Captain Cooked, page 19
“How are you doing?” Michael found the wrong time to show up, just as I had exorcised his voodoo hold on me. He looked like a college student after an all-nighter frat party. So, I told him, “You look like shit.”
“The burdens of leadership.”
“A goal you sought.”
“Yes, too soon, I’m afraid. I don’t know if I can cope.”
“Of course, you can. If there is destiny, you were made for each other.” He sighed and then put a smile to his face. Michael’s smile. I would miss such simplistic sincerity in a man’s pleasant upturned mouth.
“Considering your close call last night in the harbor, escaping violent death, I assume you had other nightmares.” I caught his drift.
“My dreams did get a little wild. If I saw anything unusual last night, I put it down to bad poi I ate at the lū‘au, and a bilge load of sea water I drank in the harbor later that night. No need to bother others with my wandering imagination.”
“Poi does not usually sit well with most people from the mainland.”
“I was hoping to make it a regular staple, see the islands more. Sadly, Jeffrey Dayne is a man on a quest for insatiable foodie experiences, and I doomed to wander as his sidekick, like Sancho to Don the Q.”
Michael’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, Madison, that it did not work out between us. For a brief moment…”
“For brief moments, the island became the paradise it’s advertised as.”
“You know my new job will be all consuming pressure. And there are other responsibilities…”
“It’s okay, Michael. You have your chance to succeed; you don’t need distractions.” We were trying to be magnificent in our joint pained sacrifice. I had to give him the out, bring us back down to certain unsolved elements. So, I asked, “Where do you think Captain Jimmie is?”
Michael gazed at the horizon.
“The police believe he took his fishing boat and skipped out, maybe to Micronesia. The Coast Guard has issued an all-points alert.”
I could see in his mannerisms the revelation of his mentor’s treachery ached and tore at his feelings. It is hard to respect another when any variation of that emotion is trampled.
“I assume the lūa’u finale is still on?”
“The show must go on.” I laughed at his corporate façade going back into place and he joined in the mirth. Shortly, he departed. We would survive as friends. I could live with that, I guess. I don’t know.
Jeffrey found me spraying on my nth layer of sunscreen. I wanted to brown out the bad toxins, not immolate them.
“Two more days and we’re out of here.”
“Exactly. I’ve reached my quota on near death experiences. We are finished here.”
“Not quite. Captain Cooke tried to poison us, blew up the stage, and then wanted our snooping to stop permanently. I don’t think he was the first poisoner of Oli and he probably didn’t tip you off the ladder at Akaka Falls.
“We don’t have to solve every nuance of a crime spree, do we? Besides, you left out that he murdered Joe Coffee and Larry Tutapu.”
“Did he murder Joe Coffee?”
I stopped my lotion slathering. “What are you saying?”
“Nothing, really, except if you recall from his conversation before trying to scuttle us, he never admitted he killed Joe Coffee.”
“But he did, no one else had a motive.” I knew in an instant that was not true. Michael. Could his turmoil within surface out of control? In a rage to find a weapon, a spear close at hand, he knew where they were. And his motive? Protecting the greater corporate success of Ho‘oilina Kai Resort? Protecting someone? I hardly thought so. Definitely not guarding my virtue, as demonstrated by our awkward parting less than an hour ago. I saw my father watching my juvenile mind at work.
“No,” I said, affirming what I believed true, not facts, but as I saw it. “No, Captain Jimmie killed old Joe.”
“Okay, who fed the Jimson Weed to Oli Palalū?”
Enough already.
“Tomorrow,” I said, “let’s think about it tomorrow.”
“Yes, you need other distractions. Safer ones.”
“Yeah, like I’ve got to concentrate on shooting the last of the HDTV tonight. I’m concentrating on that job right now. Put some lotion on my back, will you.” I rolled over, undid my back strap, nestled into the beach towel draped over the chaise lounge, and let all problems outside of five feet from my repose evaporate. I closed my eyes and sought idyllic dreams where they say ‘Hawai’i is a state of mind.’
“Slather on the lotion thick,” I directed my father, hoping for a native bronze tan, not Ahi-seared tourist burn.
Jeffrey’s hands started awkward. He paused a few long seconds, then smoothed out the coconut-aloe basting lotion over my back, onto my legs, in circular motions. He went beyond mere application and returned to begin what I took as a gentle backrub. All senses melted, my eyes shut to the tenderness, right to the tingling sensation when his fingers traced down my back bone, down into my butt crack, down between―!
“Jeffrey!” We had entered a world of erotic child abuse.
“The name’s Will. Will Bonney.”
“What?” I flipped over, forgetting momentarily my suit top, going European au naturale, modesty quick to cover my breasts. “You!” The leader of the Beautiful People, rubbing me!
“Name’s Will. He did wave me over and asked me to put on the lotion.”
Jeffrey was nowhere to be seen. Damn prankster that he was.
“I guess it’s his practical joke. Hey, like ask me if I could decline? I’ve seen you around the hotel. Sorry, if I offended you.”
I shaded my eyes. Will, whatever his name, uninvited, sat down next to me. He had shaved off his little chin fuzz; either way didn’t matter to me, if I cared. Close up inspection, I guessed he might be older than I, but not by much. He towered in his Tommy Bahama bathing trunks, a chest lean more than brawny, good stomach abs. He flashed this childish grin, a full set of teeth, orthodontic perfect. Hazel brown eyes. A slight scar barely visible on his jaw; if self-conscious, a reason for not shaving? Using my Dayne powers of deductive reasoning, highly scientific by how he touched me, I guessed an unattached young man, not gay, definitely cocky and self-assured. His Beautiful People posse nowhere to be seen.
“I thought you and your friends would be out…” I caught myself before he knew I was a first-class snoop.
“Everyone got a break this morning. Some of them are power shopping. After lunch we’ll get back together. We’re finishing up a group project. Bummer to say, tomorrow is our last day on island.” His eyes did linger on mine; was there something said unsaid?
He continued, “Doing a night flight over to Maui.”
“Hiding out?”
“What?” Quizzical and startled.
“I mean, what’s on Maui to do that you can’t do here?” Jeez, did that sound like begging?
“Oh. Some of our group are registered at the Hawai‘i Writer’s Conference. It starts this week.”
“They’re writers?” Well, that confirmed my theory they were not empty-headed boobs, except maybe the blonde.
“Two are. One writes political commentary, the other, high tech espionage fiction. Quite good, light years beyond James Bond and his tricked-out Aston Martin. More like Vince Flynn or James Rollins with Matrix high-tech. As for myself, I am going to take a quiet visit to Charles Lindbergh’s grave site near Hana.” His voice serious below his smile, a bass voice, with light gravel tones, different than Michaels, but slow cadence, strong, commanding, like Michael’s. I tried not to compare and jumped into the conversation.
“He’s the one who first flew the Atlantic?” I’m no Dumbo; it was once a Jeopardy question. “I didn’t know that’s where he’s buried.” I didn’t. “For a man who saw from the air the most beautiful places in the world, it says something he chose the Hawaiian Islands to make his final landing.” I must have said something right, he actually beamed.
“Exactly.”
Freaky. He said ‘exactly’ like I do.
He continued, “I will stand there for inspiration, pay homage to the ultimate adventurer.” He looked at his watch, as did I, almost noon, and his watch very expensive, a Swiss dive watch. “I am sorry, but I have to beg off. Things to do in prep for our final… excursion. By the way, you might not wish to burn that, or I could put help put on sunscreen.”
A breast had escaped from my clutched bikini top.
A devilish smile tied to a ‘goodbye.’ He walked away.
Why did I get this feeling he did not want to go back to his friends? No, only my grasping imagination. Wait, I should be less critical of myself, accept opportunity. One door closes, another opens.
Better yet, where there’s a Will there’s a way.
After a minute, I followed him unseen into the hotel.

Chapter 38
Serious Games
I thought so. Watching him from behind a hotel pillar, I copied down as he wrote on the flip chart GPS coordinates and a small series of numbers.
N 20 08. 546’ W 155˚ 48. 077’
N 18 54. 741’ W 20˚ 05. 022’
N 155 40. 802’ W 155˚ 29. 335’
AEE-27537
He covered up his clues and started reading through notes, prepping for his meeting and the launch of their last hunt. I raced to my room to change clothes and get a head start. Finally, some fun, verve without danger. I could handle this.
Ignorance made me research this geo-caching, and lo and behold, I had been walking around with my own GPS system, my cell phone. Our hotel courtesy jeep even had a mobile GPS. They were everywhere. At a local sporting goods store I had purchased a mid-range unit and rushed through the basic manual. I hoped I could still get close enough to find at least one of their hidden containers, their cache. To the coordinates, I gathered up three trinkets I would leave behind, if I were successful. Even finding one hiding spot would achieve the surprise I envisioned.
Down the road in the hotel loaner I exceeded the speed limit, one hand looking at my GPS gadget, the other seeing if the direction would take me off the highway.
Surprising, the first coordinate location, not hours away, but just down the road. The tourist map spelled out the area: Black Sand Beach.
Satellites, something like 6 of them whizzing overhead in triangular configuration, gave me guidance to a small shopping center. After walking one way, then the other, checking the different GPS readings, I found the cache, behind a dumpster, under a moldy bag of cut grass clippings. A dark metal container, to me, it seemed like one of those old war ammunition boxes, designed I presumed to be waterproof.
Dramatic pause and sweaty hands like opening a thousand year old tomb of some exotic prince, waiting to be overwhelmed with what little trinkets they had dropped in or a clue to their master treasure.
What the—! —There were three medium-sized ziploc plastic bags of what looked like, was in fact, white powder. The game changed dramatically, if not to a dangerous round of play. It had to be drugs. I dare not open and do a finger taste. What is going on here?
I did not dwell on my discovery, caught up in the intensity of the hunt, addicted to wanting to know what was at the next site. Whether blind to sane reasoning, in turn I wanted to do some of my own serious mind blowing, so I left behind my own trinket gift. Freak on that, Will Bonney.
A mile down the road the next cache almost did me in, mentally. It had been a wicked week of murders and a killer or killers on the loose. And now this: a gun wrapped in black plastic, placed in a buried Tupperware container. Not a real gun and that really confused me. More like a pellet pistol but one I saw with small feathered darts, and a medicine bottle, like those that you stick in to give shots. Clear liquid in the bottle, no markings. I returned the found treasure to its secreted place, under a pile of lava stones, surrounded by white coral rock design, the initials not W.B. but BTK. Meant for one of the Beautiful People, I expect, one of them trained to use the medical silencer. This was getting surreal. Again, I left my teaser gift and ran to the Jeep. Time might be running out. If each team raced to one of these caches, then at the last one, they might already be there. My coordinates, with the added numbers took me down a winding street, towards the ocean, slowing to a guard gate fronting an expensive housing compound. A sign announced: Black Sand Beach Estates. Well, that was the end of this hunt. The prize lay beyond that protective barrier and I wasn’t about to go and try and lie my way past a guard taking license numbers asking visitors what their business was and their destination.
Hold on, it couldn’t be. It was worth a try and I drove up on the owner’s roadway side, to the entry pad, just like I owned the place, and punched in: SG 20-9-16 15-6. The gate swung open, the guard wiggled his hand in a shaka hang loose greeting and went back to his paperwork. He did not write down my license plate but I caught sight of the security camera on top of the guard shack that would catalogue my Jeep. Anyone in review would recognize the affixed logo of Ho‘olina Kai. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
A small street took me among multi-million dollar homes, all in turn, behind their own large protective fences, each with secured gates. I found myself heading into a cul-de-sac, one large castle styled house at the end, above the ocean breakers.
The coordinates stopped me before I would have dead-ended at the fortified gates of the castle. The cache therefore had to be nearby, and I hoped and prayed to the gods, not hidden over a fence, or in someone’s yard, someone who might have snarling dogs, exactly the growls I heard close by. Okay, start looking. They tell you to look for worn signs of where people have beaten a footpath to the cache. No past visitors here. This game was a one-timer, and for what purpose I could not fathom. Drugs and a dart gun? Were the other Beautiful People in the medical profession, something to do with, maybe, animals? Maybe these people were kinky, paintball type shoot ’em ups, snorting cocaine, and tranquilizing each other. Nothing seemed to be rationale in explanation. I grew frustrated. I had failed to find the last cache.
To divert suspicion of my search I had raised the Jeep’s hood and every once in a while glanced in. Anybody seeing me might believe I had lost an automotive part. Time must have run out. They would drive in and discover me, and what circumstances would occur I dare not start thinking up my imaginary scenarios. I am dealing with reality, crazy as it gets. I raised my eyes to the heavens for divine guidance. Damn. I should have looked up to begin with. There was the last box, well hidden among branches of a bush on the artsy lattice work of a stone wall. The box, in descript, the size of a large soap dish. Inside, what apparently looked like a garage door opener. In fact, it was a garage door opener. Worse than the two previous cache revelations, the thought struck me that over in the Middle East, extremist bombers used cell phone and garage door signals to detonate road side bombs. A bomb? Not again. Three bomb incidents in a single span of island time. Not coincidence but a curse laid on heavy. I now had to think the impossibility as plausible: Will Bonney, the assassin, poised to blow up some famous person or a dignitary? And this is his idea of simple contract hit?
For some time, I held the device in my hand hoping Will Bonney and friends would show up, and I could confront them, and demand an explanation, even on threat of my own life. The street, except for barking dogs, retained a landscaped emptiness. I studied the shrubbery near me and saw no clue to a buried depository of high explosives. Women do this, damn us. I had to know. I climbed back in the Jeep and for protection, ever the stupid-ass, even fastened my seat belt. Ducking down beneath the Jeep’s dashboard, holding the opener above my head, I pushed the button.
No explosion. I raised my head and looked around. At the far end of the cul-de-sac, the large metal gate started to swing slowly open. Oh, my gosh. I had the presence of mind, pleased at having avoided being blown up (for the third time), and jumped from the Jeep and stuck my head under the hood. Two armed guards, one with a barking, snapping German Shepherd, came carefully to the open gate, hands on holsters. I kept my head down, faked some sparkplug fiddling, then went back behind the wheel, and after several dramatic exaggerated efforts started my Jeep. As the gate automatically swung slowly closed, they returned inside the compound, inspecting the gate mechanisms for further malfunctions, then resumed their patrol.
With great forethought, I had considered what this last gotcha joke would be. My initial prank was a Ho‘oilina Kai room card key; make them go around and try to find the right room and guess why it belonged to a large family staying at the hotel, the card key I found dropped by one of the children. No, I changed my mind. My new idea popped forth; I rummaged through my purse and found what I was looking for. Whatever they were up to, next to a garage door opener to find the business card of Detective Kee of The Big Island Police Department ought to rank as one of the greatest of the ‘Okole squeezers.’
Something had gone wrong. When I returned to the hotel, in a hurry to change for the ending festivities of the Lū‘au Challenge, there sat the Beautiful People, in cocktail mode, talking quietly. They had not gone off geo-caching. They would not get the shocks of a lifetime. Besides, by the time I entered the lobby, and saw them, my analysis of my own geo-caching discoveries led to the conclusion these people were up to no good. And they might not be as ‘beautiful’ as they presented themselves to the world. Damn, but if Will Bonney didn’t see me and wave, and all the others of his party turned their heads to see where his eyes led, and all smiled as if to extend friendship. Damn them. I fled to my room.
