Primitive Secrets

by Deborah Turrell Atkinson

  Storm sat at her desk and rummaged around for the phone book. A couple of fruitless calls later she put the receiver back and listened to muffled voices in the hall. She got up and popped her head around the doorjamb.

  Ian Hamlin, the newest associate in the firm, was walking a handsome, burly man in frayed denim jeans and a buttery suede shirt down the hall. Storm did a double take; he was worth a second look. She recognized the man from publicity photos. Hamlin must have a good reputation. The client was Christopher DeLario, a sculptor renowned for his sensual bronzes. DeLario did larger-than-life interpretations of men and women with musculature that one New York critic had compared to Michelangelo. Around O’ahu, he was better known for his wild parties and the thirty-year-old custom Harley he rode. People gossiped that the radiant bronze Aphrodite at the art museum was modeled after a lover who had left him for another woman, and that she’d posed during a party that swirled with flakes of cocaine and clouds of ice.

  DeLario looked haggard, though the droop of his shoulders didn’t hide their powerful breadth. Storm didn’t believe everything she heard; she knew that people love to color in the empty spaces around fame. Her eyebrows bounced in appreciation at the sight of the men and she went back to her desk. In one of the drawers, she dug out a slightly crushed package of peanut butter and cheese crackers and stuffed one in her mouth. She had passed up all that delicious food a couple of hours ago and now her stomach rumbled with hunger.

  She opened the laptop case that she used as a briefcase and rooted for the papers she’d taken home a few nights before Hamasaki had died. Until the old man’s attache turned up, these were among the few files available to pass on to the other partners. Edwin Wang had asked her twice already.

  Storm stopped chewing and batted at crumbs that fell into the case. The folder wasn’t in there. She went through the bag again, then dumped the computer and all the papers out on the desk.

  She forced herself to sit back in her chair and take a deep breath. Okay, she’d been preoccupied lately, but she’d looked through some of this last night. She pawed through the mess again, more quickly. The folder was missing. With a flash of insight, she remembered it resting on the kitchen counter, where she’d set it this morning when she went back inside to feed the cat. Storm let her breath go in a hiss. “Son of a bitch!”

  “And good afternoon to you, too.” Hamlin stood at the door, grinning.

  Storm looked up, startled. “Oh, hi.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I didn’t mean you. I—”

  “I refuse to take offense. One of my dearest childhood companions was a Labrador Retriever.” He dropped into the chair facing her and set a cup of coffee in a Wild Bill Hickock mug on her desk. “How are you doing? I’m surprised you’re here.”

  Storm could see the varying shades of hair in his mustache; some of them were graying, and she liked the overall effect. It gave him a renegade appearance despite the well-cut, double-breasted navy suit, which he wore with a white shirt. His tie was some tropical flower pattern in red and orange. Hibiscus, maybe. She looked at the portrait of the poker-playing marksman on his mug and almost laughed. Hamlin resembled him.

  “I’m okay.” She held the package of crackers out to him. “Was that Christopher DeLario I saw leaving your office?”

  “Yeah.” Hamlin took a cracker. “Thanks. I didn’t feel like eating at the memorial service.”

  “Me either. I still expect Hamasaki to walk in here and tell me a joke. Or give me advice.”

  “Yeah, I know. But I hope I live as long and happily.”

  “You seen his briefcase anywhere? Maybe in a kitchen cupboard or a partner’s office? You could hide a body under the journals on Cunningham’s bookshelves.”

  “No kidding,” Hamlin chuckled. “You talked to Lorraine?”

  “She’s the first person I asked.”

  Hamlin helped himself to another cracker. “When do you take the bar?”

  “I did last month.” Storm shrugged. “We’ll see if I get to be a real lawyer or continue gophering.”

  “Sometimes it feels like there’s not much difference.”

  “Hey, for a guy with clients like Christopher DeLario, I’m surprised you feel that way.”

  “I’ve known him a long time,” Hamlin said quickly and bit into a cracker. “That was a nice service. Are you Buddhist?”

  Storm lifted an eyebrow at him, then shifted gears. “No, my mother was Episcopalian and my father rarely went to church. I know about this stuff from living with the Hamasakis, though Martin and I used to make fun of some of the rituals.” She smiled at the memories of Martin’s impertinence. “Despite his irreverence, Martin went with Aunt Bitsy to obon memorial festivals until he left for the mainland. Sometimes I went along and said a prayer for my parents.” She pushed a pile of paper clips around on her desk and wondered why she’d brought up the issue of her parents. The funeral, she supposed.

  “Martin’s the youngest son, right?” Hamlin asked. “I was in Hamasaki’s office a few weeks ago when they were talking on the phone. Sounded like long distance.”

  “Yeah, Martin lives in Chicago.”

  “They were discussing business and something about a party Martin had, but Hamasaki sounded serious. He was using his lecturing voice. You know the one.”

  “Uh-oh.” Storm’s forehead creased. Though in the past, Martin had partied too much for his parents’ tastes and could still be rebellious, she had always felt that he had inherited his father’s strong set of ethics.

  “Well, he had this authoritative tone. It was the end of the workday for us, must have been night in Chicago. They were discussing the financial records of some company whose stock Martin wanted to buy. Hamasaki said he’d check something out and call him back.”

  “He’s really proud of Martin. And of David and Michelle, too.”

  “He was proud of you, too.” Hamlin cocked his head at her.

  Storm heaved a sigh. “Hamasaki probably saved me from reform school. It had to be hard to take in an angry teenager when you had three kids of your own.”

  “You were angry?”

  “Yeah.” Storm went back to pushing the paper clips around on her desk.

  “And Hamasaki tamed you?” Hamlin grinned at her, his eyebrows high arcs above gray-green eyes.

  “Hardly.” Storm suppressed a snort, but forged on to cover her discomfort. “He’d been hanging around in the background when my dad was dying. He didn’t have to take me in, but it was funny, I felt like he really understood me.” She frowned. “More than my dad. And my mom was long gone.” She clamped her lips closed. She couldn’t believe she’d said as much as she had.

  Hamlin got up and examined a photo Storm had on her shelves. Storm’s best friend Leila McShane and her son Robbie clowned on the beach. Hamlin avoided looking at Storm. “It was my dad who ditched out on my family.”

  “No kidding. How old were you?”

  “About sixteen, the third of four kids. Unlike the others, I stayed home until I finished high school, used my anger to do well in school.”

  “You were smarter than I was.”

  “Maybe I was madder.” Hamlin squinted into his coffee mug.

  “I doubt it. My first day on O’ahu, I dyed my hair purple and got a tattoo.”

  “No shit. Show me.”

  “In your dreams.” They both laughed.

  “You didn’t want to move to O’ahu?” Hamlin asked.

  “No, I wanted to stay with Aunt Maile, my mother’s sister. She’s a healer on the Big Island. I wanted to learn to be a healer, too, and practice lapa‘au, traditional Hawaiian medicine.”

  “But you came.”

  “Well, yeah.” Storm frowned and carefully examined the handle of a coffee mug on the desk. “Your parents live here?”

  “My mother lives in Detroit. So does my sister.”

  “And your dad?” Storm aske
d. Pain or contempt, she wasn’t sure, streaked his face before he lowered his lips to his coffee cup.

  A rap on the doorframe startled both of them. Edwin Wang stepped into the office. “I’m looking for some notes of Hamasaki’s. That briefcase turned up yet?” He took off his gold-rimmed glasses and wiped them on a monogrammed handkerchief.

  “No to the briefcase, but I’ve got some notes lying around. Most are at home.”

  “I need them,” he said. “I have to call clients, tie up loose ends.”

  “I’ll bring them in tomorrow.”

  “Thanks.” Wang gave his glasses another wipe, then replaced them. “There’s a meeting for partners and associates tomorrow afternoon. Storm, you’re invited, too, since it concerns the repercussions of Hamasaki’s death.” Light glinted off the lenses of the glasses. “His office is unlocked now. You should look around and see if there’s anything you want. Bitsy said she wanted the furniture and artwork, but to let you look over work-related items.”

  Hamlin drained his coffee and stood up. “I’m going to miss the old guy.”

  “Me, too,” Storm said.

  She packed her laptop and a few assorted papers into her carrying case, slung it over her shoulder, and headed down the corridor. She couldn’t help but glance toward the closed door of Hamasaki’s office.

  She had gone out of her way to avoid entering his office since the morning she’d found him. A few times she needed one of his books, but she kept finding ways to keep from going in. The longer she put it off, the more skittish she got. Her feelings were confused. Part of her was frightened that she would relive finding him lifeless at his desk; the rest of her wanted to be alone in his sanctuary, where they had shared professional confidences, family secrets, and good jokes. By the time she pushed the elevator button to the underground garage, she had decided that she’d face it tomorrow morning.

  Her battered ‘72 Volkswagen Beetle sat alone on the dark, sloping floor of the garage. That’s what you get when you leave after six. A couple of weak fluorescent lights reflected from the oily concrete floor. Not even the maintenance people were around.

  Storm rummaged in her bag for the car keys. A package of mints fell to the grimy floor and she let them roll under the car. Where the hell were those keys? She always put them in the outside pocket of the laptop case. Except, oh yeah. She had been carrying her purse when she drove back from the memorial service. Storm shifted the laptop case on her shoulder and felt like a pack mule readjusting her load. She swung her purse onto her right hip and concentrated on digging to the very bottom of the black bag.

  She smelled him before she heard him, old garlic and strong, nervous sweat. When she heard the glutinous lisp of rubber soles immediately behind her, she twisted toward the noise, her hands still rooting in the depths of the handbag. He slammed her into the side of the old Beetle before she could raise her head.

  Chapter 4

  The car rocked with the impact and Storm hunched against its rounded side. She instinctively tried to protect her face and head, even though a pain so piercing that she was stupefied emanated from her frontal sinuses. A yowl that she didn’t recognize as her own voice echoed through the garage.

  The shock of the attack disabled her for a few moments and she curled her body around the laptop case and purse as if they were life preservers in a forty-foot sea. Then some primeval and irrational belligerence surfaced within her. Her face hurt like bloody hell and she was pissed. What kind of vicious desperado attacked women in parking garages? Especially one trying to get into a rusting ‘72 VW?

  She brimmed with a snorting, bull-charging, red-hot rage that wanted to flatten this scum-sucking stump-dick. How dare this scrotum-faced bottom-feeder attack people he perceived as weaker? Storm roared and swung her purse hard at the side of a stocking cap mask. He grunted and made a grab for the purse with one hand while his other grappled for the laptop case.

  This brought his foul-breathed visage to within about four inches of Storm’s throbbing nose. His chest was nearly touching hers, but she knew (from a few close calls in her wilder teen years) that this was not a bad position in which to have a guy, his arms spread like a crucifix.

  Awareness of the gratuitous pose gave her extra strength. With a yell muffled by closing sinuses, Storm hammered her right thigh to the vicinity of where his legs met and felt a satisfying mass of soft flesh.

  The guy gargled with pain. He bent over and made gagging noises while he struggled with the balaclava he wore. One ear and a few tufts of black hair poked from an eyehole. He retched and heaved and clawed with one hand at his crotch and the other on the black mask.

  This was a good start. Experience had taught Storm that most guys have an enormous advantage over women, even fit ones, in terms of brute strength. Women need to be faster and smarter. He could still have a surge of agony-driven fury and flatten her for good. She would be safer if he were blind, disoriented, and in disabling pain. Unconscious would be ideal.

  She wasn’t going to give up her brand new laptop easily. No fucking way. She’d just paid it off.

  She raised her knee into the guy’s face and felt what might have been a crunch. But the stocking mask padded his face and he was still standing, so she raised the laptop case over the back of his head. She had centered her weight over the bent-over figure to let him have it with whatever she could when a man’s voice shouted from a distance.

  “Storm!” Heels clattered across the concrete floor.

  The attacker, doubled over, scuttled away like a crippled crustacean. Storm lowered the laptop and leaned against the car.

  “You just saved my computer,” she said to a gasping Hamlin.

  He dropped his own briefcase and reached for her. “Jesus! Are you okay?”

  Storm slumped against him for a minute. The adrenaline was fading and she was left with shaking knees and a face pounding with pain. Hamlin put his arm around her for support, but she struggled upright. “I’m all right. Really.”

  Hamlin held her at arm’s length. “What’s all over your blouse, then?”

  Storm looked down. “Shit,” she mumbled.

  “Fortunately, it’s only blood. I got my nose creamed like that once, too.” Hamlin took her gently by the arm. “Come on, you need to be looked at. Who’s your doctor?”

  “Same as yours, probably. Remember, Wang got a corporate rate at that new HMO.” Storm stopped and looked around. “Maybe we should call the police.”

  “Let’s do it from my car.”

  Storm sagged in the leather bucket seat of Hamlin’s Porsche. Her adrenaline rush had waned and all the energy had left her limbs. She didn’t feel as if she could lift a finger, but when Hamlin handed her a cell phone, she took it and managed 911.

  After explaining to the cops that they should meet her at the emergency room, she hung up and looked over at Hamlin, who was jamming his parking card into the exit slot for employees. “Mind if I make another call?” she asked. “I was supposed to meet my friend Leila and her son Robbie for dinner.”

  “Huh? I hope you’re canceling.”

  She answered Hamlin with a mute nod and spoke into the phone. “Hi Leila, I got mugged.” She could hear the fatigue in her own voice. “No, you should see the other guy. Really. Okay, I’ll see you later.” She handed the phone to Hamlin. “They’re meeting us at the ER, too.”

  Leila and Robbie burst through the wide glass door to the emergency room two minutes behind Storm and Hamlin, who were standing at the admissions desk.

  “Geez, Storm,” Robbie said with wide eyes. “You look bad.”

  Storm pulled away the ice pack an ER nurse had given her and peered at him from slitted eyes. That comment had multiple meanings in ten-year-old speak.

  He grinned and touched the ice bag. “I mean, you’re gonna have two black eyes. Way cool. I’ve only ever had one.”

  Leila dragged him away by the neck of his tee-shirt.
“Tomorrow, you’re going to look much bet—”

  “Worse. You’re gonna look like you went skydiving without a parachute.” An ER doctor loomed over Storm and squinted at her. “Come here and sit down, please.”

  He poked at her nose and stopped a whole two seconds after she yelped and tears crowded her eyes. Then he shone a light into her blurred and sensitive orbs. She had to tell him how many fingers he held up and who the Vice-President was. “You’ll start to look better in about a week. At least your nose isn’t displaced. We don’t have to set it.”

  So much for bedside manners. Storm tried to glare him down, give him stink-eye that would tell him what she thought of his alleged compassion, but he’d moved on to another patient in the hospital assembly line.

  The police had waited through the examination to ask their questions. Storm spoke to them for a few minutes, trying to describe the attacker using acceptable language, and realized how little information she could give them. Black hair, she thought. Jeans, black tee-shirt with no distinguishing marks, tennis shoes, mask. She could picture his posture, the way her hands slipped on the sweat of his arms, the garlic on his breath, but how to get his essence across? From what she could tell the police, the attacker could be one of hundreds of guys.

  The police were closing their notebooks when a handsome blond man in scrubs hustled into the room. She cracked a fat lip into a half-smile. “Rick. I thought you worked the morning shift. That’s why you couldn’t come to the memorial service.”

  “Yeah, but I got called back in. We’re short-staffed. I heard what happened. You okay, babe? You look terrible.” He stroked Storm’s arm while he leaned back to assess the damage. Leila and Robbie moved off a few discreet steps.

  “I’ll take you home,” he said.

  Hamlin turned to leave. “Storm, I’ll pick you up tomorrow for work if you like. About eight?”