Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout

O’ahu.
    “Company again.” I turned to Maya, who I began to notice was rather accomplished at being unfazed.
    The two men stepped into the Lodge, leaving one man inside each Jeep. Even at this distance, inside the trailing Jeep I could see the Panama hat.
    “Sun seems to think we know something he doesn’t,” I said. “Did Corky tell him about the map?”
    “No, that’s why Corky was killed.”
    Maya said “killed” nearly as dispassionately as if she were referring to a cockroach. Now I’ve seen more than my share of grieving widows and lovers. And, hands down, Maya was the coolest of all. When it registered that this was the first she’d referred to her boyfriend’s death since leaving Maui, I wondered again what else this forty-six-year-old redhead wasn’t talking about.
    Our airy, pale blue room had enough soft angles and plush furnishings to put one in the mood for relaxation. The king-size bed, a four-poster of knotty pine, reigned over the spacious room, but left plenty of extra territory for overstuffed chairs and lounges and billowy blue curtains framing bucolic views. We had everything anybody might need: a wet bar, a safe, color TV and video player, two phones, a koa ceiling fan, and our own personal lanai overlooking our own personal banyan tree.
    I stepped onto the teak-furnished lanai and watched Sun’s two Jeeps, drivers only, pull into the Lodge’s parking lot. Maya reclined on the four-poster bed, each post topped with a carved miniature pineapple resembling a hand grenade.
    “Lovely.”
Maya ran her fingers over the powder-blue comforter. “Try the bed, Kai.”
    As she oozed admiration over our temporary lavish surroundings, I couldn’t help observe, “You don’t seem too broken up over your boyfriend.”
    “Husband,”
she corrected me. “Anyway, I had my cry.” Fluffing a downy blue pillow, Maya turned her wandering grey-green eyes to me. “What do we do now?”
    “Wait.”
    “For what?” She stretched her lanky limbs on the bed like a cat.
    “Darkness,” I said. “In the mean time, you can make yourself comfortable.”
    “I will.” Maya continued her feline stretching. Her copper hair glowed against the blue pillows. She made that poster bed look awfully inviting. So I made myself turn away and walk over to the desk.
    Paging through the Lana‘i phone directory, I searched for the number of a surfing buddy whom I had first met years ago in the lineup at Cunahs in Waikiki. I hadn’t seen Conrad Figueroa recently, and I didn’t even know if “Rad” or his family still resided on Lana‘i. But having just one friend on this island might be a lifesaver.
    I tried dialing “Angel Figueroa,” the first of two “Figueroa” entries in the tiny book. The phone rang and rang. On the sixth ring an out of breath young woman gasped “hello.” I explained why I was calling.
    “Rad?” she said excitedly. “You’re a friend of Conrad? Rad’s my big brother.”
    Catalina told me she lived in the family home in Lana‘i City with her two children, Felipe and Maria, and their grandfather, Angel, who worked the early morning shift in the kitchen at Manele Bay Hotel. She didn’t mention the father of her two children.
    “Come visit us,” Catalina said with warm and sincere Filipino hospitality. “Felipe and Maria would love to meet you. And Papa too. He’s napping now. He goes to work every morning at five.”
    She gave me directions to their house on ‘Ilima Avenue, and we hung up. If Maya and I ran into trouble, Catalina might just become our new best friend.
    I then phoned Leimomi and left a message that I was working a case on Lana‘i and was
very
sorry to miss our date tonight. I left neither a phone number nor said at what hotel I was staying—I didn’t even want to think about what kind of explaining I’d have to do if Leimomi called and Maya answered.
    Maya and I stayed in the room most of the afternoon, her watching info-mercials about age-defying miracle beauty cures, me sitting on the lanai keeping an eye on Sun’s Jeeps in the Lodge’s parking lot. Around four, I took a walk to the sundry store and bought two penlights.
    As I was leaving, I saw my albino friend in the cavernous Great Room sunk into an overstuffed leather sofa with a newspaper in front of his nose. He acted as if he didn’t see me, but as I passed he peered at me over his
New York Times
and then pulled a cell phone from his shirt pocket.
    When I returned to our room, Maya’s