Aloha Betrayed (3 page)

“She has other talents,” Honi said.

“I’m getting another drink,” Professor Luzon said, ducking away from the table.

“You might have asked if I wanted anything,” his wife called after him.

“And do you?”

Honi waved her husband away with a disgusted look and stirred her drink with the straw.

The voice of the narrator rose above the music to explain the stories being told in dance.

“One day, Hina tells Maui to go catch
ulua
, the great fish, with the magical fishhook his grandfather gave him. ‘But you and your brothers must not look back for any reason once the fish has taken the hook,’ she says. Out at sea, the brothers feel a gigantic tug upon the canoe and paddle with all their strength into the waves. At that moment, a baling gourd floats alongside the canoe. The brothers pull it on board and it transforms into a beautiful woman. Excitedly, the brothers all look back at this wondrous sight, and the spell is broken. The fish is lost, but instead they have raised the islands of Hawaii from the sea.”

“That’s a neat trick,” Bob said. “I only catch bass when I go fishing.”

“Shh, Bob!” his wife said, poking him with her elbow.

Marian gave Bob a polite smile and returned her attention to the stage, pointing out one of the dancers to Helen. “That’s the one we saw last time.”

“How can you tell?” Helen asked. “He’s wearing a mask.”

“I remember his tattoo.”

The narrator finished her tale. “Maui and the beautiful woman of the canoe fall in love. They are married and become ancestors to the Hawaiian people. This is the story of our people, guided by stars across the Pacific to make their homes on new islands and to begin new families. On a clear night you will see the constellation Scorpio. That is the magical fishhook that guided our ancient navigating ancestors to these shores. Ladies and gentlemen,
that
is the legend of Maui.”

The audience broke into applause. I gathered my hat and shoulder bag in anticipation of the program’s end, but Honi waved, shaking her head. “It’s not over. There’s at least another hour to go. They’re just setting out dessert.”

“I don’t think I could eat another thing,” I said, stifling a yawn.

“And we haven’t had our chance to try the hula,” Marian said. “That’s the best part.”

I relaxed back in my seat. The luau continued with more dancing and storytelling. Despite the volume of the music, the vibration of the drums, and the acrid scent of the tiki torches—or perhaps because of them—I felt myself nodding off. I straightened in my chair and looked around, hoping no one had noticed. I peered into my empty glass of punch. “Would you please excuse me? I’m going to get a cup of coffee. Would anyone else like one?” With no takers, I slipped from my seat and walked up the grassy aisle toward the booths that served as outdoor bars. Long tables held plates of cakes cut into small squares, and urns of coffee. I helped myself to a cup, walked farther up the field behind the bars, and turned to watch the performance, grateful to be at some distance from the loudspeakers. A cool breeze ruffled my hair and I breathed in the refreshing air.

“She’s never going to give up. You know that, don’t you?” an angry voice said off to my right.

I glanced over to see two men arguing in low tones. One of them was tall with an athletic build, the other older, softer, and with a shaved head.

“Did he try talking to her?” asked the taller man.

“It’s too late for talking,” the other replied. He was a beefy man in a colorful patterned shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, almost a Hawaiian uniform, judging by the attire of most of the men at the luau. “She’d better quit if she knows what’s good for her. They’re not going to put up with it anymore.”

“She’s not going to convince him to change his mind, even if she tries.”

“If she scuttles this project, I swear he’ll kill her.”

They must have noticed me eavesdropping. The tall man glanced my way and drew his companion toward the path that circled the field.

I shrugged off the threatening talk and moved back toward the coffee table intent on a refill. I peered at my watch but couldn’t see its face in the dark. The luau should be ending soon. It would be a forty-minute ride back to the resort before I could finally climb between the cool sheets of my bed.
Perhaps another cup of coffee isn’t a good idea,
I told myself, adding,
Maybe you should have waited to get over jet lag before attending a luau.
I’d recently adopted a rule for myself: Never schedule anything important the night you arrive if you travel across time zones. Now I was thinking about extending that to two nights.

I returned to the table just as the narrator was describing the elements of a hula dance.

“We’re going to send our boys and girls into the audience to select a few volunteers. Now, for those of you chosen by our dancers, please oblige them, for this is our custom. In a few moments you’ll be joining us here onstage.”

“Get ready, Elaine,” Bob said. “They’re going to want you to show off your dance moves for everyone.”

“Oh, Bob!”

Elaine’s husband obviously heard that plaint a lot. But it wasn’t Elaine who was pulled from the table to demonstrate her hula skills. I felt a strong hand circle my wrist. “Come—you’re going to be my partner,” the dancer said.

“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m not the right one.”

“I’ll do it,” Marian called out.

“This is the
wahine
I have chosen,” the dancer said, bowing before me. He tugged me behind him to the stage, where a small crowd of people were waiting to mount the stairs. “Don’t worry,” he whispered into my ear. “We’ll teach you all you need to know.”

We formed a long line on the stage, the lights effectively blinding us to the audience.

“Put your hands off to the side, bring your feet together, bend your knees, and smile,” the narrator instructed, her voice reflecting her own wide smile. “Next, put your hands up in the air and make a big circle with your hips. As the music moves faster, make your hips move faster.”

My expression must have been skeptical, but I was wide-awake now, wanting desperately not to make a fool of myself. My hula partner jumped in front of me and demonstrated the proper technique. My hands in the air, I swiveled my hips in an approximation of his moves, feeling the heat of embarrassment rise up my neck. I knew my face was scarlet.

“Hands to the side. Hands up. Turn in a circle. Aren’t they wonderful, ladies and gentlemen? Let’s have a big hand for all our hula dancers.”

The narrator directed each couple to display their hula prowess and encouraged the spectators to vote for their favorites with their applause. I watched nervously as younger, suppler bodies than mine attempted the tricky feat, but when she pointed to me, I pasted a big grin on my face and swiveled my hips. I could imagine what the reaction would be if my friends in Cabot Cove heard about this escapade. “Jessica Fletcher dancing the hula? Never happened!”

But as my Irish grandmother used to say,
“May you dance as if no one’s watching, sing as if no one’s listening, and live every day as if it were your last.”

I gave my all to the hula.

Ao No Hoi!
—What a Terrible Thing!

M
ike Kane was writing on the whiteboard when I entered the classroom the following morning an hour before our students were due to arrive. He was tall and broad in the way many Polynesian men are, with a face remarkably unlined for someone his age, which I estimated to be mid-fifties. He wore a white shirt with an embroidered placket tucked into baggy tan trousers, the cuffs of which puddled on his gray sneakers. A thick black band dangling from his neck held a pair of eyeglasses with clip-on sunglasses attached.

“Good morning,” I said, putting my shoulder bag and notebook on the table next to where he’d set his briefcase. “Thanks for suggesting the luau. It was wonderful, although I must admit by the end of the evening, I was struggling to stave off jet lag.”

He turned to greet me. “You couldn’t have been too tired. I heard you came in first in the hula competition.”

“My goodness, word gets around here quickly.”

“You’re on a small island,” he said with a smile, although there was something in his eyes that stopped me.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m afraid I have some bad news to give you.”

“Oh, dear. Has our class been canceled?”

“Nothing as simple as that. Please take a seat.” He pulled out one of the chairs, held it for me, and sat opposite, taking one of my hands in both of his. His chin dipped down to his chest and he took a deep breath.

I felt the blood drain from my face, and a torrent of awful possibilities raced through my mind. What could have happened? Did he get a message from Cabot Cove? Had our sheriff been injured racing to a traffic accident or crime scene? Had there been a fire or a flood or a break-in? Would anyone even know where to reach me should some disaster occur? Had one of my friends taken ill, or worse? Seth was getting on in years. Although I cautioned him to slow down, he still insisted on keeping full-time office hours, not even counting how long he spent at the hospital visiting his patients every day. Had his heart given out? I prayed he was all right. Countless dire scenarios materialized as I waited for Mike Kane to elaborate.

“Jessica, I’m so sorry to have to tell you this.”

“Yes?”

“You met Mala Kapule?”

“Yesterday,” I said, slightly breathless. “I told you I was going to stop by her class. We had coffee together afterward. I heard she was at the luau, too, although I didn’t see her.”

“Mala fell off a cliff on the south shore last night. The police think she was trying to climb down to where a specimen of a particular plant is growing in the rocks.”

“Oh, dear. Was she terribly injured?” I asked, afraid to contemplate anything worse.

“She was badly battered by the rocks. She may have hit her head when she lost her balance. She fell in an especially difficult place for rescuers to get to. The tide is very rough on that stretch of shore. The waves come in one right after the other. There are boulders under the water that are jagged and sharp. By the time the authorities got to her, she was gone.”

I let a soft moan escape my lips and felt tears start in my eyes, even though I’d known her so briefly. “So young,” I whispered. “She was so young.”

“Yes, but old enough to know not to go climbing in the dark of night, no matter how enticing the prize growing out of the rocks.”

“Are you certain that’s what she was doing?” I asked.

Mike shook his head. “That’s what the police have presumed. They’ve labeled her death an accident.”

“But you have doubts?” I let go of his hand and pulled a tissue from my pocket, dabbing at my eyes and regaining my composure. Now was not the time to get all weepy. A dozen students were about to arrive.

“Let’s just say I’m reserving judgment.”

“I don’t know why I got so emotional on such short acquaintance,” I said. “We’d barely met. I guess it’s that I’ve been hearing about Mala for months. Her late uncle Barrett was a friend of a close friend of mine. She was so charming and sweet to me yesterday.”

“You don’t have to excuse your grief. Any life lost is a loss to the community,” he said. He paused a moment, then continued. “In Hawaii, we believe in
‘ohana
.”

“I’ve heard that word before. What does it mean?”

“The simple translation is ‘family,’ but in reality our
family
is a much wider circle than those merely related by kinship. It takes in all of those we love, all those we respect and honor. It is both our community as well as those outside it to whom we have ties. That can encompass many people.” He stood and paced in front of the whiteboard.

“Was Mala part of your
‘ohana
?” I asked.

He nodded. “I didn’t know her, but her uncle, Dr. Kapule, was my physician. So I knew of her.”

“Until I met her yesterday, that was my experience as well.”

“I’m going to ride over there after class,” he said.

“To the place where Mala fell?”

“Yes. Would you like to come with me?”

“Very much.”

Our students began filing into the classroom.

“We’ll talk more later,” Mike said, turning back to the whiteboard.

I picked up my notes and reviewed them, purposely pushing my mind away from the image of Mala Kapule tumbling down the rocky precipice into the churning water below. But she kept intruding on my thoughts. I remembered the child who’d pointed out the sea turtle. Her father had warned her not to step off the path. Clearly the signs posted along the trail cautioning visitors indicated that there was a real danger of losing footing if the soft earth should collapse. Yes, Mala was passionate about botany. But would she really have been so foolhardy as to risk her life to acquire a plant? I tried to avoid the conclusion that kept forcing its way to the front of my thoughts. What if her death wasn’t an accident? What if the same people who objected to her political and scientific views decided their goals were better served without her? And what if those men on whose conversation I’d eavesdropped at the luau were speaking about Mala?

There were twelve students in our class, all soon-to-be graduates of the Maui Police Department’s training program. After brief introductions and expressions of our thanks to the sponsoring foundation and the police department administration—and instructions for the students to turn off their cell phones—Mike and I began teaching our course, entitled “Public Input and Criminal Investigations.”

Mike’s qualifications for leading the class—thirty-two years on the force and a long string of cases effectively closed—were obvious. Mine were less so. While my reputation as a mystery writer may have brought my name to the attention of the sponsors, it was more likely that my experience in helping to solve some murders over the years had prompted the invitation to become Mike’s co-instructor. I never start out intending to get mixed up in a murder case, but somehow information comes my way, and before I can stop myself, I’m pursuing leads and giving advice to the police—not always well received, I might add. But clearly, someone had noticed my successes, and here I was about to tell future detectives their business.

“We’re going to begin by talking about how information makes its way through a neighborhood,” Mike said. “Jessica, would you like to start?”

“The nature of a community is that news travels within it in many different ways,” I told the police recruits. “For an electronic generation such as yours, the obvious route is online, on social networking sites, in texts and e-mails, but these are far from the only ways to ferret out information when you’re working a case. Leaving out the Internet for the time being,” I continued, “can you give us examples of other ways you might hear news about, let’s say, a series of burglaries?”

Hands went up and suggestions were called out.

“In the incident reports.”

“On TV.”

“The radio station, Native 92.5.”

“In my grandmother’s kitchen.”

“
Maui News
, the paper.”

“How about Wow-Wee Maui?” This was greeted by a wave of laughter.

I looked at Mike questioningly.

“It’s a local bar.”

“These are all great suggestions,” Mike said. “One thing to keep in mind when you’re out on the street—and you’re all going to be pounding a beat on the street before you become an investigator, if you ever do—is to keep your ears open for news. Sometimes even the simplest statement you overhear can give an investigator the key to solving a case.” Mike screwed up his face and pointed to a student in the third row who had been whispering to the young woman next to him while she was trying to listen and take notes.

Mike squinted one eye and called out, “’Ey, bruddah!”

The student looked up quickly.

“I saw Lenny Jingo last night giving rides in his new pickup. Whaddya tink’a dat?” Mike said in his best streetwise accent.

Those not in Mike’s line of sight giggled nervously as the student Mike had called upon pointed to his chest and had a confused look on his face.

“Yeah, you! C’mon, you’re supposed to be a police officer now,” Mike said.

Mike’s victim in the third row squirmed.

“Nothing up here, huh?” Mike said tapping his temple.

“How’s something stu . . . , something like that supposed to help you with a case?” the student asked in an irritated voice.

“You tell me,” Mike said. “Think about it. You’re walking a beat. You’re getting to know the people in the neighborhood. What does this news tell you?” He looked up at the class. “Ideas?”

“Lenny finally got his driver’s license back?” someone called out.

“His
kuku wahine
died and left him her fortune.”

The other students laughed.

Mike lowered his head and leaned toward the fellow he’d singled out. “Let’s hear from Akamai
over here.”

“My name’s Louis. Why’d you call me Akamai?”

“
Akamai
means ‘genius.’ I figured since you weren’t paying attention, you already knew everything. Okay, Louis, what’s your idea?”

“Well,” he said, buying time, “I think—”

“That’s a good start,” Mike said, setting off snickers among the students.

Louis’s face reddened. He cleared his throat. “Lenny Jingo never has two cents to put together,” he said.

“And that means?”

“That if he’s joyriding around in a new pickup, he probably borrowed it.”

“Or?”

“Or stole it.”

“Very good! That’s why it’s important to listen.”

The class broke into applause. Louis stood and gave his classmates a mock bow.

“In a small town, or on a small island, anything out of the ordinary is commented on,” I began. “People will talk. Sometimes they know something. Sometimes they don’t. They may be guessing or even making up a story to fit the facts, but you have to pay attention. A clue may be buried in the gossip.”

“You also have to be careful and judge when you listen,” Mike added.

“Exactly,” I said. “You cannot assume that everything you hear is true, but a rumor is a good place to start looking for the truth.”

“Okay, let’s get back to your favorite place, since you all usually have your heads buried in your cell phones,” Mike said. “If you do go online trying to find information on our fictional burglaries, where do you go?”

“You could check out Lenny’s personal page, see what photos he posted to figure out where he’s been in the past few weeks,” one student offered.

“Where else?”

“His friends’ pages?”

“Twitter?”

“Anyplace else?” I asked.

There were shrugs all around as the suggestions dried up.

“Mrs. Fletcher, where would you look?” Mike asked.

“I would look at the news stories, blogs, and columns online,” I said.

Louis groaned. “What good is that? They’re only going to repeat the common knowledge.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “but in the Comments sections below the articles, people may make an observation or even joke about what’s going on. They might not respond to the police request to call with any information, but in their need to express an opinion, they often reveal more about themselves and what they know than they intended to. You may find the names of people who know something, or who could lead you to other people who know something.”

“Yeah, but what if they’re anonymous or using a fake name?” someone called out from the back row.

“That’s easy to trace,” another student answered.

“The point Detective Kane and I are trying to make is that information can come from anywhere. If you’re observant, if you file away offhand remarks in your memory bank, sometimes the pieces of the puzzle can come together.”

Mala Kapule was a puzzle, I thought.

As the class continued, I wondered how I could find out more about this beautiful young botanist whose acquaintance I’d only just made, whose family and friends were strangers to me, who lived on an island I was unfamiliar with, but who, in such a short time, had already become part of my
‘ohana
.