Pleasing the Dead

by Deborah Turrell Atkinson

  “It’s in the contract. You know that.” Ken’s penetrating gaze drifted to Storm’s curious one. White teeth gleamed under a full, rakish moustache. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Storm, meet the captain of my two-boat fleet. This is Ken McClure.”

  Storm put out her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  Ken’s hand was warm and dry. “Pleasure’s mine.”

  “What’s the schedule tomorrow?” Lara got back to business.

  “The rescheduled group goes out at seven, and we’ll be back before noon. The sunset cruise leaves at two.” His eyes crinkled at her. “Don’t worry, we’ve got it handled.”

  “Is Stella going out with you?”

  “She’s doing the morning group. I’ll check with her about the afternoon run. If she can’t go, Susan can.”

  “Susan’s paid by the hour, so she’s expensive,” Lara said with a grimace. “How’s Keiko coming along?”

  “She still won’t go without Stella. But I think she’ll come along tomorrow morning. She’s good at setting up the tanks and equipment.”

  Lara nodded, and for a moment Storm thought she saw concern flash across Lara’s face, but it disappeared quickly. Running a small business is a huge job, Storm reminded herself. In some ways like her small law firm, but with more people to supervise. And Storm didn’t have to deal with construction work going on at the same time. It was as if Lara had to supervise two separate work teams, complete with the personal issues that come with them. The carpenter’s drinking, Keiko’s distress (whatever that was about), dry wall dust over everything, and who knew what else? She’d been here all of a day.

  “I’ll talk to them,” Lara said.

  Ken nodded cheerfully. “I’ll see you around lunchtime tomorrow?”

  “Yes, at least call and give me a report.”

  “Have a nice swim.” He cheerfully pointed to the fins Storm held. “I’ll tell Damon you’re going.”

  “Thanks, let him know I’ll see him in the morning.”

  Lara handed Storm a dive mask. “See if this fits.”

  For the first time, Storm noticed crow’s feet around Lara’s perfectly made up eyes. Her client looked tired, and Storm could imagine why.

  She put the mask to her face and checked the seal. “It’s fine, but we don’t have to do this today. Want to go tomorrow instead?”

  Lara shook her head. “It’s only getting busier.” She jerked her head toward the back room. “If Damon and his crew get the cabinets up today, we’ll start putting things away tomorrow.” Her shoulders slumped a bit. “Of course, we’ll be working around the painters.”

  “Can you delay the opening? Or open without having the back room finished?”

  Lara’s mouth twisted. “No, we’ll get it done. It’s just disorganized right now.”

  “Damon seems capable.”

  “Yeah, he is.” She put fins, masks, and snorkels in two net bags with drawstrings and handed one to Storm. “Let’s go. I can use the break.”

  “Ken McClure looks familiar somehow.”

  Lara’s good humor returned. “Women often say that.”

  “No, I mean it.”

  “He’s involved in a group called Beach Rescue Alliance. They got some print not long ago when about twenty protesters turned up on a beach and half the women marched topless.”

  “That could be it,” Storm said.

  “Probably,” Lara laughed. “We’d better drive separately. I have to meet Ryan later.”

  Storm got into her rented oven and seared her leg on the chrome seatbelt buckle. She yelped, rolled down all the windows, and turned the air conditioner to maximum. A moment later, a white Corvette convertible rolled around the corner. Lara wore sunglasses and a wide brimmed hat. She looked as cool as a polar bear on an ice floe.

  Storm wiped a rivulet of sweat from her eyes and pulled out onto South Kihei Road. She followed Lara to Pi‘ilani Highway, then south through the golf courses in Wailea. A quarter mile past the turn to Storm’s hotel, Lara turned onto a public access road to the beach and then into a gravel parking lot.

  Storm parked next to her. Lara got out of her car, tossed her hat onto the front seat, and put the top up. “You’re going to love this.”

  Both women went into the bathhouse to put on bathing suits, then pulled their snorkeling gear from the net bags and headed the last fifty yards to the gently lapping ocean. It was a calm day and people were scattered along the white sand, but the beach was far from crowded. A few snorkels bobbed around visible coral heads. Every now and then a lazy swim fin broke the surface.

  “Tourists usually stay in close.” Lara pointed to the nearby divers. “Some of the local swimmers are quite adventurous, though.”

  “Are we meeting any of them?”

  “Not now. The pink hats usually go out in the morning.” Lara fitted her mask on her face.

  “Pink hats?”

  “It’s a group of local swimmers. They’re all ages, but most of them are members of U.S. Masters Swimming, and they wear pink racing caps. I’ve been encouraging Stella and Keiko to join them.”

  “Are Stella and Keiko good swimmers?” Storm pulled on her fins and splashed into the water. She wanted to ask what their story was, but thought she’d get further if she eased into the topic. It would be best if Lara volunteered it.

  “Stella’s quite a good swimmer, though Keiko needs more experience. Stella is already leading some of my snorkeling groups. Easy stuff, not the scuba dives. Come on, I’ll show you.” Lara dove in, ending the conversation for the time being.

  Storm stroked after her into deeper water, finding it easy to follow. Storm was a surfer, and paddling her board kept her in shape for this kind of outing. The water was so calm and warm she felt at ease, and looked around with delight at the increasing life below.

  Coral colonies squatted like condominiums on the rippled sandy bottom. There were handfuls of fish hovering over each one, cleaning and foraging. The water, which was clear and bright, allowed her to see at least fifty feet in any direction, and the shadows of bigger coral heads loomed in the deeper water ahead.

  As she found her swimming rhythm and began to breathe more comfortably, Storm imagined herself flying above a new and exciting landscape with inhabitants that paralleled the world of legs. Clusters of bright butterfly fish, and humuhumu-nukunukuāpua‘a, the reef trigger fish, a small fellow with a long name, went about their business indifferent to the creatures passing above.

  Not indifferent, Storm reminded herself. They knew she and Lara were there; they just weren’t threatened. The humuhumu’s bright, flat eyes checked their progress, but the fish continued to peck along the rippled sandy bottom. Storm enjoyed spotting these animals, not only because they were the unofficial Hawai‘i state fish, but the name translated to “trigger fish with a snout like a pig.” Lara’s ‘aumakua may have been the big, bad shark, but Storm trusted pigs.

  The women swam nearly side by side, though Storm let Lara set both the pace and the direction. Lara wore a red flowered bikini, and her mask, snorkel, and fins were a yellow that matched the brilliant Yellow Tangs darting among the coral formations ten to fifteen feet below them.

  They stayed in twenty to thirty feet of water as they rounded a point of lava rock that pitched from the shoreline into the ocean at a sharp angle. Above water, it was craggy, black, and forbidding. Beneath the surface, it teamed with life: algae, coral, opihi, little shrimp, eels, limpet, and other organisms in their own tidal ecosystem. It was the underwater version of the steep, high inland cliffs, known as the pali, formed by ancient volcanic eruptions and eroded by thousands of years of wind and rain into precipices of pleated green velvet.

  Lara popped her head up and pulled the snorkel out of her mouth. “How’re you doing?”

  “I love it.”

  “It gets better. Just up ahead is an arch we can dive through. It’s only about ten feet deep. Follow me.”

 
Lara set out with Storm close behind. Right away, Storm spotted the arch of stone on the bottom, and three turtles, two larger ones and a juvenile, swam on the other side of it. Storm squealed with delight into her snorkel. Lara heard her and turned, her teeth showing in a smile around the snorkel. She looked a little like her shark totem.

  Lara pointed to the turtles and dived. Storm pinched her nose to equalize her ears and went after her, keeping enough distance to avoid Lara’s fins. Though Storm had a moment of trepidation, the arch wasn’t far and she reached it before her breath ran out. Plenty of time to sail through and surface on the other side.

  The turtles glided out of the way. It was as if they were watching the fun. Silly humans, look how hard they have to work out here.

  Through the clear porthole of her mask, Storm observed two more turtles in the shadow of a rock formation, then three more lingering near the bottom. Lara grunted into her mask and pointed with excitement at a single turtle that was feeding along a slope of jagged lava rock. Like the fish, the animal watched the humans, but continued with his activity.

  Lara popped her head out of the water and removed the snorkel from her mouth. “It’s a Hawksbill. They’re an extremely rare, endangered species. You can tell by its beaked mouth and the scalloping of his shell along the back edge.”

  Storm situated her mask and plunged her head back into the water. The Hawksbill scraped at a chunk of rock, though she knew the animal watched her carefully.

  She surfaced and pushed the mask to the top of her head. “It’s beautiful.”

  Lara’s eyes gleamed. “I have to tell Stella and Keiko. Keiko will be thrilled.” She scanned the coastline to get her bearings, then pulled her mask down and set out again.

  Storm watched for other Hawksbills, and saw more of the larger Green turtles, but the Hawksbill was an exceptional sighting. Swimming with long, easy strokes, a sense of contentment filled Storm. She was aware that she and Lara were guests in this universe, and she was pleased that her passage above the turtle’s world hadn’t seemed to disturb it.

  Lara swam for ten or fifteen minutes without comment, and Storm trailed behind and listened to the calls of Humpback whales in the distance. It was a mournful sound when heard from under water. A few of the great mammals lingered at the end of the season, probably mothers waiting until their calves were strong enough to make the long trek to their Alaskan feeding grounds.

  Lara was at least fifteen feet ahead of Storm and had slowed at an outcropping of rocks. She dived, came up for air, and then dived again, deeper this time, and waved for Storm to follow. Storm took a deep breath and descended.

  Lara hovered with her hands waving, like a skydiver floating on an air current, and grinned toward Storm. She pointed downward at an indentation still another ten feet below her. Because Storm was still on the other side of the rocks, she couldn’t see what Lara was looking at, but she assumed Lara wanted to share another wildlife sighting. She hoped it was another Hawksbill, perhaps a mate to the one they’d seen, and she swam forward slowly, careful not to bang against rocks in the backwash from the surf.

  Lara rounded the rock’s jutting corner. The tips of her yellow fins fluttered about ten feet deeper than Storm, and Storm stroked to catch up.

  Suddenly, Lara exploded from behind the jagged notch as if she’d been shot from a howitzer. Something else blasted past, too, with a force so strong it caused Storm to somersault, arms and legs flailing. Lara, folded into a multicolor ball of rolling limbs, caromed against her and knocked Storm’s mask awry, but Storm caught a glimpse of Lara’s face before she lost her mask. Her client’s mouth was wide with terror, the mouthpiece to her yellow snorkel flopping uselessly in her streaming hair.

  A split second later, something fast and muscular bumped Lara again, driving her into Storm’s side. Lara made a noise like a drowning kitten, a plaintive cry that penetrated their underwater realm.

  The women raced to the surface. Rarely had Storm felt so puny and helpless. Later, she would reflect that all their thrashing had been pretty dumb. Sharks are attracted to disturbances and signs of distress, and she and Lara were splashing like a couple of speared octopuses.

  Once they were within ten feet of the rocky and difficult shore, the women faced each other. Each of them heaved for air, and Storm wondered if her eyes bulged as much as Lara’s, whose pupils were dilated and black as gun barrels. Neither wanted to swim back the way they’d come.

  “Bruce has never done that.”

  “We must have startled him. Maybe Bruce is a mom.” Storm struggled to keep up. Lara had already stood up. Her knees were pumping as she high-stepped across the rocky bottom.

  All they needed now was for one of them to step in a hole. They were probably all filled with Moray eels and sharp-spined wana, or sea urchins.

  “Careful,” Storm called.

  Lara plunged ahead. “You don’t understand.” She held her mask and snorkel in one hand and her arms flapped with effort. “He’s my ‘aumakua. My family totem. He should never have done that.”

  Storm tried to keep her feet from scraping across the sharp lava in the surging tide. “Lara, let’s swim down shore a bit, where there’s a sandy bottom.”

  Lara didn’t seem to hear, so Storm set her jaw and followed with tentative, careful steps. Each one hurt. Not only were the black rocks sharp, but on shore they were hot as skillets.

  “Lara, don’t take it personally. We scared it. Maybe it’s a she—with babies to protect.”

  “It’s supposed to protect me.” Lara’s voice held a sense of betrayal.

  “Ouch.” Storm stepped on a sharp rock. “It’s a wild animal. A wild pig would chase me, too, if it had to defend its nest.” She didn’t mention that she’d be disappointed, though she didn’t expect a sow to protect her over her own young. That was asking too much.

  It was true that many Hawaiians had great faith in their ‘aumakua. If a pig chased Storm, she’d find the experience distressing. But there were a lot of very good reasons it could happen.

  “Shit,” Lara said, and picked up her foot. Storm could see a drop of blood on the pad of her big toe. Meanwhile, Storm’s heel had a tender stone bruise. A spot of soft sand loomed ahead, an oasis in a lava field.

  Storm headed for it. “Where are we going?”

  Lara hobbled on. “The road.”

  “How far are we from our cars?”

  Lara’s shoulders rose and fell. “About a mile.”

  The hot sun beat down on the top of Storm’s head, and a contusion over her eye stung. Must have been from when Lara banged into her, when the mask came off, which was why salt water still ran from her nose.

  She picked her way carefully across another pitted lava spill. The irregular surface had holes filled with fine white sand, which gave it a polka-dotted appearance. At high tide, those puka would be filled with salt water and tiny forms of life, but now they were cushions for her sore feet.

  The women limped inland to the narrow, paved road. Storm recognized the area from this morning’s jog.

  Lara perked up. “We’re close.”

  “Good.” Storm hopped from foot to foot. She could fry an egg on the tarry asphalt. “My feet are killing me.”

  “Me, too.” Lara cocked her head. A truck was lumbering down the road, and Lara waved at it. “I know these guys. They work at one of the houses down near La Perouse Bay.”

  “There’s a lot of construction going on, isn’t there?” Storm asked.

  “Only a handful now, but there will be.” Lara hopped on the hot pavement. “Hey, Charlie! Got room for two more?”

  Two men sat in the cab and two more in the bed of the pickup. They were shirtless and wore bandanas over their dark hair. One guy’s arms and chest were covered with writhing dragons, mermaids, and geishas. It was hard to make the scenes out without staring. Not staring wasn’t easy, either. The other guy merely had tribal bands around both biceps. He looked tame by comparison.
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  Storm felt self-conscious in her bikini. Lara let Tribal pull her into the cab, but Storm hopped in before either man could grab her. The truck bed was grubby with clumps of earth, and she’d bet the metal was hot as a frying pan. Not wanting to add her butt to her growing list of sore spots, she sat on her swim fins.

  The ride wasn’t long and the men dropped Storm and Lara at their cars. Storm pointed to the outside shower. “I’m going to rinse the salt off.”

  Lara eyed the green moss around its base for a tenth of a second. “I’m taking off. I’ve got to meet Ryan for dinner.”

  Storm checked the angle of the sun, and then looked at her diver’s watch. It was five-fifteen. “Hey, the swim was great. Thanks for taking me.”

  Lara looked out of the corner of her eye. “Right.”

  “I mean it. Stop worrying about the shark. Your ‘aumakua must be the manō hae, the fighter. Not a dinky reef shark.”

  That got a small smile. “See you tomorrow.”

  Storm stood in the cool shower while Lara walked to her car. Lara didn’t have the same confident spring to her step that she’d had when they’d started their swim.

  Chapter Seven

  Storm didn’t have much time if she wanted to meet Damon at seven. Depending on traffic, Lahaina could be a half-hour drive or more. The public shower’s cool water had revived her, especially her burning feet, and she took another shower back in her hotel room, where she washed and conditioned her hair and slathered on the hotel’s skin lotion.

  A little lip gloss and mascara, and a black jersey tank dress with a short, flared skirt that was both comfortable and jazzy. Flat, strappy sandals. No way was she putting her beat-up feet into closed shoes.

  She glanced at her watch again, and decided she had a few minutes. She dialed Hamlin’s mobile phone.

  He answered, and the sound of his voice was a comfort. “I’m glad you called,” he said. “I’ve been leaving messages for you.”

  She peeked at the screen of her phone. Sure enough, there were three. “I’ve been trying to call you, too.”

  “I’ve been worried—. No, no. I miss you.”