Big Island Blues

by Terry Ambrose

  I reread the note before saying, “Ho’okano? Who the hell is that? It sounds like an old Hawaiian—no, you don’t mean she actually believes in this thing? What did you tell her?”

  “The whole story,” said Shaw. “I told her about all Carla’s research and what happened before. You know what she did?”

  Duh, no. “Haven’t a clue.”

  “She pulled out a chain with an amulet that whacko Warren gave her when she was six.”

  I looked at Alexander. “Is that the one Benni mentioned?” But, it was Shaw who answered.

  “It happened when Benni flew to Honolulu to see her brother.” He glanced across the room at Alexander. “That’s you, right?”

  Alexander shook his head. “Benni never came back.”

  “Ask her about it. Anyway, Warren took her to meet this Ho'okano. This supposed priest told Andi the amulet would protect her from evil spirits. Warren said he had one just like it and together they could channel the ‘good powers.’” Shaw rolled his eyes and waved his hands in the air. “All sorts of cockamamie bullshit like that. According to what Andi told me, this all happened on their last day together when he drove her to South Point.”

  I thought about Benni’s reaction earlier. “No wonder she was so pissed off.”

  Shaw leaned back in his seat. “This character was all dressed up like that big bird on Sesame Street—all yellows and oranges, lots of feathers. He did some mumbo-jumbo ceremony and blessed the amulet. They told her she must keep the pendant a secret, so she hid it from everyone, including her mom, for months. You’re right, Andi told me that when Benni found out what Warren had done, she was livid. But, by then the kid even slept with the damned thing. Even now, she still believes she’s protected and the amulet is guiding her career. To top it off, she said she got a message from this Ho’okano the other day through that Facebook thing when she borrowed Carla’s internet connection. The whole thing’s asinine.”

  I pointed at Shaw. “You believe an old guitar is cursed.”

  “In the presence of incontrovertible coincidence,” he said, “even those who know better will believe.”

  “Woohoo,” I said. “How profound. My patience is gone, Shaw. I’m tired of the games. I want the whole story, not just half. Neither of us appreciates being dragged all the way to the middle of the island so you can sit there and wax on about how sorry you are for your life.”

  “McKenna,” Alexander said. “Look over in the corner.”

  I glanced at the space where Alexander pointed. There were two empty guitar stands. “So what?”

  “I think I see what Shaw’s getting at. Andi’s a lot like her mom. Real spunky. If she think she’s protected by some old Hawaiian amulet, I know what she doing.”

  I turned back to Shaw. “She took the Martin?”

  “Helluva kid I’ve got there,” he said proudly. “She thinks she’s Wonder Woman and is going to save her old man. Are you boys ready? I brought you out here for two reasons. First off, I wanted to make sure you two didn’t go running off looking for her without me. Now that we’re all working together, I think we have a better chance of finding my daughter before she catches up with this Ho’okano.” Shaw walked across the room and picked up a small overnight case. He returned to stand before me.

  “There’s no way we’re working with you,” I said.

  Shaw set down the bag, then walked to the wall and pulled down a rifle. “Sure you are. We’ll just wait until you change your mind.”

  I blinked several times while staring at Shaw. “Are you kidding me? You’re going to shoot us if we leave? That’s a helluva way to gain someone’s trust.”

  “My concern is finding Andi before she gets in over her head. You tracked her this far, I suspect you can find her again.”

  Alexander stood next to me shaking his head. “I heard enough, McKenna. Let’s take his keys and drive back to the B&B. He ain’t gonna shoot us. He can walk in or have Cousin Phil come get him.”

  “Don’t test my patience.” Shaw ground out the words slowly. “And don’t think I won’t use this. It wouldn’t be anything I haven’t done already.”

  “You know, Alexander, I think he might do it.” I thought about what Shaw had told us. The Facebook message seemed suddenly important. “Did you see that message she got?”

  “Nope. That’s Carla’s thing. I got no use for computers or all these fancy cell phone gadgets. Carla did all the research. Out here, you can’t even get reception for one of those damn phones. That about drove Andi crazy. She did learn to use a whiteboard, though. Come with me. There’s something else I need you to see. It’s the other reason you had to come here. Maybe you can make sense of this damn thing.”

  We followed Shaw into another room, where he flicked on the overhead fluorescent lamps. It was a kitchen with old tiles, an old white refrigerator with rust spots that looked like a map of the islands, and cabinets painted canary yellow. Shaw pointed at the wall behind us, where there was a whiteboard on which Andi had created a diagram of circles connected by lines. Inside each circle, there was a name or a question.

  “What’s that?” asked Alexander.

  “It’s a mind map,” I said, scrutinizing what she’d written. I read the names out loud. “Donny, Shaw, Ho’okano, Art Swenson.” There was another circle with a question mark in the middle. A line connecting to Donny’s circle led to another circle with “Involved? How?” written inside. For Ho’okano, she’d connected a circle with “Fraud!” written inside. For Art Swenson, she’d asked the question, “Hired by?” The line from that circle led back to the center circle with the question mark.

  I pointed at the board. “Carla was right, Alexander. Your niece is a helluva detective. She knows there’s something fishy here. Who is this Art Swenson, anyway? Why does his name keep cropping up?”

  Shaw’s hard eyes locked onto mine. “Art Swenson is the name of a guest who stayed at Carla’s B&B for the three days prior to the day I was almost shot. He checked out that same day. The problem, gentlemen, is that Art Swenson’s been dead for twenty years. I don’t much believe in ghosts, but I’m damned curious about why he wants to shoot me and make my daughter pay for something I did.”

  “Carla mentioned a guest who wasn’t concerned about security. She said he was kind of strange. That’s him?” Talk about being torn. I’d really wanted to forget about Shaw, but he was somehow tied into Andi’s quest to find—what? Who?

  “That’s him, alright.” Shaw gritted his teeth, then continued. “It was Carla who connected the names. Andi was showing her that message on Facebook and they looked up—what did they call it—the profile for Ho’okano. Carla about flipped when she saw the guy’s picture. That man died twenty-two years ago.”

  “No way.” I had a growing sense of foreboding, but moved closer to the board to inspect each letter closely. I muttered, “We’re not doing zombies on the Big Island. There has to be an explanation.”

  “This wasn’t a zombie. In addition to the surveillance video Carla’s an amateur photographer. She shoots candid photos of her guests. She says it generates a lot of good will when she gives them one as a souvenir. Anyway, she only got one picture of this guy, but he’s a dead ringer, so to speak, for the Art Swenson who died. As for how he knew we were connected, beats me. I’ve got no idea how he found her or me.”

  “That seems to be Andi’s main question, also. You know what, I want to see that picture,” I said. “And I want to know how he’s tracking her. Saddle up, cowboy, we’re going back to talk to Carla.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  In the moonlight, Shaw’s truck reminded me of a lonely sole who’d survived one battle too many. Unfortunately, the truck rode about the way it looked. The diesel monster had been a palace compared to this little egg crate, with its battle-scarred body and long-gone suspension. Every rut traveled through the axle, up the suspension, and into a bone-jarring shot to my back.

  Carla was waiting for us on the front lanai, looking relaxed and c
asual. Her slippas crunched along the brick walkway as she came to greet us. She’d changed out of her sundress into jeans with a long-sleeved “Waimea Rocks” T-shirt. She melted into Shaw’s arms and they exchanged an uncomfortably deep kiss that had me ready to clear my throat in a plea for cooler heads and hearts. Shaw and I both had a sure thing going. I was going to get a trip back to Kona with Alexander and my aching back while Shaw was going to be singing “Come On I Wanna Lay Ya” unless he committed the crime of the century.

  As Shaw and Carla walked to the house, arm-in-arm, my jealousy surfaced. Why couldn’t I have what they had? Their bodies swayed in a languid rhythm as steamy as the night air in summer. I suppose my time had come and gone. Carla looked at me over her shoulder. “You look like you’re in pain, Mr. McKenna. Did you get bounced around too much?”

  “McKenna don’t do so good on rough rides,” Alexander said.

  I straightened up, trying to stretch just enough to loosen the muscles. It was too late. “It’s an old injury from when I was a kid. Being cramped up in cars sometimes sets it off.”

  When we were all on the lanai, Carla pulled away from Shaw and cocked her head in my direction. “Fix Mr. McKenna’s back, hon.”

  “Yeah, hon, fix his back.” It was the first time I’d seen Alexander smile in a couple of days.

  Shaw’s lips tightened and he shook his head. I wasn’t quite sure what “fixing” entailed, but I wanted no part of it. My best friend might think this would be fun, but my fixer didn’t look any happier than I felt. I put up my hands to cut this off before it could go any further. “I’m fine,” I declared.

  “Nonsense.” Carla planted her hands on her hips as she glared at Shaw. “You do me all the time. It’s not like you’re going to marry him. One quickie will fix him up.”

  Mr. Macho Cowboy stammered a weak refusal, but gave in when Carla wagged her finger in front of him just like my fourth-grade teacher used on me when I shot a spit wad at another kid. My missile hit a window instead of my target and my punishment was to clean the window. Shaw grumbled now just as I had then. “I will—if he’ll let me.”

  I shook my head to ward off this amateur medical intervention, but Carla ignored my protest. She grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me around, and shoved me backwards. She barked, “Now!”

  Her outburst took me by surprise, but Shaw’s arms clamping around my chest caused me to panic. My legs flailed in the air as he lifted me from the ground. “No! No! Put me . . .” My back cracked like a sticky door being forced open, and then my feet were back on the wooden slats of the lanai.

  To my surprise, the move hadn’t hurt that much. In fact, it felt as though the quick stretch had released the building pressure. My knees felt weak, not because of pain, but because I’d acted like a terrified child. Alexander stood, speechless, watching me with a look that conveyed confusion and amusement at the same time.

  “You big baby.” Carla snickered. “Are you done?”

  I gulped down my embarrassment. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You feel better, don’t you?” Her head moved up and down ever so slightly. Obviously, she’d been unimpressed by my imitation of a six-year-old.

  Heat rushed up my neck and into my face. She’d been right and all eyes were on me. Talk about feeling stupid. “Guess so,” I stammered. I turned to Shaw. “Thanks—I think.”

  Shaw grimaced. “No problem. Now can we get back to business?”

  “I had no idea you were so bossy,” I said to Carla. “Are you like that all the time? You were so pleasant earlier.”

  She shook her head. “I only get involved when someone seems indecisive. Andi was that way, too. At first, anyway.”

  “That don’t sound much like Andi,” Alexander said.

  “Were you bossy with her, too?” I had a premonition that Carla knew more than she’d let on earlier.

  “She ran away.” Shaw sounded morose. It looked like this cowboy had the blues. “Babe, if you know something that could help us find her . . .”

  “Shaw told us about a Facebook message from someone named Ho’okano,” I said. “Based on what we saw out at Shaw’s place, Andi thinks he’s a fraud. Why didn’t you tell us about him before?”

  Carla crossed her arms over her chest. She grimaced and, for the first time, seemed uncertain of what to say. “I should have mentioned this before. At the time, I thought Andi was at the ranch and she’d tell you about him. When she was here—she used the wifi connection to check her social media accounts. It was almost like she was looking for something in particular because it only took her a few minutes.”

  “Ho’okano?” I held my breath. Was he the key? What did Andi know about him? “Shaw said you looked up his profile.”

  “We did. I didn’t see the guy’s message, but she did show me his photo. It wasn’t the same name, but it was the same picture as the guy who was here. I told her about that. Shortly afterwards, she became very intense and began tweeting.”

  How obvious. The kid loved her social media and she probably announced to the world where she was. “I need to borrow a computer.”

  The three of them stared at me for a moment, then Alexander broke the silence. “This ain’t no time to be checkin’ your email, McKenna.” He made little typing motions with his fingers.

  “No, no. I should have thought of this before. These kids tweet everything. If she stops to take a pee, that’s an event worth telling the world about. Carla?”

  She pointed into the house while Shaw and Alexander shook their heads in confusion. They obviously didn’t get the whole social media thing, but I had a good idea of where this could lead. I’d never seen the need for Twitter before. I mean, I manage an apartment building and tweeting about being bored because I had to wait for a plumber seemed pointless. I did have an account, but for the most part, I’d created it out of curiosity, not a need to stay connected.

  Once Carla had me situated, I logged into my account and looked up Andi. I remembered her Twitter handle from when I’d used her computer. It was perfect for a rising star—@AndiKapono. Her page included her most recent tweet, which had been sent almost two hours before. It simply said, “mtg ho’okano 2 end this now. nd hlp.”

  I clicked on the details link and saw that Andi’s followers, like caged birds in an aviary, had been tweeting away in response to her plea for help. Oh, good God, what was that girl doing?

  Among those involved in the conversation, I recognized Donny’s handle, which was a similar to his Facebook handle. His comment was, “u cn stay w me can hide u dm me” Besides the fact that, once again, I decided the kid needed serious spelling and grammar lessons, did he really think he could stop whoever was after Andi? Or was it the other way around?

  Most of the message made sense: “You can stay with me. I can hide you.” But, I had to know what kind of shorthand “dm” was. It certainly wasn’t “dump me.” I looked to the computer screen for guidance, scrolling across the icons at the top of the page. When my cursor hovered over the envelope icon, the words “Direct messages” popped up. A light bulb came on in my head. He was asking her to send him a direct message so only the two of them would be able to read it. Got it—direct message me. I called out, “Alexander! Come here a second.”

  He appeared next to me and peered at the screen over my shoulder. “What you got now, McKenna?”

  “Andi. Two hours ago she tweeted that she was meeting Ho’okano and needs help. Most of the replies she received weren’t the least bit helpful. It’s the typical social media friendship—inane, rapid-fire expressions of support.” I pointed them out on the screen. “Things like this one—you go girl, or those—rock on and you’re tough, kick ass contributions. Donny’s the only one to offer any real assistance. And she didn’t respond to any of them, at least, not that I can see.”

  Carla and Shaw came and stood next to Alexander. Carla pointed at the screen. “Click that link.”

  I did as she’d instructed and an image appeared. It was the front of the B
&B.

  “That tweet was sent from here,” Carla said.

  I planted my elbow on the table and my chin on my hand as I stared at the photo. So intent had I been on the words that I hadn’t noticed the photo link. I wondered out loud. “What’s she doing?”

  None of them had an answer to that question, but all of us were gathered around as though we were one big concerned family. I was in the driver’s seat with no clue as to where to go. “Where to go,” I muttered, then blurted out, “That’s it! Carla, was Andi here earlier?”

  “No.” Carla shook her head. She paused, then said, “Wait. When I was out front, I saw a car on the roadside. It was just getting dark, so I couldn’t really see it very well, but I figured if it was her, she’d have come in.” Carla pointed at the screen. “Try refreshing the page. Maybe she’ll post something else.”

  I went back to her profile and saw a new tweet from Andi. “thx all. time 4 food & guidance. xoxo” Again, there was another photo link. This one was a church glowing white in the moonlight.

  “That’s Hoku Loa Church in Puako,” said Shaw. “It’s thirty minutes from here. The general store’s closed by now, so there’s only one other place she could be going. Thank God they don’t have any resorts.” He grumbled, “At least, the developers haven’t destroyed that village yet.”

  I’d seen the ways development had changed the islands just in the short time I’d been here. I couldn’t imagine how much change had come before. We didn’t have time to debate “progress,” good or bad. I said, “She’s leaving us a trail. We need to follow it.”

  “Why would she be taking pictures of everywhere she’s been?” asked Carla. “If she’s in a hurry to get someplace, it doesn’t make sense that she’d take the time to be stopping for photo ops.”