Can You Hula Like Hilo Hattie

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Book excerpt

Prologue

“Oopsy.”

“That would be an understatement.”

The three of us peered down at the slim, twisted, bloodied body of a previously pretty woman. A once painstakingly maintained and expensively sculpted face was now a mass of broken skin and bones. Long chipped salmon-pink nails on the right hand appeared to be gripping a jagged rock while those on the left were twined in tendrils of seaweed. Perfect, plump lips that many women would give their eye teeth for were retracted in a macabre smile while formerly merry eyes, the color of the ocean, stared unseeingly upward. A grim gruesome death mask had replaced a vibrant visage.

The gentle breeze that had been blowing all day was quickly evolving into offshore winds and cracking surf while the September sky was growing dark with giant cumulonimbus clouds. Thunder and lightning weren’t far off.

It had started out like any Hawaiian Wednesday morning: sun-drenched and dazzling. A vivid rainbow had curved over Ala Moana Beach Park as The Bus transported people to work and school, and tourists to Pearl Harbor and the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet. As they did every day, trolleys and shuttles traveled to various hotel pick-up points and Hilo Hattie’s while cabs and cars were navigated to planned destinations.

Who’d have expected our first official paying private investigation case to take such a drastic detour—to the brutal murder of the young wife of our wealthy philanthropist-client? We were at the “Peering Place”, a rocky cove situated near the Halona Blowhole that was as beautiful as it was dangerous. The small sandy beach within the cove was well known as the beach in the 1953 movie From Here to Eternity. At the moment, though, it didn’t exude the romance it had when Burt and Deborah had graced the sands.

We’d only had to demonstrate she was a cheating spouse who possessed a secret that could prove of value to her husband and help dissolve a four-year marriage. All that had been required: surveying the woman, taking photos as necessary, and delivering nightly reports. Easy-peasy. Not.

What we’d unearthed in the preceding days extended to the sordid world of drugs and gambling, two ugly and dangerous addictions that could drag you under and far like the Molaka’i Express, which was the crossing of the Kaiwi Channel from volcano-formed Molaka’i, Hawaii’s fifth largest island, and possessed exceptionally strong currents. If the vice didn’t batter you, the enabler—the human component—was there to ensure you remained dependent, paid up and/or stayed high, and never screwed him or her.

“Man, she must have really pissed someone off.”

“Big time.” I peered across the darkening Pacific and reflected on that which had brought us to Hawaii: a desire to open our own P.I. agency. But the body sprawled across rough wave-soaked rocks begged one crucial question: what did a meteorologist, actress, and scriptwriting assistant know about detecting? So what if they’d played amateur sleuths several months ago during a murder-filled week at an eerie Connecticut mansion? That didn’t grant them the expertise or street smarts to manage a bona-fide case.

. . . But maybe the more imperative question at the moment was: how were they going to explain a simple undercover-case gone terribly wrong?

Chapter 1

Four p.m. and the sky was the color of black Sambuca. Winds were collecting momentum, sounding like wailing pirate ghosts flitting amid Louisiana bayous, while rain had started to descend like July Fourth fireworks over San Diego Bay. The sidewalks several floors below the high-rise condo building were empty save for two lanky kids, a scooter-bound lady, and a big burly man hurrying and scurrying to drier, safer places.

Exterior lighting, obscured by the downpour, was providing minimal illumination; as a result, it was barely possible to see across the boulevard into the park and marina. Boats would be bobbing like little yellow plastic duckies in a child’s bath and waves surging like crowds of pubescent girls at a Justin Bieber autograph signing.

I’d only been living in the tenth-floor two-bedroom condo for six weeks and in Hawaii ten. I’d taken a chance and came to Oahu without a pre-visit. I hadn’t regretted it, not yet anyway and, somehow, I didn’t think I would, but the torrential downpour outside was making me nervous. What did I know about Oceania weather, besides the fact that I had provided worldwide climate details to faithful viewers during my North Carolina days as a weather forecaster, also known as meteorologist? Tsunamis swung by this way, that was a given, but I’d never experienced one. A large tidal wave didn’t scare me nearly as much as the thought of an earthquake, though. Oh well. I’d endured some crazy weather in my three-plus decades (okay, I was thirty-two for the curious). Besides, what could possibly faze me after spending a wacky week in a haunted antebellum Connecticut mansion, where five murders had occurred?

The lights in the cozy Ala Moana Boulevard condo flickered several times, suggesting a power outage was imminent. In anticipation, I grabbed matches and two big fat aromatherapy candles from a storage closet at the far left of a galley kitchen recently painted seashell pink and sea blue, my favorite colors. There was nothing like the pleasing and calming scent of lavender to help soothe the soul. A shot of rye wouldn’t hurt either, if you were into rye. I wasn’t. But my melodramatic crazy cousin Reynalda Fonne-Werde was. I was more of a red wine drinker.

Grrrrccchhhhhhh-kaboooooom-grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrch. Button, frightened by the lightning that flayed the sky like a vaquero’s whip, had just displayed her anxiety—whomp—and pain. Upon scurrying into my bedroom, she’d hit the wall under a double-size bed when she’d hurled that furry tan-mocha-and-cream body beneath it in a desperate search for refuge. It would probably take an hour to coax her out from under there, and only once the storm dispersed.

Lovely little Button was an eight-month old rescue mutt I’d adopted the day after I took possession of the condo. The purchase of the cozy living quarters had been negotiated while I was still living in Brentwood for a total of seven quick months. I was allergic to cats, but when I’d gotten the idea to adopt a dog—still not sure where that came from—I’d spent a couple (heartbreaking) hours at a local facility, picking a soulmate pet. Button and I had bonded instantly. An itchy nose was as bad as it got, and the young woman helping me make the decision explained that Button was a mix of Havanese, Schnoodle and Chacy Ranoir, all breeds considered hypoallergenic. How lucky could you get? Home came hypoallergenic, funny-looking Button.

The original move from Wilmington North Carolina to Brentwood California had been done partly under duress. My cousin Reynalda, better known as Rey, was an overdramatic woman of thirty-four and a cheesy B-movie actress who’d started her career as a dancing drupe in a fruit-juice commercial. Rey wanted her best friend, Linda Royale, and her cousin, Jill Jocasta Fonne, me, to open a private investigation firm in California, seeing as we’d done so well “solving” murders back in Connecticut.

I’d been game to try something new—in addition to remaining in media, if only local—but the move to the land of sunshine and cosmetic surgery had never been at the top of the list when she’d made the suggestion. To put a stop to Rey’s incessant pleading, nagging, coaxing, whining, yadda yadda yadda, I’d caved in. Or maybe the thought of living in the land of sunshine and cosmetic surgery did ultimately win me over. Whatever the case, I’d ended up in the Golden State, living in a lovely little apartment overlooking a lush courtyard where cherubs danced through burbling fountains.

It seemed to take Rey a short forever to realize that being a P.I. in California wouldn’t be easy. Among other things, you needed a combination of education in police science, criminal law or justice, experience equaling three years or six-thousand hours, and to pass a criminal history check. I’d discovered that on the fourth day in California, but had not shared the findings. Best she learned for herself.

Not one of us was willing to put in the required years of experience and training, but did my cousin give up? Of course not. That would not be the Reynalda Fonne-Werde way. Instead, she obsessed on Hawaii. I wasn’t sure why she’d determined the Pacific Islands were the place to start up the new business, nor was I sure why I had decided it was okay to move to a place I’d never been, but I’d felt oddly fine with the choice. Sometimes you get a gut reaction, a sense that all will be okay, so with the flow you go. And there you are.

I lit the candles and placed them on an oval glass coffee table, then opted for a glass of Australian Shiraz. It was Thursday and I wasn’t due at the station until ten a.m. to prep for the noonday weather report. There was no reason I couldn’t kick back and relax. There was plenty of time to work on local-interest stories for the upcoming week and The Triple Threat Private Investigation Agency team (the company name was a Rey Fonne-Werde must) didn’t have anything on its plate.

Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. Linda was attempting to locate a missing teen. It was more of a favor than an actual case, though gas expenses and lunches would be compensated. A distant cousin of her boyfriend Makaio Johnson Mele, Makjo for short, who worked as an HPD Supervising Legal Clerk, had informed him that her seventeen-year-old son Xavier had run away from home—for the fifth time. When Linda said she was checking the teen’s usual haunts, Rey decided to accompany her to Wahiawa, located between two volcanic mountains on the scenic Hawaiian island. With any luck, the quest would prove successful, though if he’d run away five times to date, what would prevent him from doing so a sixth? Hopefully, the gals would be okay on the drive there. I’d not want to be out on the road right now. Linda had enough sense to come in out of the rain; Rey was another kettle of fish.

Drriiinnnggg. I glanced at the mobile phone sitting on a kitchen counter. After one lone shrill annoying ring, it remained mute. Mother Nature didn’t. Thunder rumbled like a caravan of army trucks hammering across rocky terrain. I filled my glass to the brim and took it and the phone to the sofa. My mother had always been adamant about not turning on a TV during a storm: anything could happen. Look at Aunt Sue Lou she’d remind me every time brilliant white streaks darted across the heavens. Hers had exploded during one and made a mess of Aunt Sue Lou’s highly shellacked hair, pricey-but-ugly ensemble, and half of a large living room furnished a lá 1960s Bewitched.

Watching the weather was as entertaining as any prime-time show I’d recently watched, so I settled in. Drriiinnnggg. Drriiinnnggg.

“It’s Rey!” My cousin’s tone suggested she was in one of her excited (excitable) moods.

My voice, on the other hand, was deadpan. “Yes, Missy Reynalda?”

“We’re stuck in a pub outside Mililani, thanks to the weather, but it’s okay in here actually, except for a big biker guy who’s leering at Linda and licking the rim of his beer mug as he’s doing so. Looks like Brad Pitt when he was going through that grizzled mountain-man phase back when, but even hairier.”

“Fascinating.”

Rey’s raspberry rumbled across the island. “We found Xav.”

“Good work.”

“Not really. He’s handcuffed to Linda. He was getting antsy too, but we got him gnawing on chicken wings and fries, and he seems to be okay right now. Anyway, I wanted to let you know we’re stuck and may not be back for a while.”

“You’re both big girls. You don’t need to check in.” I glanced at a long oval mirror alongside a handsome bedboard cabinet with wicker trim, the central design theme of the new place. For the first time in several years my hair was chocolate brown with honey highlights, not black with burgundy highlights. It was also four inches below my shoulders, the longest I’d worn it since grade school. It warmed loon-black eyes and accentuated a heart-shaped face that had known stress too long. Life on the Mainland could do that: make you dart and dash, hustle and bustle, and never allow you to take time to smell the Frangipani or Moonflowers. Funny how you didn’t realize that until you’d spent time on Hawaiian soil.

“No, but I need you to check in with Honey Konani, Xav’s mother. She’s not at home and she doesn’t have an answering machine, and it looks like the power may go out around here. The lights are going all wonky. My cell phone’s dead. So, just to be on the safe side, could you keep calling until you get her and let her know we’re on our way?”

“You may get there before I reach her,” I pointed out.

“We may,” she agreed, hesitating. “The kid, I’m worried. He’s got a problem.”

“Most teens do. If it’s not peer pressure or bullying, it’s keeping up good grades or—”

“Those aren’t problems, Jilly,” she interrupted impatiently. “Those are passages of rites. . . . He’s into drugs. Big time.”

“He told you?”

“Didn’t have to. He—”

A loud kurplunk was followed by two thumpa-thumps. These were trailed by a couple of curses and another kurplunk, then an eye-squinching, eardrum-hurting, splat-thud-clang.

“Damn! Gotta run!”

I stared at the phone. Was the storm damaging property? Were pub patrons engaging in fisticuffs? Or was Xavier making a great escape?

Thunder rumbled and grumbled like a heavy rock drummer performing a steady stream of bass and hi-hat foot work. Grrrrccchhhhhhh-kaboooooom-grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrch. Button leaped onto my lap and buried her multi-colored nose into the folds of my oversize sweatshirt espousing the virtues of Sonoma Valley wines. It made for quite the grand finale. I lifted my glass and toasted the skies.