He’d gone to Aiea High, a public school not far away. Then he’d gone to college on Long Island, near his dad’s family. We knew a couple of people in common, and it was interesting to compare the paths of our lives.
Finally, after battling traffic, we swung into Terri’s circular driveway about an hour later. Though the mountains loom just on the other side of the Kalanianaole Highway, Terri’s house is on a flat plain that sticks out into the Pacific. Twenty-foot royal palms stand on each side of her ranch-style house, towering like sentinels to protect her and her son.
Danny Gonsalves came running out to meet me in the same kind of tiny polo shirt and shorts I remembered wearing to school when I was a kid, and I picked him up and swung him around. “Hey, sport, how you doing?”
“Are we going surfing, Kimo? I’ve been going body surfing with my friend Chuckie and his dad. I’m getting really good.”
“We’ll go soon, I promise. What’s this I hear about you hitting another kid?”
“Who are you?” Danny asked Mike.
“I’m a friend of Kimo’s. My name’s Mike.”
He reached out formally to shake Danny’s hand. “Are you a policeman, too?” Danny asked. “My daddy was a policeman. He got killed.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not a policeman, I’m a fireman.”
“Wow! If I’m not a policeman when I grow up I want to be a fireman. Or maybe an astronaut, or work in a bakery with all kinds of desserts.”
“Well, if it’s okay with your mom, sometime maybe Kimo can bring you over to the fire station and I’ll show you around.”
Danny’s eyes were as big as coconuts. “Cool! Wait’ll I tell Chuckie.”
I sat down on the grass, and pulled Danny down next to me. “Is Chuckie the kid you hit with the rock?”
He frowned. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Mike sat across from us. His body language was open, and Danny moved over next to him. “You know what police officers do, don’t you?” I asked Danny.
He looked at me. He’d moved up next to Mike, as if he expected Mike to protect him from me. “Police officers arrest bad people,” Danny said.
“This kid you hit, is he bad?” I asked.
Danny nodded eagerly. “Yeah, he’s really bad. You should arrest him.”
“For what?”
Danny’s face darkened, and he was quiet for a minute. But I’m accustomed to waiting out suspects, so I didn’t say anything.
“He said mean things about my dad,” Danny said finally.
“Ooh, that’s tough. You loved your dad, didn’t you?”
Danny snuggled up against Mike, who put his arm around the boy. “Uh-huh.”
“Your dad was a great guy,” I said. “I knew him for a long time. He made a couple of mistakes, sure, but we all make mistakes, don’t we?”
Danny nodded. His dark hair was crew-cut short.
“The thing we do when we make mistakes is we apologize for them,” I said. “And then we promise not to do them again.”
“That’s a good plan, don’t you think, Danny?” Mike asked.
Danny looked from Mike to me. “I guess.”
“I think you should tell your mom exactly what happened, and then she can talk to this other kid’s mom, and maybe, since both of you made a mistake, if you both promise to do better, then things will be okay. I know that would make your mom happy.”
“Okay,” Danny said.
We looked up to see Terri standing in the doorway of the house. She wore a vintage aloha shirt with a couple of buttons open and a pair of nylon running shorts, and she looked worried. “Danny, honey, why don’t you go play Nintendo,” she said. “I want to talk to Kimo.”
“They’re always talking,” Danny said to Mike. We all got up, and he asked, “Will you come play Nintendo with me when you’re done?”
“Maybe for a few minutes. We’ll see. I might have to go back to the station.”
He nodded, then turned back to Mike. “Do you get to ride the truck?”
“Sometimes they even let me run the siren.”
“Cool.” He turned and ran inside, and I introduced Terri to Mike.
“You look terrific,” I said to Terri. “Are you working out?”
“I’ve been spinning and taking kick-boxing. A girl’s got to take care of herself.”
She led us into the living room. “Sometime you’ll have to tell me all about what Kimo was like in high school,” Mike said. Terri slid a glance at me out of the corner of her eye. I caught it and I guess I blushed, because she smiled.
“I’ve got some stories.”
“All right, all right. We came here for a reason, remember? And not for everybody to start comparing my faults. I talked to Danny, and I told him that he has to apologize, and tell you why he hit the other boy.”
“Why did he?”
“See if he tells you, first,” I said. “If the boy keeps giving Danny trouble, let me know, and I’ll have a talk with his folks.”
“Thank you, Kimo.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You guys want anything to drink?”
We all agreed on lemonade, and followed her into the kitchen where she started pouring. “Terri was telling me yesterday that her family trust has been giving some money to the Church of Adam and Eve,” I said to Mike. “That may be where Jeff White got the money to pay Ed Baines.”
“Tell me about this Trust,” Mike said. “Is there any proof that’s where the money came from?”
“My family used to own Clark’s, the department stores, and my great-grandfather was wealthy. He fought against statehood because of the taxes, and he created The Sandwich Islands Trust to get around them. When the chain got sold to the Japanese, a lot of money went into the trust, and now it’s probably the biggest in the islands.”
She paused to move her legs under her on the sofa. “It’s separate from our family money, but my Great-Aunt Emma, my father’s aunt, has always run it as if it was her own money. Lately, though, I think she’s slipping. She uses a walker now, and she gets tired easily, and I think she’s just figuring out that she’s not running things the way she used to.”
“That’s why she’s asked you to help,” I said.
“You want me to talk, or not?”
I held up my hands. “Old friends,” I said to Mike. “You can’t live with them, and you can’t shoot them.”
“At least not if you’re a police officer,” Mike said dryly. “Go on, Terri.”
“Thank you. My first order of business is figuring out exactly where the money’s going. Most of the board members are old, and they’re all part-time anyway, so nobody pays a lot of attention.”
She leaned forward, adjusted the position of a couple of books on the coffee table in front of her. Finally she continued. “It seems the Trust has been funding the Church of Adam and Eve, as well as some other opposition to gay marriage. I can give you a copy of the cancelled check, if you need it.”
“Let me guess, Aunt Emma saw you on TV the night of the bombing and she called you up to complain.”
“Actually she did see me, but she wasn’t upset I was there, or on TV. Although she would prefer the Clarks to keep a slightly lower profile.” She smiled. “No, apparently it showed her I had some gumption, and I might be able to do what needs to be done with the Trust.”
“Let me tell you what we found out today.” I told her what Ed Baines had told us, about being hired by Jeff White to throw horse manure at the Marriage Project offices, that the money was coming from some big foundation.
“I need to tell Aunt Emma about this,” Terri said.
“You can’t tell her anything yet. We’ve still got a lot of investigation to do.”
I looked at my watch. “You think we can spare ten minutes for Nintendo?”
“If he’s got three controllers,” Mike said. “You know I’ve got some pretty nimble fingers.”
He wiggled his fingers at me, and I laughed. “I know,” I said, and Terri looked at me, and I blushed again. “Come on, let’s go play.”
We found Danny playing a fighting game on his Nintendo, and he gladly gave us each controllers. We battled together for a while, but in the end he beat us both. “We’ll have a rematch,” I said, laying down my controller. “Soon. I promise.”