Free Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout by Chip Hughes Page B

across Baldwin Avenue onto the plank boardwalk fronting the Paniolo Trading Company, whose rippled tin awning offered welcome shade as the scorching sun pierced thin mountain air. The old-fashioned general store smelled of roasting turkey and saddle leather and motor oil. This place had everything someone in a small cowboy town might need, from Band-Aids to videos to fresh
ahi.
Even an ATM machine. And, of course, Jim Beam. But no one I talked to knew of Maya or had seen a mug like Corky’s—except in the Honolulu papers.
    Bummahs.
By now it was well after noon and everybody in Makawao was eating lunch except me. I found a yuppie deli tucked between some artsy shops in a courtyard shaded by a
hau
tree. I ordered a seared
ahi
croissant (the closest they had to a sandwich) and a Coke, hoping the caffeine and sugar might stimulate some new thought on the case.
    Sitting under the hau’s spreading bows, I scanned the surrounding shops and wondered if Maya might patronize any of them: a seascape gallery, a second-hand boutique selling granny dresses and
da kine
, a jeweler specializing in sterling silver, and a glass blower.
    I doubted if Maya had ongoing use for a glass blower, but it looked like the most interesting of the shops. I finished my
ahi
and wandered inside. The blower was hard at work. A molten orange blob at the end of his long tube glowed like fiery lava. As he turned it round and round, the orange glow became a perfect crystal sphere—evidently a paperweight, as the nearby shelves displayed. Brilliant orbs, they glinted with vibrant colors—turquoise, pumpkin, scarlet, saffron, peach.
    I lifted up one in apple green, the size of a baseball. Sticker shock! It cost as much as the tab for this whole trip.
    “That’s one of our most popular crystals,” said a woman with frosted hair who had crept up behind me. “Lovely, isn’t it?”
    “I might have to hock my car to buy it,” I joked.
    “We have a layaway plan,” she said with a straight face. “The smaller weights are less.”
    In spite of myself, I checked one in ocean blue the size of an Easter egg. Inside the crystal were delicate turquoise-tinted swirls like undulating waves. It was beautiful. And only half the price of the larger green one. I wondered if Leimomi would like it.
    “You can almost see the ocean inside, can’t you?” the woman purred.
    You could. On an extravagant whim, I replied: “I’ll take this one for my girlfriend.”
    “She’ll love it.”
    Then I pulled out Corky’s photo. “I’m looking for an old friend named Maya who may be with this man. I can give you his name if that would help.”
    “I don’t need his name,” she said proudly. “He looks different without his beard, of course, but I would recognize that boyish face and those green eyes anywhere. That’s Charles, Maya’s husband.”
    “Yes . . .” I tried not to betray myself.
    “They were in last week. Maya bought a crystal vase for their cottage. I think they’re renting. Just moved in about a month ago.”
    “Is it near town?”
    “You can’t miss it—the yellow one about a mile down the road . . .”
    I thanked her, paid for the crystal orb, and headed to my waiting Mercury. She was right. The yellow cottage wasn’t hard to find. Beyond the weathered tombstones of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, it sat just outside of town among velvet green horse pastures. I pulled into a gravel drive and walked up to the tin-roofed cottage. The place looked deserted.
    “Hello, anybody home?” I said through a screen door.
    No one answered.
    “Hello?”
    No response.
    I peeked in the mailbox and I found a phone bill addressed to “Maya Livengood,“ and a letter forwarded from Ke Nui Road—also in her name. There was a third forwarded letter addressed to “Charles McDahl“ that was postmarked January third—nearly a month ago—in Lewiston, Idaho, but just forwarded a few days past. The handwriting looked feminine and shaky. And the sender’s last