Haole Wood

by DeTarsio, Dee

  Haole Wood

  A Novel

  By Dee DeTarsio

  Haole Wood

  by Dee DeTarsio

  ISBN: 978-0-615-64049-5

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2012 by Dee DeTarsio

  When San Diego weathercaster, Jaswinder Park, is mysteriously summoned to the island of Maui in Hawaii to help her grandmother, she ends up losing her job. This fair-haired, light-skinned foreigner, called haole by the natives, decides to stay in Maui for a couple of days until she can figure out what to do with her life. She realizes that her quick trip to Maui may not be all she’s hoping for when:

  She has to bail her Hawaiian/Korean grandmother out of jail for possession of pakalolo.

  The only thing she can understand her grandmother say is: “Not that.”

  She can’t decide which hurts worse, her sunburn, hangover, or memories of the night before.

  She’s labeled the “Liquor Licker” on the front page of the Maui News in a photo that shows her doing a shot of tequila with a hunky Hawaiian who’s been found dead.

  It seems she’s had orgasms that have lasted longer than her career.

  She scrapes the bottom of the barrel to find her guardian angel.

  Beautiful fabric found in her grandmother’s closet unfolds a future for Jaswinder as she designs sensuous silky wraps called sunshminas that provide sun protection. She tries for a Hollywood connection, but her company, Haole Wood, has some growing pains. From trying to find a killer, to selling her sunshminas, to lusting after Dr. Jac, the island dermatologist, to trying to ignore her so-called guardian angel, can Jaswinder learn to embrace the island way of life? Aloha!

  Haole Wood

  Chapter 1 Aloha

  Chapter 2 If It’s News to You, It’s News to Us

  Chapter 3 Poor Suellen

  Chapter 4 Adios

  Chapter 5 S-To-The-Lutty

  Chapter 6 Shit Creek

  Chapter 7 Let It Burn

  Chapter 8 Squirmatology

  Chapter 9 The Heat is On

  Chapter 10 Death Warmed Over

  Chapter 11 Arrest In Peace

  Chapter 12 No Fun In Funeral

  Chapter 13 Blonde Leading The Blind

  Chapter 14 Sun$hmina

  Chapter 15 Sew What

  Chapter 16 Hell’s Angel

  Chapter 17 I Love You More

  Chapter 18 That’s A Wrap

  Chapter 19 Hot Couture

  Chapter 20 What Would Dean Koontz Do?

  Chapter 21 Forty-Eight Hours

  Chapter 22 Sextraordinary

  Chapter 23 Out of Sequins

  Chapter 24 Leis of Our Dives

  Chapter 25 Surf’s Up

  Chapter 26 Sale Away

  Chapter 27 I Dream Of Genie

  Chapter 28 DIY

  Chapter 29 Humuhumunukunukuapa’a

  Chapter 30 Just In Case

  Chapter 31 Haole Wood Dreams

  Chapter 32 Gorgeous Gorges

  Chapter 33 Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

  Chapter 34 Jaswinder, P.I.

  Chapter 35 Lois Of The Lows

  Chapter 36 Herbal Essence

  Chapter 37 Lokelani

  Chapter 38 Not That

  Chapter 1

  Aloha

  The swirling turquoise close to the shore stretched out to meet the midnight blue deeper waters, looking like bright new colors of Crayola crayons melting in the sun. My ears popped again as I leaned my forehead against the airplane window. I was stunned as always at the primitive beauty of the ocean. The white frothy waves licked the Hawaiian island of Maui as the plane continued its descent. Something flickered, almost the suggestion of an outline of a person. I glanced over my shoulder, but no one was there. I guessed it was just a reflection on the window. The lush green rolling hills below skewered with palm trees promised an exotic pu pu platter of adventure—an expedition I would rather not be joining.

  I hadn’t been to Maui in about fifteen years since I was a teenager visiting my Hawaiian/Korean grandmother we call Halmoni. For some reason, my dad wasn’t particularly close to his mother, so I didn’t really know her all that well. I lived in San Diego and was geographically closest to Halmoni. She was in trouble. I was it.

  I did everything I could to get out of making the trip. When I got the frantic call from my parents, I turned into a total brat. “I don’t even know her. I have to work. Forget it. I’m not going.” It’s not like my mom is the boss of me. She couldn’t make me go, for Pete’s sake. I am a grown woman. I am thirty years old, and I call the shots in my life.

  I trudged off the plane in Maui with only my backpack since I planned on being there for only a couple of days. Oh, how the gods of ominous music must have laughed. I headed down the stairs, out toward the taxis. The island breezes whooshed through the open air terminal at the Kahului airport and greeted me with an atmosphere as alien as if I were on another planet. I stopped and took a deep breath and remembered how different the oxygen flowed in Maui. The niggling worries I carried for the six-hour flight magically disappeared as if the wind whipping my hair cast them adrift like unwanted split-ends.

  Though I knew it would cost half a day’s salary, I hailed a cab. I wiped the grumpy look off of my face, it wasn’t Maui’s fault I was on this fool’s errand. I gave my weather girl’s best smile as my arm hulaed high. Even though I didn’t really know my grandmother anymore, I hoped Halmoni was going to be all right.

  “It’s outside of Lahaina, up off Lahainaluna Street,” I told the beefy Hawaiian who stopped to pick me up.

  “Mahalo. No worries.” I got in and sank into the sticky seat. The driver shoved it into gear and peeled out in the rusty Crown Victoria, throwing me into the armrest on the passenger side door.

  I settled back, letting the heavier than normal air massage my skin. I gulped in the sweet aromas through the open window and tilted my head like a dog on a joy ride. Once we passed through the commercial district right outside of the airport, we hit the open road for another thirty minutes and headed toward Lahaina, the downtown of west Maui. I could hardly keep my eyes off the ocean to the left as the highway hugged the coast. I knew living in San Diego spoiled me, but Maui felt like a different country, with the added bonus of bath water warm ocean waves.

  “You said you are visiting ohana?” the cab driver asked. “Your family?”

  I laughed as he squinted over at me. I nodded. “My grandmother.”

  “She’s Hawaiian?” he asked.

  Again, I nodded. Immediately, Artie, I read his name on the certificate, relaxed, flashing his big white teeth at me. Just like everywhere, prejudice was in full bloom in Hawaii.

  “That’s cool you got family here. You’re so white, though. What a haole.”

  I laughed. He didn’t offend me even though haole wasn’t the politically correct term. No one believes I have Korean and Hawaiian blood. My dad looks like a westernized version of Don Ho, but my mom is totally Scandinavian.

  “What’s your name?” he asked me.

  I took a deep breath. “Jaswinder.”

  He took his eyes off the road to stare at me for dangerously long seconds until I pointed at the curve ahead. “I know, I know,” I said. “I work in television.”

  “Respect.” He flashed a big grin at me. He didn’t need to know about the explosive drama that hit when I turned twelve. Keeping all four original, pitiful letters, I improved upon my name with both an homage to Snow White and an oh-so-exotic heroine from a steamy romance novel I snuck read. By the time I was ready to get over it, it was
too late.

  “You ever live here, Jaswinder?”

  “No. I grew up in Ohio. We came to visit a few times when I was younger, but my dad went to school on the mainland and pretty much never looked back.”

  I remembered those long ago magical visits to my grandmother’s house. It was almost like being on Gilligan’s Island. In fact, that’s what my sister and I used to play. We would eat our cereal in hollowed out gourds my grandmother had at her house, head to the beach to play in the sand, and come home when the sun got too hot. In the afternoons, we would laze in the hammock out back under the kukui nut trees.

  I have always been a little frightened of Halmoni who doesn’t speak English. Pretty much all I have ever been able to understand her say is: “Not that.” Halmoni has that mastered. “Not that,” she used to snap when Josephine or I would reach for the wrong herb hanging in her kitchen, our grandmother’s finger pointing in the right direction. We managed to communicate, somehow, through trial and error, raised eyebrows and ludicrous pantomimes.

  We knew Halmoni loved us. I remember being about five or six years old and crying from a terrible sunburn. Halmoni coated my skin with a cooling concoction she made from kukui nut oil, all the while soothing me with some Hawaiian lullaby. The pattern of her caressing massage almost made me fall asleep as she held me on her lap, cradled in her arms, the not unpleasant smell of the oil just another ingredient in the day’s breeze. I sighed and snuggled in tighter and meant to squeeze her arm but missed and grabbed her breast.

  “Not that!”

  The car lurched as Artie turned right and headed away from Lahaina. I bid aloha to the little town as Artie pointed in the opposite direction and said, “Mauka.” I nodded. Couldn’t speak it, but could understand he meant toward the mountains.

  “Up a little ways on your left, I think,” I told him, hoping I got it right. Overgrown ferns and purple-blue tropical bushes nearly hid the little driveway to my grandmother’s house. He pulled in, charged me the equivalent of a full spa manicure and pedicure, and wished me well.

  “Aloha,” I repeated back to him before turning to stare at the house.

  The house was much smaller and older than I remembered. The bright yellow paint from my childhood had faded to chalky beige. I hummed to myself as a breeze bounced me back and forth. I might as well make the best of things. It could be worse. It wasn’t like Halmoni lived in Siberia.

  I walked up the wooden steps to the small lanai and felt under the large conch shell for the key. I let myself in. The dark wood floors gleamed. I used to love walking on them in my bare feet. I slipped off my sandals. The couch and club chairs were arranged in the exact same spots as they were on my last visit when I had been a teenager. I turned and entered my grandmother’s kitchen, which was still filled with drying herbs and growing plants.

  On the phone, my mother instructed me that Halmoni wanted me to go to her house first to get some money. I shook my head and breathed in the smell that immediately conjured up a vision of my grandmother. I sniffed the earthy green aroma in her kitchen that held a hint of some spicy succulent flower. Oh, Halmoni. What did you do?

  And why do you have more than a thousand dollars crammed inside an old pee pot in the cupboard under your sink?

  Chapter 2

  If It’s News to You, It’s News to Us

  I started up my grandmother’s jeep and headed back into town. I hoped my plan to rescue my grandmother would work. If everything went smoothly, I would be back home in time for my shift at the television station on Wednesday without anyone really noticing I had been gone. How was I to know nothing in my life was fated to run smoothly? Oh, I don’t know, maybe a quick review of my past history?

  As the weekend weathercaster at the NBC affiliate in San Diego, I had to do some pretty fancy footwork to figure out how I was going to do my job from Hawaii without calling in sick. My parents, the same folks who leave thirty minutes early for a two-minute, one-mile drive to church on Sunday mornings, insisted I leave the very next day, making me miss my weather slots. Since there really is no such thing as polyjuice potion, pity, I needed to create a twenty-five-hundred-mile wide solution, so I could fly off to Maui with a clear conscience and keep my career intact.

  As long as I can remember, I have wanted to be on TV. Who knew my nickname would actually morph into my TV name? My fascination with television surely has some psychological roots. Maybe it was part of my fantasy world as a former thumb sucker/bed-wetter/funny-looking kid who grew into an unappetizing teenager with astigmatism, asthma, and acne. Back then, I would have traded being fat for having clear skin in a minute.

  It didn’t matter that my teeth were white and straight enough to prop up a smile, there was that one off-kilter eyetooth that always seemed to trap the stray poppy seed or bay leaf. My mom still smacked my hand away from my face whenever I smiled behind my fingers.

  I smiled extra wide in that freezing cold studio in San Diego as I pulled off my magic. Any airtime was prime time, and I needed to prove to my news director that I was a key player. Besides, how would it look if I tried to tell him I needed the weekend off, to bail my Halmoni out of jail?

  My friend, Barry, the weekend producer, loved intrigue, Game of Thrones, and apparently the idea of not having a girlfriend. He seemed delighted to help me out of my pickle.

  “Look, Jaswinder,” he told me, “good thing I got in early. I’ll grab someone from production and tell them I want you to pre-tape your weather segments. I’ll just run them during the shows as if they were airing live and you were right here.”

  “Great.” That was exactly what I was hoping for. I could do my job, still be present and accounted for, and do my duty by my family. Everyone wins. It was the perfect solution. I had brought in a second set of clothes for the Sunday broadcast. “Thanks so much, Barry,” I told him. “You tell me how much time you want to give me and I’ll have my weather stuff all ready.” I was so relieved I hugged him and planted a kiss on his cheek.

  “No prob,” Barry said. “Easy peasy. Who will know? The crew won’t mind.”

  The homemade bundt cake brownies I brought in with me didn’t hurt, either. Barry sucked the chocolate off of his teeth and licked his fingers. “It won’t take long to shoot your weather,” he told me. “And during the live newscasts, we’ll just roll it and drop it right in.”

  I checked all the meteorology reports and everything looked crystal clear. Smooth sailing. It was San Diego, after all. I could do the weather in my sleep.

  As I straightened the collar on my lavender suit, I jumped at a quick flash. For just a moment, I thought I saw . . . something. I smiled in case someone important entered the studio. I shook my head, as if I were an actress portraying bewilderment. Unfortunately, the crew had been rolling tape and later ended up using that footage, accompanied by zany cartoon music and the sound of breaking glass.

  If only I paid closer attention. Instead, I took a deep breath, pretending that what I had seen was probably just the reflection of the floor director in the teleprompter screen. Teeth don’t fail me now. Never having learned the fine art of flirting with the camera, I tilted my head a fraction to the right, (my best side) sucked in my stomach, widened my eyes, relaxed my shoulders to make my neck look long and graceful, smoothed my hair on both sides in an equal and opposite motion, repeating as needed if one hand was out of sync with the other, and finished by swiping my pinkie through the lipstick in the middle of my top lip for that oh-so-pouty look. Had I been a baseball player I’m sure I would have hit many a home run thanks to my disciplined superstitions. I probably looked more like I was chewing tobacco and adjusting myself as I threw my tease to the camera.

  “Will our purple mountain majesties soon be awash in amber waves of rain? We’ll find out, coming up.” I learned early on, San Diego weather forecasts always tease the chance of rain, regardless of the impossibly clear, sunny blue skies. We had to, in order to get people to tune in. It didn’t take long for Barry and I to nail the s
egments.

  “So, I hope you soaked up all the sunshine and had a great time outdoors. Did you make it to the beach? If you didn’t get there today, there’s plenty more sun and fun on the way. Temperatures will be in the mid-seventies, just remember your sunscreen.” I waggled my finger for that extra dab of credibility. I threw in my signature “Enjoy!” with a wave and tossed it over to no one since my co-anchors obviously weren’t there for the taping. “Greg and Janie, back to you.”

  With that, I plucked off my microphone, thanked the crew, changed my clothes, and ran out to the Cloud 9 Super shuttle waiting to take me to the airport. My plan worked perfectly. (Note to self: For future reference, never, ever think a plan is working perfectly.)

  Nobody offers rides to the airport in San Diego, except boyfriends. I felt a quick pang at the time getting into that shuttle van, missing my ex-boyfriend, Jeff, who dumped me a few weeks earlier after I admitted that someday, yes, I wanted to have kids. He thought I was pushing for a commitment and then told me I wasn’t ambitious enough for him. Well, I could have used his ambitious lift to my plane, I thought. At least it made me realize that missing Jeff hurt no more than having to pay for a ride to the airport.

  I just hoped I could get things squared away with Halmoni. Then, maybe my family would take me seriously, and I could finally feel like a grown up. An odd shadow flitted through the light in the van as I buckled my seat belt. Great. Probably an overdeveloped guilty conscience blood vessel bursting in my brain. Even though I was queasy about skipping out on work, I didn’t really have a choice. It’s not like I didn’t do my work, I just did it early. Besides, who would notice?

  Chapter 3

  Poor Suellen