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RANDY RANDOLPH OF SEED Solutions sat alone in his metal folding chair at the front of the lecture hall.
“Hi, I’m Molly Barda.” I extended my hand. “I teach in the College of Commerce here. I just wanted to say hello, and thanks for coming out to talk to us.”
He took my hand and squeezed it briefly. I thought I caught a whiff of booze breath. Maybe he’d gone out to dinner before the forum.
“You’re a teacher here? Should I call you Professor?” He snickered, as if there were something humorous about my being a professor.
“Just call me Molly.” I settled into the folding chair next to him. “So you mentioned in your intro you’re new to Hawaii. I just moved here a few years ago myself. Are you adjusting?”
When I had been watching Randolph from the audience, the pineapple pattern of his aloha shirt had masked the stains spreading under his arms. Sitting beside him now, I could see he was drenched with sweat.
“Trying to buy a house. Takes forever to get things done around here. Some ridiculous holdup with a tenant.”
“I’m doing some research about attitudes toward biotech,” I said. “I wonder if you wouldn’t mind if I recorded—”
“One down, a thousand to go,” he said.
“I’m sorry? What was that?”
“I’ve been at way too many of these things already, and it’s just the beginning.”
He seemed willing to speak candidly. This was better than I’d expected. I’d already asked his permission to record our conversation, right? I was set.
“Why do you say too many?” I asked.
“’Cause everyone’s got their minds made up already. These things are all the same. When my boss told me I was going to Hawaii, I was expecting sandy beaches and beautiful hula girls. Instead I get a bunch of old hippies from California spouting off about the keiki and the `aina and all that crap.”
He looked around, as if he were about to impart a great secret to me.
“And then—I probably shouldn’t say this. But every single time, some chunky Hawaiian chick stands up at the end and says, ‘Oh, I don’t know about DNA or anything, but my grandmother taught me about fishponds.’ Then she goes off about her ancestors and Pele and blah blah blah.”
So much for my scientific objectivity. I did not like this guy at all. Chunky? That woman wasn’t any bigger than I was.
“Hey, you’re not writing any of this down, are you?” he said.
I held up my hands to show him I wasn’t holding any writing instruments. Over on the other side of the lecture hall, Emma and Pat finished their conversation with Councilwoman Zabek and made their way toward the upper exit. (We were in one of the newer classrooms, which had been built with two doors. In the event a mad gunman came in through one, people had a chance of escaping through the other.)
Emma paused when she reached the door, turned around, and made a rude gesture meant for my eyes only. Maybe it was a good thing I’d come to talk to Randy Randolph by myself. He might not have been so forthcoming with his opinions about the natives had Emma been standing right there. Also, Emma probably would have punched him by now, which would have been hard to explain to our Human Subjects Board.
“So what do you think of Art Lam?” I asked.
“Art’s a good man,” Randy said. “He’s rational. Orientals are very practical people. Alls he wants to do is grow food to feed people, and he has to sit there and listen to these loonies accuse him of poisoning the land.”
“Councilwoman Zabek?” I asked.
“Typical politician. Just does whatever the crazies in her district tell her to.”
“What about Primo Nordmann, who was scheduled to be your fourth panel member? What do you think of him?”
Randy Randolph’s expression went opaque, like a shutter being pulled down over a storefront.
“You probably need to talk to one of the organizers about him. I gotta get going. Hey, nice to meet you, Melody. Give me a call if you want to talk some more.”
“It’s Molly.”
He pressed a Seed Solutions card into my hand—green ink on cardstock the color of a grocery bag—and left, trailing a tang of alcohol and flop sweat. I tucked the card into my bag and made my way over to where Davison and Crystal were still chatting.
“I hope you didn’t believe everything Randy Randolph told you,” Crystal said.
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“He’s a client.”
Davison’s face clouded. “You’re massaging this guy?”
“We just started Randy on a strength training program. I’m doing personal training and life coaching for him.”
“So what happened to Primo Nordmann?” I asked. “The fourth panelist? Why wasn’t he here tonight?”
“Who?” Davison asked.
“Primo Nordmann. He was a student here. Maybe you knew him when you were here?”
“Nah,” Davison said. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“Come to think of it,” I said, “I haven’t seen Primo around the yoga studio lately. Is he okay?”
Crystal flicked a glance at Davison, and then at me.
“You don’t know,” she said.
“Know what?”
“Neither of you can say anything about this.”
“I won’t,” I assured her.
“Primo attracted some bad energy.” Crystal paused to make sure we understood how significant that was.
“How did he do that?” I asked. “What happened?”
Crystal motioned us to come closer.
“Didn’t you hear about that body found in Art Lam’s papaya field? It was Primo.”
“That was Primo? Primo is dead?”
“Oh, the papaya field guy,” Davison exclaimed. “Molly, he’s the one you—”
Davison caught my panicked look. Fortunately, he was smart enough to catch on and change the subject.
“Yeah, I heard about it,” he mumbled.
It wasn’t common knowledge that Emma and I had discovered the body. Detective Medeiros had asked (ordered) Emma and me to keep it quiet, and we were more than happy to comply. We didn’t need the celebrity, and we didn’t want to mess up the police investigation.
“Crystal, how did you find this out? About Primo?”
How did Crystal Phoenix the yoga instructor/ personal trainer/ life coach/ masseuse/ supplement saleswoman know who the murder victim was, when Emma and I had no idea? When we were the ones who discovered the body? Some kind of researchers we were.
“The police came and talked to all of us at the studio. But they told us not to tell anyone. Molly, you can’t say anything, okay?”
“Who would do something like that? I mean, I know Art Lam is kind of a grumpy guy, but if he caught someone cutting down his trees, I think he’d just yell at them and call the police. He doesn’t seem like a—” I was going to say he doesn’t seem like a dismembering kind of guy, but I remembered just in time no one had said anything about Primo’s manner of death.
Davison was looking from Crystal to me and back to Crystal, as if he were watching a tennis match.
“Sometimes it isn’t ours to know,” Crystal said. “Some secrets belong to the Universe.”
“How horrible,” I said. “Poor guy.”
Having Primo Nordmann as a student hadn’t exactly been the highlight of my teaching career. In class, he often showed up without having done the reading, and then “made up” for it by pursuing class participation points with extra vigor. He derailed and dominated the conversation with his anti-corporate rants, which was not particularly helpful to the other students in the business planning class. Outside of class, Primo was an office-hours pest, lobbying me to convert to his all-fruit diet and trying to get my approval for a number of insane business ideas. (My favorite: smashing global capitalism by setting up an alternate worldwide supply chain for all manufactured goods.)
But even at his worst (which I’d have to say was when he filed a grievance against me for insensitively eating cheese in front of him during my office hours) I just hoped he would chill out a little and stop hectoring me. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to kill him, much less going about it so viciously.
“It’s getting late. And cold. I’m ready to go home. I have class tomorrow, and I have to finish prepping my lecture.”
I rubbed my upper arms to generate some warmth. “Davison, do you need a ride back, or...?”
“I’ll take him home,” Crystal purred.
“Great. Thanks, Crystal. Davison, I’ll let your dad know you’ll be home whenever. No rush.”