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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Not the sneezy type
>> Kona
On the way back from their swim with the sharks, Mano Kekai hooked another big ulua, so his first stop in the harbor was Robert Yee's fish auction.
While they did their business, Cruz MacKenzie phoned the city desk, let them know he'd be filing a column by e-mail later in the day.
Then he called Nick Ornellas' office, but the life insurance agent/ex-cop wasn't in. He did answer a call to his cell.
"I'm going to write about finding Daren Guy's beard in the sink."
"Might as well," Ornellas replied. "Our investigator from Chicago confirmed it, but she hasn't found anything substantive, nothing to indicate fraud. We thought we had something -- the medical examiner's report indicated there were chunks of ahi in the tattered fringe of Daren's shorts they recovered."
"Ha!"
"What?"
"That's what it looked like!" So while he had been generally inebriated at the press conference where Jonah Hancock had displayed the shorts, he had not been a total rude idiot when, with everyone else thinking "that stuff in the fringe" was Daren's flesh, he proclaimed that it looked like tuna fish.
Ha! Take that, colleagues of the free press. And you too, Jonah Hancock.
"But that still doesn't prove anything," Ornellas said. "The ahi could have been in the shark's teeth when it attacked Daren. The nylon acted like floss, sort of. That's the investigator's conclusion anyway."
"Shark floss -- pleasant thought."
"But the shorts also had traces of Daren's blood, so ..."
"Have you talked to Sonya?"
The reply was a blast of static. "Sorry, I'm on my way back from Hilo -- the road dips down behind a bunch of rock here. No, I don't know where she is. Sure wish I did."
"Hilo?"
"Yeah, went to visit a doctor who I think would be good for Sonya, if I can find her."
"Shrink?"
"No, allergist."
"Allergist? I never knew her to have any allergies. She wasn't what you'd call the sneezy type."
"No no. Doc Cocker has a program to for women who have breast implants, to cleanse their bodies of silicone poisons that have built up over the years.
"Funny, he's a small town doctor who's on the forefront nationally. Very few people know about him over here, though."
Cruz didn't recall his name from the stack of news clips he'd read on implants. "I understand your concern -- if she dies, the policy you sold Daren the night he died says The Rock pays Daren's cousin double."
"Geez, you press guys are jaundiced."
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
