Haole Wood

by DeTarsio, Dee

  “Hey,” I said, as I popped my head into the stifling room, interrupting the sounds of their soothing chatter and humming sewing machines. “Pay day!” I sang out. I squeezed the envelopes in my hands and blinked back tears. “I just want you to know how grateful I am. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine these sunshminas would be this successful. I think we are onto something big here, and it’s thanks to all of you.” I wiped my sweaty palms on my jean skirt and looked around. “I think we need to find more space, and I—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Lois interrupted me then nudged Shayna. “Give it to her.”

  Shayna had a sly grin on her face. “We made you something.” She handed me a box, wrapped in large, green banana leaves with a small, lime green orchid tucked in on top.

  “What is this?” I asked, taking the beautiful tropical package. “Maybe we should wrap our sunshminas like this.”

  “No!” The women all groaned, looking around the room, stuffed with fabric, heaps of sunshminas, and piles of tissue paper.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I am not going to add to your work load. Just keep doing what you are doing. This is just so pretty. Thank you.”

  “Open it,” Lois commanded.

  I slid the leaves off and opened the box. “Ah.” I looked at Shayna and then pulled the gift out. “This is gorgeous.” I opened up a woven hat, put it on and went to the mirror. “It’s stunning.” I ran my fingers over the brim and pulled it off, looking at the workmanship. “Did you design this? When did you find the time?”

  “We used the scraps from the material and cut them into long, thin strips,” Shayna said. “Mary got the idea to twist them into really tight, fine strands so Mary could weave it into a hat. She makes baskets, too, you know.” Shayna twirled her hair. “Do you like it?”

  “This is going into our line,” I said, putting it back on and admiring myself. “It folds up and doesn’t get smashed, and if it looks good on me, it will look good on anybody! Thank you!” I held out my arms, trying for a group hug. “No takers? That’s okay.” Before I could launch into more gratitude, my cell rang again.

  “Haole Wood Sunshminas,” I sang.

  I ended the call and explained to my little eavesdroppers. “That was an Australian clothing company that heard about us and may be interested in buying some of our sunshminas.”

  Chapter 32

  Gorgeous Gorges

  I was in my grandmother’s garage to make space for a bigger workshop, when a flashy red Camaro barreled down the drive and stopped with a sassy quarter-turn.

  O’Boyle. I clasped my hands together. He must have found something.

  “Hey. What’s up?” I asked him.

  The speed at which O’Boyle handled his horsepower was inversely proportionate to the length of time it took him to walk five steps toward me. The optimist in me hoped that he had a big surprise that would turn that Ben Franklin frown upside down.

  “What happened? Tell me.”

  He cleared his throat. “The pretrial is going to be tomorrow. No more delays. They have enough evidence to bind your grandmother over for trial. She was there the night Mike Hokama was killed and the herbs were hers. I’m afraid they’ll want to revoke her bail and send her back to prison until after the trial.”

  “No.” I leaned against a dusty shelf. “This can’t be happening. What evidence? It’s all circumstantial.”

  “The DA feels he has enough details to convince a jury to convict your grandmother.” He fiddled with his glasses. “I am sorry,” he said, looking like he had never had to say that before.

  I don’t know who was more surprised when I reached out and hugged him. He stood there stiffly, long enough for a butterfly to flit over his shoulder. I barely felt his two soft taps on my ribcage. The streaming sunshine backlit his expression as he turned and raced that butterfly back to his car. OBAD1.

  O’Boyle peeled out. I went behind the garage and took a deep breath. I loved my grandmother’s back yard. It smelled like the zest of a grapefruit, clean and fresh, and if there ever was a place for fairies to vacation, this was the spot. I rubbed a thick jade plant leaf between my fingers and tried not to think. It didn’t work. The hideous wheels of blame, self-doubt and regret chugged away. I had believed that if I kept busy getting the clothing line up and running, our luck would change.

  I walked under the shade of the canopy of the silvery-green leaves of the kukui nut tree, Hawaii’s state tree, that may be the lynching of my grandmother. I kicked at a green, fallen fruit. How can something so commonplace and so useful be so deadly?

  I had done my homework and knew my history. Early Polynesians brought the seeds over to the Hawaiian Islands and the tree flourished. Thank goodness it did, since those isolated islanders used every part of it. The wood was used for canoes, oil from the nut was used to burn lamps, and resin from the tree itself helped heal sunburns, while leaves were used to treat wounds.

  It was such an amazing tree. When I was little I always loved hearing the leaves rustle as Josephine and I sat out back and strung together the little white flowers. The flower essence was used a lot like lavender, at least in Hawaii, for relieving stress and anxiety. Yet there I was, as far away from peace and tranquility as it was possible to be, in the middle of a nightmare with my grandmother. I pressed on my stomach, knowing I fed my fear turtle. My guardian angel hadn’t been around since he blurted out that he knew how everything was going to turn out. I was beginning to fear the worst. All I could do was my best, and hope that my guardian angel still had my back.

  I picked up one of the fallen fruit and worked my nail inside a split in the side. I pried the pulpy fruit open and dug out the seed, which looked like the husk of a walnut. The seeds were about fifty percent oil and the ancient Hawaiians would skewer them on a coconut frond that burned for about a half an hour or so. My sister and I used to sit out back at dusk and imagine we were primitive hula girls, dancing in some ancient ritual around the candlenuts that Halmoni made for us.

  I kind of remembered the nuts were a used as a laxative, but I never heard they could be poisonous. I guess like peanuts, to the wrong person, they could be deadly. A lot of Hawaiians did eat the kukui seeds. They liked them roasted, ground and salted, sometimes flavored with chili powder. I have once tried a favorite dish called inamona poke, which used seasoned kukui paste to flavor small pieces of seafood. It was no ketchup.

  I hefted the nut in my palm. The hard shells could be polished into a brilliant luster and were sold all over the island. Most of them were brown or black, but the immature ones that were not yet ripened, were white. Others were dyed bright colors. I used to love my old kukui nut bracelet, with its smooth cool finished beads lightly clacking together. Who knew it could be responsible for so much heartache?

  I was sure my grandmother did know how to make and use the poison, but, so did many others. The whole island was covered with the trees, the fruit was everywhere. Kukui nut oil was even experiencing a surge in popularity and was being sold to the cosmetic industry for soaps and lotions. The ancient Hawaiians who used it on their own skin were definitely onto something. Jac told me that the oil was rich in polyunsaturated linolenic acid, a compound soothing to cuts, bruises and sunburns, even showing promise in calming psoriasis and acne. I threw the nut as hard as I could.

  The police were being shortsighted to think that my grandmother was the only suspect who could use their powers for evil. Someone was out there and I was getting closer to the answer, I could feel it. If my guardian angel trusted me, it was high time I did, too.

  The trees paraded into the deep valley below. A gorgeous narrow gorge formed a focal point as a small stream glistened, reflecting sunlight through the dappled shadows of the leaves. It looked so peaceful. I knew better.

  Chapter 33

  Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

  When I fell into bed that night, I remembered to do my version of praying. I usually tried to picture what the other person was doing, and then I’d draw a he
art around them in my mind’s eye. Sometimes my heart drawing wouldn’t cooperate and I’d miss my intended prayee’s feet or something and I have to go back and do it again. I always made my sister’s protective heart prayer extra large to accommodate her bigger butt and enormous ego.

  “So you pray and judge at the same time,” said my guardian angel.

  “Not now,” I groaned and snuggled in my bed.

  “Don’t you mean ‘not that?’”

  “I mean not now. Not you. What are you doing here? I thought you were mad at me.” I peered over at him in the dim light.

  He folded his hands and had what looked like a St. Francis of Assisi halo around his head. “We are forbidden to wish ill of our charges.”

  “What a pompous ass. Where’d you get the halo?”

  “You like?”

  “No. Cut it out. And go away.” I turned my back to him. I wanted to get right into sweet dreams about Jac.

  “He is worthy,” I heard him say.

  I blew out a shot of breath, ignoring him. “You could do worse,” he continued. “You and I both know you have.” He chortled his belly laugh. “Remember that one guy?” he started.

  “Which one?” I didn’t have the best track record. I always thought I was a late bloomer, but there must come a time when you have to stop saying that. I hated high school and couldn’t wait until what I thought of as an unfair sentence that didn’t fit the crime, was completed. Just where was my fabulous guardian angel hanging out back then I wondered, as I remembered how cut off I felt from my friends:

  “ . . . And then he asked me out.”

  “My parents have NO idea—”

  “He can do it to me, but I’m not doing it to him.”

  I had no prom dates, not even any pity dates, but oh, the private dates I went on in my head. I always wondered why I had such a romantic streak in my plain Jane so-not-gonna-happen package. At any given time growing up, I had at least three or four crushes, and they were all magnificent. They were also unattainable, unavailable and as unlikely to ever happen as me becoming a flying nun, and becoming a nun had once been an option I truly considered. I guess I thought in lieu of an engagement ring or wedding ring there was always suffering. And if nothing else, I was great at suffering, dammit.

  I would have the best times on my make-believe dates. They would wine me and dine me, and dance with me ‘til dawn, and discover my special inner beauty, because heaven knows, it was invisible to the naked eye. Had Twilight been written years earlier, I swear to the stars above, I would have spent my teen years looking for vampires.

  So, TV romance it was. I knew Bruce Willis would never fall madly in love with me and have me replace Cybil Shepherd on Moonlighting. I realized that I would never be an Apollonia to my very own brown-eyed shiny-with-lust Michael Corleone (my first racy movie I snuck watched behind my mom’s back), but my dance card was always full . . . in my dreams. My imagination worked overtime on MacGyver scenarios, which unlike the show, would end up in some pretty steamy hijinks, while we were trapped, facing certain doom.

  Thankfully, the college years finally arrived, with birth control pills that cleared up my skin and added some pounds in the right places. I graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in Broadcast Journalism, and what my friends and I liked to call under graduate honors, involving as many hours as possible spent under graduates. So, I wasn’t quite sure as to which guy my guardian angel had been referring.

  “The Unibomber’s cousin?”

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “And don’t forget Ricky Martin.”

  “Cut it out.” I didn’t really date Ricky Martin. I dated a Ricky Martin. He was so cute, too. But after he made me dinner and made me over, he made out with one of the neighbor boys.

  Before my guardian angel strolled any further down memory pain, I flipped back over and threw my pillow at him.

  “Why do you always do that?” he said, lobbing it back at me. I caught it and punched it, like it was his fat mouth, and nestled my head back into it.

  “You can’t do this to me anymore,” I said through a big yawn. “I can’t take it. I need harmony and order in my surroundings. I am a Virgo, you know.”

  “The Big Guy does have a sense of humor.”

  “What do you want?” Maybe if I stopped eating so much ketchup he would disappear.

  “Oh, Honey-Girl. Haven’t you read up on the latest studies? All that lycopene in ketchup is good for you.”

  I pretended to be asleep.

  “Nice try. When you are really asleep your nose whistles.”

  It’s almost impossible to go to sleep when you are furious with someone—or mentally disturbed.

  “You are not that crazy,” he whispered. “Be still. Do you remember what your news director used to tell you?”

  I rolled over. “He used to say, ‘It ain’t art unless it makes the air.’ Of course, that was to shame me for a story I worked on all day that ended up missing its deadline.” I plumped my pillow. I needed to quit wasting time and get proof of my grandmother’s innocence, before it was too late. It was time to make something happen. But, how was I supposed to air someone else’s dirty laundry?

  Chapter 34

  Jaswinder, P.I.

  The next day, my sewing team showed up and I helped my grandmother serve them tea. In spite of all the orders we had and all the work I had to do, my heart was heavy. Later today Halmoni would be formally accused of murder at her pretrial. None of it made any sense. Ugly thoughts that maybe my grandmother did do it seeped into my brain. I watched Lois noisily slurp her cup and then roughly wipe her mouth with her napkin. She banged the cup on the table. “Come on, wahines, work to be done.”

  I watched her twist her napkin at both ends. My mouth dropped open.

  Finally, it all made sense. I realized what my sex dream with that TV guy had been all about, what he had been trying to tell me when he folded his clean white handkerchief neatly and put it back in his pocket. I thought back to my date with Jac at the restaurant, when the chef had wrung out his towel hanging at his waist. Watching Lois, the way she twisted her napkin, proved Halmoni’s innocence.

  The clues were there all along. It was right there in the crime scene photo. There was a shot of my grandmother’s basket of herbs, and a white, twisted towel lying on the table next to it. That’s what has been bothering me all along. My grandmother was a nut about folding things, sheets, towels, and napkins. There is no way Halmoni would have left Mike Hokama’s without a completely tidy, ready to use, and folded, towel. Everyone has their habits, their signature moves. I had seen Lois use her napkin twice. She twisted it exactly like the towel in the photograph from Mike Hokama’s murder scene.

  “Before you all get started,” I told the women, “I’ll need your addresses.”

  “What for?” Lois asked.

  “For bookkeeping. I’m updating all my records and putting everything on computer.”

  I handed Lois my yellow legal notepad and watched everyone write down their information. “Thanks. I’ll be back soon. I’m going to go run a few errands. I need to make sure you all have everything you need. I’ll be back this afternoon.”

  I ran outside to my grandmother’s jeep, feeling my turtles wrestling in my stomach again. Time was up, I had no choice. I called O’Boyle. Maybe he could meet me there. Or get a warrant. Or talk me out of it. “Dammit.” I got his voice mail. I forgot, he told me he was going to be in court all morning. How could I possibly explain that I knew who the killer was because the killer wiped her mouth and abused her napkin like an old-fashioned washerwoman hanging clothes out to dry. But there it was.

  “Hi, O’Boyle. It’s Jaswinder. Call me. I have important news about Mike Hokama’s killer.” I could be a woman of few words, too.

  I took off, following the day’s rainbow, or anuenue, heading toward Lois’s house. She lived only a few miles from my grandmother, in a small, neat blue cottage. I couldn’t believe I was going to break and ente
r, but I had to try to find evidence. More evidence than what they had against Halmoni. I could not let my grandmother go back to jail. I also couldn’t count on the police buying my twisted napkin theory. I was just going to take a look around to see if I could come up with something, anything that might prove Lois knew more than she said she did about Mike Hokama’s murder. The thought of Lois catching me in her house gave me the creeps. I just didn’t know how I could demand that the police go take a look-see, since I didn’t know what I needed to look for.

  As much as I relied on Lois for helping get Haole Wood up and running, I knew Lois was not as innocent in all this as she seemed. That napkin was the clue, and could be an important part in this case.

  I thought I was pretty clever as I made a u-turn and pulled the jeep a few houses ahead of Lois’s house. It would be an easy getaway. I knew my 48 Hours Murder Mystery procedures.

  I did have a hard time walking nonchalantly. It seemed as if I had to tell my brain to move my knees. I was able to stop myself from whistling. I couldn’t catch my breath, though. It seemed as if I were caught in the crosshairs of a sniper’s telescope, atop an itching trigger finger. I passed an overgrown wispy hedge and darted quickly to the back of the house, fleeing nosy neighbors’ eyes.

  The barking dog with the ferocious fangs was another story. He had huge eyes with a crazy yellow tint—the perfect complement to the flecks of foam at the corners of his mouth. “Nice doggie,” I said, wondering exactly how long that chain was. This was not a Dean Koontz dog. “Hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmmm,” I tried humming and stepped up onto the back porch like I had full rights and permission. I knocked on the door, just in case, and set the dog off all over again. He lunged and snapped his jaws, announcing to the entire island, “Intruder! Intruder!”