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Ray gave up on getting me to call Peggy, and we focused on lunch. “There’s a great fish taco truck over by the Pier 19 terminal,” he said, as we walked back to my Jeep.
“I thought I was supposed to be the one who knows everything about Honolulu,” I said. “You’re the mainland transplant.”
“Hey, I’ve been here three years. And despite what I said to Frankie yesterday, this place feels more like home every day.”
“What are you going to do when Julie finishes her dissertation?” I asked. It was a question I’d been wondering about but hadn’t been able to bring up before. “She going to look for a teaching job somewhere?”
By somewhere, I meant, ‘back on the mainland,’ which would mean Ray picking up and following her, as he’d done when they moved to Honolulu so she could attend UH.
“We’ve been talking about that, now that she’s getting close to finishing. And we don’t know. There aren’t a whole hell of a lot of teaching jobs these days so we may have to go wherever she gets an offer. And if we go back to the mainland it’ll be easier for Vinnie to grow up knowing his grandparents and the rest of the family.”
We climbed into the Jeep. “Moving over to the FBI might be a good deal for you,” I said. “Once you’re in with them, you could transfer to a field office wherever Julie gets a job.”
“It’s not that easy. Remember, if we’re in the JTTF we’re still working for HPD. We wouldn’t be agents.”
“I know. But if you like the work you could go to Quantico and get the training, then make a jump.”
Ray shook his head. “I’m not thinking about any of that now. I want to see what happens with Julie.”
“You’re a great husband. I don’t know that I’d be willing to follow Mike all around the country.”
“You do what you have to do,” he said.
Losing Ray as a partner wasn’t a happy thought; I spent more time with him than with Mike most days, and it was tough to find someone you could get along with as well as he and I did. I pushed the idea to the back of my mind as I made a couple of complicated turns and then pulled up in a warehouse neighborhood similar to the one off Lagoon Drive.
The sky was striated with thin cirrus clouds, the sun peeking back and forth like a kid playing hide and seek, and a fresh salty breeze blew in from the ocean. We waited in a short line at the taco truck, and when it was my turn, I stepped up and ordered my platter, and when Ray and I both had our food we walked over to a bench overlooking the water.
A family with two little kids was sitting nearby, and once again I went back to the conversations Mike and I had been having about kids. I couldn’t see why the ohana we had built wasn’t enough for him. “Did you feel something different when you first saw Vinnie?” I asked Ray.
“Different how?”
“Different from looking at other babies. Because he was yours.”
“I guess so. I mean, it’s like there’s something in the blood—I look at his little face, and I feel this overwhelming urge to protect him and nurture him.” He looked over at me. “You and Mike still haven’t made up your minds?”
I told Ray about Sandy’s offer soon after she made it. “I think it’s the other way around. We’ve both made up our minds. It’s just that we don’t agree.”
“It’s because Mike’s an only child,” he said. “I guarantee you, once he sees a baby who’s related to him, that’ll all change.”
“It’s not Mike who needs to change,” I said. “It’s me.”
He put the remains of his taco down on his plate. “You don’t want to have a kid? But I’ve seen you with your nieces and nephews. You’re great with them.”
“And I think that’s enough. Mike doesn’t.” I turned to face him. “Seriously, Ray. The kind of work we do. Don’t you worry about not being there for Vinnie? I mean, how can you make a commitment like that? You’ve been shot. If that bullet had a slightly different trajectory, you’d be dead. And that could happen to either of us any day.”
“You’re a regular Mary Sunshine, aren’t you?” Ray picked up his taco and took another bite. When he finished chewing he said, “If I really thought about all the dangers out there I’d never leave the house, and I’d never let Julie or Vinnie go out either. But you can’t think that way. Otherwise you end up living for seventy or eighty years and never taking any chances.”
I finished the last of my taco and crumpled up the plate. “We’d better get over to Fields’ house.”
As I drove, I plugged in the Bluetooth again and called Peggy Kaneahe. Fortunately for me, she was in a meeting, and I was shuttled to her paralegal, a sweet Australian woman named Sarah Byrne. “Tell her I need to talk to her about Alexander Fields. As soon as possible, please.”
“Mr. Fields? He hasn’t been active with the firm for years.”
“This is in confidence, Sarah. But did you see the reports of that warehouse fire yesterday morning out by the airport?”
“Yes. I saw the smoke on my way in to work.”
“A man was killed in the fire. Preliminary medical identification leads us to Alexander Fields. I wanted to give Peggy a heads up and see what she knows about him.”
“I’ll have her call you as soon as she gets out of her meeting. Poor Mr. Fields. I only met him a few times but he was always very gracious.”
Fields lived in a waterfront property on the other side of Diamond Head from downtown Honolulu. It was an old house in the colonial style, with a hipped roof, big windows, and a broad portico. A wrought-iron gate closed off the driveway from the street, and Ray had to ring the bell and announce himself to the woman who answered.
We drove down the macadam driveway and parked in the semi-circle in front of the portico. A diminutive twenty-something Filipina wearing a maid’s uniform answered the door. “Mr. Fields not home,” she said.
“We know,” I said. We showed her our badges and introduced ourselves. Her name was Marikit, she said, and she was Mr. Fields’ aide. “But he go out last night and not come back. I don’t know where he go.”
“Did he have a car?” I asked, as she led us into the living room, where a bank of French doors looked out on the ocean. The furniture was simple but elegant, a koa wood settee upholstered in a tropical print, with matching armchairs and a low coffee table with a couple of architecture books there.
She nodded. “Yes, but I drive him. Car still here, in back.”
“You live here?” Ray asked, as the three of us sat down.
“Yes, in small cottage in back. Mr. Fields like privacy. After I fix dinner and clean up, I go back there. If he need me, he call on cell phone.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” I asked.
“Last night, six-thirty. He like to finish dinner by Wheel of Fortune.” She pointed to the big-screen TV. “I leave him here, watching. I go back to my cottage.”
“You didn’t hear anyone come in or go out?”
She shook her head. “Mr. Fields, he still pretty sharp. He talk on telephone, he take care of himself. And he have cord around his neck, in case he fall, with a button he push to get help.”
“Alexander Fields was seen going into a warehouse near the airport with an elderly woman and two younger men. Any idea who that could be?”
She shook her head. “Widows very interested in Mr. Fields, but he not. No women come here.”
“When did you come into the house this morning?” Ray asked.
“Eight o’clock, like usual. I put on coffee and go up to Mr. Fields’ room. He not there.”
“Bed slept in?”
“No. And he always make himself cup of hot cocoa before bed, and leave mug in sink. Not there today.”
“He often go out at night and not come back?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then why didn’t you call the police?” I asked.
“Like I say, Mr. Fields very private. He not want other people know what he doing.”
There was something fishy about that statement, but I let it go. “Mr. Fields passed away last night,” I said, choosing my words carefully.
Her lip quivered and she began to cry. “Poor man. I hope he finish book. It matter so much to him.”
“Book?” Ray asked. “He was reading one? Or writing one?”
“He have man come to house, and he talk and Mr. Greg, he write down. They going to make big book.”
“Mr. Greg?” I asked. “You know his full name?”
“He leave card.” She stood up and went across to an antique roll top desk. She slid the tambour cover up and pulled out a business card. “Here,” she said, handing it to me.
The card belonged to Greg Oshiro, a local newspaper reporter I knew well. I’d have to call him—but I wanted to wait until I knew more, because anything I said to him was likely to end up in the Star-Advertiser, the result of the merger of the Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser, papers I had grown up reading around the kitchen table with my parents. I handed it back to her and said, “We’re going to have to look around.”
It was obvious to me from the way Marikit wouldn’t meet my eyes that she was hiding something. But whatever it was, we’d find it.
“Do you know how to reach Mr. Fields’ next of kin?” Ray asked.
“Yes, yes.” She went back to the desk and brought us a folder. We asked her to stay in the kitchen while we looked around, and she went in there and turned on the radio.
Alexander Fields had prepared well for his eventual demise; the folder had the contact information for his children, both of whom were on the mainland, as well as his attorney (Winston Yamato, his ex-partner, of course), and his investment broker. As a veteran, he was entitled to burial in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, commonly called Punchbowl, and he had a plot reserved next to his wife.
“I keep telling Julie we have to do this,” Ray said, looking over everything. “Just in case. My brother agreed to take Vinnie if anything happens to both of us, but we’ve got to have the papers drawn up.”
My cell phone rang; the display read Fields and Yamato. “Kanapa’aka,” I said.
“It’s Peggy. Sarah told me Alexander Fields is dead?”
“Yup. We’re going to need to talk to Winston Yamato and anyone else in the firm who dealt with Fields regularly.”
“It was a homicide?”
“They don’t call the cops out when people die of natural causes, Peggy. You know that. When can Ray and I come over?”
“I’ll need to organize things and check calendars. I’ll get back to you.”
She hung up. “Aloha to you, too,” I said to the phone.
“You were pretty snippy with her,” Ray said. “Why can’t you just be nice to the woman?”
“It’s called history.” We walked to the kitchen. It was a warm, comfortable room, lined with oak cabinets and appliances that looked like they’d been in service for years. Marikit was sitting in a cushioned chair at the plain oak table. “Have you cleaned the house yet today?” I asked.
She shook her head, and I called for a crime scene tech to come out and take fingerprints. It was unlikely that a visitor would have worn gloves, so there was a chance we could pull a print from somewhere. There were no signs of a struggle, so it appeared that if someone had taken Fields to the warehouse on Lagoon Drive, he had left his home under his own power.
The gate system didn’t track calls, so we had no idea when the car had arrived for him – sometime between seven-thirty, when Marikit last saw him, and a half-hour or so before Dakota saw him and the others at the warehouse.
Ray and I both put on gloves and he went upstairs. I looked through the rooms on the ground floor; there was no datebook with a mysterious meeting penciled in and no used coffee cup or wine glass to provide us with a DNA sample. Either Fields or Marikit was obsessively neat; everything was orderly.
I sat down at the polished dining room table, under a crystal chandelier. The koa wood breakfront behind me was tastefully stocked with Chinese export porcelain; a Hawaiian quilt, in shades of bright blue and white that matched the china, was framed under glass across from me. I opened the folder Fields had left for his children. His most recent investment statement was there, along with the deed to the house and various other legal documents.
About two thirds of the way through I hit pay dirt: the incorporation records from Samoa for Inline Imports. Fields was the sole owner of the corporation, which had been set up in 1992. There was no information, though, about what kind of material was imported.
A few pages later, I found a list of all the property Fields owned, either directly or through various corporate shells. Halfway down the page was the address of the warehouse on Lagoon Drive, which had been purchased soon after the corporation was set up.
I sat back in the high-backed wooden chair and looked out at the ocean through the lanai. Was Inline Imports a dummy corporation? There wasn’t anything else in the folder that referenced the company or any business it might have done. Had Fields had set up the company only to purchase the warehouse?
Mike had noted in his report that there had been a lot of paper stored there, in cardboard boxes. Fields had been in practice for decades, and he had many business interests. Were those boxes filled with old paper records? Or something more?
I pushed back the chair, picked up the file, and walked through the living room to the polished wood staircase, which turned on itself as I climbed to the second floor.
Ray was in Fields’ spacious bedroom, which looked out at the ocean. Through another set of French doors I saw a small balcony where a table faced the water, with a single chair. No recliner for Alexander Fields; it looked like he sat at the table and read the newspaper, or whatever else he did, with the waves as his companions. A nice life, if you can get it.
Ray stood next to a long, low bureau. A sitting Buddha anchored one end; the other end held a jewelry box full of expensive watches, gold cufflinks and pinky rings set with star sapphires, tiger’s eye and other precious stones. “Not a robbery,” he said, pointing at it. “And I found a couple of grand in hundred-dollar bills in the bottom drawer.”
“I made some progress downstairs. We won’t need those records from the Samoan Consulate after all. Turns out Alexander Fields owned Inline Imports.” I held the paper up to show Ray.
“You think he was taken there to retrieve some old records?” Ray asked. “Or something else?”
“No way of knowing yet,” I said. “Guess it’s time for us to call his kids. You want the son or the daughter?”
“I’ll take the daughter. Weeping women are more my specialty than yours.”