Rip Tides (13 page)

Chapter 12

B
reaking a few speed limits, Stevens reached Kahului, Maui’s main town, a utilitarian urban sprawl built up around the airport and shipping complex at the harbor. He started his search at the harbor, pulling the Bronco up to a cluster of tents illegally pitched behind boulders at the waterfront.

He flicked on a flashlight as he got out of the truck, but almost didn’t need the light because the moon was so high. Wind off the water tossed Stevens’s hair and snagged at his clothes like reaching hands as he approached the tents.

Dark figures looked up at his approach. They were clustered around a smoking lantern and hibachi with hot dogs cooking on it, judging by the smell. Stevens kept the light down, off their faces, and pitched his voice low.

“I’m looking for someone, a woman. About five seven in height, a hundred and ten pounds. Blonde hair, in her late fifties.”

“No, sorry, man,” finally came from the fire area. Stevens was saddened to see several children clustered in the doorway of the tent. “No
haole
women here.”

“Thanks. I’m looking for her and will give a cash reward for any tips.” He handed the shadowy figure who had spoken his card. “Fifty bucks, no questions asked, if you call with where you’ve seen her.”

The man took the card. “Fifty bucks. We’ll keep an eye out.”

Stevens went on, working his way down the beach, giving out cards.

He’d come to know the locations of the nests and knots of homeless through his officers at the Haiku Station, many of whom had occasion to go out and answer calls at the locations for anything from first aid to assault. Like any expensive vacation area, funds were short for providing housing and services to the indigent. With real estate at a premium, the community dealt with the problem by selectively ignoring little encampments that popped up until they became a problem. One too many assaults or burglaries usually triggered a sweep, and the homeless were disbanded temporarily until they formed some new out-of-the-way cluster.

There seemed to be no long-term solution, but Stevens hated it when there were children involved. Kids should have a bed to sleep in, clean clothes, showers, good food. He’d had those things; his wife had not.

But this is America, and people are free to be poor however they like.
Dark thoughts fluttered around Stevens’s mind as he worked his way across town. He was getting into the truck from where he’d been talking to people in a makeshift cardboard box village when the radio crackled into life.

He heard his call sign and picked up. “Lieutenant Stevens. Go ahead, Dispatch.”

“Disturbance call in the parking lot of the Ale House, Kahului.”

“Ten four,” Stevens said. “Requesting additional units.” He’d asked to be notified of any disturbances that could involve his mother, but he didn’t want to end up handling a bar brawl by himself off the clock.

Another unit chimed in. Stevens put his cop light on the dash and whipped the Bronco out of the cardboard village clustered in the graveled lot behind a decrepit shopping center where he’d been looking for Ellen.

Stevens pulled into the parking lot of the Ale House, a popular pickup bar and restaurant in the center of Kahului. He was relieved to hear the wail of the backup units approaching as he jumped out of the Bronco, heading for a knot of people around a screaming couple. His heart lurched as he spotted a whirl of blonde hair, silvery in the yellow glow of streetlamps. Onlookers from the restaurant and parking lot obscured his view.

He held up his badge as he shoved through the crowd, yelling, “Police! Let me through!

The couple was down on the ground, hitting and hair pulling by the time he reached them. He grabbed the woman by the shoulders and hauled her off the man she was beating with an unbroken beer bottle.

Her shoulders felt frail in his hands, but her mouth was a snarling void, her eyes bloodshot pits as she swung the bottle at him. Dodging the blow, the only feeling Stevens had was relief as he saw she was a skinny young tweeker in a too-tight top. Not his mother. That second of distraction gave the woman an opportunity to crack him in the ribs with the bottle before he was able to subdue her.

He had the combatants separated and zip-tied by the time the other officers arrived. Getting up, he cupped his throbbing ribs.

He’d seen Ellen as crazed as the tweeker, and it wasn’t pretty. The relief that this hadn’t been her was tempered by renewed worry and dull anger that beat through his tired, bruised body. Getting back in his Bronco, he rested his forehead on the steering wheel, overcome by the memory.

He’d just graduated high school, and it had been bittersweet without his father, who’d died two years before. His mother had come and had managed to keep herself together through the ceremony, but he hadn’t dared go to any of the many graduation parties he’d been invited to without going home to check on her—and he was glad he had.

She was totally blitzed and angry, cursing their father for dying on her and chasing sixteen-year-old Jared around the house and beating him with a bottle. He’d had to restrain her and lock her in her room until she slept it off. That was when he’d decided to go to the military instead of college—he’d just wanted to be totally gone from the house.

Stevens still felt bad about leaving Jared there to deal with her back then. He’d done his best for his brother by setting up friends and relatives to take him in whenever she was on a bender. And now, this was no way for him to spend his off-duty hours.

He had a son who needed him.

Stevens rolled down his window and got an officer’s attention. “Take them in for a night in the drunk tank. I’m going home.”

* * *

Once you’d been grabbed for any reason, you just aren’t the same.
Lei reflected on how the many attacks she’d endured as a police officer over the years had changed her as she showered. She wasn’t going anywhere without a weapon from here on out.

She got out of the shower and noticed that her phone’s battery was low. She plugged it in and opened the fridge, hoping for something left over from the tenant before.

A Styrofoam lunch container sat on the shelf of the mostly empty refrigerator, along with a couple of Longboard Lagers.

Thanks for coming to look for Makoa’s killer. Least we could do! Aloha from Aunty Connie and Uncle Fred,
read a Post-it note on top of the box. Her vacation rental hosts, now an aunty and uncle.

“I love Hawaii.” Lei took out the meal, a typical artery-hardening selection of local food: two scoops of white rice, a mountain of teriyaki beef strips, and a mound of macaroni salad. A wilting orchid added a tropical touch. Her stomach rumbled as she transferred the rice and beef to a china plate and into the microwave while she made short work of the mac salad.

Finally, dinner eaten, sipping a Longboard, she called Pono.

She heard a football game on in the background as she put her feet up against the little Formica table in the unit. “Hey, partner. Picked up something very interesting during my stint as a photographer tonight.”

“What?” Pono muted the TV. “Make it quick, woman. I’m going to bed early tonight, trying to catch up on some z’s from the last couple of days.”

“Yeah. Remember the cute blonde friend of Shayla’s?” Lei told him about Pippa’s apparent attempt to steal Makoa from her best friend. “Maybe she found out he was going to ask Shayla to marry him and it pushed her over the edge.”

“Wouldn’t she go after Shayla, not Simmons? And isn’t our suspect male?”

“Yeah, but I’m wondering if she hooked up with someone who has an ax to grind with Makoa. And she helped in some way.”

“What way?”

Lei took a pull off her Longboard Lager. The beer was light, cool, and delicious. She’d missed beer while she was pregnant.
Thought of a good thing about losing Baby—I get to drink beer.

The thought made her throat close on a wave of revulsion. She coughed.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Just a little beer down the wrong pipe,” she said. Grief still ambushed her way too often, with its familiar twin, guilt. She’d lost Baby through her own recklessness. She’d always believe it, no matter what the doctor said.

“Anyway. I have this feeling about the engagement ring. That it’s telling us something important,” she continued.

“What if the ring wasn’t for Shayla? What if Simmons was getting ready to ditch Shayla for her friend Pippa?”

The beer bottle froze in Lei’s hand as she considered this. “I don’t know, Pono. The photog who saw them said he saw Makoa and Pippa arguing pretty seriously outside the team house. He left her. Doesn’t seem like he was getting ready to ditch Shayla. And if Shayla was acting about how grief-stricken she was over his death, she’d earn an Academy Award.”

“True. I was there. Both girls were both really broken up, if I recall correctly. But they always say, follow the money. Money, love, revenge, hiding something. Those are the main motives for murder. Stopping to consider the money motive, there are several people who benefit from Makoa’s death. Torque has a big payout on his life insurance, his father is going to get three million in badly needed cash, and his girlfriend is cleaning up, too. It’s beginning to look like Makoa was worth more dead than alive.”

“Just for the sake of argument, I’m going with the love and revenge motives. Say Makoa had something going on with Pippa, as you suggested. Or, he was going to ask Shayla to marry him but now has feelings for Pippa, so popping the question is on hold. He tells Pippa not to say anything; that he’s going to break up with Shayla on Maui this weekend. Shayla gets wind of it somehow; she enlists her ex, Tadeo, who ropes Oulaki into doing the deed. So we have three of four major motives covered: money, love, revenge.”

They sat for a long moment.

“I’m thinking we need to reinterview these girls pretty closely,” Lei said. “Show them both the ring. See what pops. And I need to dig a little deeper here. See if I can find anyone else to say anything about Pippa and Makoa’s relationship.”

Pono sighed. “I don’t like this new direction.”

“Me neither.” Lei took a long swig of beer. It burned going down as she thought of the two girls, crying in each other’s arms. One of them might have betrayed the other in the worst possible way. “And that’s not the only motive I’ve found here. There’s the North Shore Posse.” She described the hate mail and her encounter at the beach that evening.

“I don’t like you stirring the shit without backup,” Pono said brusquely. “Make sure Kamuela’s with you next time you go fishing for information, or I’ll sic Stevens on you.”

“Funny.” Lei rolled down the blinds. “But what do you think of the Posse having motive?”

“Pretty thin. If it was them, more likely it would be some beachfront beat down in front of their home break and posted on YouTube. I can’t see something like what happened to Makoa at his home break being their style.”

“Agree.” She found herself using Kamuela’s terse comment. “Well, with any luck at all, I’ll be home tomorrow. Talk soon.”

She hung up, still thinking about Shayla and Pippa, crying in each other’s arms over the same man.

Chapter 13

L
ei was down at the surf break at the crack of dawn, looking around and unobtrusively taking photos of the team house, the surfers on the deck, and the crowd that began to gather as the sun broke over the heaving ocean on another day of pristine surf.

The sand was damp and cool, its golden color muted in the early light. Silvery mist rose above the glassy ocean, the exhaled breath of spent waves condensing above the breaks. Lei wished she had a board and more time; it was smaller today, and she was pretty sure she could handle one of the smaller peaks at Pupukea. But this was work, and she didn’t have much longer on the island.

Lei didn’t set her tripod up this time. Instead, while she waited for the lifeguards to arrive at the big yellow shuttered tower, she shot the faces of the gathering observers and the denizens of the team house as they rose. When the lifeguards arrived, she approached them, quickly identifying Eddie Nanaio, whom Kamuela had introduced her to the previous day.

Nanaio’s eyes lit up, giving her an approving once-over as she approached the tower, gesturing for him to come down to speak with her.

“Looking fine, Detective,” he said with a grin, coming down the stairs.

“Thank you.” Lei grinned back. “I’m just trying to pick up gossip about Makoa. I was wondering if you know or heard of anything about his love life.”

“I knew he was having a thing with two girls.”

Lei’s pulse raced at this confirmation. “Really? Tell me more.”

Eddie, rolling up a rope attached to a float device, sat on the step with an air of settling in to a story. “Both beautiful Maui girls who would follow him over. Friends. It seemed like he was with Shayla, the darker one. But then we started seeing him with Pippa, the blonde, and we didn’t see Shayla come to Oahu anymore. He’d go back to Maui, and the story was, he’d see Shayla there. But the blonde, she came to Oahu all the time for work and he saw her here.”

“What does she do for work?”

“Heard it was modeling. Catalogs, bathing suits. Like that.”

“Shayla, too. So do you know which one he was really with?” Lei frowned.

“Both of them. Pippa here, Shayla on Maui.” The older lifeguard tipped back his head to laugh. “Oh, that boy was in a world of trouble.”

“Well, when we interviewed them at the scene, Shayla was very clearly presented as his girlfriend and Pippa as her BFF,” Lei said. “So it seems like one of them is in the dark about this arrangement.”

Nanaio shook his head. “No. They all knew about it. I saw the three of them together plenty of times. I think they had a story they all agreed to for the public. But he was with both girls, if you know what I mean. Sometimes together.” He waggled eyebrows fuzzy as caterpillars suggestively.

Lei snorted. “Fo’ reals?”

“Fo’ reals.” The lifeguard finished wrapping the rope around the float and hung it from the steep metal stairs. “Andy! Come tell her about Makoa’s ladies.”

“Oh, he had it going on with those two bikini models,” Andy, the younger lifeguard, confirmed. “We’d give him shit about it once in a while after we saw him hanging out with one or the other, sometimes both of them. He just said we were jealous. And we were.”

“So if you had to pick which girl he’d pop the question to, which would it be?” Lei asked.

They both shook their heads. “Depends if you like blondes or brunettes more.” Nanaio grinned.

“Oh God,” Lei said, and flapped a hand in disgust. “This is no joking matter.”

“Well, then, my money’s on Pippa,” the younger lifeguard said, with unexpected gravity. “They laughed a lot. Seemed like friends as well as lovers. I think he liked her more.”

“My money’s on the brunette, Shayla,” Nanaio said. “She was the alpha of the three.” He went on to describe several anecdotes where Shayla had called for sunscreen on her back, or to move to a different spot on the beach, and the others had gone along. “If anyone was getting a ring, it was her. She called the shots.”

Lei frowned thoughtfully. “Thanks, both of you. I may need to talk with you again.” She walked away, heading down the beach toward the team house. It was time to bring Kamuela in on this information. She took out her cell and called him with her interesting news.

“Pick me up at the team house. I want to check out what Cantor and Oulaki have to say about Makoa’s girlfriends.”

* * *

Lei and Kamuela sat with Pete Cantor in the back office where they’d done yesterday’s interviews. Lei tugged her cover-up shirt lower on her thighs, wishing she’d taken the time to go back to the house and change into more appropriate clothes, but time was wasting. Now that she had this lead, she was eager to get back to Maui and follow up with the girls.

Lei started off open-ended. “Tell us more about Makoa’s life here in the team house.”

“Makoa was disciplined. Not a partier. Some of the guys, once their heat is over for an event, they’re cracking out the beer and calling up chicks. Not Makoa. He trained for his events,” Cantor said. He looked stressed—bloodshot eyes, his hair in disarray. “He never cut loose.”

“What about when his girlfriends visited?” Lei asked as if she knew all about both Shayla and Pippa’s involvement with the surf star.

“They were supportive. They both understood his career demands.”

“Which one did you see more of, here at the house?”

“Pippa. I got that was the arrangement. He was dating both of them, but they’d worked it out that Shayla was his public main squeeze, and Pippa was company for him on Oahu.”

Lei felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. “So how did he pull off such an unusual arrangement?”

Pete shrugged. “It’s not that unusual for a pro athlete to get plenty of attention and have multiple partners. At least these girls were friends. We never had any drama.”

“Do other guys on the team have this kind of ‘arrangement’?” Lei made air quotes around the phrase.

“Not a steady situation like Makoa had, no. Most are dating multiple chicks or have a steady girl.” Pete tipped his head forward, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. “You don’t know the kind of attention these guys get. They’re the Hawaii version of football players. We get women showing up at the house in nothing but a beach towel. I do my best to keep everything safe and sane around here, because I want the guys performing their best. So I was happy Makoa had those girls and they’d worked something out between them. No jealous scenes or catfights throwing off his concentration.” Lei didn’t like the picture he painted, or his tone. Time to provoke him a bit.

“I see why you’re single with that kind of attitude toward women,” Lei said. Her potshot hit the target, because Pete’s face darkened.

“Who says I’m single? Sluts and hos are a dime a dozen,” he growled. “They just interfere with the guys’ focus.”

“Alrighty, then,” Kamuela chimed in, smacking his thighs. “We get the picture. But now that Makoa’s dead, we’re interested in motive for his murder. What kinds of reasons occur to you?”

“I don’t know.” Cantor looked down, his throat working. “We have the paddle out in a few hours. I’m doing the best I can just to deal with all the fallout from his death. Frankly, I can’t stand to think of it for long.”

“I’d like to come to the paddle out,” Lei said. “I need to observe.”

Cantor handed her a half sheet of printed paper. “It’s too rough here at Pipeline, so we’re going out at Waimea Bay. The surf is down, so it will be mellow.”

Lei took the flyer. “We may need to talk with you again. Please send Bryan Oulaki in.”

“He’s not here.” Cantor stood up and pushed his chair back in. “He had to go in to Honolulu for a photo shoot.”

“So he’s not at the paddle out,” Lei said. “How convenient.”

Cantor didn’t reply, just went out of the office and shut the door a little harder than necessary.

“That was interesting,” Kamuela said. “Got anyone else you want to speak to?”

“No. I’m going to that paddle out, and then I’ll go back to Maui. I’m eager to get those girls in a room and see what they have to say.”

* * *

The aqua water of Waimea Bay, sparkling with sunshine, gave lie to the sad occasion of Makoa’s paddle out as Lei, with Kamuela beside her, launched her rented longboard over the looming shore break. She churned her arms to get over the mountain of whitewater and far enough out not to take the next wave on her head. Adrenaline pumped through her system, energizing her as she joined the straggling host of surfers heading out to the middle of the bay.

Glancing ahead, she recognized two gorgeous women in bikinis paddling toward the circle of surfers that was forming—Shayla and Pippa, neck-deep in leis.

Of course they are here
. She wasn’t going to have to go back to Maui to talk to them after all.

Lei and Kamuela pulled up and sat on their boards in the floating circle. Talking was going on between friends and acquaintances; Lei kept her gaze moving around the circle, taking note of many famous surfers and influencers in that tight-knit community.

Kamuela had brought her a small waterproof camera; she held it unobtrusively near her waist and shot photos of the people gathering in the circle.

It felt great to be in the water, even for this somber occasion. Lei sat on her board, only partly submerged, the warm sea lapping at her thighs. The deep green valley felt like welcoming arms surrounding them, and Lei could see the other half of the ceremony, onlookers, supporters, and friends, gathering on the beach.

She wished she wasn’t here at the memorial on the job, but it was necessary. She glanced over at Kamuela.

He sat upright on his board, floating with the supple grace of a surfer waiting for a wave, his body gleaming with beads of water. But when he met her eyes, his were all cop. He scanned the circle with a hard, alert stare that took everything in and gave nothing away.

When the circle was several hundred strong, everyone occasionally adjusting their position by paddling, the
kahu
priest officiating from a nearby canoe blew a conch three times.

Silence fell over the circle as the blaring yet haunting notes echoed across land and sea, and spontaneously the surfers reached for one another’s hands. The circle drew tighter and closer, a changing mandala on the surface of the water. As Lei held Kamuela’s hand on one side and a stranger’s hand on the other beside her, she felt a ripple of powerful connection between the people here and the ocean that nurtured them.

The
kahu
blew the conch one more time, and then the group closest to the canoe, whom Lei identified as other Torque team riders, Oulaki obviously missing, raised their clasped hands in the air.

“Makoa! Makoa! Makoa!” they cried. The chant of the young man’s name was taken up by everyone, hands clasped and raised in the air.

Lei felt the tears she’d been holding back since the moment she’d seen the magnificent young body on the beach at Ho`okipa spill to join the salty moisture of the ocean on her cheeks. She let the tears come, and tilted her face back toward the sun.

Finally, the cries of his name died down, and the
kahu
began to chant, the vibrating tones of Hawaii’s rich native language joined by the percussion of an
ipu
on the canoe. The mesmerizing sound was magnified across the water and reflected back by the crowds on the shore.

Lei kept her eyes on the team riders and Makoa’s girlfriends. They held hands even when everyone else let go, leaning in to each other and weeping quietly in the lee of the canoe.

After the chant, spontaneous stories broke out around the circle. Stories of Makoa’s best rides at Pipe, of his grom days on Maui, and of his generosity to others. Lei’s skin shivered with the breeze on the water and an overdose of emotion, with grief that reminded her of all her own losses: her baby, her beloved aunt, her grandmother and mother, her home, burned to the ground with all she owned.

But here she was, still alive.

Finally, the ceremony wrapped up with a beautiful rendering of “Over the Rainbow” played on ukulele and sung by a Hawaiian musician seated in the canoe with the
kahu
. One final cheer and chant of Makoa’s name, and the lei and flowers worn by everyone were tossed in the center of the circle. They floated on the water, a fragrant offering.

Lei photographed that moment as best she could, looking for anything unusual, but there was nothing to see but heartfelt, bittersweet grief and love on the faces of those around her. The circle broke up as everyone turned and paddled back in, laughter and talk resuming with the release of emotion.

“I have to grab those girls,” Lei muttered in an aside to Kamuela, spotting Makoa’s girlfriends still floating by the canoe. “Let’s wait for them on the beach.”

“Mean,” he said, teasing.

“It’s the job. Get ’em while they’re down and emotional. We’ll get more out of them. They should have told us about their ‘arrangement’ with Makoa when we interviewed them on Maui.”

The relentless drive to nail the one responsible for this heartbreak rose up in Lei. She would grieve by getting justice for one taken too soon.