Unburying Hope

by Mary Wallace

  She needed to make clear her own life path, she knew that. By making herself emotionally healthy, by finding a life challenge, she’d better weather the waves of disconnect and overconnect of these two new people in her life. But that meant she’d have to reach out, Skype Frank, ask for his help in setting up the webpage. She knew she needed to get to him very soon anyway, to have him check on Eddie’s mother’s legal custody documents. She bit her lip, not hearing the banter between Eddie and Rosalinda as they headed out of the school parking lot. Reaching out to Frank might be harder than digging the big shovel into the salty air-hardened pan of earth out in the garden. But setting up connections between the people who worked to save Detroit would soothe the overpowering combination of homesickness and loneliness that she felt here as the other two found their way without her.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Another night came and went without Eddie in their bed. She drove Rosalinda to school and wandered down the mountain, stopping for a cup of tea at a small bookstore where she bought a book about webpages. It was going to be daunting, she knew, to start that kind of thing by herself. It would be better if she could reach out to Frank, she knew. She’d turned on the laptop and sat in front of the camera but she hadn’t had the courage to turn on the Skype software, to see if Frank had his account open, ready to reconnect.

  Later, driving past the dive shop storefront, she saw no lights on. She parked and walked to the front door. It was locked and she couldn’t see any sign in the store that someone was there. The back storage room wasn’t visible from the front window.

  She went next door to the surf shop and walked in, asking Rusty, the Japanese sales clerk, whether or not anyone had been next door in the last day.

  “Nope,” Rusty said. “But the cops were here last night, an alarm went off after midnight, waking up the whole neighborhood. We weren’t hit, and the deli wasn’t, but the cops were here at store opening to tell me about the alarm.”

  Celeste bristled. “An alarm? What alarm?”

  “Yours. The dive shop’s.”

  “I didn’t know we had an alarm system.”

  Rusty walked her outside to the back door and pointed above the dive shop’s door to a small black speaker. “It’s connected to the front and back doors.”

  “The front door looked fine.”

  “But look at this,” Rusty fingered a gauge mark on the door. “Someone wanted to get in. The cops said the back door was open but no one was around.”

  Celeste tried the door handle but the door was locked. “Rusty, can you put a note under your register to phone me if something like this ever happens again?” She wrote her cell phone number on a piece of paper from her purse and tore it off to hand to him. She looked up at the speaker above the back door and squinted her eyes to read the alarm company name and phone number, logging them into her cell phone. She walked with Rusty back into his store, relieved that he went right to a roll of tape and taped her phone number near the phone.

  “So, you haven’t seen Eddie today?”

  Rusty looked at her with distrustful sympathy and said quickly, “No.”

  Celeste stood still for a moment and then retreated when Rusty moved forward to help a customer. “I’m going next door,” she motioned to him, but he waved and went back to his selling.

  The front door of the dive shop looked unmolested, the windows had the new logo painted in gold, a diver with a scuba tank on, a big turtle swimming right in front of the diver’s mask. Eddie had told her he’d paid one of the loitering homeless men to paint from a stencil he created, and it came out very well.

  No lights, no unusual mess inside. She went a bit farther up the sidewalk, walking into the deli, confused about what to do next. She would ask what had happened and then walk out and call 911 or the non-emergency police number.

  Adolfo, the deli owner, walked her to the back of his store to show her his own untouched door.

  “Why do you think they only messed with the dive shop?” she asked him.

  “There was a very bad element there,” he said.

  “Still?” Celeste asked, “Now that we’re opening the store?”

  “You?” Adolfo looked at her, incredulous.

  “My boyfriend is opening it,” she said sheepishly, “but it’s going to be both of us running it eventually, I’m sure.”

  “Your boyfriend can’t seem to keep away the drug addicts that prey on the neighborhood. It was bad when the store was empty, but he’s giving them money for odd jobs. So now they hang around even during the daytime.”

  “He paid them to paint the logo on the front window.”

  “Look, I’ve been on the island for 20 years. These lowlifes take over vacant spots and they set up their own shops, selling drugs, running rackets. Your boyfriend giving them jobs is a real problem. It keeps the maggots around. So I suggest you start showing up, and tell him to pack a gun.” He reached under the counter, pulling out a small caliber pistol.

  Celeste stepped backwards, aghast. “We don’t need a gun, I’m sure.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Either you have a gun and pull it on those losers, or your store will close and you’ll be on the unemployment line, standing behind them as they pick up their government checks.”

  She walked backwards to his front door. “I think I should call the cops, to see if they think Eddie is in danger.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a big boy. I don’t think he’d let anyone run him without a fight. But get yourself a gun, and don’t be afraid to pop a perp. The law protects you, if you shoot in self defense.”

  Celeste felt a chill in her chest. She walked out the door and wandered away towards her car, intentionally averting her eyes from the storefront.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The cops who showed up were no help. It was an incomplete attempted robbery, they said. The locked door had been left open. The gauge marks hadn’t opened the door. The door had either been left open accidentally or the shop owner had opened it after the attempted break-in, not seeing the damage to the wooden doorjamb in the dark.

  Celeste told the female cop, ‘Shinoda’ imprinted on a plastic nametag on her uniform shirt vest pocket, who she was, who Eddie was and explained that she hadn’t heard from Eddie in a day. “Do you think he could be in danger?” she asked the cop.

  “Does he ever stay out all night?”

  Celeste cringed, “Yes. But this is the third time here on the island.”

  “When do you usually hear from him?”

  “A day or two later.”

  “He’s been gone a few times?”

  “Maybe 8 or 9 times in 6 months.”

  “Then I wouldn’t worry that he’s in danger. There has been a lot of drug activity in that shop since it went vacant a year ago. We’ve been casing it. We’ve cleared it twice, taken guys in. But the building owner is screwed, like a lot of people. When your storefront is empty, it’s easy pickings…”

  “You weren’t casing it last night? You didn’t see what happened?”

  “Nope, we drive by a few times each day and night. Looked like a new business is going in, and sometimes that scares away the drug dealers.” The cop looked at her and said pointedly, “Your boyfriend is a user?”

  Taken aback, Celeste sputtered, “No, I don’t think so. No, he’s got a little daughter, she’s here with us. He wouldn’t risk it. No, I’m sure he’s not,” she added, when she saw the cop’s eyes narrow and look directly into her face.

  “Sure? You can’t always tell who is an addict, until time passes and their teeth decay like old tobacco chewers in China, half of each tooth burns away.”

  She grimaced at the thought and remembered teasing Frank about his perfect teeth.

  “Or their skin gets broken and they scab up a lot.”

  Eddie had a scab on his cheek, from tripping over a box in the store, he said. It was only the size of a dime but it was healing slowly.

  “How
naive are you?” Officer Shinoda hissed under her breath. “That store was closed for months.”

  Celeste choked on her defensive words, “But there were black trash bags outside it when we toured it. It looked like someone was clearing it out.”

  “I bet they were. Did you look in the trash bags?”

  “No. It was trash.”

  “Was it? Meth dealers dispose of their paraphernalia in trash bags. We’ve busted three Mexican citizens outside that shop, each carrying tens of thousands of dollars worth of ice.”

  “What’s ice?”

  “Crystal meth. It’s powder that’s been processed in denatured alcohol. When it dries out, it becomes crystalline.”

  “There were a couple of freezers when we walked through that were gone when Eddie got the shop ready.”

  “Using freezers is the fastest way to get the alcohol to evaporate, it makes tiny crystals, which is what we found in the baggies that the dealers were carrying.”

  “So the shop was a meth lab?” Celeste asked, remembering the frequent internet stories about garage and kitchen meth labs in Michigan. And Eddie’s reticence about renting this space. He had seemed fed up with the relentless presence of drugs and she knew that his temper had been rising because he wanted Maui to be different. But she had insisted to him that this place, near a deli and surf shop would be an easy match, giving his new business a welcome boost.

  “Nope. Not a lab. It’s been a dealing hangout. But there were no refrigerators the last time we had a warrant.”

  “They were freezers. The kind you see at a corner store with ice cream bars for sale. But there were two of them, back against the rear wall.”

  “No freezers there either when we went through.” Shinoda motioned to her partner, Ryan Komoko, a hefty Hawaiian man with a mustache that reminded her of a TV detective she’d watched at the old lady’s apartment.

  Komoko pulled up close, standing next to her. He leaned in with a soothing voice that immediately reminded her of the TV good cop, bad cop playoffs she’d seen so many times from the green chenille sofa before her mother came home.

  “Look, you seem clean.”

  Her eyebrows went up, she wondered for an instant if she should get a lawyer. “Yes?”

  “And your boyfriend is missing. Not missing, he could be out on a bender.”

  “So what?”

  “He rents the space that was an active meth house. He disappears. Have you been texting him?”

  “Yes.”

  “He respond?”

  “No.”

  “You make it worth his while? Tell him he’ll get laid if he responds?”

  Celeste’s lip curled. “No, I told him he’s missing parts of his daughter’s first weeks of school.”

  “It’s the middle of the semester. You just moved here?”

  “Yes.”

  “From…”

  “Detroit.”

  “Does he use meth?”

  “No,” she scoffed.

  “Don’t be too quick on that reply, honey”, he said, “1 in 10 Americans have tried it. You get wrapped around and around by meth, like you are a baby goat crushed by a ten-foot boa constrictor. One hit destroys you, and your life becomes one long squeeze until you die.”

  Tears welled up in Celeste’s eyes and she looked over to see the blank look Detective Shinoda was giving her. “I don’t know. He’s a very good man. He was in Afghanistan.”

  The two cops looked at each other, a momentary flash of sorrow between them.

  “Military, eh?” Komoko leaned closer.

  “Yes.”

  “Tours of duty completed and released?”

  “No, he’s either out on disability or discharged. He doesn’t talk much about it but he was deployed four times.”

  “What disability?”

  Celeste was surprised that she hadn’t needed to know the technical words, but her faith in Eddie had been immediate and enduring. “He has a dent in his forehead.” She reached to her own temple, touching it tenderly, measuring out a few inches to show them the size. “Unexploded mortar shot at him from close range. They gave him a few medals.”

  “Is he in therapy? Was he in Rehab? Is he on anti-depressants?”

  “That’s kind of personal,” she said, puzzled, remembering the masses of pills in his toiletry bag. “He’s not in counseling, but why?”

  “There’s a huge problem with vets returning with mental health problems. Many get addicted to drugs, go paranoid and either commit suicide or go to prison for violent crimes. Most of the vets won’t tell the VA that they need help, they don’t get therapy or the mood elevating drugs they need to recover from their tours.”

  “He’s not violent or suicidal. We moved here so he could live his dream.”

  “What’s his dream?” Shinoda asked.

  “Opening a dive shop,” Celeste said, but a deeper truth rushed out of her mouth, “reuniting with his daughter.”

  “How old is his daughter?”

  “8.”

  “Where is she at school?”

  “A little private school in the upcountry,” Celeste said with a bit of pride.

  Shinoda’s eyebrows raised, “How are you paying that tuition?”

  Celeste realized in that moment just how vulnerable she and Rosalinda were without Eddie around to consult. She had no idea how Eddie got his money, aside from maybe a military pension, but he always had cash. She’d asked him about paying taxes and he had given her the same grief about taxes that he had about using a bank. She filed her tax returns religiously and knew she was clean, but what would happen if she let him pay their bills in cash? Thank god, she’d written the first tuition payment by check. She hadn’t yet deposited the cash he’d reimbursed her with, so her bank account was clean. Whenever he gave her cash, she used it for groceries but had used her own account for the house rent, Rosalinda’s new clothes and, thank goodness, her tuition.

  “I worked for Michigan Bell for 10 years and I’m a good saver. I pay her tuition with my savings,” Celeste said, hoping her pride in her self sufficiency would mask her inner battle to hold back everything she knew, the ways Eddie had gracefully steered her to use her own funds for large purchases and then reimbursed her in cash.

  She wondered if he had been smart enough to intentionally position her in this clean way. He must have been. It would have been easier if he’d gone to Rosalinda’s school and enrolled her and then paid the tuition himself.

  “You left Detroit? Left your job? Why?” Detective Komoko crossed his arms and lowered his head to stare at her.

  “I was fired,” she said, her own head down in chagrin.

  “Why? Drugs?”

  “No,” she spat, “No. Because I had a fight with my best friend,” she remembered Frank’s kindness even at the end, serving the lady that had taunted the hidden, enraged, frightened side of herself out into the open, “and I screamed at a customer who was driving me crazy.”

  “I’m sure your boss can tell us the story.” Komoko raised one eyebrow.

  “Am I a suspect in anything?” She looked Shinoda in the eyes. “Has any crime been committed that involves either me or Eddie?”

  “No. Not yet.” Shinoda’s eyes narrowed. “Alright, then. Enough for now.” Shinoda motioned for Komoko to back up a few inches, to give Celeste room to move. “You go back to being the abandoned, wronged Mommy and we’ll keep an eye on your store.”

  Celeste heard the ‘Mommy’ and centered her inner strength into her face, praying that her momentary flinch was imperceptible.

  She walked to her car and climbed into the driver’s seat. Damn it, time to get into the pickup line at school.

  She couldn’t send Eddie to jail if he was involved as a dealer, which her heart told her he could not possibly be. And she would not, she was surprised to clarify to herself, deprive Rosalinda of her father’s presence as she grew up.

  No.

  Here on Maui, they had a lovely home, he had his gardening, and togeth
er they had moments of completeness that had eluded them separately for all of their lives.

  It was twenty minutes away from school pickup time and she hadn’t even been able to stop back home to have lunch. Maybe Eddie was asleep, maybe she’d find him when she and Rosalinda walked in the door. She’d tell Rosalinda to tiptoe and put her backpack into her own room, then they’d go out again to get school supplies. They’d let Eddie sleep, do their errand and get home in time to make a quiet dinner of fried chicken and caesar salad. She had just bought a small can of sardines, a mortar and pestle and it would be soothing to grind the salty fish into paste for the salad dressing.

  Eddie could wake up and find a happy little girl, a warm dinner, her offer to help him with the store. And the maybe not-so-crazy advice to buy a gun.

  Chapter Forty

  As she pulled into the school driveway eighteen minutes late, she saw Rosalinda’s head lowered, tears stumbling out of her closed eyes. A slim, red headed teacher held her in a tight side-to-side embrace, and jostled Rosalinda when she spotted Celeste in the car. “Don’t worry,” the teacher soothed, “Your momma’s here now, look, look.”

  Celeste smiled wanly, lowering her front passenger window all the way.

  But she saw no comfort in Rosalinda’s face or her stance. Instead, the little girl broke down in tears. Celeste turned the car engine off and jumped out her own car door, kneeling in front of a now quietly sobbing Rosalinda. “What? I’m here!” She looked at the teacher. “Is she okay? Is she sick?”

  “No,” the teacher gently rubbed Rosalinda’s shoulders. “Some kids feel really abandoned if their parents are late. But Rosalinda, here, shouldn’t feel like that… She’s here with Momma now.”