The End of the Dream by Ann Rule Page B

weren’t joined at the hip, Scott spent time in Honolulu, and Kevin took short trips to Edmonton, Alberta, and sailed with his friend Rich. But The Shire was their home base, it was the most stable, dependable, welcoming home either had ever found. But then their perfect way of life hit a roadblock. Kevin’s job with Hawaii Plant Life was phased out, the tomato farm was in a fallow period, and he didn’t have the money for his share of the rent. He didn’t miss the jobs, though. He had made up his mind to believe in his skill as an artist.   But Scott didn’t have enough to pay for both of them, and he said, “Bubba, we’re in trouble. We haven’t got the rent.”
    “Don’t worry, “ Kevin said. “I’ll get the money.” At that moment, the phone rang. Scott answered and handed it to Kevin, saying, “It’s for you, Bubba.” It was Michael Lau, who owned a wonderful tourist attraction called Paradise Park. Kevin had put his bid in to do some murals at the park, even though he’d never painted a mural in his life.
    But Lau didn’t know that and he hired Kevin on the spot to paint a seventeen-by-fifty-five-foot mural at Paradise Park. He would pay him $3,000. This amount of money was unheard of in their world, but Kevin accepted the commission without betraying the excitement he felt. It would mean leaving The Shire for a long time, but it was necessary if they hoped to continue renting their home. “I wasn’t going to waste any money renting another place, “ he recalled. “I bought a tent from somebody for $150 and found a place out in the jungle next to a stream.
    It was gorgeous, and I ended up living there for six months.” Kevin painted thirteen murals at Paradise Park. It was fortunate that he was an athlete, the murals rose so high above the ground that he had to be both an acrobat and a painter. The wall he created in the Bird Theater looked so real that you had to touch it to tell it was a painting. A crystalline waterfall cascaded over lifelike rocks and banana leaves and crimson halacoya shaded the “water.” One night, there was a violent tropical storm and Kevin woke up in his tent to the sound of trees crashing down all around. When he ventured out at dawn, he saw that a huge coconut palm had fallen inches from his tent. Rather than being frightened, he felt blessed. He was alive, he had finished his assignments at Paradise Park, and he had more money than he had ever made in his life. Most important, he had proved to himself that he could, indeed, make a living with his art. Kevin Meyers had come to believe in signs and omens. Some unseen hand had saved him from being crushed by a falling tree in the jungle. He was free now to go back to The Shire. Kevin’s homecoming was not what he expected. On the surface, everything looked the same, the gardens they had planted were, if possible, even more lush than they had been. But, as he walked through the property, Kevin felt the hairs prickle at the back of his neck. He looked closer and saw that someone had cleverly planted marijuana in sheltered pockets of space between The Shire’s gardens.
    The pointed .
    leaves hid themselves among the coleus and the hibiscus plants, but they were there, as luxuriant and thriving as everything else they had planted. Kevin turned to Scott with a question in his eyes. “Who planted it? “ Scott grinned. “I did. See how it blends in? I hid it so well that no one will ever see it.” It was one thing to rip off somebody else’s illicit field of pot, it was another to plant the illegal drug in front of their home.
    Scott couldn’t understand why Kevin was upset. And Kevin couldn’t explain that growing marijuana on the land that Bill Pfiel had leased was a betrayal that could bring them all down. This wasn’t like stealing cherry pies, or bananas, or even somebody else’s marijuana.
    This was fouling their own nest. Kevin didn’t want to be at The Shire.
    His friend Rich was sailing to California and