My Kind of Town
My Kind of Town
The sweetest thing
>> 2002 Wilder
The dinner, the wine, the conversation were all good, and so was the first kiss. It tasted of Riesling. One led to another, and soon Dr. Laurie Tang was leaving the dirty dishes on the coffee table, leading HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes by the hand down the hall to her room.
Later, as they lay entwined in the afterglow, he said the sweetest thing.
"Uh, you mind if we turn on the 10 o'clock news?"
"Of course not! I'm a news junkie!"
She reached for the remote on the nightstand.
"Whoa!" Gomes said. It was the first time he'd seen one of the new, tinsel-thin peanut butter-clone electro-gel TV screens. "Nice picture."
Mina Minimoto was sitting at the anchor desk, the first team of anchors out sick with the galloping gunk. "And here's the latest on the investigation at that illegal chemical dumpsite in Waimanalo."
There on the screen were members of a joint team -- Health Department, Medical Examiner, HPD, EPA -- explaining what they'd found.
"By some quirk," Medical Examiner Dr. Kanthi von Guenther said, "well after the corrosive effects of the chemicals began, someone dumped a batch of heavy wax into the pit." She held up chunk of translucent wax encasing a decomposing hand skeleton that appeared to hold a decomposing pistol. "Our best guess is suicide. Unfortunately, we've been unable to identify either the individual or the make of the weapon. End of story."
"End of case," Gomes said.
"You were working on that one too?"
"I talked earlier with a fairly prominent businessman who drove by the site a couple of times, seemed to have quite an interest in the investigation." A thought hit him. "You've actually met his family in the ER, Sheets Ah Sun." Laurie had treated his son Lance for a head injury, his nephew Quinn for a gunshot wound to the leg. A nice family.
"I'd say you had a good day, Sherlock, two cases closed."
Gomes had also solved the Family Photo Burglar mystery.
"On to the next one."
Laurie knew what it was. She slid closer to him, put an arm across his muscular chest. "Donovan?" Her recently ex-boyfriend, Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop- Kamaka. Gomes had arrested the senator after he broke their deal and failed to show for a trip to drug rehab. Then he'd been erroneously liberated from a police van en route to OCCC by a gang who thought they were nabbing Hawaiian activist Isaac Kunia, who himself had been arrested for drug paraphernalia.
"I'd like to find him for his own good," Gomes said, softly stroking her hair. "He's in way over his head."
Which is exactly what the senator was thinking just then as he was handed a pistol.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com