I went through the door and, instead of a tinkly bell like Farrah’s, a buzzer went off to alert the proprietor to my presence. Farrah’s bell was annoying, but it was at least cheery. The buzzer had a grumpy “what do you want?” sound.
“Can I help you?” said a tiny dark-skinned woman with thinning dark hair. She hustled over to check me out and I smiled. Farrah maintained it was important to immediately greet any customers who looked suspicious. She claimed it cut down on shoplifting if she put shifty people on notice she had them in her sights.
“Mahalo, I’m here to pick up some beer and snacks,” I said. I suppose I should’ve said “buy” instead of “pick up” but I was pretty sure her beady-eyed glare wouldn’t fail to notice if I tried to sneak out a six-pack under my shirt.
The woman pointed to the refrigerator case in the back. I pulled out a six-pack of Longboard Lager. In the chips and candy aisle I loaded up on kettle chips, li hing mui-flavored peanuts and dried wasabi peas.
“Will that be all?” the woman said as I unloaded it all on the counter.
I took out my wallet and pulled out some cash. In the most casual tone I could muster I said, “Do you know if a woman named ‘Lokelani Kaula’ still lives here in Kailua-Kona? I’m from Maui and a friend of mine asked me to look her up.”
“You mean Loke?” The woman eyed me as if I’d tried to slip her a counterfeit twenty.
“Yeah, that’s right, Loke. She’d be, oh, about my age, I guess. Mid-thirties.”
“Loke isn’t a Kaula no more,” said the woman. “She marry that guy, Ray Vick. You know Ray?”
Since I’d already explained I was from Maui, I wondered why she’d think I’d know Loke’s husband but I figured it wasn’t necessary to point it out. After all, I was asking for her help.
She went on. “You may a’ heard about him. He owns the big coffee farm down the road. The place called ‘Naturally Kona.’ Ray make a lotta money from that coffee…a lotta money.” She shook her head as if the guy had unlocked the secret of spinning coffee beans into gold. But then, with organic Kona coffee selling at upwards of forty to fifty bucks a pound, it was darn close.
“He and Loke live there?”
“Yeah. They got a nice place. A real nice place.”
She rang me up and I hauled my stuff to the car. The beer was cold so I toyed with the notion of taking it back to the B & B before it got warm, but then reconsidered. We didn’t have a refrigerator in our room but there was bound to be one in the breakfast room. When I got back from the coffee farm I’d ask if they’d mind holding it for us.
“Naturally Kona” turned out to be over ten miles away, in Kealakekua. I’d used the GPS on my phone, but still I missed the turnoff from the highway and had to double back. The place was marked with a discreet wooden sign about the size of a garbage can lid. It had been nailed to a fence post at the entrance to a rutted dirt road. The road ran ma kai, or toward the ocean, from the highway. I turned down the dirt road and bumped along, feathering the brakes on the steep incline.
A minute later I was passing row after tidy row of coffee trees. The trees weren’t tall, maybe eight or ten feet at the most. They’d been trimmed to nearly perfect spheres of shiny emerald green leaves. Beneath the trees the ground was grassy, but between the rows the earth had been recently tilled, revealing dark reddish brown soil. The orchard resembled an artist’s rendering of Eden; everything healthy, tidy and vibrant. There was nary a weed or bug in sight.
I drove up and parked in the gravel lot. A hand-lettered sign that read, “Coffee Tours” pointed to a two-story building on the other side of the lot. It was a barn-like structure painted dark brown with white trim. They’d set up a covered area outside the barn with a sign designating it as the tasting room. The tasting area consisted of a corrugated roof over four long tables. The first table held four stainless-steel air pots alongside stacks of tiny white paper cups. The second table held a display of photos and artifacts showing the Kona coffee growing process. The back two tables were used to showcase a sampling of coffee-themed items for sale. No one was out there, which seemed pretty trusting to me. At the far end of the tasting area, a door marked, “Gift Shop,” led inside the barn.
I went inside.
“I’m looking for Loke Vick,” I said to a woman in back. She was putting price stickers on mugs featuring the “Naturally Kona” logo. I shot her a toothy smile. “Is she available?”
The woman took my measure, as if deciding whether I was there to serve her a subpoena or to interview her for a feature story in Coffee Talk. Seems my cheeriness won out.
“I’m Loke,” she said. “How can I help you?”
“Is there somewhere we could talk, in private?”
She glanced around the store. We were the only people in there.
“This is about as private as it gets,” she said. “A tour just went out so I’m not expecting anyone for another fifteen minutes.”
I dug Lili’s bogus birth certificate out of my beach bag purse. “I’m sorry to bring this up, but it seems you had a baby girl eighteen years ago. According to public records, she died shortly after birth. Is that correct?”
Her eyes widened as if I had come in to serve her subpoena and she’d been accused of a particularly heinous crime. She turned away.
“Again, I’m sorry,” I said. “But there’s been a development.”
She turned back. Her cheeks had reddened and her eyes were now narrowed in fury. “How dare you come in here asking a question like that? I don’t even know your name.”
Oops. Seems I’d forgotten the first rule of civility. At least introduce yourself before you go crashing into someone’s heartbreaking past.
CHAPTER 12
After I introduced myself and explained why I was there, Loke seemed to calm down a little. She led me to a back corner of the gift shop where they’d placed four cozy upholstered armchairs around an actual “coffee table” on which they’d placed an air pot of the “Coffee of the Day.” She picked up two beautiful green and blue hand-thrown stoneware mugs with “Naturally Kona” embedded in the clay and pumped coffee into them out of the pot.
“I hope you’re a coffee drinker,” she said. “That’s pretty much all we have here.”
“Mahalo,” I said. “I love coffee.” I didn’t ask for cream or sugar even though I never drink black coffee. I recalled a time when I’d requested ketchup at a fancy Honolulu steakhouse and the waiter had shot me a withering look while telling me they didn’t keep any on the premises.
“I hope it’s still hot,” she said. “I made this pot an hour ago.”
I sipped the impossibly dark liquid, preparing for the bitterness. It was surprisingly smooth. “It’s great. I’m sorry about being so abrupt earlier. I apologize if I seemed insensitive.”
“No offense taken. I just can’t believe after all this time the wound feels so fresh. You got kids?”
I shook my head. “Maybe someday.”
“Well, don’t wait too long,” she said. “Ray and I have been trying for twelve years now. Right after I lost Lili, I couldn’t imagine going through that again. But Ray was very persuasive. After a year I stopped using birth control, but it seems my body won’t cooperate. Every month that goes by it’s like losing her all over again.”
I nodded. Anything I said would probably only cement her earlier assessment of me as a tactless jerk.
“So, what can I do to help?” she said.
“I’m trying to figure out why my client has your daughter’s birth certificate,” I said. I explained the mix-up with Lili’s birth certificate and how she’d been using the wrong one all these years.
“I have no idea. You said she’s hanai? That she was raised on Maui?” Loke said.
“Yes.”
“Maybe there was a mix-up at the records office. You know, Lili was born at home but then they rushed her to the hospital as soon as the midwife determined she was having trouble breathing. I was pretty out of it, so I’m not too sure
what happened after that. Maybe Lili’s paperwork got swapped with another baby born at the same time.”
“That’s possible, but I had a friend at the Vital Records Office check on it and there’s no record of another baby girl born within a week of your daughter.”
“And you’re sure the girl you’re talking about was born here in Kona?” she said.
“According to my client, that’s what her hanai mom told her.”
“Then I can’t imagine what else could have happened.”
We sat there, me sipping the amazingly good coffee, her glancing nervously around the shop. When she sneaked a peek at her watch, I stood up. “I really need to let you get back to work,” I said. “Mahalo for your time. If you think of anything else, would you mind giving me a call?” I gave her my “Let’s Get Maui’d” business card.
She looked down at the card and her eyes got shiny. “A girl my daughter’s age is getting married? It seems impossible.”
“It will be impossible if I can’t track down her birth certificate.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea?” she said. “I mean, she’s awfully young.”
“They both are. But in my line of work I see a lot of couples. David and Lili seem to be one of those one-in-a-hundred couples you hear about who find each other early in life and it just clicks. I’m no expert but I’m betting they’ll be married forever.”
She stood. “I wish I could’ve been more help,” she said.
“I wish I could’ve been more sensitive,” I said.
She leaned in and gave me a quick hug. “No worries. You’re fine, Pali. It’s just that some things are forever. Losing a child is like a tattoo on your heart.”
***
I drove back to Kailua-Kona and found Hatch at a beachside bar. As we drove to the B & B he rattled on about how he’d met a guy at the bar who was studying for the civil service test to become a firefighter and how he’d encouraged him to go for it.
I nodded and made appropriate noises of approval, but my mind was back at “Naturally Kona.” I felt lousy about dragging up memories of Loke’s private hell in such a clumsy way.
“Do you think I’m insensitive?” I said.
“What? You?” Hatch’s brow creased. “Nah. You’re the nicest person I know. You want to see insensitive? Come down to the station some night when we’ve got a new rookie onboard. The guys spend days, weeks, coming up with stuff to torture them with. Did I ever tell you about the time the guys froze a probie’s car keys in a block of ice? When the dude’s shift was over, he couldn’t find his keys…”
He went on but I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about how my entire adult life I’d managed to avoid getting a tattoo—on my heart or anywhere else.
***
That night we went to dinner at Jackie Rey’s. The concierge at the B & B claimed it was a Kona institution, with a huge following and great food. We arrived during “aloha hour” which meant we got a few bucks off our mai tais as well as a plate of some of the freshest-tasting ahi poke I’d had in quite a while.
As we headed back to our room something popped into my head. We got inside and I took out my cell phone.
“Sorry,” I said to Hatch. “I’ll just be a minute.”
He ripped off his T-shirt and started unbuttoning his shorts. I smiled and went on, “Okay, make that thirty seconds.”
“Aloha, Loke,” I said when the caller picked up. “Sorry to bother you again so soon, but I have a question about the midwife who signed your daughter’s birth certificate.”
There was a pause and Loke said, “Now isn’t a good time for me. Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
“I’m sorry, of course. Tomorrow will be fine.”
“How about we meet at Lili’s gravesite?” she said. “I usually go there on Sunday mornings.”
It was about the last place I ever wanted to go. But after my clumsy lack of aloha earlier that afternoon and then interrupting her evening, I felt obliged to agree.
“Sure. Where’s the cemetery? And what time is good for you?”
She gave me directions and told me she normally got there early. We made plans to meet at eight o’clock at Kona Memorial Park off the Mamalahoe Highway. Hatch was sanguine about getting up so early. He’d made tentative plans to go surfing with his wanna-be firefighter friend and he said the best swells and fewest people would be right after daybreak.
As we were getting ready for bed—me in my naughty see-through nightie, Hatch in a pair of boxers featuring romping Dalmatians—he reached out and took my hand.
“I’ve been thinking about something,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“You think Farrah and Ono are happier than they were before?”
“Of course. Don’t you remember all that stuff Farrah went through last year?” I said. “And Ono—well, Ono literally wound up face down in a ditch. I’d say they’re probably both a lot happier since they found each other.”
“But how about the marriage thing? Do you think they’re glad they got married instead of just living together?”
I had an inkling where this was headed.
“I don’t know. Farrah seems over-the-moon, but that’s pretty typical of newlyweds.”
“You ever think about it?” he said. “You know, about marriage?”
We locked eyes. I loved Hatch and I knew he loved me. But for me, marriage was one of those “tattoo” things. It was for life. I wasn’t about to paint myself in a corner so I deflected the question.
“Are you kidding? I’m a wedding planner. Marriage is pretty much my life’s work.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
We enjoyed each other’s company for the next hour or so and I fell asleep a few minutes after midnight. Six-thirty a.m. would roll around long before I wanted to get up. But then, I figured no matter how long I slept I’d never be ready to visit a baby’s grave.
CHAPTER 13
Hatch leaned in and kissed me good morning. It was still dark inside the curtained room so I smelled the coffee before I realized he was holding a cup out in front of me. The room was warm and I’d kicked off all the covers.
“Rise and shine, love,” he said. “I brought you sustenance. And it’s just the way you like it—jet fuel with lots of cream and a handful of raw sugar.”
“You’re on my short-list for sainthood,” I said.
“Not so fast. From what I hear, a saint would be obliged to avert his eyes from a get-up like that.” He pointed to my filmy nightie. “Personally, I’d rather die with a smile on my face than a halo around my head.”
I pushed myself into a sitting position and took the cup. Then I remembered I’d promised Loke I’d meet her at eight. “What time is it?”
Hatch checked his watch. “Seven-twenty-two.”
I bounded out of bed, sloshing coffee onto the hardwood floor. “I need to go. Do you mind if I take the car? Oh, I forgot—you’re going surfing this morning.”
“Already went and came back. It was great. Why don’t I drive you up there?”
“I’m pretty sure Loke would rather not have an audience.”
“No worries. I’ll drop you off and you can call when you want me to pick you up.”
I swiped a wash cloth across the necessary areas and pulled a brush through my hair. One thing about spending most mornings at the Palace of Pain locker room is I’d perfected my fast track morning toilette. I could get “street legal” in less than five minutes.
We drove the Hawaii Belt Road for about three miles and then turned south onto the Mamalahoa Highway. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I guess if the Road to Hana can call itself a “highway” then this road could too. It was twisting and steep, with thick foliage hiding the small houses and coffee farms on either side of the road. Occasionally, we’d come to a more open area and if I looked ma kai, I’d see the flat horizon beyond. We were so far up in the hills the ocean looked flat, gray, and endless. If we’d been able to go as the crow
flies it probably would have taken us half the time, but this was the way the GPS lady insisted we go.
The entrance to the cemetery was on the mauka, or mountain side, of the road. The terrain there was steep and the cemetery was actually on a series of terraces above the road. We drove up to the uppermost terrace and parked. The view from there was beautiful; green lush lawn sliding like an infinity pool into the backdrop of ocean and sky. If ever there was a peaceful final resting place, this was it.
Loke was squatted down by a gravesite when we pulled up, but when she saw us she stood and started walking toward the car.
I hopped out. “I’ll make this as quick as possible,” I said to Hatch.
“No rush. It’s beautiful up here. Maybe I’ll walk around a little. Check things out.”
“It’s a cemetery, Hatch.”
“I know. But if they didn’t want people to visit, don’t you think they’d lock it up or something?”
I joined Loke and apologized for being a few minutes late. She shrugged it off.
“Sometimes I come up here just to get away,” she said. “It’s so peaceful.”
She led the way and we made small talk on our way to the gravesite. When she stopped, we were standing in front of a tiny brass marker about the size of a brick. The marker was engraved “Lili’uokalani, Most Precious One.” Even though the thirty-two letters and spaces were written in tiny letters, it took up the entire marker.
“I love it here,” Loke said with a sigh. “See? I’m going to be buried right next to her.” She pointed to a small patch of unclaimed land to the right of the marker. It was a tiny plot, maybe two feet square. No way was it even big enough to hold Loke’s less-than-a-hundred-pound body.
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