The first I knew there was a problem was when her friend from LA messaged me saying "I was supposed to meet your mum today and she wasn't there". I thought it was a missed lunch date and said that mum probably had her days mixed up and not to worry. Mum was supposed to stay with her and she was worried mum was in LA with nowhere to stay. I said that mum would be fine, she was probably shacked up with some homeless people and rescuing their dogs. She asked if I had any travel details for mum and I said, I know I am going to sound like a bad daughter, but we don't usually exchange that sort of stuff, but that mum had left some paperwork on her kitchen table if I needed it.
It wasn't until I got home from work that night and found an email from the same lady, addressed to many of mum's contacts wanting to know if anyone had heard from mum as she had not arrived on her flight from Hawaii to LA the day before and she hadn't heard from her. Mum's friend contacted me again saying she was really worried because the airline told her mum hadn't checked in, boarded or made contact. She had also rung the Hawaiian police, but they couldn't help without knowing where she was staying. Now that really got my attention, it wasn't just a missed lunch date, and there is no way mum would let a friend drive a 5 hour return trip and then not turn up. Something had to be wrong.
Mark and I drove to mum's house and let ourselves in. Her car was tarped in the driveway, so I make Mark check inside to make sure she isn't dead in the car (I read too many horror stories). The car is clear so Mark unlocks the front door and we do a sniff test to make sure there is no smell of dead body. The dogs went nuts, they have the run of the house when she isn't home and the lady next door looks after them. Mum has somewhere between 3 and 9 dogs, it is hard to count them because they shape shift and split and multiply before your eyes.
Of course, there's no paperwork on the table, the dogs are jumping up and barking, and then I hear a noise at the back sliding door, the white dressing gowned next door neighbour is there, with a torch, investigating the commotion. Lucky Australia has gun laws, or she might have turned up with a shotgun. She returns home with the aid of her walking stick to get the paperwork, it has the Melb-Hawaii-Melb flights, but no other details. I ring a couple of mum's friends to see if they know where she's staying and they don't know, but then set to finding out.
All agree it was unlike mum to not contact her friend, so obviously something is seriously wrong. I fire up mum's computer, which is slow as slow, the dogs are barking, my mobile is ringing, mum's neighbour is explaining some finer details and Mark and I are shrieking at each other from room to room. A search of mum's efficiently filed and regularly deleted emails reveals nothing and her Facebook page hasn't been updated since before she left. I ring flightcenter 24 hour emergency number to see if they have any accommodation details (after we agree on a way to work with or around the privacy laws) but they only have the Hawaii-LA-Hawaii flight details.
By this time, the dog mafia has become involved (they are all seeing, all knowing) and mum's home phone rings and someone gives us a direct Federal Police contact. We call the Feds and are advised to lodge a missing person report with Victoria Police who will then alert Interpol. They also tell us that the police will probably try to shoo us off and tell us to ring the Feds. After chasing escape artist dogs back into the house we head off to the police station.
At the police station the cops have an invisible paper, scissors, rock game to decide who is going to serve us, then they get in a huddle to discuss the finer points of feds versus local and interpol. After determining that they have to lodge the missing persons report, the policeman sighs as he gets out his pad and takes down every teeney weeney detail in beautiful script handwriting. This is probably because by this time there is a queue behind us that contained four people checking in for community based orders, a man that needs to have his finger prints taken and an Indian family with a cute baby the policeman nicknamed Tiger, that needs some documents authorised.
During this wait, my phone rings. A lot. One is a call from an old friend I have only spoken to once in the last 30 years and he is up for a chat. Another is a call from a lady, her poodle has just gone into season and she wants to mate her with Kombi. Someone else rings and invites us over for dinner and to view the new renovations. People I have sent vague text messages to, asking if they happen to know where mum is staying are starting to get suspicious and are texting wanting to know what is going on. It is all fun and games. Mr policeman wants a recent photo of mum and I try to email this pic to him from my ipad, which decides that it hates the victoria police server and refuses to send the picture.We complete the report, and he asks me to email the picture from home.
At home in my recliner, I fire up my clunky old laptop and open up an email. My dogs are cranky, they want their chicken dicks (chicken necks, we call them dicks because they are penis like) so they are climbing on my keyboard and nudging my hands, as my phone is ringing. It is another member of the dog mafia following up on a text message I hadn't answered. I abruptly receive and terminate the call, because someone is banging on the door. My dogs go nuts. Visitors, visitors. Mark answers the door, it is two uniformed police, they are looking for my daughter (another story). Mark takes a calling card and promises she will call a senior sergeant from the eastern suburbs when she gets back from Thailand. We have a husband wife debate over what trouble she could possibly be in and I return to the email. The phone rings again and the king of the dog mafia has tracked down another friend who was away housesitting, he knows the name of the place mum is staying. Yee ha. I look it up on the internet and then add the details to the email to the policeman. We then quickly discover the place is 38 stories of timeshare apartment, operated by 3 different management companies. It is also the middle of the night in Hawaii and no one is answering the phone number listed on the internet.
Mr Policeman then rings, to get a description of mum, height, weight, complexion, hair, teeth, eyes and tattoos.
Mark and I discuss many scenarios like drunken coma/alien abduction/detained by Homeland security, we send all new information to the friend in LA to take up at her end as it is the middle of the night in Hawaii and there is nothing we can do here, so we head off to bed ready to continue the hunt the next day.
Next morning, by this time mum has been missing approximately 48 hours, after a quick 'no news' Facebook exchange with the lady in LA, she tells me that at least the Hawaiian police have been contacted by interpol. I head off to work at 6 am (I know it is unheard of). After a teary explanation, my current boss locks me in my office and says 'do what ever you need to do'. By this time nearly every branch of the dog mafia knows mum is missing. The phone is going mad, Facebook messages are popping up faster than I can keep up with and email is red hot. I have a couple of long conversations with my brother in amongst all of this about Hawaiian police potentially having to door knock 38 storeys x 10 apartments per floor if we couldn't find an apartment number.
Then it was time to get organised. I like lists and being organised and highlighters. I love highlighters, especially fluorescent yellow ones. All documents were glued and phone numbers recorded into an A4 spirax pad, with a big to do list, an email group was set up for regular updates for the dog mafia, (I didn't want my toes cut off and fed to their dogs).
Once that was done, I started making the other formal calls, Dept. of Foreign Affairs, travel insurance office, while adding more dog mafia representatives to the ever growing email list.Then it was time to actually do some paid work. While this was happening, the dog mafia were also busy. Their super sleuthing uncovered some more phone numbers, which I dutifully passed onto Mr policeman. And then my 80 year old friend Hursty rang and wanted to discuss, in excruciating detail, our upcoming trip to Cairns, I couldn't tell him mum was missing as then he would have had me on speed dial on the hour every hour, and if I fob him off he sulks for days.
Then it was time to go to my mother in laws for a special 70th birthday dinner with surprise visit from Tasmanian relatives. The highlight of this dinner was us informing her that a huge party had been organised for her for Saturday night in the local church hall. I also emailed and called one of the Tiki Godfathers. He is part of the Tiki movement and regularly goes to Hawaii, sipping cocktails in interesting bars with like minded people that collect stuff like this
In his vast network in the Tiki World, he knew some local Honolulu cops and a journalist he had contacted, who was prepared to help too. I knew mum would enjoy the idea of a group of men in Hawaiian shirts sitting around a tiki bar, planning how to find her. Mum and I love drama, and crime books. He also told me that there was a big storm in Hawaii and predicted that mum
would be caught up in that. Partly I agreed with him, partly I thought
that she had been cooked and eaten by cannibals. I have a brain a bit like a flow chart. I start off at one point and then have a series of different scenarios that flow through to a different outcome, just so I can be prepared (even if it is delusional)
This morning arrived. Mum had now been missing 72 hours. The dogs jumped on my head to say they wanted more chicken dicks. I hadn't heard from any of the authorities, so we checked facebook to see if there were any updates and then Mark and I sat in our recliners at 5 am and he started ringing the phone numbers uncovered by the dog mafia, one of which was the phone number for the building manager. The building manager explains that there are 30 not 3 timeshare management groups, and as he is giving Mark the phone numbers for the top few, his assistant finds their names on a list and is able to give us the exact phone number.
After a false start, we get through to a bright young woman, probably with a hibiscus in her hair, that informs us Kay and Tony are fine and are at breakfast, so we leave a message asking her to call us, because the whole world is looking for her. I make some calls and send emails to the dog mafia and other concerned parties telling them the world is back on its axis. Later mum updates her facebook to tell us that the airport was full of people trying to evacuate before the storm, she was repeatedly bumped off the plane, and after 18 hours, the airport was shut, and she was forced to return to the timeshare, where she collapsed, tired, to sleep on a couch in her travel mates now single room. She had sent numerous email updates from an airport computer to her friend in LA, advising her not to come to the airport, etc, but they disappeared into cyber space. And for some reason, the airlines decided to class mum as 'failed to board' with no further information, forgetting to mention, something important, like a hurricane, downgraded to Tropical Storm Flossie that has descended on Hawaii.
I am so glad she is ok. As my brother said when I was annoying him with my stupid scenarios, 'it can't end like this', I agreed, we have too many more adventures to share but I did say, well, we have Interpol and Hawaii Five O looking for her, if she is found murdered, we can never top that, she wins.
Everyone is happy mum is safe. A few want to kill her, it is a natural reaction, like when a kid goes missing and you smack them when you find them, even though you are happy to see them. And although she is very powerful, Mum can't control a cyclone, the media's reporting of the weather and airport closures, international airports or cyberspace. I said to the dog mafia in the last email when I told them she was safe and well "I am sorry I won't get to see you all at the funeral. I had planned to go to Hawaii, identify her rotting body after it was found in a shallow grave, have a brief but passionate affair with the hot investigating officer, have mum cremated in a lei decorated Islander celebration on the beach with flaming torches, bring her ashes back to Australia in a carved decorative container, which customs would attemt to seize. Then I would have hired the dog pavillion at the showground for a memorial service with the frozen cocktail machine and champagne."
Mum's next door neighbor is pleased she doesn't have to break it to mum's dogs that they have been orphaned and are going to foster homes, and another friend was planning a 'Kay S Memorial Sash' for next year's Royal Melbourne Agricultural dog show, but the group consensus is we are going to have a funeral party anyway. We love parties and we love Kay.
