“Seems a shame,” said Grandma Mama. “Now there’s none left for us, and the liquor stores are closed today.”
“Never mind,” said Aunt Nozzie. “I’ll make Scarlet O’Haras once we get home.”
We all helped unload the food from the van. The dinner was a few minutes late, but all our diners seemed happy—without the help of Grandma Mama’s addition to the whipped cream.
*
A few Scarlet O’Haras into the evening, and I said something stupid.
“No need for you to go back to Illinois now, before the Christmas holidays. Stay until the New Year,” I said, forgetting that the warm feeling in my tummy might just be from the Scarlet O’Haras and not due to a sense of bonhomie. “Look, it’s beginning to snow.”
We all gathered at the kitchen window and toasted to a successful Thanksgiving dinner and to the upcoming Christmas season.
“More snow,” said Aunt Nozzie. “I wonder how long before I can get this caste off. I’m just dying to try snowmobiling. It looks like a lot of fun, especially if I get to drive.”
I poured myself another Scarlet O’Hara.
The End (Until Christmas)
The Mac Salad Killer
Albert Tucher
“Honey, it’s Thanksgiving,” said Lucy.
Errol Coutinho looked across the kitchen table at his wife. Were they really going to have this argument?
Three years into their second marriage, and after two dark, divorced years, they picked their fights with care. He wouldn’t have thought this was a core issue.
He squelched the urge to shut down or flee, because cowardice made things worse in the end. That was something he hadn’t known the first time around.
“It’s also Hawaii,” he said. “Mac salad is in the state constitution.”
He tried a smile, but it bounced off her.
“Thanksgiving is supposed to be special,” she said. “We always have mac salad.”
“It will be special.”
He decided not to point out that the menu was his territory. One of the things they had learned in their two years apart was to leave the cooking to him. Lucy ran the DNA lab that served all law enforcement in the state, but the kitchen defeated her.
Of course, she still had a consultative role.
Coutinho sometimes thought attitudes toward macaroni salad were the most reliable way to tell the kama’aina from the malihini, the true residents of Hawaii from the visitors. Some people lived here for decades and remained outsiders without realizing it, but he wouldn’t have thought Lucy fell into that category. Maybe it had to do with having company. There would be other cops, spouses and children, and hostess anxiety might be affecting her more than she wanted to admit.
He was wondering how to de-escalate the conflict, when his cell phone rang. He looked at the display. Most husbands wouldn’t have gotten away with seizing the distraction, but Lucy was a cop’s wife. She knew he couldn’t ignore the phone, especially when the call came from his partner.
“What’s up?” Coutinho asked.
“Uniforms just brought Matty Kahele in,” said Kim.
“Be right there.”
He disconnected and looked at Lucy. She was not pleased, and he hoped he didn’t look relieved at the interruption.
“I have to go in. We got that guy who strangled his wife.”
Like everyone on the Big Island, Lucy had been reading about the case in the newspapers. Busting a wife-killer was an extenuating circumstance, wasn’t it?
*
The fifteen-minute drive from Coutinho’s house to headquarters on Kapiolani Street was usually long enough for him to put his game face on, but today he felt the need for more recovery time. Disagreements with Lucy did that to him.
He found Kim in the detectives’ bullpen. His partner was watching the video monitor for Interview Two, which showed Matty’s enormous bulk. The man had a take-out carton in front of him on the dented steel table, and he was concentrating on forking the contents into his mouth.
Coutinho had a premonition.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“Mac salad from Café 100,” said Kim.
The drive-through restaurant on Kilauea Avenue was Hilo’s ground zero for down-home favorites.
“Matty said he’d talk on two conditions.”
“I’m guessing that’s one.”
“And it had to be the family size. The other is you.”
“Figures,” said Coutinho. “I know him from way back.”
He hesitated and decided to break the news now.
“Might want to ask Matty to share. Lucy’s not down with mac salad tomorrow.”
“She knows she lives in Hawaii, right?”
“If you want to go someplace else for Thanksgiving, I understand.”
“We’re partners. Through the good and the bad. And Brandi loves Lucy.”
Kim listened to what he had just said and added quickly, “So do I.”
Sometimes Coutinho felt married to Kim. He knew he and his partner were thinking about the same thing—their choices in this life, including taking up with women from the mainland. Lucy was a California blonde, which was halfway to Hawaii, but Brandi Locatelli had recently come from Linden, New Jersey. It didn’t get more mainland than that.
Coutinho put the thought aside and studied Matty on the screen. The big man had aged in twenty years, but he had beaten considerable odds in living this long. The Spam and KFC that had replaced the traditional diet of fish, fruits and vegetables often killed native Hawaiians in middle age. Matty’s profession was also an issue. Marijuana traffickers sometimes didn’t survive their business disputes.
Coutinho made the short trip to the interview room and pushed the door open. Matty looked up in mid-forkful. The fork paused, but then completed its journey. Matty chewed and swallowed, as Coutinho waited.
“Coutinho, howzit?”
“Long time, Matty.”
“Twenty years, must be. I was one Kona boy back then. How long you wen’ stay there?”
“Just two years. The sun almost fried my brain.”
Coutinho still remembered the relief he had felt when the customary clouds of Hilo had closed over him after those two years. He was a Hilo guy to the core.
“Always thought you looked like you was wondering what you did wrong to end up there.”
“That why you always fought so hard when I had to bring you in?”
“Nothing personal. That’s just how it’s done.”
“I know.”
“Shoulda stayed,” said Matty. “But the pakalolo business is on the Hilo side.”
Coutinho let him complete the thought.
“Wouldn’t have met Angie if I stayed. Wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
Matty took another bite and chewed, as if honor required him to camouflage his introspection.
“Don’t really know how it happened. We’re talking about Thanksgiving. Goin’ down the list—all of Angie’s ohana, brothers, sisters, cousins, all them people I can do without.”
“Okay.”
“Then she tells me, no mac salad. Gonna be ‘nice,’ she says. ‘Okay,’ I say, nice means stuff people like fo’ eat.”
“Exactly,” said Coutinho before he could stop himself. Well, establishing a rapport was basic interviewing, wasn’t it?
“I don’t get drunk and act up. I don’t care about football. Just give me what I like. Sounds like she getting a good deal, to me anyway. But she wouldn’t let it drop.”
Coutinho had to get an explicit admission. “So what happened?”
“They talk about seeing red. It’s for real. I choked her. Just couldn’t stop.”
Those looked like tears in the big man’s eyes. Coutinho felt an urge to lay a comforting hand on Matty’s wrist. It was a little weird, considering how many times he had cuffed that same wrist.
“Gonna be spending Thanksgiving with us, Matty. Not going to be any bail.”
“I’m better off in here. Angie’s ohana. You know.”
Family was huge in this basically Asian society.
“What’s going to happen with business?” The cops needed to know who would be moving in on Matty’s marijuana operation.
“Morrison gonna keep a lid on things.”
It was probably true. The island’s biggest trafficker had lasted thirty years by doing what needed to be done. Sometimes that meant stepping in and keeping a certain amount of order.
“That’s good,” said Coutinho. “Speaking for the cops, we would appreciate a quiet holiday.”
*
As Coutinho carved, he surveyed the table with pride. Deep frying the turkey in the back yard had turned out to be a master stroke. The bird was perfectly brown, and the breast had stayed juicy. His stuffing looked like heaven, and smelled better, and his vegetable dishes were simple but elegant.
But damn it, there was something missing. A couple of things, actually.
He could tell that Kim agreed, but they kept quiet about it. Detective Tom Johnson looked around the table as if the mac salad might be lurking somewhere. With him the craving was probably genetic. Anyone who heard his name before meeting the man was surprised to see three hundred pounds of native islander.
The ethnic melting pot did things like that in Hawaii.
Johnson’s wife Kimiko was about a third his size, but she looked ready to strike if he commented.
That left Coutinho’s mother as the wild card. The real issue with Mama wasn’t the menu. Her only grandchildren lived in Los Angeles with Coutinho’s sister. The children the other guests were bringing would emphasize Coutinho’s failure to honor his obligation to continue the family line, and she might displace her disappointment onto any topic that proved handy.
“Jake gonna be late?” Johnson asked.
“Yeah,” said Coutinho. “Amy too. She got delayed in Vegas. She’s bringing the kids, and Jake’ll get here when he can.”
“Crime never sleeps,” said Johnson. He gave Coutinho a meaningful look. If Jake was busy, it probably wasn’t with a case.
Coutinho didn’t appreciate the position this put him in, but he made an ethical compromise. He wouldn’t lie for Jake, but he would keep his mouth shut.
At that moment Amy Espinosa bustled in. She still wore her business suit and pantyhose, two things that were rare enough on this informal island to draw second looks. But even when she dressed down, something indefinable about her said, “Seattle.”
Lucy hugged Amy and fussed over her eight-year-old twins, a girl and a boy.
“How was the mainland?”
“Big.”
“So I hear.”
“Hot, too. Vegas always frazzles me.”
Amy’s job in the hotel industry had her traveling to corporate headquarters several times a year.
“Thought for a while I wasn’t going to make it.”
She looked at the table. “No mashed potatoes.”
Meaning no Jake.
“I called him. Ran down the recipe. He said he’d handle it.”
“Minahs, Amy,” said Coutinho. “We get choke grinds.” (Translation: No problem. We have plenty of food.) When he spoke pidgin, it was usually to make his point with a humorous touch. Amy had lived on the island long enough to understand the words, but they fell flat. Coutinho got a bad feeling. He hoped Jake would deliver.
*
They talked shop at the table. What else did cops have to talk about? The one topic that stayed off the table, pardon the expression, was mac salad.
Until Brandi stepped off the narrow path. It stood to reason. She was still learning how to be a cop’s significant other.
“So I hear you caught the Mac Salad Killer.”
“Where’d you pick that up?” Coutinho spoke more sharply than he had intended. The police had been keeping that nickname in-house. Nothing that could be taken as trivializing domestic violence was supposed to get out in public.
Brandi looked surprised, both at the tone and the question itself. “I’m a nurse. Cops talk to nurses.”
She had a point. Cops spent a lot of time in hospitals waiting to talk to witnesses, and nurses came to feel like colleagues. But they weren’t really, and a cop was supposed to remember that when it came to the important stuff.
Coutinho decided this wasn’t the time to ask Brandi which cop had spilled it.
Even though Couthino said nothing out loud, Tom Johnson must have known he was thinking the question. “That was me.”
His face gave nothing away, but Johnson knew what he was doing. Coutinho wasn’t going to make an issue of his lapse now, at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Kimiko was on the cop wavelength after all these years, and she looked apprehensive until she saw the issue being tabled.
Then her expression changed, and Coutinho could read her mind. Just how much time was her husband spending on talking with nurses?
The front door opened and banged shut. Jake Espinosa appeared in the kitchen doorway with a smile on his dark Portuguese face and a large takeout carton in his hand.
Coutinho had that premonition again.
“Look at you all,” said Jake. “Sitting around on the taxpayers’ time.”
He shifted the carton to his other hand. Coutinho couldn’t take his eyes off the white cardboard.
“Happy Thanksgiving, all. Sorry I’m late, but somebody gotta bust the bad guys.”
“Guess that would be you, Jake,” said Amy.
Jake went over to his wife and bent over to kiss her. She didn’t react.
“Didn’t have time to work up your recipe, Honey.”
He held up the carton like a trophy. “But I got the next best thing. Mac salad!”
Amy got up from the table and walked toward the doorway. Coutinho hoped she was heading for the bathroom, but it didn’t surprise him when the front door opened and closed.
Everything stopped, until Coutinho realized that saving the situation was up to the host, which would be him. He felt all eyes on him as he arranged a smile on his face and went to Jake.
“Thanks, buddy. Take a seat.”
He took the carton into the kitchen and looked for a place he could hide until tomorrow. There was now a turkey-sized space in the refrigerator, but even if he had lost those twenty pounds he had been seeing in the mirror lately, he wouldn’t fit. There was nothing to do but empty the carton into the bowl that had been waiting for Amy’s mashed potatoes and return to the dining room, bearing the evidence that he was part of the conspiracy of men.
Everyone pitched in to help, acting as if Jake hadn’t screwed up big time.
Although he didn’t seem to realize it.
And then Mama took over.
“I’ll say grace now.”
Coutinho managed not to wince. They had all given Mama a lot of material today, and her genetic Portuguese fatalism would get a workout.
She waited until everyone was ready.
“Dear Lord, we thank You for this chance to get together and think how we have fallen short this year, like always. As we make amends to You and each other, we are grateful for Your bounty. We forget that some people would be grateful for mac salad and a table to sit at, or even a spoon to eat it with.”
Coutinho kept his poker face.
“The thing is, Lord, we know we don’t deserve Your grace. Some of us love to complain. Others think there will always be time to do our family duty.”
The grandchildren issue. Again, he was ready, and kept his face impassive.
To Coutinho’s left the Johnson boy Isaac was starting to squirm. He was twelve. Everybody else knew enough to hunker down and endure. That even went for the Espinosa twins. Coutinho worried about them. They seemed too old for their years, as children of conflict often did.
“Lord, give us the strength to start over tomorrow and remember it’s not just about a head start on Christmas shopping. Help us to remember the homeless, the lost, and the abandoned, and to forgive the ro
ad ragers and the checker in the Safeway for her impatience.”
Mama went on, but Coutinho knew to stay alert. His “Amen” was right on time, but Kim and Tom Johnson entered late, like the tenor section of a church choir.
Coutinho looked up and saw Amy standing in the doorway. She made her way to the empty seat. He searched her face, but she was giving nothing away.
“And help us to welcome with an open heart those who return,” said Mama.
“Amen again,” said Isaac.
Now it was time for mac salad. Everything else on the table seemed to fade into insignificance. As Coutinho watched the fatal bowl approaching, he had a sudden insight. This was what the doomed French aristocrats of the revolutionary period had felt like, waiting in line and shuffling ever closer to the guillotine.
The bowl came to him. He made himself look at Lucy, but nothing showed on her face. That was how he knew it was bad. He could help himself or pass the bowl. It wouldn’t make the slightest difference, because right now he was part of the conspiracy of men.
He dished first for Isaac, who grinned in anticipation.
That’s right, Coutinho told himself. Hide behind a kid.
They ate, and against the odds even managed to make things pleasant. Coutinho thought it stood to reason. Thanksgiving was about family, and family was a balancing act on a high wire in a storm, with a bill waiting to be paid on the far end.
So he wasn’t surprised at Lucy’s next move. She waited until they had finished dessert and coffee.
“Errol, why don’t you take the guys and turn on the game?”
He agreed as if he had never heard a better idea in his life. “I’ll just get some beers.”
He bustled in the kitchen for as long as he could, but the living room awaited him.
“That Lucy is the greatest,” said Jake, who had already taken the best seat in front of the TV.
Trust Jake not to know how hard Coutinho worked to avoid football.
*
Black Friday. Normally a day dreaded by cops everywhere, a day for standing in a thin blue line against the onslaught of shoppers at Walmart, and for catching up on domestic disputes that had festered since yesterday.
Coutinho had never felt so relieved in his life. Less than twenty-four hours earlier he had wanted to beg company to stay all night, even Jake. Then came the agony of wondering when this strange woman who resembled his wife would stop pretending to be Lucy doing the dishes and let the real Lucy return, even if she read him his rights.
The Killer Wore Cranberry: A Fifth Course of Chaos Page 12
