Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout

embraced the typically sun-splashed beach.
    But there wasn’t much sun at quarter past five, just a pink glow heightening in the east. Nearly three hours to cool our heels. The more time we gave Sun to find us, the more chance he would. But what was the likelihood of Frank O. Sun thinking to look for us in a resort kitchen? Zilch, I hoped.
    Angel punched in at 5:28 AM, then we followed him through a maze of hallways to the huge kitchen, where he donned a chef’s cap embroidered with the resort’s name in royal blue. At stainless preparation tables
sous chefs
were already at work slicing tangy tropic fruits for the breakfast buffet: kiwi, mango, pineapple, papaya—while mingled whiffs of cinnamon, coconut, and buttery oats suggested that the pastry chefs had started work even earlier.
    My stomach growled. I saw Maya eyeing a tray of fragrant muffins. Since we had just hiked through the night without food, I suspected she was as ravenous as I. Angel must have seen the look of hunger in our eyes.
    “Dis way,” he smiled warmly. “Da employees’ dining room.”
    Angel led us a short distance from the kitchen to a room where resort workers were eating a very early breakfast. A smaller sampling of the hotel’s guest fare was laid out in a buffet line.
    “OK wit’ da boss if we eat?” I wondered out loud.
    “He don’ mine,” Angel winked. “He don’ know and he don’ mine. Or he put it on my tab, no worry.”
    Maya and I filed through the buffet line heaping on fruits of every variety, elegant pastries, and, for me, scrambled eggs and breakfast meats. We filled our plates, then dug in, as if only hours earlier I hadn’t forked over two bills for dinner at the Lodge’s swanky restaurant.
    After breakfast Maya found an unnoticed corner of the employees’ lounge to snooze in, and I kept watch on a secluded terrace overlooking bright blue bay. To ensure we didn’t miss our ferry, I set my alarm watch for seven thirty. Even if I had dared to, I was too wired to sleep. I kept turning over our options for escape once we reached Maui. None of them perfect.
    When I stepped back into the employees’ lounge to wake Maya, she was gone. As my watch ticked toward eight I wondered if she and the sunscreen bottle had flown. I tried not to worry. Her disappearances were becoming routine.
    A few minutes later she casually strolled into the lounge.
    “Where have you been?” I asked the obvious with all the enthusiasm of a soldier after a twelve-mile forced march.
    “Reliving beautiful memories of Mangle Bay,” she replied. “Corky and I—”
    “Do you still have the map?”
    “Why wouldn’t I?” She opened her purse and fished out the bronze sunscreen bottle.
    “OK, let’s go.” I led her to the employees’ dressing rooms where—with the blessing of Angel, if not his boss—we changed into a couple of unattended wait-staff uniforms: royal blue aloha shirts, slacks, and embossed baseball caps. Maya slipped the sunscreen bottle into pocket of her aloha shirt, where the staff customarily kept their order pads and pens, then twined up her long hair under the blue cap. I practiced slouching in my new outfit, so I might be taken for a tired waiter on whom onlookers would spare no more than a casual glance. With my sore feet, working up a shuffling gait was no problem.
    We tracked down Angel again, thanked him for the food and clothes, and asked about getting a ride to the ferry.
    “No worry,” he said, smiling his
aloha
smile. He led us up a spiral staircase to the resort’s marble-columned entrance. From there a van whisked us to Manele harbor like two hotel workers heading for a weekend getaway on Maui.
    The Lahaina-Lana‘i ferry idled into the harbor as we arrived. About the size of a city bus, the boldly red-white-and-blue-striped vessel floated high in the water and had two decks spacious enough to accommodate more than the few passengers waiting with us to board. The lower deck was enclosed by dark glass; the upper (behind the wheelhouse) was open to the morning sun. At the stern, four gapping pipes rumbled with the throaty authority of twin diesels.
    This appeared to be no “chug-chug” ferry. But a ferry that could get up and move. The twenty-five mile trip between Lana‘i and Lahaina was scheduled to take only forty minutes. The fast clip would suit me just fine. The sooner we got away from the “Pineapple Isle,” the better.
    The ferry docked and the engines shut down. I scanned the other