Paradise, Passion, Murder

by Terry Ambrose

  “We’re grateful you’re there. You need backup. We’ve just sent a K9 cadaver unit to the Watanabe property and they went straight for that part of the garden you mentioned.”

  “Oh, man.” I didn’t want to be right. I didn’t want Takeo Watanabe or Sachi Hammond to be dead and buried.

  “Are you okay?” Kathy asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I know you’ve had a rough time, cuz. You’re doing great.”

  I blinked back tears. It sure didn’t feel like it.

  “Stand in the light,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  I walked outside and waited. I didn’t know what to do with myself. And then I saw him. That bastard Cheng-Gong Dan. He stood across the road eating an ice cream. Our gazes locked, and he stared at me. He must have recognized me from Whole Foods and took off running, dropping his cone on the ground. I bolted after him, narrowly missing getting hit by cars coming in both directions.

  Front Street on its slowest day is wall-to-wall foot traffic, but I kept up with his dark head bobbing and weaving through the pack. Thank God he was moving away from the most popular area where the people were fewer, until he reached a school.

  Something made him turn right. He almost hit a low branch of a banyan tree in the schoolyard. Kids started screaming as he stomped their bento boxes and stuck his foot in a basket of cut oranges. He tried to remove it, but kept moving, orange segments flying. I realized the kids were making adzes out of balsa wood. I’d done the same thing in my day.

  “Kids, I’m a cop. Move.”

  The kids looked at me.

  I tried to jump over a couple of them but their heads went back and forth.

  “Is he a bad man?” One of them asked as I ran.

  “Yes,” I called out.

  They picked up their half-finished weapons and with a united cry, converged on him. One of them bonked him in the head, and he went down. They kept yelling and pummeling him until I shouted, “Enough.” I straddled his body and put his arm behind his back. I didn’t even have cuffs.

  “You need zip ties?” asked the coolest woman I’d ever met.

  I nodded. “Yes, please.” I got three of the plastic ties onto Cheng-Gong Dan and kept him sitting on the ground. I called 911, requesting backup.

  The kids kept him surrounded with their wooden adzes. It made sense to me, considering our islands were once ruled under the Law of the Splintered Paddle. Their teacher looked so proud.

  Then my cousin called. “Bad news, cuz. They found them both. They’re saying the decomp is so bad they’ve probably been there about a month. They also arrested Bobby Hammond. Apparently his mistress walked in upstairs twenty minutes ago and confessed that she knew about the killings. She said Hammond killed Sachi because he was afraid she’d leave him before his green card came through. Sounds like he knew about her love affair with Watanabe.”

  “Amy Jaeger told them this?”

  “She said she couldn’t live with her conscience after she talked to you this morning. Apparently Bobby Hammond’s brother was involved in the art swindle case back east.”

  I wanted to hear more, but I had to keep a grip on Cheng-Gong Dan.

  “If only he’d painted more, none of this would have happened. What a loser.”

  “Oh, he’s a loser.” I let out a snort.

  I was grateful to hand the jerk over to Maui PD when they arrived, but of course, questions remained. I told all the kids I would personally make sure they all received commendations. I posed for photos with them and their teacher.

  “How exciting.” The teacher clapped her hands. “See, I told you making adzes would change your lives, didn’t I?”

  I left her to it, then drove off to Maui PD’s station on Honoapi‘ilani Highway and worked my way through the crush of media and the usual “concerned citizens.”

  Inside the station, I answered the detectives’ questions and contacted my cousin at HPD. I should have known. Kathy and the rest of the lab staff were at the crime scene.

  Only when I flew back to O’ahu and went to the scene myself did I learned why Bobby Hammond had been involved with the art crew. He and his cousin had been using the paintings Cheng-Gong Dan had created to ship drugs across the country.

  Somehow Bobby had remained unnamed in the ensuing trial and moved to Hawai‘i, intending to start the art forging and smuggling business all over again. A chance meeting with Watanabe intrigued him. Watanabe apparently told him of the gallery in Lāhainā and how they stole his paintings.

  According to what Amy told the police, Watanabe kept telling Bobby he couldn’t paint, then suddenly did. Bobby happened to see a painting he thought looked like his wife, and he suspected an affair. The idea drove him nuts, not because he loved Sachi, but because he still needed her.

  One thing led to another, and he connected with the owners of the gallery, who lamented their failed attempt to build some mystery and drama around the paintings. Watanabe not only threatened to call the police, but refused to paint anymore.

  Having discovered Sachi was cheating on him, Hammond came up with a cunning plan. Kill them both and replace the reluctant artist with a world-class forger who could easily copy Takeo Watanabe’s style.

  It would have worked except somehow Sachi found me.

  Nobody could understand how she contacted me a month after she died. Though I swear I spoke to her, the incoming call from her the previous night never showed up on my cell phone or the records, but the bank teller who gave her the thousand dollar notes backed up my story of going in there.

  How Sachi found me is a profound mystery already gaining popular myth in the islands, but my mom and I know what happened. I worked for ten years on cold cases in Kaua‘i. Our unit was called Ke Ahi Pio‘ole: The Fire That Never Burns Out.

  I might have left the job, but the job has not left me. I’ve had ghosts come to me before, telling me their secrets. It’s been a burden, and I realized, thanks to the beautiful Sachi, it is also my treasured gift.

  The dead seek me out. Just like our motto says, “Finding their killers, finding them justice is my life.”

  I have no idea what Bobby thought he would do when his wife failed to show up for his immigration hearing. Perhaps he planned to find a replacement. Who knows? And he refuses to say. He’d started telling people Sachi had left him only after people noticed she was missing. She was a well-loved girl, so he couldn’t have kept up the façade much longer.

  I used the money Sachi gave me to pay for her funeral expenses. My mom and I have worked hard to raise money to keep her home as a refuge for battered women, children, and their beloved companion animals.

  I feel guilty I thought I could ever walk away from those long-forgotten cases, but I have to thank the spirit of my friend Noni Kolima, who knew I would help.

  For me, it is the only way.

  I am sure at night I sometimes see Sachi and Takeo walking in the garden. I see them, and Susie does, too. And if I ever think I will forget my truth, I remind myself I am one who walks with those who have crossed the rainbow.

  I am one who knows how to help them.

  I am the one who believes in them.

  I am the one who makes sure the fire never burns out…

  A. J. Llewellyn

  A.J. Llewellyn lives in California, but dreams of living in Hawai‘i. Frequent trips to the islands, bags of Kona coffee in the fridge and a healthy collection of Hawaiian records keep her refueled.

  A.J’s passion for the islands led to writing a play about the last ruling monarch, Queen Lili‘uokalani, written from her maid’s point of view.

  AJ never lacks inspiration for writing romances. With over 200 published books, this is indeed rare. When it does happen, she surfs and hangs out with friends and animal companions.

  A.J. Llewellyn believes that love is a song best sung out l
oud.

  Find me on the web at www.ajllewellyn.com and follow me on Facebook.

  Clipped Wings: A Lei Crime Short Story

  Toby Neal

  Morning glowed through the steel wire embedded in the glass of the youth correctional facility’s high window. Consuelo Aguilar lay on her back gazing up at a Jack Canfield quote she’d written out and taped to the bottom of the bunk above her. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”

  Only today, everything she wanted was on the other side of barbed wire.

  There was no point in getting up. Lying here was probably the most comfortable she’d be all day, and if she got up, she might wake Fai. She could hear Fai’s deep, rhythmic snores. The Tongan girl was never in a good mood when she woke up.

  Consuelo could just see the waving top of an ironwood tree through the tiny window, its long, feathery needles backlit and black against the dawn sky.

  “That’s how I feel. Backlit and black,” she whispered. Consuelo rolled over and reached under the bunk for her notebook and pen. She jotted the phrase into the notebook.

  Doing so felt as vain as writing the words in sand on the beach, as if they’d blow away the minute she lifted the pen from the paper—but writing was part of her therapy. Part of her future.

  She set the notebook back down and looked up at the picture of Angel, her teacup Chihuahua, right beneath the Canfield quote. She was going to see Angel soon, when Lei Texeira, her mentor, brought the little dog to visit. It was important to remember all the things she had to live for, even if some of the most important were already gone.

  “It’s the depression talking,” Consuelo muttered. Dr. Wilson, her therapist, was always reminding her that the depression had its own voice, and fighting it began with identifying its insidious lies.

  Fai snorted and turned over, making the bed’s old metal springs squeak. “What’chu talking down deah?” she growled.

  “No`ting,” Consuelo said. Their voices held the lilt of pidgin, dialect of Hawai‘i. Fai wasn’t a friend, but at least she hadn’t been an enemy. The Tongan girl, her homemade tattoos writhing up arms and thighs, could deadlift two hundred pounds. Sometimes she liked to show off by cracking kukui nuts in the exercise yard with her bare feet.

  No one messed with Fai. Having her as a roommate had kept Consuelo out of many of the girl fights that happened on the ward.

  So what was on the other side of fear?

  Flying. Being free.

  Folding her hands under her head, Consuelo let her mind drift back to when she’d been flying, and free. For a while, she’d gone anywhere she’d wanted to. Taken anything she wanted. She hadn’t used what she’d taken for herself. She’d stolen from the rich and given it to those who needed it. She’d made a difference. For a little while, she’d been a hero.

  It sucked to lie here and remember how that had felt.

  Depression talking again. She was going to have a life, when she got out of here. Her mentors, Lei Texeira, the FBI agent who’d captured her, and Wendy Watanabe, the reporter who’d covered her case, had made sure of it. In fact, she owed them both, big-time. Wendy had raised money to hire a top-notch defense lawyer, and Lei had helped her get mental health help. Between the two of them, Consuelo was only in the correctional facility for two years.

  “You like get out of here?” Fai’s husky voice shattered her thoughts.

  “What you mean?”

  “What’chu think I mean?”

  “I don’t know.” Consuelo cautiously threw back the thin blue synthetic blanket and sheet, all that was necessary for warmth in this climate. She swung her legs out of the low bunk and peered up.

  Fai’s round brown face, her thick black hair a tangled halo, looked down at her. “We going get out of here. Early.” Fai’s dark brown eyes were hard as pebbles. “You can come.”

  Consuelo’s heart pounded heavy thuds, which filled her ears. “I’m just doing my time. I only have two years.”

  “I’ve already been here two years, and I sick of the bullshit.” Fai scowled. “I want to leave before they send me to the federal facility on the Mainland. My uncle, he goin’ set us up with IDs. My cousin, he get one boat. Taking me and Jadene to one nother island.”

  “Why’re you telling me this?” Consuelo stood up, took a few steps away from the bunk to get a better look at her roommate.

  “Because. If you come, and we get caught, we all get off easy. I not stupid.” Fai sat up, her legs dangling off the bunk. She pulled the correctional-issue plain black tee down over her loose breasts and combed back thick, bushy hair with a tattooed hand. “You get the good lawyer. I getting some insurance for Jadene and me.” Jadene, a white-trash haole girl from Kaneohe, was Fai’s current girlfriend.

  “It doesn’t work that way.” Consuelo felt her mouth go dry. “Ask my boyfriend. He got twice my time.” Her boyfriend been captured at the same time as Consuelo and was serving a much longer sentence at a facility in Utah.

  “He was over eighteen, dat’s why. You do this, you going give all those rich assholes the finger. Just like you was doing before you got caught. You get one whole movement going on the outside, I been hearing.” Fai’s eyes gleamed with excitement.

  It had been two months since Consuelo had been released from Tripler Hospital’s mental health ward and begun her sentence at Hawai‘i Youth Correctional Facility, and this was the first time Fai had indicated she knew or cared about Consuelo’s past.

  “I need to think about it. What’s the plan?” Consuelo pulled the plain black sleep tee off over her head, clipped on her bra, and zipped up her orange coverall.

  Fai jumped down from the top bunk, landing with a thump beside her. “Not telling you unless you’re in.”

  “I can’t agree until I hear the plan.” Consuelo had her back to the other girl as she stowed her sleep tee in the cheap cardboard bureau where their clothes were stored.

  Fai threw a meaty arm around Consuelo’s neck, hauling her up against her heavy, muscular body in a chokehold, with Consuelo’s head caught in the crook of Fai’s elbow. She pushed Consuelo’s head forward with her other hand as she lifted the much smaller Filipina girl off her feet, cutting off her air supply.

  Consuelo heaved and thrashed, clawing at Fai’s arm. She kicked back at Fai’s legs with her unshod feet, but the bigger girl merely grunted, twisting so Consuelo dangled off her hip. Consuelo’s flailing had no effect at all.

  “You think you’re all that,” the older girl hissed in her ear. “You nothing but a flea. I could kill you right now. And I will, if you say one word about this. You’re coming with us.”

  She flung Consuelo like a rag doll. The petite girl flew forward and hit the wall, sliding down to the floor in a gasping heap.

  Black spots gradually receded from Consuelo’s vision as she caught her breath. She pulled herself together and sat up, drawing her knees close against her chest, touching her bruised throat.

  There was nothing to be done at the moment but play along. Fai was right. She’d be dead any time the girl wanted to kill her.

  Fai turned away as if nothing had happened. She dressed in her prison orange, humming a little as she dragged a comb through her thick hair.

  Consuelo’s voice was hoarse as she said, “I guess I’m coming.”

  Consuelo kept her hands in the loose pockets of the orange coverall as she walked into the visiting area. She kept her face still so as not to reveal the dread and excitement that filled her at the call from the office that her mentor, Special Agent Lei Texeira, was here to visit, bringing her dog, Angel.

  They came every week, but due to Lei’s busy FBI work schedule, it was never a predictable day or time. Consuelo hated to admit how much she looked forward to the sight of the curly-haired agent with the warm, tilted brown eyes and smatter of freckles on her nose—but she didn’t have to hide how happy she was to s
ee Angel.

  The little Chihuahua, wearing a tiny therapy dog vest, bounced toward Consuelo, yipping with excitement. Consuelo scooped her up, ducking her head to hide the tears prickling her eyes.

  “Hey, baby,” she whispered into the dog’s sleek neck. The little animal wagged her curly tail, her whole body vibrating. She licked Consuelo’s neck, and Consuelo tossed her head back and laughed.

  “Consuelo.” Lei’s voice was a little rough. “Come here.”

  They weren’t alone in the room. Knots of girls visited with their families around the bolted-down tables. In a far corner, Fai and Jadene were twined together on one of the couches. Consuelo felt the older girl’s eyes burning a hole in her coverall as she advanced to sit on one of the metal stools beside Lei.

  Usually the agent let Consuelo play with Angel alone for a few minutes, or let the other girls who still hadn’t really warmed up to Consuelo pet the little dog. Today the agent’s gaze was intent and probing.

  “Yes?” Consuelo looked up at Lei, her heart pounding. She hadn’t decided if she was going to go along with the breakout, or if she was going to try to tell someone and get it stopped. Either choice was fraught with risk. She felt herself teetering on the brink of the hard choice as she looked into Lei’s concerned brown eyes.

  “There’s a bruise on your neck.” Lei pushed a hank of Consuelo’s glossy black hair away. “On both sides of your neck.”

  “Hey. Who’s your friend?”

  Fai’s voice came from over Consuelo’s shoulder, and she felt the Tongan’s bulk behind her. She kept her face neutral and voice flat. “This is Special Agent Lei Texeira. With the FBI.”

  “You get visits from cops?” Fai’s meaty hand rested on Consuelo’s shoulder.

  “Back up off of her.” Lei’s voice cracked with authority, and she looked coiled as a spring, though the agent hadn’t moved on the stool.

  “Introduce me.” Fai’s tone was silky as her hand loosened and slid away.