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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Conspiracy theory
>>Kona
Cruz MacKenzie's phone conversation with insurance agent Nick Ornellas concluded just as Mano Kekai was getting paid for the 74-pound ulua he'd caught on their way back from swimming with sharks, including the 14-footer Mano called Mano, the shark god.
"Thanks," Cruz said, shook Mano's leathery hand. "You changed my world, you and your sharks."
"That, bruddah," Mano said with a kolohe smile and a wink, "was the whole idea. Jus' tell the story good."
While Mano left to refuel his boat, Cruz headed to Mrs. Tamura's, bought a bottle of water.
"You seen Sonya?" he asked as he paid.
"Not for days, Mistah Cruz. I'm getting worried."
"Lot of people are. I guess she really took Daren Guy's death hard."
"I t'hink it's more than that," Mrs. Tamura whispered. "You know that other boat was out there, the big sail boat was anchored out near Daren's boat? It disappeared same time Sonya did."
Cruz recalled the yacht well -- Wet Spot -- and the old man in formal yachting attire glaring at him as Sonya motored him back to shore after their night together. And then at Daren's memorial service, he'd seen the old man whispering to Sonya. "You think..."
"I don't know what to t'ink. Maybe she ran away with him. Maybe he... I'm t'inking about calling the police."
Conspiracy theories make for great columns, but Cruz wasn't sure about this one. He would, however, mention it to Ornellas.
Cruz thanks Mrs. Tamura, took his water outside with his laptop and sat at the shaded picnic table to compose a column about meeting the shark god. The easiest way to tell it was just as it happened, chronological, and take readers along on the same wild ride he'd experienced.
But Cruz kept coming back to the end of the trip, when Mano stopped outside the harbor where Daren's boat was anchored, held his hands out, palms facing the water, chanted and then announced that Mano the shark god said none of his children had harmed Daren and that "he's giving them a bad name."
Wait... Ornellas said the investigators found ahi flesh in the tattered fringe of the the half of daren's short that had been recovered... And that morning he awoke aboard Daren's boat with Sonya, she'd said there was a nice piece of ahi in the fridge they could have for breakfast -- but there wasn't... And a light went on in his head and Cruz saw his own conspiracy theory: Daren shaved his beard, maybe cut himself, that's tender skin after years with a beard, and he got blood on his shorts... Maybe purposefully... He takes off the shorts, puts that chunk of ahi in a pocket, uses it as bait...
And another thing: Cruz had seen what looked like the other half of Daren's shorts on Maui... Maybe they really had been cut with pinking shears!
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
