O'ahu Lonesome Tonight? (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series #5) (7 page)

CHAPTER 9

As expected,
Monday morning dawned bright and clear, without a cloud in sight. At about
seven-thirty, Jeff and I drove up to Leonard’s Bakery on
Kapalulu
Avenue for fresh malasadas. Malasadas are described as Portuguese doughnuts but
Leonard’s are about a million times better than any doughnut out there, and
that even includes fresh Krispy
Kremes
. Leonard’s
filled malasadas have a center of the creamiest custard and every two months
they offer a different flavor. The September flavor was
lilikoi
,
or passion fruit.
My favorite.
We got in line and Jeff
ordered a half-dozen, some with filling and some without. We got a couple of
coffees to go and went outside to sit on a bench out front. We averted our eyes
from the people in line who stared longingly as we stuffed still-hot malasadas
into our mouths and then licked our fingers clean.

“These are even
better than I remember,” Jeff said with his mouth full.

“I know. We
practically lived on these things when I was in college,” I said.

After we’d each
polished off a cream-filled malasada and had started on seconds, an unshaven,
rather pungent man with a banged-up shopping cart brimming with personal
belongings sidled up to us. “
Aloha
. You
gonna
finish that?” he said, pointing to Jeff.

I looked down.
Jeff had placed his half-eaten malasada on the lid of the bakery box while he
took a sip of coffee.

“Uh, I don’t
know. Jeff?”

Jeff picked up
what was left of the malasada and looked at the guy. “You want this?”

“Yeah.
I haven’t had much to eat today.”

“Well, it’s
still early,” said Jeff. He shot me a grin but I was too uncomfortable with the
situation to acknowledge it.

“You know,
we’re just about through here,” said Jeff. “Why don’t you take the rest of
these?” He handed the guy the pink box.

“
Mahalo
,” said the guy. “You got napkins in there? I
don’t like to get no sticky stuff on my hands.”

I ran into the store
and grabbed a wad of napkins. The guy took the box and left.

“He’s worried
about sticky stuff on his hands?” Jeff said.

We put our arms
around each other’s waist and walked back to the car. “Fun times in the big
city,” I said.

We headed down
Kapahulu
to
Kalakaua
Avenue to
connect with Diamond Head Road. We could’ve cut over at
Monsarrat
,
but we agreed we’d rather take the scenic route, along the beachfront.

“Sometimes I
forget how beautiful the beach is,” Jeff said as we drove along Queen’s Surf
Beach. “I like living on the mainland, but I
gotta
say, sometimes I miss this so much.”

I looked over
at him. Even with his sunglasses on, I could see the furrow between his
eyebrows.

“You can always
come back, you know. There are tons of engineering firms over here.”

“Not on Maui.”

“No, not on
Maui, but from
O’ahu
you can get to Maui in half an
hour.”

“I’m afraid the
kind of work I do is pretty specialized.
Government stuff.”

“Yeah, well look
around. We’ve got government everything here. Army, Navy, Air Force, Interior,
Homeland Security, DOD, NASA, USGS, and about a dozen other acronyms I don’t
have the security clearance to even know exist.”

“True. But what
I’m working on is unique to Livermore.”

“Oh, so it’s
one of those jobs that if you told me about you’d have to kill me?”

“Probably not
kill
you, but I’d be expected to mess you up pretty bad.”

“Fat chance of that.
You make good money?”

“Ridiculously good.”

“Then spend a
little of it to come home more often.”

We drove up
Diamond Head Road and turned in at the marker for the park. There was a park in
the crater, but you had to climb to the crater rim if you wanted to catch the
view. Even though it was not yet eight-thirty on a Monday morning the parking
lot was nearly full.

“Seems we’re
not the only nature lovers up this early,” I said. “You want to do the hike?” I
said, pointing to the trailhead.

Jeff shrugged.
“It’s a nice view, but I’m kind of sluggish from all the sugar in that malasada.
Why don’t we go as far as the tunnel and then come back?”

“Sounds like a
plan.”

We got out and
walked up the paved trail until we reached the two hundred foot long tunnel.
“You sure you don’t want to go all the way up?” I said.

“Nah.
Been there, done that. I’d rather go to the beach.”

As we started
back down, the wind picked up. A thick bank of clouds was moving in from the
south.

“Looks like we
might get a little rain after all,” Jeff said.

By the time we
reached the parking lot the rain was really coming down. A stiff wind blew the
rain nearly sideways so by the time we got into the car and slammed the doors
we were pretty well soaked.

We sat panting
from the final dash. “You know, I’ve always wondered,” I said. “Do you get
wetter if you run in the rain since you’re quickly moving through all the
falling
raindrops,
or wetter if you walk, since you’re
out in it longer? It seems you get wetter if you run because you’re coming in
contact with more of it.”

Jeff looked at
me.
“Seriously?”

“Yeah.
It’s an interesting physics question, don’t you
think?”

“The amount of
rain that actually hits your body is directly proportional to the amount of
time you spend in the rain,” he said. “It’s a question of time, not velocity.”

“Oh,” I said.
“Really?”

“Who knows? But
that’s the kind of BS we throw around the lab when we either don’t care about
the answer or we’re too lazy to do the research.”

“It’s really
coming down,” I said. “Look at the windshield. It’s like we’re going through a
car wash.”

We slowly made
our way back to the penthouse. Jeff called Farrah and they agreed to reschedule
their lunch date when the weather cleared. We slouched around the apartment
hoping the rain would let up in an hour or so but by two o’clock it was still
coming down.

I plopped down
on the sofa and called Hatch. “So did you make it to Montana?”

“Yep.
I’ve already stowed my gear and met my bunkmates.”

“Is that a
cowboy twang I’m picking up?”

“Yep.
Gotta
do what I can to fit
in. They’re already calling me ‘
McGarrett
’ since I
came in from Hawaii. God knows what name they’d give me if they knew I was born
and raised in LA.”

“Well, you stay
safe. Just ‘
cuz
they’re calling you
McGarrett
it doesn’t mean you need to go all
Hawaii
Five-O
out there.”

“What’s that
mean—‘going
Hawaii Five-O
’?”

“You know,
driving fast the wrong way down one-way streets.
Rappelling
off high rise buildings with knotted bed sheets.
That
kind of stuff.”

“Sweetheart,
there’s no such thing as a one-way street or a high rise building anywhere
within a hundred miles of this place. It’s pretty much all mountains and trees
with a river running through it.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It is. You
can’t believe how big everything is here.
The sky, the
mountains, the endless forest.
Being out here feels like going from a
one-room apartment to a mansion.”

“Well, enjoy
your mansion, but remember you’ve got someone waiting here at home in the
apartment.”

“Will do.
I miss you.”

“I miss you,
too.”

We hung up and
I felt a pang. It’d been a long time since I’d been to the mainland. Island
life was homey and safe, but I never forgot the expansive feeling I’d had when
I’d gone to the mainland for Homeland Security training. To see another ocean
and fly over towering snowy mountain ranges felt like going to another planet.

By one-thirty,
Jeff and I had grown tired of being cooped up together. We’d told and re-told
all the good stories, and we’d asked and answered every question we had for
each other.

So even though
I was wary about meeting my two half-brothers from my father’s side, I was
eager to get out of the penthouse.

I gathered up
my purse and umbrella and paused at the door. “I thought we would’ve heard from
Steve by now. I hope his interview went well.”

“He probably
wheedled his way into a late check-out,” said Jeff. “I expect him any time
now.”

“Would you do
me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Give me a call
at three. Or better yet, come down there and get me. I think an hour of
familial pretense is my limit.”

“Got it.
But I’ll call, if you don’t mind. The thought of
breathing the same air as your father’s kids is more than I can stomach.”

“It’s not their
fault, you know.”

“I know. But
still. Anyway, I promise I’ll call at three.”

***

I arrived at
the
Moana
Surfrider
Hotel
in plenty of time for our two o’clock reservation. I was hungry after having
only two malasadas for breakfast and then hiking partway up Diamond Head, and I
was wet from the jaunt down
Kalakaua
from the
penthouse. I would’ve taken the car, but in Waikiki parking is a much bigger
headache than a few raindrops.

The
Moana
is one of Waikiki’s old-school hotels. Built in 1901,
it was a technological marvel of its day with telephones and private bathrooms
in every room. It also had one of the first elevators on Hawaii. The style is
‘beaux-art,” with a massive pillared portico, brilliant white paint, and a
wrap-around lanai out front. The lanai has a dozen or so hardback rocking
chairs that allow the guests to ‘sit a spell’ while they rock and watch the
traffic on
Kalakaua
Avenue stream by. Out back on the
ocean side, the lanai (which the
Moana
staff refers
to as a “veranda”) is where they serve formal tea every afternoon.

I went into the
lobby and marveled at the polished wood floors, blazing chandeliers and
Corinthian columns. Where did the architects think they were—Savannah? But as odd
as the place looks among the drab stucco and concrete hotels surrounding it, I
had to admire its adherence to the centuries-old vision of its creator. The
place was unique.

I looked
around. I’d seen Facebook photos of my half-siblings, but I wasn’t sure I’d
recognize them in person. The oldest brother, Stuart, was five years younger
than I, which made him around thirty. His brother Michael was a bit younger.
Stuart had mentioned he’d be bringing his wife. I’d never seen a photo of her.

We’d agreed to
meet out back in the
makai
bar, the one next
to beach, before going up to the veranda for tea. I went out back and saw a
mid-twenties guy sitting far from the action. He was hunched under the umbrella
at an empty table—no drink or even a napkin signaling he’d ordered a drink. He
looked a lot like my father, or anyway what I’d seen of my father from photos
and videos.
Medium build, with light brown hair and sharp
features.
He was tanned and cleanly shaven. My father had looked pretty
much like the Tommy
Bahama
ideal of a
bon vivant
haole
dude living the tropical dream. And this guy
looked like the younger version.

“Excuse me,” I
said. I tapped him on the arm to break his absorbed stare at the shorts-clad
bar maid with a bum you could pound taro on. “Are you, by any chance, Stuart or
Michael?”

“Huh? No.
Sorry, I’m just waiting for my girlfriend.”

I don’t know if
he thought I was some high-class hooker with a strange pick-up line, but I felt
compelled to explain.

“Oh, pardon me
for disturbing you. I’m meeting my brothers here.”
Which, of
course, didn’t explain anything because at that point he looked even more
confused.

“Uh, you kind
of look like them,” I stammered. “I haven’t seen either of them for a long
time.”
Like never,
I thought, but he didn’t need to hear that sad story.

“Oh.” He
shifted in his chair as if to signal that our conversation was
pau
, or over.

“Again, sorry,”
I said backing away.

I looked
around, hoping to find another likely candidate, but there were none in sight.
Had my brothers changed their minds? Maybe the rain had chased them away. It
wasn’t the best day to be sitting out on an open veranda. Every now and a gust
of wind blew a wave of wet onto the starched white tablecloths and three-tiered
towers of scones and finger sandwiches.

The irony of
being stood up by the offspring of the man who’d stood me up my whole life
wasn’t lost on me.

CHAPTER 10

The guy who
showed up at the
Moana
veranda at a quarter past two
wore a neatly-pressed aloha short and white slacks. He was the spitting image
of a man I’d only seen on a video after he died—my father.

“Sorry we
couldn’t get here any sooner,” he said. “The rain’s making everybody
pupule
. We nearly got clobbered by a fool in a
Mustang convertible going the wrong way through the park.” He grinned and stuck
out a hand.
“Stu Wilkerson here.
And you must be
Pali
.”

I shook his
hand. Stuart had the look and demeanor of a successful real estate broker but
I’d learned on Facebook that he worked at a boat yard that refurbished yachts.