.

The sharp peaks of the Na Pali, on the other
hand, spoke of indomitable strength as they'd withstood brutal
attacks by the wind and sea for thousands upon thousands of years.
I realized the pictures don't come close to doing this place
justice.

Twice, I caught myself open-mouthed as we
skirted the sharp peaks which drop straight down into the sea, each
hiding a tiny secluded beach in its shadow. The scene repeated
itself again and again down the distant shore.

Drake had planned the stereo music playing
through our headsets to correspond with the terrain. Soft and
gentle at first, quick and exciting over the rugged parts.

"Folks, normally we try to fly into the
Kalalau Valley, but it's become socked in with clouds the last hour
or so," Drake's voice came through, still confident and clear.
"I'll take us a little way farther up the coast to Hanakapiai, and
we can buzz in there for a close-up."

None of us knew one valley from another,
anyway. It sounded fine to me. It was all beautiful.

The back seat group wasn't saying anything at
this point. Cory was pulling the airsick bags out of their
wrappers, while Brenda ignored him, grabbing a moment of silence
for herself. Drake glanced back at them, and we exchanged another
raised eyebrow.

We did a few more circles and turns over the
small beaches. The sand was the color of a freshly baked sugar
cookie with turquoise water lapping gently at the edges of it. We
headed inland up a narrow valley with high lava peaks on either
side of us.

"As early as 800 A.D., the ancient
Polynesians had sailed across open ocean to discover these islands,
and many of them settled in these very.... valleys." Drake's voice
broke off quietly, and I turned to look at him.

"What is it?" I tried to speak loud enough
for him to catch my words, but he wasn't looking at me, and
couldn't hear me over the engine noise.

His face had turned pale under his tan. I
followed his line of sight down to the rugged lava embankment
below.

A very dead-looking man lay sprawled across
the rocks.

Except for his bright red shirt with
geometric patterns of blue and gold, he would have been difficult
to spot. His dark slacks and shoes blended with the lava rocks, and
I didn't see any flashy jewelry. He appeared to be about five-ten,
slim, dark haired.

I looked back up at Drake, then glanced again
at the back seat. They were all occupied, Cory with a pile of
shredded paper and plastic now at his feet, and the parents,
staring up at the rugged cliffs surrounding us.

Drake had switched radio frequencies again,
and was speaking rapidly, although those of us in the aircraft
could no longer hear him.

I stared out again at the dead man, noticing
details out of habit. He was about a hundred yards in from the
shore, lying face down in an area where the terrain started to
rise, the lava rocks becoming rougher farther inland. I wondered
how he had gotten there.

Drake had mentioned one narrow foot trail
along the coast, which hikers and campers used. Had he gotten off
the trail and fallen? It would be easy to do out here. The endless
rows of sharp ridges looked impossible.

Yet the picture struck me as not quite
plausible. For one thing, he didn't have a backpack or any other
gear that I could see. And his clothes weren't right. The
multi-colored shirt looked silky, more like a dress shirt than
outdoor wear. And the shoes. They were black dress shoes. No one in
his right mind would attempt to hike in those.

Who was this out-of-place victim?

Drake had circled as casually as possible,
and we headed now out of the narrow confines of the valley.

"What's happening?" I mouthed.

He reached forward to the center console, and
flipped a toggle switch. I noticed that the top position was
labeled "Passengers," while the bottom position said "Co-Pilot." He
switched it down. Now the backseat group could not hear him.

"I radioed what I saw. The office is
rescheduling my next flight, and the airport people want me to
bring the police out. Operating as we do here, on aloha time, I'll
probably be tied up with this until late tonight." His face had
taken on lines I hadn't seen earlier. He suddenly looked
drained.

He toggled up so all could hear and swung the
helicopter around the end of the sharp rocky ridge. Beyond, the
land opened up again into a wide valley where taro fields shone in
emerald squares below. Drake mechanically recited the names of the
towns below and the famous people who inhabited the large estates
that bordered a golf course and lined the beaches.

The music flowing into our headsets turned
into a haunting Hawaiian song, whose words were unfamiliar but
whose melody cried with pain.

The helicopter entered the island’s main
volcanic crater through a broken-out V in its side, a place where
lava flowed into the valley below in ancient times. On three sides,
narrow waterfalls cascaded down the shiny black rock. Above us, the
top of the mountain was shrouded in dark gray clouds, heavy with
moisture, that misted down onto our windshield. The aircraft seemed
tiny and insignificant in the huge cavern-like space. The music
drummed heavily. The whole effect was melancholy gray.

Once outside the gloomy crater, again the sun
shone and we finished making our circle tour of the island.
Somehow, though, I had the impression Drake was rushing through it,
his mind still back there in the Hanakapiai Valley. Truthfully, I
didn't hear much of the tour myself. My mind began to mull over the
possibilities.

Drake brought the helicopter in over the
heliport, cruised slowly down the flight line, and set it softly
down on the pad. While the waiting shuttle driver unloaded the
others from the back seat, I fished around in my purse.

"Drake, if you can use help with this, give
me a call," I said, handing him my business card. "I'm staying at
the Westin."

"RJP Investigations?"

"I'm a partner in a PI firm back home," I
explained. "And from the look of it, I'd say this is no simple
hiking accident. Looks to me like a murder."

I unbuckled my seatbelt, and stepped down to
the tarmac. I glanced back once. Drake was sitting motionless,
holding my card in his hand. I didn't know whether he'd call or
not, but I did know that my natural curiosity wasn't going to let
go of this. Now that I'd voiced it aloud—the M word—I'd have to
find out what had happened.

So much for my vacation.

Chapter 3

I got into private investigating, indirectly,
because I took an accounting course in college. I was twenty years
old when I realized that I was about to come into a fairly decent
inheritance, and I had never even balanced a checkbook. It was my
second year of college, my second year of foundering around with no
clear goal in mind.

My parents had died in a plane crash when I
was sixteen, leaving money in a trust for me, to be collected when
I turned twenty-one. With this momentous occasion near at hand, I
decided I’d better become fiscally responsible. My brother, Ron,
talked me into the accounting course.

Whether I really had a natural talent for the
subject, or whether it was pure luck that I got professor Rosa
Alvarez for the class, I'm not sure. She definitely helped ease my
way through it with her genuine affinity for both her subject and
her students. It's one thing to know a subject, another to teach
it. Professor Alvarez had that rare ability to assess a student's
learning mode, and fit the subject to it.