Bet Your Bones

by Jeanne Matthews

  A blond reporter got out on the other side of the truck and futzed with her microphone. “Get a tight shot of those signs, Perry. Zoom in on Eleanor and the ringleaders.”

  “Be careful her ugly mug doesn’t break your camera,” taunted Claude Ann.

  The other cop, a white guy with a horsy face and no neck, slung an irascible look at Claude Ann. “Please go inside the hotel, ma’am. Harsh words will only inflame the situation.”

  “Then do your job, officer. The whole bunch of ’em oughta be jailed for trespassing.”

  “All of Hawaii is our land,” came a loud voice from somewhere in the crowd. “Can’t trespass on our own land.”

  The reporter secured her mike around her neck and approached Claude Ann. “Are you a spokesperson for Uwahi Gardens? Has the Land Use Commission okayed the proposed sale?”

  “No.” Claude Ann backed away. “I mean, I don’t know about the Land Use Commission. I’m Xander Garst’s fiancée. And these people are nothin’ but bullies and hooligans.”

  “Does Mr. Garst have confidence that the Commission will grant approval?” The reporter held the mike under Claude Ann’s nose.

  “You’ll have to ask…”

  The big woman’s voice rolled over Claude Ann’s. “Dey can approve anyting. Don’t mean it’s gonna get built. Garst can’t cockaroach no more land dat belongs to Pele.”

  “You’re freakin’ nuts!” said Claude Ann, and stormed into the lobby.

  Marywave, looking curious but uncertain, scrambled out of the back seat and followed her mother inside. Dinah held back, fascinated by the confrontation and the real-life manifestation of the Pele myth in modern Honolulu. Who were these people and what had Xander Garst done to get them so worked up? For all its touristic and commercial trappings, maybe Hawaii wasn’t as tame and Christianized as she’d assumed.

  “‘Aihui!” yelled a bare-chested, angry young man, pointing straight at Dinah. “Pele gonna bust you, too.”

  Dinah was dumbfounded. What had she done? “Officer, what’s that word? What does it mean?”

  The white cop rounded on her. “It means go inside. Right now! That’s an order.”

  Well, a-LO-bloody-ha. She about-faced and stalked into the lobby, repeating the strange word to herself so she’d remember it. ‘Aihui. ‘Aihui. She’d find out what it meant.

  At the reception desk, an attractive Asian woman was apologizing profusely to Claude Ann. “The Olopana regrets this unpleasantness, Ms. Kemper. We’ve asked the police to keep the protesters farther from the entrance, but they haven’t been very effective.”

  “It’s not your fault, but this is the third time in a week.”

  “We appreciate your patience. The manager told Mr. Garst he’d file for an injunction, but Mr. Garst doesn’t want to give them any more publicity.” She handed Claude Ann an envelope. “He left you a message and he said for me to tell you that every hour he’s away from you is torture.”

  Claude Ann nudged Dinah in the ribs. “Isn’t he just the darlingest man in the world?”

  Dinah forced a smile. Judging from the hubbub outside, there was some difference of opinion.

  While the receptionist checked Dinah in, Claude Ann turned away and read her message.

  As with the plane ticket, Dinah’s hotel bill was pre-paid, so registration was a simple matter of signing her name and accepting her key card.

  Claude Ann finished reading and said, “Xan’s runnin’ late on account of business. You wanna go to your room and freshen up before dinner?”

  “In a few minutes.” Dinah surrendered her suitcase to a hovering porter. “I need to walk around a bit and unwind.”

  “Don’t snack and spoil your dinner.”

  “I won’t.” She watched as Claude Ann strode across the lobby to the elevators with Marywave scuffing along behind. When they disappeared, she crept back to the door and peeped out at the action.

  The fireworks had fizzled and the protesters were already dispersing into the shadows. Dinah felt a sense of relief for Claude Ann, but the anthropologist in her couldn’t help feeling disappointed. It wasn’t every day one had the chance to interact with pagans. The TV people had turned off the camera and the mike and stood schmoozing with the policemen. Dinah opened the glass door a crack to hear.

  “…just rumor and gossip,” said the brown-skinned cop. “Nobody alleged foul play.”

  “He’s one powerful kahuna,” said the cameraman, who looked Filipino. “That old tita’s got a lot of guts to go up against him.”

  “Isn’t she related to…?” The blond reporter caught sight of Dinah in the doorway and pursed her lips, as if evaluating her as a potential news source. The cops looked, too, and Dinah let go of the door and retreated across the marbled lobby. At the far end, there was another glass door through which she could see a terrace with tables and umbrellas. She slammed outside, crossed the terrace, and emerged onto a beautiful crescent of beach.

  There was no one on the terrace. The only sound on this side of the hotel was the peaceful whoosh of the surf. She took off her sandals, strolled down the beach, and tried to make sense of the exchange she’d overheard. If Xander was the powerful kahuna, the big woman the reporter had called Eleanor must be the tita taking a stand against him. But foul play? A housing development might be unpopular. It might be controversial or a blight on the landscape. But it could hardly be described as foul play, not by a policeman anyway. Claude Ann had said that the protesters’ chief complaint had to do with human bones on the site, but Dinah hadn’t seen any signs about that. Did this group of Native Hawaiians really believe that Xander’s development would desecrate the body of their goddess?

  Oh, for Pete’s sake. Her imagination was running away with her. Hawaiians weren’t animists who believed that spirits exist in rocks and real estate or blamed their troubles on a disgruntled goddess. However isolated the Hawaiian archipelago, it was part of the U.S. of A. “Pele” was probably just island-speak for the green movement and the protesters invoked the goddess’ name to garner media attention for their anti-development cause and exaggerated the small earthquakes as “Pele’s Revenge.”

  In front of her, silhouetted against the reddening sky, Diamond Head rose out of the sea like the fin of some gigantic fish. An article in the Hawaiian Airlines magazine said that the original Hawaiian name for the crater meant “brow of a tuna,” but British sailors seeing it from a distance thought that the crystals glistening in the lava rock were diamonds. They turned out to be common calcite, but the misnomer stuck.

  After about fifty yards, a jetty of large rocks blocked her way and she turned around and ambled back toward the hotel. It appeared to be a small, boutique affair with Mediterranean style balconies overlooking the ocean. On one side of the hotel, a flock of dolphins cavorted in their private saltwater lagoon. She paused for a few minutes to watch them and pondered Claude Ann’s remark that she wouldn’t have married Hank if Dinah hadn’t made a fool of her. It didn’t jibe with her little speech about wanting to be friends again. And it didn’t jibe with the truth.

  You’re being paranoid, she told herself. Claude Ann had been arguing with her mother. Mothers fought dirty. A woman arguing with her mother might say anything. Daughters, too. And given Marywave’s opposition to her mother’s remarriage, she might have embellished Claude Ann’s words to add to the stress. It was a secondhand remark passed on by an impudent squirt with an ulterior motive. There was no cause to make it into an omen.

  One of the dolphins swooshed out of the water and chattered at her as if inviting her to jump in and play. She laughed. He and his pals would make a charming addition to a wedding. Why couldn’t Claude Ann and Xander have been content to say their I do’s here in Honolulu at the Olopana instead of dragging the party to the Big Island to pose beside a belching volcano? Oh, well. Maybe there weren’t as many of Pele’s
rambunctious disciples on the Big Island.

  When she reached the terrace, she brushed the sand off her feet and put on her sandals. Walking back through the lobby, she noticed a corridor of shops and moseyed into a few of them to browse. They carried an array of designer scarves, pricey jade and coral jewelry in a rainbow of colors, Chinese vases, Japanese netsukes, and Louis Vuitton luggage along with a few more prosaic guest needs. She bought a tube of toothpaste, a newspaper and, on impulse, a pack of cigarettes—Sincerely Yours, menthol lights. What were a few paltry carcinogens compared to the deadly gases she’d be inhaling on the rim of that volcano?

  In the last shop, she found a book of Hawaiian history, legends, and myths and charged it to her room. That strange fray with the protesters suggested a more complicated Hawaii than the one depicted in the travel brochures. She had a feeling that molten lava wasn’t the only fire smoldering under the surface of Paradise.

  Chapter Four

  In November of 1880, Mauna Loa burst open and began discharging lava. There was no great concern during the winter, but over the spring the lava oozed closer and closer to Hilo. The forests west of town glowed red and the air was thick and acrid with smoke. By June, the fiery flow had reached the outskirts of town and real estate values plummeted. On June 26th, the flow coursed down from the streambeds above Hilo gobbling as much as five hundred feet of earth each day. Methane explosions sounded like cannon fire and the heat and glare were intense. The Christian inhabitants closed their shops and businesses and thronged the churches to beg the intercession of Jehovah. The Hawaiian inhabitants sent an urgent message to Princess Luka Ke’elikolani, a descendant of King Kamehameha I and an unreconstructed worshipper of Pele.

  Princess “Ruth” as she had been re-christened by the Western missionaries, was fifty-five years old and tipped the scales at four-hundred-and-forty pounds. Her nose had been crushed in a pitched battle with her second husband and her voice boomed like thunder. She wasn’t one to be overawed by the U.S. government, or the white man’s Jehovah, or Madame Pele’s flare-ups.

  When she came ashore in Hilo in July, Princess Ruth ordered a batch of red silk handkerchiefs, a large quantity of brandy, two roast pigs, and an unrolled taro leaf and commanded her underlings to conduct her royal personage to the edge of the flow. The horse selected to pull her carriage wasn’t up to the task and a crew of prisoners from the Hilo jail was drafted to haul her to her destination.

  When she was satisfied with her vantage point, she disembarked and directed that a luau be held on the spot. Then, chanting a sacred poem and swaying her imposing hips in a hula, she fed the taro leaf and the handkerchiefs into the flames. When these had been consumed, she smashed a bottle of brandy against the hot lava sending up a hair-singeing gust of fire. The Princess and her party drank the rest of the brandy, ate the pigs, and slept all night in the path of Pele’s progress. By morning, the lava had cooled and the goddess had retired to her mountain. Score one for Ruth, whose attitude and description called to mind the formidable woman leading the anti-Garst demonstration outside the hotel.

  Dinah closed the book, turned the no-smoking sign to the wall, and lit a Sincerely Yours. Showered and smelling of some citrusy lotion, she lay propped up on her king-sized bed in her luxurious ocean-front room thinking about Eleanor’s views on Hawaiian real estate and Xander Garst. Claude Ann had sounded perplexed by Xander’s lack of assertiveness with the protesters, even a little fearful. Did she feel she had to stand up to them because he wouldn’t, or couldn’t? She’d showed her loyalty, but Dinah didn’t think her bravado would discourage the woman who resembled Princess Ruth.

  She picked up the newspaper and glanced over the front page. The man who’d fallen into a steam vent near Ocean View on the Big Island still had not been identified and no one had come forward to report a missing person. The police were now calling it a homicide. Due to extreme decomposition of the body, fingerprints had not yet been obtained, but with advanced forensic techniques, the police expected the identity question to be resolved within the week.

  The telephone rang. Dinah picked it up and listened as Claude Ann delivered her dinner-time instructions. Dress to the hilt; wear the new earrings; don’t tell any Needmore stories no matter how hard you’re pressed; and be in the Paliuli restaurant downstairs at 9:00 sharp.

  Dinah stubbed out her cigarette, her first in nearly a month. Even the Philippine government had jumped on the health bandwagon to stamp out smoking. Once cigarettes made men look macho and women look sexy. They had bolstered men in times of war and pacified them in times of boredom, and they went so perfectly with martinis and mood music. A cigarette had once been the finale at the end of lovemaking and the final solace of men brought before a firing squad. Now smoking was just one more discredited myth. Like burning witches to prevent sorcery or taking calcium supplements to prevent osteoporosis. While she was thinking about it, she pitched her Calci-tabs, which had apparently been shown to cause heart attacks.

  She slipped into her only dress, a sleeveless black sheath with a jewel neckline and a side slit, combed her hair, and assessed her reflection in the mirror. It had been months since she spruced up to go out for a social occasion. She’d almost forgotten what she looked like in a dress. When her fieldwork on Mindanao ended, she would return to the States and rejoin civilization. Maybe she’d return to Emory and complete her graduate degree. In the meantime, this was as close to the hilt as it got. She added a tinge of lipstick, stepped into a pair of sling-back heels, and headed for the elevators.

  The Paliuli was two floors down, tucked away on the mezzanine. As she entered, torch ginger and red anthuriums and birds of paradise blazed from every nook and cranny. Xander and Claude Ann were already seated. The maitre d’ ushered her past a mural of an Edenic island scene to her host’s booth.

  Xander stood to greet her. “Dinah, mahalo for coming so far to celebrate with us. I’m delighted to meet you.”

  He was six-three at least, broad-shouldered, with a wide, rather sensual mouth and penetrating brown eyes. There was a stippling of gray at his temples, but a forelock of still-dark hair fell across his forehead, and he had been blessed with a strong, clean jaw line. He wore a brown turtleneck and a tan cashmere jacket and seemed casually at ease with himself and his place in the world. Whatever his reasons for not wanting to cross swords with the protesters, he didn’t look like a man accustomed to tiptoeing.

  Claude Ann said, “We’re expectin’ Xander’s daughter, Lyssa, and her husband, Raif, to join us in a little while so scooch in close. Marywave’s with the sitter so we can drink and cuss to our hearts’ content.”

  Dinah settled herself next to Claude Ann, who wore an asymmetrical, one-shoulder blue cocktail dress and a radiant smile.

  Xander sat back down and held up his hand to summon their server. “Claude Ann refuses to tell me a thing about Needmore, Dinah. I’m counting on you to enlighten me.”

  Dinah wanted to talk about the protesters, but she tried to contain her curiosity until after the initial pleasantries. “Needmore in the nutshell…”

  “It better be an itty-bitty nut,” warned Claude Ann.

  Dinah held up her hand. “Needmore is best known for its killingly high humidity, its speed trap, and the captivating aroma of its onion processing plant.”

  Claude Ann laughed. “Don’t forget the captivatin’ quicksand.”

  “The quicksand is metaphorical,” said Dinah.

  Xander grinned a winningly boyish grin. “I’m overjoyed that you two ladies made it out of the quicksand, real or metaphorical.”

  The waiter breezed by and took their drink order. Claude Ann wanted a champagne cocktail. Dinah ordered a dirty gin martini.

  Xander shot her an amused look and asked for the same. When the waiter had gone, he said, “Claude Ann and I are having our first fight. She thinks of you as a sister, Dinah. Will you please help me persuade he
r that I can’t possibly write my own vows?”

  “The first duty of the maid of honor is to support the bride, Xander. Whatever Claude Ann wants, I’m on her side. But why do you feel you can’t write your own vows?”

  “I’m not a poet. And the examples Claude Ann has shown me of other people’s vows are so high-sounding and sappy.”

  “That just means you’ll have to come up with something better,” said Claude Ann.

  Dinah smiled. A man who could say it was torture being away from his lover for a few extra hours had a finely nuanced concept of sappy.

  He raked his hair off his forehead. “Thirty years ago, my wife and I wanted a no-frills civil ceremony, but she was Hawaiian and her family traditional to the nth degree. They insisted on the whole nine yards of Hawaiiana and the show they put on was like something from another century. Somebody blew a conch shell to call forth the gods. There was lots of chanting and hula and some godawful potion that was supposed to be sacred to Pele that we had to drink. My wife and I exchanged maile leis and promised to make the Aloha eternal. It was the ceremony that seemed eternal. It lasted until dawn.” He nuzzled Claude Ann’s cheek. “You know that I love you, darling, but I want to keep it simple this time. I see no reason to gild the plumerias.”

  Claude Ann laughed. “The last time I married, all I had was a handful of puny, no-smell roses Mama bought at the Piggly-Wiggly Market. It was a rainy Februrary day and cold as blue flujins. The groom was dressed like an undertaker and he had to bum the weddin’ band off of my daddy’s finger. This time it’s gonna be a sunny June day with a beautiful ring and everybody lookin’ like a million bucks. I want to wallow in plumerias and have everything be perfect.”

  Xander lifted her hand and kissed it. “It will be, Claude Ann. You have my word.”

  Claude Ann rhapsodized about the absolutely divine Vera Wang gown she’d ordered and the reception she’d arranged at Xander’s house on the Big Island—caviar, Dom Pérignon and “the whole cotton-pickin’ works.” Xander appeared to take a genuine delight in her enthusiasm.