JoAnn Bassett - Islands of Aloha 07 - Moloka'i Lullaby (5 page)

We wandered out to the small airport parking lot to locate the car Sifu Doug had arranged for us to use. He’d called in a favor and asked the guy who owns the local kung fu academy to rustle up some wheels for us. I’d fallen all over myself in gratitude, since rental cars on Maui County’s smaller neighbor islands are scarce and expensive.

We spotted the car parked just where the guy said it would be: at the back, three spaces down from the end. I glanced over at Hatch to see if he was thinking what I was thinking, but it looked like I was alone in my nostalgia. The car waiting for us must’ve come off the same assembly line as my former ride, and longtime shame, a mid-nineties Geo Metro.

“Look,” I said. “It’s the Phlegm-mobile. Only this one’s blue.”

By now we were twenty feet from the car.

Hatch still didn’t seem to be making the connection.

“You know, my old car. This car looks just like the Mean Green Machine.”

“Your car never looked
this
bad,” he said. “Looks like this thing’s been in a demolition derby.”

He pointed out a two-foot dent in the right front fender. At the center of the folded metal, the paint had chipped away and rust had settled in for the long haul.

“Looks like they hit something pretty big,” I said.

“Not necessarily. I bet I could bend this cheap metal with my bare hands.” He put a hand on the fender as if he was about to prove it.

“C’mon,” I said. “It’s fine. At least it’s free.”

I was used to making excuses for my wheels. I’d done it for years.

We looked around at the other vehicles parked in the lot. Most were foreign pick-ups, like Toyota Tacomas and Nissan Frontiers. And, most sported a light to heavy dusting of red dirt; with assorted dents and dings being the rule, rather than the exception.

“See?” I said. “We’ll fit right in.”

Hatch cocked his head. “Hear that?” he said.

“What? I don’t hear anything.”

“Yeah, that’s the thing. When was the last time you were at an airport this quiet?”

I pricked my ears and listened as wind softly stirred the branches of the Norfolk Pines lining the airport access road.

“It’s almost spooky,” I said.

The doors to the Geo were unlocked, so we stashed our stuff in the back and began a search for the keys. We checked the tops of the front tires and under the mats in the back seat. We even rummaged through the trunk. No luck.

Hatch climbed into the driver seat and there they were—dangling from the ignition switch. The keychain was a single ring, decorated with a thumb-size Hawaiian warrior helmet made from the tough outer shell of a
kukui
nut.

“I guess they weren’t worried about someone stealing the car,” I said.

We both laughed.

“The guys at the station told me that’s how they roll over here,” Hatch said. “Welcome to the land of ‘no worries’.”

We drove out of the lot and I felt a flutter in my stomach. The last time I’d been to one of Maui County’s remote islands—Lana’i—I’d been alone and running for my life. Now I was with Hatch, leisurely checking out a part of my home state that I’d inadvertently ignored. I felt at peace, and secretly grateful to Amanda and Richard for giving me a reason to explore Moloka’i, the “most Hawaiian” island.

I was pretty sure the wedding venue was going to turn out to be beautiful, and Hatch and I were getting along better than ever. Everything was falling neatly into place. After three years of shocking news and unforeseen tragedies, it was about time I got cut a break.

Finally. I felt as if the black cloud of calamity was moving on, leaving me with nothing but blue skies ahead.

CHAPTER 7

In my discussion with Sifu Doug I’d learned there was only one town on the island: the small town of Kaunakakai, on the south side. It was about a twenty-minute drive from the airport. Since my primary objective of this initial visit was to line up as many local vendors as possible, Hatch and I had agreed it would be best for us to get a place in town for our short stay.

The drive from the airport into town was downhill and uneventful. There were few cars on the road, and the passing scenery was mostly open fields or stands of trees:
kiawe
, and Cook and Norfolk Pine, along with a smattering of towering ironwoods. Once we got down to the coastal road, we passed a few modest houses with spacious yards, but even near the beach, there was nary a shopping mall or high rise in sight.

We drove by a thick grove of coconut palms. They were some of the tallest I’d ever seen, but a few looked pretty scraggly. Toward the west end of the grove, some of trees were missing their crowns, making them look like sway-back telephone poles. They’d apparently taken a hit, either by time or high winds.

I squinted at a brown wooden sign as we drove by. It said, “Kapuaiwa Coconut Grove.”

“Wow,” I said. “Have you ever seen so many palms in one place?”

“This grove was planted in the 1860’s, by order of King Kamehameha the Fifth,” said Hatch. “Apparently they planted a thousand trees here.”

“Where did you hear that?” I said.

“I read it on a website back at the station. I was looking to see if there were any good surf beaches over here.”

“And are there?”

“Yeah, but they’re mostly on the west side. In the winter the waves are huge.”

We took a left at a gas station and went into town. I was surprised to see Kaunakakai was much smaller, and a lot less hectic, than Pa’ia.

We drove four short blocks past worn wooden buildings with false fronts and small, dark windows. There was a stucco government-style building with cop cars in the parking lot at the far end of town, across from a school with a well-maintained ball field. Beyond that, the town dwindled to a few blocks of small homes with tidy yards. 

“Was that the whole town?” Hatch said.

“I guess so,” I said.

“Where
is
everybody?”

“There are only about seven thousand people on the whole island,” I said.

“Yeah, but I only saw about ten of them on the street back there. Where
is
everybody?”

We turned around and went back through town. At the intersection of the King Kamahameha V highway and Kaunakakai Street was a mile post marked, “Mile 0.” A tidy white building with “Molokai Burger” in big red letters on the rooftop occupied the corner lot.

“Is it too early for lunch?” I said.

The clock on the Geo’s dash read 4:30, but it was clearly wrong. I guessed the time was probably more like eleven. The clock in my old green car had stopped working the first time the car battery died, and after that it was prone to flights of fancy. It would start up again—sometimes ticking away for weeks on end—but it gave up entirely near the end of its life.

I’d never worn a watch, except during my short stint with the feds, but I was pretty good at guessing time based on the position of the sun, my stomach rumblings, and, when I was in my shop, the sounds coming through the walls from Farrah’s grocery store next door.

Hatch always wore a watch. “It’s ten-fifty,” he said. “Perfect time for a burger.”

We parked and went inside. The menu board featured a “ramen burger,” a hamburger wrapped in a ramen noodle “bun.” The picture looked like a greasy mess to me, but the ingredients were right up Hatch’s alley. I opted for the more pedestrian mushroom burger.

The smiling girl who took our order told us they had free wi-fi. I thought it was odd she’d mentioned that, until I realized that although this was a burger place, it wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination, “fast food.” We sat at our table checking emails and just generally fiddling around with our phones. In due time, the burgers were up.

“Where are we staying?” said Hatch.

“In a condo at Moloka’i Shores. It’s just down the road.”

We ate our burgers in record time, and then drove down the King Kam Highway to the condo. We checked in, and then realized we’d forgotten to pick up any supplies in town. The woman at the check-in desk recommended Friendly’s Market, so we drove back into town.

Friendly’s turned out to be only about half the size of the Gadda da Vida, but it had an amazing collection of merchandise. Not too much of anything, but a little of everything. We bumped and “excuse me’d” down the narrow aisles until we had a hundred dollars-worth of provisions. It sounds like a lot, but at Moloka’i prices, it all fit quite comfortably into our two re-usable grocery bags. Plastic bags had gone the way of the dinosaur throughout Maui County years ago, so everyone was used to bringing cloth bags to the store.

We returned to the condo and put the food and drink away in the tiny kitchen. The condo was on the second floor. It had one bedroom and a bath, with a
lana’i
sporting a peek-a-boo view of the ocean. Even though the water view was limited, the place was so quiet we could hear the waves crashing ashore.

“I forgot how wonderful it is to be at the beach,” I said.

“Yeah. Sometimes I can hear the ocean from my place, but I can’t see it at all,” said Hatch. “This is great.”

I wanted to just plop down on an outside lounge chair and let the ocean lull me to sleep, but I had work to do.

“I need to drive to the west side and find the address Amanda gave me,” I said. “But if you’d rather stay here and nap, that’s okay.” Hatch often needed a nap after getting off work since he’d usually been up all night going out on calls.

He screwed up his face. “Hmm, drive a trasher car across the island to eyeball a wedding place, or hit the bed with my girl? Hard to choose.”

“Okay, funny man, I wasn’t offering you company. I was just wondering if you wanted to drive over there with me. I want to check out the venue before I try to arrange anything else.”

“If it’s okay with you, I think I’ll let you go it alone this time. I’d like to stick around here and see if there’s any place to do a little body surfing. When you get back, let’s see about that nap.”

“Sounds good. But you know you don’t have to just bodysurf. There’s a surfboard in the bedroom.”

“Seriously? Where?”

“Under the bed. I’m sure it’s okay to use it. Why else would they keep it there?”

Hatch dashed into the bedroom and dropped to his knees to check under the bed.

“How’d you know this was here?”

“I found it when I was checking out the place. You know me: I always look under the bed, in the back of the closets, behind the toilet, and—”

“Geez, I was the cop, not you.” Before switching to firefighting, Hatch had been a Honolulu cop. He’d so fully embraced his fireman persona I sometimes forgot he’d ever walked the thin blue line.

“Yeah, but you weren’t trained by the feds to always expect the unexpected.”

“Oh, babe. When I was on the force I busted more than my share of transvestite working ‘girls’ in Waikiki. And, the first week I was at Maui Fire we stumbled across a little kid hiding in a closet during a house fire. Believe me, I’m always expecting the unexpected.”

“Well, it’s just something I do when I stay anywhere new. I check out everything.”

“Glad to hear it,” he said, taking me in his arms. “But hurry back from wherever you’re going, ‘cuz I got something in the bedroom I
really
need you to check out.”

We kissed good-bye and I hustled out to the car. I only had the rest of the afternoon to get up to speed on what I’d be facing to coordinate a wedding on Moloka’i. Hatch would want to relax on Sunday before going back home, and Amanda was scheduled to arrive bright and early Monday morning. I’d managed to dupe her into thinking I knew what I was doing, but if I didn’t get busy, even a dim bulb like Amanda was bound to catch on that I was flying blind.

***

The ride across Moloka’i was like a flashback to my childhood in upcountry Maui. In the thirty-five minute drive, no more than ten cars passed by going the other way. The few farms and homes along the way were generally tidy, but not upscale. Although it was greener, the island reminded me a little of Lana’i: not many people, not much going on.

My cell phone GPS instructed me to turn off Highway 460 at Kaluakoi Road. I took the winding downhill road
makai
—toward the beach. I passed by Papohaku Beach Park, and the GPS kept nagging me that I’d “arrived at my destination.” I looked around and didn’t see a house; or even a driveway. Maybe Richard’s business partner would turn out to be a starving artist who lived in a campsite at the park.

I made a U-turn and pulled into the parking lot. The immense park was eerily empty, but I did see a woman striding toward the public restroom with two little kids in tow. I approached her and she eyed me warily, as if encountering another person was reason for concern. I asked if she was a local and she guardedly answered she was. I smiled and told her my name, adding that I was also
kama’aina
, from Maui, just visiting for a few days. At that she seemed to relax a bit. But when I showed her the address Amanda had given me, she shook her head and said she didn’t recognize the street name.

I went back to my car and drove on a bit further, but didn’t come across a single house that looked occupied, much less a gas station or convenience store where I could stop and ask directions. How did people live in such isolated conditions?

Finally, I turned back and went up to the main road and drove into an area marked “Maunaloa,” a small community at the end of the road. The place looked pretty deserted, but there were a few storefronts with lights on inside. I went into a one-room art gallery and a chime sounded. After looking around for a few minutes, I wondered why no one had come out to greet me. 

The walls were covered with paintings sporting price tags of thousands of dollars each. They were beautiful paintings, some featuring island people, some of local landscapes and tropical plants. One that really stood out was a gorgeous portrait of a woman sitting cross-legged with a wide basket of ripe papayas in her lap. The painting was priced at thirty-two hundred dollars. Where was the proprietor? Not that I was criminally inclined, mind you, but it seemed to me that even the most inept thief could simply lift the painting off the wall, sell it on eBay, and live quite comfortably for a couple of months—even with the high prices on Moloka’i.

As I stood contemplating how easy it would be to commit grand larceny, a short, smiling woman popped her head around a bamboo screen that separated the main gallery from a back room.

“
Aloha
, I thought I heard someone come in,” she said. “Can I help you?”

I wanted to tell her I thought I could help
her
. I mean, who leaves valuable artwork—almost fifty thousand dollars’ worth, by my estimation—completely unsupervised? Granted, this gallery was off the beaten path, but thieves tend to be opportunists. They don’t care if it’s downtown Honolulu or the back of beyond. I wanted to point out that art galleries on Front Street in Lahaina employ full-time security guards, although they’re dressed like tourists to avoid taking anything away from the
aloha
atmosphere. I thought she should get a surveillance camera, or at least a sign warning that she had one.

But I didn’t scold her for her naiveté. Instead, I asked, “By any chance are you familiar with the area around Papohaku Beach Park?”

“Yes, I live down there.”

“Great. Well, I have a friend who has a house there and I’ve been unable to locate it. The address is 31 Papapa Place.”

She eyed me as warily as the woman at the park.

“And what is your friend’s name?” she said.

“George. George Bustamante. He’s in the art business, too.”

She laughed. “Ha, I suppose you could say that. But unlike me, Mr. Bustamante is a big
kahuna
in the art scene
.
I’m simply a starving artist. My name’s Kapi’i, by the way.” She offered her hand.

“I’m Pali,” I said, giving her a quick handshake. “These are your paintings?”

“Yes. Except for the jewelry in the case over there, everything in here is mine.”

“They’re beautiful,” I said.

“
Mahalo
,” she said. “That’s our Hawaiian word for ‘thank you.’”

It wasn’t the first time, or likely the last, that a local would mistake me for a tourist. With my light hazel eyes and hair the color of a coconut husk, I hardly resemble most people’s notion of a Hawaii-born
kama’aina
. I started to set her straight, then paused. Perhaps on Moloka’i I
was
technically a tourist. After all, I’d only been there once.

She interrupted my reverie to add, “I can direct you to Mr. Bustamante’s place. When you get to the turnoff for the park, keep going. Stay on that road for about a half a mile or so. Not as far as Kaupoa Beach, but just before. Mr. Bustamante’s place is called ‘Hale Kahakai.’ I don’t think he’s got the address posted outside, just a little brass sign with the house name on it.”