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Greg Oshiro called again as we were driving back to headquarters. “Sorry I missed your call yesterday,” I said. “Trying to juggle two cases at once.”
“Bernice Fong?” he asked.
“Yeah. You know her?”
“I spoke to her Tuesday morning,” he said. “She was frightened.”
“We need to talk, brah. Where can we meet?”
“I’m getting ready to go to lunch. I have to do an interview over at the Aloha Tower Marketplace afterwards. Want to meet at the Hi Town Café?”
“We can be there in about ten minutes.”
After Diamond Head, the Aloha Tower is Honolulu’s most recognized landmark, built in the 1920s to welcome cruise ship passengers. Now it’s the control tower for the port, and also houses a cluster of shops. I parked in the garage and got to the café a few minutes before Greg, giving Ray and me the chance to order our paninis and sodas, then stake out a table outside.
Greg arrived just as we were settling down. He looked like he might be losing some weight—probably all that chasing around after his two little girls. Or maybe Anna was controlling his diet better than he ever did.
He went inside and ordered his own food. When he brought his tray out to us, I gave him a couple of minutes to eat before I asked, “So. You spoke to Bernice Fong yesterday?”
He nodded. “She called me at the paper Tuesday morning. Said that Alexander Fields had told her I was working on a book with him, and she wanted me to come out to her house and talk to her.”
“She give you any reason?”
“Not at the time. But I figured she might be good for a human interest story so I drove over there. She was nervous about something, but she wouldn’t say what at first.”
He took another bite of his panini. When he finished chewing, he said, “She kept asking me if Fields had told me anything about the 1950s.”
“What did you say?” Ray asked.
“I told her Fields had told me he had done some things in the past that he wanted to atone for, but that he’d never been specific. Which was the truth.”
“How did you leave it with her?” I asked.
“She never told me exactly what she was worried about. I asked if I could interview her for the paper and she put me off. I was irritated about the waste of time but what could I do? She was ninety years old or something. Not like I could pressure her.” He looked from me to Ray. “Her death is connected to Fields’ murder, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “We’re just not sure how.”
“By something that happened back in the fifties?”
“Off the record until we give you the go-ahead?” I asked.
“If it has to be.”
“Go back through the archives and look for articles about the death of a Senator from the mainland named James LeJeune,” I said. “He was killed in a brothel in Chinatown and I think Fields was involved somehow, along with Bernice Fong and her husband.”
“You think that’s the thing Fields wanted to atone for?”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Ray asked. “He never talked about it?”
Greg shook his head. “I’d have to go back through my notes, but I don’t remember anything. And I think I’d recall the murder of a big-time politician.”
Greg left a few minutes later for his interview, and Ray and I stayed on in the sun, sipping our lemonade. “Let’s see if we can put a timeline together,” I said. “Fields is writing his memoir, and he wants to come clean about Senator LeJeune’s death. He tells Bernice Fong.”
“Why?” Ray asked.
“Either she was involved, and he wants to warn her. Or the Judge was, and he wants to let her know before he goes public.”
“I’ll give you that,” Ray said. “You think Fields told Gardiner, too?”
I opened the netbook and checked the dates. “Gardiner said he went to see Bernice Fong on Sunday the sixth.So even if Fields didn’t tell him, Bernice must have.” I started taking notes. “Pika and Taki picked him up the next day in the limo. Bernice Fong was with them. They went to the warehouse, where Fields was shot and the building was torched.”
“Bernice Fong was worried,” Ray continued. “She called Greg Oshiro to ask what he knew. You think she called Gardiner again?”
“Has to be. He must have decided she was a liability, and he sent Pika and Taki to kill her.”
“Or went with them and killed her himself,” Ray said. “Gardiner could have been at the warehouse, too.”
“Dakota only saw the two bodybuilders and the old man and old woman,” I said, typing away. “But that doesn’t mean that Gardiner wasn’t with them. Just that Dakota didn’t see him.”
“Motive, means and opportunity,” Ray said. He held up his index finger. “What’s Gardiner’s motive? He didn’t commit the murder. He was like, what, sixteen years old?”
“Protecting his father’s name?” I asked.
“Really? Kill two elderly people you’ve known all your life, just to protect the reputation of your dead father?”
I shrugged. “I’ve heard of worse motives. And you saw that huge portrait of Emile Gardiner in the reception area. Andy Gardiner’s a loser.”
“Let’s say you’ve got motive, though I’m not sure about it. How about means?”
“Taki and Pika,” I said. “They’re thugs with minor beefs. According to the receptionist, Gardiner knew Pika, because he was their driver when they went out.”
Ray frowned. “I give you that he knew them. But it’s a big jump from having a guy drive you around to bars to hiring him to kill for you.”
“We don’t know that he had Pika or Taki kill for him. He could have done the killing himself.”
“Again, you’re stretching credibility here. He’s a seventy-year-old guy who has nothing more on his record than a DUI. Suddenly he’s turned into a stone cold killer?”
“You’re harshing my mellow,” I said.
“Somebody’s got to keep you on track. If I give you motive and means, we’ve still got opportunity.”
“That’s the easy one,” I said. “Bernice made him some dumplings to get him over to her house. Then she told him that Fields was going to spill the beans.”
“Speculation. We don’t know that.”
“Fine. You call the shots, then. What do we do next?”
“We find Pika Campbell and Takvor Soralian.” Ray picked up his cell and asked me for the number for Royal Rides. I gave it to him, and he dialed. “Yo, how ya doin?” he said, in what sounded like almost a parody of a Philadelphia accent, though I had a feeling it was close to his native language. “I’m looking to hire a limo to take me around the island and my buddy told me youse guys are great.”
He listened for a minute. “Yeah, my buddy told me to ask for a guy named Peeky?” More listening. “Yeah, tomorrow works. My hotel? The Moana Surfrider. You just have him ask for Vinnie. They know me there.”
He ended the call. “Nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“You do that well,” I said.
“If my father heard me talking like that he’d knock me one. He worked hard to lose his accent and he wouldn’t let any of us use bad grammar.”
When we got back to headquarters Lieutenant Sampson motioned us to his office. “Sit,” he said, and pointed at the chairs. I was tempted to put my paws up like Roby, but Ray caught my eye.
“You’ve been out exercising your usual tact and diplomacy, I understand.”
Great. Andy Gardiner had made good on his threat to call the chief of police, and the shit had rolled downhill, first to Sampson, and now to us. I was about to argue when he shook his head and said, “She saw you pocket your wedding band, you know.”
“Huh?” I said.
“Not you, Kanapa’aka. Your partner. The one who’s supposed to play by the rules and keep you in line.”
“Harmless flirtation,” Ray said. “And she told us what Gardiner wouldn’t.”
“And then she told the boss, who is encouraging her to file a sexual harassment complaint.” He crossed his arms over his chest, encased in a light blue polo shirt without any adornment. “I’m assuming the information you got was necessary?”
“Dakota identified one of the guys who drove Alexander Fields to the warehouse where he was killed,” I said. “A body-builder named Pika Campbell. Brittany confirmed to Ray that Pika had driven her and Andre Gardiner in his limousine in the past.”
“Did Dakota ID Gardiner as well?”
I shook my head. “He only saw two bodybuilders, Alexander Fields, and an elderly woman we believe was Bernice Fong.”
“So what kind of case are you trying to make?” Sampson asked.
Ray stepped in. It was his ass on the line, for a change. “We believe that Gardiner hired Pika Campbell and his friend Takvor Soralian to drive Fields and Mrs. Fong to the warehouse. We needed to make sure Gardiner had contact with the limo company and with Campbell as a driver. Because he knew both the victim and the man who drove the victim to his death, we have reason to suspect that Gardiner is connected to the case.”
Sampson nodded. “Andre Gardiner has powerful friends, as I’m sure he told you when you visited him. You’d better know what you’re doing if you’re going to accuse him of anything.”
He nodded toward the door. “Go.”
We went. “That was a refreshing change,” I said, when we were back at our desks. “For once I’m not the one in trouble. Maybe I’m maturing after all.”
“Doubtful,” Ray said. “Gardiner’s smart. He knew that if he complained about the way you treated him he’d be putting himself on the line. So he shifted the complaint to Brittany.”
“Sampson’s right, though. If we’re going after Gardiner we’d better have a fourteen-carat case.”
We went back to Andre Gardiner’s file. Without a subpoena we couldn’t access his bank or phone records, and we didn’t have enough evidence to convince a judge to grant one. “Look at this,” I said. “Gardiner has a concealed weapons permit for a nine-millimeter handgun. That matches the kind of gun used to kill both Fields and Bernice Fong.”
“He’s too smart to use his own gun,” Ray said.
“Could have been unplanned,” I said. “Maybe he was taking Fields to the warehouse, and then Fields started arguing and Gardiner shot him.”
“This trip to the warehouse,” Ray said. “What do you think Fields had there?”
“Something that tied Gardiner’s father to the murder?” I asked.
“But what?”
“I have no idea.” I looked at the clock. “We’ve put enough overtime into this case. I’m going to cut out early and stop by Punahou. I want to talk to someone about Dakota.”
“All right. I’ll hang here with my thinking cap on.”
As I drove up to Punahou, I tried to shift my thoughts away from murder and on to Dakota. The school was founded in 1841 to educate the children of Congregational missionaries, and had been teaching the movers and shakers of Honolulu—as well as members of the hoi polloi like me—ever since. It was one of the oldest and largest private schools in the country, with an endowment that matched many colleges, and a board of trustees that included alumni and community leaders, including my good friend Terri Clark Gonsalves.
I couldn’t shift my thoughts away from Andy Gardiner, though. When I got to Punahou I identified myself to the security guard and found my way to the library, where I pulled down the yearbooks for the years Gardiner had been there. He had been a popular, academically gifted kid and played multiple sports. He was the president of his junior class. But by the end of his senior year, he had dropped most of his activities, and he no longer made the Dean’s List.
That was curious, I thought. Senator LeJeune had been killed in January of 1959, just as Andy Gardiner had been in the middle of his senior year. Had something his father did knocked him off the tracks? Suppose he had found out about his father’s role in the Senator’s death, and that caused him to rebel?