The Last Resort

By Janet Go

This riveting story is part mystery, social commentary, and fascinating Hawaiiana. Grace Hill, the narrator, tells the hidden truth about what goes on behind closed doors of The Palms, an independent retirement community in Hawaii. Grace and her Clue Crew of three friends help a Hawaiian police detective solve six mysterious deaths among the residents. Characters are the flamboyant manager of the home and her bumbling husband, a transgender masseuse, a tipsy Cajun chef, a militant social director, and 110 rattled seniors who survive a ballistic missile alert, a hurricane, and a norovirus epidemic. This irreverent romp through everyday life in a retirement home is the sequel to Menu For Murder, published in 2015, in which the Clue Crew and police crack the murders of five residents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796092165

Janet Go

The author’s first article appeared in the Washington, D.C. Star at age eleven. After graduating from the University of Colorado, she moved to Honolulu, then to Guam. In 1969, she wrote the first tourist guidebook to Guam and Micronesia and was a staff writer for daily newspapers. Upon retirement from U.S. Civil Service in 1991 as a technical writer/editor for Navy publications, she returned to Colorado. When not skiing moguls, she wrote travel articles for magazines and newspapers and published four books. She has sailed the seven seas on freighters and luxury liners. She lives on Maui.

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Copyright © 2020 by Janet Go.

ISBN:                Softcover                        978-1-7960-9217-2

                          eBook                            978-1-7960-9216-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/06/2020

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Aknowledgement

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

AKNOWLEDGEMENT

Mahalo nui loa to my friends and first readers, Joyce and Duane Howard and Janet and Bob Walker, for their astute suggestions and to my buddy Rick Olson for his humorous insights.

Also by Janet Go

Micronesian Visitors Guide

Dance of Desire, Tragic Passion Behind New Orleans’ Mask

Where America’s Day Begins, Jungle Journalism on Guam

Where America’s Day Begins, A Reporter in Guam and Micronesia, 2nd Edition

Waltzing on the QE2

Alpenglow, Romance in the Rockies

Don’t Miss the Boat

Menu For Murder

ONE

Are you still enjoying your prunes, or are you pau? The server asked as he topped off the man’s cup of coffee.

The man stabbed a prune with his fork like he was spearing a bale of hay. Not pau yet. The Hawaiian word pau means something is finished–a job, meal, beer, gig, affair, or whatever.

My tablemates and I, who were sitting at the next table, burst out laughing.

Who enjoys eating prunes? I asked my tablemates, Yoko, Sarah, and Jodell, as we savored our minute slices of rainbow papaya. The chefs were experts at cutting papayas into dozens of finger-sized slivers.

Sarah giggled. Well, a dish of prunes a day keeps the gastroenterologist away.

Tsk. Tsk. Jodell frowned.

We women were four of one hundred and ten residents who were supposed to be enjoying a carefree lifestyle at The Palms, a retirement community on the island of Maui in Hawaii. It’s sort of a Disney World for independent seniors and crusty geezers over 50.

Attention, everyone. The Palms’ Manager Dana Donlop ran into the dining room. Her powdery, Botoxed face was frozen, and her shrill, sing-song voice could barely be heard above the chatter of the diners.

Some people looked curiously at her over their bowls of oatmeal, prunes, and canned peaches. Others couldn’t hear her because they had either forgotten to wear their hearing aids or hadn’t turned them on.

Those of you sitting at the window tables return to your apartments immediately. Dana pointed with her left hand to the occupants of six tables placed along the wall of floor-to-ceiling louvered windows at the front of the building.

A ballistic missile is due to strike here within 20 minutes. I repeat. A nuclear missile is heading to Hawaii as I speak. Return to your rooms immediately.

Psst. Psst. Dudley Donlop, Dana’s husband and co-manager of The Palms, stuck his head out of the office. He put his right thumb to his ear and his right pinky to his mouth to indicate a phone call.

Dana flipped her long, bottle-blonde hair behind her shoulders, pivoted sharply, and teetered on stiletto heels from the dining room across the atrium into the office. At five-feet-nine inches tall, Dana didn’t need high heels to look imposing, but her sequined shoes were a carry-over from her year’s reign as Miss Idaho Potato.

Missile? Yoko Lee frowned, squinting her liquid brown eyes, so small they were mere slits on her round face.

Sarah Berg’s blue eyes dilated. She gasped and covered her mouth with her left hand. What in the world? Grace, what does it mean? With her right hand, she made the sign of the cross on her breast.

Here’s a message. Jodell Martin fingered her smart phone and read out loud: Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.

One by one, residents at the window tables stood up.

Damn it to hell, shouted a man whose chair slammed against a window as he dashed out of the room. His haste was surprising because he usually lingered after meals to bloviate about his war stories to anyone who would listen

Another man’s face turned red as he painstakingly hoisted his 250-pound torso to his full height and followed the first man out of the room.

Apocalypse! One man panicked and yanked his wife from her chair. They clasped hands and shuffled out of the dining room.

Another couple followed as quickly as their 94-year-old legs would move. Their faces reflected the terror they felt as they were about to face the end of their world.

Unbelievable. One dazed man rose, grabbed his walker and inched out of the room into the atrium. Two men in electric wheel chairs snaked between the others, and caregivers pushed their panicked patients in wheelchairs out of the room.

The last couple to leave the window tables was Crystal, a red-headed massage therapist, and her companion, Julie, a petite blonde. Crystal muttered, I’ll miss my client’s appointment as she put her arm around her friend’s shoulders and led her out of the room. Julie’s girls almost bounced out of her low-cut, gold lame blouse as the pair crossed the atrium to the elevator.

My tablemates and I were sitting in the second row of tables from the windows.

Come on, gals, let’s get out of here. I stood up and grabbed my plate of papaya.

I’m going to check my TV; there’s gotta be some breaking news about this.

Good idea, Grace. My friends followed me out of the dining room.

As I hurried down the hallway, someone behind me panted, There goes our trip to Macy’s.

Someone else asked, What about the water aerobics class?

Inside my studio apartment, I glanced at the radio clock on the table beside my lounge chair: 8:05 a.m. on that Monday morning in November.

I powered the TV remote to a cable channel but heard only the local weather, the usual vehicle/pedestrian accidents, and bumper-to-bumper traffic in Honolulu. I switched to ABC and NBC and FOX cable channels–nothing unusual.

While surfing the cable channels, I finally I found a local station’s news report being interrupted by this message: The U.S. Pacific Command has detected a missile threat to Hawaii. A missile may impact on land or sea within minutes. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

The warning continued. If you are indoors, stay indoors, and stay away from windows. If you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter in a building. If you are driving, pull safely to the side of the road and seek shelter in a nearby building or lie on the floor. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Take immediate action.

Yeah, like what? I shouted at my Sony TV’s flat screen.

I sat on the edge of my desk chair and looked around the room. Where would I hide from a missile? My apartment was sixteen by twenty-eight feet. I knew I couldn’t fold up my old body to fit into my small clothes closet or under my government-gray desk. I could go down the stairway, located beside my room, to the basement level of the three-story building.

On second thought, what good would it do me anyway? If a nuclear fireball detonated close by, wouldn’t I, along with everyone else, be killed immediately?

The travel mementos displayed on my bookshelves reminded me of my years cruising around the Pacific Islands, South America, the Mediterranean, and the world. I began working as a teenager and retired at age 61. I have skied many mountains, won a jitterbug contest in Madison Square Garden when I was 52 years old, had hundreds of articles and eight books published, and, now, I was settled in paradise. I walked to the window thinking that if my time had come, I’d miss my view of the ocean, sandy beaches, palm trees, plumerias, the moon shining into my room, even the roosters crowing to welcome a new day.

I hadn’t missed much in my long adventurous life. As Hunter S. Thompson wrote about his own life, What a ride!

Months earlier, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had issued emergency civil defense instructions in case of a nuclear attack. It stated that people should go inside and stay inside, or duck and cover if you were outside.

FEMA estimated that the fireball of a ten-kiloton blast at ground level, a bomb almost equivalent to those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would destroy everything within a half-mile. Most people beyond that would be badly injured by the flash, blast wave, and flying debris. Few would survive.

Persons downwind of the explosion would have only minutes to move inside quickly to avoid clouds of lethal radiation. The effects of radiation could cause death within hours or even weeks, and persons in outlying areas could receive third-degree burns. FEMA said removing clothes after exposure eliminates 90 percent of radioactivity.

The broadcast described the hysteria and panic in Oahu. Tourists on Waikiki Beach ran for shelter into hotel lobbies or into the International Marketplace. At the stadium, hundreds of competing gymnasts ran for cover; University of Hawaii students crowded into campus fallout shelters; golfers dashed to the locker rooms of the Oahu Country Club; and dudes at a Kaneohe ranch scrambled into a concrete bunker in the mountains.

The announcer said that a Hawaii Congresswoman and her husband, driving over the Pali on Oahu, saw motorists parked inside the Interstate H-3 tunnel. The couple also saw some drivers speeding past them across the Koolau Mountains to reach their homes on the windward side of the island before the nuclear fallout.

For months, I had watched TV news shows and read newspaper articles giving accounts of rising tensions between North Korea and the United States. Both countries had threatened to use nuclear weapons against one another.

Over the past year, North Korea had conducted several intercontinental ballistic missile tests capable of delivering nuclear warheads to Hawaii. A missile launched from North Korea would give 12 to 15 minutes of warning time for Hawaii, located roughly 4,600 miles east.

This prompted a heightened state of readiness in Hawaii, the most isolated chain of islands in the world. Anchored at 20 degrees 44’ N and 156 degrees 26’ W in the North Pacific, the 50th State is the fourth smallest of the United States, with about 750 miles of vulnerable coastline.

Also, there were threats that North Korea would bomb Guam, the U.S. Territory 3,800 miles west of Honolulu and 2,100 miles southeast of Pyongyang. As a former newspaper reporter on Guam, I knew that Anderson Air Force Base, on the northern part of the island, was home to a Navy helicopter squadron, B-1 and B-52 bombers, and B-2 stealth bombers. To the south, the Naval Base was an important outpost for U.S. fast-attack nuclear powered submarines, which gathered intelligence off the Korean peninsula and South China Sea.

At 8:43 a.m., 38 minutes after the first alert was broadcast, a message streamed across the TV screen: This is a false alarm. There is no incoming missile. There is no missile threat or danger to the State of Hawaii. Repeat. False Alarm.

Well, I’ll be damned.

The broadcast went on to say that the Hawaii National Guard Adjutant General had contacted the U.S. Pacific Command and confirmed there had been no missile launch.

Evidently, the announcer said, the alert had been inadvertently triggered by an employee at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency at the Diamond Head Crater headquarters. The man had selected the missile alert warning template from a drop-down menu, to a prompt that read Are you sure that you want to send this alert? He clicked Yes, sending the missile alert to cell phones and broadcasters.

This triggered panic until FEMA sent the last message notifying people it was a false alarm. The mistake was blamed on human error when the employee failed to hear the ‘exercise’ part of the original missile alert message. When the notice that the emergency alert had been canceled, it had not been sent to phones immediately.

Wow! I breathed a sigh of relief, plunked down on my lounge chair, stretched my legs out, and thanked my lucky stars the alert had been a mistake.

With the threat of annihilation gone, I dozed off for about half an hour. When I awoke, I went to my desk to check my e-mail. There were three messages from friends asking me whether the missile alert had been a hoax. If not, one joker said, it’s been nice knowing you. By the time I answered my friends and assured them all was well, it was almost time to go the dining room for lunch.

I went into the bathroom to freshen up. The mirror above the sink reflected my blue eyes and paler-than-usual face, with lines that mapped 89 years of happiness and sorrow. I guess at this age, I already have one foot in the grave, but I wasn’t sure which foot!

In the alcove between the bathroom and the living-bedroom-kitchen area, I glanced at the full-length mirror hanging on the wall of what I call my dressing room. My thinning white hair topped 135 pounds of a body, shortened three inches by age. But, I thought, I didn’t look too bad. Everyone, even my doctors, said I didn’t look my age. Hah. They were full of flattery, or hoomalimali as the Hawaiians say.

I locked my apartment door and walked down the hall towards the dining room. On the way, I admired the colorful posters decorating the walls. I remembered very well Honolulu’s boat days of the 1960s and ‘70s, Hawaii Calls broadcasts from Waikiki, and hapa-haole songs crooned by Don Ho, Elvis Presley, and Martin Denny.

Two weeks earlier, I had returned to The Palms, after an absence of three years. A couple of years before I moved out, I wrote a novel about five mysterious deaths that took place here within one week. It was a fictional account of the crimes, in which the suspects were the head chef, his wife, the sous chef, a saleswoman, and the swimming pool maintenance man. The Clue Crew, actually my tablemates and I, helped the police solve the mystery of those murders.

Certainly, nothing like those mysterious deaths could happen at The Palms again. Could they?

TWO

When I entered the dining room, my friends were already seated. Good afternoon, gals.

Hi, Grace, they said in unison.

What a relief to hear that the missile alert’s over. It took ten years off my life, said Jodell as she buttered a warm taro roll.

We preferred to eat taro rolls instead of the white flour rolls offered every other day at lunch time. The leaf and root of taro, or kalo, are used to prepare luau dishes and poi, the Hawaiian staple that accompanies Kalua pig and even served to babes-in-arms.

Seems that fake news doesn’t just happen in Washington, D.C., eh? I snorted.

Sarah sighed. Now we can breathe easily again.

"Hi-yah. What could we do about it anyway?" asked Yoko.

Nothing, that’s for sure. I grinned. We won’t forget this Monday morning for a while, eh?

We all agreed.

Did you know, Sarah asked, that some people ignored the alert because they didn’t hear the siren down the street go off? Others were so scared they tried to call the Civil Defense Office, but the lines were jammed. I heard that a few people did get through to say goodbye to their family and friends on the mainland.

Well, I didn’t hear any siren, but I certainly took it seriously, I said.