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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Front page BVDs
>> Maui
After renting a car from Budget at the Kahului airport, Cruz MacKenzie called his old friend Lucien Charbonnier at Chez Paul in Olowalu. "Ah, Monsieur MacKenzie, you are famous today!" Lucien crooned in his French accent.
"What?"
"You have not seen your competition today?"
"The Gannett Gazette? No." Nervous pause. "Why?"
"Well, my friend, I can only say that I am jealous. Much as I enjoyed the company of B.B. King, I would gladly have traded dinner with him for an evening with your young lady. She looks very beautiful, and very young."
"Where'd they play it?"
"Front page! But I must say, couldn't you have chosen more stylish BVDs? Something with color. Or stripes are nice. And your hair, a disaster."
"Do you know who that girl is?"
"Does it matter? She's lovely. This will be good for your reputation."
"She's the daughter of Biggie Kanaka."
"Ah. I'll see you for dinner at 6, if your legs don't get broken between now and then."
>> Off the Big Island
Daren awoke, reached for Sonya, found only a cold spot.
"Good morning!" he called. "You still aboard?"
On the deck, Sonya jumped, looked for a place to stash the 11 pages of pink stationery filled with Daren's writing -- 11 pages of Daren's self-incriminating account of what had really happened on the night he won the Lotto and in the days since -- and found none. She was not supposed to know any of it, she was sure.
Swallowing panic, she called sweetly, "You think I'm leaving you now? After thinking I'd lost your forever? No way, mister. Why don't you jump in the shower and leave it running for me, Sweetie? I'll scrub your back."
"OK, give me a minute."
She heard him turn on the KHON morning news. More like 15 minutes, Sonya knew. Daren was regular as clockwork in the morning. She was just finishing the last page when she heard the shower. Holding the sheaf of pink paper behind her she stepped down into the cabin, returned the pages to where she'd found them on the desk.
Knowing things about Daren she didn't want to know ... no, that wasn't right, she needed to know these things ... things she just wished were not so... things she could barely believe ... except that he'd told the story in his own words, in his own handwriting ... knowing that he planned to make it look like he was eaten by a shark ... and somehow that idiotic Paul thought Sonya actually liked him so he tried to kill Daren ... but instead Daren killed Paul and his new crewman ... and suspected Sonya was part of the plot and thus needed to die ...
Knowing all this, Sonya stepped into the shower with her fiancee.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com
