Wipeout!

     “Delivering babies is not in my standard contract,” says Kai Cooke to his very pregnant client, Summer McDahl. Summer has hired the “Surfing Detective” with an unusual request: to prove her husband is dead. Corky McDahl wiped out on Christmas Eve in heavy surf at Waimea Bay and vanished. Now it’s February, Summer’s baby is soon due, and Corky’s life insurance company refuses to pay a $200,000 policy because of several “red flags”: bank accounts cleaned out, credit cards run up over the limit, BMW convertible missing . . . . Cooke too is dubious, but Summer’s plight and her wad of hundred-dollar bills persuade him to investigate.
     This unlikely case, which he assumes will go nowhere fast, leads the P.I. on a twisted treasure hunt on three islands with a redhead named Maya who also claims to be Corky’s widow. Along the way Cooke keeps wondering: Did Corky perish at Waimea Bay, or pull off the most daring skip-trace ever? The answer turns out to be more complicated than the question would suggest, involving the islands’ big-wave riding and drug trafficking scenes, not to mention the competing claims of Corky’s two “widows.” In the end Summer delivers her baby, but can Cooke deliver the goods? Is Corky McDahl dead or alive? Though the “Surfing Detective” seems the last to know, his client gets a great deal more than her wad of hundreds paid for.