What an idiot I’d been. I’d never even considered the idea that Donny’s feelings for Andi might be because she was his sister. Along with a million other questions like how many families Warren might have had, I wondered what the meeting between Andi and Donny was all about in the coffee shop. It also occurred to me that Andi might have deliberately misled me about her relationship with Donny. Maybe she’d even misled herself for some perverse reason. Either way, I didn’t feel as though I could trust Malama’s assessment of the brother-sister relationship. Not yet, anyway.
No, I needed to know for sure whether Donny had a crush on Andi. Yes, or no. And I did not want conjecture. The only way I was going to get that answer was to resort to one of my oldest skills—trickery. “Malama, have you and Warren been together long?”
“He’s dead, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. I told you, he’s Luana’s father. It wasn’t until after Warren left Benni that he moved in here. We always kept it secret because Warren said the government was after him.”
“Did he say which part of the government?”
Malama laughed. “There wasn’t nobody after him. Warren was so paranoid he wouldn’t jaywalk. But, we got along really good.” She gazed at her daughter. “Too good.” She went to Donny’s side and sat, then put her arm around the boy’s shoulders and let Luana climb onto her lap.
It was hard for me to believe this was the same woman who had literally chased me off the porch the other day. Or maybe not. Then, she’d had secrets and children to protect. Now, she needed to salvage her life and help mend a broken child.
I knelt in front of Donny. “Did you think I was trying to hurt Andi? I mean, when you saw me in The Roasted Bean. Is that what you thought?”
Donny shrugged; he avoided my gaze by watching the strings on the guitar. “I don’t like strangers.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You and that other dude show up and start asking questions about people.”
Donny’s voice was barely audible, but the meaning behind them came through loud and clear. I’d walked into The Roasted Bean and been too nosey, too fast. Even Alexander had called me on how I’d barged in.
“So I spooked you because I was too pushy,” I said.
“Maybe. Art was going behind Mike’s back. I thought you could’ve been working for him. You know, maybe it was a double cross.” He raised his eyes from the guitar to engage me in a staring contest. “What would you think?”
Malama had me locked squarely in her protective-mom laser sights. “Do you have to do this now?” But, as quickly as she’d engaged me, she shifted her attention to Donny. “Mike Breenfield is a spineless criminal. How could you deal with him after we warned you?”
A nod. A tear. A crack in a tough exterior the boy could no longer maintain.
Malama had a fire building inside her I recognized from the other day. “Did Mike have something to do with Warren’s death?” she demanded.
I was thankful her anger was directed at Mike Breenfield and not me. I was also thinking it was time to throw out one of my wild McKenna hunches. Donny was a hacker with knowledge of the web. He had the motivation. “Mike Breenfield hired Donny to create online documentation about a curse on that guitar.” I pointed at the Martin. Donny’s jaw fell—I’d found the key. I continued over Malama’s protests. Now was not the time to stop. “The idea was to lure a man named Shaw Hardy out into the open. Breenfield hired a killer to eliminate Shaw. I’m guessing he told Donny all he wanted was the Martin.”
Malama stared at me, her mouth open, then at Donny. “Is this true?”
“My dad wasn’t supposed to be involved. This had nothing to do with him.”
“Is it true, Donny?” Malama asked, her voice gentle, yet insistent.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think nobody was gonna get hurt.” Donny slanted his eyes at me for a split second. “He got it right. Mike lied to me.”
“We need to go to the police.” Malama shook Donny’s shoulder. “Did you hear me? We need to make this right. If this Mike Breenfield killed Warren, he must pay.”
Donny smiled. “Oh, he’s gonna pay. I already took care of that.”
“What did you do?” I asked. Many of the people I’d chased during my skip tracing career had been brilliant. They’d often left me wondering why they hadn’t put their mental energies into being honest instead of looking for an easy ride. Donny might have that misguided brilliance. But, Breenfield? He struck me as a manipulator, not a genius.
“He ain’t got no money left,” Donny said smugly. “I locked down the server, too.”
“What did you do with his money? And how did you ‘lock down’ the server?” I made quotation marks in the air with my fingers. The last thing we needed was for Donny’s little plan to avenge Mike Breenfield’s misdeeds to backfire. If he had been too obvious, it would give the guy advance notice and time to make an escape. He might even be able to destroy the evidence against him. In his effort to extract revenge, Donny might already have made it impossible for the law to make Breenfield suffer anything other than vigilante justice.
“I changed the user level password on the server. Mike ain’t getting in to it unless he’s a mindreader.”
Malama regarded me with sadness in her eyes. “I don’t want this boy to get hurt. He’s suffered enough.”
I thought about all the suffering this little monster had caused others. It hardly seemed fair to me that he not feel some pain himself. That, however, was not my decision to make. “He needs to tell the police what he knows. We also need to make sure Mike Breenfield doesn’t see this coming. Donny, what did you do with Mike’s money? Don’t you see? He’ll know what you’ve done. Is there anyone else he might suspect?”
“Big Mike ain’t that smart. He won’t know what I did.”
Really? How naive, I thought, and classic. The opponent was always less brilliant, slower, and weaker—until he won. How many of the casualties littering the battlefield had learned how wrong they were after it was too late? “So you think Mike Breenfield’s stupid?”
“He won’t even know the money’s gone.”
This kid had a lot to learn about crooks and warriors. “You know, Donny, I think that’s exactly the same sort of thought that Art Swenson had just before he died.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and sneered at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means he met his match. Let’s hope you haven’t met yours—or mine.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Luana plopped onto the floor and rested her head against the couch next to Donny’s knee. Malama’s face twisted into a frown as she rubbernecked between the two kids. A moment later, she squeezed past the little girl and stood.
“I have to get her down for a nap.” She bent over and reached for Luana, who extended her arms to her mother, but made no effort to stand. Malama groaned as she straightened up. “You’re getting big, baby girl.” She regarded Donny for a moment. “I’ll be right back.”
The words seemed to be directed at both me and Donny. Malama padded away. For the first time, I got a good look at the tattoos on her right leg. Paw prints started above her ankle and tracked up her leg to her inner thigh. There was a time when those tracks would have drawn my full attention, but now that I’d met Benni, it was no more than a casual observation. I looked back to Donny and scrutinized his face.
“Mike Breenfield hired you to be his spy, didn’t he?”
Donny didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, he had all the grand plans. He wanted to be on the council and do something with that stupid land he bought. At first, he paid me to set up a web server in his back room at the store. I asked him if I could use it to bring in a little business of my own.”
“Whose idea was it to seed the web with all that crap about the guitar?”
“He told me to do it. I was just doing what he told me.”
“That’s bullshit, Donny.” It was time to play on Donny’s ego. “You and I both know that Mike Breen
field doesn’t have the smarts to figure out how to create a disinformation campaign. He’s nothing more than a thief. He was quick enough to steal a cash bag when nobody was watching. But, he couldn’t even buy a good piece of land to develop. He’s only a guy who sells T-shirts for a living. You knew how to do it, though. Didn’t you?”
“You and my dad. Big words, small minds. Yeah, I did it. Mike told me what to put out there. I knew how to use the tools.” He glanced off to one side, his eagerness to brag eating away at him. He wanted to gloat, but about what?
“Creating old Indian curses on guitars isn’t exactly a standard computer science project.” I pointed a finger at his face. “What did you do? Google it?”
“I just, figure stuff out, man.”
Donny’s fidgeting belied his forced restraint. Play to his pride, I told myself. “Come on, you’re sixteen. Just a kid.”
“I was ten when I started!” He slumped back onto the couch. “It was in, like, fifth grade. I wanted to hang out with the older kids. Not the dorks my dad liked, either. One of them was good at music and my dad was always on me to be more like him. He made me take stupid guitar lessons. He said maybe I could play with Andi someday.” He raked a few strands of hair out of his face with a slow, absent-minded movement. “I didn’t know how much it meant to him.”
Malama returned and sat next to Donny. She rubbed his shoulder and said, “Let it out.”
I softened my tone, hoping to leverage his moment of introspection. “What do you mean, Donny?”
“I made him crazy. All the stuff he tried to do for me. I fought him on it all. The music lessons. The guitar. It’s all messed up. I just wanted my dad to like me. Nobody liked me. But he didn’t get it. He never saw me for what I was. I wanted a new computer for my birthday; he gave me a stupid guitar.” Donny smirked as he crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s when I decided to show them what I could do.”
I wondered if Warren had considered sending Donny to therapy. He’d done it for himself, why hadn’t he gotten his son in also? “Who thought up the guitar curse?”
“Mike closed the shop early one day cause it was slow. Him and Marylyn were drinking in the back room and I was there. They got pretty wasted. Mike was telling Marylyn about Benni. How she went off on him about Shaw. He even told her how Shaw wanted to give that guitar to Andi. Marylyn said she wished she could’ve given her kid a guitar. I said maybe she could and they liked the idea. He thumped his chest. I’m the one who researched the USO flight. Not Mike.”
“You created the curse?”
“Nobody was s’posed to get hurt.”
“You mean Andi wasn’t supposed to get hurt. Because you were in love with her.”
Donny stared at me. “She’s my sister, you idiot! I wanted to meet her because . . .”
“Because she’s pretty,” I said.
“No! Because she’s good at what she does.” He leaned into Malama and sobbed. “I connect with her music. And now I’ve blown it. She’s gonna hate me forever.”
Malama’s tears soaked into Donny’s hair. She whispered to me, “Please, he’s had enough.”
I shook my head. I had the answer to one question, at least from Donny’s perspective. We still needed to deal with Breenfield. “What did you think Mike was going to do to get rid of Shaw?” I stared at Donny, not knowing whether to feel sorry for the hurt he felt or anger at the hurt his work had created. “Why did you think they brought Art Swenson here?”
“I dunno.” He took in a sharp breath. “That wasn’t my problem.”
“You know, Donny, you didn’t drive your dad crazy. He had a medical condition. I still don’t see why you became involved with Breenfield.”
“Him and Sam are my friends. But, Mike was like Andi’s mom. He encouraged me. Gave me a computer to use. He didn’t try to make me something I wasn’t.”
Poor Donny. He’d been hooked on the strongest drug of all, having his ego stroked. I had to give Mike Breenfield credit for that one. He did know how to manipulate people. He’d played Benni to get information about Shaw, then he’d used Marylyn to find a killer, and finally Donny to glue the pieces together. He’d known how to lure Shaw out of his twenty-year hiding place. Yes, Mike Breenfield deserved credit. He also deserved to face a jury.
“The information about the curse is pretty extensive. Did you plant all of it?”
Donny shrugged. “It was real easy. Just drop a few links in some forums. People are stupid. They don’t do any research. They find something and believe it. Once I put the first pages out there, all the idiots started building it up. Same as politics. It’s all BS.”
“The con man’s best friend,” I said. “Rumor. If you went to all this trouble to help Mike out, why are you turning on him now? Why’d you text me the information for the meeting at South Point?”
“I told you, I didn’t want nothing to happen to Andi.”
Malama whispered to Donny as she stroked his hair. “It’s okay. We’ll figure this out.”
He seemed encouraged, but still avoided making direct visual contact with me. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a piece of paper that had been folded into a small rectangle.
I immediately recognized the size. Four inches by six. It was the same size Andi used. He held the note in one hand, caressed the paper with his thumb as he read silently. When he was done, he handed it to me. I recognized Andi’s personalized stationary and her loopy handwriting.
Donny . . . I’m sorry I wasn’t a better sister and want to try and make that up to you. To do that, I will need one favor. Text my mom’s friend McKenna and let him know I’m going to Ka Lae with Dad. Aloha nui loa, Andi.
“Aloha nui loa, Donny. Much love. Maybe you two are on the right track after all.” Despite his outstretched hand, I gave the note to Malama. As she read, I asked, “She gave you this when she stopped by to pick up your dad?”
“Yes,” he said. He watched carefully as Malama read the note. When she passed it back, he refolded the paper, first lengthwise, then in half by its width, before carefully slipping it back into his pocket. “Andi told me she was freaked out by Dad when we met. He was s’posed to give her a job, but he wouldn’t. He told her it was dangerous. He was always doing stuff like that.”
Malama gazed off at a corner of the room. “It was the hardest part. He was so unpredictable.”
“There’s one more thing you can do for her.” I waited for Donny to look at me. “She needs you to go to the police and tell them everything. We need to bring Mike Breenfield to justice. The police already have Marylyn in custody. To keep Andi safe, we need to get this into the open. Will you do it?”
“Only if I can talk to her first.”
Just when I was starting to believe the brother-sister line, he made a demand like that? Was his request that of a brother wanting to have one last heart-to-heart with his sister, or the last desperate action of a stalker unwilling to let the object of his obsession go? I wondered about Andi, too. What was her angle? Why hadn’t she told me about the note? Or their relationship? “I’ll talk to her, see what she says.”
“One more thing,” said Donny. His jaw was set, his eyes cold. “It has to be alone.”
Try as we might, neither Malama nor I could talk Donny out of his demand. Malama finally got him to relax his terms a bit by telling him how much seeing them together would mean to her. My palms were sweaty with the fear that Andi had only been using Donny to get help. Once Donny agreed we could watch from a distance, I told him she was in a car out front. He picked up the guitar and stood anxiously. I motioned for him to wait, then called Alexander. “Are you still here?”
“Andi gotta be leaving in a few minutes for rehearsal. Tonight’s the show.”
I hated to do this to someone just hours before their big show, but if we didn’t, who knew what retribution Donny might seek? “Donny wants to talk to her. I think he wants to give her the Martin.”
Alexander must have buried the phone in his shirt bec
ause his voice became muffled. A moment later, he said, “She gonna do it.”
I disconnected the call and cautioned Donny. “Out front. But, only for a few minutes. The show’s tonight and she needs to get to rehearsal.”
For a moment, I thought Donny might refuse Andi’s terms, then he looked at Malama.
“Donny,” she said, “I don’t think you should be getting your hopes up. She’s been through a lot and you’ve caused her a lot of pain. If I were her, I don’t know what I’d do.”
His face fell, but he agreed. He clutched the guitar close to his body as he sidestepped between the couch and the coffee table and shuffled to the front door. Through the rusty screen, I saw Andi approaching. She stopped about ten feet from the stairs. Donny faltered as we went down the steps. His knees shook and I wondered what was going through his head.
Andi’s posture stiffened as she watched him.
Malama and I stood next to each other on the front lanai watching the awkward meeting. I wondered if perhaps now, without the craziness Warren seemed to gather about himself, these two could get to know each other.
“She’s one brave girl,” Malama whispered.
“That she is,” I said. I only wished I’d get to see more of her. But, that was not to be. On the street, Benni and Alexander stood arm-in-arm clutching each other for comfort. My heart broke for the worry they must be feeling.
When he was a few feet away, Donny stopped. Andi took one tentative step, then a second. Donny did the same. The step-brother and sister were now less than an arm’s length from each other, separated by circumstance and past deeds.
I overheard Donny say, “I never meant to cause so much trouble.”
At the mention of what he’d done, Andi stiffened. “You almost got me killed. But, thank you for calling McKenna.” She took a deep breath. “Donny, you’re my little brother. I should have tried harder to get together with you. We’re ohana. We should stick together. I’m sorry I—I’m sorry I didn’t understand you better.”
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