Molokai Reef (35 page)

The
outboard started on the first pull. Gybe flipped the shifter forward
and twisted the throttle. He swung the dinghy in a tight circle and
aimed for Les.

Les
had the FX running and was pulling away from the boat ramp. Like the
bull and the matador, Gybe and Les maneuvered the boats around the
harbor. They made taunting starts and danced around each other.

Tired
of the game, Les broke away and headed for the harbor entrance.

Gybe
had heard that some jetski engines developed over 150 horsepower, no
match for the nine point nine horsepower Nissan hanging from the
transom of his dinghy.

The
WaveRunner schussed across the harbor towards the open ocean, the
only escape from the harbor bounded on the east by the pier, the west
by the reef and the north by the shore. Les cranked the throttle
tighter until he saw the inbound tug and barge plugging the channel.
He spun the FX in a tight circle and aimed straight for Gybe. Just
before impact, Gybe faked to the left then spun
Aweigh
to the
right. Les missed.

Gybe
idled
Aweigh
along the front of the reef while Les circled
near the pier. The jousters eyed and taunted each other. Once
again, the FX sprang forward towards Gybe.

The
reef was behind Gybe as the WaveRunner accelerated towards him. Les
swerved the WaveRunner back and forth intimidating Gybe. The
inflatable offered little protection from the heavy WaveRunner. Nor
could Gybe outrun it. He considered bailing out.

Les
accelerated towards the dink. He would have creamed Gybe if not for
the sudden distraction.

Bill
had watched the two gladiators circle for another pass. Just after
Les cranked the throttle forward, the bird flew from
Makani
to L
es’s head, where he curled his toes into Les’s
kinky hair. “Yee hah. Yee hah.” Shrieked the scarlet
macaw.

Les
never saw the reef. Not when the WaveRunner slammed to a stop. Not
during his subsequent flight through the air.

Like
an eagle carrying a Chihuahua, or in this case a large pig, Bill rode
the soaring SynCorn director. His claws released just as Les hit the
water. The first time.

Witnesses
argued about whether Les skipped three or four times, but they agreed
that he was de-pantsed on the second skip.

64

Kara
waited for the Moloka‘i Princess to dock. She had talked Gybe
into borrowing
Aweigh
. Susan was the third person off the
ferry and embraced her friend Kara. Kara led her to the dinghy and
motored out to
Lagoonabago
where the others waited.

Lagoonabago
had sailed into port early that morning. Gybe joined Andrea for
breakfast during which he explained the events leading up to solving
the murders and Les’s capture. Andrea, ever the host, offered
to throw a party for the amateur sleuths.

By
the time Kara arrived with Susan, the girls aboard
Lagoonabago
had put together a party for the newly released Susan. Andrea had
suggested that they
dress ship
so they strung signal flags up
the forestay to the mast and then down the backstay. Lindsey
arranged the flags to spell out ‘Oceans Now – Welcome
Susan.’

Andrea
welcomed Kara and Susan. Gybe made the introductions as they walked
into the saloon where Mongoose and Flyn sat. The girls brought
drinks.

Before
speaking, Gybe noted that everyone sat comfortably in the catamaran’s
saloon. Andrea and the girls – Amber, Lindsey, Pamela - sat at
one end of the table. Flyn, Mongoose, Kara, and Susan sat on the
other side. He could seat this many people in the saloon of
Ferrity
,
but they wouldn’t all be sitting at a table. Nor, would anyone
be able to get up and walk around.

“
Skoal.
To Susan’s release.” Gybe hoisted his glass of
champagne.

After
Susan’s brief discussion of her stay in jail, Gybe summarized
the murders.

Jean
and Ray met after she moved to Moloka‘i. They hit it off as
friends and were very interested in each other’s work.
Starting as a practical joke, they decided to create a strain of corn
that contained THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Neither
researcher believed that the current laws regarding pakalolo were
enforceable or logical.

Because
of her official work in removing the minuscule amount of THC from
hemp, it was easier to work on the reverse process of transferring
the THC genes from marijuana to another plant. Since Ray worked with
coloring corn, they agreed to make the green corn. Like two kids at
the county fair, they dubbed the secret project ‘caramel corn.’

Everyone
listened without interrupting. The only sound was of champagne
flowing, occasionally punctuated by the popping of a cork.

The
process was straightforward and not particularly difficult. Soon,
they had corn that tested with a THC potency of eight to ten percent.
“Similar to the potency of good pot.”

“
Makes
me hungry. Andrea, do you have any of those green chips nearby?”

She
didn’t and Gybe paused while the ‘goose made an emergency
run to
Makani
for chips.

Ray
and Jean never tried to sell hashish, Gybe continued. The coconut
grapevine slipped up and somehow translated the pakalolo chips to
hashish. Ray and Jean tried to sell the green chips to the drug
brothers. As we’ve seen in our meetings with the brothers,
they aren’t the swiftest fish in the pond.

Flyn
began laughing.

“
Wasn’t
that funny Flyn.” Gybe scrunched his face.

“
I’m
not laughing at what you said. I was remembering what I saw on the
pier this morning.” Flyn had gone to the pier to top off the
water tanks on her boat. While there, she had seen the drug
brothers.

“
Makaha’s
leg was in a cast and he was on crutches. He mumbled idle threats
that he thought I couldn’t hear. Barely able to walk, he was
in no condition to start a fight or tangle with me again.”

Flyn
paused for a swallow of champagne. “He wasn’t nearly as
funny as his brother. Nahoa stood behind him wearing only a
lava-lava, the loincloth that the Samoans wear. Anyway, Nahoa is
standing there with his legs spread wide and his arms sticking out
like a newborn penguin.”

“
When
he walked he waddled like a duck.”

For
suspense, she sipped another bit of bubbly. Gybe spun an index
finger in a circular motion, the universal speed-it-up signal.

Gybe
looked at Mongoose. Had the ring around Nahoa’s jewels gone
off, he wondered. “Mongoose – you still have the control
for that thing we put on Nahoa.”

Mongoose
nodded and retrieved the control hanging on a lanyard around his
neck. He explained to everyone what the device was and that he could
detonate it by pressing the green button. Pamela and Lindsey winced,
Amber’s eyes widened.

Flyn
recaptured the floor. “Anyway, I asked around. The device had
exploded.” Gybe and Mongoose covered their privates in a
male-bonding gesture.

“
But
how? I have the control.” Mongoose asked.

“
The
story is,” Flyn couldn’t control her laughter, “the
story is that Nahoa’s girlfriend was in bed with him the other
night. She got so frustrated with his inability to focus and
perform, that she pulled out a vibrator and took the matter into her
own hands. Apparently the vibrator triggered the device.”

When
the laughter quieted down, Gybe looked to Mongoose for an answer.

“
I
told you it was the Mod IV. Guess I’ll need to test the next
one against female sex toys.” He shrugged. “Anyway, it
didn’t blow off his nuts. Even I couldn’t do that. The
explosive device was loaded with a concentrated powder derived from
the poison oak plant. He’ll be fine in a week or month or so.”

After
the laughter and some speculation about the manhood of the drug
brothers, Gybe continued his explanation of the murders.

When
the drug brothers refused the product, Ray and Jean dumped the chips
at the Hotel Moloka‘i as the conclusion to their practical
joke. Somehow, Les found out about the project. Probably from
snooping on Ray’s computer. Mongoose had found several of
Ray’s files on Les’s PC. Some evidence suggested that
Les had stolen the computer from Elizabeth’s GeNesRus company
during its first week of existence.

“
It’s
very common for management to monitor files on employee computers.”
Flyn offered. “It is especially common in research where
every document is supposed to be archived daily.”

“
Anyway,
as Mongoose found out,” Gybe continued, “Les was short on
money. SynCorn was in deep financial doo-doo. He contacted someone
in the drug trade and talked them into the scheme. Remember someone
sent two million dollars to SynCorn a few months ago.”

“
So
why kill Ray and Jean?” Lindsey asked.

“
They
wouldn’t give him the recipe. He knew what they were doing but
he didn’t have the exact procedure, nor did he have any of the
result – no actual corn.”

“
He
used the concrete helmets to torture them.” Mongoose guessed.

“
Probably.
Andrea, remember that jetski that the hikers found down by the old
Boy Scout Camp? It looks like Les used the inner tubes to tow his
victims to the reef. Then, with the concrete on their heads, he
dunked them until they talked.”

“
Talked?
Their heads were encased in concrete and they had a snorkel in their
mouths.” Flyn pointed out.

“
OK,
wrote. Apparently, they only gave him the password to the files
describing the technique. He never discovered the greenhouse full of
live plants.”

Noting
the gender imbalance aboard
Lagoonabago
, a six-man canoe
paddled alongside. More followed.

Andrea
counted twenty-three visitors when the lower edge of the sun touched
the horizon.

As
the party moved towards midnight, the consumption of drinks and chips
continued unabated. Mongoose seemed to have an inexhaustible supply
of the green chips, now dubbed loco maize. He made frequent supply
runs back to his
Makani
.

Susan
and Kara discovered that Andrea knew how Gybe got his name. Assisted
by Amber and Lindsey, they begged her to tell. Andrea looked to Gybe
who shrugged his eyes before leaving the saloon and heading to the
bow.

65

Pamela
refreshed everyone’s drink before Andrea began the story.

Andrea
told them that Gybe’s mother grew up in New England and learned
to sail when she was six. His father was from the Midwest and had
never sailed. Like many newlyweds, they were poor, but as a wedding
gift Gybe’s father bought an old Cal 20 sailboat for his new
bride. For a home, the couple had rented a small cottage, formerly a
crab shack, on the Magothy River just north of Annapolis, Maryland.
A small dock jutted out from the house’s front lawn.

After
returning from a simple and inexpensive honeymoon to Kitty Hawk,
North Carolina, his mother worked every evening cleaning, painting,
and re-rigging the new-to-her sailboat.

Two
weeks after the honeymoon, at a small party on a warm Friday evening,
his mother christened the boat. She named the small vessel, Ku‘uipo.

The
next morning while she readied the boat, Gybe’s father packed a
picnic basket lunch. They sailed away from the dock before 10:00
a.m. It was his father’s first sail. The light winds blew
from the west as his mother showed her new husband how to sail.
After lunch, they had been sailing downwind in a gentle breeze just
east of Thomas Point Lighthouse when the newlywed urge struck.

It
was too hot to go below into the small cabin. In the cockpit, they
removed each other’s clothes but as the passion soared, Gybe’s
mother scooched up onto the flat cabintop. She staked out the bottom
position and slid a cushion under her butt. Her feet pointed forward
and her hips lay just starboard of the mast. Dad was on top.

Unlike
bigger sailboats, the Cal 20 had a flat coach roof that began at the
bow and gently rose towards the stern. There weren’t any
lowered walkways along the side.

A
deep thrust caused his mother to open her eyes. Above her, she saw
the top of the mainsail backwind and screamed “Jibe ho.”
His father, still unfamiliar with sailing terms, raised his head to
look around just as the boom swung across from the port to the
starboard side of the boat.

His
Dad’s sperm felt the jolt, abandoned ship en masse, and
torpedoed towards his mother. Unlike the Titanic, it was every sperm
for himself or herself with no preference to the girl sperms.

The
blow on the temple had killed his father. The body surfaced three
hours later.

Gybe’s
newly wed, unknowingly pregnant, mourning but practical mother sailed
Ku‘uipo back to the family dock.

Gybe
stood with one arm around the forestay, a fresh Lavaman red ale in
his hand, and stared across the ocean. Susan came up alongside and
put her arm around him. “Gybe, thanks for helping me.”