Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout

we finally met up, both of us puffing. When the blood stopped pounding in my ears, I listened to reassure myself we hadn’t been followed and then, clasping her warm hand, led Maya quietly into the dark woods.
    Snapping on our penlights, we huffed up a foothill trail through a grove of ironwoods and pines. In less than half mile of meandering, the trail intersected the road to Shipwreck Beach.
    Six miles stood between the Lodge at Koele and Shipwreck Beach.
Six miles.
Sun would be watching our Jeep, so that was out. But it was a nice evening for a hike. The air was cool, even a bit chilly at this elevation, and luckily the blustery Trades had died down.
    We stepped along the sloping highway, alone under the stars. Any approaching vehicle would give us plenty of warning to conceal ourselves, for headlights and a motor’s hum would carry a long way in this silent night. The terrain looked less desolate by night than by day, a dark country road winding down an endless grade. We could have been in any rural spot, except for the lights of Lahaina flickering across the channel.
    The moon soon rose above the sea, painting Maui’s distant twin mounds pale amber. The highway took on an eerie glow. I hoped Maya would complain of sore feet—so I could too. But she kept on, her hips swaying rhythmically in front of me.
    I glanced behind us, looking for two pairs of Jeep headlights. I glanced behind us again and again. No sign of Mr. Sun.
    It was past midnight when we finally reached Shipwreck Beach. A low tide offered more sand for our throbbing feet to tread on than the narrow strip of the morning. Bleached remnants of sea creatures scattered about glowed like ghouls in the moonlight.
    Our every stride brought more cans, containers, and debris to sift through—Miller Genuine Draft, Kikkoman soy sauce, a lonely flipper, Tide detergent, a rusty fire extinguisher, frayed rope—in search of our sunscreen bottle.
    “What kind of sunscreen are we looking for?”
    “Coppertone,” Maya said. “Bronze bottle. Number 8.” She paused. “. . . Oh, yeah, Corky said to look by a rusty freight container washed ashore near the stranded ship.”
    She tells me this now?
Could she really be that much of an airhead?
I stepped gingerly among the debris.
Or was this a wild goose chase after all, with Maya in the lead?
    As we hiked the beach toward the wrecked ship, behind us, about a quarter mile back, I spotted two flashlights combing the sand like search beacons. They could have belonged to fishermen, but I doubted it.
    “Guess who?” I pointed to the roving lights.
    Maya didn’t even hear me. Her mouth had dropped open.
    Before us loomed the moonlit ship, its rotting, ghostlike corpse still unburied by the sea. Heavy swells were battering it and exploding like skyrockets in the moon’s glow. I got chicken-skin.
    Opposite the distant ship sat the freight container on the beach, sprayed by the shore break. The rust-orange container had apparently plunged from a freighter, spilled its cargo, and washed ashore. One of its two doors had been ripped off and lay twenty yards away in the sand.
    I glanced down the dark beach. The roving beams kept coming. Now human figures crossed in front of the beams, picking their way through the debris as they walked. “Where’s the map?” I asked again.
    Maya shone her penlight inside the rusty freight container. Crabs with big menacing claws scuttled every which way through the dark and shallow sloshing seawater. Their powerful pincers and beady eyes seemed to threaten intruders: “Don’t even think about it setting foot in here!”
    Only those twin searchlights closing in on us could possibly prompt me into that container.
    No need. Maya evidently knew right where to look. Under the lip of the doorsill—high above the crabs and sheltered from wind and sea, there it was: a bronze bottle. Coppertone 8.

Nineteen

    “Unscrew the cap.”
    Maya’s eyes met mine, and something in them glinted like a devious child’s. She twisted off the cap.
    I shone my penlight on a rolled piece of paper inside the neck of the bottle. It looked dry and clean. A pencil or car key or small finger could, with patience, fish it out.
    “That’s Corky’s map.” Maya peered at the rolled paper and smiled strangely.
    “Screw on the cap and let’s go.”
    “Go? Don’t you want to see it?”
    I pointed down the beach at the wandering beams, growing larger every minute. “Let’s move.”
    “Where?”
    “Hiking