The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

by Trisha Telep

  Lily meant well, but Noelani didn’t need her assistance in the romance department. She had a perfectly good almost-fiancé waiting for her in London. OK, admittedly, almost-fiancé was a bit premature since she and banker John Stoddard had only gone out once, a dead boring evening spent trying to make sense of an artsy French film about sex, blood and sunflowers. Still, better a boring banker than a heartless private investigator, even if said private investigator still looked like a cross between a cowboy and a surfer with broad shoulders, wavy dark hair and eyes the exact same shade of blue as the water in Kahaluu Bay.

  OK, moron, she lectured herself. Focus on the goal. Only that was the problem. She upended the box, staring in despair at battered copies of National Geographic and Scientific American. She and Dillon had been at this for hours and were no closer now to solving the mystery of her grandmother’s apparent suicide than they had been when they’d first started their search.

  They’d begun with the office, which had taken all morning, though the rest of the house had gone more quickly. They were nearly done now, just this stuffed-to-the-rafters attic left to sift through. Although at the rate they were going, they’d be at it for a week.

  Noelani carefully flipped through each magazine before stuffing it back in the box. With a heartfelt sigh, she repacked the last one, shoved the box aside, and reached for the next carton in the stack.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered as she got a good look at the contents.

  “Find something?” Dillon abandoned the battered chest of drawers he’d been riffling through and threaded his way towards her through haphazard stacks of boxes, crates and old furniture. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” She tried ineffectually to replace the lid with hands that suddenly seemed to be all thumbs.

  “Must be something, and something pretty shocking, too. You’ve gone as white as a ghost. Here. Let me.” He took the box from her, tossed the lid aside, and pulled out an envelope, one of hundreds. He stared at it for a few seconds in silence. “What the hell?” He shot her a look that was two parts anger to one part hurt feelings. “You’re a better actress than I gave you credit for, Noelani. I thought you didn’t recognize me, but you’ve known who I was all along, haven’t you?”

  “You deliberately brought me here on a trumped-up pretext.”

  “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. It was Lily. She knew I wanted to hire a private investigator to look into the circumstances of Grandmother’s death. She deliberately left your card where—”

  “The part I don’t get is why you kept my letters all these years when you didn’t even bother to open them.”

  “You wrote to me,” she said, still not quite believing it.

  His eyebrows slammed together. “Damned right I wrote to you. Every damn day for a whole damn year.”

  “I never got your letters,” she said. “Grandmother must have ...” She caught her breath on a sob as she realized the enormity of her grandmother’s deception. But why? Why would she have done such a thing? Unless . . . “The kiss,” she whispered. “She must have seen us that day at your uncle’s stables.”

  He dropped the letter, grabbed her upper arms and dragged her upright. “What are you saying?”

  “My grandmother must have intercepted your letters. I don’t know why she would have kept them though.”

  He released her arms, but didn’t say a word.

  “In retrospect, I suppose I should have suspected something when Grandmother shipped me off to boarding school the week after our big kiss.” She paused. “Good grief, we were thirteen and fourteen. What did she think we’d do? Elope?” She managed a shaky laugh.

  But Dillon wasn’t laughing.

  She reached up to smooth the frown lines from his forehead. “I have a favour to ask?”

  “What’s that?” His voice sounded hoarse.

  “Kiss me?” Because sixteen years was a long time, and maybe her memory was flawed. Dillon’s kiss had seemed pretty special when she was thirteen, but she was more experienced now. More experienced and less impressionable.

  Or then again, maybe her memory was right on the money, she decided a few seconds later when Dillon’s lips met hers. Heat sizzled along her nerves. Pleasure flooded her body. “Wow,” she said when he finally released her.

  Breathing hard, Dillon propped his forehead against hers. “I see your ‘wow’ and raise you a ‘hot damn’. But just to be absolutely certain we aren’t overreacting, maybe we should put it to the test one more time.”

  “Try the kissing again, you mean?”

  “Exactly.” His smile turned her insides to mush.

  “Why not?” Noelani spoke with a nonchalance she was far from feeling.

  Dillon framed her face with his hands and pressed his lips to hers in a kiss, first soft and sensuous, then hard and demanding. He tasted of coffee and cinnamon, hot and sweet, wickedly delicious. Noelani let herself go, floating on a sea of sensation -boneless, mindless.

  But when Dillon started to lower her to the threadbare rug, she pulled away. “This isn’t a good idea. Not here. Not now.”

  He gave her a quizzical look. “But isn’t that why . . .?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why you hired me in the first place.”

  She stared at him in disbelief.

  He laughed. “You didn’t think I bought that Lily-tricked-me excuse, did you?”

  “Why not? It’s the truth.”

  “Is it?”

  The cockiness of Dillon’s smile put her hackles up. “How was I to know private investigator Dillon Makua and Marshal, my teenage crush, were one and the same?”

  “If you didn’t know,” he said, “then how would Lily have known?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe Grandmother told her, and ...” She let her voice trail off, uncomfortably aware of just how implausible her explanation sounded.

  “OK. If you say so. I just thought—”

  “What?” she asked. “What did you think? That this so-called case was merely the spoiled little rich girl’s ill-disguised ruse to get you into bed?”

  “I’m not sure I’d word it quite that way, but yeah, something like that,” he agreed.

  “You egotistical jerk!”

  “Jerk?” His eyes narrowed. “Me? I wrote you every day for a whole year. You’re the one who didn’t write back.”

  “Because I never saw your letters, not until now.”

  “Really?” He lifted one eyebrow in a sceptical look.

  A chill wrapped itself around her heart. He didn’t believe her.

  “Let me be sure I have this straight. First, I’m a schemer, and now I’m a liar?”

  “Don’t forget a spoiled little rich girl,” he said.

  “Fine.” Ice-cold fury stiffened her backbone. “If that’s what you think, go. I don’t need your help.”

  “I suspected as much.” Dillon’s smirk made her want to smack him, but she managed to maintain her dignity until he left the attic.

  Then she promptly burst into tears.

  Dillon paused halfway down the narrow staircase. Noelani’s sobs pricked at his conscience. “You’re a real jerk, Makua,” he muttered under his breath. He should go and make sure she was all right.

  Unless the waterworks were a deliberate ploy, a bid for sympathy.

  Could Noelani cry on demand? How good an actress was she?

  Not that good, he decided and was just about to head back up when he heard the first of several loud thuds, punctuated by some very creative profanity. Apparently, she’d progressed beyond the hurt feelings stage into the desire-to-cause-bodily-harm stage. Not the best time to apologize. He headed downstairs instead.

  But the minute he stepped onto the moonlit verandah, he realized leaving wasn’t an option either. Their only transportation was the four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee they’d rented at the Hilo Airport, and if he took off, Noelani would be stranded here alone until Lily Yamaguchi showed up tomorrow. If Lily Yamaguchi showed up tomorrow. Considering tomorrow
was Sunday, that was a pretty big if.

  Damn.

  As he stood debating his next move, the porch light came on and the front door flew open. Noelani rushed out and grabbed his arm. “Wait!”

  Very dramatic. Pretty damned effective, too, especially factoring in the entreaty in those big hazel eyes. “You just told me to go,” he said.

  “I know what I said, but please don’t leave. Not until you see this.” She held out a photograph.

  Noelani wasn’t trying to manipulate him, he realized, and felt like a bastard for suspecting otherwise. “You found it. The original.”

  “No, it’s not the picture of my grandfather. It’s a picture of my Great-uncle Thomas.”

  Dillon took the photograph from her trembling fingers.

  “I dropped a box and this photo fell out of an old album. His name’s on the back. There’s no mistake. Besides, I recognize him from photos taken when he was younger.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Dillon asked, then fell silent as he got a good look at the picture of a middle-aged man in a priest’s cassock. “I thought you said your Great-uncle Thomas died when he was in his teens.”

  “He did,” she said. “I’ve visited his grave. He’s buried in the family plot in Hilo.”

  “There must be some explanation.”

  “Like what?” she said. “Great-uncle Thomas miraculously rose from the grave?”

  “Maybe your great-uncle faked his death, then secretly ran off to become a priest.”

  “Great-uncle Thomas was knifed to death in a bar brawl. I’ve read the old newspaper clippings. Grandmother kept them in the top desk drawer in her office. I think she felt guilty, as if his death were her fault.”

  “How so?”

  “Grandmother made a habit of rescuing her brother, but this time, she was too late.”

  “Knife wounds aren’t necessarily fatal,” Dillon pointed out. “Maybe the family just pretended he died. Maybe they were so embarrassed by the scandal that they forced him into the priesthood.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Noelani said.

  Dillon didn’t argue. His suggestion had been pretty farfetched. “OK then, what’s your explanation?”

  “I don’t have one,” she said. “I mean, say he faked his own death and ran off to become a priest. That doesn’t explain how his photograph found its way into a dusty old album in Grandmother’s attic. No matter how I crunch the numbers, it doesn’t add up.”

  Dillon studied the priest in the photograph. “You’re right,” he admitted. “Unfortunately, I’m too tired at the moment to do the maths. Why don’t we call it a night? Tomorrow maybe we can visit your great-uncle’s grave.”

  “So you aren’t leaving?” Was that relief he saw in her expression?

  “Not until we get to the bottom of this.” He paused. “I owe you an apology, Noelani. I leaped to some unwarranted conclusions earlier. You didn’t have any ulterior motives when you contacted my office, did you? You truly didn’t realize who you were hiring.”

  “No,” she said.

  “And you never got my letters.”

  “No,” she said again. “Grandmother’s doing. I’m sure she meant it for the best, but . . . She was always trying to save people from the consequences of their own folly, you see. That’s why she missed out on the last few days of my grandfather’s life. She felt it was her duty to help Thomas.” Noelani heaved a weary sigh. “Ironic, isn’t it? Despite her well-meant intervention, Thomas continued down the same destructive path.”

  Noelani had already been up for an hour and a half by the time Dillon wandered into the kitchen looking for breakfast at a quarter to seven.

  “You’re up early,” he said.

  “I haven’t adjusted yet to Hawaii time.”

  “Headache?” he asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “You’re frowning,” he said.

  “I went out on the lanai to drink my hot chocolate a while ago, and I found this lying in the centre of the table.”

  “What is it?” He leaned closer to get a good look. “Obsidian? One of Pele’s tears.”

  She nodded.

  “What was it doing on the lanai}”

  “I haven’t a clue. Maybe it’s a sign,” she said lightly. “Maybe Pele’s telling us we’re on the right track.” Then she frowned as another possibility occurred to her. “Or maybe she’s warning us off.”

  Six stones marked the family plot, six stones but only five actual interments accorded her great-grandparents, her parents and her great-uncle. The remaining stone marked her grandfather’s empty grave, empty since John Crawford lay entombed inside the USS Arizona.

  “Grandmother’s stone will go right there.” Noelani pointed to a space next to her grandfather’s memorial.

  A shaft of sunlight sliced through the clouds as if to mark the spot. Dillon caught a flash as the beam glittered off something near John Crawford’s headstone. He knelt to take a closer look. An obsidian teardrop glistened in the grass.

  “Find something?” Noelani asked from behind him, then “Oh!” she cried when she realized what had captured his attention. “Another tear.”

  One might have been a coincidence, but two? Dillon didn’t think so. He plucked the tear from the grass and stood. “Someone’s playing games with us.”

  “But why?”

  “Good question. Wish I had a good answer.” He studied the little cluster of gravestones. One caught his attention. “What year did your great-uncle die?” he asked Noelani.

  She gazed at him, obviously confused by the sudden turn in the conversation. “In the forties. The early forties.”

  “That’s not what it says on his stone. Look.”

  She stooped to examine the grave marker. “ ‘Thomas Adam Ferguson,’” she read. “ ‘Born 6 May 1926. Died 3 June 1976. God was his salvation.’” She glanced up at Dillon, looking stunned. “But there must be some mistake. I’ve seen this headstone a dozen times or more, and I know it didn’t say 1976 before or include that bit about God being his salvation. Someone’s switched stones.”

  Dillon shrugged. “Maybe. The marker isn’t new though. See the lichen growing along the edge?”

  “But—”

  He tugged her to her feet. “I don’t know what’s going on, Noelani, but I sure as hell intend to find out.”

  Noelani shot Dillon a furtive sideways glance. He hadn’t said a word since they’d left the cemetery. His expression looked grim and more than a little angry, though she was fairly certain the anger wasn’t directed towards her. Not this time.

  Tropical vegetation — giant tree ferns, palms, bamboo and an occasional cluster of bright red anthuriums - encroached upon the narrow road and blocked much of the light. The humidity was so high that moisture dripped from the foliage and condensed in tiny droplets on the windshield.

  “I don’t recognize this road. Where are we going?” she asked as they splashed through a pothole bigger than the koi pond in her grandmother’s garden.

  Dillon’s smile seemed forced. “Back to the plantation. I need time to mull things over though, which is why I opted for the scenic route.”

  Jungle route was more like it. Noelani half expected Tarzan to come swooping through the trees. What she didn’t expect was the projectile that smacked the windshield. The glass cracked in a starburst pattern but didn’t shatter.

  Dillon hit the brakes.

  “What was that?” she asked. “Did you see what hit us?”

  “Chunk of loose rock, I think.” He released his shoulder harness and climbed out of the vehicle to assess the damage.

  Noelani followed more slowly. He was probably right about it being a rock, but her first thought had been that someone was shooting at them.

  “Damn it to hell!” Dillon was swearing as she came around the front end of the vehicle.

  “What is it?”

  “Another of Pele’s tears.” He extended his hand to show her the obsidian teardrop he’d pulled from the cracked winds
hield.

  “How is that possible?”

  He shrugged. “I think someone’s trying to tell us something. Your Grandmother maybe.”

  “Or Pele.” Noelani shivered.

  “Excuse me?”

  Noelani, one hand pressed to her racing heart, spun around at the sound of a female voice.

  A diminutive old woman in jeans, flip-flops, and a green-and-black University of Hawaii Warriors football jersey stood in the middle of the road, clutching an oversize purple handbag.

  “Good heavens, you scared me to death,” Noelani told her. “Where did you come from?”

  The old woman set her handbag down with a sigh. “My car broke down, left me stranded back that way.” She waved an arm to indicate the road behind them.

  “That’s strange,” Dillon said. “I didn’t see any cars off the road. Did you, Noelani?”

  “Not on this highway.” The old woman smiled, revealing a set of crooked teeth. “A secondary road halfway down Mauna Kea. I’m headed for my nephew’s place in Honoka’a. I’d appreciate a lift.”

  “Of course,” Noelani said quickly before Dillon could voice an objection. She could tell by the look on his face that he wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of a hitch-hiker. “As it happens, we’re headed for Honoka’a, too. I’m Noelani Crawford, by the way, and this is Dillon Makua.”

  The old woman gripped Noelani’s hand with surprising strength, considering how frail she looked. “I’m Polly Ahiai-honua, but most people call me Auntie Polly.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Auntie Polly.” Noelani accompanied her words with a smile, determined to make up for Dillon’s stand-offish attitude.

  “Watch your step,” he said politely enough as he held the door open. He even offered Auntie Polly a hand climbing into the back seat and helped her get her seat belt fastened before handing her the purple bag she’d left sitting in the middle of the road. But he didn’t look happy about the situation, and he left it to Noelani to make conversation with the old woman during the drive to Honoka’a.

  Auntie Polly surprised Noelani with a hug when they left her at a small, seemingly deserted house on the outskirts of town.