I'm Kona Love You Forever (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series Book 6) (12 page)

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s wha
t I know so far: David’s mother, Malia, was found slumped over in her car this morning and she was pronounced DOA at the hospital.”

“
Who’s David?”

“Oh, sorry.
David’s the groom in the teenager wedding I’m doing.” Up to that point I hadn’t filled Hatch in on the details of the wedding. We have an understanding: I listen to the high points of life at the fire station and he does the same for me with “Let’s Get Maui’d.” But we try to avoid boring each other with “shop talk” by skipping over the particulars. It makes for less yawning and furtive glances at our cell phones to check for incoming texts.

“Do they have a C
.O.D.?” Hatch is a paramedic so he’s prone to sliding into acronyms when anything medical comes up. It’s part of the culture.

“Cause of death? I assume it was asphyxiation. I had a hard time getting much out of Lili, but she said
when her future mother-in-law was found, her car was running and the garage door was down. I’m kind of winging it here, but I’m guessing they’ll find carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“Sounds
about right.”

“She’s
on her way over here,” I said.

“Who?”

“Lili. She asked me to stay here and pick her up at the airport. I asked if she’d gotten her parents’ permission to come over but she blew me off. I guess I’ll have to deal with that when I see her.”

“
Okay, wait a second,” Hatch said. “You say the groom’s mother died here? I thought they both lived on Maui.” Hatch looked irked, as if I was purposefully trying to confuse him.

“
No, Lili’s on Maui. Both kids were born on the Big Island but Lili was raised on Maui and she lives there. David and his parents still live here.”

Hatch shot me a “
whatever” look which meant he’d heard enough. “I need to go,” he said. “I’ve already traded a shift so I need to be back on duty tomorrow.”

“I know.
How about you load up your stuff while I go check and see if I can keep the room for another night or two? I want to stay and help Lili. She’s just a kid. Although her parents are concerned about her, I doubt they’re going to be all supportive of her coming over here to be with David.”

***

Lili’s plane landed and Hatch’s was scheduled to take off on the return flight. Since I couldn’t go through security I spent a few minutes outside waiting for Lili to appear. When she did, I hardly recognized her. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes as red as a fillet of
ahi
tuna.

“Pali,” she
moaned. She fell into my arms. Luckily, after catching a glimpse of her I’d braced for impact. It felt like Sifu Doug had tossed me an eighty-pound medicine ball.

“Lili, let’s get your things and get out of here. Do you have a place to stay?”

She slumped even further. “I thought I could stay with you.”

Good thing I’d managed to keep the room.

“Sure. There’s only one bed, but it’ll be fine.”

She started crying. “I
never even got to meet David’s mom. I only talked to her on the phone. How could this happen?”

I
practically carried Lili to baggage claim to pick up her bag. Her suitcase was enormous. When I hefted it off the luggage conveyor it weighed almost as much as she did.

“What’ve you got in
this thing?” I said.

“I d
on’t know how long I’ll need to be here.”

“Speaking of that, have you called your folks yet?
They’re really worried about you.”

“I’ll do it later.”
I shot her “the look” and she added, “I will, promise.”

The owner
of the B & B had said I could only stay two more nights. After that, she was booked solid for the rest of the week. Some kind of coffee convention.

“Is David
here already?” I said.

“
Yeah. He got a ride over from Hilo as soon as he heard.”

“Do you want to go
to the room to freshen up?”

“
No,” she said. “I need to be with David.”

***

In the past couple of years I’ve spent a fair amount of time with grief-stricken people. And that’s not counting the distraught mothers-of-the-bride I’ve had to talk down from a ledge because they thought their daughter could’ve done better in the son-in-law department. I’ve learned in most instances it’s best to just listen. No fake smiles, no arm-patting or words of false comfort, and certainly no probing questions to extract the grisly details.

But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t curious
as we stood outside David’s mother’s house. A small crowd had gathered in the driveway to witness the commotion. The body had been taken away hours ago, but the place was still crawling with police. A handful of TV reporters lurked at the edges, probably hoping to catch a loved one in the throes of anguish. Nothing screams “film at eleven” like unbridled grief.

“
If you’re a reporter, get off my property,” said a plus-sized local woman of about thirty-five. She wore stretchy beige pants that strained to encompass her ample hips and a pastel-striped peasant blouse with puffy sleeves. The overall effect was like looking at a gigantic shave ice.

“I’m not.
My name’s Pali Moon. I’m the wedding planner Lili and David hired to do their wedding. I brought Lili here from the airport.”

“Oh, sorry.
You looked like one of them,” she said. “I’m Shayna, David’s oldest sister,” She took my hand and squeezed it; then held it for a few moments longer. I’m not used to holding hands with strange women but I guess it was the order of the day because as I glanced around there was a lot of hand-holding going on.

“Lili
flew over from Maui when she heard. I guess David was devastated by the news.”

We both looked over at Lili who was swooning in
the arms of her fiancé. David’s expression was blank, as if posing for a mug shot.

“
Typical,” said Shayna. “Everyone’s worried about David. It’s like the rest of us don’t even exist. And my mom? Don’t even get me started on that.”

I’
d dealt with sudden death before, but never a suicide. From what I’d heard, friends and family members react differently when someone makes the choice to end their life. People aren’t just saddened by the news, they’re angry. As if offing yourself was the ultimate rude gesture. “
How could she do this to us?”
hung in the air like a bad odor, even if no one had the guts to say it.

Sh
ayna shot me a tight smile. “And speaking of David. It’ll be interesting to see what he and the diva decide about their wedding. Seems wrong to me to go ahead with a wedding right after you bury your mother, but knowing David, he’ll do it anyway. ”

“
I wouldn’t count on that,” I said. “There’s already been a snag. David and Lili probably wouldn’t be able to get married this month even if this hadn’t happened.”

“Oh
, really?” she said. I could feel her eyes on me, hoping I’d divulge whatever it was that might keep her baby brother from getting married, but I knew better than to go down that road. Client confidentiality and all that.

We both
stared at David and Lili, clinging to each other like the final scene in a Greek tragedy. What is it that compels people to rubber-neck car wrecks and replay YouTube videos of near-fatal misses? I wanted to take the high road and avert my eyes from their anguish, but it was nearly impossible to look away.

***

After the police left, Shayna invited me into Malia’s kitchen to talk. I was pretty sure she was hoping to soften me up so I’d blab about the “snag,” but I was on guard. I had my own reasons to want to see where David had grown up.

The interior of the house
was a disaster. Some of it was probably due to the dozen or so emergency services people who’d shown up. They’d had to drag the gurney through the house since the garage was too narrow. But the sticky floor, unwashed dishes piled on the counters, and reeking cat box had been there long before any paramedics had been called.

“
Sit wherever you can,” Shayna said. “My mom’s a pig.”

I did a double-take and she said, “
My bad. I guess I should’ve said, ‘My mom
was
a pig’.”

Sh
ayna pulled a kitchen chair away from the table and pushed a sleeping cat onto the floor. I had to relocate a foot-tall stack of
People
magazines before I could sit down.

“Jeez, look at that
,” Shayna said, picking up one of the magazines. “She’s got gossip rags dating back to the days of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes; maybe even Nicole Kidman. I swear the woman never tossed anything. You ever watch those ‘hoarder’ shows on TV? My mom could’ve been on there. But she was too bitchy. The TV people want nice freaks, not crabby ones.”

I said nothing.

“You probably think I’m horrible. But believe me, I have a million reasons. She treated us girls like
lepo
, like dirt. As far as she and my dad were concerned, David was the master and we were the slaves. It was always ‘Go help David’ or ‘You can’t have that because I need to get something for David.’ Behind her back us girls called him ‘King David’ because that’s how it was.”

“You mention
ed your dad,” I said. “Is he around?” It seemed odd to me no one had said anything about Malia’s husband up to that point.

She barked a laugh. “I
’m sure he’s probably celebrating at a bar somewhere. He and my mom fought like cats and dogs. They haven’t been together for years. He moved out when David was just a little
keiki
.”

“
They got divorced?”

She leaned her pudgy body toward me and whispered, “Never married. But
most people around here don’t know that.”

“Oh.
I see.” It probably sounded judgmental coming from a wedding planner so I went on. “Your parents had three daughters and a son? That’s a pretty big commitment right there.”

“Four daughters.
The joke in our family is my dad, Pono, stuck around long enough for mom to pop out a boy and then he took off. Go figure.”

“And you’re the oldest?”

“Yeah. I’m thirty-five. My twin sisters are thirty-two and my youngest sister is twenty-nine. The rest of them got smart and moved to O’ahu. I’m the only fool who stuck around.”

“
There’s a twelve year age gap between your youngest sister and David?” I said.

“Right.
Us girls think my mom may have had some miscarriages or whatever, but eventually my dad got his son.”

“But he didn’t name him ‘Pono’ junior?”

“Nah. Even though we’ve got a lot of Hawaiian blood, my mom was never into Hawaiian names. I’m Shayna and my sisters all have
haole
-sounding names too. They agreed to name my brother ‘David’ and that’s probably the last thing they ever agreed on.”

We sat in silence for a few moments and
then Shayna said, “I know I shouldn’t be saying this but nobody’s surprised my mom finally did it.”

“Was your mom ill?”

She blew out a
pfft
. “She was a sick, sick puppy. You name it, she had it: diabetes—and I’m not talking the pill-kind, I mean the shots kind—and fibromyalgia, and hypo-thyroid, high blood pressure, clinical depression, the list goes on and on. But what do you expect? She was at least eighty pounds overweight. She never stuck to her diet and then she’d have an episode and they’d rush her to the hospital. I’m an LPN, a licensed practical nurse, but I haven’t been able to hold down a full-time job in over two years. My
mother
was my full-time job.”

There was a quick knock at the door and David and Lili came in the kitchen.

“Hey, Shay,” said David.

“Hey,” said Shayna.

Lili flew across the room, dodging cats, spilled cereal, and stacks of newspapers. She threw herself at me, nearly dislodging me from my chair. But I’m pretty good at maintaining my balance when attacked so I managed to hold my ground. Lili ended up in my lap.

“
Take it easy,” said Shayna, pulling a tissue from her bra. She held it out to Lili, but when Lili didn’t take it, Shayna leaned over and proceeded to wipe the younger woman’s face like a mother spiffing up a snotty-nosed kid.

“Can
you stay here with me this week?” Lili sobbed into my shoulder. “I need to stay.”

“I only have the room
at the B & B for one more night,” I said. “Then I have to get back to Maui.”

“You
could stay with me,” said Shayna. “My house is nothin’ fancy, but you and David could sleep on the blow-up bed. My daughter would probably like having other kids to hang out with.”

Lili cried harder.

Shayna looked annoyed. “Was it somethin’ I said?”