six

Wednesday, April 10. I’m one of about four dozen passengers aboard a 9:05 am flight to the Friendly Isle. My boarding pass lists my destination as (MKK) Moloka‘i – Ho‘olehua, the name of the tiny airport there. Back when I did my first investigation on Moloka‘i I flew on an eighteen-seat Twin-Otter, operated by Island Hopper airlines. Today's twin turbo-prop commuter planes are roomier, quieter, and smoother, making the journey to Moloka'i a little less, well, thrilling.

As the airplane taxis to the runway I start to see similarities between this new case and the one I worked back then. In both there was a death from a fall. Sara Ridgely-Parke, the victim in the murder on Moloka‘i, plunged from the cliffs at Kalaupapa and Mrs. Beatrice Ho from the cliffs at Makapu‘u. The first death was ruled an accident, the second unattended. In both cases my clients, Adrienne Ridgley then and Marie Ho now, hired me to prove that the victim’s end did not stem from an accident or suicide, but from murder.

As for the new case, if it weren’t for what I know about Dr. Grimes that Frank Fernandez doesn’t, I might be swayed by the homicide detective’s conclusion. But I’m not being paid to agree with Frank. I’m being paid to prove he was wrong. To find anything he and his crew missed, however, will be a challenge. I can’t kid myself about that.

When the airplane hums down the runway and climbs over the white sands of Waikīkī Beach, I'm wishing I was down there carving frothy trails in the turquoise surf. But at least up here I’m getting paid. I think so, anyway.

Should I have taken those euros? Then I reassure myself. She’s an heiress—she’s good for it.

Leaving O‘ahu behind, the airliner crosses the wind-whipped Ka‘iwi Channel—twenty-five miles of whitecaps between O‘ahu and Moloka‘i. If Marie is right and her stepfather pushed her mother, Dr. Grimes would have had to pilot his boat in darkness across this wild channel, do the deed, and then return again before first light.

I’ve already checked conditions for the crossing from Moloka‘i to O‘ahu on the night Beatrice Ho died.

If Dr. Grimes wanted to return secretly to O‘ahu to murder his wife, this would have been the perfect night. He’d really have to scoot both ways for the timing to work out. And he could in his speedboat.

I peer out the window at the dark sea below. It’s amazing how the milky turquoise reef waters near shore around our islands so suddenly turn blue-black as India ink in our deeper channels.

The dark blues lighten again as the airplane descends over Moloka'i's West End—an arid cocoa brown and rust-red plateau of stunted kiawe, grazing cattle, and a two-lane highway with a few rusty side roads. The wheels of the airliner fold down and before long brush the macadam strip at Ho‘olehua Airport.

I disembark, collect my rental car, and turn east onto a narrow blacktop—well, more red than black—that stretches though more of the same terrain to Kaunakakai. Within minutes, I’m there.

Kaunakakai, the Friendly Isle’s main town, seems frozen in time. It’s like I never left. And still not a single stoplight! The three short blocks of tin roofed mom-and-pop stores with hitching posts couldn’t be more familiar.

I drive through town behind a rusty pickup with the bumper sticker: “Don’t Change Molokai; Let Molokai Change You.” That says it all.

On my earlier case I stayed at the ‘Ukulele Inn, whose lively Banyan Tree Bar kept me up more nights than I’d like to remember. But the storied old inn with its funky oceanfront cottages has closed down since then. Only one full-service establishment remains near Kaunakakai and the harbor where the doctor kept his boat. The Moloka'i Beach Hotel.

According to the report Fernandez gave me, the doctor’s alibi for the night his wife died was confirmed by a chambermaid who saw him early the next morning, by a bartender who served him on the evening before, and by his boat caretaker who confirmed the doctor’s watercraft was docked in its accustomed place that evening. For the period between the late evening and the early morning HPD apparently relied on the doctor’s word.

Or, to put it another way, Fernandez and his crew could find no evidence that the doctor wasn’t where he said he was.

I made some calls before leaving O'ahu to ensure the chambermaid, bartender, and dockhand would be available. The first two, Moloka‘i Beach Hotel employees, probably don’t know I’m coming. The third, an independent contractor, does. I hope all three can tell me something they didn’t tell HPD.

I drive about two miles outside of Kaunakakai to the Moloka‘i Beach, whose Polynesian thatched cottages and island-style ambience mark a pleasant departure from the typical high-rise hotel. I wander by a few of the outlying cottages on my way to the open-air lobby at the water's edge. A sign by the front desk announces Moloka‘i-style music performed every weekend, with a photo of a group of kupuna, or elders, strumming ukuleles and guitars and singing. Kanekapila.

Pumping through the lobby’s loudspeakers is my favorite song about Moloka‘i, written by Larry Helm and performed by Ehukai:

Take me back . . . take me back . . .

Back to da kine.

All over, mo’ bettah,

Moloka‘i. I will return.

I give a smiling desk attendant my card and ask where I might find Lena, the chambermaid. The attendant tells me Lena is cleaning beachfront cottages and shows me on a hotel map.

Caller ID says HPD. I answer and hear the gravelly voice of Homicide Detective Frank Fernandez. Yesterday his tone was calm and almost sweet. Today more edgy.

“I’ve got to tell you, Kai, you shouldn’t have taken that yellow dog from Maile. That was a low thing to do.”

I gather he’s referring to Kula. If I didn’t need Fernandez’s cooperation on this case I’d simply tell him the retriever is mine. End of story.

“Maile wants to know when he’s coming home. She misses him and so does Blitz. Those two dogs are inseparable.”