Iced in Paradise

by Naomi Hirahara

  Of me? That’s plain stupid. Travis, unfortunately, falls in the same category, which makes a long-distance relationship especially hard.

  When we are back in the car, I immediately text my dad. I haven’t done so in about three months, according to the leftover text messages on my phone. I wait for a few seconds. No response back. This trip has been a complete waste of time.

  “I don’t like her,” Sophie says from the passenger seat.

  “Huh?”

  “That girl surfer. She dissed Dad.”

  For once, I can agree with my sister’s sentiments. Yeah, Dad’s a jerk, but he’s our jerk. Santiagos reserve the exclusive right to insult our own.

  Sophie nods off during the drive home. I think about putting on my music, but I don’t want to disturb her. She’s the cutest when she’s asleep. She finally stirs when I idle the car in front of our house.

  She wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie. “Aren’t you going in? Maybe Dad’s back.”

  “I’m just going to check on the shop. Wanna make sure Sammie closed everything up okay.” Since there’s been a rash of burglaries on this side of the island, I’ve been more cautious recently.

  Our tiny business district is pretty much dark; the bar is completely closed up. As a one-man operation, D-man doesn’t have regular hours, and I remember that he’ll be working at the competition early tomorrow morning. But there’s light coming out of one establishment, Killer Wave.

  I knock on the glass pane on the door.

  “Eh, you wen find him?” Kelly lets me inside.

  I shake my head. “Nope. He’s disappeared. Into thin air. Like always.”

  “Give him a break. He’s trying to turn things around.”

  Kelly, always the glass-is-half-full kind of guy. I’ve forgotten how much I’ve missed his positivity.

  He’s doing inventory of his rental equipment. On the hardwood floor are pairs of swim fins. He’s placed a few damaged goods, a fin with a broken strap and a cracked snorkeling mask, to one side.

  “Good you wen come back, Leilani. It’s like everyting is how supposed to be.”

  He gives me one of those looks, and I have to admit that my heart skips a beat. Most of the time we’ve spent together over the past couple of months has been with Court.

  “Well, I’m happy for you two. Court and you,” I say awkwardly. “This summer, eh. When you two gettin’ hitched?”

  He smiles. “Court wants you as her maid of honor. She gettin’ round to asking you. Once there’s no shibai.”

  There seems no escaping drama when my dad’s around.

  Beams of light flash through the window, and then we hear a car engine turning off. “Who’s that?” I ask.

  Kelly looks out the window; I follow behind him.

  It’s a long white van parked in front of the vacant storefront next to Killer Wave.

  “Looks like one of those serial killer vans. You know, the ones in those crime shows on Netflix.”

  “You’ve been bingeing too much,” I say, but I have to agree.

  Emerging from the driver’s side is a haole guy, with black-framed glasses, slim build, and wearing a loose, lightweight jacket over a white T-shirt. I can’t tell for sure, but his hair looks dark and curly.

  “He looks like a serial killer,” Kelly says.

  “You think he’s taking over Auntie Lulu’s place?”

  “Nah, he no look like one baker.”

  “Just ’cause was one cookie place, no mean going be one now.”

  “Landlord tells us notting.”

  That part is definitely true. I am now in charge of paying the bills, and the rent check for the shack goes to some generic limited liability company.

  The man pulls out a key, opens the door, and enters the storefront.

  “Should we go over there and say howzit?” Kelly asks.

  “To a serial killer?”

  Kelly flashes his pearly whites and we both laugh.

  “Well, this is good fun and all, but I gotta go.” With everyone attending the surf competition, I’m pretty much on my own at the shack tomorrow.

  “Pekelo gonna mind tings here.”

  Kelly’s competing, I remembered. His older brother, Pekelo, has been filling in for him often, just yesterday, in fact.

  Before I leave, I check the front door and the pop-up window of Santiago’s. Both are properly locked; everything is safe and sound. On my way back to the car, I can clearly see the license plate on the van. Another Californian trying to find paradise in my hometown.

  When I get home, I kick my Crocs off and hang the key on its hook. Only the hall light is on, and I hear light snoring from the girls’ room. Everyone is sleeping.

  I check my room, and it’s empty. Luke must have found a ride to Bamboo Royal on his own. Thank God.

  I plop down on the bedspread, which was quilted several years ago by Baachan. It has a purple background with a lavender appliqué in a breadfruit pattern. She made it for me when I left for college in Seattle, and I brought it back with me.

  I open up my laptop and see that it’s ten o’clock, so 1 a.m. in Seattle. Damn. I didn’t realize it was so late. I message Travis on Skype, and we connect. His skin has a greenish tint from the bedroom lamp, but I’m not going to mention it.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I lost track of time.”

  I tell him everything that happened today: Dad’s arrival with Luke and then his disappearance. The long drive to the North Shore for nothing.

  “You can’t just do everything your mom wants you to do,” Travis says. “You’re just enabling her codependence.” Travis’s mother is a therapist, and I hate when he starts to psychoanalyze me.

  “My mom was worried. You mean I’m supposed to ignore how she’s feeling?”

  “It’s between your dad and your mom. You don’t need to get in the middle.”

  I try to relax my face so it doesn’t reveal my anger, but I’m not good at faking anything. “You know that my mom’s sick, right? It’s not like everything is normal.”

  “Leilani, Leilani.” Travis’s voice gets soft. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I was looking forward to talking to you. I was worried about you.”

  I take a deep breath. “Yeah, sorry about that. It’s just that a lot has been going on. What did you do tonight?”

  He tells me about an open mic he went to at our favorite coffeehouse. A friend in our apartment building performed stand-up, and I guess he bombed. “He said he really missed that you weren’t there. You would have told him how much worse everyone else was and made him feel better.” I picture the slick, wet streets and the rows of cool restaurants and bars. I miss Seattle, its dark possibilities, and most of all, Travis.

  “Did you manage to have any fun tonight?” he asks.

  “Nah. After going to the North Shore, I checked on the shack and then Kelly was at the store—”

  “You were with Kelly?”

  Oh, no, not this, I’m thinking. Travis knows I dated Kelly once upon a time. “He’s just a friend. Like a brother. Manages my dad’s rental shop and he’s engaged to Court.” Travis met Court when she came out to visit me in Seattle.

  “So, yeah, he was there, counting snorkeling fins. Really exciting stuff.”

  Travis grows quiet. He looks away from the screen, half of his face glowing green.

  I quickly change the subject. “Waimea is pretty dead at night. But there’s the beach. And it was eighty degrees today.”

  “I’ll take that over bad comedy.”

  I’m not sure I would, but I grunt in agreement.

  “No panic attacks today?”

  I shake my head, a bit mad to be reminded of my emotional challenges. The thing is, I really haven’t had an attack since I’ve come home. I’m not sure what that means, but I don’t want to think about why. With my father back on Kaua‘i, I don’t want to think about anything difficult tonight.

  When I open my eyes, my room is still dark. It’s
actually a converted garage, and the window that Grandpop Santiago built for it is only two foot square. I don’t mind because it means the sun won’t be blinding me at daybreak. I’m not a morning person, and luckily I don’t have to go to the shop that early.

  It’s ten-thirty and I take a quick shower. Afterward, I drag myself into the kitchen in my bare feet and start to make some coffee. Travis has mailed me beans roasted from our favorite Seattle coffee shop. I know Kona beans are world famous, but I need to hang onto something from my old life. Every week Seattle seems to get more distant, as if I had just imagined but not lived those five years away from home.

  As I pour hot water into our French press, I notice a note from Mom left on the counter. She’s driven Baachan to her ukulele class in Kapa‘a and later she, Baachan, and my two sisters will be heading for Cannons Beach on the North Shore for the competition.

  I pour coffee into my UW tumbler, put on my sunglasses, and walk over to the shop. I unlock the door and don’t even bother to turn on the lights. Nothing changes in here, and I could probably shave ice with my eyes closed.

  My right Croc steps on something squishy and raised high off the floor.

  Dammit, Sammie, I think. Why you have to be so out of it? I’m messy, too, but I’m not bothered by my own slovenliness.

  Then I look down and am frozen in place.

  It’s Luke, the OC surfer, facedown in a puddle of water.

  Chapter Three

  BAACHAN SAYS FAMILY IS EVERYTHING, but I know that she really doesn’t believe it. It’s samurai wish fulfillment promoted in the old Japanese movies she watches. The sword-wielding warriors always talk about bushido, or family honor, as they squat and kneel and march around their wooden houses separated by paper walls. But I say it’s mostly bullshit.

  Our immediate family, especially all the female Santiagos, are super tight, like an unbreakable knot, but go a few branches away on our family tree and all I see are torn-up twigs. For instance, take one of our assistant police chiefs, Sergeant Dennis Toma, whom is supposedly related by marriage to Baachan’s older sister over in LA. Those two sisters haven’t spoken to each other like maybe ever. And Sergeant Toma, who my father bullied every day in elementary school in Waimea, claims absolutely no connection to us. In fact, I wouldn’t be exaggerating to say we are probably on his top-ten list of families he’d like to put behind bars.

  I’m getting that vibe now as he sits across from me at our picnic table out front of the shop. He’s wearing his dark uniform with four gold stars on each shoulder. His slender fingers are clasped together on the table, right next to a big glob of strawberry sauce. I want to tell him to watch out for the sauce, but I don’t think that he’d be open to any kind of helpful warnings from me.

  “Tell me one more time,” he says.

  How many times I gotta tell you, brah, I say silently, but I comply.

  I knew that Luke was dead from the get-go. I mean, his face—both his nose and mouth—had been immersed in water. He had a terrible gash on the back of his head, and blood had soaked through his golden hair. I don’t know how I did it, but I was able to think enough to get on my cell phone and dial 9-1-1. “There’s a dead body on the floor of our business. Santiago Shave Ice. Yah, yah, I know him. Luke Hightower. He’s a surfer from California.” I gave our address to the dispatcher and was told the police would be on their way.

  I ran outside to see if anyone was around. Killer Wave was closed until eleven and, besides, Kelly was on the North Shore. There was a hand-drawn sign on Lee’s Leis and Flowers: “Be Back Soon.” No one seemed to be next door in Auntie Lulu’s place and, besides, I didn’t know how helpful this new guy from California could be. I stood outside and waited. I feared that I was going to have a panic attack, but it didn’t come. I smoked through my single cigarette and had second thoughts. Maybe Luke was actually alive, holding on to the last bit of life. And here I was, outside smoking a cigarette.

  I went back inside, turned on the lights, and gingerly walked toward the body. I could clearly see a pool of liquid around him. I touched the liquid—it was cool to the touch—and smelled my wet fingertips. Odorless and colorless. Was it water? What the hell had happened? I checked our freezer for leaks, but the equipment seemed to be fine. The dispatcher had told me not to touch the body, but still I wanted to make sure that he was dead. Kneeling down, I touched his shoulder. It was stiff and, yes, definitely lifeless.

  My story, told the third time, is over. “So then you guys showed up.” I fold my arms tightly, as if I’m hugging myself.

  One of the officers lifts up the yellow crime tape loosely hung across Santiago’s open front door and walks toward us.

  “Hey, long time no see,” the officer says to me. Andy Mabalot and I had been in the same high school class. He was nice enough—he even invited me to a dance once, but I turned him down. Kelly and I were kind of friend-dating and I didn’t want anything to further complicate that relationship.

  Sergeant Toma doesn’t seem to appreciate small talk, at least that’s the impression I get from the way he glares at Andy, who quickly clears his throat. “There was no cell on him,” he reports to his superior. Toma writes something in his notebook, sends Andy away to collect some evidence, and resumes his interrogation. “So he was staying at your place.”

  “He was resting.”

  “Where, on the couch?” Sergeant Toma asks.

  What did that matter? “No, in my bedroom.”

  Toma furiously writes something in his notebook.

  “It’s not what it sounds. My mom told him to. I was back here at Santiago’s. She was just trying to be nice.” The Aloha Spirit is probably a foreign concept in Sergeant Toma’s vocabulary. “When I got home from Bamboo Royal, he was gone.”

  “And you have no idea where he went?”

  “I told you. I barely know the guy. I don’t even have his cell phone number.”

  “Your father? He didn’t sleep at your house?”

  “I dunno,” I say. “By the time I got home last night, no one was up.” That wasn’t a lie. Toma takes notes on what time I had left Santiago’s. “You can ask Kelly Kahuakai,” I tell him.

  “Don’t worry. I will.”

  Just then a white van rumbles into Waimea Junction’s dirt parking lot. “That guy was here last night,” I say before even thinking.

  “Who?”

  The slim haole man in the same hoodie emerges from the driver’s side.

  “I think he’s renting Auntie Lulu’s old place.”

  “I miss her cookies.” I didn’t realize Andy had returned to the picnic table with Sergeant Toma’s bagged evidence.

  “I do, too,” I exclaim, and Toma lets out another sigh. I try to see what’s in the bag, but Toma sends him away. “Officer Mabalot, go over and get an initial statement from him.”

  Andy nods and heads over to the van. I start to get up, but Toma stops me and says that he has more questions. Just my luck.

  “Hightower didn’t leave his suitcase at your house?”

  I shake my head. “He just came for some grindz and rest, I guess.” I remember the luggage we moved into the back of Killer Wave. No need to reveal that to Toma now. Not until I had a chance to get a good look at it.

  “Well, we’ll have to talk to your mother and the rest of your family. Maybe they’ll know when Hightower left your house.”

  “They are all at the surf competition up at Hanalei. This boy was supposed to be there, too.”

  Just then my phone vibrates, and I look down to read the text. It’s my reminder to order more syrup from our Honolulu supplier.

  “Let me see your phone.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you hiding something?”

  “No.” I reluctantly hand over my phone to Toma.

  “What’s your password?”

  “I’m not going to tell you that.”

  “I’m going to hang on to this, okay? Until after we talk to your parents.”

  “That’s no
t right. Don’t you need a warrant?” Law & Order is one of my favorite TV shows, and I’ve seen almost every iteration of it, even the episodes made before I was born.

  “If you don’t want to cooperate.…”

  I hold my face with my hands. “Take it. I don’t care,” I lie. “Is that all?”

  “For now.” He offers me a ride to the North Shore in his squad car, but I decline. All I need is the rest of Kaua‘i to see me in the back of a black and white. Leilani Santiago, she hasn’t changed much since high school.

  I watch as a covered body on a stretcher is carried out to the coroner’s jeep. I feel sick to my stomach and can taste the acid of my morning coffee, but not in a good way. Members of the local TV news crew have arrived with their cameras, and I pretend that I’m just a lookie-loo instead of a material witness. After about forty-five minutes, the police officers, including Andy, get into their squad cars. Now I’m at a loss for what I’m supposed to do. One side of the yellow crime tape has come loose and is flapping in the breeze. No sense in doing business today, I think. I stay outside, as if Luke’s soul is floating somewhere in the shack.

  About fifteen minutes later, I see someone on a bicycle wheeling toward me. “Howzit?” It’s Kelly’s older brother. Before, everyone called him Pete, but after he came back from military service in the Middle East, he wanted everyone to call him by his Hawaiian name, Pekelo.

  He notices the crime tape. “Someting happen?”

  I tell my story for the fourth time. “I’ve never seen a dead body before,” I confess.

  “You lucky den.”

  “Not so lucky today.”

  “You like me call Kūheakapu?”

  “Nah, I guess I’m not supposed to talk to anybody until the police get to them first.”

  “That’s messed up. It’s not like you wen kill him. You neva, right?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Seemed like he was the son that your dad nevah had. Least that’s what I heard.”

  “From who?”

  “Ah, nobody.”

  Yeah, right. Probably some of the guys who hang out at D-man’s after the sun sets.

  “Toma took my phone.”