Isle Be Seeing You (Islands of Aloha Mystery Book 9)

by JoAnn Bassett

  “The Twitter post on Allen is he needs some space.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Now I’m just waiting for the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ speech.”

  “I’m sorry, Steve. But maybe once he spends a little time alone he’ll reconsider.”

  “Maybe, but not likely.”

  “So why are you here? Leaving an offering to Pele for intervention in your love life?”

  Steve laughed. “Not hardly. I’m shooting some downhill bikers.”

  As ominous as that sounds, Steve wasn’t in a murderous frame of mind. He’s a professional photographer who specializes in taking pictures of visitors for various tourist-driven businesses. He’s my go-to guy for wedding photography, but his real bread and butter comes from tourism concerns like the local zip-line company and the charter boats docked in Lahaina Harbor. He takes everyone’s picture as they fly overhead or are about to board a vessel and then sells them the finished photos when they’re finished.

  “Wow! I didn’t realize that zipline was so far up! I need to show this to my pansy brother-in-law.”

  Or,

  “Look, Larry. You look so cute in that little captain’s hat. Let’s buy it, honey. It’s only twenty bucks.”

  The sun had peeked over the lip of the crater, so we said aloha and I went back to searching for Alex and Kat. If they’d decided to sleep in, I’d have to do some deep breathing before calling them. And, I’d scrap the hands-on teaching model and simply demand they come up with something other than a sunrise wedding in a freezing twenty-knot wind or get themselves another wedding planner.

  The downhill bikers took off as soon as the sun was completely up and over the rim. The crowd thinned as people made their way back to their cars. As I was about to give up and return to my car I spotted Alex and Kat huddled against the ranger cabin. Alex had thrown a beefy arm around his diminutive fiancée who clung to him like a nervous monkey. They wore shorts and sandals with a beach blanket draped over their heads. Their faces were slack, dazed by the cold.

  I trotted over and touched Kat’s shoulder. She flinched.

  Teeth chattering, she said, “Why didn’t you tell us it’d be so freakin’ cold?”

  “Sorry. I thought you’d researched the conditions up here.”

  “Well, you can forget about us doing the wedding here. No way.”

  “Yeah,” added Alex. “We’d rather live in mortal sin and suffer the consequences. At least we’ll be warm in hell.”

  I hid a self-satisfied smile. “Let’s meet tomorrow morning and discuss other venues.”

  “No cold places,” said Kat.

  Alex weighed in. “But nothing in the blazing sun, either. I don’t want to sweat through my shirt. It’s silk so it has to be dry-cleaned. ”

  “No worries. Maui offers lots of options.”

  CHAPTER 6

  By ten o’clock I was back in my shop. I’d made a full pot of coffee, sucked down half of it, and checked and returned all my email messages. At eleven the carrier brought in the snail mail and it didn’t contain a single overdue bill or bit of bad news. I figured I was on a roll, so I took a victory lap by spending the next couple of hours updating my website. It isn’t something I enjoy, so it takes a certain frame of mind to get me to do it.

  At one-thirty my stomach reminded me I hadn’t eaten, but my mind was elsewhere. I needed to get to the Palace of Pain and check when I’d been slotted to cover Sifu Doug’s classes. I didn’t want to mess up by not being at the right place at the right time. Also, after barely pulling off my seat-of-the-pants keiki class on Wednesday, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to prepare a little.

  I expected the alley to be empty, or to spot the silver Toyota truck in Doug’s reserved space. But there was my sifu’s black Wrangler. Had his cousin backed out on switching? Maybe the guy needed his truck for the weekend ahead and wasn’t willing to trade until Monday.

  “Aloha, Sifu,” I said, as I came through the door.

  Doug leaned against his office doorway, arms crossed as if expecting me.

  “Hey, Pali. How’s it hangin’?” His voice sounded downright chipper, which was in sharp contrast to our conversation only the day before.

  “I see you didn’t trade rides with your cousin yet.”

  “I’m rethinking it. It’s prob’ly a stupid idea.”

  I held his gaze, fully expecting him to enlighten me regarding his change of heart.

  “You here to work out?” he said.

  “No, I came by to check the class schedule and see when you’ll need me.”

  “My bad. I should’ve called. Looks like I won’t be needing help after all.”

  Okay. Again, I waited for a clue as to what was going on.

  “What happened? You and Lani work things out?”

  “Sort of.”

  When Doug didn’t feel like talking, it was tough duty trying to wring something out of him.

  “So, it’s all good?”

  “As good as can be expected.”

  “Okay, great. Then I guess I’ll head back to the shop.”

  He crossed the room. “How’d it go up on the mountain this morning? Your clients have a change of heart?”

  Oh, sure. He plays Mr. Mysterious and he wants me to spill? I don’t think so.

  I shrugged. “Went great.”

  We locked eyes, as if we were each nursing a private grudge. It wasn’t standard operating procedure for us to refuse to confide in each other, but he’d started it.

  I hooked a thumb toward the door. “Guess I better head out.”

  “Okay. See you around.”

  I got in my car and looked back at the guan. What the heck was going on?

  ***

  I went back to my shop and worked the phones for half-an-hour on behalf of Alex and Kat. Steve had given me an idea for a venue, but I wanted to check availability before getting the wedding couple excited about it.

  Things were clicking along nicely when my stomach rumbled again, reminding me it was now seriously past the lunch hour. I walked over to the Gadda and found Farrah replenishing canned goods at the back of the store. Soup cans flew from a large cardboard box onto the shelf as if she were a nimble juggler practicing her craft.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She glanced up at me but didn’t slow down. “Hey, yourself. You hear from Finn yet?”

  I shook my head. I’d been able to avoid fretting over my marriage problems while dealing with a looming wedding deadline with no venue and worrying over whatever was going on with Sifu Doug and Lani, but with Farrah’s inquiry, it came roaring back.

  “He told me before he left it might be some time before I heard from him.”

  “Where do you think he’s gone?”

  “No idea. But I’ve got a bad feeling they’re probably messing with one of those ‘Axis of Evil’ countries.”

  “Huh?” Farrah wasn’t big on following the news so even if my reference hadn’t been fifteen years old she probably wouldn’t have gotten it anyway.

  “It’s an old phrase from back in the President Bush years. The younger Bush, not the first one. He was talking about countries that don’t like us. Ones that give us major grief. Back then it was Iraq, Iran and North Korea, but in the past couple of years we’ve managed to add a few more players to the team.”

  “Wait a sec. There were two President Bushes?”

  Like I said, she isn’t big on current events.

  I gave her the Cliff’s Notes version of Presidents Forty-One and Forty-Three and then changed the subject.

  “Finn didn’t take his wedding ring.”

  “How do you know? I thought you said he hasn’t called.”

  “He left it by the kitchen sink.”

  “Probably just forgot it.”

  “I wish I could believe that.”

  “They prob’ly told him not to take any valuables. You know, no jewelry and like that. The military industrial establishment’s harsh on rule breakers.
”

  “When he left, he didn’t know he was being sent overseas. He thought it was just a normal work week.”

  “Huh. Well, there’s nothing normal about the weirdness going on at my house,” she said.

  She probably changed the subject because there really wasn’t much more to say about Finn ditching his wedding band. I welcomed the shift in focus.

  “What now?”

  “Last night I had a rap session with the scary dude in my back yard.”

  “You talked to him?”

  She nodded. “Yep. I got in touch through my Ouija board, and he started talking story like, nonstop. It was like a totally rad séance, you know? After a while I had to shut it down quick because Ono came looking for me. He’s sportin’ a bummer attitude about me dealing with the dude. But before that I found out some pretty heavy stuff.”

  “Like?”

  “Okay, he started out mellow. Said his name’s ‘Ling’—not sure if that’s his first name or last—and he cut cane right where our house is now. Said the company shafted him on his final paycheck, but that wasn’t the worst of it.”

  “Yeah?” It annoys me when Farrah drags out a story, but since that’s her preferred method of imparting information, I’ve learned to roll with it.

  “Uh-huh. Seems his keiki daughter was killed right there, in our back yard. Mowed down by a cane wagon. He’s sticking around to make things right. Said something like ‘eye for an eye.’ Freaked me out.”

  “What’s he mean? You didn’t kill his little girl.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said. I told him I was totally bummed about his baby girl, but he hung tough. Said it must be avenged.”

  “Avenged? That sounds like a threat. What’re you going to do?”

  “That’s where you come in. ‘Member when I said I wasn’t hip to borrowing money for the kahu? Well, now I gotta rethink that. If that dude hurts my Hatchie, I’ll die.”

  Hatchie was Farrah’s nearly year-old daughter, Hatshepsut. She has a twin brother, Plácido. No Jennifers, Jacobs, or even a Leilani for Farrah; she went with hard-to-pronounce foreign names that will bedevil those kids for the rest of their lives.

  “Of course the money’s yours. When will the kahu be able to do it?”

  “Don’t know yet. I rang up a dude on the Big Island, but I haven’t heard back.” She pulled a folded page from her apron pocket and handed it to me. It was a print-out from a web site offering the services of a dark-skinned, balding, sixty-ish guy wearing a string of maile leaves around his neck and a red and yellow pareo tied to form a kind of skirt. Something about his countenance hit me as off. As my auntie’s boyfriend used to say, “Don’t look like I guy I’d buy a used car from.”

  I looked up. “Seems to me the two of you shouldn’t need phones. I mean, since you both hang out in woo-woo world, you should be able to communicate telepathically.”

  She glared and snatched back the paper. “This is mega-serious, Pali.”

  “I know, sorry. It’s just I wonder if this guy can do anything that you couldn’t do yourself. You’ve got all the hardware.”

  Farrah has a small fortune invested in Tarot cards, Ouija boards, sacred stones, crystals, you name it. It seemed hard to imagine that a Hawaiian kahu would have any greater access to the mystical world than she did.

  “It’s not about ‘hardware,’ as you call it. It’s about technique. I’ve never learned the righteous way to do a blessing like this. And I don’t have time to screw around getting up to speed.”

  “Okay. So, where do we go from here?”

  “The bank.”

  We trudged across the street and up two blocks to the Bank of Hawaii. For years I maintained an iffy relationship with them. Being self-employed meant my checking account often teetered on the brink of non-sufficient funds, sometimes actually going over the cliff. But after my father died, I used the bank’s trust department to set up monthly stipends to my seven half-brothers and sisters. The fees and interest the bank enjoys from the trust account flipped me from “deadbeat” to “valued customer” status. Valued customers don’t worry about bounced checks or annoying fees, everything’s discretely handled by the back office. It’s yet another example of the one-percenters taking care of their own.

  “Aloha, Pali,” chirped the female bank manager as Farrah and I cleared the door. She always seems to have her radar tuned to high alert whenever a high-net worth client walks in. I wouldn’t be surprised if the woman scans the security cameras every few seconds to ensure we never have to stand in line.

  “How can I help you today?” She looked me up and down as if hoping I’d brought her another multi-million-dollar account. I’d never let on, but I’m pretty certain my days of stumbling into a seven-figure windfall are forever in my rearview mirror.

  “I need to make a withdrawal.”

  I turned to Farrah and whispered. “How much, exactly?”

  “Ten Bennies.”

  It took me a few beats to do the math. I leaned in and kept up the whispering. “A Benjamin is a hundred dollars, right?”

  She nodded.

  “So, ten of them would be a thousand.”

  Farrah appeared peeved. “Well, duh.”

  I asked the bank manager to excuse us for a moment. I cupped Farrah’s elbow and steered her outside.

  “Are you kidding me? A thousand bucks?”

  She crossed her arms. “That’s right.”

  “Farrah, that’s a fortune for a few minutes of chanting. Are you sure you heard him correctly?”

  “I talked to his assistant and she was straight up. A house blessing costs seven hundred to a thousand. And he only will come if he gets the money in advance. No credit cards or phony stuff like checks.”

  “It’s a ridiculous amount.”

  “My baby girl’s life is in danger.”

  “Yes, but it’s … you know.”

  “No, I don’t know. Are you saying Hatchie’s not worth it?”

  “I’m not saying that at all. But it’s a lot of money for something that’s kind of dodgy. How do you even know this guy is for real?”

  Farrah’s eyes grew shiny and her lip trembled. “I dig this seems ‘dodgy’ to you because you’re not a believer, but to me it’s life and death.”

  I pulled her into a hug. “Okay. Sorry for doubting you. I’ll get you the thousand bucks, but I sure hope this guy turns out to be real deal.”

  “Don’t worry, he is.”

  We went inside and I sent a wire transfer to the kahu’s bank account on the Big Island. It galled me the guy refused to accept a cashier’s check and he’d demanded payment in advance. But I figured it was worth it if it meant Farrah would sleep well. She’d been through more than her share of trials and tribulations in the twenty-five years I’d known her, but this latest scare over the safety of her children seemed to be taking an especially heavy toll.

  As we left the bank, I handed her the receipt for the wire transfer.

  “You won’t regret this, Pali,” she said.

  In my experience when someone says, “No disrespect meant,” or “I’m only saying this because I love you,” or “You won’t regret this,” it often turns out to be quite the opposite.

  CHAPTER 7

  I walked back to my shop rifling through my beach bag purse in search of my cell phone. I couldn’t find it. I was about to dump out the entire contents on my desk when I spied the phone where I’d left it—acting as a paperweight on the Alex and Kat wedding folder.

  I tapped in my code and a little “2” popped up on the voicemail icon. I called for messages, hoping to receive a go-ahead from the winery about holding the wedding there. The wedding was less than four days away and I’m never comfortable leaving things to the last minute. In my world, folks who claim they “perform better under pressure” are simply rationalizing sloppy work habits.

  The first message was, indeed, from Bobby Fielding, an acquaintance of Steve’s and the manager at Maui Winery. In a chilly voice he told me t
hey don’t normally host private events, but things were slow at the moment so he’d consider making an exception. This one time. Don’t make a habit of asking, and so on. I didn’t take umbrage at his tone. I’d probably have done the same thing under the circumstances.

  I hung up and went to the second message. It stopped me cold.

  “Hey, Pali, it’s me. I just have a minute. I had plenty of time to think on the plane and I can’t do this. But don’t worry, I’ll handle everything.” A static-filled pause went on so long I thought Finn had hung up, but then he said in a husky voice, “Okay, I better go. Take care of yourself.”

  I was about to delete the voicemail, then decided to save it. Maybe I’d misunderstood. Maybe when Farrah heard the message she’d offer a different take on what I thought I’d just heard.

  I blew out a breath and called Bobby at the winery. I wasn’t sure if his relationship with Steve included any awkward history, so after I name-dropped how I’d heard about him I didn’t press for details.

  I got to the point. “Will you be in tomorrow?”

  “Saturdays are my day off,” he said in the same cool tone he’d used in the voicemail. “And as I said in my message, we’re a winery, not a wedding chapel. We don’t normally host things like this.”

  “I realize this is a big ask, but my wedding clients have already had quite a few set-backs. Their mainland flight got cancelled, and then the airlines lost their luggage. If anyone deserves a little ‘aloha,’ it’s them.”

  I could practically feel his eye-roll coming through the phone.

  “Okay. I’ll come in tomorrow, say eight o’clock. I’ve got a thing at ten so don’t show up late. You said six people? The couple, two witnesses, a minister and photographer.”

  “I’ll also be there, which will make it seven. We’ll go elsewhere for dinner.”

  “You better, because as I said, we’re a working winery. If you want to eat you’ll need to go across the street.”

  “Is there a restaurant?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”