06-I'm Kona Love You Forever

by JoAnn Bassett

  “Yes, it’s called the ‘Department of Nutrition Management’ but everything’s got a silly name up there. They call the janitors ‘Sanitation and Asepsis Engineers.’ Most of ‘em had to look up the word ‘asepsis’ when they first called them that. The powers-that-be thought they’d get away with giving everyone an important-sounding job title instead of a raise. Believe me, it didn’t work.”

  She gestured for us to take a seat in the living room while she brought out the coffee. The room had polished hardwood floors, a small sofa, and two rattan arm-chairs with Hawaiian print cushions. A three-foot rattan coffee table with an orchid blossom floating in a glass bowl anchored the grouping, like a focal point we could all agree on. I had a moment of déjà vu as I looked around the interior. Then I remembered. This house had a nearly twin sister on Dole Park, in Lana’i City. I wondered how many of these five-room eight-hundred square foot bungalows had been built in Hawaii. Thousands? Maybe ten-thousand? You can find them on every major island in the state.

  Nancy came in balancing a tray with a hot-pot, three mugs, a sugar bowl, and a cream pitcher. She carefully laid out a napkin and spoon in front of us as if performing a Japanese tea ceremony. No one spoke.

  We each got busy doctoring up our coffee to our personal taste and then sat back. I waited for Nancy to take a sip before launching in.

  “Edie says you may be able to get information about the results of Malia Byers’ autopsy,” I said. “The family was told she committed suicide, but Edie thinks otherwise.”

  Edie gaped at me as if I’d just loudly passed wind and then pinned it on her. I smiled, seemingly oblivious to her annoyance.

  “Ah,” said Nancy. “Yes, I heard they brought in the coroner from O’ahu to work on that.”

  “Do you know if they’ve finished?” I said.

  “I don’t, but I’m friends with someone who would know.”

  I took another sip of coffee, as if tacitly agreeing to let Nancy set the pace of how things would proceed from there.

  Edie’s eyes shifted from me to Nancy and then back again. After a few seconds of silence, Edie said, “Who?”

  “I’d rather not give the name. But it’s someone who has first-hand knowledge of what comes out of the pathology department.”

  Edie looked miffed, as if peeved Nancy had been forthcoming with me but had just stiff-armed her.

  “When can you talk to ‘this person’?” Edie said.

  “I can try to reach them right away. Do you mind if I make the call from another room? I’m serious about not wanting to put someone’s job in jeopardy.”

  Edie and I both nodded. Nancy got up and went into a back room and closed the door.

  “She’s only doing that ‘cuz you’re here,” Edie said. “Because I’m a-hundred percent sure I know who she’s calling.”

  Nancy came back into the living room a couple of minutes later. “My friend said it would be best if you gave me your questions and I’ll get you the answers. Again, I apologize for the subterfuge, but this is confidential information which hasn’t even been released to the family yet.”

  Nancy went to her kitchen and took a small notebook and pen out of a drawer.

  “Okay,” I said. “This is what I’d like to know: First, what was the cause of death? Second, did the coroner find anything unusual or questionable? And, third, were they able to positively rule the death a suicide?”

  Nancy scribbled in her notebook and then read back the three questions. “Anything else?” she said. “How about you, Edie?”

  Edie looked down and gave a quick shake of her head.

  Nancy asked me for my phone number and I handed her one of my “Let’s Get Maui’d” business cards.

  “I’ll call you when I get the information,” she said.

  We stood, and I thanked Nancy for the coffee. As we headed out to the car I could tell something was bothering Edie.

  “Are you mad I jumped in first with my questions?” I said. “Because if there was something else you wanted to ask, you should’ve spoken up.”

  “It’s not that,” she said.

  “Then what’s wrong? You seem upset.”

  She sniffed and looked out the side window. “I’ve known Nancy for going on thirty years now. I can understand why she didn’t want you to know who she was calling. She doesn’t know you or know if you’ll blab it all over. She should’ve asked you to wait outside.”

  “But you would’ve stayed inside?”

  She nodded. “She just fell all over herself playing the know-it-all. And then her saying she’d call you when she found out about the autopsy. I might just as well not been there. She even gave you your coffee first.”

  Funny, I hadn’t noticed. From my recollection, Nancy set the tray down and we each just grabbed the closest mug.

  Earlier, Edie had brought up tricky triangle relationships. “Three’s a crowd, so the two gang up on the other one.” In Edie’s world, Nancy and I had apparently “ganged up.” No greater wrath…

  ***

  I dropped Edie off at her house and was heading back to the coffee farm when my phone chimed. I glanced at the screen. Okay, I’ve seen the public service announcements and know it only takes seconds to go hurtling into on-coming traffic, so I looked only long enough to see it was an unfamiliar local number. If it had been Hatch, or anyone else who’d been at the proposal fiasco, I would’ve let it go to voicemail. I hadn’t allowed myself time to unravel why I’d reacted like I did, so I certainly wasn’t ready to explain it to anyone else. I pulled to the side of the road to take the call.

  “Aloha, this is Pali.”

  “Hello, dear, this is Nancy Clevinger. Am I catching you at a good time?”

  “I’m in my car, but it’s okay. I’ve pulled over.”

  “Good. I know you and Edie are anxious to hear what my friend found out. She called back soon after you left, so I thought I should call you right away.”

  “Mahalo. That’s very kind of you.”

  “Before you go thanking me I think you need to hear what she said. Unfortunately, the information is rather muddled.”

  “You already have the answers?”

  “Yes. And they’re rather vague.”

  I waited. No use pushing. I’m not a fan of twenty questions or trying to wheedle stuff out of people who aren’t prepared to talk. She’d tell me what she had to say in good time.

  “Here are your answers: For question one, she said ‘undetermined.’ For number two, she said ‘yes.’ And for number three the answer was ‘no’.”

  “I don’t remember the order of the questions I gave you,” I said. “Would you mind reading them to me?”

  “Sure. You asked if they found a cause of death. My friend said the report shows Malia had a fatally low blood glucose level, less than twenty milligrams per deciliter, at the time of her death. But her eyes were bloodshot, and her blood levels also showed an excess of carbon dioxide. That points to asphyxiation.”

  “So, they’re not sure what killed her?”

  “They ruled it ‘undetermined’.”

  “Malia was a type one diabetic, right?” I said.

  “I didn’t know her well. You’ll probably have to ask Edie about that.”

  “Okay. And question two?”

  “You wanted to know if the coroner found anything unusual, and the answer to that was ‘yes.’ The coroner’s report shows that along with the questionable cause of death, they found defensive wounds, perhaps signs of a struggle.”

  “Were the wounds described?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  Again, I waited.

  She cleared her throat. “She had a developing bruise on her hip. And, they found skin and blood under her fingernails. Also, …” Nancy’s voice had become thick. “She had a cut lip.”

  “She’d been assaulted?” I said.

  “I asked the same thing, and my friend said the coroner doesn’t like to make assumptions about cause.”

  “Yeah, that makes se
nse. They leave that up to the police,” I said. “So, that’s why the answer to question three—could it definitely be ruled a suicide—would be ‘no.’”

  “Correct.”

  “Mahalo again for helping with this, Nancy.”

  “You’re welcome. I wish I had better news.”

  We signed off and I wondered, given the circumstances, what she would have considered “better news.”

  ***

  I did a three-point turn and headed back to Edie’s. Her peevishness at Nancy’s seeming disloyalty would no doubt be aggravated if I failed to immediately fill her in on the results of the autopsy. Besides, it was only fair. She’d been the only one willing to dig into what really happened to David’s mother. I knew first-hand what it was like to lose a mother under false pretenses…and how devastating it was when the ugly truth finally came out.

  Edie answered the door in her usual eager-beaver style.

  “You hear something?” she said. Her eyes gleamed like an eight-year-old waking up on her birthday. Cake, a party, maybe a new doll or a bike. In Edie’s world, pithy gossip—whether good news or bad—was cause for celebration.

  “Yes, I got a call.” I left out saying, “from your friend, Nancy,” because there was no use hauling out the salt shaker for that wound.

  “What’d she say?”

  I reiterated the autopsy findings, ending with me asking her if she was absolutely certain Malia had suffered from insulin-dependent diabetes.

  She nodded. “Poor thing. She’s been taking those shots for years.”

  “Well, maybe she made a mistake and gave herself too much insulin,” I said. “Maybe when she realized her mistake, she tried to go for help. But she was dizzy and fell and cut her lip. Then she got in her car to drive to the hospital, but she passed out before she could back out of the garage.”

  Edie shot me a “nice try” look. “Nope. No way that’s how it happened.”

  I gave her a palms up. “Why?”

  “Because she hated givin’ herself those shots. Wouldn’t do it. For more’n a year now she made her daughter come over and do it. Twice a day, every day.”

  “Which daughter?”

  “The oldest one. That big gal, Shayna.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Okay, so Shayna had come off as less than grief-stricken over her mother’s death. And she was quick to point the finger at David for aggravating his mother’s chronic depression. But imagining her as a ruthless mom-killer was quite a stretch. Why would she do it? The two women lived only a few blocks from each other so it wasn’t as if her twice-daily chore was an unreasonable burden. Scoot over to mom’s in five minutes. A couple minutes of talking story while she prepared the syringe and gave the injection, and then a five-minute walk home. From what I’d observed, Shayna’s daily to-do list would fit on a matchbook cover. No outside-the-home job, and from the looks of things, not much inside-the-home work going on either.

  But she’d mentioned she was an LPN who’d been unable to hold down a job thanks to her mom. Was that just a convenient excuse so she could lie around watching QVC while stuffing her queen-size maw with taro chips? Hard to know, but killing off Mom would also destroy her iron-clad excuse for long-term unemployment. And, try as I might, it was impossible for me to picture Shayna eagerly racing up the hill to the hospital to fill out a job application.

  I hadn’t heard any talk of an estate, or life insurance proceeds, or any monetary reason why any of the kids would have benefited from her death. What was I missing?

  But I didn’t have time to ponder. The park blessing was scheduled to start at two and it was already one-thirty. I headed back to the coffee farm to pick up Lili.

  ***

  I’d never been to a park blessing, but I’d been to many Hawaiian house blessings so I was familiar with the drill. First, the kahu, or person presiding at the blessing, will offer prayers. Modern day blessings often incorporate spiritual elements of both ancient Hawaiian and Christian beliefs. It’s kind of tricky, balancing prayers to Ke Akua, the ancient Hawaiian creator, along with those to Jehovah of the Bible, but the ceremony manages to honor both belief systems in a way most locals find acceptable.

  A traditional blessing is closely associated with the land. It’s a reminder the land is to be cherished. The land was here before us and it will be here long after everything living on it has disappeared. Blessings provide an opportunity to express gratitude for the land and all it gives us.

  After prayers, the kahu will call on those present to join in adding their mana, or spiritual essence, to the thing being blessed. The people are asked to agree to protect the land, the house, or the business being blessed. This isn’t taken lightly. It bonds those present at the blessing to future responsibility for what happens at that place. In Hawaii, paper documents, or palapala, aren’t what binds people to their property; it’s the kuleana, or responsibility for good stewardship that counts.

  Lili and I arrived a little bit late, but well within the bounds of “island time.” Higashihara Park is located in Honalo, along the Kuakini Highway. It’s kind of hard to find, because the park itself is on the downward slope of a hill on the ma kai side of the road. You can’t see the park from the highway, only the narrow road leading to it. We parked and joined a throng of smiling people milling around in the children’s play area.

  Lili spotted David and ran to his side. I looked around and realized I was one of the few folks there without keiki, or kids. Everyone—grandparents, parents, school-teachers, you name it—was accompanied by a minor.

  I sat on one of the newly varnished benches and contemplated the obvious irony of being thirty-five, single, and childless in a blessing for a keiki playground after I’d spoiled my one big chance to join the human family. Luckily, Loke and Ray showed up before I had a chance to wallow.

  Ray was wearing a long strand of maile leaves across the shoulders of his grey silk aloha shirt. Loke wore a long linen sheath and a white orchid lei. She carried three bright purple lei draped over her arm. She held one out for me and I bobbed my head so she could slip it over my head.

  “Mahalo,” I said.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to give this to you when you came to pick up Lili,” she said. “I was giving my neighbor instructions on how to operate the credit card machine.”

  “Very detailed instructions,” said Ray.

  “These lei are for Lili and David,” Loke said. “But I don’t see them. Do you know where they are?” She scanned the crowd. It had grown to twice the size in the past ten minutes.

  Ray checked his watch. “Wasn’t this blessing supposed to begin at two?”

  Loke took his hand and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “You can take the malihini out of the mainland, but you can’t take the mainland out of the malihini,” she said.

  “Lili was over by the canoe last time I saw her,” I said. I pointed to a beautifully constructed wooden canoe modeled after the Hokule’a, the ancient Polynesian canoe which was built to recreate the voyage from Bora Bora to Hawaii. The canoe on the playground had a wide deck and a carefully crafted wooden sail. Little kids were scrambling over it like ants on a dropped jam sandwich.

  “Aren’t these wooden play structures beautiful?” Loke said. “Let’s look around a bit before the blessing starts.”

  “It’s already almost three,” said Ray, as he and Loke headed off. His voice had the exasperated quality of a punctual person stuck in a “whenever” world.

  About ten minutes later, Lili and David waved at me to join them in the front row of seats reserved for special guests. I shook my head, but soon David was at my side.

  “Lili wants you up there with us,” he said. “They told me they’re gonna do something nice for my mom.”

  “But I’m not a part of this,” I said. “I’m just an on-looker.”

  He glanced back at Lili. “She’s already totally freaked out. I may need back-up.”

  “Okay,” I said. He started to lead me back t
oward the seats, but I put a hand on his arm to stop him. “Can I talk to you a minute before we go over there?”

  “Sure.”

  I told him the high points of what I’d learned from the coroner’s report. I stuck to the facts: the precipitously low blood sugar and signs of asphyxiation, the minor injuries, and the “undetermined” cause of death. His eyes narrowed.

  “I apologize for bringing this up when we’re here to honor your mom,” I said. “But I’ll be leaving soon and I thought you should know. It may not have been suicide.”

  “How’d you find all this out? My sister called about the autopsy but they wouldn’t tell her anything.”

  I stumbled for an explanation. No way I wanted to delve into the details of how I’d come across the information, and under no circumstances would I even hint about Shayna’s possible involvement.

  “Well, I can’t exactly say—”

  The kahu called everyone to order with the forlorn sound of blowing a conch shell. I told David we’d have to talk about it later and we scurried to take our seats. Talk about “saved by the shell.”

  ***

  They renamed the children’s play area in honor of Malia Byers. The head of the parks department read the inscription on the plaque. “Malia Byers—mother, friend and playful spirit. This play park reflects her love for the keiki of Kona. Ho’okipa na mea a pau hele mai a pa’ani. Welcome to all who come to play.”

  Malia’s five children all stood behind the parks department guy as he read, but when he finished, he handed the plaque to David. Shayna flinched, but caught herself in time to smile for the cameras.

  Loke and Ray offered to take Lili back to the coffee farm and I let them. As David had predicted, Lili had cried through the entire blessing as if it’d been a funeral. By the time things broke up she was a mess—puffy eyes, zombie pale, and with the stooped shoulders of a person burdened with grief.

  I sidled up to David. “Why is Lili taking this so hard?” I said.

  “See that wahine over there?” he said. He pointed to a woman in a flowing purple dress heading out of the park. Her back was to us but the cotton-candy fluff of orange hair was a dead giveaway.