Aloha Betrayed (21 page)

I was certain that my thoughts mirrored what Mike and Tahaki were thinking, that there was no evidence to prove that Luzon had been instrumental in Mala’s death, that he’d ever laid a hand on her. It was his word against his wife’s. The defense would paint Honi as a bitter, angry woman whose husband had cheated on her multiple times and who was out for revenge. They would both go free.

“What did you do after she fell?” I asked.

“I panicked,” he said. “I left.”

“You didn’t try to help her?”

“I didn’t think anyone could survive that fall.”

“If you were innocent, why didn’t you call the police?”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I just wanted to get away.”

“You didn’t see your wife?”

“No, I never saw her.”

“I hid behind the bush until he was gone,” Honi said.

“You never tried to determine if Mala was still alive?” I asked.

“No,” Luzon said.

“I did,” Honi called out.

Mike turned to her. “What did you do, Mrs. Luzon?”

She slowly approached.

“I came here where she had gone over the edge and pulled myself onto this rock.” She climbed up to the spot where Mike had looked down the cliff the morning after Mala had been found. “I saw her body on the rocks below.”

“How long did you stay?”

“I don’t know, a few minutes, maybe longer. I looked around to see whether anyone else had witnessed what I’d seen. It was dark. No one could see anything. That’s when I left. I went home and was in bed when Abbott arrived an hour later.” She hopped down from the rock and dusted her hands.

“Where had you gone?” Mike asked Luzon.

“I didn’t want to go home yet. I went to the bar to get a drink.”

And met up with Grace,
I thought, remembering Bob Lowell’s story about seeing them together. “Mrs. Luzon, did you ever consider going to the police to report what you’d seen?” I asked.

“I considered it,” she said, “but I decided not to. Frankly, I wasn’t sorry that Mala had died, and I wasn’t about to send my husband, as despicable as he is, to prison while I ended up struggling for the rest of my life.”

“Did your husband know that you’d witnessed what you claim happened?” I asked.

“‘
Claim
happened’? Are you suggesting that I’m lying?”

“Did he know?” I repeated.

“He knew—because I told him. He denied having pushed her, of course, but I thought perhaps it would be useful to hold it over his head. I had the ridiculous notion that it would straighten him out, that it would curb his infidelity. It didn’t, of course. Ask Grace Latimer.” She snarled as she said Grace’s name.

“Be careful, Honi,” Luzon said.

“Why should she be careful, Professor?” I asked. “Is it because this has just been an elaborate story the two of you concocted to protect each other, to cover up a murder?” I turned toward Honi. “
You
pushed Mala over the edge, didn’t you, Mrs. Luzon? You thought Abbott and Mala were having an affair, but they weren’t. Mala had higher standards than to have an affair with your husband.”

“Higher standards! You think that superannuated surfer dude she hung around with was an example of higher standards?” Luzon said.

“I wondered where Grace learned that term. That’s what she called Mala’s friend.”

“Grace again!” Honi muttered. She shook her head. “Can’t believe it. It’s never enough.”

“Honi, be quiet. Our lawyer will take it from here,” Luzon said angrily. “You think you’re so smart, Mrs. Fletcher, but it’s all speculation. You have no proof.”

“Ah, but we do, Professor. There was someone who saw Honi push Mala over the cliff. A little boy who lives over there.” I pointed to Koko’s house. “And, Honi, you knew that there was a witness. In fact, you came to the house to find him, but when Koko saw you, he hid in his room, crying, and refused to come out. And when he saw you again yesterday, he was so scared, he was afraid to stay home, and hid in his father’s car.”

“I can’t believe it’s still Grace,” Honi ground out.

“Honi, that’s enough.” Her husband put out an arm toward her. “We’ll be fine.”

Honi turned to her husband and let out what could only be described as a growl. “Fine! You think that we can be fine as long as Grace is still around? I should have killed her, too. This is for Grace,” she shouted as she shoved her husband in the chest. Luzon stumbled backward, arms reaching out to grab something, anything. Tahaki, Mike, and I rushed forward, but before we could reach him the soft earth beneath Luzon’s feet gave way. He bellowed as he fell, tumbling down headfirst, sending a flock of francolins screeching into the brilliant blue Hawaiian sky.

Aloha
—Hawaiian Greeting That Can Mean “Good-bye”

D
id Abbott Luzon’s serial infidelities drive his wife to kill Mala Kapule in the mistaken belief that she was yet another of his lovers? He must have recognized some culpability on his part when he agreed to help Honi cover up her actions by accusing each other of the crime.

And was the professor guilty of deliberately sabotaging his colleague’s chances for the chairmanship as Dale had suggested? Was that what Mala accused him of the night she died? If so, he paid dearly for his underhanded actions. And if he hadn’t tried to damage Mala’s reputation—well, he suffered a severe penalty for his adulterous conduct, compliments of the heels of Honi’s hands.

I was convinced early on that if Mala had been killed by someone, it had its genesis in the controversy over the building of the solar telescope on Haleakala, that magnificent landscape that plays such an important role in Maui’s culture and belief system. As it turned out, more basic human motives were involved.

I must admit that certain aspects of Mala’s life tainted my perception of this young woman whom I had admired so much both before and after arriving on Maui. But was I allowing circumstantial evidence to influence me? Dale had thought she and the professor were having an affair, but he’d seen only one side of their correspondence. According to Luzon, Mala was using his unfaithfulness to blackmail him in order to secure the post of chair of the department for herself. We’ll never know the truth because neither party is alive.

And was the money Mala received from the Oregon construction company used to delay the lucrative Haleakala contract only for the purpose of allowing Douglas Fir Engineering to push Cale Witherspoon’s firm out of the way? Had her efforts to throw roadblocks in Witherspoon’s way been to benefit herself and not the Hawaiian people who opposed the project? And was Christian Barlow telling the truth when he said it was his idea alone to drive me off the side of the road leading down from Haleakala? I hoped so, because I’d decided not to press charges against him.

Unanswered questions leave me frustrated. I love a clean resolution, which certainly wasn’t the case with the cast of characters surrounding Mala Kapule.

There was, of course, one certainty, and that was that Honi Luzon had killed Mala and had pushed her husband to his death, both times in front of witnesses, even if the witness to the first murder was too young to testify. It was hard to feel sorry for Honi. She was such an unpleasant woman. But had she always been so? Her husband had subjected her to years of mental abuse thanks to his unchecked libido. Never having experienced such a situation, I could only speculate about how deleterious an effect it would have on her—have on any woman, for that matter.

“Will she be charged with murder?” I asked Mike Kane after dinner at his house that evening.

His wife, Lani, had insisted that I join them, and I was happy to oblige. After the upsetting events of the day, it was comforting to be with a normal functioning family. I arrived with several of my books to inscribe to Mike and Lani, and found what I hoped was the perfect gift for her, a small mounted photograph of sunrise over Haleakala by the same photographer whose work I had bought for myself. Lani was delighted, or at least she said she was.

“You know, I’ve never been up there at sunrise,” she said. “Mike, now that you’re retired, you’ll have to take me.”

“I will as long as you promise not to ride down on a bicycle.”

We all laughed.

“My guess is that Honi will go away for a long time,” Mike said when we got around to the events of the day. “Her defense lawyers might plead temporary insanity, you know, having been pushed over the edge by him.” Mike smiled. “‘Pushed over the edge.’ Sounds like I’m making a joke. I’m not.”

“I didn’t take it that way,” I said, “but insanity pleas seldom succeed, and how could she claim
temporary
insanity twice?”

“She snapped; that’s for sure. Maybe a jury will see it that way and cut her some slack.”

Before Mike drove me to my hotel, Lani draped a
lei around my neck that she’d made just for me. “So you’ll always remember us and Maui.”

“I don’t see how I can forget.”

•   •   •

I would see Mike Kane one more time before returning to Cabot Cove. We were scheduled on Saturday to teach one more class to young Maui police officers. After a wonderful night’s sleep, I arrived at the college early and sat outside the horticulture building basking in the sunshine and pristine air and watching the parade of people passing by. One of them was Grace Latimer.

“Good morning, Grace,” I said.

She stopped, turned, and said, “Oh, hello, Mrs. Fletcher. I didn’t expect to see you again.”

“It’ll be the last time,” I said. “I’m teaching a final class this morning with Detective Kane.”

She said nothing.

“Grace,” I said, “I’m sorry for what’s happened to Mala and Professor Luzon. I know that you were close to him and—”

A torrent of tears interrupted what I was saying.

She embarrassedly looked around as she pulled tissues from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes.

“We were in love,” she said.

“You and Professor Luzon?”

“Yes. He was going to marry me once he divorced his wife, and we were going to start a company together. I can’t believe that he’s gone, that that dreadful woman he was married to pushed him off a cliff. Mala, too. She’d threatened him with exposing our relationship so that she could become chair of the department.”

“That’s what Professor Luzon told you,” I said.

“Yes. He told me everything. There were no secrets between us.”

“May I offer you a piece of advice?” I said.

She looked quizzically at me.

“First,” I said, “I wouldn’t believe everything Professor Luzon claimed. But more important, Grace, you’re an intelligent, attractive young woman with a fine future ahead of you. Becoming involved with a married man is never a smart thing and almost always leads to heartbreak. I know that his death represents a loss for you, but it also frees you to find a better path in your life.”

What had been a pathetically sad, tearstained face morphed into an angry expression.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “You’re too old to feel the way Abbott made me feel, that I was the most important person in his life, his first true love.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” I said as Mike Kane came around the corner and waved as he approached. “I wish you everything good in your life, Grace.”

She walked away as Mike arrived.

“The professor’s graduate assistant?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “She’s very young, and very foolish.” I brightened. “Ready to impart more wisdom to a class of future Mike Kanes?”

•   •   •

I never had a chance to touch base again with the people I’d met while on Maui—Charlie Reed; Elijah Kapule; Auntie Edie; Cale Witherspoon; Carson Nihipali; Dale Mossman; and especially Koko, the precious little boy who’d run away, afraid of the lady he’d seen on the cliff where someone had died. I just hoped that he would eventually put it out of his young mind. How successful he would be depended a great deal on his father.

I flew home the next day, stopping in Boston and transferring to a small plane flown by Jed Richardson, our local airport manager, who delivered me to Cabot Cove. Seth Hazlitt was waiting.

“Aloha,”
I said as I settled into the passenger seat of Seth’s car.

“Speaking Hawaiian now, I see,” he said.

“That’s about the extent of my knowledge.” I said, laughing.

“Good trip?”

“Mostly.”

“Shame what happened to Mala Kapule. Barrett would be devastated.”

“Yes, it was a tragedy, Seth, but not the only one.”

“Oh?”

“It’s a long story, my friend. Give me a few days at home and I’ll be happy to tell you the whole unfortunate tale.”

“And I’ll look forward to hearing it, Jessica. Do you need to stop at the market on your way home?”

“Only if they have pineapple iced tea, which I have a hunch they may not. No, Seth, I’m ready to go home.”

•   •   •

I kept in touch with Mike Kane and his family. He told me that the telescope project was going forward, although there was an ongoing battle between competing construction companies. It certainly wasn’t my battle, although I admit to rooting against the arrogant Cale Witherspoon.

I’d given Bob and Elaine Lowell my e-mail address and received what seemed like a daily message from the ebullient Bob. But then one arrived from his wife. Bob had been jitterbugging enthusiastically with a young woman at a party when he collapsed, the victim of a massive heart attack. The news saddened me. Although he wasn’t the sort of fellow I aspired to spend lots of time with, he was a good and decent man who loved life and all that it offered. I sent my condolences.

The photograph I purchased of the sea turtle, or
honu
, is proudly displayed in my home office, reminding me of the Pacific Ocean and the beautiful island of Maui. I hoped that the telescope being erected on Haleakala wouldn’t in any way spoil its remarkable beauty and meaning to the people of Hawaii.

For me, the trip to Maui had been eye-opening, to say the least. I wished it had gone as planned: teaching courses to young Maui police recruits and using my downtime to relax and explore the island, its rich customs, and its loving people. But although I may have missed some of its more typical attractions, I think I experienced much more than the average tourist. And whenever I worry that things are not going quite right, I pick up my lava stone inscribed with a circle and two dots, and I imagine that the goddess Uli is watching out for me.