Coconuts and Crooks Read online

  “Well...” Mom said.

  “And now you’ve been here one day, gone to see him, and he’s dead,” he said, walking into the building.

  “We didn’t kill him,” Mom said.

  “I know that, but it’s the court of public opinion I’m worried about,” the man said. I was impressed with his use of that phrase. So many people here had great English. “Stay out here. I can’t have you contaminating my crime scene.”

  The captain came out shaking his head. “This is not good,” he said. “My officers will arrive soon to take photographs.”

  “You can check our hands for gunpowder residue,” Mom said.

  “That will take months to come back, if we can even get it sent out. Do you have an alibi?”

  “We went to see Gurley,” Mom said.

  “Police chief?” Wenling said.

  “Call me Captain. Everyone does,” he said.

  “Captain, you’re not going to arrest us or take our passports, are you?” Wenling asked, her voice softer and her shoulders more hunched than usual.

  “Not if I don’t have to. I know Jo didn’t do it,” he said.

  “You won’t have to,” Wenling said, returning to her normal posture. She likes to play at being a frail older lady when she thinks she’s in trouble.

  “We just need everyone else to believe it. This isn’t like your towns in California, where people get killed at parties every few months. Lapitan hasn’t had a murder case in over twenty years. But the people here, they think the government and law enforcement are corrupt, and they are right. But I’ve been sent here to fix that.”

  “You’re a hero to the people,” Mom said.

  “Thank you, but I can’t have the people’s faith in me shaken. I’ve only been here for four months. This judge does not have a good reputation. Anything that has to do with him will be suspect.”

  “Our alibis will check out,” Mom said as she gave the captain Gurley’s telephone number, and he called to check out our alibi. “She says you guys left over an hour and a half ago,” he said.

  “It took us a while to find a pedicab,” Mom said. “But Buboy drove us here.”

  “Yes,” Buboy called out from the pedicab.

  Captain nodded, but his expression didn’t look happy. “He works for you.”

  “Yes!” Buboy said. “Very generous boss, Ma’am Jo.”

  Buboy thought he was helping, but we all knew he wasn’t.

  “Auntie Jo!” someone called from across the street.

  I turned to see Gail rushing up to us. “How are you?”

  “Busy,” Mom said.

  “It’s so great running into you twice in one day!” Gail said. “Hi Captain! It’s an honor to meet you again.”

  “We’re in the middle of police business right now,” Mom said, trying to get Gail to leave.

  “What happened?” Gail asked.

  Three police motorcycles pulled up, and a man in a car. Captain went over to talk to the men.

  “It looks like very official business,” Gail said.

  “Yes,” Wenling said. “You have to leave.”

  But Gail didn’t leave, and she overheard Captain tell one of the men to dust for fingerprints.

  “Fingerprints,” Gail said. “Sounds like some kind of crime is happened. And the three of you are talking to the police about it. What happened?”

  Captain returned to us. “Let’s all go down to the station to talk some more.”

  “Were they here to see the judge?” Gail asked.

  Captain ignored her, and I was glad.

  “I hope nothing happened to him. It wouldn’t look good for my tita and her friend. But I can provide an alibi. I saw all three of them in the cafeteria at the Bethel Hotel just a few hours ago. They were telling me how they were going to seek vengeance on anyone and everyone who had even a little bit to do with her sister’s death.”

  “I see,” Captain said, turning to the three of us.

  “I’d be glad to testify or make a statement if you need me to,” Gail said with a smirk. “I even told my friends exactly what they said just a few minutes later at the cafeteria if that helps.”

  “Thank you,” Captain said. “I’ll have one of the officers take your statement. Thank you for your help.”

  Captain waved over one of the officers to take her statement. Buboy volunteered to drive us to the station, but the Captain said it wouldn’t look right. Within minutes, the area was swarming with onlookers and more streamed from down the street where the parade was. Naturally, everyone on the island saw us in the squad car heading to the station.

  I woke up freezing. My head pounded. It took a moment for me to remember that I was in a hotel room in another country. I sat up in bed, the covers clenched around my shoulders.

  “Open up, kid,” I heard Mom call from outside the door.

  That’s when it registered that the pounding in my head was actually pounding on the hotel room door.

  I shuffled over to the door and opened it for Mom and Wenling.

  “It’s freezing in here,” Wenling said.

  “I was so hot yesterday, I think I turned up the air-conditioning to full blast.”

  Mom grabbed the remote to the air-conditioning and turned it down.

  “We left the keys so the power would stay on,” Mom said. “You were really tired.”

  “I don’t sleep well on planes,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t have guessed with all the snoring,” Wenling said.

  I remember crying during a number of arguments about my snoring with my ex-husband. I’d always assumed that he was being sensitive. Guess I was wrong on that one.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “It reminds me of your father,” Mom said.

  Dad snored loud, but he was over six feet tall and two hundred pounds. Did I snore that loud?

  “Why are you hunched over like that?” Wenling asked.

  That’s when I realized my back hurt. “I’m not used to these kinds of beds.” Mattresses in the Philippines are considerably thinner and firmer than mattresses in the United States, or at least as far as I could tell from my one mattress experience.

  “It’s good for you. Growing up in the US has made you soft. I need to make sure Jennifer goes to China,” Wenling said, sitting down on the bed and opening up her shopping bag.

  My mouth was dry, my head ached, and so did my back. I needed something to drink and something to eat.

  “You don’t look too good,” Mom said.

  “I think I need to eat, and maybe I’m a little dehydrated.” I knew that it was definitely hot in the Philippines, because I actually craved a glass of water over a soda, and that almost never happens.

  “We’re famous!” Wenling said, showing me the cover of the local newspaper that she’d pulled out of her shopping bag.”

  “I don’t see anything,” I said.

  Wenling pointed to a small box that said “Judge Hernandez found dead,” and then it told the reader to turn to page three.

  “I’m surprised the murder made it to the front page,” I said. “Didn’t Captain say there haven’t been any murders in the last twenty years?”

  “According to the article, details about his death are unknown,” Mom said. “It’s written almost like he passed away. He was ninety-two years old.”

  “So the article didn’t mention anything about the gun?” I asked.

  “I guess nobody knows,” Mom said.

  “Well, there is that clerk that you talked to at the store,” I said.

  Mom and Wenling turned to me as if to wonder what I meant.

  “Remember, Wenling asked the clerk if he heard a gunshot or saw someone running with a gun,” I said.

  I headed to the bathroom to brush my teeth and get a drink of water.

  “Well, Captain will find out who killed the judge, and we can keep finding out who killed Lalaine,” Mom said.

  “Don’t you think they are related?” I asked from the bathroom.

>   “There’s a chance the two cases are related, but Judge Hernandez was a real crook. He probably had made a lot of enemies in his life. The captain is a smart man; he saved a bunch of people during a hurricane not too far from here,” Mom said.

  “That’s why he’s famous,” Wenling said.

  Mom nodded. “Are you hungry, kid?” she called to me in the bathroom.

  I realized I hadn’t eaten since the plane. While there were a few snacks at Gurley’s house, I didn’t really consider that a meal. I’d been so exhausted when we came back from the station that I climbed into bed without having anything for dinner.

  “Starving,” I said.

  “What do you think about going downstairs for lunch?” Mom said asked.

  I hadn’t realized it was that late, but I felt that I was okay with that. Anytime was a good time for food as far as I was concerned. It surprised me that I had gone so long without a meal.

  “Do you guys mind if I take a quick shower?” I asked as I headed over to my suitcase.

  “No problem,” Mom said.

  “We got SIM cards so our phones will work here,” Wenling said. “We need to test them.”

  “So you didn’t forget,” I said to Wenling.

  “Me yelling at you to remember, made me remember,” Wenling said without a trace of guilt.

  I poked around in my suitcase looking for some clothes, but kept an eye out for Mister Spider from yesterday. I still hadn’t seen his dead body anywhere around. I hope he escaped somehow and was living a life somewhere outside of this hotel room.

  Still not understanding how to turn the hot water on, my shower was quick, and the three of us went to lunch downstairs.

  Mom ordered the fried chicken and rice, and I picked out an interesting eggplant dish that was part of an omelet that looked really good. It had little bits of ham and onions on it as well.

  Wenling asked if they had balut. The girl behind the cafeteria counter made a face and shook her head no.

  “I never liked it either,” Mom said.

  “It’s a delicacy,” Wenling insisted, but settled on having some kind of soup.

  We sat down at the table after paying and began eating our food. “I think we should go to the scene of the accident and also visit Kim Lim today,” Mom said.

  “Do you think we should see Auntie Chooney and find out why your cousin twice removed or whomever she is has it in for us?” I asked.

  “Yes, but it’s better to make them wait,” Mom said.

  I looked up from my food thinking I might want to order seconds and noticed that everyone was watching us. “Mom, do you notice that everyone is staring at us?”

  “They’re probably just noticing how beautiful you are,” Mom said.

  “No,” I said, “that can’t be it.”

  “I know you have low self-esteem from the United States, but here your pale skin is considered very beautiful and unusual. Enjoy it,” Mom said.

  Mom may have been right about that, but I sensed people were staring at us for another reason.

  “Maybe it’s the meme I made,” Wenling suggested as she took a picture of a dumpling that she’d artfully put on a spoon. “It’s been shared over two thousand times from the catering page alone.”

  “That’s impossible!” Mom said. “We only have six hundred people in the group.”

  “No, I approved a ton of people on the plane and more this morning.”

  Mom stopped eating her meal and reached for her phone. “Oh no!” Mom said, reading our Facebook page. “You approved a lot of people here in the Philippines.”

  “So?” Wenling said.

  “Have you read the comments?” Mom asked.

  “No,” Wenling said, her mind focused on picking out the proper filter for her dumpling picture.

  “Everybody knows the judge was shot, and they think we did it!” Mom said.

  “Not again,” Wenling said.

  “That explains why everyone is staring at us,” I said.

  Mom nodded.

  “Captain isn’t going to like this,” Wenling said.

  My gut dropped. The court of public opinion was against us. “What do we do, Mom?”

  Mom frowned and looked at everyone. Every stare felt like an accusation. A worker wheeled out a cart with a tub on top of it to clear a nearby table. “Excuse me, Dong,” Mom said to the young man. “Can you take a photo of us?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Give him your iPad for the photo,” Mom said to Wenling. Wenling hesitated. “It’s to make a meme,” Mom explained, and Wenling quickly agreed. She showed the young man how to take a photo.

  “Gather around the table,” Mom instructed. “Can we borrow your rag?” He handed it over to Mom. People gathered closer and started whispering to each other.

  “Look like you’re wiping the table,” Mom said, handing me the rag. She told Wenling to get near the cart and grab hold of the dishes. The worker smiled and took off his white hat and apron and put them on Mom. A few people laughed.

  The mood in the room seemed less accusatory, but I didn’t know what Mom was getting at.

  The young man snapped the photo.

  “You all might wonder what we’re doing,” Mom said to everyone in the cafeteria. “Some of you might follow our page or have heard about the judge. You might also know that we are very famous detectives in the United States. We’ve solved four murder cases in just one year.” Mom said holding up her fingers to indicate the number four. “Some of you might think we’re the ones who murdered the judge, but we’re not. And we’re posting this photo to let everyone know that Captain Remollow is dedicated to cleaning up the corruption here in Lapitan, and we took this photo to show that we’re going to help him clear up this mystery!”

  Several of the people clapped, and everyone started talking. Mom returned the cap and apron as she whispered to us, “We have to go.”

  Wenling gulped down a bit of her soup, and I wrote off the idea of having a second helping of the eggplant.

  “Walk out with your heads held high and nice and slow like in the movies,” Mom said.

  We slow-walked to the door and when we got outside Wenling burst into laughter. “That was so fun!”

  “I don’t get it,” I said to Mom.

  “In a small town, whether it’s on an island in the Philippines or by a mountain in California, the only thing to combat a juicy story is another juicy story.”

  Buboy honked his horn. He was waiting to pick us up.

  “Did you upload the photo?” Mom asked.

  “Almost,” Wenling said.

  Mom signaled Buboy to wait. After the photo was uploaded, we all got into the pedicab.

  “Where to?” Buboy asked.

  “We need to go to see Kim Lim. We have two murders to solve,” Mom said.

  What would’ve been awesome was that we sped off in the pedicab and solved the case, or at least made some headway. But that would’ve been easy. After our very dramatic scene claiming we were going to clean up this mystery, we decided we needed to talk to Kim Lim. Except when we got to his house, it had a huge gate, and his very armed security guard said he was out of town.

  We went to Kim Lim’s office, and the guard there said the same.

  It being too late to go to the courthouse, we decided to go to visit where Aunt Lalaine died. Mom was sure that someone had been paid to run her off the road or perhaps even shoot her like the judge. But it had been so long since the crime all that remained was just a path of highway with a bake shop on the corner. The workers at the shop hadn’t been there ten years ago, but said when the owner came back to town they’d give him our number.

  We asked around the village, but nobody in the area had witnessed the accident.

  “Should we interview Auntie Chooney?” I asked Mom.

  “I don’t want to let her know we don’t have any other leads yet,” Mom said. “Between her and Gail, they’re likely to ruin our case before we even get started.”

 
“This isn’t like in Fletcher Canyon where we know everybody and it just happened,” Wenling said. “At the Lucky Dragon lots of people come to us.”

  “That’s what we need. Buboy,” Mom said as we got back into the pedicab, “where do people hang out to get the gossip?”

  Buboy paused and thought about it. “Casablanca Cafe and Bar,” he said. “All the foreigners go there to meet chicks and drink all day, and the locals go there to sell things to the foreigners. Plus it’s right on the Boulevard. If you sit outside even then people who are too poor to afford to eat there can see you while they walk. Everybody walks on the Boulevard.”

  “Take us there,” Mom said. “That will be our new headquarters.”

  What I liked about our new headquarters was the view of the ocean, emphasized by large oscillating fans that added to the ocean breeze. If it ever got too hot, I could go inside and enjoy the air-conditioning. They made a mean mango shake, which became my new addiction. It was just too hot to drink diet soda all day. I told myself that at least there was a lot of vitamin C in the mango shake, which made it healthy. I ignored the two giant scoops of sugar they added to each of the shakes to make them tasty.

  Buboy had been right. There was lots of gossip at the Casablanca bar, but most of it was about us. Not that many people had any news about the accident or what happened to the judge, but Mom told us not to worry. The word would get out, and people would come to us.

  We stayed at the Casablanca until well after sunset. I drank four mango shakes, and had a pizza that I regretted ordering. The pizza here was mostly just bread with ketchup and other odd toppings. I’d actually made better at home, which showed how bad it was.

  We returned to the hotel that night discouraged, but determined. Mom pored over the case notes and decided that we needed to find the pedicab driver who’d survived the alleged accident that took Aunt Lalaine’s life. Wenling spent the night responding to comments on our Facebook group. I opened my laptop to check and see if any orders for cakes had come through.

  “Maybe we should have some kind of special recipe for our trip that people can order,” I suggested to Mom.