1 Murder on Moloka'i (18 page)

V: Chapter Ten: Mauna Kea Takes Kai’s Parents

In chapter ten Kai interviews witness Heather Linborg on Maui, then flies to the Big Island along the Hāmākua Coast to interview another witness, Milton Yu. Through the airplane’s windows the PI watches Maui’s Hāna Highway curve along the coast, reflects on his conversation with Lingborg, and then, as the Big Island comes into view, he spots Mauna Kea, Hawai‘i’s tallest mountain, which he describes as “cloud shrouded and dominating.” In the earlier versions of the novel, seeing Mauna Kea prompted him to reflect on the accidental death of his parents on this mountain and how it changed his life. This excerpt contains details of Kai’s childhood and his motivation for becoming a private detective—namely, to vindicate his father from causing the accident.

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ten

At a few minutes past noon the Hilo-bound DC-9 rumbled over Kahului Bay. As the crowded liner banked southeast along Maui’s Hāna coast, I had a moment to contemplate Heather Linborg. I couldn’t get over her lie. Or her gold bikini.

Below the climbing jet, fabled Hāna Highway coiled along the twisting coastline. Deep emerald canyons of bamboo, breadfruit, and flowering
ōhi‘ā
were pierced by silver dagger waterfalls. I could see a sampling of the winding road’s six hundred curves and hairpins, and fifty-odd bridges, knowing them all first-hand. As we glided over this craggy, foam-washed coast with majestic Haleakalā towering in the distance, I wondered if the Maui masseuse had served Parke in her professional capacity–a mere rub down?–or in some more personal way. That she knew him at all seemed ominous.

Remote Hāna Bay soon drifted under our wings, a tranquil azure pond bringing an end to Maui. Then nothing but sea green, a shade darker than Heather Linborg’s eyes. The plane crossed the twenty-mile ‘Alenuihāhā (“great billows smashing”) Channel to the island of Hawai‘i. As I recalled from a boat passage once with my parents, this channel between Maui and its southern neighbor can get pretty wild. Today’s flight was smooth. Not a single bump.

Soon the Big Island, twice the land area of all other Hawaiian islands combined, loomed ahead at its northern tip, the lush mountainous spine of North Kohala. The Maui masseuse slipped from my thoughts as we flew along Kohala’s windward coast.
What a view!
Over on the lee slopes, fleetingly visible through cotton white clouds, lay the rolling green pastures of Parker Ranch. Down among the coastal lava beds sprawled the ocean-front fairways and velvet greens of the Mauna Kea and Waikoloa golf resorts. And on the windward side, directly beneath us, soaring sea cliffs were pierced by more silvery cascades.

As the jet descended south along the Hāmākua Coast, where soon I would interview Milton Yu, groves of kukui stood out like lime-green swatches against the darker green cliffs. The fire-orange flowers of African tulip trees dotted the landscape like a pointillist’s canvas. Above these flamboyant trees rose Mauna Kea. I grimaced at the sight of this tallest mountain in Hawai‘i–cloud-shrouded and dominating.

Mauna Kea, you see, took my parents’ life. Their light plane crashed into the mountain when I was only eight. I can never look at Mauna Kea without thinking of them and how my fate suddenly and irrevocably changed. The accident report blamed pilot error. I never believed it.

The sky had been clear. My father was an experienced, careful pilot who knew every inch of Big Island terrain. Though the report exonerated the airplane’s manufacturer and the firm from whom he leased it, I suspected some of the “investigators” had ties to these two entities. In any case, I received compensation from neither. A modest life insurance policy became my only legacy.

I had been an only child. Now I was alone. My cousin Alika’s family, the Kealoha’s of the North Shore, welcomed me into their
ohana
and treated me as their own. But since I was a shy boy raised in town and accustomed to the hallowed halls of Punahou, I had trouble adjusting to an unfamiliar public school. My grades fell. Through lengthy family negotiations I was too young to understand, it was decided that I would attend private school in California and live with the family of my father’s brother, Orson T. Cooke of Pasadena.

I grew up with three sandy-haired cousins who looked like my brother and sisters. No one outside the family’s rambling Tudor on a hillside cul-de-sac off Orange Grove Boulevard knew I was part Hawaiian. I spoke little pidgin. I shed my “Island-style” ways. Gradually I became a Californian.

Ironically, it was California–not Hawai‘i–that kindled my passion for surfing. Cousin Matthew Cooke and I haunted our favorite spots: Malibu, Rincon, County Line, Trestles. After graduating from preppy Ridgecrest Academy, we trekked south to California Surfside College–a liberal arts school perched on Sunset Cliffs at Point Loma–boasting four of the best breaks in San Diego. At “Cal Surf,” as students fondly dubbed our college, we clocked more hours in the water than in the classroom. I had a blast– until my father’s life insurance ran out.

I quit the pricy beach-side school (against my Uncle Orson’s advice) and joined the Army, after a recruiter promised me duty at Fort DeRussy in Waikīkī.
Shibai
. Didn’t happen. I spent my whole tour stateside. When discharged I returned to San Diego intending to complete my degree with Army money at Cal Surf. Instead I partied and rode waves. Cousin Matthew, by then a management trainee at Acme Casualty, landed me a job as a claims adjuster.

I never did finish college. Claims work taught me volumes, however, about human nature. I witnessed more half-truths, deception, and outright fraud than I care to remember. This glimpse into the darker side prepared me–better than any classroom–for my later occupation.

People are like waves.
Despite appearances, look out for what lies below.

Insurance investigation sharpened my instincts for sham. When I finally returned to Hawai‘i I began gathering evidence on my parents’ accident. Someday I will put all the pieces together. Though the statute of limitations may have expired, though I may never win a dime from the guilty parties, at least I will vindicate my father. Anyway, nothing could compensate for what I lost.

VI: Chapter Eleven: Toes on the Nose at Rock Piles

Before meeting his client Adrienne Ridgely for drinks at sunset at the Halekūlani in Waīkikī in chapter eleven, Kai paddles out to a surf break called Rock Piles. He’s getting nowhere with the case at this point, or with his long-distance girlfriend, Niki, who lives in Los Angeles. Out in the water he’s able to sift through the various pieces of the puzzle, and to contemplate the sad state of his love life. As part of the original conception of the series, I’ve tried to include scenes in each book showing Kai surfing and reflecting on his cases, and his life. “Sherlock Holmes had his pipe: I have my surfboard,” says Kai in
Murder on Moloka‘i.
In the cut paragraphs below, while he does mention his client, a suspect he’s about to interview, and a previous case, he focuses mainly on surfing itself — its dangers and rewards.

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eleven

Sunday afternoon before meeting Adrienne I looked at dismal apartments for rent, made more dismal by the fact that Niki hadn’t popped into town for weeks. Later I tried calling her, but again got only her answering machine. Rather than break the good news that I might see her soon in Los Angeles, I decided to just drop in at her apartment in Marina Del Rey near the L.A. airport. If she was home, we’d have a surprise reunion. If not, the drive wasn’t much out of my way.

Buoyed by the thought of seeing Niki I squeezed in a surf session before sunset at Rock Piles, offshore of the Ala Wai yacht harbor where I had tangled with that scurvy deadbeat, Leonard Souza. Rock Piles can be an especially good spot in summer–with hollow peaks and occasional tubes breaking over a shallow coral reef–but boards washed against the harbor’s lava rock jetty can end up in splinters, not to mention surfers who ride them.

Surfing, like any sport, has its hazards. One wrong move on a winter swell at Waimea Bay, for instance, can ruin your whole day. The wave rider who wipes out on a smoking thirty-foot wall may stay under the white water for not seconds, but entire minutes. Or hours. The surfer’s body floats ashore, or is never seen again. It depends. No one knows exactly why the drowned ones disappear, except maybe the sharks.

I was once asked to find the remains of such an unlucky waterman, a Californian reported missing after getting hammered one big December day at Waimea. His fractured board had rolled in, but not his corpse. It proved an eye-opening case, convincing this middle-aged longboarder to leave those North Shore titans alone.

Straddling my board at Rock Piles, waiting for one of those lovely peaks to form up, I puzzled over the case of Sara Ridgley-Parke. So far, no witness had admitted to seeing Sara fall, though each was covering up something. Only Archibald had been in a position to observe Sara’s plunge. Would the travel agent shed light on the mystery? In Los Angeles I would soon find out.

Before long I spotted a clean set rolling in, swung my board around, and blissfully forgot Archibald. On the peaking left break, I planted a rail and turned hard to stay ahead of the curling lip. Trimming to a smooth plane, I cross-stepped forward gingerly, aping the tip-riding logo on my office door.
Toes on the nose!

Just as my pinkies reached the tip, my longboard suddenly pearled (nose-dived) and I flipped
hulihuli,
head over heels. My board shot tail-first from the soup like a missile. Fortunately, it didn’t hit me in the chops. I felt a big yank on my ankle as the ten foot leash snapped tight.

My caroming surfboard and I were safe, spared today from the lava rock jetty. But I had taken an embarrassing spill. Especially for a former champion.

Later I recouped. A few ripping good rides put me in the mood for dinner with Adrienne. At five o’clock I carried my board home, showered, dressed, and then walked back to the Halekūlani.

VII: Chapter Twelve: Kai’s Shark Bite

The centrality of surfing to his character is brought home through Kai’s frequent surf sessions, his surfboard always riding next to him in his car, and his using surfing as a metaphor for life and a way to solve problems and cases. But his ever-present badge of belonging as a surfer is the crescent of sixteen welts on his chest. He was attacked, as he tells us, one morning at Laniākea. A tiger shark bit him once and swam away. Kai unveils his shark bite in each book, typically in intimate moments. Below is one of those moments–cut from chapter twelve of
Murder on Moloka‘i
–in which Kai accompanies his client, Adrienne Ridgely, to her room after drinks at the Halekūlani Hotel. Following this is the sequel to the scene where he reminisces about his evening with her.

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twelve

Sometime during that evening, I forget exactly when, we ordered from room service Mumms champagne and a
pūpū
platter of seared
‘ahi,
fried mozzarella, and sesame chicken in ginger sauce. Emboldened by the Mumms, Adrienne explored with tentative fingertips the crescent of pink welts on my chest. Each of the sixteen raised teeth marks she touched slowly, methodically–one at time.

“Oh, you poor thing!” She stood back and gazed at the half moon-shaped bite. “You
poor thing.”

I let it pass.

Adrienne wasn’t the first woman to touch my shark “trophy,” but her warm, soothing caress penetrated like deep heat– down to that dark secret place where I had filed away and forgotten the attack. Her touch on those scars felt more intimate than our love making.
Why?
I had no wish to relive that morning at laniākea. Being able to remember is a useful skill; being able to forget is better.
For real.
Otherwise, how could I ever surf again?

After the champagne and
pūpūs,
I left the Halekūlani at about three, stumbling back to my apartment through the drowsy, moonlit streets of Waikīkī.

Five hours later I dragged myself aboard a crowded DC-10 bound for Los Angeles. It was Monday, October 9. Booking the flight only the day before, I found myself sandwiched in the cramped middle section of the coach cabin.
Bummahs.
Every time I tried to snooze, another passenger crawled over me to stretch or use the lavatory and I awoke with an aching head and a guilty conscience.

My Technicolor dreams featured gauzy images of slender, supple Adrienne, her baby soft skin luminous in the buttery Waikīkī moonlight. I tasted again her sweet, coconut milk kiss–her deeply passionate kiss. This cool, crisp, headstrong woman from Boston had shown yet another side.

Two aspirin eased the throb at my temples, but did nothing for my nagging conscience. Here I was only hours from seeing Niki and I’d just slept with another woman.

VIII: Chapter Twelve: La Casa Nova

Later in chapter twelve, after interviewing witness and suspect Emery Archibald at his Glendale, California travel agency, Kai visits the apartment of his girlfriend, Niki, in Marina Del Rey, near the Los Angeles airport. Niki is not at home, but her other boyfriend is–an airline pilot named Jacoby. This is a sad revelation for Kai, but his just desserts, as he himself admits. Since he has just spent the night with his client, he is in no position to blame Niki for seeing someone else. The scene of his encounter with Jacoby that runs two pages in the published novel, extends to nearly six in the earlier drafts and contains numerous details and nuances cut from the book. Why was the scene cut? Perhaps because it develops Kai’s character more than it contributes to the solution of the crime.