Bet Your Bones

by Jeanne Matthews

  He got out and went around to open the car door for her. “This is going to be one strange meeting.”

  “Whatever happens, at least we can set the record straight about Xander’s role in your mother’s suicide and maybe generate some ho’oponopono.”

  The Hilo Hawaiian Hotel was an older hotel with a spectacular view of Coconut Island and, in the distance, Mauna Kea. Jon and Dinah followed the walkways along the shore and entered the hotel from the waterside. They found the restaurant and sat down. A waiter brought water and menus. Jon toyed with his watch while Dinah mentally enumerated all of the ways in which her bluff could go wrong. She could have constructed a case against an innocent man and enlisted the real murderer to help her trap him. Avery could be guilty, but too cagey to take the bait. The bait could be too flimsy to persuade him. He could take the bait, but change his mind and skip town. Or he could take the bait, realize that he’d been tricked, and blow away everyone in sight with yet another gun. She hadn’t run out of worst case scenarios when Jon stood up.

  “Hello, Eleanor. Glad you could make it.”

  Eleanor’s eyes transmitted a comprehensive skepticism. “This must be ke panepo’o.” Her tone implied that Jon didn’t ask her to lunch often. Dinah translated the Hawaiian as “earth-shaking.”

  Jon pulled out a chair and Eleanor sat, but he had trouble pushing her toward the table and she didn’t budge. He gave up and sat down. “Sorry I haven’t been in touch.”

  “I saw you at the memorial service. You didn’t look glad I could make that.”

  “We didn’t know what to expect.”

  “I went to talk to Lyssa.” She eyed Dinah as if she were a stink bug. “Your friend Claude Ann stopped me.”

  Interesting as that encounter must have been, Dinah cut to the purpose of this encounter. “Eleanor, I’ve learned something about Leilani. Something that will change the way you think about things.”

  “I taught my last class of the day. I’ll have a Mai Tai.” The subtext was clearly, I will let you know when it’s time to call this meeting to order.

  Jon hailed the waiter and ordered Eleanor a Mai Tai and a beer for himself. Dinah didn’t want anything to drink. She was too nervous. She was already thinking that Jon was right and her bright idea was supremely stupid. A huge mistake. She looked around. What if Sara Sykes didn’t come or didn’t want to air the truth? What if Eleanor was so invested in her prejudice against Xander that she refused to believe her? What if she accepted Sara’s story and still declined to cooperate?

  Eleanor stared across the table, mute as a statue, and Jon did a conversational tap-dance to fill the void. He stuck to non-controversial topics—the rash of harmonic tremors over the past week, the upcoming 4th of July fireworks show, and did Eleanor read about the one hundred and fifty pound Kahala fish caught off the Kona Coast. She didn’t say whether she had or had not. When their drinks were served, she removed the pineapple wedge, the sugar cane stirrer, and the paper umbrella from her Mai Tai and tasted. Seemingly satisfied, she broke the ice. “How is Lyssa?”

  Jon didn’t sugarcoat the situation. He described Lyssa’s mercurial emotions and said, “I worry that she’s going to imitate our mother.”

  “She won’t. I went to a kaula.” She gave Dinah a condescending look. “A kaula is a prophet. A seer. She told me that something very bad would happen soon, but not to Lyssa. Not to you, either, Jon.”

  Dinah’s skin shrank. She tried to resist the inclination to superstition, but it would have been nice to hear her name included in the list of those to whom something very bad would not happen. Claude Ann’s, too. “What kind of a very bad thing?” she asked.

  “The kaula saw a box of papers, a fountain of fire, a mound of broken stones, a child sick with fever, and a woman carrying a stick.”

  The woman carrying a stick arrived as if on cue.

  Jon stood up. “Sara. Thank you for coming.”

  Dinah’s angst escalated. Was Marywave the sick child? Claude Ann had been about to take her to a doctor the last time they spoke.

  Jon took Sara’s cane and hung it on the back of an extra chair. He pulled out a chair for her next to Eleanor. Eleanor and Sara apparently needed no introduction. To Dinah’s surprise, Eleanor reached a hand out and covered Sara’s. “The Mai Tai is good, Sara.”

  “I guess I’d better have one.” Sara looked more careworn than ever. “If my attorney deems it advisable.”

  Steve smiled. “It’s advisable. I’d say we can all use some fortification.”

  He showed no ill effects from the pakalolo, but Dinah was mulling the significance of a box of papers and second-guessing herself. She was less sure than she’d been two hours ago when she’d hatched this plan. But whatever the result of her ploy to entrap Avery, surely it was in everyone’s best interest to put to rights the misunderstanding that had concentrated Eleanor’s hatred on the wrong man.

  Steve ordered his mother a Mai Tai and a beer for himself. “Are you up to this, Mom?”

  “Yes. I’m ready.”

  Jon said, “Eleanor, Sara has something to tell you about Leilani. It changed the way I think about her death and I think it will change the way you feel about my father.”

  Eleanor leveled a hard stare on Dinah. She seemed to intuit that, whatever was about to issue from Sara Sykes’ mouth, Dinah had been the catalyst. She turned back to Sara and nodded, as if granting her permission to speak.

  Sara spoke in a soft, clear voice and she aimed her words directly at Eleanor. “Do you remember my husband, Louis? I met and married him when we were at the U together. Louis, Xander, Avery, Leilani and I had our own clique. The boys all competed for Leilani’s attention, but I was a friend. Leilani’s friend, too. Soon after the boys went to work for the U.S.G.S., Xander married your sister. Louis and I were at the wedding.”

  “I remember,” said Eleanor.

  “Some time after that, Louis asked me to marry him. I thought he’d outgrown his infatuation with Leilani, but he still carried a secret torch. I don’t know what caused Leilani to lose interest in Xander, but it wasn’t long after Lyssa was born. She and Louis began an affair and Louis was so enamored with her, so thrilled by her change of heart, that he scarcely bothered to hide it from me. He spent more and more time with her. She had been my friend and so I humbled myself and went to ask her to break it off. But she had no remorse, Eleanor. None at all. She told me she was in love with Louis, that she should have married him instead of Xander. She said Louis was applying for jobs on the mainland and as soon as he received an offer, she would divorce Xander and Louis would divorce me and take her away from the islands.”

  Sara’s Mai Tai arrived and nobody said anything for a while. Eleanor kept her eyes down, playing with her paper umbrella.

  Sara said, “I’m sorry if this taints your memory of your sister. Jon needed to know that his father wasn’t to blame and Steve seems to have known all along that his father was an adulterer.” She had a few sips of her Mai Tai and her voice took on authority. “And I needed to rid my soul of all this bottled-up resentment.”

  Eleanor ran her eyes around the table. “Did Xander kill him?”

  “No,” said Dinah. “Xander didn’t kill him. It was probably an accident, but the person who called Leilani to inform her that Louis was dead may have given her an exaggerated report of Louis’ misbehavior while he was in California. He was another of Leilani’s admirers.”

  “Who?”

  “Avery Wilhite called me with the news,” said Sara. “I asked him if he’d spoken with Leilani. He said that he had.”

  Chapter Forty

  Holding fast to the passenger door of Eleanor’s speeding ’59 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, Dinah felt as if she had lost control of her plan. Events were spinning out of control and she was riding the tiger’s back, hanging on as best she could without a seat belt
. The Caddy had not been retrofitted with any new-fangled safety equipment and Eleanor seemed to have little regard for traffic lights and stop signs. The bench seat had been pushed back to its limit to accommodate her girth and, with arms at full stretch, she kept a two-handed grip on the wheel and motored down the center of the Belt Road as if she owned it. In Eleanor’s mind, she did own it.

  Dinah said, “It’s only a theory. Avery may not have killed either Varian or Raif. And Jon’s right when he says we don’t have enough facts to run a good bluff. Avery will know that you’re lying. We should forget about it. And anyway, I need to be with Claude Ann. Her little girl is sick.” Before leaving the hotel, Dinah had called Claude Ann. Marywave’s fever had worsened. She might be on the Belt Road at this very minute, rushing toward Hilo in the oncoming lane, trying to get Marywave to the hospital. “Seriously, Eleanor. Let’s put this off to another day.”

  “Kaii. The doctors will take care of the girl and Xander will take care of his woman. Nothing you can do.” She had seized the reins. The plan that Dinah had conceived and set in motion was under new command. Dinah had been demoted to aide-de-camp. Eleanor was going to attempt to blackmail Avery by claiming to have information tying him to Varian’s murder. If Avery agreed to pay, it was as good as an admission.

  The way Dinah envisioned the setup, Eleanor would call Avery tonight from her home with Dinah standing by to offer advice and encouragement. Eleanor would arrange a meeting with Avery in some public place tomorrow afternoon. Dinah would advise Steve of the time and location and he would go to the police and work his wiles on Vince Langford. Steve had the home-island advantage. He was a well-known attorney and an officer of the court and he was an accomplished persuader. If anyone could sell the plan to Langford, he could. Ideally, Langford or one of his subordinates would show up at the meeting with Avery to guarantee Eleanor’s safety and capture the transaction on tape. Assuming everyone stuck to this script. But as the Coupe de Ville barreled down the road, Dinah began to have second thoughts.

  “On reflection, we should clear this with Lieutenant Langford before you make the phone call, not after. If Avery calls your bluff and reports you to the police for attempted blackmail, you could be prosecuted, Eleanor.”

  She snorted. “Nobody’s going to put me in jail.”

  “Even so, we should wait and talk it over with Jon before making the phone call. He’s going to Volcano to check in on Lyssa and later tonight he’ll swing by your house to pick me up. He thinks that what we’re doing is dangerous and the more I think about it, the more I tend to agree with him. There are too many variables, too many ways the situation could get out of hand. Let’s all put our heads together tonight and come up with a less risky plan.”

  “I don’t care about risk.” She braked hard and the lilac-colored behemoth fishtailed into the driveway past the GOD-IS-NOT-HAPPY banner. She switched off the engine and regarded herself in the rear view mirror. “All these years, I’ve been unjust, ho’opono’ole. I’ve been vindictive and stubborn, grieving over a wrong I didn’t understand. Sara Sykes is cleansing her soul and making peace with the past. She is seeking ho’oponopono and I will do the same. But first I will negotiate with Avery Wilhite.” She turned to Dinah and a rare, mischievous smile creased her face. “Let’s chance’um, sistah.”

  ***

  The only inside info Dinah had for this bluff was the knowledge that Varian was Avery’s nephew and the fact that Varian had lived briefly in the Bayside Apartments where the police had found a few books and papers and a PC. It stood to reason that if Avery had known where Varian was staying on the island, he would have cleaned out his apartment of any potentially telltale items. The police hadn’t disclosed the existence of the computer to the press or completed their examination of its contents. If, as Dinah hypothesized, Varian had made a discovery at Uwahi, he would have described his findings. The risk of losing the deal had passed, but the risk of being linked to Varian’s murder must keep Avery awake nights. There was a chance that Eleanor could convince him that she had information worth paying for. And if he could be linked to Varian’s murder, maybe the police could pressure him to confess to Raif’s murder.

  Dinah had been trailing Eleanor through her indoor jungle for an hour while the ethnobotanist watered her kupukupu ferns, her bromeliads, and an actual forest of areca palms that brushed against the living room ceiling. Orchids proliferated and there was an enormous fish tank in one bedroom where archerfish darted among mangrove roots. Eleanor wouldn’t sit still to be rehearsed. Dinah ducked under a low-hanging philodendron vine and kept up the drill. “If he asks you how you got into Varian’s PC, tell him you have a hacker friend at the U who helped you. Tell him the police would find the contents extremely interesting, but don’t be specific. Keep it vague. Tell him it ties him to Varian and leave it at that. If he thinks there’s a possibility, he’ll fill in the blanks from his own knowledge.”

  “I don’t need to rehearse. I know what to say.” Eleanor wasn’t the least bit nervous. She dug her finger into the soil around an umbrella-shaped bonsai tree. “This one’s an arboricola schefflera. Poisonous enough to kill a cat or a baby, but very pretty.”

  Xander had called Eleanor “the poison lady.” Dinah wondered how many of these plants were poisonous. “Are there a lot of poisonous plants in Hawaii?”

  “One of the deadliest is nanahonua, Angel’s Trumpet. Then there’s the Be-Still tree, oleander to you. People have died from barbecuing over Be-Still wood. The kukui nut tree is poisonous, but not deadly. Kava kava root is safe, but the leaves can be toxic. Then there’s nightshade, foxglove, rosary peas, anthurium.”

  “Anthuriums are poisonous?”

  “Only if eaten in large quantities.” She paused to inspect the pleated leaves of an orchid and drop a few ice cubes into the pot. “Have you read about Kalaipahoa, the poison goddess?”

  “No.”

  “She infected a copse of trees on Molokai with a poison so virulent that birds flying high above their branches fell instantly dead. The king decreed that an image of the goddess be carved from one of the poisoned trees. Hundreds of carvers perished. Eventually, the image was finished, but it was deadly to the touch and had to be wrapped in layers of kapa cloth. Kalaipahoa’s priests presided over a murder rite they called praying to death. Pule-ana-ana. They chiseled off splinters of the goddess’ image and sprinkled them in the food of the person they wished to kill.” She made an eruptive noise which Dinah construed as a laugh. “Maybe I should invite Avery to dinner.”

  Jerusalem, was she serious? “We don’t know for sure that Avery is guilty of anything, Eleanor. And pule-ana-ana isn’t consistent with ho’oponopono.”

  “Let’s make the call now.” She set her watering bucket in a utility sink in the kitchen and led Dinah into her office, the only room in the house not choked with plants. Her desk was surprisingly modern. She pulled out a directory. “Your eyes are better than mine. What’s his home number? About now, he’ll be cleaning up the supper dishes for his bossy wife.”

  Dinah found the number and Eleanor dialed. She sat down behind her desk and turned on the speakerphone.

  Avery answered on the third ring.

  “Eleanor Kalolo, Avery. We have business to discuss.”

  He was slow to respond. “Eleanor. To what do I owe this honor?”

  “I called to congratulate you on the sale of Uwahi.”

  “Well, now. I must say. Didn’t expect congratulations from you.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to close so you’d be rich. No use trying to sell something to a man who can’t pay. Now you can pay.”

  “What is it you’re selling?”

  “Your nephew’s report on King Keawenui’s bones. He was writing a book on burial customs, how the priests would assemble the skull and long bones of a king into a sitting position and set fire to them. They let them burn for ten
days and then the king became a god. His successor had to build a hiding place for the sacred remains. Your nephew found Keawenui’s iwi.”

  “Too much,” mouthed Dinah. “Not so specific.”

  “Of no interest to me, Eleanor. Take the report to Paul Jarvis. He’s the new owner.”

  “Rick’s friend Raif told him I was fighting Xander about Uwahi and Rick came to see me. He said you’d offered him money to keep quiet for a few weeks, but he wasn’t sure you could pay. And you couldn’t have until now, could you?”

  Eleanor, no! Dinah waved her hands. Too much.

  “But I paid him, Avery. He gave me his report and I’m reading it right now. Appended to the first page is a form you signed, a form giving him permission to conduct his research on the property.”

  Dinah studied Eleanor’s face. Was she making this up? Was she a mindreader? Had she actually spoken with Varian?

  “Don’t recall signing anything,” said Avery, alarm creeping into his voice. “What’s your game?”

  “The same as Rick’s, only this time the stakes are higher. This time it’s not about the money, Avery. It’s about your life. You couldn’t pay Rick and so you had to kill him. But you’ve got lots of money now and you can pay me. It’s what I’ve been waiting for.”

  “You’re full of it. This is blackmail. I’ll call the police.”

  “Call them. Call them and see what happens.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “My price is a hundred thousand dollars. Chickenfeed to you now. Bring the money and meet me at the end of the Mauna Loa Road at nine o’clock.”

  Dinah gaped in astonishment. Not tonight!

  “I don’t have that kind of cash lying around.”

  “Get it. Call your banker. Raid Kay’s knitting basket. Do what you have to do. I’ve waited a long time for this.” Eleanor cut the connection and grinned. “How’d I do, eh?”

  “Is any of it, is any of what you said to him true? Did Rick Varian come to see you? Do you have his report?”