by Frankie Bow
I went back out to the bedroom, knelt down, and peered along the floor. The hard maple was smooth and flat. Even a piece of lint would be easy to see, let alone a glittering earring. I stood up, brushed off my knees, checked behind the dresser, and then pulled the comforter off the bed and shook it, listening for a reassuring clatter.
Nothing.
I checked the top drawer of the dresser to make sure I hadn’t put the jewelry away. I hadn’t. The velvet boxes were empty.
I had a clear mental image of the two earrings with the pear-shaped diamonds, and the necklace, a delicate Edwardian confection of slender ribbons set with sparkling gems. I’d taken them out this morning and polished them with baking soda until they sparkled. And then set them down. . .where?
My jewelry had been here this morning. Now it was gone.
And the only people in the house were Donnie, Davison and me.
Davison, I recalled, was in the market for baubles.
It wouldn’t be any use to accuse anyone of theft. Even if I was sure who the guilty party was (and I was sure, make no mistake), I had to play dumb and pretend I had no idea what had happened to my jewelry. According to Donnie, his wonderful son was incapable of wrongdoing.
The bathroom door opened, and Donnie emerged, a towel wrapped around his waist, a fragrant cloud of shower steam billowing out behind him.
“You look great,” he said. “I’ll be ready to go in five minutes.”
“My jewelry’s disappeared. We need to call the police.”
CHAPTER SIX
While we were waiting for the police to show up, Donnie searched the rest of the house with me. We went over the living-dining-kitchen area, the spare room next to the guest room, and the master bath. We even took the flashlight outside and examined every square inch of the lanai. The only place we didn’t look was Davison’s room.
By the time we heard the knock on the door, we’d been over the house twice. Donnie answered it. Davison hadn’t come out of his room. He was either oblivious to the whole thing or, more likely, hiding out and hoping no one suspected him of nicking my jewelry.
The uniformed police officer came in and introduced himself as Andy De Silva. He already seemed to know Donnie. Of course just about everyone in Mahina knew the owner and founder of Donnie’s Drive-Inn. Officer De Silva would have been difficult to describe to a police sketch artist. Mid-thirties to early forties, I guessed. Brown hair, beaky features, weak chin, generally unmemorable. He’d make a terrific spy. He could walk right by you, and you’d forget him immediately.
The three of us sat down on the couch, and Officer De Silva pulled out a tiny notebook. I was surprised he didn’t have something digital.
“Shouldn’t Davison be here?” I asked.
“Davison?” Donnie frowned. “He doesn’t know anything about this.”
“Donnie, I think Officer De Silva wanted to talk with everyone in the house.”
“Davison’s here?” De Silva said. “He might have seen something. You never know. I’ll ask him if he knows anything about it.”
Donnie went to get Davison from his room. When Davison emerged, he still wore the same outfit he’d had on earlier: cutoff sweats and a tank top. One side of his face was creased from where he’d been sleeping on it. No slumber-robbing pangs of conscience for him. As soon as he spotted the uniformed officer, he stood up straight and switched into suckup mode.
“Good evening, Officer De Silva. How may I help you?”
“Some jewelry is missing from your parents’ bedroom. Did you see or notice anything unusual?”
“What? Molly, your jewelry is missing?”
“Yes, Davison. My platinum earrings and necklace. The set your father gave me. Have you seen them, by any chance?”
“No, I didn’t see anything. My apologies, Officer. I wish I could be more helpful.”
Officer De Silva nodded. “Okay. Thanks for your help.”
Davison turned around and sauntered back to his room.
“Aren’t you going to ask him anything else?” I entreated De Silva. “How did he know it was my jewelry that was missing?”
“Molly,” Donnie said. “You’re the only one in this house who wears jewelry.”
It was true. Davison had gone through a pirate earring phase, and then an ear gauge phase, but since he’d been attending the military academy, he’d been letting the holes close up.
“Officer De Silva, maybe you should search his room.” I avoided making eye contact with Donnie, who was trying to give me a look. “I’m suggesting looking in Davison’s room because it’s the only place we haven’t tried yet.”
De Silva made a note.
“Do you have any kind of housekeeping or cleaning service? Or anyone else who has a key to your house?”
“We do,” Donnie said. “It’s the same service I’ve used for the last fifteen years. I’ve never had any problem with them.”
“And just to clarify, sorry to interrupt, Donnie, the cleaners weren’t here today. I remember polishing the necklace and earrings just this morning.”
“Do you have a house alarm?” Officer De Silva asked. I exchanged a glance with Donnie.
“No,” I said. “We’ve talked about it, but what we’ve heard from other people about the number of false alarms, we didn’t think it was worth the trouble.”
“Usually in cases like this, it’s rare to recover the items.” De Silva stood up.
“Is there anything we can do?” I asked. Besides rifling through my stepson’s belongings the minute he’s out of the house, of course.
“Not really. Wait a week and see if it turns up. If not, report it to your insurance company. Maybe you could check the local pawnshops, but you probably won’t have much luck. Someone steals something, they’re not gonna try sell it in the same neighborhood where someone could recognize it. These people who come through and buy gold. It’s where the stuff usually ends up.”
“The ones with the big ads in the newspaper?” I asked.
“Those are the ones. The stolen goods usually end up off island pretty quick. So, how’s Gloria doing? You hear from her lately?”
We were done with trying to solve a theft, apparently, and had moved on to small talk.
“She’s fine. Her business is doing well.”
“That’s good.” Andy De Silva seemed like he didn’t want to leave yet. “She ever come back to Mahina?”
“I don’t think she has any travel plans in the near future.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, next time you talk to her, give her my love.”
“Will do.”
Donnie stood up. Not wanting to be the only one left sitting, I followed suit.
“Take care of yourself.”
“Thank you, Officer,” I added as De Silva clomped down the wooden steps of our front lanai.
“Oh, Mrs. Gonsalves,” Andy called back as he opened the driver’s side door of his police cruiser. “See you Monday, ah?”
It took me a few seconds to register that “Mrs. Gonsalves” meant me.
“I’m sorry. What’s Monday?”
But he was already driving away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“See me Monday?” I asked Donnie. “What was that about?”
Donnie shrugged and closed the door.
“I feel like I’m the only person in Mahina who’s never met your sister.”
“She doesn’t get back to Hawai`i very often. She and her husband are running their own business on the mainland. It’s hard for them to get away.”
“Well, I hope I get a chance to meet her someday. Oof, what an adventure. Officer De Silva seems nice, anyway.”
“He’s personable.”
“Donnie, you know what sounds good right now? A nice glass of wine.”
He nodded, went to the kitchen, and took down two wine glasses from the cupboard. Donnie’s stemware collection was a far cry from the repurposed furikake cups I’d used during my single days.
“Sangiovese?” He pulled a
bottle from the mini-cellar, a knee-high wine storage and cooling gizmo, which looked like a dorm fridge. Before Donnie had moved in with me, my preferred wine storage method had been to stack the boxes in the pantry.
“Sangiovese sounds delightful, thanks.”
I sank onto the couch, the reasonably priced black leather one I’d bought at Balusteros World of Furniture when I first moved to Mahina. One of these days we’d get something nicer, but the couch had held up pretty well, and it was easy to clean. Even red-wine spills wiped off without leaving a trace.
“What kind of business does your sister have?” I took the glass from Donnie as he sat down next to me.
“It’s a health spa.”
“And she’s in Palo Alto, isn’t she?”
“Los Gatos.”
“I wish I knew more about your family. I’ve barely even talked to your sister on the phone.”
“You’ll meet her one day, I’m sure.”
“That’d be nice.” I pulled a coaster off the stack and set down my empty wine glass. “Should we still go to the dinner? Or is it too late now?”
“I think we’ve already missed dinner. By the time we get down there, they’ll be wrapping it up.”
“Well, at least you got to see me all dressed up.” I smoothed my silver silk palazzo pants and straightened my collar. “Even if I didn’t have my beautiful platinum parure to set it off.”
“You look beautiful.” Donnie stroked my hair. “I can still take you to out dinner if you want.”
“It’s nice of you to offer, but it’s late now. Everything’s closed. Even the Drive-Inn is closed by now, isn’t it?”
“I think Chang’s Pizza Pagoda is still open.” Donnie was volunteering to line the pockets of one of his main competitors, just so I wouldn’t be disappointed.
“No, it’s okay. What if someone sees us out when we were supposed to be at the Chamber of Commerce thing? It wouldn’t look right.”
“Good point. I’ll throw something together for us. How about pasta?”
“Sounds great. Are you sure?” I was so hungry even the Maritime Club’s iceberg lettuce and bleu cheese dinner salad seemed tantalizing.
“Very sure.” Donnie gave me a quick kiss on the forehead and went into the kitchen.
“Davison,” he called in the direction of the guest room. “You want something to eat?”
Davison emerged, wearing long pants and a dark blue hoodie. “Nah. I’m gonna go out.”
“You need to borrow the car?” Donnie asked.
“You’re going out now?” I said. “Where’s there to go in Mahina? Everything’s closed.”
“No need. I got a friend coming by.”
Off to fence my stolen jewelry, no doubt. There was nothing I could do about it, unless I wanted to tackle Davison on his way out and try patting him down.
“Why don’t you stay and have a bite before you go?” I asked sweetly.
“Nah. You guys’ll have plenty more chances to feed me. No worries.”
Davison strolled out the front door and disappeared into the dark.
“Aren’t you worried about him?” I asked Donnie. “Going out in the middle of the night by himself?”
“Molly, it’s nice of you to want to mother him, but he is a grown man.”
Donnie disappeared into the pantry and emerged with some dried pasta and an armful of jars. Garlic and fresh tomatoes materialized, and within minutes, the kitchen smelled better than any restaurant in Mahina. I carried our wineglasses to the counter and hitched myself up onto a barstool to watch Donnie work his culinary magic.
“Don’t worry about the jewelry.” Donnie pulled down various pots, pans and bowls and assembled them around the stove. “If it doesn’t turn up, I’ll find you a replacement.”
“But you said it was irreplaceable.”
“Unique, not irreplaceable. Only people are irreplaceable.” He filled a pot with water and set it on the stove. Then he got out a cutting board and started whacking cloves of garlic with a broad knife blade to pop off the skins.
“Do you really think my jewelry’s going to ‘turn up’? You don’t think someone took it, then?”
“You have been known to misplace things.” Donnie lit the gas stove with a “whoomp.” I was still getting used to having an open flame inside the house. Donnie had installed a propane stove to replace my electric range, not something one undertook lightly. The island was made of cooled lava, which was hard to dig through. Active volcanoes kept the ground in constant motion. The underground gas lines so common on the mainland would be impractical and dangerous in Hawai`i. For Donnie, cooking over a flame instead of an electric coil was worth the trouble of installing a propane stove and getting the tanks refilled.
“I looked all over the bedroom, Donnie. I know my earrings and necklace didn’t fall behind the dresser or onto the floor. I would’ve seen them. And why do you say I misplace things?”
“Don’t you remember the time I found your shoe boxes in your oven? I still can’t figure out how those got in there. You must’ve been pretty distracted that day.”
“Good point.”
Before Donnie and I were married, I used my oven for overflow shoe storage. I’d never told him. It would have made me seem frivolous.
“Well, here we are.” Donnie turned around and grinned. “It wasn’t exactly the evening we expected, but we might as well make the most of it.”
“The most of it? Sure.” I wondered whether Davison was planning to sell my jewelry outright, or drop it in the mail to Sherry. Unless Sherry was on the island, and he was meeting her now. . .
“. . .so why not celebrate?” Donnie continued.
“Celebrate?”
“Life is good. I have a beautiful wife. You have the summer off, and we have our son visiting. It’s nice to have the whole family together, isn’t it?”
I resisted the urge to make the obvious “two out of three” comment. “I’ll take the compliment. But I don’t exactly have the summer off. I have to turn a data file and a two-sentence abstract into a full-blown book chapter.”
“Do you have to? You’re not getting paid for the summer.” Donnie brought the bottle of Sangiovese over to the counter, sat down next to me, and refilled our glasses.
“True, I’m not getting paid for the summer. But with my teaching load, summer is the only time to get my research done. So basically, I have twelve months’ worth of work do to, but I only get paid for nine. I’m not complaining. It’s still a good job. And I’m grateful I have tenure. Which, by the way, is not a guaranteed job for life.”
Donnie set down his glass.
“I know. It just means they can’t fire you without making up a reason first. So have you thought any more about our, you know, discussion?”
“Discussion? Oh. The baby discussion.”
“How do you feel about it?” Donnie asked
“You know, I never used to understand why people wanted children. Even my parents. They went way out of their way to adopt me. I’m glad they did, of course, but I never saw myself doing the same thing. All of the research indicates people are objectively happier without children.”
“So what are you saying?” Donnie looked worried.
“Sorry. My mother always tells me I ramble. No, you know what? I do understand it now. Wanting a baby.”
“Really?” Donnie took my hand and squeezed it gently.
In that moment, he wasn’t the confident entrepreneur I knew. He was a supplicant, approaching me as if I were some sacred, forbidden temple. And bloody well right, too, as I was going to be the one doing all of the heavy lifting in this enterprise.
“Yes. I know it sounds kind of corny, but it’s like you and I have all of this love for each other, and there’s so much of it we almost need another little person here to help soak it all up. Kind of like when you have sauce left on your plate and you need more bread. Sorry, that’s not a very good analogy. I must be really hungry.”
“Sauce!” Donnie ju
mped up and ran to the stove, where the pot was starting to boil over.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Donnie had left for work by the time I woke up. A rectangle of hot sunshine lay across the white bedding. Despite a lingering headache and the memory of my missing jewelry, I felt pretty good. Donnie and I had enjoyed a nice dinner a deux the night before, and now I had the whole day in front of me. I planned to be productive enough to make up for yesterday.
I started by rearranging my workspace. I tried out various layouts of mouse pad, keyboard, and pencil cup. When I had attained a satisfactory configuration, I started up the computer. The library login was slow, so I went to the kitchen for a coffee refill. I finished logging in, finished my coffee, went to the bathroom, got a third cup of coffee, and checked my email. I was about to get to work on the book chapter when I heard a vehicle outside the house.
I pulled the curtain aside in time to see the mail truck pulling away. I knew I should close the curtain and get back to work. Time management experts advise ignoring both physical mail and email until after lunchtime. The problem was I didn’t want to wait.
Working at home sounds like heaven to people who have never done it. Imagine rolling into the “office” in your pajamas, your only commute the distance from the coffee machine to the computer. Unfortunately, it gets lonely and boring pretty fast. I remember reading a study of “virtual” employees where one at-home worker reported the highlight of his day was when the mail came. Only a few days into my self-directed summer, I understood exactly what he meant.
Today’s mail contained little to get excited about: a water bill, a flyer from Chang’s Pizza Pagoda, and a thin white envelope from the Mahina Police Department. The latter was doubtless a copy of the police report. Had there been any good news about my stolen jewelry, they’d have called. I stuck the envelope from Mahina PD in the bill box. I’d send it along to our insurance company later. The Chang’s Pizza Pagoda flyer went into the trash.
I knew I should get to work on my book chapter, but as long as I was thinking of it, maybe I’d have another look around for my missing jewelry. I had daylight and might see something I’d overlooked the night before. I took a small flashlight from the kitchen utility drawer, went back into the bedroom, and raked the light over the floor.
