Shattered Palms (Lei Crime Series)

by Neal, Toby

  She had no answers for any of those questions.

  Lei drove up to the vacation rental mansion at three p.m. Marcella met her at the dented truck, dramatic brows knit in worry and anger. “I can’t believe you! Seriously, you need your priorities adjusted!”

  Lei, hot, exhausted, and irritable, snapped at her friend.

  “What I shouldn’t have done is have a big wedding. Me and Stevens at the courthouse would have made a lot more sense.” She whisked the dress, pristine in its plastic drapery from a day ago, off the seat and handed it to Marcella. “I need a shower, just to start.”

  Lei made her way through the accusatory gauntlet of her aunt and father toward the bathroom. “I’m here on time to get ready, and I got the killer!” she exclaimed. “Can we just have a wedding already? Please!” Her voice filled with tears as she slammed the giant teak bathroom door.

  In the large glass-block shower enclosure, under a foot-wide metal showerhead raining soft water over her, she began to relax a little—but she still hadn’t heard from Stevens, and she wondered where he was. Probably at his apartment getting dressed with his brother. She pictured submitting to all the upcoming hair pulling, makeup patting, dressing, and walking down an aisle of flowers at the lush park—only to end up alone at the altar.

  Lei felt queasy thinking about it. She was drying off, looking at her pale face and wet head in the mirror hopelessly, when someone knocked at the door. “Who is it?”

  “Marcella.”

  Lei let her friend in. “Come to lecture me some more?”

  “No. I’m just worried about you. Your aunty fixed you a sandwich—said she doubted you had eaten today.” Marcella, already wearing the formfitting red sheath she’d chosen as her maid-of-honor dress, set a glass plate with a purple poi roll loaded with kalua pork on the granite counter.

  Lei pressed her hand against her stomach. “I don’t think I can eat that. That dress is tight, and I’m so nervous I feel sick.”

  Marcella put hands on her hips and gave Lei her best FBI stare. “Are you pregnant?”

  “Maybe.” Lei sat on the toilet and put her head in her hands. “I might be. I got a test, and I’ve been too scared to look at it. I decided to look at it with Stevens on the honeymoon.”

  “Oh my God. Typical Lei—stick your head in the sand and hope for the best.” Marcella’s warm voice took the sting out of the words. “Here, I’ll eat the pork. You just have the roll.” She separated the sandwich and handed Lei the roll, scooping the pork into her mouth with her perfectly manicured fingertips. “Mmm. This is so good. Your aunty is a really good cook.”

  “I know.” Lei ate the roll, swallowing the dry bread with difficulty. When she stood up, tightening the towel around her body, she felt a little better. “The worst is, I told Stevens I wanted some space a few days ago. I was feeling anxious; you know how I get. And then I postponed the wedding. Do you think he’s going to show up?”

  “He’s going to show up, because there’s a whole FBI and police department who’ll kick his ass if he doesn’t—just like they’d hunt you down if you tried to run off. But seriously, Lei, did you have to make the poor guy stress out like that? He’s wondering if you’re going to show up.”

  “So I guess I just have to get the dress on, go, and hope for the best.”

  “I can have Pono track him down if you want.”

  “No. I was the one asking for space and creating this drama. I deserve whatever happens next.”

  “Lei.” Marcella shook her head, pulling Lei’s stiff body into her arms in a hug. “It’s not about deserving anything. This is about love. Don’t you trust that he loves you?”

  Lei shut her eyes, leaned on her friend. “Yes. I know he loves me. I guess I need to prove I love him too.”

  “He’ll show up. Now, stop procrastinating, and let’s get you into that gorgeous dress.”

  Chapter 24

  Wayne Texeira wore a short-sleeved black aloha shirt in a subtle print and black pants, his version of a minister’s outfit. A slack-key and ukulele band played mellow music as they stepped out down an “aisle” of plumeria blossoms, heading toward an arbor of palm branches. They followed Tiare’s sturdy figure, clad in a red fitted muumuu, leading Keiki. The Rottweiler kept her head up and ears perked, enjoying being the center of attention, the ring pillow tied to her collar. Marcella was already at the end of the aisle in front of the palm frond arch, and she encouraged Lei with a smile.

  Michael Stevens stood directly in front of the palm frond arch.

  A wave of relief made Lei’s knees go weak.

  His piercing blue eyes were on her, alight with passion. She needn’t have worried he wouldn’t show up.

  She knew how different she must look from her normal casual style. Her hair had been coiled onto the top of her head, a haku lei of maidenhair fern and pikake circling her forehead. Ringlets framed her face and trailed down the back of her neck. Lei’s shoulders were bare and her olive-tan skin glowed with gardenia-scented coconut oil. Her mouth was colored a deep rose, her tilted brown eyes set off by silvery plum shadow. Nothing hid the freckles sprinkled across her nose. Stevens had said he loved them.

  The dress began with an ivory silk kimono-style collar, hinting at her Japanese heritage, attached to simple open netting that merged into a slender silk column. The graceful, modest shape hugged Lei’s torso all the way down to her hips, from which the skirt flowed in a double layer of tulle and silk to the grass. “You’ll look like a lily in this design,” Estelle had said. And glimpses in the mirror at the house had showed Lei that she did.

  Lei set her fingertips lightly over the tattoo of the Hawaiian Islands that twined around her father’s brown forearm. Her father’s strong, calm presence grounded her as they walked forward across the grass. Folding chairs in rows held seated guests who’d risen at the sight of her, their faces turned toward her in a sea of smiles.

  Lei could feel her heart fluttering, a trapped butterfly in the cage of the dress, as she forced her feet to move. Her father closed his warm, work-hardened hand over hers on his arm, and his wordless support helped her move forward.

  Stevens stood tall and splendid in a crisp subtly-patterned dress shirt tucked into black pants, a masculine maile lei’s glossy, deep green leaves draped regally over his shoulders. His usually tousled dark hair was cut short, showing the clean, solid lines of his head. His tanned throat worked as she drew close enough to see him swallow, his eyes a blue flame as they gazed at her.

  No, she needn’t have worried that he wouldn’t show.

  Her father took her hand and put it in Stevens’s large, long-fingered one. She turned partway and looked out at the crowd, her eyes picking out special friends: Ken Yamada, her partner from her days in the FBI, dapper in his familiar gray suit. Sophie Ang, gorgeous in a scarlet pantsuit, her smile wide and luminous. Jack Jenkins, Lei’s partner from Kaua`i, aloha-wear casual with his arm around his new wife, Anuhea. Pono and Tiare, resplendent in their wedding apparel, stood on either side of them at the front. Captain Ohale from the Big Island sat in the second row back beside a smiling Dr. Wilson, Captain Omura and her date beside them. Aunty Rosario, in a sumptuous velvet-trimmed formal muumuu, was seated in the front row with Tiare and Pono’s children on either side of her. Her grandfather Soga, his stern face suspiciously shiny, sat next to them with Lei’s smiling young protégée, Consuelo Aguilar. Stevens’s handsome brother, Jared, sat on the other side of them. The chair reserved for Stevens’s mother was empty.

  Way at the back, Lei spotted another familiar face, shaded by a dramatic hat—Stevens’s first wife, Anchara, stunning as ever. Lei felt her own eyes widen, but Anchara only smiled as they made eye contact. Stevens had said she was okay with the wedding, and her presence must mean she was. Lei felt a tiny weight she hadn’t even known she was carrying drop away.

  A host of dear friends and family, missing only a few, were all here for her and Stevens. Lei turned back and made the mistake of looking into Stevens�
�s eyes. They were so icy-bright she knew they were filled with tears.

  “I love you,” he whispered, and she felt her own eyes fill. She blinked to keep them from spilling over.

  “Dearly beloved,” Wayne Texeira began. Lei handed her simple orchid bouquet to Marcella and took Stevens’s other hand. Their voices at first halting and whispered, but gaining volume, they took turns speaking timeless promises.

  “I, Lei, take you, Michael, to be my husband, to have and to hold. For better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward, until death do us part.” Lei managed to get through the traditional words she’d chosen in some long-ago conference with Tiare. Her head felt like a balloon, way too far from her feet, but her body was suffused with an incredible feeling that pushed all the exhaustion of the last few days somewhere far away.

  “I, Michael, take you, Lei, to be my beloved wife, to have and to hold you, to honor you, to treasure you, to be at your side in sorrow and in joy, in the good times and in bad. To love and cherish you always and defend your life with mine. I promise you this from my heart, for all the days of my life.”

  She hadn’t known what he would say. He spoke boldly with no hesitation or prompting, and when Stevens took her in his arms for the first time as his wife, Lei let her eyes overflow. She sank into the possessive kiss, her arms twining around Stevens’s neck as his arms wrapped her body close.

  Lei didn’t hear the clapping, or the band, or the good-natured hooting and teasing. “Hana hou! Hana hou!”

  Marcella finally tapped her shoulder with the bouquet and brought them back to earth, and Lei shrieked as Stevens scooped her into his arms and carried her down the aisle to a roar of joyful applause.

  Chapter 25

  Lei turned away from the circular portal window that looked out across the water and twinkling lights of Kahului Harbor. “Whatever I expected for a honeymoon, it wasn’t this! I love it.” The limo had taken them from the reception party straight to the dock, where they’d drawn congratulations getting on board the ship still in their wedding clothes.

  “Duchess Cruises sent us a discount,” Stevens said, draping his maile lei over the lamp. “I just tucked the letter away for our hoped-for honeymoon. Got all kinds of touristy things planned, like diving with the manta rays. But this is only the first week. We’re going back to California to hike Yosemite next. We’ll visit your aunty and dad on the way back to Hawaii.”

  “You are so amazing.” She walked back to him and pulled his head down for a kiss. “I’m so tired from the last few days—but I can’t wait!”

  Stevens hadn’t let her change after the wedding and reception in the park, saying, “I want to take this dress off you myself.”

  “Let’s see how tired you really are,” he whispered against the curls that had further escaped from her hairdo. “Alone at last.”

  Stevens turned her away from him, and she smiled at him puzzling at the row of tiny pearl buttons. The dress’s only embellishment began at the top of the prim collar and followed the line of Lei’s spine all the way to low on her hips, where the froth of skirt began.

  “How am I going to get through all these buttons without ripping this right off you?”

  “There’s a zipper hiding in there,” Lei said, her voice gone husky. “But before you find it, I need to know something.”

  She turned, setting her hands on his arms and looking up into his eyes. “Why didn’t you call or text me in the last few days? I was so scared.”

  “I was scared too.” He took both her hands in his, stroking his thumbs across her skin. “I needed to know you’d come anyway. I needed to know you loved me—enough to take a chance on me.”

  Lei gazed into his blue, blue eyes for a long moment, reading the pain there, the longing, the love. She blinked, looked down. “There’s one more thing.”

  She walked over to her suitcase, took out the brown-paper-wrapped package. “I don’t know if there’s ever a good time for this, but I figure whatever it tells us, it might be better to start our honeymoon knowing.”

  They sat side by side on the bed, Stevens’s dark brows knit in puzzlement as she unwrapped the package. He sucked in a quick hard breath at the sight of the pregnancy test box. “Whoa.”

  “Yeah. I was too scared to look at it alone.”

  He slid a long arm around her and drew her close. “Whatever it tells us, we’re in it together.”

  She leaned her head on his shoulder and took the little wand out of the box. She pulled the plastic sections apart so the stripe of color showed. If it was blue, she was pregnant. If it was white, she wasn’t.

  The little strip was white.

  They both blew out a held breath at the same time.

  “Not pregnant,” Lei said aloud, feeling an unexpected sorrow steal her breath.

  “Not pregnant,” Stevens echoed, and she heard the same sorrow in his voice. “Well, that’s good, right?”

  “Right, of course,” Lei said, but tears obscured her vision as she slid the wand back into the box, got up, and walked it to the trash can, dropped it in.

  “We can work on reversing that result right now, you know,” he said, following her to brush a curl off her face. “I’m game if you are.”

  “No. Not ready,” Lei said. “I guess I’m more ready than I thought I was, because I never expected to feel even a little sad about it. But no, I’m on the pill and going to be more careful until we really are ready.”

  “In that case, champagne is in order, and lots of it.” Stevens went to the wet bar, already stocked with a sweating metal bucket of ice and a bottle of Dom Pérignon, accompanied by a card offering Congratulations from Duchess Cruises! “I was wondering why you didn’t drink at the reception. Chalked it up to nerves.”

  He filled her flute, careful to keep the bubbles from welling over the side.

  “Well, it’s bottoms up now,” she said. “Can’t believe I made it through the whole wedding ordeal without drinking.”

  “Ordeal? Just all the people we know from everywhere, cooped up for a day and dying to party,” Stevens said. “Even Jared.” His brother had come, bearing their mother’s transparent excuses. “Hope he enjoys Maui. He’s been saying he’d like to transfer over here.” Jared was a firefighter in Los Angeles and had complained of the severity of the fires and stress in his area.

  They wandered the two large adjoining rooms, sipping champagne and commenting on the size of the honeymoon suite with the opulent satin-covered bed and mirrored ceiling.

  Two glasses of champagne later, Lei was ready to resume where they’d left off, turning to offer her back. She’d considered telling him about the case and decided later was soon enough. “Unzip me, please.”

  Stevens sat on the edge of the king-sized bed, pulling her between his legs. He fumbled under the collar until he found the long zipper concealed under the placket of buttons. Lei turned her head to look up at the mirrored ceiling, watching him slide the zipper down by degrees, kissing his way down her spine and sucking in a breath as he came to the scrap of ivory G-string and garter belt she wore.

  “Lei! Oh my God,” he whispered, cupping her buttocks in his hands, nibbling the dimples at the base of her spine. “You know I really married you for this ass, don’t you?”

  She laughed, and turned in the puddle of silk at her feet, feeling glorious in the white demi bra, G-string, and ivory silk garter set that had been Sophie Ang’s bridal gift to her when she heard Marcella had bought Lei’s dress.

  “My friends know how to take care of us.” She pushed him in the chest so he fell backward onto the bed. “Look up and watch me take your clothes off in the mirror.”

  Even as she undid each mother-of-pearl button of his dress shirt, her head buzzing with champagne and hunger, another part of her was imagining his view of her astride him in her erotic underwear, undressing him.

  The thought was so arousing she could hardly stand it, could hardly make herself
slow down. She tried to be as torturous as she could, stroking him through his clothes, taking her time on him with tiny bites and kisses. She slid back and forth over his chest, circling her tongue over his rock-solid abs, bending and posing her body so he could see and appreciate every sensuous movement and the contrast of their bodies: his large and hard, hers slender and toned.

  His inarticulate exclamations goaded her on, leaving no doubt she was having an effect.

  Her own desire rose with spiking urgency, heat humming along her nerve endings, every movement increasing the craving that pooled in her lower abdomen.

  When she had him down to his black silk boxers, whimpering with desire, she stood back, reaching up to undo the pins anchoring the ladylike hairstyle she’d worn for the ceremony. Lei shook her hair free, a wild, curling mane around her shoulders. Turning and doing a little striptease, she slid the G-string off with a sexy shimmy, leaving on the ivory stockings and bra. She turned and slid his boxers down.

  More teasing and torturing ensued.

  Only when he finally begged, “Just kill me now and be done with it,” did she climb back onto the bed, and into his arms.

  Lei sat at the table on the tiny balcony that looked over the ocean as the cruise ship sliced through the water toward their next stop, Kaua`i. They ate fruit from a basket that had appeared in the morning outside their room. Up near the top of the ship, the equivalent of four or five stories above the water, Lei felt a little breathless at the beauty and luxury around her. She could see a whale blow off in the distance. At the bow, a pod of dolphins leaped through the water alongside them. Clouds paraded in snowy splendor alongside, and she spotted yet another whale.

  She could see the appeal of traveling this way, especially cocooned as they were in their room. The breeze was cool, tugging at her hair and ruffling the apricot silk of her robe. Stevens reached across the table holding a strawberry from the fruit basket. Lei leaned over and bit into it, brushing his fingers with her lips. “Mmm.”