The Flaming Luau of Death

by Jerrilyn Farmer

One had to love a small town. Could Kelly’s political meeting still be in progress, as Keniki had predicted, despite the loss of one of its important members? Or perh aps because of that loss? I had to stop and check.

  I found a parking spot on the next block up and walked back. Bamboo, it turned out, was a charming restaurant and bar situated on the ground floor of an authentic plantation-era building from old Hawaii, with art gallery space upstairs.

  I was greeted by an elderly hostess, but my eyes were scanning the place, looking for anyone who might fit the vague description of The Bamboo Four.

  “Just one?” the old island auntie asked again.

  I focused on her finally and spoke up clearly. “I was told there was to be a meeting here today. But I’m not sure I got the time right.”

  “A meeting?” she asked, checking me out. I was wearing a neat pair of short white shorts with a pale lavender T-shirt, along with the de rigueur flip-flops. Lots of tan skin, my hair doing its corkscrew thing in the constant soft humidity. Not the sort of getup one would wear to attend a Republican caucus, I grant you, but I still had no idea into what sort of radical politics Kelly Imo was mixed up. This was Hawaii. Everyone was laid-back, no?

  “You mean HBA? No, no, you don’t want them, miss.”

  “HBA?” I grabbed on to it. Hawaiian Birchers of America. Ew. Hawaii Break-Free from America? Hm. “My friend told me to come.”

  “Well, that’s the only group here,” she said, smiling. “You like bamboo?”

  I looked around the twinkle-lit interior, so charming, with old hardwood floors, framed Hawaiiana on the walls, and vintage bamboo decor. My kind of restaurant in an old refurbished building. I was dying to read the menu. “I love it,” I said.

  “You love bamboo?” The woman, dressed in a floral muumuu, looked startled. “Then you come with me. HBA for you.”

  Whatever that meant.

  I followed her around the corner to the far section of the main dining room. There, a large round table held eight or nine people, all deep in serious conversation. They looked up as we approached.

  “Who’s this, Mary?” asked a large, tan white man in his fifties. “You thinking of hiring a new waitress?”

  “She with you HBAs,” said the hostess, pulling another chair over to their table.

  I sat down and faced the stares. Eight men and one woman. All wearing aloha shirts in various hues and patterns. They had no idea who I was, naturally, but I just smiled. “Hello. I’m Madeline Bean. Keniki Hicks told me you would be here.”

  “Keniki sent you here?” asked another man, this one very wiry but equally overtanned. “But why?”

  “She was touched by all the plants and flowers that you sent. For Kelly.”

  “Ah,” said the female member of their group, putting down her pen. “She’s here to sit in for Kelly. Is that allowed?”

  “Not in our bylaws,” said the first man, sounding grim. “Absolutely not.”

  “Earl,” said the woman, a trim blonde, in an exasperated voice, “we don’t have any written bylaws. I’ve been trying to get you guys to recognize how important it is to—”

  “Thanks, Claudia,” said the man, shutting her down. He didn’t sound thankful.

  “You can’t vote in Kelly’s place,” said the second man, the wiry one. Everyone else seemed to be alarmed by the idea as well, and I heard a lot of whispering as cross conversations sprang up at the far end of the table.

  “Why can’t she?” asked Claudia. “We have no written bylaws, so—”

  “This Modlin woman,” said Earl with a grimace to the wiry man beside him. “This is all she keeps harping about—”

  “Look,” I said, trying to get their attention. “I have something to say.”

  Claudia shushed them all.

  Now what exactly could I say? I still had no flipping idea what this group stood for or why Kelly was at odds with them. “But first, can a girl order lunch around here?”

  “Jeez,” said Earl. “Get this young woman a menu, will you, Claudia?” And then to me, he said, regaining his charm, “Look, we don’t mean to sound heartless. Jeez. I mean, no one here is sadder than I am that Kelly had that terrible accident. We even considered rescheduling our board meeting today.”

  Ah. They considered it.

  “But a lot of our group come over for this meeting from the other islands. We were already here this morning by time we got word of what happened. If I rescheduled, we’d lose a month, and none of us thought Kelly would want us to do that.”

  I’m sure they were thinking of Kelly Imo foremost when making this decision.

  Claudia returned to the table, holding out a menu. “Here you are, sweetie,” she said. I could tell she must be a great mom; she had that sort of offhand caring competence about her.

  “Thanks. Say, why don’t you just continue on with your meeting while I get settled? We can talk about Kelly a little later, if that’s okay.”

  I saw one of the men at the far end of the table nudge a buddy and whisper, “That Kelly. He had great taste in females.”

  “Okay, let’s go on,” said Earl, figuring, I suppose, that making me leave would be too much of a disruption. Such a fuss would hardly be tactful, since I was invoking the name of a very recently deceased member. A member of what, I was dying to discover, but I figured if they were willing to hold their meetings out in public, they weren’t planning to overthrow the U.S. government. Most likely.

  “Where were we?” he asked Claudia, who then consulted her handwritten notes.

  “You were talking about Panaewa.”

  “Right.”

  I looked over the menu, wanting to take it all in as I always do, while at the same time trying to keep an ear out for mention of what this group’s politics really were. In truth, I was starving. The list of pupus, or appetizers, was heavenly. I considered quickly the chicken sate pot stickers, the Margaritaville prawns, or the kalua pork quesadilla. The prawns were herb-grilled with fresh papaya, drizzled with a spicy tequila lime sauce. Yummy. While the pork was smoked in a traditional Hawaiian imu, or underground oven, and tucked into a grilled flour tortilla along with jalapeño jack cheese and topped with tropical fresh fruit salsa and sour cream. Equally divine.

  A waitress, a young girl with her hair swept up tight on her head, materialized. Decisions, decisions. I looked up, and Claudia Modlin met my eyes. She whispered, “The kalua pork.”

  I smiled and ordered.

  Meanwhile, the gang of Hawaiian-shirted men was deep in discussion. When I heard the word dying, I paid keen attention once more to the conversation.

  One of the men, a very old Asian fellow with white hair, was speaking with a froggy voice. “This is why they die,” he was saying. “He chews and he pisses.”

  Ahem?

  “Yes, Ike,” another man said, as if he had been down this road before.

  Who dies? Who chews? Who…well, who? I sipped my water and tried to become invisible as I waited for my food.

  “The T. siamensis has been chewed, true,” said Earl, sounding weary. “But it’s still hanging in there.”

  “Maybe yes,” said Ike, “maybe no. But the B. multiplex was not so lucky. It’s dead!”

  “The fern leaf again,” Earl said. “Yes, we know all this, Ike. We need to move on now. What do you expect? It wasn’t planted on the tiger’s path, but a tiger cannot be controlled. It’s going to chew. It’s going to piss. We can’t control that.”

  I must have looked as perplexed as I felt. What sort of political group was this?

  “The zoo,” Claudia explained, correctly interpreting the furrows in my brow, “over near Hilo. We planted bamboo in the new white tiger habitat. There’s been some worry about how well the plantings may thrive with the tiger taking such a keen interest in them.”

  “Ah.” My kalua pork arrived before I was expected to react to this news. Thank goodness. I mean, what could I possibly add to a conversation about tiger piss?

  “May we move on?”
Earl asked the group.

  So their big topic of conversation was dying plants? HBA. Hawaiian Bamboo Association?

  I ate as they moved on to discuss sales of T-shirts. New association T-shirts that featured a stylized block print of…I waited as one of the club members fumbled with a drawing and then held it up. Bamboo. Oh! I was so good. I was so right.

  But hey, what was really going on here? Had I in fact just boldly crashed a luncheon for avid bamboo lovers? Or was there possibly something more sinister involved? Keniki Hicks had come unglued when she talked about Kelly’s political foes. Were these folks them? Could all of Keniki’s anger really have been aimed at a group of bamboo fanciers? I had expected some answers here, possibly as to why Kelly wound up dead. I nibbled my insanely good quesadilla and figured, at least until I got my butt kicked out of the meeting, I might as well continue listening.

  “And now, finally, we are up to the new business,” Earl stated, looking at me warily.

  “About time,” said a muscular man who was called Brian. “I’ve got a proposal.”

  “No, you don’t,” argued Earl. “You never sent me notice of any new business, so it will not be—”

  “Now, maybe I didn’t,” Brian said testily, “but you know damned well Kelly did. He was going to raise this issue today, and so I am doing it in his place.”

  “That’s out of order,” Earl said. “You are not recognized, Brian.”

  “Is that right?” Brian asked, his voice going up half an octave in outrage, looking over at Claudia.

  “We need to have a set of written bylaws,” she started up again, sounding pleasant between the loud bickering.

  “To hell with that,” said Brian. “If I can’t raise the issue, then let this girl do it. She’s sitting here for Kelly. He’s the one who got the motion together, right? So let her do it.”

  I had just raised my lovely half-eaten quesadilla to my lips as I noticed everyone at the table had now turned to me. “Me?” I asked, talking around the tortilla.

  “It’s unheard of,” fumed Earl.

  “Go ahead, sweetie,” suggested Claudia, her pen up.

  What the hell had Kelly been going to propose to this group of agitated bamboo fiends? A new planting in the zoo? Not likely, because I noticed old Ike was less interested now. What, then?

  “Let her finish her sandwich in peace,” Earl suggested. “We can take all this up next month.”

  “No!” yelled Brian.

  “Let’s all just be patient,” said Claudia calmly.

  I swallowed. “Look. I am not a regular member of your group, um, obviously.”

  They looked at me, waiting.

  “But let me say this. I feel it would be best if Brian put the proposal into actual words, as it were. And then, you know, to satisfy Earl here, I can make the official motion on Kelly’s behalf.”

  “That’s right,” Brian said, standing up, “that’s fair.” And then he launched into a ten-minute description of Kelly’s master plan for how bamboo could save the Hawaiian Islands.

  Ka-kau

  (The Secretary)

  I’ll say this for the plan. It was as brilliant as it was wacky. Kelly Imo had apparently figured out a way to save Hawaii from its almost total dependence on tourist dollars—in other words, rescue the state from economic crisis—by introducing a new agricultural business to the islands. In place of the dismal commercial disaster that befell sugar, he proposed developing plantations of bamboo, which he intended to be harvested and processed for use as building material. A similar plan was showing promise in the Philippines and in Vietnam. Bamboo, apparently, was amazing stuff. His research showed that bamboo had a tensile strength greater than steel. Steel! Who knew?

  Of course, our part of the globe has not yet taken much to using bamboo in construction, so Kelly’s scheme required some deep-pockets investors who would build processing plants and mount a stunning PR campaign to somehow convince the Western world to get with the bamboo. New businesses would be developed to turn the raw bamboo into construction and building materials, such as bamboo poles, bamboo thatch, bamboo molding, bamboo fencing, bamboo weave, bamboo mats, bamboo board, bamboo flooring, and probably six or seven other utilizations that flew right over my head.

  “But you have a problem from the start,” the wiry man seated next to Earl interrupted. “Which variety are you proposing to grow?”

  “Stop getting bogged down in the details, Pete. We’ll grow the best kind,” said Brian, flushed, waving off the question, not wishing to be pinned down. He had bigger ideas to share.

  “Does ‘the best’ mean the strongest?” the wiry man challenged, just as hot about his bamboo. “The straightest? The most durable?”

  “Pete—”

  “I’m not finished! The most flexible? The most bug resistant? Does it mean the most canes or tonnage per acre? Do you want to use the bamboo ‘as is’ in the round? Or do you want to mill it for composites or laminates? Or do you want it primarily for furniture?”

  “Pete!” Brian raised his voice, trying to stop him.

  “See,” the wiry man continued, his voice strong, “you have not done your homework, Brian. And neither had Kelly, God rest his soul. So don’t go taking this group off the edge of the cliff. We could get ourselves into real deep doo-doo if we follow this madness without thinking it through. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Yes,” Claudia said in her calm, cool voice, taking rapid notes. “Out of order, every word, but that’s all you’re saying.”

  What rabbit hole had I fallen down? These men and a woman were getting hot and bothered over a cockeyed plan to introduce bamboo plantations to the economy of Hawaii. Somehow, pros and cons be damned, it didn’t sound like the makings of a motive for murder. After all, no matter how heated the discussion, I couldn’t see any of these bambooists killing over it. I mean, really. Except…I surveyed the table. Maybe Earl.

  I pulled three fives out of my purse and put them on the table. I had learned a lot about bamboo, without a doubt, but I’d learned practically nothing of any real value about Kelly Imo or why he had been in Holly’s room. I knew even less about why he might have died so suddenly.

  The closer I got to knowing what made Kelly tick—his sweet girlfriend, his green thumb—the less he seemed a likely player in any sort of a deadly game.

  “You’re leaving?” Earl asked, startled.

  “Not without making the motion,” Brian demanded. “Come on, now. Just make it.”

  “Okay,” I said, still standing.

  The rest of the group quieted down. Claudia Modlin, her blond hair neat, held her pen ready.

  “I move that the HBA advocate Kelly’s proposal, as stated by Brian.”

  “Time has come we stand up,” said Ike, putting a fist into the air. “We show the whole world. We can save people here. Many will get jobs. Let’s share our secret. Let’s tell the world about the power of bamboo.”

  “Hell,” said Earl. “You’re supposed to second it, Ike, not make a speech.”

  “I second it, then,” Ike said, his froggy voice loud and clear.

  The noise level at the table rose, each HBA member disagreeing again with his neighbor. “Settle down, now,” Earl said. “We’ll have plenty of time to discuss the motion further at our next meeting.” As they bickered, I quickly made for the exit.

  When I got to the front door, I had another thought. I scribbled a note and asked the young waitress if she would mind taking it. I wrapped it in a five-dollar bill, a healthy tip, and then walked out into the Hawaiian sunshine.

  Two minutes later, Claudia Modlin joined me on the bench out in front of Bamboo.

  “I just wanted to thank you for helping me back there,” I said.

  “It was fun to see Earl squirm.” Her tanned face was unable to hide a hint of satisfaction. “It was horrible of him to railroad this meeting after what just happened to Kelly. We usually have two dozen members in attendance, but Earl knew many of us would stay away out of res
pect for Kelly. I almost didn’t come, but I’m glad I did.”

  “Were you close to Kelly?” I asked. She was in her young forties, I guessed, but looked wonderfully fit. Perhaps living in Hawaii gives one great skin.

  “He was a dear boy,” she said, her voice softening. “My husband is a doctor on this island, and Kelly and he used to go surfing together, along with my sons.”

  “I see.” Again, I was reminded of how strong a swimmer Kelly had been, how comfortable in the ocean.

  She looked at me and said, “I’m surprised we haven’t met you before. How long have you known Kelly?”

  It’s amazing how much you can get away with in life if you just practice the art of ignoring the questions you don’t want to answer. I’d learned this from watching politicians on TV. Instead of admitting I didn’t actually know Kelly from Adam, I came up with a distracting question of my own. “I’m concerned about his death,” I said, lowering my voice. “Aren’t you?”

  Claudia Modlin sighed. “It’s very rough, the surf here. People don’t realize how dangerous.”

  “You think he was swept off into the ocean?”

  “It’s certainly possible.”

  “Really?”

  “There was a tourist couple visiting Kauai not very long ago. From Indiana, I think, or Illinois. They were walking out on some rock outcroppings with their eleven-year-old son while the tide was very low. People think that’s safe to do.” She shook her head. “I imagine they were having a wonderful time, a great family holiday in Hawaii. But then a wave came—a rogue wave, very large and unexpected—and it swept the parents off the rocks. Isn’t that tragic? Right in front of their boy. And they were gone. They were dead. Drowned just like that. It was on the news for days. There were dozens of witnesses on the beach nearby, all shocked, of course. A kind man took the son back to shore. Can you imagine? That’s the ocean. Never turn your back on it.”

  Again, a story about death in paradise.

  “That’s horrible. But tourists from the Midwest might not know any better. Kelly was a local guy. He was a surfer, a man who knew these waters very well. Aren’t you at all surprised that such an athletic guy would die this way?”