Paradise Crime Mysteries

by Toby Neal

  “It has to be Terence Chang,” Lei murmured, staring at the ceiling. That reminded Lei she hadn’t checked in with Marcella about her friend’s reopening of Chang’s case, and now there was a lot to update her on.

  She phoned Marcella, and when her friend didn’t pick up, left a message that it was urgent they speak regarding new developments.

  She got up and went into the kitchen. Wayne looked up from scrubbing the sink. His face seemed to have aged in the hours since Lei had called him about Rosario’s death; his cheeks were sunken and eyes hooded. His dark visage reminded her of her first glimpse of him in prison orange, and how things had changed so much since then. She walked to her father and opened her arms. He dropped the scrubber into the sink and embraced her.

  “I keep thinking of doing something for Rosario,” Wayne said into Lei’s hair. “Bringing her something to eat. Checking her blood pressure. I’ve walked to her door a dozen times, and I don’t remember she’s gone until I get there.”

  Lei couldn’t speak, just tightened her arms, and then finally let go.

  “I’ve been thinking while I’ve been cleaning.” Her dad turned to the fridge, took out a couple of Heinekens, popped the tops, and handed her one. “Sit down. I have an idea I want to run by you.”

  “I’m listening.” She took a sip of the beer.

  “Rosario left her half of the restaurant to me and the house to you. I’d been planning to ask you if I could stay on here and do some volunteer ministry while working at the Hawaiian Food Place—but now I’m thinking of something different.”

  “She left me the house?” Lei frowned. The beer tasted yeasty and strong, and she remembered she was pregnant and pushed it aside. “She never said anything to me.”

  “Yes. We talked it all over because we had time to. She wanted to give you and Stevens something to get started in life, and prices are almost as high in Marin County as Hawaii. You should be able to sell this house for enough to buy something similar on Maui if you want. The house is paid off.”

  “That’s incredible. I can’t believe she was so generous. I thought she’d leave it to you—it makes sense for you to keep living here.”

  “She left me income, in the form of my half of the restaurant. So I was thinking. Now that you are bringing home this baby, and having another one, you’re going to need help. Child care. And I’m going to need something to do with myself besides bus tables and wipe counters at a restaurant.” Wayne pushed a hand through his long, silver-streaked curls. His eyes, when they met hers, were vulnerable, dark circles beneath them. “I always wanted to make up for those years we lost, but we still haven’t had the chance. What do you think about selling this house and buying something big enough on Maui that I could live with you and Stevens? As your nanny. Or, as I’ve heard them called, ‘manny.’”

  Lei’s mouth quirked. “You, a ‘manny?’” Her eyes trailed over his muscled, tattooed arms, picturing him changing a baby. She could see it. His intimidating appearance was all a front. She’d never seen him be anything but gentle—but he’d guard their house as fiercely as Keiki would.

  “I was very good with you when you were little. But of course you don’t remember that,” Wayne said. “And you know I can cook and clean.”

  Lei’s chest ached with the feeling of her heart melting. “I can’t think of anything I’d like more. Keiki will be beside herself.”

  Wayne had stayed at Lei’s little cottage on Kaua`i during one of her postings for a while, and the big Rottweiler had become almost as attached to Wayne as she was to Lei.

  Her father turned away, and Lei could tell by the way his shoulders were hunched that he was trying to hide his emotion. “Well, there are a lot of things to settle, but I hope you will ask your husband. Talk it over.”

  “He’s going to love the idea as much as I do.” Lei got up and embraced her father from behind, resting her cheek against his shoulder. “Losing Aunty has taught me something. We can’t take anything for granted. We have to be with our ohana while we can. Knowing you’ll be home to take care of the house and baby Kiet is a huge relief to me. And you couldn’t possibly be any worse at child care than me and Stevens. We don’t have a clue. We’ll be Googling everything.”

  Just then Lei’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She took it out, saw Marcella’s number. “Dad, I have to take this.”

  “I’ll make us something to eat.” Their talk seemed to have energized him, and he turned toward the refrigerator.

  Lei went back to her bedroom.

  “Lei. What’s going on?”

  Lei shut her door and threw herself on her bed. “So much.” She told Marcella about Aunty’s death, enduring her friend’s exclamations of shock and grief. Marcella had become attached to Aunty as well. Knowing Rosario had been terminally ill didn’t mitigate the shock of her sudden, suspicious death. “So now, more than ever, I need someone tracking everything Terence Chang is doing.”

  “I have Hilo PD on him like white on rice, and I’ve got Sophie monitoring his online activity. So far, we haven’t found anything, but this guy has major computer skills. He could be orchestrating all this from his back bedroom just like he did on that other case.”

  “I know. And here I am in California, having to sit on my hands while that nurse who killed Aunty is roaming around with her briefcase, free as a bird. I just want to go home and work, where I can do something. Speaking of, there have been developments on that. I’m sure Marcus knows already.” Lei filled her friend in on the breaks happening in the heiau case. “But we still need to find the killer of the Norwegian art thief. It may or may not be Awapuhi. The two thugs that held the Norwegian are still in the wind. I wish I could go home and work, be with Stevens. I have nothing to do here but be reminded Aunty’s gone.”

  “You should go. I’m sure Omura needs your help with all that going on.”

  “I need to stay. Help my dad with my aunt’s funeral. Oh, and I’m pregnant.”

  “What!”

  “Yeah. Like you said, what’s one more? Anyway, I hope you’re right about that—and about giving us a date night sometime.”

  They talked more and Marcella said, “Keep me posted. Believe me, if we had any probable cause on Chang, we’d be bringing him in.”

  “Okay. I guess I have to let that be enough.”

  “Oh, and on a personal note—Marcus asked me to marry him.” Marcella’s voice quavered.

  “I was waiting for that,” Lei said. “Congratulations! Because you said yes, right?”

  “I told him I needed to think about it.”

  “Holy crap, don’t do what I did!” Lei exclaimed. “He adores you, and you guys couldn’t be better together! For God’s sake, if you learned nothing from what I did and what happened with Anchara—please, marry the man!”

  A long pause. “You might be right,” Marcella said. “I just have to be sure. I mean, the rest of my life is a long time, and I worry I’ll let him down.”

  “Seriously, you have it so much more together with him than I ever did with Stevens, and I love being married more than I ever imagined. I don’t know what I was so scared of.”

  “Even though Stevens is messed up by Anchara’s death? Like you told me about?”

  “More so, because of it. We’re there for each other in ways you can’t imagine until you make that commitment.” Lei pressed her fingers against her lips and shut her eyes, remembering their passionate lovemaking.

  “Well, grist for the mill. Gotta run!” Marcella said, and cut the connection.

  Lei went back into the kitchen. Her father had reheated more of the beef stew.

  “I think you should go home,” he said without preamble, setting the bowls on the table as she came in. “It’s going to take a while for them to release your aunty’s body and to plan the memorial. You should go back to work. I know it helps you deal with things.”

  Lei sat down. The stew smelled delicious, and her dicey stomach turned on and said yes. She picked up her spoon. “I
want to stay and help you pack up her things. Plan the memorial. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Sweets.” He put a hand on hers, made eye contact. “I can take care of all of that. What I can’t handle is you pacing around like a caged lion, frustrated because you can’t work this case, needing your husband and your dog.”

  Lei laughed, a sudden upwelling of mirth, and he laughed, too. “Now you see the real me. Still want to come live with us?”

  “More than ever. The hope of doing that has given me a real second wind. But, of course, I respect what you and Stevens decide.”

  “Well, I’ll just have to hop on a plane and get home to talk with him about it,” Lei said. “Thanks, Dad. I think you might be right about how I cope. But we’ll come back for her memorial, for sure.”

  “With any luck at all, you’ll be bringing my new grandson with you.” Wayne dug into his stew.

  “Now, there’s something to worry about. Stevens didn’t say anything about that investigation, but hopefully something’s happening there. Something that doesn’t involve us as suspects.”

  “You’ll just have to fly home to find out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Stevens and Omura stood outside Interview Room Two. “I’ll take the lead,” Omura said. “Let’s hold back the part about the artifacts until the right moment.”

  “Sounds good.” Stevens glanced into the glass insert in the door. Awapuhi was an intimidating presence, even cuffed to the table. His lawyer, a slender young Hawaiian man dressed in business casual, leaned in close to talk with him.

  Omura fluffed her hair, flicked a nonexistent speck off her sleeve, squared her shoulders, and led the way into the room.

  Stevens limped over and turned on the recording equipment on the wall. Omura recited the date, time, and the names of the people present, pausing for the young lawyer to provide his name. “Keiran Moniz.”

  Once they were settled, Moniz started in. “My client tells me you failed to identify yourself as police personnel when you came to the door, hence his defensive actions.”

  Stevens drew his eyebrows together and made eye contact with Awapuhi. “I stood on your step and rang your bell, Mr. Awapuhi. You opened the door and tried to blow me away. I didn’t have time to identify myself. Good thing I wasn’t there selling Girl Scout cookies.” He felt the stress of those moments color his voice with sarcasm as his ankle throbbed, reminding him the leap to safety hadn’t been without a price. “You fired on me. That’s ten years of hard time for felony assault with intent to do deadly harm to a law enforcement officer.”

  Charles Awapuhi glowered. The lawyer shuffled a few papers. “Not identifying yourself was a critical oversight, Lieutenant Stevens,” Moniz said.

  “‘Maui Police Department’ were the first words out of my mouth after I yelled ‘gun,’” Stevens said. “Glad I had lungs left to say anything at all.”

  Omura smiled, placating. “It’s too bad things got off to that start, Mr. Awapuhi, because Maui Police Department has only ever wanted to support the heiau investigation and protect the artifacts in their sites. The officers who came to your house just wanted to run a few things by you. Discharging a weapon at a police officer is a very serious action we need to address. But we have another matter we’re concerned with. What do you know about the killing of Norm Jorgenson, a visitor from Norway?”

  “I don’t know notting,” Awapuhi growled. “I never killed nobody.”

  Stevens remembered noticing before how the Hui leader thickened his pidgin and hid behind it.

  “Were you aware Jorgenson is linked to the artifact thefts here on Maui? We haven’t been able to compare trace yet, but he could be linked to all the heiau burglaries,” Omura said.

  “No, I nevah knew dat.”

  “With your connections in Maui Police Department, I’m surprised that you nevah knew dat,” Stevens said, deliberately imitating Awapuhi.

  “I said, I never knew notting about this Norwegian.” Awapuhi gave Stevens stink eye at the implied collusion.

  “Are you called ‘the Man’ within the Heiau Hui? ‘Kane’? As a respectful nickname?” Omura asked.

  “Sometimes.” Awapuhi looked down at his hands, and Stevens could see that they carried the marks of hard work. “But I’m not the only one they call that.”

  “Who else is called that?” Stevens asked. Awapuhi just glared.

  Stevens glanced at Omura—this line of questioning wasn’t going anywhere. She gave him the tiniest head nod.

  “Mr. Awapuhi, can you explain how the artifacts that were stolen from the Haiku heiau were found in your backyard?” Stevens asked.

  Awapuhi’s head lifted and eyes narrowed. “You had no right to go into my home!”

  “On the contrary.” Omura slid the search warrant across the table to the lawyer, whose youth showed in his consternation as he took the documents. “Sorry we weren’t able to hand you these things in person, what with the gun battle going on.”

  The lawyer scanned both the arrest and the search warrant. “These appear in order. I am counseling my client not to answer any more questions.”

  “Mr. Awapuhi.” Stevens caught the other man’s eye and put all his disillusionment into his voice, each word dripping with contempt. “You claim to care about your people’s heritage so much, and yet you’re the one stealing the artifacts. You’re ‘the Man,’ all right.”

  Awapuhi smacked his fist down on the table, pride and anger overriding his lawyer’s advice. “There is a bigger picture here. We must protect these precious relics of our culture; keep them safe in a place where they can be preserved forever. Not have just anyone trampling through our sacred places, destroying them.”

  “So this was doing a good deed? Chiseling them out of the stones your ancestors carved them into and mounting them on a wall somewhere? Whose great idea was this?”

  At that, Awapuhi folded his lips shut and shook his head. He sat back and folded his arms. “I’m done talking.”

  They continued the questioning for several more minutes, to no avail. Stevens was satisfied—Awapuhi had admitted he knew about the artifacts and even given a hint as to why they’d been taken. It was as much as they could hope for with no further bargaining leverage.

  “Your client will be remanded to Maui County Correctional Center until his arraignment. Please explain the process to him,” Omura said.

  They got up and left as Awapuhi began bellowing abuse at his lawyer, pounding the table some more. Outside in the hallway, Stevens leaned on the wall to take the weight off his ankle. Omura frowned.

  “Did you get that looked at?”

  “No time. It’s just a sprain.”

  “Get it looked at. File your workplace injury report.” She looked down at her file and made a note.

  “Yes, sir.” He felt stung by her abrupt tone. “Did you hear anything on the radio? My earbud was dead in there.”

  “No. They haven’t contacted us. When you’ve had your ankle checked, I’ll get back to you, but you can go home now. Good job getting ‘the Man’ to admit he knew about the artifacts. It wasn’t much, but it was something.”

  “Thanks.” He followed more slowly, limping, as Omura pep-stepped down the hall to her office. The aftermath of adrenaline overload and the stresses of the day caught up with him suddenly, his body sagging with exhaustion. Going to the emergency room felt like a personal nightmare. He decided tomorrow was soon enough, though he filled out the workplace injury form and left it with the watch officer.

  Stevens swung by Pono and Bunuelos’s cubicle, missing Lei with a sudden hungry fierceness. This spot was where he used to find her when he came by Kahului Station. Now she was placed with Torufu in another cubicle, but he imagined he could still spot her curly head just visible at the top of the padded wall. A lonely night filled with the possibility of bad dreams awaited him at home, and he dreaded it.

  Pono looked up with a quick grin. “Nice job getting Awapuhi to admit he knew about the relics
.”

  “I had to shake something loose. Hey, have you heard anything about Anchara’s case?”

  “No. Been too busy to try to pick up anything from McGregor and Chun. They’ve been really closemouthed on the whole thing.”

  “Well, Omura told me they were following some other leads, so I guess that’s good,” Stevens said. “Want to get a beer?” He knew Keiki would be at home waiting for him, and for dinner—but so were those nightmares.

  “Sure. Let me just close up a few things.”

  “What’s up with your ankle?” Gerry Bunuelos looked at the leg Stevens was favoring. “I imagine the captain wants you to get it checked out.”

  “Just a sprain, and I’m too tired to go to the emergency room and deal with all that.”

  “Let me have a look. I was a paramedic before I switched to police work.”

  “Great. It’ll save me a trip. And while you’re at it—what’s happening with chasing down those suspects? Toaman and Guinamo?”

  “Sit on this box over here and take your shoe off,” Gerry directed. “I always keep an extra-stocked medical kit in case I come across a situation on the job.” Bunuelos reached under his desk for a large white plastic box marked with a red cross.

  Stevens’s respect for the short, wiry detective went up another notch as he sat down on a box of computer paper and undid his shoe, prying it off the swollen foot with a grunt of pain. Gerry knelt in front of him, rolling his pant leg up and peeling the sock off to expose the ankle, swollen and purple with bruising. He snapped on a pair of rubber gloves.

  “Nasty,” Pono commented from his work station.

  “I’m going to palpate this, try to see if it’s broken. If it is, you need X-rays and all that. I need to see how much mobility you have. This is gonna hurt a bit.”

  Stevens gasped as Gerry palpated the swollen ankle, moving in a systematic way from the calf down to his toes. “As to your suspects, Torufu and I ran down their addresses. No one home. Interviewed neighbors and roommates.” He held the foot firmly but gently, flexed it up and down. “How’s that?”