Bet Your Bones

by Jeanne Matthews

  “Not unless they make one with cyanide.” Dinah put her hand over her thudding heart and studied Marywave’s cartoonishly wide eyes. It was a fairish attempt, but her lying skills weren’t yet so well honed. “You know, Marywave, it’s a sin to tell a lie.”

  “Uh-uh. There’s no commandment against regular lyin’. Only bearin’ false witness.”

  “Well, there’s a civilian rule against regular lying. Don’t try my patience, Marywave. Where did you go? What’s up?”

  “Why persecutest thou me? Acts five…”

  “Oh, can it!” Dinah was tempted to beateth her behind. What was she fibbing about? Had she sneaked off to buy itching powder to exacerbate Xander’s allergies or spray paint to trash her mother’s dress? Dinah resolved to give Claude Ann a heads-up about possible mischief in the works, but she didn’t have the energy or the patience to interrogate the little liar. She herded her back into the Outrigger’s lobby and asked the concierge to hail them a taxi back to the Olopana.

  Chapter Eleven

  At the front desk, Marywave announced that she had misplaced her key card and the receptionist announced that there was a message for Dinah. Expecting a call from Xander, Dinah was surprised to see that it was from Dr. Sowell, one of the anthropologists she’d been working with on Mindanao. Guerillas from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front had attacked and beheaded a group of journalists and politicians in Cotabata province and the study was suspended indefinitely. Do not return. We will advise you if the study resumes and there is a position for you.

  Dinah wadded up the message and stuffed it in her purse. She should feel an outpouring of sympathy and grief for the slain, but all she could think about was her own thwarted career. Another opportunity kaput, as per the usual.

  The receptionist presented Marywave with a spare key card and Marywave and Dinah continued on to Claude Ann’s suite. To Dinah’s considerable irritation, Tiffany wasn’t there. She tried calling her room, but she wasn’t there either. Marywave guessed she’d be at the swimming pool and would Dinah please, pretty please let her go swimming, too? As if she had a choice. Until she could deliver the pest into the care of the sitter, she was stuck with her.

  While she waited for Marywave to change into her bathing suit, she turned on the TV and channel surfed. She wished she’d paid attention to the name on the TV truck last night. If it was a slow news day, the station might rerun the segment and throw in a little background and commentary on Uwahi. But it was too late for the midday news and too early for the evening news. On one station there was a discussion of ho`oponopono. An elderly Hawaiian man was explaining to an audience of people seated on the floor in front of him that in order to heal their errors, which he called hala, and restore harmony within their families and communities, they must confess their hala and apologize. Only through the ancient practice of ho`oponopono could relationships be set right and past quarrels and misunderstandings rectified and forgiven.

  Dinah was just getting into it when Marywave capered into the room. She wore a blue and green striped tank suit and a self-satisfied grin. “I’m ready.”

  “Is there anything you’d like to confess, Marywave?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “The Bible says that all the world is guilty before God.”

  With all her scriptural loopholes and equivocations, Marywave was beginning to sound as if she had something important to hide. Dinah let it go. She had her own hala to reckon with and she was positively yearning for a cigarette. She turned off the TV and the two of them set out to search for Tiffany.

  As Marywave had guessed, the sitter was lounging beside the pool in a daring little red bikini, surrounded by a gaggle of libidinous teenage boys. Dinah consigned Marywave into her care and escaped to the sanctuary of her room.

  The message light on the phone was blinking red. Maybe it was Xander. She picked up.

  Xander’s voice said, “Hi, Dinah. I understand you want to speak with me. Give me a call at eight-o-eight, six-two-two, two-four-o-six.”

  Dinah went into her over-sized bathroom with its dual wardrobe closets and separate vanities and foraged in the mini-bar for vodka and V-8. She mixed herself a Bloody Mary and sat down on the bed to organize her thoughts. This took almost half of the drink, but she nerved herself and dialed.

  Xander answered.

  After the preliminaries, she said, “I guess Avery Wilhite and Claude Ann told you that Eleanor Kalolo approached me for a chat this morning.”

  “Yes, and I am sorry, Dinah. The woman’s unstoppable. I don’t know why she’s rabblerousing here on Oahu. Uwahi’s on the Big Island, which is where she lives and agitates normally. But however much of a pain she is, she’s harmless.”

  Like the little jigglers, thought Dinah. “I’m not so sure, Xander. Her anger sounds visceral and very personal. Should you request police protection for yourself and Claude Ann?”

  “Eleanor’s a blowhard. An empty muumuu.” He laughed at his little funny, but it was a tinny laugh. “All she can do is make noise and empty threats.”

  “Did Avery tell you the word she said I was to pass on to you? Pash?”

  “It’s meaningless. More of her Hawaiian hocus-pocus to stay in the limelight. Forget her, Dinah. Enjoy your afternoon and…”

  “Avery told me that she’s your late wife’s sister.”

  The silence on the other end gonged. I’ve stepped in it now, thought Dinah.

  “You’re concerned because I haven’t told Claude Ann.” His voice was flat, resigned. “I should have. When Claude Ann and I met, so many difficult things were going on in my life. She couldn’t have been more understanding or accepting or supportive. Frankly, I was afraid I’d lose her if I hit her too soon with the truth about Eleanor. Most of my problems are temporary. But Eleanor is relentless. As I’m sure she made plain to you, she hates me.”

  “So you are concerned that she can do more than make noise.”

  “She can slander me. She can slander Uwahi. I don’t know if she can torpedo the deal at this point. I don’t think so. And the more I know about Claude Ann, the surer I am of her love and her loyalty. You needn’t worry, Dinah. I’ll tell her about Eleanor tonight.” He seemed to have talked himself into a more positive frame of mind. “Things will work out fine. How can they not in the land called Paradise? Look, we’ll see you in the ballroom tonight around eight. Jonathan will call for you a few minutes before. He’s already checked into the hotel.”

  Dinah finished her Bloody Mary and mixed another. Between Eleanor’s spooky hints and Xander’s sunny evasions stretched a no man’s land, under which bones might or might not be buried. Dinah didn’t buy Xander’s line that he didn’t know what Pash meant. For all of his seeming candor, he had skipped right over Eleanor’s reason for hating him. Did she blame him for her sister’s suicide? Could Pash have been Leilani’s nickname? Whatever lay behind the feud, there would be no ho`oponopono between Xander and his Hawaiian nemesis anytime soon.

  However there could and should be ho`oponopono between Dinah and Claude Ann. Dinah decided that the best way to confess her hala in the matter of Wesley Spencer would be in writing. A letter would give Claude Ann a chance to digest the story in private before they talked. In the rear view mirror, the situation might strike her as funny.

  Dinah moved to the desk, took a pen and a piece of Olopana stationery out of the drawer, sat down, and composed her first sentence.

  Dear Claude Ann,

  It’s time we cleared the air once and for all. Whatever Hank may think, I did not “have something going on” with Wesley Spencer. I have always been your friend and I would never come between you and your boyfriend or do anything to hurt you ever. If that is what you think, it is absolutely false. And ridiculous.

  Did that sound too defensive? In Dinah’s mind, defensiveness almost always
implied guilt. Of course, confessing one’s guilt was the purpose of ho`oponopono, but there were gradations of guilt and she didn’t want to give the impression that she was copping to a higher offense than the one she’d committed.

  She lit a Sincerely Yours, nursed her drink, and mulled. Claude Ann and Wesley had met in college and, after a whirlwind summer romance, they became engaged. Claude Ann loved him like the sun. She thought he loved her. Everybody did. And then one day, drunk and barely coherent, he called her and reneged. No rhyme. No reason. Not even a decent mea culpa. He quit school, packed his things, and decamped in the dead of night, leaving no forwarding address. Claude Ann was shattered.

  Dinah had watched her cry and pine for days, until she couldn’t stand it any longer. Without telling Claude Ann, she made a few inquiries around campus and tracked Wesley to his lair in Atlanta. She cornered him and pleaded on Claude Ann’s behalf, reminded him how much Claude Ann loved him, how brokenhearted she’d be if he didn’t carry through on his promise. She appealed to his sense of honor, warned him what a mistake he’d be making if he let a catch like Claude Ann get away, implored him to at least call her and talk to her. Her arguments collapsed when Wesley informed her that he had come to the realization that he was gay. To put the icing on the cake, this realization had arrived with the discovery that he was madly in love with Dinah’s brother, Lucien.

  It was a long drive back to school. A drive during which Dinah despaired of ever really knowing another human being. It wasn’t all that great a shock to discover that her artistic, chameleon-like half-brother was gay. It was his duplicity that knocked her for a loop. She had thought they were close. She had thought they entrusted their secrets to one another. But like her father, Lucien had fooled her. It was a second reminder. People lie, even when they don’t say anything.

  And Wesley? He’d seemed the studliest, red-bloodedest, hetero-male imaginable. Although Claude Ann had never said so, she must have had sex with him. Even in the Bible Belt, most girls lost their virginity by they time they were juniors in college. Especially if they were engaged to be married.

  Dinah had agonized over what to do. Neither Wesley nor Lucien had come out of the closet to their parents or her or anyone else so far as she knew. She couldn’t blow their cover and she couldn’t think of a good way to break the news to Claude Ann that the man of her dreams had switched teams. Claude Ann was loyal to a fault. She would pine her life away waiting for Wes to come back to her. Dinah had to give her a reason for his desertion that didn’t shake her self-esteem to the core, but one that would close the door on any hope of a fairy-tale happy ending.

  In the end, she told her she had visited Wesley in Atlanta and he’d owned up that he’d been seeing somebody else on the side. She said that he’d fallen in love with this other person and they had eloped and gotten married. She didn’t mention the gender of Wesley’s new love and the only actual lie was the getting married part. In her naiveté, she assumed that this would bring about closure. Looking back, she should have foreseen that Claude Ann would feel humiliated that she’d gone begging to Wes on her account as if she were a charity case. But who could have predicted she’d freak out and marry Hank Kemper to save face?

  Dinah tore up the letter, tossed it in the waste basket, and began again.

  Dear Claude Ann, I know it mortified you that I took it upon myself to talk to Wes without your knowledge. It was wrong of me to meddle, but I was only trying to help. Wes told me he was gay and living with his male lover. I was too big a coward to tell you that. But if Hank thinks I had something going on with Wes, he’s wrong. And if Wes led you to believe that something happened between us, he’s a bigger coward than I am.

  Wes had turned up in Needmore a year ago and Claude Ann walked out on Hank a year ago. There had to be a connection there. How likely was it that Claude Ann had had further contact with Wes? Maybe they met again in Atlanta and Wes told her everything. Maybe that was why Claude Ann said she wasn’t mad anymore and wanted to return her friendship with Dinah to the status quo ante. Lucien had come out to his family. Maybe Wesley had come out to his parents and while he was about it, he had made a clean breast to Claude Ann. If that were the case, there’d be no reason to revisit the Wesley episode in speech or in writing. Dinah tore up that letter, too.

  Self-justification vied with ho’oponopono. Her reasons for lying had seemed so selfless and high-minded at the time. But deep down, had she cared more about protecting her brother’s secret than telling her best friend the truth? Perhaps she’d been afraid that Claude Ann would hate Lucien and hate her by association. And did she really and truly believe that Claude Ann would have fallen apart on the news that her boyfriend was gay? Today such an idea seemed melodramatic, an insult to Claude Ann’s intelligence and resilience. There must have been extenuating circumstances. Dinah just couldn’t remember them at the moment. Good grief, who knew what anyone had been thinking ten years ago? The Past was a galaxy far, far away and the things the natives thought and did there defied present-day comprehension.

  She put out her cigarette. She should go out onto the lanai and soak up her thousand dollar view, but the blue sky clashed with her black mood. She flumped onto the bed, and opened the book of myths at random to a chapter titled The Uses of Mana.

  The pre-Christianized Hawaiians, like most preliterate peoples, believed in the inherent spiritual power, mana, of all persons and all things. The royals were infused at birth with more mana than commoners, but everyone and everything emanated some degree of spiritual force, either for good or evil. Death did not dispel or diminish the power of mana. The bones of the dead, especially those of the kings, retained such a potent mana that they imparted an almost godlike power to whomever possessed them. Family members kept the bones of their dead and carved them into talismans, which could be used by their owners either to ward off harm from themselves or to inflict harm on someone else. Since the ancestor’s mana belonged to every member of the household, the power to hex belonged to everyone. Anyone could send pilikia, the Hawaiian word for trouble, to anyone else for any reason.

  The telephone rang. Please God, no more pilikia. And don’t let the rock expert be an earlybird. “Hello.”

  “It’s me. Come quick. It’s an emergency.”

  “What kind of…?”

  “My suite. Hurry.”

  “Claudy…?”

  The line went dead and Dinah leapt off the bed. Had something happened to Marywave? Had Eleanor Kalolo firebombed Xander’s office? She ran out the door and tore down the hall. Claude Ann’s suite was at the end of the hall, one floor down. She reached the elevators and jammed all of the down buttons. The doors didn’t open and she didn’t wait. She ran to the stairs and, in a blind rush, took them two at a time.

  The door to Claude Ann’s suite stood ajar and she pushed inside, panting. “What?”

  Claude halted in mid-stride and spun to face her. “I’ve been burgled.”

  “Dear God! Not the Vera Wang.”

  “My gun.”

  Dinah stared at her, speechless.

  “Somebody took Grandpa Hollis’ Beretta out of my train case.”

  Dinah knew the weapon. She could recite the inscription on the barrel by heart. R Beretta Mo 1934 Brevet. Hollis Albright had confiscated it from an Italian officer during World War II. In his dotage, he showed off his prize to everyone who walked through his door and endlessly repeated the story of how he’d overpowered the Italian to take it.

  “Why,” asked Dinah, “did you bring a gun with you to Hawaii?”

  “I’m not used to gallivantin’ around the world by myself like you are, smartypants. I wanted some protection. With that Eleanor skulkin’ around, it made me feel safer.”

  “You obviously thought you needed protection before you met Eleanor. Is it because you’re afraid of Hank?”

  “The only thing I fear from Hank i
s a sermon.”

  “Have you notified hotel management? They should call the police. Is the Beretta registered?”

  “Georgia doesn’t require people to register their guns.”

  “The feds do. And I’m guessing that anyone who brings a firearm into the State of Hawaii is required to register it pretty damn quick.”

  “Then it’s not registered. Sheesh. It’s not like I’m carryin’ it around in my garters.”

  Xander walked through the open door. “I just got your message. What’s wrong?”

  “Somebody stole my gun.”

  He looked as taken aback as Dinah had been. “You have a gun?”

  “I had a gun. Somebody stole it.”

  “Jesus Christ, Claude Ann.”

  Dinah said, “The first thing you have to do is report the theft, Claudy. If somebody commits a crime with it, they can trace it back to you.”

  “No.” Xander raked his hair out of his face and kneaded his forehead. “Not right away. Let’s sleep on it. Maybe it’s just been misplaced and will turn up in the morning.” He produced a weak laugh. “There’s no need to go off half-cocked.”

  If this was an example of Xander’s fabulous sense of humor, thought Dinah, it was time for an intervention.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Polynesians invented kapu, a system intended to suppress objectionable desires by imbuing the desired object with peril. Kapu prohibits what is dangerous, stigmatizes what is unclean, and wields a profound psychological power upon those who believe. The Hawaiian religion designated an oppressive number of things as kapu, forbidden upon pain of death. To cross the king’s shadow was kapu. To wear yellow was kapu. To eat turtle or squid was kapu. Women were banned from eating bananas or pork, and it was kapu for women to eat anything at all in the company of men. In the circumstances, Dinah wouldn’t have objected if that particular kapu still applied.

  She was thoroughly disgusted with Xander. She didn’t know if Hawaii or Georgia had a law requiring gun owners to report a stolen gun, but it was certainly the reasonable thing to do. It astounded her that he was so publicity shy he would risk putting his bride crosswise of the law when it would be a simple matter to file a police report. She had a bad feeling about that Beretta. A gun was an inauspicious accessory to pack for a holiday in Paradise. It was downright ominous as part of a bride’s trousseau. Claude Ann claimed that she’d transported it to Hawaii legally, in a locked box in her checked luggage. How it got here and why she’d felt the need for it were moot questions. Where it had got to and for what purpose was the mindboggler. It crossed Dinah’s mind that Xander might have discovered the gun in Claude Ann’s suite and boosted it to keep Claude Ann from doing anything rash. But why would he pretend he didn’t know about it?