Death in Paradise

  Death In Paradise

  Hawaii Thriller Series

  J.E. Trent

  For my wife Eila, who was a continuous source of encouragement to write this story. I’m eternally grateful.

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  Contents

  Bonus

  1. Morning Paddle

  2. Jessica

  3. Going to Hawaii

  4. Hale

  5. Jasmine

  6. Marlin House

  7. Jennings

  8. Marlin Fishing

  9. Sam’s Bungalow

  10. Simmy

  11. Paddle Out

  12. LA

  13. Week Later

  14. Return to Kona

  15. Breakfast

  16. Governor

  17. Pua Cancer

  18. House Hunting

  19. Uncle Jin

  20. Puako

  21. Hospital

  22. Homecoming

  23. Stage Four

  24. Uncle Jack

  25. Employee Meeting

  26. Decision

  27. The Hit

  28. Too Close for Comfort

  29. Security

  30. Uncle Jack Hui Hou

  31. Golf Pro

  32. Uncle Jack

  33. Kona PD

  34. Sashimi Maru

  35. Lanai

  36. Kidnapped

  37. Night at Sea

  38. Arrested

  39. Woo Ching vs. Jessica

  Epilogue

  Author Notes

  About the Author

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Also by J.E. Trent

  Hawaiian Glossary

  Boating Glossary

  1

  Morning Paddle

  Kona Hawaii

  There’s nothing like a hot-blooded Filipina with a bad attitude pointing a butterfly knife at you first thing in the morning to get your adrenaline pumping. That wasn’t Mike Murphy’s preferred way to start the day. Once again, Simmy had accused him of cheating on her with another woman. And he was sick of it. It was 6:30 a.m. as the sun rose over Hualalai Mountain and turned the puffy white clouds above Kailua Bay cotton candy pink.

  Mike paddled his one-man canoe over the reef, heading toward Kaiwi Point. Most days he paddled south toward Keauhou. But that morning there was a fishing tournament about to start in Kona. There were twenty-five boats entered, they jockeyed for the best position near the Kailua Pier, and he didn’t want to get tangled up with them.

  Those rich guys were trying to get the jump on the other boats at the start of the tournament. They could be cutthroat as they raced off to the fishing grounds. A canoe, versus a forty-five-foot Cabo fishing yacht, doesn’t get any right-of-way. But what the canoe might get was flipped by the wake. And it was too early in the morning to huli the boat as far as he was concerned.

  Mike used his time on the ocean every morning to think about life in general and whatever he had planned for the day. Today, he had two pressing issues. One of them was a woman who loved him in an unhealthy jealous kind of way. And the other, a billionaire neighbor who wanted to buy his small resort, Aloha Village, so it could be bulldozed and replaced with a casino mega-resort.

  Mike tried to quit thinking about his crazy girlfriend and just be at one with the ocean while he dug his paddle deep into the water with each stroke. His canoe moved fast through the light swells when the first dolphin exploded out of the water. It cleared his head by mere inches as it crossed over to the starboard side and drenched him with seawater spray that flew off its body.

  “Damn it, Koa!” Mike yelled at the dolphin as it circled the canoe. He was on guard now. He knew Kiki wasn’t far behind and expected her to leap out of the ocean any second. Hopefully not over his head, as Koa had just done. That behavior was not typical of dolphins in the wild. But these two were not wild, or normal. They were highly trained, and they belonged to his brother Jack. According to the government, they belonged to the US Navy and were only in Jack’s care. But, in reality, they were Jack’s.

  Mike made a mental note he needed to call his brother after he paddled and ask him if he could look into the problem neighbor. Jack had the resources to run a background check even though he had technically retired six months earlier from NCIS in Honolulu. Jack had moved to Kona to start a sport fishing business, but still worked part-time for the government doing contract work.

  Mike felt there was something rotten about his neighbor Mr. Lau; it was a nagging feeling that just wouldn’t go away. But he knew Jack would find out if there was anything to be worried about.

  Mr. Lau owned the Ming Resort next door to Mike’s property and had made several offers to buy Aloha Village. Most people took no for an answer. Not Lau. The word no didn’t seem to be in his vocabulary. Not even after Mike had told him, for the third time, that he was not interested in selling at any price. And certainly not so Lau could expand the Ming into a casino.

  As Mike’s canoe rounded Kaiwi Point, he decided it was time to paddle back to the pier. He needed to call Jack to see if he was back from Hong Kong yet.

  After putting the canoe on top of his Tundra, he drove to the Old Kona Airport to chill at the beach while he called Jack. He parked by the first palm tree near the water and walked to the picnic table on the sand. He sat down on the bench and took a couple of minutes to watch the waves before he made the call.

  After a few minutes of watching the waves, a thought popped into his head that maybe he should hedge his bet and email his daughter Jessica, since it seemed he could never get her on the phone. The email was short, he only asked her to call him when she had time. The more cops the better he thought as he clicked the send button on his phone.

  Mike dialed Jack and got the answering machine. “Hey, Jack, call me when you get in. I need to talk to you.”

  A few seconds later his phone rang. He glanced at the number on the screen, he hoped it was Jack, but it wasn’t.

  “Aloha, Mike speaking.”

  “Howzit, Mike, this is Kimo, returning your call. You left a message yesterday. Are you still interested in the dive boat I have for sale on Craigslist?”

  “Yeah, is it still available?”

  “It is, but I got one guy that says he’s coming to look at it later this afternoon. But you know how that goes. If you want to check it out, I’ll be here all day today.”

  “Where’s the boat located?”

  “Hilo,” answered Kimo.

  “Okay, text me your address, and I’ll leave right now.”

  “Shoots, brah, I send’m.”

  Mike needed to replace the resort’s dive boat right away because it had a blown engine. Every day the boat didn’t operate cost him income he couldn’t afford to lose.

  Kimo’s boat was over ninety miles from Kona. Mike decided it was better to fly his plane to Hilo instead of driving. He could get there faster and check it out before the other potential buyer. He got up from the picnic table and dialed Kona Air Services as he walked across the beach back to his truck.

  Kai Santos picked up the phone right away.

  “Air Services, Kai speaking, how may I help you?”

  “Howzit, Kai. Mike Murphy here. I need to banzai to Hilo real quick to check out a boat. Can you fuel my plane?”

  “Shoots, brah, no problem. It’ll be ready to go by the time you get here.”

  “Mahalos, Kai.” Mike hung up the phone and headed to the Kona airport.

  On the way to the airport, Mike’s truck got a flat on the highway.

  “Oh damn!” Mike said, as he realized he’d forgotten to put the lug wrench back in the truck after loaning it to
a friend.

  He waited for an hour for someone with the right size wrench to stop and help. That put him an hour behind schedule and in a huge rush to get to Hilo. He arrived at the airport and thanked Kai for having his plane fueled and ready to go.

  After a thorough preflight, he sat on the taxiway, and waited for clearance, from the tower, as the Gulfstream jet in front of him roared down the runway.

  A minute later he heard through his headset, “November Hotel Juliet 224, cleared for takeoff.”

  “November Hotel Juliet 224 cleared for takeoff,” Mike copied back to the controller and then applied full throttle and sped down the runway. The Beechcraft Bonanza lifted off and climbed above the lava field. At a little over three hundred feet, the engine died, and the plane stalled. There wasn’t enough altitude to recover from the stall, and the small plane plunged straight into the lava rocks below. Mike Murphy died instantly in the crash.

  2

  Jessica

  Los Angeles

  It was 2:12 a.m. when the phone on the nightstand rang. Jessica rolled over and grabbed it, while she squinted to see who was calling in the middle of the night. She was exhausted from the murder investigation she had just worked twenty hours straight to close. Jessica couldn’t even focus one eye to read the screen on her phone. She opted to press the Off button and go back to sleep.

  Twenty minutes later, she heard two loud knocks, like cops banging on the front door. “Crap. Go away,” she grumbled.

  She rolled out of bed, grabbed her .45 off the nightstand and stumbled to the front door. After a quick look through the peephole, she opened the door.

  “Sorry to wake you, Lieutenant Kealoha, but the watch commander said it was important that we wake you up and tell you to call your sister in Hawaii. There’s been an accident.”

  This wasn’t good. She thanked the two burly street cops and closed the door.

  Now wide awake, as the adrenaline flowed through her veins, she picked up her cell phone and saw that her sister Pua was the one who called. She knew it must be serious. Pua never called her during the day, much less in the middle of the night. Jessica hit the redial on her phone as she paced the floor of her small apartment living room. Pua answered on the first ring.

  “Jessica, there’s been an accident,” Pua said, as she sobbed.

  “What happened, Pua?” Jessica asked softly.

  “This morning Dad took off from the Kona airport and crashed his plane. He’s dead. A witness said they heard the plane’s engine sputter and quit, only a few hundred feet in the air. Then it crashed into the lava field, and Dad died on impact.”

  Jessica felt a sharp pain in the pit of her stomach, as if she had been kicked in the gut. Her knees buckled, and her eyes welled up with tears.

  “I’ll be on the first flight to Kona in the morning,” Jessica said, in a complete daze.

  After she hung the phone, she sat on the couch and thought about what Pua had just told her. She stared at a photo of her father that hung on the wall and wondered if the phone call from Pua wasn’t real. Maybe she was in the middle of a bad dream, but it started to feel too real to be a dream.

  For the first time in three years, she felt like taking a drink. But that was no longer an option for her. She took a minute to think through what would happen if she had a drink. Her next thought was “maybe tomorrow, not today.”

  She couldn’t believe it. Her father, of all people, died in an airplane crash—it made little sense. He always took meticulous care of his plane. He was a perfectionist when it came to maintenance. Her father had been an engineer on the inter-island cruise ship for twenty years before going into the hospitality business. Nobody took better care of their airplane than Dad did. He knew better than anyone that equipment failure always seemed to happen at the worst possible time.

  Something just didn’t add up. How could this have happened? Was it sabotage? Who would want to do this? Her father didn’t have any enemies as far as she knew. Maybe it was just an accident. He had been running the Aloha Village Resort at least ten years now. Jessica doubted anyone would want to kill him over something related to the resort.

  Her mind raced and she needed answers.

  3

  Going to Hawaii

  The flight from LAX to Kona took five hours and twenty-five minutes—a lot of time for Jessica to think. It was too soon to conclude that foul play had caused her father’s death, but her gut told her there was something wrong. During most of the flight, she scribbled notes on her tablet about random thoughts and things she would do while back on the island.

  Five hours after leaving LA, Jessica looked out the window of the 757 jet and could see the Big Island in the distance, her eyes started to well with tears. She always looked forward to coming home to the island, but not this time.

  Twenty minutes later as the plane rounded the northern tip of the island the captain announced over the PA that they would land in Kailua-Kona in a few minutes. Jessica looked out the window at the turquoise ocean below, off the West side of the Big Island of Hawaii, it was as calm as a lake. That was typical of the leeward side of the island. The beauty from the air overwhelmed her, from the snow-covered tops of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa to the extinct volcanoes of Kohala and Hualalai.

  She saw a half a dozen fishing charters off the coast, most likely trolling for marlin. They reminded her of all the times she and her father would go fishing together. Just the thought of it caused her eyes to well up with tears again. A minute later, she pushed those emotions back down, just as she always did when she saw a disturbing crime scene involving a child. The other thing she could see was the lava flow where her father had crashed his plane and lost his life.

  As the big jet was on final approach over the lava flow, she said a prayer for her father. She didn’t believe there was a God that cared one way or the other, but she figured it never hurt to hedge your bet, just in case. If there was one, he had a lot of explaining to do as far as she was concerned.

  Jessica texted Pua after the plane landed and taxied to the gate. _“I should be at the curb in a few minutes.”_

  As she exited the aircraft and walked down the ramp to the tarmac, she felt the warm, balmy breeze brush her cheeks. The scent of plumeria flowers nearby filled her nostrils. For a moment, she felt both sadness and relief at being back in Kona.

  Kailua-Kona was a small town on the leeward side of the Big Island. Some of the locals referred to it as a drinking town with a fishing problem. It had the best blue marlin fishing in the world, and it was hot and dry compared to the other side of the island where Hilo, the county seat, was located.

  Almost every day in Kona, it rained in the late afternoon above the eight-hundred-foot elevation. That also made it one of the best places in the world to grow coffee because of its unique weather pattern—early morning sunshine and afternoon showers.

  ***

  Pua had arrived at the airport a few minutes early—uncharacteristically, since she ran late most of the time. She waited for Jessica, out front at the curb, in her new red Mercedes SUV as she listened to Bruno Mars and texted her broker about a real estate deal on the verge of blowing up. The other agent involved in the transaction had misrepresented the facts to her buyer. Pua’s seller had told them to go screw themselves, once he’d figured out the truth, because of something the buyer had said during a chance encounter with the seller.

  Pua always went first class; Louie Vuitton handbags, Vera Wang dresses, and the most expensive perfumes. She didn’t care if she only had two nickels to her name; she wanted you to think she was wealthy by all outward appearances. But Pua was your typical real estate agent, broke one year and rich the next. From the looks of the new Mercedes, she had made bank for the moment, at least until the next downturn in the economy. She was a grasshopper through and through and could be a real diva. The ability to look the part made her feel like a high-end realtor. “Fake it till you make” it was her motto coming up in the early years of her business. And it
looked like she’d finally made it since she only handled properties over a million dollars.

  Jessica was a jeans and T-shirt kind of girl and could never understand how Pua had come from the same gene pool. It was just one of life’s little mysteries that she had yet to figure out. When Pua saw Jessica heading toward the SUV, she got out of the driver’s seat and waved at her as she walked around the back of the vehicle to the curb. Pua had on Maui Jim sunglasses to hide her puffy eyes, a tank top, jogging shorts and rubber slippers.

  Who are you and what have you done with my sister? Jessica thought when she saw Pua. Grief—everyone had different ways of handling it, as Jessica knew from experience. Jessica was so good at hiding her emotions that no one could tell what was going on with her unless she shared it. But anybody that knew Pua could take one look at her and know something was terribly wrong in her world.

  The two sisters had been ambivalent toward each other their entire lives. After Jessica had stowed her carry-on bag, they hugged behind the Mercedes as if they truly meant it–for the very first time ever.

  “Are you hungry, sis, or do you just want to go to the house?” Pua asked.