The Flaming Luau of Death

by Jerrilyn Farmer

  “Oh, you’ll love this one,” Pualani said. “It’s my favorite. It’s a total body treatment designed to detoxify and tone the skin. Very luxurious. Very restful. You’ll see.”

  I so needed this. Wes had been addicted to luxury spas for years, but I had resisted. The idea of strangers and massages had turned me off. But that was just silly. Look at Pualani, my first masseuse. She was darling. She was wearing hibiscus flowers around her neck. This was all too great.

  Pualani asked me to follow her to my individual treatment room, and we went down a small hallway, past several identical doorways, and entered a room that was kept dimly lit by a dozen scented candles and very low lighting. The New Age music was also piped in here, coming from hidden speakers.

  Pualani continued speaking in low, soothing tones. “We’ll start with a dry brush exfoliation, is that okay with you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Wonderful. And after we rid your body of any traces of dead skin, the body will be painted with a rich mixture of mud. The mud mask is followed by a warm wrap and a neck and scalp massage. How does that sound?”

  “Dreamy.”

  “Wonderful,” said Heavenly Flower. She held up a giant leaf green–colored towel. “Please take your time. You may take off your robe and hang it on this peg. Then get onto the table and cover yourself with this towel. I’ll be back in just a few minutes. All right?”

  I nodded.

  It occurred to me, a few minutes later, that I, Madeline Bean, was lying naked on a table, under a piece of terry cloth, on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, waiting to be painted with mud that had been flown in from the Dead-freaking-Sea, and I felt wonderfully sanguine about the prospect. I went on listening to the gentle string music and breathing deeply the candle-fragrant air, truly letting my mind go blank for the first time in, well, years. When Pualani noiselessly reentered the treatment room, she adjusted a small pillow under my head, carefully arranging my wild curly hair so I was comfortable, and then she took out a brush with short, soft bristles. All her movements were careful and graceful, like a dancer in slow motion. With a light touch, she took my right arm out from under the cover sheet, and with a circular motion, she began to briskly rub the brush over my shoulder, working her way down my arm to my wrist.

  “Is the pressure too hard?” she asked, her voice filled with concern for my comfort.

  “It feels fabulous.” And really, how often in the last few years has anyone been so happily dedicated to my comfort? It was generally the other way around. I was the one putting on parties for everyone else, worried about their comfort. I was surprised to find how quickly I could relish this turnabout.

  Pualani finished with the brush-down, having carefully withdrawn each arm and leg from beneath the green terry cloth drape, one at a time, and then, holding the large towel just so to preserve my modesty, had me flip over onto my stomach. She then worked on the back of my legs and over my shoulders, each step professionally designed to treat me like royalty while sloughing off all this alleged dead skin. I felt a warm glow as my blood began circulating in the past half hour as never before.

  Next, Pualani got out a thick paintbrush, the size you might use to paint the molding strips around your door, and began laying on thick, warm, dark gray-brown mud in smooth strokes down my back. She was tidy and didn’t miss a spot. This is definitely the woman you’d want to call if your armoire needed a quick coat of varnish. The smell of the mud was earthy but clean. How did they manage that?

  “Our brushes are made from sable hair,” she explained.

  Of course. I allowed myself to breathe deeply, relax further, concentrate on the sensations. The brush felt smooth and silky, while the mud was rather hot and thick and wet.

  “What exactly does the mud do?” I asked, my eyes closed, so relaxed at this point that I didn’t even think twice about the brilliance of my conversation.

  “Mud is wonderful,” Pualani said, sounding perfectly happy to talk about the goo. “We are all part of the earth, of course. So this takes us back to nature’s elements. Mud has curative properties, you know, Madeline. It’s all the minerals that are contained in it. This morning, for your treatment, I’m using mud from the Dead Sea, which is the highest quality mud available; very mineral rich.”

  And to think, before this morning, I’d had no idea there was a hierarchy of mud.

  Pualani went on. “It actually has a nice anti-inflammatory action that helps to draw out any impurities and metabolic wastes,” she explained, going through her spiel. “As it heals and soothes sore muscles, the mud replenishes the body with nutrients and minerals.”

  “Ahh.”

  For most of the next fifteen minutes, that was about all I could respond. But as Pualani was wrapping me in a warm sheet and beginning the scalp massage portion of the treatment, I began to feel a little chattier.

  “So have you been working here since the Four Heavens opened?”

  “Oh, yes. We’ve been open a year. It’s a beautiful hotel, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is this your first time with us, Madeline, or have you stayed here before?”

  “First time,” I said. “We are having a party for my assistant, Holly. She’s here somewhere too. We’re celebrating her upcoming wedding.”

  “How nice!” Pualani said. “This is a special treat, then.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have chosen the right spot. All of our staff are trained to make sure you are pampered here.”

  “Everyone has been fantastic. Do you know Keniki Hicks? She works at the resort, I believe, during the day?”

  “I know a Keniki,” Pualani said and stopped rubbing my scalp for a second.

  How quickly one can go into spa withdrawal. More scalp massage, please. “She works as a waitress,” I added. “Out by the Orchid Ponds.”

  Pualani went back to rubbing my neck. Heaven regained.

  “Yes. All the staff get to know one another like a family,” Pualani said, but her voice had changed. Her breathing had become audible, and her hand was shaking a little bit.

  “Pualani, what is it? Something is wrong.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said quietly. “I can’t go into it here. This isn’t permitted.”

  “What isn’t permitted?”

  “The guest must not…I’m so sorry, Madeline. I must step away for just a minute.” Pualani stopped rubbing my neck.

  “No. Tell me. What is going on? Is something wrong with Keniki? I am really concerned. She helped us run the party last night,” I said.

  “That was your party?”

  I was lying on a table, slathered in a coating of mineral-rich mud, wrapped tightly in hot, wet sheets, and yet I felt a sudden chill. “Please tell me what has happened to her.”

  “Nothing happened to Keniki, thank God. But it’s her boyfriend. He works at an orchid ranch down the coast. He works there at night. I think he’s a watchman, but I’m not sure. They found him very early this morning. He’s a very good swimmer. Everyone knows that. But how did he get in the water?”

  In my mummified configuration, I couldn’t prop myself up on the table. I could barely move. I simply had to ask again, “What happened to Keniki’s boyfriend?”

  “He was found this morning. Dead. The waves were pushing him up against the rocks.”

  Poor Keniki. So beautiful and happy last night. I remembered her laughing at us, trying to teach us the hula. I remembered her bonding with Wesley and showing him some advanced moves. Keniki was a young woman, and I imagined her boyfriend must also have been young. And now he was dead. “Oh, no.”

  “I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you this, Madeline.”

  “Was it an accident?” I asked, hoping to get a little more information before Pualani pulled her professional act together and realized she must stop upsetting the spa guest.

  “It’s just a terrible thing,” she said, shaking her head, still shocked by the news. “Kelly was her fiancé. Kelly
Imo. He was strong, a very strong swimmer, but anyone can get knocked over by a wave. You must never turn your back to the ocean, not even for a short time. Maybe he hit his head on a rock.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “They say no one saw him go into the water. He was wearing his work clothes, they said, so how could he have meant to go swimming?”

  “I see.”

  “It is so sad for Keniki.”

  All of a sudden, being wrapped in warm towels and entombed in a mud-crusted cocoon began to feel oppressively confining. That state of blissful relaxed mindlessness, a state I had only just begun to discover for the first time, was, of course, completely shattered. All I could think of was “Poor Keniki.”

  “Yes. And with your party right there,” Pualani agreed.

  “Right where?”

  “Right there at Anaeho’omalu Bay. Didn’t I say? That’s where they found poor Kelly’s body this morning. He was washed up against the rocks near Anaeho’omalu Bay.”

  Ki’i

  (The Photograph)

  I finished showering and drying off and then wrapped my squeaky clean, mud-free, detoxified, and completely exfoliated self up in a fresh version of the brown and black batik robes all the guests wear around the Four Heavens Sports Club and Spa. When my eighty-minute mud mask treatment time had been up, Pualani had left me at one of the private shower rooms, all glass and slate tiles, and, apologizing again, hurried away to her next appointment.

  I walked over to the mirror-lined room that held the hair dryers and other accoutrements of beauty prep, and began the endless process of combing out the tangles in my long hair.

  According to the large clock on the wall, I was scheduled for the next luxury treatment in my Day of Beauty in twenty minutes. But it could wait. First, I would go see Keniki Hicks. And the thought of Keniki, her long hair swaying, spreading Hawaiian cheer at our luau only last night, and now suddenly thrown into such anguish, made my eyes sting. Why had fate brought such tragedy to this nice young woman?

  An array of sprays and lotions and creams and ointments were displayed in a row of glass jars along the marble countertop before me. One of them promised to detangle and condition. I had been making little progress through the thicket of hair, and so I gave a few spritzes to my unruly curls, and then a few more spritzes for good measure, before going back to work with the comb.

  And I couldn’t help thinking of Keniki’s boyfriend—his body found right there at our own Anaeho’omalu Bay. Just hours after our luau, it must have been. Just yards away from the beach upon which Keniki had distributed hula skirts and taught us all how to make the hand motions for “a man” and “a woman” and “enduring love.” It was an irony of such bitterness.

  I turned away and tried to concentrate on some facts. Keniki’s boyfriend had been washed away, no one yet knew how or from exactly where he entered the water, and then found early this morning among the rocks at Anaeho’omalu Bay. He was wearing his work clothes. Had he been working late at night on some misty path and fallen into the ocean, becoming injured in the fall? Had he been out on a beach, perhaps walking out on the lava rocks that jut into the sea? People got swept away by an unexpected surge all the time, Pualani had warned me.

  I looked again in the mirror and was surprised to see the spray-on detangler stuff had actually helped. I picked up the can and checked the label. Perhaps I would have to buy some of this. It smelled faintly of grapefruit. Nice. I gave my head a shake, and corkscrews of redblond hair fell gently into place on the left side. The right side was still a bird’s nest, so I went to town, giving several additional spritzes, and began working out the tangles with the comb.

  And yet, I thought again, I knew almost nothing about this couple. Had they been happy? I hated to give words to this question, but having dated a cop, I know how they think. An accident? And so close to where the girlfriend was working. Could there have been something sinister going on? Had the couple been fighting? I hate this sort of thinking, but I know how predictable investigators could be. In an unexpected death, they would wonder, who had something to gain? Who held a grudge? And always, look to those closest to the victim. Poor Keniki.

  What a shock, to have your life planned for happily-ever-after and discover one fresh morning that it simply will not be. It was all too familiar to me, stirring up old memories too difficult to remember.

  I’ve had a few shocks of my own, enough to remind me how little control we truly have over the course our lives will take. I thought about Xavier and the pain I’d felt when he left me. And here I was, nine years later, doing just fine, thanks. Doing just great.

  I padded over to my locker and then realized I had somehow misplaced the key. Probably left it in the treatment room. But when I made my way back down the hallway, the door to the treatment room was locked.

  I tried a few other nearby doors. Several must have led to additional treatment rooms, but they were locked as well. I stood in the dimly lit, narrow hallway and thought it over. There were no spa attendants in view. And the tinkling New Age music was beginning to get on my nerves.

  The one door that wasn’t locked was marked: STAFF ONLY. I peeked in, looking for help. This room was also empty. It appeared to be a plain-wrap version of the guest locker rooms down the hall, and much larger than I’d expected. I walked in. On a bulletin board were employee notices, including warnings from Workers Comp and OSHA, along with the week’s work schedules for the spa as well as the staff who worked at the hotel’s three restaurants.

  The room must serve as the rest lounge for all the resort’s female employees. The colors were muted, just as in the guest locker rooms, but the lockers for the staff were smaller. A watercooler stood beside a table that held a basket of tea bags and sweetener. On the wall across from the bulletin board was a chart. In the left-hand column was a list of names, presumably the names of each of the employees. I scanned the list and noticed that Pualani Santos was listed. I also saw the name Keniki Hicks.

  “Pardon me,” said a female voice from behind me. “This room is for the staff. Can I help you?”

  I turned and faced a young woman with a long braid coiled on top of her head.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I left my locker key in one of the treatment rooms. Pualani was my aesthetician. My name is Madeline Bean.”

  “Don’t worry, Miss Bean,” she said, smiling warmly. “We have a master key to open the lockers. Just a moment and I’ll get someone to help you.”

  “I didn’t notice any attendants out in the spa,” I said.

  “No. We are very short staffed today. My apologies. We have had three of our girls cancel on us. Very distressing, I can tell you, with a full appointment calendar. Let me take you to your locker and use my own master key.” She led the way back to the luxurious guests-only locker room.

  “Staff members haven’t shown up to work? Is that because of what just happened to Keniki Hicks’s boyfriend, Kelly?” I asked.

  The young woman’s expression changed. She lost a little of her smooth guest relations veneer and became just a little more human. “Well, yes.” She looked at me with open curiosity then, and sighed. “I’m surprised you have heard anything about it so soon. I suppose all the guests will be talking about it.”

  “Maybe not quite yet. But I am a friend of Keniki’s. She helped me with a luau last night.”

  “I see,” said the young woman. We now stood in front of locker 22. She pulled a key from a ring hidden somewhere in the folds of her sarong—did those things have pockets? And used it to open my locker. “There you are.”

  “I’m on my way over to her house right now. I want to offer my help if there is anything I can do to help her.”

  “How very kind of you, Miss Bean. Keniki is a friend of mine too. It’s her sister Cynthia who didn’t come to work today. She is one of the masseuses here, one of our best specialists. And also two other girls who are Keniki’s best friends. So here is your locker. Is there anything else I can do for y
ou?”

  “I should cancel my next appointment,” I said.

  “I believe you were scheduled for a manicure/pedicure next. No problem. I am happy to cancel that for you. With our staff shortage, it will be a little bit of a relief, actually. Is there anything else?”

  “I have Keniki’s address in my room.”

  The young woman hesitated only a moment and then said, “I’ll draw a map for you. I’ll be right back.”

  As she left, I quickly got back into my shorts and T-shirt, and traded the disposable plastic spa flip-flops for my own beach-worthy pair of flip-flops. Hawaii, gotta love the dress code.

  By the time I was tossing the spa’s batik robe into a nearby wicker laundry basket, the woman with the coiled braid had returned, carrying a bright green shopping bag from the gift shop of the Sports Club and Spa.

  “I was wondering if I might ask you to do us a favor?” she asked, speaking softly.

  “Of course.”

  “I am not sure when Keniki will be returning to work.” She looked sad, and I could imagine that each of the young women who worked at this resort must empathize greatly with one another. They must all have boyfriends or young husbands. How could they not wonder what it would be like if something this awful had happened to them and their loved ones? “These are the items that were in Keniki’s employee locker. There may be something here that she’ll need. If you don’t mind, could you take this bag out to her? I hate to ask you to do it, but the rest of us are going to be working double shifts today. I’m not sure…”

  “No, no. That’s fine.” I reached for the bag. “I’m happy to help.”

  “Thanks. You’ll find the directions on a slip of paper in the bag.”

  I pushed the door out to the main reception area and signed myself out in the guest book.

  “Are you leaving us already?” asked the pretty girl behind the desk.

  “I’ll be back,” I said. “Is there any way I could leave a message for my friends? They’re all still in the spa, I think.”