“You’re not a cop anymore, Kimo. You don’t have any authority to go poking around out here. If I’m with you, nobody will complain.”
She made a quick phone call and arranged for Danny to go over to the next door neighbor’s. Unfortunately, the woman had been away the previous week, and couldn’t help us. Danny argued a little but I promised we would go surfing again, and he relented.
It was a mixed neighborhood, some stay-at-home moms and some working ones, and some older couples as well. We started to the left of Terri’s house and worked our way down the street, up and down driveways, past manicured lawns, basketball hoops, and sport fishing boats up on trailers, until we came to the Kalaniana’ole Highway. Then we crossed the street and started working our way back down. We didn’t have much luck until we came to an older house across from hers and two down.
An elderly woman answered the door. “Hello, Mrs. Ianello,” Terri said. “This is my friend Kimo. I wonder if we could ask you a couple of questions about last Friday?”
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I saw all the police cars. I’m so sorry for you, dear.”
“Thank you,” Terri said, looking at the ground for a minute. She had perfected her response over the last week, driven by necessity and years of training to be a Clark, with all that entailed.
“Were you home that morning, ma’am?” I asked.
“I was,” Mrs. Ianello said. “Why don’t you come inside. I have some iced tea.”
“That would be nice,” Terri said. As the sun climbed the day had gotten hotter, and for a change there were no trade winds sweeping down her street from the ocean.
Mrs. Ianello was tiny and mouse-like, with short brown hair going gray and quick movements. As we walked into her living room I saw a comfortable arm chair positioned with a nice view of the front window. A good sign. She had a pair of small, expensive binoculars on the table next to the chair. An even better sign.
We sat in the living room and she brought us both tall glasses of iced tea with paper-thin lemon slices and long-handled spoons. Her furniture was very formal, some kind of French style, I think, tassels on the lampshades and fancy handles on drawers. “You mentioned you saw the police cars at the Gonsalves house that morning, ma’am,” I said, after taking a long sip of my tea. “Did you see anything happen before that?”
Terri and I sat side by side on the sofa, and Mrs. Ianello faced us from her armchair, sitting forward, her hands on her knees. She thought for a minute. “Let’s see, Thursday was garbage day. I always watch to make sure they take everything away.” She looked over at Terri. “You know, sometimes they leave a bag behind, or a bag comes open and they don’t pick everything up.”
Terri nodded encouragingly. “They probably came around seven,” Mrs. Ianello said. “Then I watched to make sure all the kids got on the school bus okay.” This time she looked at me. “You read about terrible things that happen to little children. I just want to do my part to help.”
“It’s very good of you,” I said.
She nodded approvingly. “I think so.” She put her index finger up to her mouth, then took it away. “Mrs. Yamanaka’s mother came to baby-sit while she went to the grocery. That was about ten. She came back around eleven-thirty, and I remember she had to drive very slowly down the street because there was a big black car in front of her cruising down the street slow, like they were looking for house numbers.”
A big black car, I thought. That sounded promising. “Mrs. Yamanaka has a tendency to drive a little too fast,” Mrs. Ianello said. “After all, this isn’t the Indianapolis 500 around here.”
I wanted her to get on with it, but it was clear there was no rushing her. She said, “The big black car stopped down the street, at the corner of Wailupe Circle. I thought it was funny that they parked there and then walked back up to your house, dear. I wondered why they didn’t just park in your driveway?”
“You said they, ma’am,” I said. “Could you describe the people who got out of the car?”
“Certainly. A tall, broad-shouldered man wearing shorts, with sandy blond hair, and a shorter man, Asian I think from his build, with black hair. He was dressed very nicely, like for business. I remember thinking maybe the Asian man was the boss and the other man was like a bodyguard.”
I could see Terri getting more and more upset. If I’d have been her, I’d have wanted to scream something like “You saw the men who killed my husband and you didn’t do anything?” but she seemed to be struggling for control.
“They went up to the front door, and then they went inside,” Mrs. Ianello continued. “I saw them leave about half an hour later, and then I went in and fixed myself some lunch, and then the next thing that happened was when several police cars pulled up.” She peered at me. “Are you a policeman?”
“I’m a detective, ma’am.”
“I thought so,” she said, nodding. “I thought I recognized you. I may be getting old but I still have my eyesight.”
And high-powered binoculars, I thought. I brought out the pictures of Wayne’s car, and of Wayne and Derek. “I don’t know much about cars,” she said. “I suppose it could have been this one. But I couldn’t be sure.”
She was even less help with the photos of Wayne and Derek. “I’m sorry, I didn’t really see their faces, just their general build. Without seeing them in person, I couldn’t really tell.” She looked at me somewhat eagerly. “Do you want me to come down to your station for a lineup?”
“We probably will, ma’am,” I said. “But we have more information to gather. We’ll be in touch with you.” We thanked Mrs. Ianello for the tea and stood up. It was a good start, I thought, and it placed Derek and Wayne at the scene. It wasn’t enough to make the case, but it was the first step.
No one else was home until we came to Mrs. Yamanaka, who was busy with twin girls, two years old. Her house was a dramatic change from Mrs. Ianello’s, very spare and Japanese, paper-thin shoji-screens and low cushions on the floor. Terri and I slipped off our shoes at the front door and stepped down into a sunken living room.
Terri thankfully sat on the floor and played with the twins so that Mrs. Yamanaka could concentrate on my questions. She was a Nisei, first generation American, and she periodically threw Japanese comments at the little girls as they played.
She always shopped on Thursdays, she said, because that was the day her mother could come and stay with the babies. “Do you remember anything unusual when you came home?” I asked. “Strange cars in the neighborhood, strangers walking around?”
“This is a quiet area. Sometimes we get tourists looking for a way to the beach. But usually not.” She thought. “I remember I had bought ice cream,” she said, “And I was afraid it was going to melt, because it was such a hot day. So I was hurrying to get home, and just when I got here there was a car going so slowly in front of me I nearly hit it. I was annoyed. I almost blew my horn, but I only had a block to go and I was afraid they would go even slower.”
“Did you see the car stop anywhere?”
She shook her head. “As soon as I got home I started carrying in the groceries. And you know, the twins, they make a fuss, so I couldn’t pay attention to anything else.”
“You’ve been very helpful,” I said, only telling a small lie. She had indeed corroborated Mrs. Ianello’s story, which was important.
No one else in the neighborhood had seen anything. It was eleven-thirty by then, and I had to hurry to meet Lui at noon downtown. “Danny will be disappointed he missed you again,” Terri said.
“You tell him we’ll have another picnic. Soon.”
I had to drive hell-for-leather to make it into downtown in time. My brother, the big executive, values his time, and refuses to wait more than five minutes for anyone. Anyone, that is, with the exception of his wife and our mother. Once, about six years ago, our parents were supposed to take him out to dinner to celebrate his promotion to assistant station manager. Our father got tied up on a project, and our parents were about twenty minutes late to meet him. He’d already left and gone on to something else. Between his mother and his wife, I think he got blistered enough to burn off a complete layer of skin. So he’s a little more patient with them.