Molokai Reef (18 page)

“
Trite
as it may sound, people are always the weak link in a security
system.” Mongoose expounded.

“
Good
work on GeNesRus, what did you find at SynCorn?”

“
Not
much more than you already know. Dr. Wilson, before his murder, was
working on the color modification of corn kernels using genetics.
Rather than trying to solve a real world problem, like pest control,
productivity gains, or drought resistance, their goal was to make
red, white, and blue corn. Or any other color that the marketing
department needed.”

“
I
haven’t gotten into their computer system yet, but I will. The
word on the street is that Mr. Lester Spooner is about out of money.
He founded SynCorn from his own pocket, money that he made on the
stock run up of his last employer. He bailed, that is, he cashed in
his stock, before the company went the way of the American chestnut.”

Kara
explained ’goose’s comment. “Billions of American
chestnut trees died in the first half of the twentieth century.
Trees up to one hundred feet tall with trunks up to ten feet in
diameter blanketed much of Appalachia. They are on the brink of
extinction because of the chestnut blight. A parasite that traveled
with Asiatic chestnut trees imported in the 1800’s. Just
another example of man screwing up the environment.”

This
woman was a one-tracker. Gybe thought.

“
Anyway,
Les’s company is short on funds and some suppliers have cut off
deliveries. He hasn’t laid off anyone. Yet. But at least two
of the key researchers have seen their paycheck go away. Les has
talked them into accepting stock.”

For
another twenty minutes, the three discussed what they knew and what
they should do next. Gybe emphasized that they needed more
information. Specifically, he was interested in the personal lives
of the dead Jean and her very much alive boss, Elizabeth. Could some
sort of lover’s triangle have precipitated the murders? Was
Jean seeing the dead Ray as well as Elizabeth? Could Elizabeth have
murdered them both during a jealous rage?

Or
could it be the other way around? He remembered how their interview
with the dead man’s wife had ended abruptly when he questioned
their marital bliss. Could Sharon, the dead man’s wife, have
believed that the two victims were having an affair?

Finally,
was money involved? Could the SynCorn’s financial troubles
play into the deaths?

There
were too many unanswered questions.

Tomorrow,
Kara would take the Moloka‘i Princess ferry over to Maui and
question Susan again. The ’goose would continue his efforts to
break into the computer system of SynCorn. Plus, he would dig into
the personal lives of the murdered woman’s boss and the
murdered man’s wife. When Kara went below to use the head,
Gybe asked Mongoose to snoop around about Susan as well.

Gybe,
for his part, was going for a sail. He needed to ponder the problems
and probe the possibilities. That is, if he could find his damn
dink.

33

The
chuckling Mongoose, if mongooses could chuckle, forced out, “I
know where your dink is, man.”

“
Where?
What’s so funny? When I find the guy who stole it, I’ll
shellac his testicles and present them to his girlfriend as
earrings!”

“
The
dink is right where you left it.” Mongoose paused for effect.
“Almost anyway, it’s on the bottom.”

“
The
dink is an inflatable, you moron, it can’t sink. Even if the
air leaked out or someone deflated it, the dink would stay afloat
like a limp air mattress in a swimming pool.”

“
Not
if it’s full of concrete. Remember that pretty young wahine
that I was with last night?”

“
Mongoose,
when I left there were at least eight young women on
Makani
.
You’ve got to ease up the pakalolo. There’s a reason
they call it that. It comes from the words for tobacco and crazy –
crazy tobacco.”

“
Gybe,
I saw you swim away with Nani. You’re awfully uptight, didn’t
you get…”

“
Enough!
Why is my dink full of concrete?”

According
to the girl, yesterday afternoon an island concrete truck pulled onto
the pier and backed up to the dingy dock. As always, several locals
were on the pier. The driver swung the dump chute over
Aweigh
and starting pouring concrete. Inspecting his work after the dinghy
sank, the driver noticed that the painter was still holding up the
bow. The driver retrieved a machete from the truck cab, slashed the
line, and drove away.

“
Didn’t
anyone call the police? Did they get license plate numbers?”

“
Everyone
knew it was your dink. While you have yet to make enemies, you
haven’t made any friends. To the locals, you’re a
yachtie or rich haole. They thought it was pretty funny.”

Mongoose
had brought his dive gear and a float bag with him. At the pier,
they found the dinghy on the bottom, thirteen feet below the surface.
The concrete man had stopped pouring once the dinghy sank. The air
chambers, still inflated, kept the whole mess at near neutral
buoyancy. They removed the outboard and carried it to the surface.
After attaching the float bag to the starboard grab rope, they used
the scuba tank to inflate. When the bag was two-thirds full, it had
lifted the dinghy up to a 45-degree angle with the bottom. From this
position, the two men were able to flip the little boat onto its top,
concrete down. The concrete plug wore the dinghy like King Kong’s
condom.

Gybe
released the air from the dink and the two men peeled the Hypalon
fabric of the dinghy away from the concrete. Kara had remained on
the dinghy dock where she helped with the salvage operation.

“
I
need to do some laundry before I take the ferry to Maui.” Kara
said once the motor and dinghy were safely on the dock. “I’ll
take the ’vair to the laundromat.”

“
Check
the dryers.” Gybe hollered as Kara started walking towards the
car.

Kara
halted, turned towards Gybe as if he had just told her to wash her
hands before supper, then started walking.

“
Squid
– check for squid in the dryers.”

That
stopped Kara. She faced Gybe. “What squid in the dryers?”

Gybe
explained that fisherman sometimes used the dryers instead of hanging
the squid on racks in the sun. Kara shuddered, then boarded the
’vair.

In
the parking lot, Gybe field stripped the outboard. He removed the
carburetor, fuel line, and spark plugs. After rinsing everything in
fresh water and then drying the parts, he reassembled the simple
two-cylinder engine. Less than two hours after they had peeled
Aweigh
off the bottom, she was afloat with the engine purring
like the good little rice-burner that it was. He bid adieu to
Mongoose and motored to
Ferrity
.

Gybe
stowed the dinghy on the foredeck. Since he was sailing only a short
way and downwind at that, he broke his own rule and left the dink
inflated, but lashed securely. Thirty minutes after returning to his
boat,
Ferrity
was ready to sail.

With
the anchor on deck, he left the foredeck, stopped at the mast, and
raised the mainsail. Predictable trade winds blew from the east.

Once
in the cockpit, he hauled in the mainsheet to control the luffing
sail. As the wind filled the mainsail, the boom swung to the
starboard side.
Ferrity
gained speed as she headed southeast
towards the pier.

With
the furling line and jib sheet, Gybe unfurled the roller-furling jib
and the big sail filled with a snap. Gybe turned the wheel and
Ferrity
’s bow swung towards the harbor entrance.

Many
would say he was showing off. Gybe, on the other hand, knew that
engines always, always quit when you needed them the most. As often
as practical, he practiced sailing away from an anchorage without the
engine.

The
sun was at the top of its arc across the sky when he motored
Ferrity
into Hale o Lono, twelve miles west of Kaunakakai. Hale o Lono
translates to House of Lono. One of the four gods brought by the
ancient Polynesians who sailed from Tahiti, Lono was the god of peace
and prosperity. Followers prayed to Lono to provide fertile crops
for he was also the god of love.

The
harbor, often shortened to Lono, was an abandoned barge harbor built
to carry cattle and supplies from the 50,000 acre Moloka‘i
Ranch dominating the west end of the island. A narrow opening,
marked by navigational range markers ashore, led sailors between the
rock jetties guarding the harbor entrance. The nearest town,
Maunaloa that he had visited with Kara, was about three miles up a
narrow dirt road. On the outer jetty, two people were creating
sculptures from driftwood and other flotsam. Someone else had
balanced rocks atop other rocks to form small modernistic cairns.

Gybe
motored past the only other boat, a large catamaran, and anchored
near the east end of the harbor, far from the ocean swell pulsing
through the entrance. He recognized the other boat, the catamaran
named
Lagoonabago
. There would be plenty of time to visit
later.

After
setting the anchor, he unrolled the mainsail cover along the top of
the furled mainsail, then lashed it to the boom. The cover protected
the expensive mainsail from the weather and tropical sun. He coiled
the halyards, jib sheets, mainsheet, and preventers.

Satisfied
that
Ferrity
was again shipshape, he made a sandwich of
leftover fish fillets, spinach leaves, and a sprinkling of capers –
no mayo. To a glass, he added a teaspoon of Tabasco, teaspoon of
lemon juice, dash of Worcestershire, squirt of wasabi, and successive
layers of chili powder, black pepper, and dried red pepper before
emptying a can of V-8 juice – no vodka.

He
stuck his head outside, noted the sun over the yardarm, actually it
was called a spreader on a sloop, then ducked below for the vodka.

34

After
lunch and a short nap, Gybe launched the dinghy sans the outboard
engine and rowed towards the catamaran.

The
catamaran was forty-seven feet long, with a nearly twenty-six-foot
beam, yet she drew less water than
Ferrity
four feet or so.
The large saloon, or salon as the advertising executives preferred,
could seat ten at the dining table. A luxurious fully equipped
galley filled the port side, opposite the table. Each hull enclosed
two staterooms. Each stateroom contained a queen size berth and an
enclosed private head.

Lagoonabago,
a play of words on the French-built Lagoon 470 racing catamaran,
could dash across the seas at over twenty knots. Andrea, the owner,
had purchased the vessel from a Caribbean bareboat charter fleet then
contracted with a Venezuelan shipyard to customize the yacht. The
work had taken seven months.

“
Ahoy
Lagoonabago
.” Gybe shouted.

Andrea,
sitting in the saloon, looked up from a paperback then stood, opened
the sliding glass door, and stepped outside. Recognition edged
across her face. “Gybe! Is that you? Come aboard, come
aboard.” She rushed to the stern.

Gybe
tied the painter to the starboard hull. Molded steps led up the
transom to the main deck. Andrea embraced him, then turned to the
saloon. “Girls, girls – look it’s Gybe?”

Three
women streamed from the saloon and engulfed Gybe in a sea of lips,
arms, and breasts. Gybe came up for air twice, but then returned to
the jumble of nubile bodies. They seemed glad to see him, although
he had never met “the girls.”

He
had encountered Andrea not long after she purchased
Lagoonabago
.
While the vessel was undergoing refit in Caracas, Andrea returned to
Sausalito where she was preparing to move her business onto the boat.
She serviced a large number of clients, scattered across the United
States, with most transactions on credit cards. The number of
international clients, particularly from Asia, expanded as fast as
the U.S. trade deficit grew and their cheap-labor economies
ballooned.

Like
any sales organization, or as Andrea called it – a global
consulting concern – she needed business management software to
manage the client base and financial transactions. Finding herself
on the leading edge of technology in her profession, she turned to
Gybe.

He
determined that off the shelf products like Peachtree Accounting,
QuickBooks, Oracle, and others were inadequate for Andrea’s
needs. Instead, he developed a custom software database application
on a secure Internet server. Because Andrea was moving the
business’s corporate offices to
Lagoonabago
, Gybe
developed the necessary tools to access the company software from a
satellite-linked laptop aboard the catamaran. Gybe, both as a friend
and business consultant, had unhindered access to the server.

Andrea
was in the service-oriented entertainment business. Aboard
Lagoonabago
, her three female employees, or pleasure engineers
as she preferred to call them, offered wit, class, and fantasies in
private theme-designed staterooms. On that day in Lono Harbor, one
stateroom carried a harem motif, another offered a San Francisco
inspired bondage dungeon, and the culturally sensitive third
stateroom sported a Polynesian décor.