| |
The next morning neither of us brought up what we’d talked about the night before. I think we were both were getting accustomed to the idea before we jumped into all the specifics.
We left Dakota at the house with strict instructions. He was to look after Roby, taking him out for a walk in the middle of the day, and he was to study at least one chapter of science and one of math. He could watch anything he wanted on TV.
Both Mike and I worked on laptops which we carried to work with us, so there was no computer for him to waste time with. We trusted him; there wasn’t much in the house worth stealing, and besides, Dakota knew that if we’d tracked him down once we could do it again.
As I pulled into the garage next to headquarters, I got a call from Lieutenant Sampson. “I’m on my way in,” I said.
“Cancel that. There’s a disturbance between members of the Fields family at the Kawaiaha’o Church. You and Donne need to get over there pronto.”
The Kawaiaha’o Church is the oldest on O’ahu, dating back over 250 years. Built of slabs of coral rock, it has seen the baptisms, weddings and funerals of Honolulu’s elite since then. It wasn’t a surprise that the services for Alexander Fields would be held there. But it was only seven-thirty in the morning. What had dragged them all out so early?
We’d been planning to attend the funeral at eleven, and Ray had already arranged to talk to Stephanie Cornell after the service. I figured I’d catch Shepard Fields on the fly.
I made a U-turn in the garage, and while I waited for the exit gate I called Ray. “Yeah, I spoke to Sampson. I’m a few blocks away from there now.”
“He say what kind of disturbance?”
“No idea. Maybe Fields has risen from his coffin like a vampire.”
“Well, he was an attorney.”
It took me a few minutes to find a parking spot in a garage on South King Street and hurry over to the church. A squad car was parked in front, its blue lights flashing, and a uniformed officer stood in the doorway of the church.
Ray was inside the sanctuary, talking quietly to a short, middle-aged woman with pronounced Japanese features, wearing a severe black suit and sensible black pumps. Two Japanese men and an older haole woman stood just to the side.
The royal pews were on either side of where they stood, marked with four feather staffs, called kahili, symbols of royal rank. Hawaiian kings and queens once sat there; now the church was a mainstay of a different kind of royalty, the economic elite of the islands.
My first visit to the church was on an elementary school field trip decades before, when we learned about the history of the building, and the portraits of the Ali’i, or Hawaiian royalty, that lined the walls of the upper level. Since then I’d been back for Terri Clark’s wedding, her husband’s funeral, and a few other ceremonies.
Ray saw me and nodded toward a tall, patrician man with sandy blond hair who looked a great deal like the portraits of Fields I’d seen, with a touch of his Japanese mother. He was standing on the other side of the sanctuary with a group of other men.
I crossed the floor to him. “You must be Shepard Fields,” I said, sticking my hand out to “I’m Detective Kanapa’aka.”
“I hope you’re here to arrest my sister.”
I nodded my head toward the other group. “I take it that’s her?”
“Shepard and his sister don’t get along,” the man with Fields said. He offered his hand. “I’m Tim O’Donnell, Shepard’s partner.”
O’Donnell was short and dark-haired, an ethnic mix like me and Fields, with smooth skin and an epicanthic fold over his eyes.
“What happened this morning?” I asked him, after I shook his hand.
“My bitch sister—” Shepard began.
Tim interrupted him. “I’ll explain. You take another Valium.”
Shepard glared at him, but turned aside and pulled a pill bottle from his jacket pocket.
“The funeral director arranged a private viewing for us this morning,” Tim said. “What he neglected to mention was that he had also arranged for Stephanie to see her father at the same time. She and Shepard started to argue.”
“And the police?”
“The funeral director got worried and called 911. But nothing would have happened.”
I looked over to where Ray stood with Stephanie. She was glaring in her brother’s direction, and he was returning her scowl.
“Anything in particular they were arguing about?”
Tim shrugged. “The same things they’ve been arguing about since they were kids. Who got special treatment, which one was the most spoiled. That kind of thing.”
I lowered my voice. “Any accusations of murder?”
Tim wouldn’t meet my gaze. “They’re both very upset.”
A portly man in a dark suit approached us. “If you’d like to finish your visitation?” he asked.
“Yes, let’s,” Tim said. He took Shepard’s hand, and they followed the funeral director.
I stepped over to two men who had been hovering behind Shepard and Tim. One looked about Shepard Fields’ age, fifty-three, while the other was fifteen or twenty years older. I introduced myself. “Friends of Shepard’s?”
“Longtime,” the younger man said. He was well-fed and prosperous, the kind of man who exemplifies the business elite of Honolulu. “From when we were keikis.” He held out his hand. “Eliseo Gomez.”
I knew the name; he was a defense attorney in Honolulu, specializing in personal injury. He advertised his services on taxicabs and bus benches.
“What happened this morning?” I asked.
“Shepard and Stephanie,” Gomez said. “Like oil and vinegar.”
“More like dynamite and a fuse,” the older man said. His name was Andy Gardiner, and he had the red-veined nose and flushed complexion of a man who drank too much. He was a hapa-haole, like so many people in the case, though it looked like he had some Tahitian in him. “Shep and Sluttany haven’t gotten along since they were kids.”
“Sluttany?”
“His nickname for her. She was pretty easy with her virtue, even for the times.”
“She looks good now, though,” Gomez said. “And isn’t that Lee Poe with her?”
I looked back at Stephanie and her boyfriend. Lee Poe looked the most Hawaiian of anyone in the room, with dark hair and broad shoulders that reminded me of my brother Haoa.
But Ray was handling Stephanie and Lee. I turned back to Gomez and Gardiner. “What did Shepard think of his father?” I asked.
“Idolized him,” Eliseo said. “But wouldn’t admit it.”
“His father didn’t approve of Shep’s ‘lifestyle,’” Andy said, wagging his fingers. “He was always his mother’s favorite when he was a kid, and Stephanie was always able to wind the old man around her little finger. That used to drive Shep crazy.”
“Crazy enough to do something?” I asked.
Both of them looked at me. “You think Shep killed his father?” Andy asked. “He wasn’t even here.”
“You grow up rich, you get accustomed to hiring people to do things for you,” I said.
“Of course,” Andy drawled. “I have an upstairs maid, a downstairs maid, and a third one just to wipe my ass for me.”
“Shut up, Andy,” Eliseo said. “Shep isn’t like that. He’s a nice guy. He just has a blind spot about his sister.” His cell phone buzzed and he stepped away to take the call, and Andy turned away from me.
I walked back across the sanctuary to where Ray stood with Stephanie Cornell and Lee Poe. Ray introduced me.
“I see you’ve been talking to the cabal,” she said. She nodded across the way toward her brother’s friends. “Do they share my brother’s opinion, that I had Daddy killed to satisfy my lust for money and power?”
“I didn’t talk to them about you,” I said. “But is that what they would have said?”
“Shep and Eliseo have been thick as thieves since they were teenagers,” she said. “They covered up for each other no matter what happened. Andy Gardiner may be a senior citizen by now, but he’s just as juvenile as they are. If you’re looking for suspects, I’d check them out.”
Lee put his hand on her arm. “Let’s not start accusing anybody. That’s how things got out of hand this morning.”
The portly funeral director returned. “Your brother and his partner have left the chapel,” he said. “If you’d like to go back there you can.”
“Thank you. I’d like that,” Stephanie said. She took Lee’s hand, and the clutch of people with them followed as they walked toward the front of the church.
“Distant relatives,” Ray said as they walked away. “Seems like the family is siding with her.”
I shook my head. “I got lucky with my brothers. We fought like crazy when I was a kid, and the two of them picked on me something fierce. But now? We’d do anything for each other.”
“My family’s like that, too,” Ray said. “All except for my brother Paul. He gave up on the rest of us years ago.”
“Really? Why?”
Ray shrugged. “Who knows? We’re a big, rowdy, Italian family. We yell at each other and get our feelings out, and then we hug and kiss and drink wine. Paul took every little slight to heart, and as soon as he could get out of the house he took off and never looked back.”
“Where is he now?”
“Nobody knows. Someday we’ll have to track him down, when Mom or Pop goes. But for now we leave him alone.”
“What kind of vibe did you get from Stephanie? You think she could be behind this?”
He shook his head. “She seemed pretty broken up.”
“Shepard’s friends said she was Daddy’s little girl, and that the mother favored him. I don’t see how parents can do that.”
“Just look at them,” Ray said. “Stephanie takes after her mother, and Shepard after his father. Of course the parent is going to go for the kid who looks like the person they fell in love with.”
“You think?”
He shrugged. “That’s what my college professors would say. Some kind of transference, I think.”
My oldest brother Lui looks the most Japanese of the three of us; Haoa is the most Hawaiian, and I inherited the most haole genes. But our parents hadn’t favored one of us over the other, and certainly not in the way that Mr. and Mrs. Fields had. Bad parenting was never an excuse for murder. But I couldn’t help feeling that family dynamics had something do with Fields’ death.