Hula Done It? (8 page)

"My anxiety's better since my Dick passed on," Lucille Rassmuson announced. "I don't have to worry about his cigar ash incinerating the dog anymore. My therapist says I'm a whole new person because of it."

"Dog?" said Margi. "I thought you had cats."

"You have a therapist?" asked Bernice. "How much does that set you back a week? I bet Medicare doesn't cover it, does it?"

I rolled my eyes in frustration. "Listen to me! Paddling a kayak is hard work! It requires upper body strength. Stamina. Hand-to-eye coordination. I don't know if any of you should risk --"

"If
you're
gonna do it, how hard can it be?" Bernice challenged.

Heads bobbing. Murmurs of assent.

"Who cares about the kayaking," Dick Teig enthused. "We're here...for this!" He waved a sheet of white paper high over his head. "Right, gang?"

Eight other hands shot into the air, each one waving a sheet of white paper.

I looked from Alice, to Osmond, to Lucille. Uh-oh. Please tell me they weren't holding what I thought they were holding.

"I got extra maps on me," Bernice said, reaching into her tote bag. "You wanna buy one? They're sellin' like hotcakes. Five bucks apiece."

I stared at the stack of paper she yanked out of her tote. Treasure maps.

Oh, God. She'd sold them to the whole freaking bus!

"It's all my fault," Tilly anguished minutes later.

An armada of red and yellow kayaks was already splish-splashing upriver toward the first significant bend, but I was still hanging out by the bus, consoling Tilly. "Try not to dwell on it," I urged. "I have a visor back in the cabin that you can borrow. It won't match any of your skirts, but let's face it. The other one's a goner."

"That's kind of you, Emily. If only I could repair the damage I've done with the treasure map so easily." She hung her head woefully. "In my excitement yesterday, I walked away from the photocopier with new copies of Marion's map, handed her one for the scavenger hunt entry, and forgot to remove the original from the machine."

"And wouldn't you know," Nana continued, "the next person into the copy center is Bernice, who finds the map in the photocopier and decides she can make a financial killin' by sellin' it off as a treasure map. She's already took in over a hundred dollars." Nana gave her teeth a loud suck. "I never woulda guessed it, but Bernice has a real gift for commercial sales."

Tilly heaved a dejected sigh. "This is so unlike me. The errors in judgment. The forgetfulness. The signs are all there, ladies. Senile plaques. Neuro-fibrillary tangles. Subcortical dysfunction. My brain has neuropathologic disorder written all over it. If I were living among the Polar Eskimos, they'd stick me out on the ice as bear bait."

"No one's going to stick you anywhere," I said, giving her arm a reassuring pat.

"Crossword puzzles," Nana declared. "One a day is s'posed to keep your brain from turnin' to mush. Kinda like takin' a multivitamin."

"There's nothing wrong with Tilly's brain," I defended. "Stuff like this happens to everyone. It's just that Bernice's little entrepreneurial scheme has mucked things up for us." I scrubbed my face with my palms and groaned. "Professor Smoker's killer is supposed to be the only person other than the three of us who has a copy of the treasure map, right? But Nils and company have one. The Brits who were sitting behind me have one. I suspect every passenger on the bus has one. How are we supposed to single out the real killer if
everyone
has a copy of the map?"

A pause. Lip chewing. Cogitating.

"I have it!" Tilly's eyes lit with sudden inspiration. "What if we --"

A torrent of violent splashing caused us to glance toward the river. Twenty feet from shore, Dick Teig and Dick Stolee were engaged in a major water skirmish, armed only with their paddles, their wives, and their waterproof disposable cameras.

"Get a picture of this, Helen!" KER-SPLAT! Dick Teig slammed his paddle onto the water, drenching Dick and Grace Stolee in a fountain of spray. "Bullseye!" he crowed, mugging for the camera.

"Start focusing, Grace!" ordered Dick Stolee as he paddled hard to starboard. "Ram-ming speed!" he yelled, aiming his prow at the Teigs' kayak.

"What do you s'pose they're doin'?" Nana asked curiously.

"Reenacting the War of 1812," said Tilly.

"The whole war?" Nana shook her head. "I don't think we're gonna be here that long, are we?"

WHOOSH! Back-paddling to a sudden stop, Dick Stolee dug his paddle into the river and rainbowed a tidal wave of water into the Teig's kayak. "Take that!"

"Oh, God. I can't watch." I covered my face and turned away. "Tell me what happens."

A strangulated shriek echoed up and down the river.

"That was Helen," Nana said. "Uh-oh. Looks like she's just realizing what that water done to her treasure map. Lookit that. It's all fell apart. Guess we shoulda used heavier stock."

"A minor setback." Tilly said. "Wait until she sees what the water did to her eyebrows." She sucked in her breath. "All right, Emily. It's safe to look now. They've changed direction. They're going upriver." She paused. "Crossriver." She let out a sigh. "Downriver."

"They're paddlin' in circles," Nana declared. "You s'pose they'll ever notice?"

Oh, God. Shaking my head, I turned back to Tilly. "Okay, what were you saying about how we should go about identifying our killer?"

Tilly parted her lips to reply, then suddenly froze, her eyes widening with alarm. "I do remember entertaining an excellent idea, but...I...I don't recall what it was." She thumped her walking stick on the pavement in frustration. "The two of you should probably go on without me. By the end of the day, I might not remember your names. Goodness, I might not remember my
own
name."

"Not a problem. Just lookit your name tag," Nana advised, grabbing on to Tilly's arm and dragging her toward the river. "The real problem is, if we don't get our tushes into one a them boats, we'll never
get
to the Secret Falls. You comin', Emily?"

That's what I loved about Nana. No matter the situation, she always managed to stay focused.

The last two-man kayak sat on the boat ramp, directly behind a banana yellow one whose nose was already in the water. An army of young people in
Kauai Kayak Adventures
T-shirts crowded the ramp, throwing out rapid-fire instructions as they eased the yellow kayak farther into the water for boarding. One of them separated himself from the group and jogged up to us.

"Three of you?" He wore a Florida Marlins baseball cap and reminded me of one of the cheery youngsters who directed you to the proper car, tram, or space ship at Disney World. "You're in luck." He whistled down to his companions at the water's edge. "Hold up launching that one! I've got another passenger for you!"

After directing Nana and Tilly toward the two-man kayak, he hurried me to the end of the ramp where the yellow kayak sat bobbing in the water. A life jacket and double-ended paddle were shoved at me, and as I donned the jacket, I caught my first glimpse of the person who was snugged into the stern of the craft.

My stomach slid down to my ankles. Oh, no. "Jonathan?" I noticed a fresh wad of duct tape spiraled around his little Coke bottle glasses, as if he'd recently walked through a doorway without opening the door first. He wore a full coverage canvas hat with a duckbill visor and ear flaps and neck flaps that would shield him from everything from UV rays to frostbite. The word
Microsoft
was embroidered in gold metallic thread across the bill, a blatant admission of where his loyalty lay in the computer wars. I saw some swirly lines in black Magic Marker beneath the gold stitchery, but I was too far away to read it. I did note, however, that he repeated the Magic Marker color theme in the black socks he was wearing with his brown wingtips and white walking shorts. I guess he'd need a little help before he hit the cover of
GQ
.

"Emily! Hey, I didn't know how I was going to do this with one arm in a sling, but you've saved the day. Hop in. Geez. This is so great! Maybe my luck is changing for the better."

If his luck was changing for the better, mine was definitely taking a turn for the worse. "Jonathan! What a surprise. I thought you might be holed up in your cabin...trying to contain your curse." Or scrubbing Strasbourg pate out of his trousers.

A buoyant smile brightened his face. "You won't believe it! Everything's changed since last night. I had a long talk with the captain, and he really set me straight."

"He -- uh -- he convinced you that you had nothing to do with the incident yesterday?"

"Better than that. He told me to get a life. And he strongly recommended island excursions as a first step. Beth used to tell me to get a life all the time, but it had more impact coming from someone in uniform. So here I am."

The captain probably wanted him off the ship to save it from sinking! Speaking of which -- I eyed the kayak with sudden trepidation. "Um..." I held a finger up to the kid in the Marlins cap. "You know, I have a tendency to get miserably seasick and I just remembered that I left my Dramamine back on the ship, so maybe I should --"

"The Wailua's the tamest river in the world," said the kid, as he and another guy muscled me down into the molded plastic seat in the bow. "Even the tour boats that cruise up to the Fern Grotto don't make much of a wake. No one's ever gotten seasick on the Wailua." A skinny guy with a peach fuzz beard and aviator sunglasses handed me a small white box that I suspected was lunch.

"Anything good?" I asked.

He laughed out loud at my question, which I didn't think boded well for those guests who were anticipating cucumber and watercress.

"A few things before you head out," said another guy with a long ponytail and freckles. "Around this first bend here there's a fork in the river. Every time you see a fork, bear left. When you come to an island, paddle past the fallen tree and haul your kayak onto shore. Here's a map of the trail to the Secret Falls." He handed me a blue index card. "It's not real detailed, but all you have to remember is to follow the path along the river until you come to a wide stream, then follow the stream inland. Don't follow any of the smaller streams unless you're an expert hiker. Those paths are pretty treacherous. The Secret Falls is probably a half mile from where you turn inland. Any questions, ma'am?"

"Yeah, about those smaller strea --" I blinked in horror. Ma'am? He called me,
ma'am?
I stared at him, my question caught in my windpipe like a half-chewed Twinkie. To be a ma'am you had to have white hair, no waist, and a ruff of loose skin hanging from your throat and arms.
Nana
was a ma'am. I couldn't be a ma'am; I was too young to be a ma'am!

"Forget what you were saying, ma'am?"

EH! He said it again!

"Okay, you two." He slapped our heavy-duty plastic hull. "We're cutting you loose." The whole crew gave us a shove that sent us skating away from the boat ramp into deeper water. I stared at my shoulder bag, wondering if I'd brought along anything sharp enough to cut through my wrists. Teenagers calling me ma'am? Why didn't I just end it all now before I had to join the rush for support hose and orthotic inserts? I didn't want to age gracefully. I didn't want to age at all!

"I hope you won't think I'm being a know-it-all," Jonathan apologized from behind me, "but that paddle isn't going to work unless you stick it in the water."

When I saw that we were floating in the direct path of the Teigs' kayak and about to be rammed, I muckled onto my paddle and dug it into the water. Right. Left. Right. Left. Aging was one thing; getting a close-up of Helen without her eyebrows was a whole other kettle of fish.

With a stiff wind at our backs, I powered us through the water like the Energizer Bunny on a battery high. I hadn't kayaked for years, but the rhythm and motion were coming back to me. I guess kayaking was something you never forgot how to do, like riding a bicycle. Or sex. Although I hadn't had sex in so long, I'd probably need a diagram to remind me which body parts went where.

Left. Right. Left. Right.

"You paddle like a real pro," Jonathan called out. "I bet you've done this before."

"In college. The university was built on a lake."

"My vo-tech school was built right next to the city dump. Talk about great location. Anytime we needed a spare computer part, all we had to do was walk across the street and scavenge for it."

We were at the back of the pack, a hundred feet away from the next kayak, staying close to the snarl of water-hugging shrubs that lined the riverbank. I liked being close to shore. It seemed a lot less risky than the middle of the river, where the water was a lot deeper. My only major concern now was making sure I didn't run out of sunblock.

"There's supposed to be an authentic re-created folk village around one of these bends," Jonathan chirped behind me. "It's only a bunch of huts, but an overhead shot of them appeared in one of the opening scenes of my favorite movie of all times.
Outbreak
. Did you see that one?"

"I saw the trailer. You like medical thrillers?"Left. Right. Left. Right.

"Not particularly. But I love it when Hollywood portrays someone as beautiful as Renee Russo falling for a loser like Dustin Hoffman. It's like watching my life unfold on the big screen. We're also supposed to pass the field where Harrison Ford was chased by those hostile natives in the first Indiana Jones flick."

Hey! Just like Captain Cook!

"And the seaplane he jumps into was sitting on this very river. Doesn't that give you goose bumps?"

I couldn't help smiling. "You sound like a big movie buff, Jonathan."

"I'm sorry. Am I talking too much?"

"No, I think it's intriguing."

"Really? Beth always told me I was really boring when I started talking movies. She was the interesting one. Boy, you should have heard her discuss her method for peeling tomatoes. It was absolutely riveting."

The more I heard about Beth, the more I began to think Jonathan had gotten the better end of the deal when she'd left.

"Did you see that old John Wayne film,
Donovan's Reef?"
he continued. "The weird water-skiing scene that's supposed to take place on the open ocean was actually filmed on the Wailua. Probably back near the boat ra --"