Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 924 & 925, September/October 2018

Maui: The Road to Hana by G. M. Malliet

G. M. Malliet is the Agatha Award-winning author of the St. Just and Max Tudor mystery novels. The seventh book in the latter series, In Prior’s Wood, was released earlier this year. She is also the author of the standalone novel Weycombe (2017) and a number of short stories. Fans should keep an eye out for the next Malliet story, out in EQMM later this year.

It was early spring as we were coming to the end of Geoff’s consultant phase — “consultant” being the code for retirement-age CEO newly golden-parachuted out of his corner office. He still sat on a few boards of the do-good sort, but he was dying of boredom, the suddenly long hours of his afternoons aging him. Even the skin of his face was crackling like the varnish of an old painting. Then he received an offer to subsidize an iffy friend’s iffier “global enterprise.”

“It’ll be great,” he said. “Jimmy only needs about two million as seed money. We’ll get double that back.”

I wouldn’t give Jimmy Maxwell ten dollars to open a lemonade stand in the desert. No one in their right mind would. Geoff was a smart guy, but his Achilles heel was choosing the people he let into his life.

But now Geoff, Captain of Industry, wanted to celebrate by spending a week in Maui, and I wasn’t going to say no. Besides, anything that delayed the evil day when he handed over two million to that moron was fine with me. Geoff wanted to rent a car and drive the Hana Highway, something we had done on our honeymoon. Had it been just three years ago?

Geoff was in a panic, I knew, so his judgment was shot: Some form of moneymaking had become necessary once the stock market plunged, taking much of his considerable inherited net worth with it. He’d had to sell off the Bentley. (I know, I hear you. I grew up in a place with no indoor plumbing; don’t think I ever got quite used to this.) But the day he sold that dearly beloved car I knew we were in real trouble.

We flew to Maui from our home in L.A. As the plane bounced and shuddered through turbulence, sandwiched between slices of black cloud, I reflected that while marriage to Geoff had not always been easy, I had never been one to shirk a challenge. I saw it as my job, being a full-time wife and adoring companion, and myself as a sort of geisha, accomplished at what was, after all, a dying art.

We had left the penthouse in the care of Geoff’s son, a young man whose aimless, nomadic existence continued to baffle Geoff, the workaholic. But sleeping till noon every day was what musicians did, I pointed out — even tone-deaf ones like Brian.

Geoff thought Brian, now approaching thirty, was misunderstood, particularly by his teachers and employers and pretty much anyone else in a position of authority. I, who understood Brian perfectly, could only nod in agreement.

“He’ll find himself eventually,” I would say. “Kids these days take longer to grow up.”

No food had been served on the plane. I didn’t mind — my new size-two shape required constant upkeep — but Geoff was cranky by the time we landed. What I minded was not sitting in first class: Geoff was entering an economical phase as he prepared to squander money on this investment. Instead we sat where the flight attendant could just be spotted cavorting behind the veil of first class, like an exotic dancer to the privileged.

Still, the sight of Maui from the sky was mellowing. The waters were of a transparent, roiling blue, so unlike the flat grays of my New England upbringing. We collected the Jeep and after a night near the airport set off late the next morning, picking up the highway in Pai’a that would carry us the fifty-two miles to Hana. First we stopped at Kuau Store for water and sandwiches for a picnic along the way.

The Hana Highway runs like a ribbon along the skirts of Haleakala Crater — a road stitched together by nearly five dozen bridges. It is as close to heaven as you can get on earth. It’s the sort of road where you half expect to look over and see Oprah standing and waving to passersby as she tends her vegetable patch. Without stopping, it is a drive of over two hours, depending on how much of the “shaka” — hang loose — vibe we and our fellow tourists absorbed along the way. It took us most of the day. We ooh-ed and aah-ed over many a waterfall that day; our first stop was to watch the surfers from Ho’okipa lookout. They all reminded me of Brian: young and tan and free to do nothing on a gorgeous Tuesday morning. Let the grownups worry about real life. The guidebook warned that you should not try to surf those massive waves unless you knew exactly what you were doing. We moved on.

We stopped at the Halfway to Hana stand to buy banana bread, and then stopped to have it for dessert with our sandwiches at Pua’a Ka’a Park. It rained off and on, typical Maui weather, but it was never enough to ruin the outing. It was only enough to obscure our view for a few minutes at a time. We decided against a swim in the freshwater pool fed by a waterfall, and pushed on. There would be time for swimming tomorrow.

So after lunch, skipping past the glory of the Kahanu Garden and the black sand beach at Wai’anapanapa (because typically, Geoff didn’t want to pay the small parking fee), we eventually reached Hana, the little town slumbering on the eastern tip of the island. I watched regretfully as we blew right past the historic Travaasa Hana Hotel and headed for our stopping place for the night, the Black Dog bed and breakfast. The place where we’d honeymooned had gone out of business, a metaphor for many things.

Geoff had had a recent medical scare (which he was not mentioning to his future partner or his F.P.’s lawyers), which was mainly what the trip was about. Doctor’s orders were to relax, or else.

On our honeymoon, we had spent hours just sitting on the beach, listening to the pounding surf, sipping wine, and talking. And laughing and walking hand in hand on the beach, Geoff looking like an ad for Cialis. It had nearly been too rainy and cold to swim, and the island seemed to be devoid of tourists, like now — a real blessing. In the afternoons we would drive aimlessly around, Carla Bruni’s voice oozing from the car’s speakers. She breathed into the mike about her love for Raphael in a way that made you think of her fabulous cheekbones, the perfection of her creamy, stone-cold smile. I wished I looked like that. “Nuit et jour... Hmm,” she purred.

We pulled over (another waterfall) and I tapped the Black Dog Inn into my phone to make sure we didn’t drive past it. A U-turn on this road was not a good idea. I saw on a travel website that the reviews were just okay, two and three stars, but the photos of the views over the water made up for any shortfalls. The inn also had an infinity pool that seemed to disappear straight over a cliff. I had made a reservation, but it didn’t look like the kind of place that needed them, especially in the off-season.

I turned the screen so Geoff could see it.

“Isn’t that what Churchill called his depression?” he asked. “The Black Dog?”

We reached the inn around four. It sat at the end of a long and winding road that ran past a shack selling bait, beer, and Hawaiian tchotchkes; a few homes and B&Bs ranging from the eccentric to the outright strange. After that, there were dwindling signs of life until we reached the wooden gates of the Black Dog and honked for admittance, as the sign suggested. A video camera was pointed at the entrance and someone must have decided we weren’t there to rob the place, because after a short delay we were buzzed in.

Geoff parked beside a cottage straight out of the Bates Motel, but it was just the office — the inn itself, sited three dozen yards away on a lip of land overlooking the ocean, was a big old plantation house that only needed a little sprucing up. Paint would have helped. A shutter here and there looked like it had taken a beating in a recent storm. Any resemblance to the online photos advertising the place was purely coincidental, but the setting was perfect. As it clung to the overlook, the inn offered a stark, remote beauty.

We waited a few minutes with the engine idling, the car’s heater warding off the chilly damp. Finally Geoff got out of the car and called, “Is anyone here?” It was so isolated and quiet, we might have been on the moon. In the far distance a sailboat bobbed on silken ripples of water under the late-afternoon sun.

I pointed. “Looks like a handyman or someone over there.” A swimming pool twinkled with promise as a stooped figure in jeans and a gray T-shirt dragged a netted scoop across its surface.

Just then a black dog shambled from around a comer of the office building, a dog as worn and grizzled around the edges as the Black Dog Inn itself. I got out of the car and tried to pet him — I love animals — but he shied away. His eyes had a cast to them and I thought he must be going blind, although he seemed to have memorized his way around the place pretty well. Certainly he was old, and arthritis hobbled his steps — he had the rolling gait of a sailor who’d spent his life on storm-tossed seas.

“Akea! Come back here, boy!”

An overweight woman in her late thirties, wearing a faded navy T-shirt tucked into the elastic waist of her denim skirt, came into view. Her brown hair looked freshly home-permed, and on her feet were a rundown pair of Keds with white tube socks clinging halfway up her shins, which would have benefited from the attentions of Lady Gillette. It was the kind of outfit that might have made sense if she were elderly and as blind as the dog, but she was my age. Who had named him Akea? Surely not this woman. Akea was the first Hawaiian king. She would have named the dog Spot or Rover.

I imagined the isolation of the place had made her careless of her appearance. Or maybe this was her nice outfit and she thought she was looking good. Who could ever tell with people.

She smiled at Geoff, and aimed something like a smile at me, as if an imaginary cigaret were stuck in one comer of her mouth. It was not a friendly smile. It was the smile of someone who understood she was in the hospitality industry, and who thus understood the most rudimentary obligations of the profession. And yet, and yet... she did not like me, and that was clear. While I do not require that everyone like me, I somehow expected that someone who was actually paid to like me might look less hostile in my presence.

Geoff disappeared with her into the registration hut, and emerged in due course holding a large, old-fashioned metal key. A tag identified it as belonging to the Aloha Suite. Great. I wondered what the Black Dog’s idea of a suite was going to be. She showed us into the house and up the stairs to the second floor, me following in the wake of her denim-covered, size-fourteen stern and Geoff bringing up, so to speak, the rear. She had seemed reluctant at first to give us the room, although it was obvious a) there was plenty of room and b) the money would come in handy. Not many people would trouble to reach such an out-of-the way place or even know it was here, tucked away as it was on a cul-de-sac of a road at land’s end. Probably she didn’t want the extra work we represented. Asked if we were the only guests here, she nodded.

“It’s a lot of work for one person, Patti.” Geoff, ever cordial, tried to make small talk, and had gone to the trouble of remembering her name. I stood in the doorway taking in the “Aloha Suite.” It had the fusty look of a bedroom someone might have died in early in the last century, the mattress riding high off the floor and sagging in the middle. Doilies protected the tops of the rickety, stained furniture. A bamboo screen that looked like it might harbor termites hid the bathroom door. “You’re the owner, right?” he asked her.

“I’m just the manager,” she told him, hitching up her skirt by its wide elastic waistband. It looked like the kind of thing you’d be given to wear on release from prison. “Been here ten years. The owners drop by now and again.” She nodded towards the window, which also overlooked the pool, where the old man was now fiddling with one of those automated pool cleaners. “Frank comes in to do the heavy chores.”

She offered to “rustle us up” some dinner, but in a way that managed to say, “You don’t really want to eat dinner here, do you?” And in fact, it was damnably hard to imagine her rustling up anything that didn’t involve Cheez Whiz. We hastened to assure her we had other plans.

“Place up the road back towards Hana,” she informed us. “On the water. Called Southern Cross. They do a good fried ahi. There’s also the Ka’uiki Restaurant. More pricey.”

Of course that was all Geoff needed to hear. I could have kicked her. There was a glimmer in her eyes that told me she knew that, and was glad. I wondered if there were a lot of inbreeding in these parts.

In due course, the Southern Cross, which was as close to being a truck stop in Nebraska as you’d find outside of Nebraska, fulfilled its function of keeping body and soul together — just — and served a surprisingly saucy little screw-top wine. We returned to the inn, driving slowly in the neartotal darkness, and subsumed in that musky, heavy scent only to be found in the tropics. One of us proceeded to pass a peaceful night. Geoff had said he was tired by the drive and the ocean air “and that execrable wine” (he was something of a connoisseur). It was stress too, of course. I kept watch as he slept shirtless, and the moonlight highlighted the ridges of the scars from his surgery. He looked like someone who’d had an autopsy.

The stress was partly Brian stress. Most recently, his son had invested in a coffee plantation that burnt to the ground under his management, although the fertilizers and insecticides had been removed from the barn in time. Brian said the aroma of burning coffee was fantastic, but the drain on the dollars he’d inherited from an aunt was considerable until the insurance came through. Luckily, he had another childless, doting aunt waiting in the wings, ready to pop off.

Brian was like that. Lucky. Tall and lanky like his father, but with a look of steamy truculence and of too much time spent at the hairdresser’s. We had circled each other warily for a long time before he finally realized I had the king’s ear and was potentially useful.

Still, in the early days I’d often wondered if I’d waded in too deep in marrying Geoff There were plenty of single men out there who didn’t have the encumbrance of a son whose main occupation was complaining that his talent went unrecognized by a heedless world.

Brian had once accused me of only caring about his father’s money. The nerve. While soon enough I could have replied, “What money?” instead I said, “Yes, I’ve always viewed Pamela Harriman as a role model.” Brian, who of course does not know who Pamela Harriman was, who barely knows who the Beatles were, gave me another of his blank looks and moved on to the next grievance, something about the nightclub owner who’d cheated him after the latest gig. I stopped listening.

That night at the Black Dog I lay awake listening to the water lapping against the bottom of the rocky embankment, in that rhythm older than time, when for sure gods and goddesses had ruled these islands. I slipped back to that one-horse town I’d grown up in, a place I rarely allow my mind to visit.

I finally dozed off and woke with the dawn. It was the habit of a lifetime, this early rising, formed during my days taking the early shifts at the factory, before I married the boss. I wondered what had seemed so strange to me about the sounds of the night and then realized there were no manmade sounds: no tires whining against the tarmac at high speed, no planes overhead. I could get used to this, I thought. Maybe it was time for a little place in the country or at the shore.

Geoff and I went down early to breakfast, to be met by Patsy or whatever her name was. We were both jet-lagged and dying for a cup of coffee, but first we had to listen to some interminable story about how the other day she’d spotted a “baby shark.”

“There have been so many sharks lately,” she informed us, although she seemed for some reason to be looking at me. “Attacks, people being killed.”

“Probably from overfishing,” said Geoff. “They have to travel farther to find prey.”

She nodded. “We have destroyed the ocean,” she pronounced. “Sharks have been sent by the old gods as a warning.”

With that she turned to retrieve the coffeepot from the service hutch between the dining room and the kitchen, treating us to her obverse side, which was nearly identical to her front, and again shrouded in denim; she was like one of those perfectly round Russian dolls that tucked neatly one inside the other, this one costumed by L.L. Bean. I wondered, disinterestedly, if this narrative was her idea of romance, an attempt to flirt with my husband. Clearly she liked Geoff. Clearly she saw me as some kind of rival for his affections. Her love was unrequited, for sure, unless Geoff had developed some denim fetish I didn’t know about.

My eyes wandered over the room’s decor, which basically looked like a vast, haphazard accumulation of vaguely nautical souvenirs, most of it blue and white to match the walls, rugs, and curtains. Some of it looked like it might have been gifted over the years — would anyone buy so many lighthouse-based lamps for themselves? If so, thought I, the owners needed some new friends.

I looked out the window to where a sliver of the swimming pool gleamed invitingly in the distance. Geoff followed my gaze.

“Time for a dip before we head out?” he said.

She answered for me.

“Sure, go ahead. It’s much warmer today, and the pool’s heated. Checkout’s whenever you want this afternoon. We’re not very busy.”

Which was like saying Death Valley didn’t get much rain.

I said, “You know what? Let’s just push on. We can take some coffee with us. Do you think you could refill our thermos before we leave?” I smiled at Miss Management, who nodded with that weird, barely disguised hostility she seemed to reserve just for me.

“What a nice idea,” said Geoff. “I wonder if we could trouble you for some sandwiches to take with us? Just add whatever you like to the bill.”

This was the flip side of Geoff He knew she would do it and only add a few dollars to the bill, if that, but he got to play the generous big shot. He got the smile she had not bothered to waste on me.

Geoff should have run for office.

I wasn’t planning to do it in shark-infested waters, if that’s what you’re thinking. Especially not with a shark-free infinity pool waiting, ready to tip Geoff over the edge into, well, infinity. But I just knew that demented woman would be everywhere I didn’t want her to be, watching us. Watching me. Fly/ointment.

I had thought to do it at Koki Beach, south of Hana, which I remembered from our earlier visit. It was another surfer-dude hangout, but every guidebook warned against swimming there because of the rip currents. Sadly, the surfers were out in force for some reason, even in off-season, and although they were occupied with catching their waves, I didn’t dare chance it. Over Geoff’s protests, we moved on.

“Too risky” I said.

And so we ended up taking the hairpin turns to ’Ohe’o Gulch. As I’d hoped, it was deserted in the early morning. This was the place of the Seven Sacred Pools. It is dangerously windy there, and anything could happen. People have died in rock slides. They’ve also been hit with debris when they swam directly beneath a fall. Really, I was spoiled for choice, but Geoff wanted to go swimming below one of the waterfalls, and who was I to stifle an ambition like that? I put up a token argument.

“At least have some coffee first, before it gets cold.”

After so many months of planning, it all happened fast, and despite the last-minute change of means — I had been thinking of a push off the top of a waterfall — it went well.

The way you fast-forward through the parts of a film you’ve seen before, I’d rehearsed this part so often in my mind, allowing for (nearly) every contingency, that the moments just flew by. Geoff sipped his coffee as we sat sheltered from the wind at a picnic table, and then he announced he was feeling tired for some reason and thought a swim might revive him. He stripped down to his swim trunks and trundled off, down to where the waterfall came to its glorious conclusion. Meanwhile, I washed out the thermos before ditching it in the stream. I watched as the water carried it over the fall.

I was listening closely when Geoff cried out. There were people at a distance, too far away to hear, and the steady drizzle of rain meant no one could see us clearly either. I watched my step going down — those rock slides — and reaching the bottom, I saw he was already taking in water. I saw a piece of driftwood and stooped to retrieve it. It might come in handy.

The dog appeared from nowhere, called by instinct and a noble nature to help where he could. I watched, incredulous, as Akea plunged in, paddling towards Geoff, who after a few spluttering resurfacings sank rapidly towards the bottom.

Throwing aside the driftwood, I leaped in too, and made a grab for the dog. I’ve told you I love animals, particularly dogs, and the thought of Akea drowning in this hopeless cause made me lose all sense of proportion. His arthritis kept him from all but the feeblest attempts at staying afloat, but on he swam towards Geoff. I guess even dogs have adrenaline surges. There was no hope he could save Geoff, but he was determined to try. To die trying. And he wouldn’t let me near him. How do animals always know?

Of course I realized Akea hadn’t got there under his own steam. That stupid woman must have followed us.

And there she was, coming too fast for safety down the path beside the waterfall, the soles of her feet slapping like gunshots against her flip-flops.

I yelled, “He’s drowned — I think — heart attack. Help me get the dog.”

From a lip of rock over the water, she hit the water in a perfect cannonball, her denim skirt billowing out behind her. She could see Geoff was beyond saving. But the exhausted dog allowed her to drag him to the shallow end of the pool, where she commanded him to stay. He looked like that was the hardest command he’d ever had to follow, but he obeyed. Meanwhile I tried to collect Geoff. She joined me, each of us taking one arm, and we swam, hauling his dead weight until he was half in, half out of the water.

“I’ll call an ambulance,” I said. She shook her head: No use. The nearest hospital was miles away, of course. I knew that. Best to make it look good, to show I’d done everything possible. But with Geoff’s health history, and those scars on his chest, they’d never think to look for the poison donated to the cause by his son. Brian had provided me with the sodium azide from what was left of his plantation; that morning I had put it in the thermos of coffee with lots of sugar, the way Geoff likes it. Liked it. Sodium azide, used as an insecticide, mimics the symptoms of a heart attack. I’d used it once before, on the chemical-factory owner who’d been my boss, and who then became my husband, and my ticket out. The husband after him had peanut allergies that came in handy.

My third husband was a binge drinker. If he’d been a steady drinker, maybe I could have coped, but I don’t like surprises. I had coped before, with my father. Geoff was number four, and arguably the best of the lot, except for that gambler’s streak he called “investing.”

What happened next is hard to believe, even for those of us who know that dogs are not only smart but noble creatures with a sixth sense. Akea bit me.

And Bitsy, or whatever her name was, gave me a look that could peel paint. I pretended not to see. In full frantic-widow mode, I sprinted back up the path from the waterfall.

“I’m going for help,” I shouted.

From the hospital, where Geoff was duly pronounced DOA, I called Brian.

“It’s done,” I said.

He was already having second thoughts, and I had to give him a little pep talk to remind him we were in it together. I’d known from the start Brian was going to be the weak link. But he wouldn’t be around for long either. Not much longer than it took his rich, besotted old aunt to pass to her reward. In the meantime, so long as he kept his mouth shut, no one would guess at his involvement. Certainly no one would link him with me. And I had my new identity, my new look, my new hair color ready to go.

For our wedding, we’d go somewhere no one would know us. Somewhere with a short waiting period, like Scotland. Who would even notice two more youngish people getting married? One of them a wealthy widow. The other, soon to be rolling in his aunt’s money. A double or nothing kind of deal.

Some people think I married Geoff for his money. People have no idea. As if just anyone could do what I do for a living. It’s just not that simple. It’s a job.

Sometimes I felt like one of those well-trained customer-service reps you get sometimes — skilled at talking down irate customers who’ve once again lost their cable connection. (“I am so sorry to hear the connection was lost, Mr. X, and I know how frustrating this must be for you. Let’s work together to resolve the issue”.)

I could anticipate the moods. I could soothe. I could entertain and empathize. I could be whatever they wanted me to be.

I was a professional.

I had to stop Geoff before he handed the money over to that missing link, Jimmy.

Still, Akea had cramped my style. Not to mention that nitwit woman. But she couldn’t know anything, not really.

Still, I’d never been suspected in any serious way in the previous “mishaps.” From now on, I’d have to watch my step, in case anyone bothered to listen to Patsy.

Brian, I’d be saddled with for slightly longer than I’d planned, but no matter. I had to make absolutely sure no one recognized me now.

Plastic surgery would once again be called for. I’ll go for the Carla Bruni look next time.