I'm Kona Love You Forever (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series Book 6) (5 page)

“Four million?”

“Yeah, at least four million people pay big money to come here on vacation every year. They’d say you’re one lucky girl—to be living in Hawaii full-time.”

“Well, they don’t have to go to school with kids who hate
them. Kids who call them a stupid
haole
and spit on them.”

“
Somebody spit on you?”

“
He spit on my backpack.”

“Probably just a bad aim,” I said.
“Surfers are big on hawking loogies after they’ve swallowed half the ocean. Sometimes they miss.” 

She looked up and
a thin smile emerged. Her face was still a mess, but she was starting to look more like a kid and less like a hate crime.

“I grew up here
,” I said. “I can help you learn what you need to know to get along. That is, if you want.”

“You
’ll teach me how to survive high school in Hawaii? It’s not like it was in L.A. I fit in there. They treat me like a freak here,” she said.

“Yeah.
Trust me, every place is different. I went to college on O’ahu after growing up here on Maui so I know what I’m talking about. Honolulu can be a tough town. You gotta be tougher. And you’ve gotta make a better effort at fitting in. I can help you with that.”

She hugged me. “You’re the nicest person I’ve met since
we moved here,” she said. She rubbed her wrist. “But you’re also the most dangerous.”

“Oh, no.
That distinction goes to your uncle. If you ever saw him fight in a tournament there’s no way you’d ever call him names. That dude’s put people in the hospital.”

“Seriously?”

I nodded.

“What’d they do?”

“They challenged him in a tournament. They even paid money for the privilege.”

“
That’s stupid,” she said. “Why would somebody do that?”

I shrugged.
“Who knows? But here’s an even bigger question: why would someone as cute as you dye her hair green?”

***

I put Kaili to work sorting invoices into neat file folders while I made some phone calls. First I called Hatch.

“Hey, what’re you up to?” I said.

“Not much. Have you got time for lunch? How was Farrah and Ono’s party?”

“It was great. They look so
happy,” I said. “Sorry you couldn’t be there.”

“Yeah, me too.
So, how about lunch?”

I walked out back so I could talk privately. I told him Sifu Doug’s
teenaged niece was working in my shop with me.

“So? She doesn’t need a babysitter, does she? Can’t you get away for
a quick lunch? Or if you want, she could come too.”

“Would you mind bringing lunch in? We could have an indoor picnic—just the three of us. I’m not quite ready to
parade Kaili around town. ”

“What gives, Pali? Th
e girl got two heads or somethin’?”

“You’
ll see,” I said.

Hatch arrived an hour later with
fish and chips from the Pa’ia Fish Market. He spotted Kaili at the back of the shop and then looked at me. He tapped his head and then held up two fingers.

“I guess I was right,” he said in a whisper.
I introduced them.

“
Pali says you’re a fireman,” she said.

“Yep.”

“You like it?”

“Love it. It doesn’t pay
much, but it’s a great job.”

“Do you sleep in your clothes?”

He shot me a puzzled look. “Uh, no. But we keep our bunker gear ready to go. I can be ready to roll in less than a minute.”

“Cool. So,
like have you ever touched a dead body?”

“A few.”

“What’d it feel like?”

Hatch’s
eyes drifted to the left as if contemplating his answer. “Sad. Mostly, it felt sad.”

She
shrugged. “But some people are better off dead, don’t you think? Then it wouldn’t be sad at all.”

“
Enough about me,” he said. “What’s your story?”

Her eyes narrowed. “What do you
mean?”

“You ever stab anybody with that hair
style?”

“Okay, you two,” I broke in. “Let’s eat.
”

We ate in record time
. Hatch and Kaili kept furtively eying each other like feral tomcats in adjoining cages at the pound. I was relieved when Hatch checked his watch and said he had to get going.

I walked him out. “You want
me to come down to your place tonight?” I said.

“If you’re still alive.”
He nodded toward the closed door.

“She’s not that bad. She’s had a rough go of it the past few months. Her mom moved
them from Los Angeles to Honolulu and Kaili’s been having a hard time adjusting.”

“Oh yeah?
I can’t imagine why. The kid looks like ‘Nightmare on Elm Street.’ And she’s got an attitude to match.”

“I know. I’m working on it.”

We made plans to get together later and I gave him a quick kiss “good-bye.”

***

I went back in the shop and called my bride-to-be Lili Kapahu. I told her I was planning to go to Kona that weekend and I’d be willing to look into what happened to her birth certificate.

“I
want to check it out,” I said. “Because if we can’t get a certified copy of your birth record you’ll have to wait until you’re eighteen to get married.” Technically, her parents should be doing the checking, but I had a hunch that wouldn’t happen.

“You’d do that for me?” she said. “You’re so nice.”

That was the second time that morning I’d been called “nice” by a teen-aged girl. I felt positively ancient.

“Yeah,
well, thanks. I’m sure the mix-up was just a clerical error. I’ll let you know what I find.”

“Can I come with you?”
she said.

Uh-oh
, what should I say? I’d planned on asking Hatch to go with me. Since he’d returned from Montana last summer he’d been kind of antsy with island fever—the local version of cabin fever. I thought maybe getting away to a neighbor island might give him a lift. The Big Island of Hawaii is big—4,000 square miles—with acres of grassy pastures along with a few soaring mountains. I thought the scenery might remind him of western Montana and he’d realize he didn’t have to go all the way to the mainland for a change of scenery.

“Uh, I
suppose you could come along if you like. But I’ll need to talk to your parents. They may not be keen on the idea of you going off-island with someone they’ve never met.”

She
blew out a breath. “Forget it. My mom’ll freak out.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t I go alone this time and
see what I can find? Even if I’m successful, you or your parents will have to sign for your birth certificate since I’m not related to you. And chances are that will require a trip to the State Vital Records Office in Honolulu.”

“Okay,” she said. “But call me
when you find something.”

I said I would.

I was about to hang up when she said. “You know, I’m counting on you, Pali.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“No, I mean it. I’m counting on you because David and me are holding off. You know, until we’re married. But if we can’t get married this month like we planned, I probably won’t be able to keep my promise to my dad.”

“
What’d you promise your dad?”

“
Me and my dad signed one of those purity agreements, you know? I swore I wouldn’t ‘do it’ until after I got married. My dad gave me a purity ring and everything. It’s a big deal to him.”

I
’d heard about purity rituals between fathers and daughters, and I was mildly curious of how the actual ceremony went, but I let it go. I had a feeling purity parties weren’t a market vertical “Let’s Get Maui’d” would be offering anytime soon.

“
Like I said. I’ll do my best.”

I hung up with a
better understanding of why time was of the essence. There was no way I wanted to get in the way of raging teenage hormones.

CHAPTER 7
 

Although it’d been my bright idea to use some of my weekend on the Big Island to track down Lili’s birth records, I started feeling uneasy about it. It was the same weird feeling I used to get when I’d ask Auntie Mana a question about my late mother and she’d deflect it. What if Lili’s birth history was a painful situation? They say you can’t unring a bell. How would I feel if, in my zeal to help these kids, I unearthed something that would’ve been better left buried?

Since I
’d fibbed to Sifu Doug and told him I had to go to Lahaina that afternoon I stuck with the ruse and drove Kaili down there with me. We hung out at Banyan Tree Park for about an hour and I bought us waffle cones at Lappert’s on the corner. The treats cost almost as much as if I’d bought dinner, but it was nice to just kick back and enjoy some empty calories for a change.

A
t five-fifteen I dropped her off at Sifu Doug’s house in Pukalani and headed back down to the Gadda.

“It’s just me,” I said, coming through the back door.

“What you mean
just
you?” Farrah trotted over and crushed me in a tight hug. “Don’t you know how much I’ve missed you?”

Ono
peeked around a tower of boxes at the end of the cereal aisle. “Hey Pali, how’s it hangin’?”

It felt weird not
to have Farrah all to myself. I was used to sharing her with customers, and I often left or pitched in to help out when she got busy. But I felt a stab of loss when I realized from now on Ono would always be there. Gone were the days of girl talk and Farrah’s undivided attention.

“I’m good. How’s it
hangin’ with you?”

“
Good,” he said. There was an awkward beat of silence and he went on. “But nobody warned me my wife was such a slave driver. I haven’t had a break all day. Tell you what, ladies. I’m going across the street and sit down and order me some fries and ketchup. Gonna stay for a full twenty minute break—maybe even half an hour. You want me to bring you back somethin’?”

We declined and he left.

“You see why I love that dude?” Farrah said. “It’s like we’re total soul mates. Like we’ve been together in, like, a dozen past lives. Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, Bonnie and Clyde—”

“You know things didn’t turn out so great for any of those couples,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah. But you dig what I’m sayin’.”

“Before somebody comes in, tell me about your trip.”

“Oh, there was so much groovy stuff I don’t know where to start. Hey, I’ve got it. Why don’t you and Hatch come down here for dinner tomorrow? I could show you the pictures. Or will he be working?”

I ran Hatch’s work schedule through my mind. He’d been on
twenty-four hour duty Tuesday so that meant he’d be off Wednesday and Thursday. “Yeah, he’s off tomorrow. But your apartment’s kind of small for four people. Why don’t you and Ono come up to my house?”

“You sure?”
she said.

“Absolutely.”

“Do you think you might be able to get Steve to cook?” she said. It was an old joke. I have a few domestic talents, but cooking isn’t one of them.

“
Tomorrow is Thursday, so Steve will probably go out. He doesn’t like to miss dollar-taco night at the Ball and Chain.”

“
Okay, see if you can dig this. How ‘bout you get us a couple bottles of decent wine and we’ll bring the eats? You always pick out really good wine.”

“Sounds great
,” I said. “See you at seven?”

“Yeah.
I’ll ask Beatrice to stay until closing,” she said. “Seems she really dug working here while I was gone. She got kinda bummed when I told her from now on we’d go back to the way things were. You know, her just working at lunchtime.”

I left and drove down to Sprecklesville to see Hatch. Unlike Lili’s parents, Hatch doesn’t own his
digs in Sprecklesville. He rents from a rich Australian guy. Hatch gets a killer discount on his little cottage in return for watching over the owner’s sprawling oceanside estate. Day-to-day it’s not much of a job, but annually he has to oversee the massive effort it takes to get the place ready for the week or two the guy spends there every year.

I parked outside the fence and walked in through
a small entry gate. I was thirty feet from Hatch’s porch when a brown cyclone came hurtling through a two-foot high hole in the screen door.

“Heen, it’s me,” I said. I squat
ted down to allow Hatch’s dog, “Wahine” to give me a thorough licking. She’s a small dog, one of six pups from Sir Lipton’s one and only litter from a couple of years ago. She leapt up and promptly got to work.