Kula (Surfing Detective Mystery Series) Read online

  “Almost two days have gone by?” I was stunned he’d waited so long to tell me. “You must have called HPD?”

  The gold dealer stopped directly in front of me, blocking the sun. “I’m a very public man, Mr. Cooke, and my reputation is essential to my business. My radio audience must have complete confidence in me or my business will wane. And as you can probably imagine, with a place like this,” he gestured to his sprawling mansion, “I have to keep the money rolling in. No, I don’t intend to call the police.”

  Not even to save his own daughter?

  “I’m giving you a new case. Lehua has been kidnapped. That you found Kula so quickly makes me confident that you can also find her.”

  “You’re sure someone has abducted her—she’s not just gone AWOL like a typical teenager?” I asked. “Have you checked with her friends?”

  “I can assure you, I have called all of her friends, including the few boys she has dated. She is with none of them. Her Mini was towed early Saturday morning. It had been illegally parked on Wilder Avenue.”

  “How do you know she was kidnapped?”

  “The same man who abducted my wife and her dog has now taken my daughter.”

  “Do you mean the prowler, sir? Has he contacted you?”

  Buckingham ran his fingers though the red roots of his black hair. “There is more I have to tell you . . .”

  twenty-five

  “About twenty-five years ago,” began Buckingham, “down in Australia, there was a bloke named Abe Scanlon, a con man who ran a rather successful Ponzi scheme—desert land in the outback. He sold the worthless land to city dwellers who never bothered to inspect their investments. Abe promised them income each month from rent.” Buckingham cleared his throat. “He got them their money—by luring in new investors. Meanwhile he was skimming off the top for himself.”

  “Abe Scanlon is the prowler?” I tried to make a connection to his daughter’s disappearance. And maybe his wife’s.

  “I’ll get to that.” Buckingham sat across from me. He put his hands together against his chin, as if in prayer.

  “He has something to do with it, then?” I pulled out my pad and pen.

  “I can assure you . . .” Buckingham looked at me with his pale blue eyes. “He does.”

  I wrote down the name: Abe Scanlon.

  “Abe wasn’t much of a front man, you see,” the gold dealer continued. “He had the face of a mule, thinning hair, and his voice was shrill as a bird. But then I came along. My name was Billy Brighton then.”

  I wrote below Scanlon’s name: Billy Brighton.

  “I was young then.” Buckingham smiled. “Handsome, if I do say so myself. Red-headed, rough, and ready for anything. I had trained to be an actor in Sydney, then when things didn’t work out in that line I took to the sea. I sailed the world. It was a tough life. I survived a few brawls in faraway ports. It was every bloke for himself. And some didn’t survive. Luckily I was good with my hands . . .”

  “You had to kill to survive?” I looked again at his hands and the gold rings that adorned them. Neither those rings nor the walnut-sized diamond perched on one of them could conceal the hugeness of his hands. Recalling his vice-like grip I concluded he could snap a man’s or woman’s neck with the ease of a nutcracker.

  “I would never admit to that.” Buckingham glanced at the faded quilts on the wall behind us. “Anyway, we’re getting a bit off course.”

  “Not a problem.” I looked at my pad. Two names so far: Abe Scanlon. Billy Brighton.

  “Main thing, I had what Abe didn’t. A voice. A handshake. A physical presence. I could inspire confidence. He saw my potential. I could make him money. Lots of money.”

  “So Scanlon hired you?”

  “Of course. He wasn’t stupid.” Buckingham ran his fingers through his hair again. “With me aboard, Abe’s business flourished. He paid me well enough for an apprentice, but I couldn’t help seeing the torrent of cash flowing into his pockets. And I couldn’t help seeing his glamorous wife—who later became my wife.”

  “Cheyenne Sin?”

  He nodded. “She was a fashion model—far younger than Scanlon. Cheyenne was in her twenties like me and regretted marrying old Abe for his money.”

  “So that’s how the two of you hooked up?”

  “We were instantly attracted. She was a beautiful woman. Still is. But something else bonded us.”

  “And that was?”

  “Scanlon’s Ponzi scheme fell apart. The pool of gullible investors shrank. Rent payments dried up. Scanlon danced around the problem by relying on me, but investors complained. Some sued.”

  “Bad news.”

  “I saw what was coming and convinced Cheyenne to come with me to New Zealand. We took what assets we could, anything that wasn’t bolted down.”

  “I bet Scanlon didn’t like that.”

  “It was too late for him, mate. He got arrested.”

  “And you and Cheyenne took off?”

  “We felt the heat, I’ll tell you. So we bought a sloop and sailed to Bora Bora. We lived there unnoticed for awhile, but hardly in the style Cheyenne was accustomed to.”

  “So you moved again?”

  “When Scanlon was convicted and thrown in prison in New South Wales, we rechristened our sloop Golden Hinde and sailed to Honolulu. I changed my name, for obvious reasons, from Billy Brighton to Barry Buckingham. I colored my hair. I took to wearing three-piece suits. A sort of makeover.”

  “Sort of.” He made it sound like a small thing—changing his identity and appearance to evade the law.

  “In Honolulu I went into the precious metals business, where my acting skills helped me launch my radio program, Gold Standard.”

  “And that’s how you bought this place?” I gestured to the sunken living room, one of countless rooms in his hilltop estate.

  Buckingham flashed a self-satisfied smile. “It was amazing how quickly it happened.”

  “An overnight success?”

  “You could say that. We needed lots of cash. Wonderview didn’t come cheap. And then Cheyenne gave birth to our daughter, Lehua, and suddenly we were a family.”

  “So what about Abe Scanlon?” I asked. “Is he still in jail.”

  Buckingham arched his brows. “Afraid not. That’s why I’m telling you this. It may sound strange to you, but . . . “

  “No, sir. Continue.” His story did sound strange, but I wasn’t about to agree with him.

  “Back in New South Wales, after serving twenty years for fraud and tax evasion, Abe got paroled. The poor man had lost everything—his fortune, his work, his wife. He’d become a bitter old man. And he blamed me, of course.”

  I was about to say, “I can see why.” But kept it to myself.

  “Once Abe was released from prison, his only thought was to find me and my wife and make us pay. In my view, he has only himself to blame. But that didn’t stop him.”

  “So he’s here? Scanlon is in Hawai‘i?”

  Buckingham returned to his prayerful pose. “Unfortunately yes.”

  “Not good.” I raised my own brows.

  “Abe searched the Pacific Islands for Cheyenne and me with no luck, until one day during a stopover in Honolulu he heard my voice on the radio. He dialed the number I gave on the air and threatened to turn us in to Australian authorities.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “Exactly. He had argued in court that Cheyenne and I were equally to blame, but since we disappeared, they had only Abe to try.”

  “Has he made any attempt on your life?”

  “Murder wouldn’t have accomplished what Abe wanted: to take my life apart piece by piece.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “If Abe kills me, he gets nothing. He can’t milk me dry unless I’m alive. Don’t you see?”

  It was my turn to nod.

  “But Abe’s demands for cash got out of hand—beyond my ability to pay. That’s when Cheyenne disappeared. Then Kula. And now Lehua. So yo
u see, Mr. Cooke, he’s behind all my misfortunes.”

  “And you’re sure he’s turned from blackmailer to kidnapper?”

  “No doubt.” Buckingham pulled out a handwritten note:

  Do not doubt my resolve, Billy. If you want to see your daughter alive again, put fifty thousand in cash into a briefcase and await further instructions.

  Your old partner

  “Has he given you the instructions?”

  “This evening at midnight. Sand Island,” Buckingham explained. “He wants me to stop at the chained gate leading to the park. I’m to come alone.”

  “You should definitely not go alone, sir. You don’t want to jeopardize Lehua’s life. . . . or yours. I’ll go with you.”

  Buckingham sighed. “Fine,” he said. “Meet me back here at eleven. Do you have a gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bring it.

  twenty-six

  I re-crossed Tantalus Drive that Sunday morning wishing I had never set foot in Wonderview. I’ve had my share of sleazy clients, and the smooth-talking gold dealer was quickly rising to the top of the list. But I feared for his daughter, who had nothing to do with her father’s crooked past. And I wondered why there was no ransom note for his wife—if Scanlon had in fact abducted her. And why Kula had ended up on Maui.

  Walking to my Impala, I saw Mrs. Gum standing at her mailbox. Her silver hair was shining in the morning sun like the figurine on Buckingham’s Rolls.

  “Good morning, Mr. Cooke,” said the widow.

  “Ho, you have one excellent memory, Mrs. Gum! You remembah my name.” I tucked in my aloha shirt which had come loose after sitting with Buckingham

  “I remembah ‘cause I need to tell you how he did ‘em.”

  “How who did what?”

  “How Mr. Buckingham make his wife.”

  “How did he do ‘em, Mrs. Gum?” I played along, but by now was almost ready to believe her.

  “He wen’ strangle her an’ den dump her body into da ocean from his sailboat. Das why da police no can fine her. Da sharks eat her.”

  “So why Mr. Buckingham want to make his wife?”

  “To collect her life insurance. He wen’ sell her Bentley car only two weeks aftah she disappear. Dat doan tell you somet’ing?”

  “Maybe he need da money.”

  “Of course. Dey argue ovah money all da time. Das why he make her.”

  I thanked Mrs. Gum for her help and wondered about her sanity. And mine. I had agreed to meet another shady character in some deserted spot in the middle of the night. The repercussions of my last meeting were still haunting me—in the form of Detective Frank Fernandez, who seemed way too eager to put me behind bars.

  * * *

  Winding down Tantalus Drive, I passed the street where Dr. Carreras had lived before his vintage Porsche flew off the road into a tree. I remembered his calling Buckingham a fraud and then promising to tell me things that would make me want to drop him as a client. After the gold dealer’s recital about his past, and Mrs. Gum’s repeated allegations of murder, I found myself wishing, now even more, to know what Dr. Carreras might have said.

  I looked down to the ocean. Off in the distance a south swell was steaming in at Ala Moana “Bowls.” Later the crowds would be out. But in the morning, even on a Sunday, a persistent surfer can usually find an open wave.

  That decided it. My nine-six riding beside me in the car, I aimed down the hill to Ala Moana Beach Park, slipped off my khakis down to my board shorts, and paddled out. The south swell was kicking up into a nice hollow left, the way they sometimes do in summer. The waves were shoulder high and rising. But was I wrong about the crowds! Surf city.

  I didn’t wait long. A set of three good ones popped up on the horizon. The first one came and was packed with riders. I let it go by. The second one was packed too. By the third wave the crowd thinned. I caught it. The green wall swept left and peaked. I stepped to the nose, crouched, and set my arms wide. I was flying, brah. Flying. The world suddenly contracted into that single moment. I thought of nothing but the wave . . . the ride.

  Surfing has a way of easing my cares, of leaving them back on shore where they belong. But I didn’t entirely forget the case. In the lull between sets I thought about Barry Buckingham (a.k.a. Billy Brighton) and his missing dog and daughter and wife. I thought about his blackmailer—Abe Scanlon. And I thought about tonight’s handoff at Sand Island.

  Kidnapping doesn’t leave many options. The ace up the sleeve is always the hostage. The kidnapper can threaten to harm unless conditions are met. Usually a ransom. Even meeting his conditions doesn’t guarantee the hostage’s safe return. I hoped the smooth-talking Buckingham could talk his way through this one. But if he couldn’t, I’d better have a backup plan.

  * * *

  Later that day I picked up Maile at the airport. It kills me how airlines announce arrival times in hours and minutes, like 12:05 and 10:13. As if the schedule is so precise you could set your watch by it. I have never known an airplane to arrive exactly on time. But so as not to stand her up, I pulled into Honolulu International well before 2:04 that Sunday afternoon. Because of the beefed-up security after 9/11, I had to wait in the windowless cellar of baggage claim. No food. No shops. No amenities except rest rooms. Just when you thought air travel couldn’t get worse, it did. Mercifully, Maile’s flight from Salt Lake City via San Francisco had caught a tailwind and was early.

  Arriving passengers began making their way down an escalator and through sliding glass doors that led to baggage claim. I watched bedraggled adults and half as many boisterous kids stream in, keeping an eye out for Maile. Before long she stepped through the doors in denims and a peach-colored T-shirt that said “Best Friends,” beneath the likeness of a doe-eyed puppy. Even at a distance I could see an aura around Maile. I found myself wondering why I’d ever lost touch with her.

  “Kai!” Maile hugged me. “Thanks for coming.”

  Her sweet scent reminded me of Mrs. Fujiyama’s lei. Lei! What an idiot! I’d forgotten one for Maile. But she didn’t seem to notice. She hugged me like the old friends we were, rather than like a fellow detective. That was all right with me.

  “So when do we go out and celebrate?” Maile asked.

  “Well . . .” I said sheepishly. “I have a favor to ask.”

  “What’s the favor?” Maile looked curious.

  “I found Kula,” I tried to explain. “Yes I did. Thanks to you . . .”

  “That’s fantastic, Kai,” she said. “But you told me already on the phone . . . Remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember. But what I forgot to tell you is . . .”

  I was interrupted by an airline announcement: “Passengers on flight ninety-three from San Francisco can claim their baggage on carousel H-four. Please note that many bags look alike . . .”

  “You forgot to tell me what?” Maile looked puzzled as passengers swarmed the carousel behind us. A red light flashed, a foghorn-like beeper sounded, and the carousel clattered into operation. We turned and watched the first pieces of luggage bounce down and start their slow circular journey.

  “I found Kula, but . . .” I struggled on, “I didn’t bring him home.”

  “Why not?” Her brows knit.

  “Kula’s on Maui. He was stolen, just as you predicted. Then sold to a woman who owns an oceanfront place in Lahaina. I went there, cased out the property, and spotted Kula. But I couldn’t see how to take him without setting off alarm bells. I didn’t want to botch the job, so . . .”

  “So what?” She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Truth is, Maile, I need a pet recovery expert. What do you say?”

  Maile didn’t miss a beat. “When do we go to Maui?”

  “Then you’ll do it?”

  “No problem.” She put her hands on her hips in mock gesture. “But you’re still going to take me out to celebrate, right?”

  “Definitely. How about tonight?” Then I remembered my date with Madison.

  “Uh .
. .” she hesitated. “Let’s wait till we bring Kula home. Anyway, I haven’t seen my cats for days. I better go spend some time with them.”

  I was relieved, but only said: “When will you be ready for Kula?”

  “How about Tuesday?” Maile asked. “That will give us one day to prepare. We’ll need a few things: A large dog carrier, plus evidence that Kula belongs to your client—AKC papers or a license. And it would help to have someone with us Kula knows well and will come to. How about the girl?”

  “I’ll ask Buckingham.” Lehua’s kidnapping and the sordid history behind it was too long to tell Maile just then.

  “You know, Kai, the right way to do this would be to inform HPD that Kula was stolen. Your client could file a police report then.”

  “He won’t.”

  “Okay . . . I guess. So we can get Kula home and he can deal with the legalities later.”

  “My client’s not much for legalities.”

  Maile glanced at the carousel. “There’s my bag!” She pointed to a plaid cloth suitcase.

  I rushed to the carousel and snatched it.

  “Thanks.” She smiled. “We make a good team.”

  I should have warned her: I almost never work with a partner. I had my reasons, but kept them to myself.

  twenty-seven

  After dropping Maile off that afternoon, I swung by my Maunakea Street office. Inside the flower shop Mrs. Fujiyama was ringing up a customer with a white ginger lei. The sweet-spicy aroma followed me up the orange shag stairs to my door.

  The fact that I’d already found Kula didn’t stop people from calling. Only Maile, Buckingham, and I knew. I fielded five messages: Two desperate pet owners pleaded with me to find their missing Chihuahua and Airedale. A third caller asked me to train her to search for lost cats. A fourth had actually spotted a light-colored retriever, but by now I knew it couldn’t be Kula. And a fifth asked if anyone had claimed the $1,000 reward.

  Still no real cases. Had I been pegged as a pet detective?

  * * *