Haole Wood

by DeTarsio, Dee

  “Someone else could have known my grandmother was bringing him herbs and just totally set her up, and taken advantage of the opportunity to poison him,” I said.

  O’Boyle straightened a stack of papers and put them in a file folder marked Park. “That’s what we have to prove. Unfortunately, no witnesses. No evidence to lead to a new trail.”

  I banged my hand on the desk. “This is so unfair. How will they even begin to find the killer if they’ve already given up and decided it’s my grandmother?”

  “I am checking Mike’s background. We’re interviewing friends. Family. Mumble-mumble. New leads.” He was sorting through the photos and didn’t look up.

  I sure hoped O’Boyle knew what he was doing. I widened my eyes at Jac. My eyebrows were hovering in the who-does-this-guy-think-he-is? stratosphere.

  He stood up. “Thanks, O’Boyle. Good luck.” Jac took my arm and as soon as we were out of the office told me to relax.

  “I thought the witnesses were supposed to be hostile, not the lawyers.”

  “O’Boyle is married to his job, Jaswinder. If anyone can solve this case, he’s the guy.”

  This was scary stuff. Poor Halmoni. She was in such trouble, big pili ‘kia. There was something strange in my mind, some detail or fragment of a thought I chased, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Was it a clue I wasn’t quite getting, or the unsettling question of what if Halmoni . . .

  Chapter 18

  That’s a Wrap

  Bail was set, the paperwork was complete, and I was allowed to spring Halmoni even though neither of us was allowed to leave the island. I hopped out of the jeep and raced behind my grandmother who hurried up the path to her house. In spite of the dark cloud looming over that tiny lady, I was so glad to have her back home. “You have a lot of friends, Halmoni,” I told her. “We’ll clear your name.” My grandmother began making tea and a pot of rice. “Cheers,” I said when she handed me my cup. “To freedom.” Whatever she thought I said must have reminded her of something since she scurried down the hall to the back bedroom.

  “Wait, Halmoni, sorry. I left it kind of a mess.” I came into the room and watched her shake out the fabric and fold it. She flipped over a tattered edge and examined the seams I tried to sew. The deep clucking noise in her throat needed no translation. “I’m sorry. I broke your sewing machine. Not that it was going all that well anyway. I tried to sew it by hand. The lady who wants to buy two of these wanted them for this weekend. I tried my best, but it didn’t work out.”

  “Not that.” She smiled at me.

  “Plus, I have no idea how you did your kukui oil protection potion.”

  Halmoni sat in her sewing chair and searched a brightly woven basket for a pair of small scissors. She peered closely at the fabric and snipped each thread, pulling away all of the little fibers. When she was finished, she shook out the fabric and folded it neatly once more. “Elua?” She held up two fingers.

  “Yep. She needs two,” I told her, helping get a bolt of fabric out of the closet. My grandmother rolled out the cloth and cut a matching length.

  “E hele mai,” she said, motioning for me to follow her.

  “Right behind you,” I said. This time I watched closely as my grandmother readied the large kettle on her stove, filling it with water and her special brew. To the kukui nut oil she squeezed out several drops from little brown glass bottles of what I guessed were essential oils of some kind. When the mixture began to boil, she placed the material in the pot and swirled it until it was saturated. I watched the clock. She let it simmer for about twenty minutes, long enough to cook hard boiled eggs, I thought. I helped her lift the pot into the sink so Halmoni could get the fabric and roll the pieces dry in a towel before taking them outside to dry.

  “I’m so glad you’re home,” I called after her.

  The rest of the afternoon, I watched her literally whip up the wraps. She even repaired the ancient machine with a new black rubber belt. My grandmother was a genius. “They’re beautiful, Halmoni. This woman is going to love them. I’ll give her a call and run them up to her tomorrow.” I picked up some of the leftover scraps to give to Jac so he could have them tested for the strength of their sun protection. I also cut a swatch of untreated fabric to see what, if any, SPF the cloth alone provided. As a pale-face myself, I had grown quite attached to my sunshmina and usually had it tossed over my shoulders, as necessary to my well-being as my cell phone. I felt it was doing its duty shading me from burning rays, plus, a couple people even complimented me on it. I hoped the woman and her daughter liked their sunshminas as much as I did.

  The next morning, Halmoni folded the two wraps carefully in three sections and wrapped them in tissue paper. I popped a kiss on the top of her head. “Not that,” she said, waving me away. Her brown eyes sparkled.

  “Thank you a million times again, Halmoni. Wish me luck!”

  I arrived at the Hyatt in no time, my heart pounding as I held the tissue-wrapped package and knocked on the door of Diane Clary’s room.

  She opened the door, talking on her cell phone, and motioned me inside her opulent suite which had Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous views overlooking the ocean. Sliding glass doors opened onto the balcony and the breeze toyed with the white sheer curtains, making a frothy frame of the picturesque palm trees down below.

  If people had this view as a screen saver on their computers, especially people who worked in newsrooms, the world would be a better place. Diane held up one finger to me. “Yes,” she said into her phone. “He’s dead. I need to know who is continuing on this deal. I put down a lot of money for that property and I aim to close on it, sooner rather than later. You will? Okay, thanks.” She ended the call and turned toward me. “Try to do business on this island,” she said, waving her hand. “I swear they are all smoking Maui Wowie or something. And my broker was just killed. Can you believe that?”

  Sorry for your inconvenience, I thought.

  “Good lookin’ guy, too,” she widened her heavily mascaraed eyes. “But, life goes on. I need that property.”

  “Do you know what happened to him?” I might as well try to get Diane’s side of the story.

  “Apparently he was poisoned by some island witch-woman,” Diane said. “I had just seen him, too. He was full of ideas about land and development on this island. There are so many opportunities here. We had a really big deal we were working on. Pity.” She narrowed her eyes and clenched her fists. She shook back her hair. “What have you got for me?” She held her hands out and reached for the sunshminas. She took them and set them on the back of the sofa. She unwrapped the tissue and held up one of the wraps before draping it over her arms. She went to the large mirror in the living room and swirled it over her shoulders. “Lovely. Just lovely.”

  “Thank you. You look pretty.”

  “Do you know if these, what do you call them? Sunshminas? Provide much protection from the sun?”

  “We’re doing research on the actual SPF range of the material right now.” I tried to pretend I was doing a live shot on TV and had only limited information, which always seemed to be the case, and kicked up the BS. “I’ve been wearing mine since I arrived on the island and it really has provided superior protection. It wicks away the heat from your body, and creates a natural shade that keeps your skin cool and comfortable.” This has been Jaswinder Park, reporting live.

  “Good, good,” Diane said, nodding. Her fingers stroked the silky lengths as she watched herself in the mirror. “My daughter is almost as fair as I am. She’ll love this. All the resort wear swimsuit cover-ups are crap. The material is either a cheap cotton with colors that bleed or they try to get you into some sarong type deal that you have to look like, who’s that famous local singer, Lana somebody? She’s the only one I know who has the body to wear something like that and keep it on without it falling off. Or, there’s always muumuus, right?”

  I nodded. “Yes, I agree. We’re working on more modern and stylish resort wear clothin
g.”

  “Good for you. How would you like to be paid? Is cash alright?”

  “That will be fine,” I said. I tried not to smile and show my greedy-looking teeth by thinking of my grandmother having to go back to jail. “Do you need a receipt?”

  “Not necessary. But do you have a card? You’re called Hollywood Haute, right?”

  “Our marketing department is printing up our cards, but I’ll leave you my number. Please let me know how you like it. And, thank you.”

  “Thank you, Jaswinder,” she said. “Hollywood Haute. I like the sound of that.” I thanked her again and as the door of Diane’s room closed I pulled out the wad of money. I began counting. One, two, three, four, five, six hundred dollars. “Whee!” The door flew open and I shoved the bills back into my pocket.

  “I had a thought,” Diane said. “I’m friends with the sales manager. You should go talk to her, they let artists set up booths in the hotel and I bet the other resorts do, too. You could show off your line and sell these to other tourists.”

  “Thank you, Diane. What a great idea,” I said, wondering how in the world Halmoni could whip up enough sunshminas to sell at a booth.

  “I bet you could make a fortune.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” I’ll figure out a way.

  “Honey, you’d be doing us all a favor. If I have to see one more red-skinned lobster vacationing from the Midwest,” Diane pinched her forefingers and thumbs together imitating a crustacean’s grasping claws, “I swear I’ll scream. You should think about stuff for the guys, too. You’d think their massive amounts of body hair would provide some protection, but no, they get just as red and nasty looking as their wives. Good luck.” The door slammed shut.

  I swung by the sales office on my way out, mentioned Diane’s name and showed off my own sunshmina to the sales manager.

  “I love it,” she said. “Sure, you can set up shop this weekend. We’ll provide a table, you’ll need to bring a rack or whatever else you show your designs on. We’ll split the profits fifty-fifty.”

  “What?”

  She nodded. “Keep good records.”

  My brain whirred as loudly as the fan belt on my grandmother’s jeep as I headed back to the house. One the one hand, I wanted to do some dirt digging on both Lana and now Diane, two people who had been closer to Mike Hokama than my grandmother. On the other hand, I had to figure out how to convince Halmoni to sew a whole bunch more sunshminas for this weekend. If we could sell ten, at three hundred dollars each, that was still a nice fifteen hundred dollars after the hotel took its cut.

  “And on the other hand?” came a voice from the passenger seat.

  I wrenched the steering wheel. “On the other hand, I’m out of hands. I’m hallucinating the world’s worst excuse for a guardian angel. Do I need therapy? Do I need to see someone?”

  “Honey-Girl,” he said, “you are seeing someone. Me!” He boomed his chortling laugh as my hands tightened my grip on the wheel. I pulled up and stopped at the light.

  “Do you mind? You’ve got to stop this. Go away and leave me alone. Please.” I raised the palm of my hand, as if to shut out the sight of his face. Over my guardian angel’s shoulder, a hand waved from the car next to us. The driver in the vibrating rusted Nova next to me thought I was talking to him. That’s right. I was the crazy one. Only I could see this monstrous blob haunting me, sitting in the passenger seat beside me.

  “Hey, Sister. I wasn’t doing anything,” said the other driver. “What’s your problem?”

  “Sorry,” I called over to him. “I was just talking to myself. Bad habit.”

  “Whoo-ee, you want to talk about bad habits,” said the old Hawaiian, revving his rusted bucket of bolts, “I could show you much better ones than that.” He wiggled his eyebrows in what he must have thought was a come-hither way. Maybe it was, once upon a time, say forty years ago.

  Go yonder, I tried to telegraph back and repel his come on by looking straight ahead. “No thanks,” I spit out of the side of my mouth.

  “You have got to relax,” my guardian angel said. “If you are still counting problems you better move on to your other foot now, and face problem number four. You like Dr. Jac.”

  I shot him my look that I perfected years ago as a teenage girl responding to the asinine stupidity of the embarrassment known as my parents. It was a powerful expression, containing traces of evil, hatred, sorrow, misery, martyrdom and contempt, with a soupcon of go eff yourself. “Can you at least make the light turn green?” I asked him, staring straight ahead. The guy in the Nova wouldn’t stop leering.

  “That I can do,” he said, raising his hands and aiming them at the stoplight. He lifted his head, frowned and muttered some sort of incantation under his breath. After about 15 seconds the light finally changed to green. “Voila,” he said bowing his head toward me.

  I peeled out. “You did not make that light turn green. I could have done that. And I probably could have made it change faster.”

  “Exactly!” He beamed at me. “You are finally getting it. You have all the power. You can do it. With that, I bid you aloha.”

  “Wait!” I reached over to grab his arm and got nothing but a handful of humidity. “You forgot to tell me exactly what I’m supposed to do with all this power.”

  Chapter 19

  Hot Couture

  “Grandmother! Halmoni!” I ran in the house. “Look.” I pulled out the money. “Six hundred dollars! Here, this is yours. If you want, we can be partners. The hotel said they would let us sell sunshminas in their lobby by the waterfall, with the other artists and vendors. What do you think?”

  “Not that,” Halmoni said. She smiled and pushed the money back to me.

  “I insist. You did all the work. This belongs to you.” She held up her hand and turned and went back into the kitchen. I followed her.

  “Halmoni, I am not taking this money. But, we could start a business. People love these sunshminas. We can sell them. Jac is even testing the fabric to figure out what the sun protection factor value is. We could market it as upscale resort wear, with SPF. This is really cool, Halmoni. There are so many things we could do with this, hats, shirts, skirts and stuff. I’m thinking of calling the line Hollywood Haute. I marqueed the name with my hands as I said it.

  “Why do you think that’s so funny?” I took her hand and led her back to the bedroom. “Look at all this material. If you teach me, I can help you. We could really do something special here. What do you think? Do you want to? Do you understand one word I’m saying? Hollywood Haute,” I said again, rubbing my hands together.

  “Not that,” she said.

  I wonder what she thinks I’m saying? I went to call my parents to bring them up to date and heard my grandmother fire up the jeep and leave. “She’s out on bail for now,” I told my mom. “But it’s still a big story and I know the police are keeping a close eye on her. Her attorney says he hasn’t heard of any other suspects.”

  “Jaswinder.” My dad sounded like he had a hard time spitting it out. “Do you think, I mean, does she, could she . . .”

  “Dad. Zip it. Don’t even think it. I barely know this woman, but I know one thing. There is no way she could have or would have done this. She did not murder anybody. Period. Geez.” Sometimes I really wondered about my own parents. Who are these people?

  “Calm down, Jaswinder. Sorry. You’re right. I feel so far away.”

  Because you are so far away, I thought.

  “I have been imagining the worst,” he continued. “We just don’t know what is going on and hopefully your mom and I can come out next week.”

  “Tell you what, Dad, hold off. Let’s see how things go. I will let you know. You and mom just take care of each other for now, get better and I will give you updates. She’s fine, I’m fine, and there’s nothing you guys could do anyway.” I couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.

  It wasn’t long before I heard the front door screen slam and the sound of women’s voices. I we
nt down the stairs to see what was going on.

  “Aloha,” said the leader of the muumuu pack, while the others in lower voices agreed, “Aloha.”

  “You must be Jaswinder,” the Hawaiian woman continued. She wore a red print cotton dress and looked like she could have been the mother of a car dashboard hula girl. She folded her arms and let me know who was boss while my grandmother stood back with her hands clasped, smiling. “Your grandmother here told us about your little idea and rounded us up to help. We’re all good workers. We’re seamstresses. I’m Lois, this is my daughter Shayna.” She pushed forward a thin, young brown-haired girl. She had a wide nose and the plump face of a teen on the brink of puberty, or hell. I caught a flash of her large teeth, with nearly imperceptible scalloped ridges, and it wasn’t because she smiled.

  “Hi,” Shayna said, looking like she perfected a pretty good fourteen-year-old teenage sneer herself.

  Lois continued. “This is Mary One, Mary Two, and Maria,” she waved her arm, the wobbling skin below serving as a rudder as the other women all said hello again. My grandmother beckoned them all back into the bedroom.

  “So let me get this straight,” Lois said as they all shoved into the tiny room. “You can’t sew.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry.”

  “You can’t draw.”

  Head shaking commenced again.

  “You’re not a designer.”

  “Nope.”

  “Yet you want to start a clothing line?” Lois was pretty, but boy did she have the Hawaiian stink eye perfected.

  “Let me explain. This tourist,” I began. “Wait, I’ll just show you.” I ran to the living room and grabbed my sunshmina. “I call it a sunshmina, you know, like those cashmere pashmina shawls that all the stars used to wear? Feel this fabric. It’s heavenly. And look at my skin.” Ten brown eyes, 12, if you counted Halmoni’s, stared at me. “I know I’m getting over a terrible sunburn, but this totally protects me from the sun.” I put it on and twirled around. “It’s so pretty and I’m telling you, I actually feel cooler in this.” I had to make them understand. “Come with me. Let’s go outside.” I made it to the back door with no one following me. I went outside anyway and stood directly in the spotlight of the noon sun, cuddling my sunshmina. They weren’t coming. They thought it was stupid. The work force grandmother assembled wasn’t buying what I tried to sell. I guess it was a farfetched idea. I heard the screen door.