Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout

want to do?”
    “Didn’t I tell you?” she said.
    “Tell me what?”
    “I must have miscounted, or I was just late, or something.”
    “I thought you said you took the pregnancy test and couldn’t bear it alone?”
    “No, Kai. You didn’t listen. I couldn’t bear to take the
test
alone. I was afraid of the results. I wanted you with me when I took it . . .”
    I was speechless.
    “We can still see each other, Kai.” Leimomi sounded sympathetic. “You can visit me on Kaua‘i. And I could visit sometimes on O‘ahu.”
    “That would be . . . great,” I said, still stunned.
    “I’m sorry to do this to you. I feel so guilty, leaving you like this. It’s not that I don’t love you. I do. It’s just that I have so much to catch up on with Daddy. I want to be at home for a while.”
    “Don’t feel guilty.” If she only knew how much I meant that. “I understand. Can I help you? Give you a ride to the airport? Maybe we could go out to dinner before you leave?”
    “I’d like that,” she said.
    We hung up and I rocked back in my office chair. All that built up emotion. All that reservoir of guilt. All for nothing.
    I thought of the ocean-blue crystal egg I had bought Leimomi in Makawao. It was the day I discovered that Corky was alive, the turning point in the case. I figured the egg would mean more to me than to Leimomi at this point. I dug through my drawers and finally found it, placing it gingerly on my desktop. The turquoise-tinted waves glowed in the sunlight streaming through my office window. A beautiful sight.
    I gazed over at Corky’s candy cane-striped surfboard lying on a rail against my office wall. After getting my butt kicked the other day at Waimea, I doubted I would ever be riding it. Maybe I could give it Summer and Corky as a baby present. Though Corky might not be riding too many more big waves himself. He had become a daddy. And who knows how the drug trial would shake down—whether he would be indicted and, if so, what kind of a plea bargain he might be able to swing.

    I spent the rest of the day in a daze, still reeling from Leimomi’s surprise announcement and feeling slightly abandoned, both by her and, as much as I hated to admit it, by Maya. I knew it was just my ego, since I didn’t really envision a future with either of them. But just the same—those ego beatings can kind of hurt.
    Later I began wondering if my phone message to Detective Tong, telling all I knew about the Sun organization, could have had any bearing on his indictment or on the early release of Leimomi’s father. Frankly, I doubted it. The wheels of justice turn slowly.
    No matter, it was provocative to imagine myself helping to turn those huge wheels.

Twenty-Five

    Monday I took off from work. I counted what was left of Sun’s hundreds. After expenses—airfare, the Lodge, rental cars, and meals—I had cleared nearly three grand.
    It took some talking to settle my accounts on Lana‘i. The Jeep Wrangler I rented had to be retrieved from the Lodge at Koele’s parking lot. Late fee, plus an extra day’s charge. On the other hand, even though I’d failed to check out at the Lodge, the nice folks there were so full of aloha that they credited my account for the second night.

    When I called the surf-line later that day, Waimea had gone down a few feet, but was still pumping. So were Sunset and Pipeline. But the crowds would be out. And I’d been up to the North Shore twice in the last twenty-four hours and didn’t care much to go again. Here in town, Waikiki was breaking two-to-three feet.
    I grabbed my longboard and headed for “Pops.”
    Paddling out through Waikiki’s shore break, my arms still felt tight from the other day at Waimea. But after the first few strokes, the stiffness wore away and I felt fine. Truly fine.
    I waited on my board in the lineup for a good set as the little swells lifted me up and gently set me down again. They resembled ripples on a pond compared to the thundering mountains up on the North Shore. But I’d had enough of big wave riding for one winter.

About the Author

    Chip Hughes earned a Ph.D. in English at Indiana University and taught American literature, film, writing, and popular fiction at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. He left the university in 2008 to write full time. His non-fiction publications include
Beyond The Red Pony: A Reader’s Companion to Steinbeck’s Complete Short Stories
—also translated into Japanese;
John Steinbeck: A