Murder at Volcano House
Owning his attorney a favor, Kai Cooke reluctantly
agrees to chaperon a referral, Donnie Ransom, and her husband to
the Volcano House on the Big Island, whose rustic rooms overlook
steaming Kilauea crater. Kai’s job is protect Rex Ransom,
the controversial former CEO of a geothermal drilling firm, from
the wrath of Madame Pele, Goddess of Volcanoes, who Donnie fears
was offended by Ransom’s drilling there, two decades earlier.
He’s attending a funeral for the second former executive
from his firm to die mysteriously in Pele’s domain. Donnie
sees a pattern and believes her husband is next. Kai goes to the
Volcano House, follows Ransom, and keeps him safe. Then the morning
after the funeral when trailing him during a solo stroll along
the crater’s misty edge, the PI is called away by Donnie,
who shows him a threatening note left for her husband: “As
you value your life, keep away from Pele . . .” When Kai
returns to the trail, Ransom has vanished. The PI hikes the crater
rim in Ransom’s footsteps, halting at a gaping steam vent
whose sulfurous odor carries the stench of human flesh. Ransom
is dead.
A few days later Ransom’s youngest daughter, Caitlin,
hires Cooke to investigate he father’s death. The P.I. doesn’t
have to scratch deeply to find others, beside Madame Pele, who
might have wished Ransom harm. An ex-wife (Caitlin’s own
mother), an ex-business partner, an anti-drilling activist, a loony
woman who fancies herself Pele’s sister, and more. Kai’s
investigation takes him back to the Big Island, and to Kaua‘i,
and aboard an inter-island cruise ship. And even to the edge of
Kiauea Crater to pay homage to Pele herself. Did the Goddess strike
down Rex Ransom? Or was some human agency involved? As Kai discovers,
the answer lies as much in the swirling steam and misty rain of
Pele’s domain, as it does in the equally misty terrain of
mortal passions.
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