The next morning, Thursday, April 11, I text Dr. Grimes that I will get my report to him as soon as possible. For all he knows I'm still in Paris. And his daughter is too.
By mid-morning I'm driving to Kailua. When I pull into Vivienne’s place Marie is on the lānai enjoying a little taste of home—that packed-rice and sliced meat local delicacy wrapped in dried seaweed called Spam musubi. Kula sits attentively beside her waiting for a bite. She doesn’t disappoint him. No surprise the retriever misses my arrival. But Marie doesn’t and points him in my direction. He dashes to me.
I get my warm and fuzzy fix and then fill Marie in on my investigation. She’s not surprised that Dr. Grimes’ alibis are full of holes. The more I tell her, the angrier she gets. She tosses what’s left of her Spam musubi, wrapper and all, into a waste basket. Kula heads that way, but I grab him by the collar.
“My own mother’s horrid death wouldn’t be too good for my stepfather.”
“The stiffest sentence under Hawai‘i law,” I remind her, “is life in prison. And in France I doubt they still employ the guillotine.”
Marie perks up. “That would be perfect for him. Off with his head!”
We move on to the hard part. We have reason to believe Dr. Grimes may in fact have piloted his boat to O‘ahu on the night her mother died, but we don’t yet have proof. We need evidence that shows he actually did.
“If your stepfather made the crossing that night he would need to dock near your home in Portlock. Any idea where?”
“Let me think,” she says.
“Take your time,” I reply.
She does. But before long she says, “His former partner, Dr. Kitagawa, has two boat slips. Dr. Kitagawa and my stepfather had a disagreement and they no longer practice together. I don’t think they even speak to one another anymore. But before that happened my stepfather occasionally used one of Dr. Kitagawa’s slips.”
“Where are Dr. Kitagawa’s boat slips?” I ask. “Anywhere close to your family home?”
“In Hawaii Kai Marina,” she says. “Only about a mile from where I grew up.”
“Sounds like we need to talk to Dr. Kitagawa. Can we do that?”
“We can try,” she replies. “I might still have his number in my phone contacts.” She checks. “Yes, I do.”
“Let’s give the doctor a call.”
She punches in his number. I overhear ringing and then a faint “Hello.” Marie identifies herself and Dr. Kitagawa is apparently happy to hear from her, based on the small talk that follows. Soon Marie is thanking him and saying she looks forward to seeing him.
“He’s home and he’ll see us as soon as we get there,” Marie says.
We put Kula in the house and head for my car. Before we climb in I look back and he’s peering through a den window with a sad look. I screw up my courage and mouth, “Sorry boy.”
His melting brown eyes turn from sad to desolate.
Predictably I cave in. “Okay, c’mon.”
Before long we’re rolling with the golden retriever’s head in the breeze wearing that goofy smile.
We pass through Waimānalo and then around Makapu‘u Point, where Marie’s mother lost her life, into the arid southern tip of the island known as Ka‘iwi, same name as the channel to Moloka‘i. The south shore is cranking today. But surfing will have to wait.
We skirt Hanauma Bay and descend the slope of Koko Head into Hawai‘i Kai. In the distance looms the faint profile of Diamond Head.
“Dr. Kitagawa’s home is barely a mile from here,” Marie says, “on Kalaniana‘ole Highway near the bridge over the harbor entrance.”
Just before we reach that bridge, she tells me to pull off. I stop in front of a stucco two-story home with a Spanish tile roof. Marie steps to an intercom at the gated driveway. I can’t hear what she says, but in a matter of seconds the gate swings open and I drive in. One door of a three-car garage rises to a shiny new BMW and out steps a neatly dressed man of about fifty.
Dr. Kitagawa gives Marie a long hug. Kula prances up to them.
“He’s a beauty,” the doctor says. “Come in. All of you.”
Kula heads for our host’s swimming pool and we climb stairs to a travertine deck. Below we see the retriever sniffing greenery around the pool and occasionally lifting his leg. Beyond in the harbor lie Dr. Kitagawa’s two boat slips. In one slip is a small sailboat. The other slip is empty.
We sit in deck chairs and he offers us drinks that we politely decline. Our conversation begins with the subject of Marie. She and the doctor talk about her time in Paris and the sad history of her family.
Suddenly we hear a splash down below. Kula. He’s jumped in.
“He loves the water,” I say.
“I’m glad somebody is using that pool,” Dr. Kitagawa replies. “I certainly spend enough keeping it clean and warm.”
As Kula continues to entertain himself in the water, we move onto the subject that brought us here. Dr. Kitagawa recalls when he once shared a practice with Marie’s stepfather and alludes to their falling out after her mother’s death. Before then, Dr. Grimes had carte blanche to use his partner’s second boat slip and also his extra car, an aging BMW convertible.
“I was attending a medical conference in St. Louis on the weekend Beatrice died,” Dr. Kitagawa remembers. “When I returned I noticed that my old BMW was parked on a different slant in the garage. You know how it is, you park your car again and again and you always park it the same way. Well, when I saw the convertible after my trip I was sure I hadn’t parked myself.”
“Your wife, maybe?”
“She came with me to St. Louis.”
“And so you assumed Dr. Grimes parked it?”
“Nobody else had a key. And there was no evidence that the house had been broken into. Besides, Gordon had told me how he could navigate between Moloka‘i and O‘ahu at night. He had the latest navigation equipment in his boat and he could also aim for the Makapau‘u lighthouse, which can be seen from West End Moloka‘i on a clear night.”
As Dr. Kitagawa speaks I’m thinking that he’s got a potentially crucial piece of evidence possibly linking Grimes to his wife’s death, or at minimum undercutting his alibi that he was on Moloka‘i when it happened. But it’s like the other evidence I’ve gathered, so far—circumstantial. Not concrete enough to indict anyone for any crime.
“If only Dr. Grimes had left something behind,” I say. “And if only you had found it.”
Then Dr. Kitagawa says, “He did leave something behind.”
“He did?”
“Yes, I found it only a few weeks ago when I was giving my old BMW a thorough cleaning before trading it in.”
Marie and I look at one another. And I ask, “What did you find?”
“I’ll get it.” He rises and steps into the house, then disappears into what appears to be an upstairs bedroom.
While Dr. Kitagawa is away my phone rings. Caller ID says HPD. Again. No doubt Frank wants to know when I’m returning Kula. I send the call to voicemail.
“Here,” the doctor says when he returns. He hands me what looks like a cash register receipt.
I look over the receipt. It’s faded, but I can clearly see on the top: Molokai Beach Hotel.
“It’s from the bar at the hotel where Gordon usually stayed,” Dr. Kitagawa says. “The date is the same night that Beatrice died.”
I check. He’s right.
“And if that weren’t enough,” he says, “the receipt contains the last four digits of a credit card number, which I assume is Gordon’s.”
“Did Dr. Grimes ever use your BMW convertible again after this weekend?” I ask.
“Never again,” he says. “We had our falling out soon after—I won’t go into that in front of Marie.”
“So he could have left this receipt only on that weekend—on that night that Marie’s mother died?”
“That’s right.”
“Why didn’t you go to HPD?”
“Like I said, I found the receipt under the driver’s seat only a few weeks ago. And I figured if the police had done a thorough investigation back then, they would have known that Gordon was on O‘ahu that night.”
Marie looks pale, as if she’s just seen a ghost. She clenches her fists. She’s always believed her stepfather pushed her mother from the cliff. Now Marie must feel she has proof.
"May I have the receipt,” I ask, “or a copy?”
“Sure.” He departs again and returns with the photocopy of the receipt. I snap the original with my phone’s camera. On the photocopy I have the doctor write today’s date and sign his name and state that it was left in his BMW convertible by Dr. Grimes on the night Mrs. Ho died. I ask the doctor to keep the original in a safe place because we may need to provide it as evidence.
Dr. Kitagawa offers his full cooperation. And again admits he doesn’t care much for his former partner.