by Hester Young
“Don’t forget about Elijah,” I remind her, rising to my feet. “Put in a good word for him, would you?”
“Yeah, sure,” she says. “Whatever my good word is worth.”
twenty-six
I don’t go back to Koa House, although Rae is waiting for me. Instead, I stay on the main highway, follow it to Kanoa Drive. Sage’s information could be the game-changer I’ve been looking for. I need to know what Lise Nakagawa was doing at the restaurant that night. Was she really unloading food shipments, or was she stocking up on supplies, preparing to leave?
I have to talk to Marvel. Lise couldn’t get into Ono Place without a key, after all. Marvel must have let her in, and while the woman said nothing about Lise’s whereabouts that night, that doesn’t mean she knew nothing.
Was she in on it?
I’ve been assuming Lise made her escape with help from Jocelyn, but what if Jocelyn didn’t act alone? What if Marvel has also been covering for this girl? She and Lise were obviously close, and Marvel had zero love for Victor and Sue. Maybe all her psychic impressions about Lise’s being dead were an act, designed to throw Rae and me off the trail.
The square is nearly empty when I arrive, a row of mostly dark storefronts with only a handful of vehicles lining the road. I park beneath a streetlight, not sure how safe the area is at night, and survey the scene. Only the convenience store remains open for business, but they don’t seem busy with customers. The clerk carries a stack of old boxes outside and disposes of them in a nearby alleyway. As he opens the Dumpster, a stray cat darts out of the shadows.
Luck is on my side. Though the sign in the window says CLOSED, I can see Marvel still inside the crystal shop, sweeping. Her long gray braid sways with each stroke of her broom.
I step out of my car, weighing how exactly to approach her. Above me, the streetlight begins to buzz, a quiet hum that swells to a more sinister crackle. I look up, unnerved. What the hell is with the electricity on this island?
As if in response, the light dims to brown, then bursts white, like the flash of a camera going off. I jump back, protecting my face. When I remove my hands, the light has returned to normal. My pounding heart has not.
I bolt across the street to Marvel’s store, wondering if I’m making a mistake showing up here alone. Still, I rap on the glass window, catch her attention with a wave.
She props her broom up against the wall and lets me in with a wry smile. “I don’t suppose you’re here for a reading.” She doesn’t seem surprised to see me, but maybe surprise is not an emotion you express when you’re in the fortune-telling business.
“I know it’s late, and I’m sorry. I just . . . had a question for you.” I lick my lips, trying to find a delicate way to handle this, a way that doesn’t sound accusatory. “The night that Lise went missing, did she get the key to Ono Place from you?”
“From me?” Marvel’s face registers mild confusion. “No. She had her own copy. Why?”
“So she could come and go in the restaurant as she pleased.”
“Of course,” Marvel says. “I trusted her.”
“She went there alone sometimes, then.” I linger by the door, not wanting to stray too far from an exit. Something doesn’t feel right. Marvel, the store, or just something about this night—I can’t tell what, but something’s off.
“We spent the whole summer trying to get the space cleaned up and ready to go,” Marvel tells me. “I still had to keep an eye on the store here, so I wasn’t always available. Lise kept an eye on the contractors when I couldn’t be there. Sometimes she brought Elijah by, and he’d help out.” She stops. “Why are you asking me this?” Her shoulders have tensed, her eyes gone hyperalert, and I wonder if she feels it, too, a sense of foreboding gathering in the air like an electrical field shortly before lightning strikes.
“Bear with me, Marvel,” I say. “This might be nothing.” I swallow. “That Friday, the day after Lise disappeared . . . when you went in the restaurant, were there any signs that she had been inside?”
“I didn’t go in the next day. It was days before I went by.”
“Why’s that?”
Marvel takes a breath. “Denial, I guess? Without Lise, the restaurant started to feel so overwhelming.” Her fingers close around the folds of her long skirt. “To be honest with you, I’ve only been in there a couple times since September. My lease ends in January. I’ve just been letting it run out.”
“Okay. But when you did eventually go inside, you didn’t see any indication that Lise had been there?”
“Of course Lise had been there. She and Elijah had been setting up tables, scrubbing down the floors and counters for days. We took a food delivery in early September, too, the only order we ever made. God, it’s probably still in the freezer. I should donate it.”
The possibility of missing food strikes me as significant. If Lise’s holed up somewhere, she has to be eating. “What kind of food?”
“Oh . . . bread, I think? Soup. Maybe some cheese and deli meat in the fridge? We didn’t get lettuce or tomatoes or anything that would immediately spoil. Why?” Her voice rises in frustration. “What’s the sudden interest in my restaurant?”
I lay my cards on the table and observe her reaction. “I think Lise might have stopped by Ono Place before walking home with Elijah that night,” I explain. “It’s probably nothing. Still . . . if you wouldn’t mind me looking around . . . couldn’t hurt, right? Just being in the space—who knows, maybe I’ll feel something. Or maybe you will.”
“You’re welcome to try.” She plucks a small key ring from her pocket and examines it. “I don’t have the restaurant key with me now. Must have left it on the hook at home. I’m going to lock up for tonight, but can you come by tomorrow? Around noon?”
Tomorrow is a lot later than I’d like, given that my flight leaves from Hilo at nine p.m. But I can’t politely demand that Marvel go home and retrieve the key, not for what is admittedly a long shot.
“Sure,” I say. “I’ll be here at noon.”
Marvel turns off the store lights and locks the door behind us. It’s nearly nine o’clock now. Even the convenience store is on the verge of closing, its tired clerk tossing a few final bags of trash in the Dumpster. I know that I should leave, return to Koa House, but the strange current in the air has me on edge, convinced I’m on the brink of something important.
“The key that Lise had,” I say, following Marvel across the street to her car, “what happened to it?”
She glances at me sidelong, understandably uneasy about my chasing after her in the dark. “I don’t know,” she says. “It could be at her house somewhere. Or maybe she had it with her when . . . when something happened.”
I cross my arms. “You really don’t think she ran away?”
Marvel doesn’t speak for a moment. We stand in front of her car now, an old SUV with a rusty bumper. “I don’t know what I think anymore,” she admits at last. “Not about Lise. I try to use my gift, but when you turn it on your own life, the people you love . . . you can never be objective, can you? The feelings always throw you off.”
“But you didn’t sense anything in the restaurant,” I persist. “The few times that you’ve been back, you didn’t get any impressions.”
“Oh, that stupid restaurant!” She slaps at the door of her car suddenly. “I never want to set foot in it again. Of course I got impressions there. Tons of them. That’s the problem with the place. Too many emotions, too much noise—like a dozen bullhorns going off in my head. I have half a mind to set the place on fire and collect the insurance money.”
“Then let me do it, Marvel.” I seize the chance. “I don’t have a personal connection to her. Just give me the key. I’ll go alone.”
She shakes her head. “No. We’ll go together. I . . . I should try. I owe Lise that.” She unlocks her car door. “I’ll see you tomorrow at noon.”
I stand at the curb, watching in frustration as she drives away. Does Marvel know something? Is she just putting me off, knowing I’ll be gone soon if she delays me long enough? For all I know, she’s going straight to Lise, warning her to lie low.
My phone vibrates against my thigh with an incoming text. U coming back soon? Rae asks. U r missing pretty epic Scrabble game over here.
The constant search for cell towers has drained my battery to 11 percent. Give me an hour, I reply. Looking into something. I make a mental note to charge my phone when I get back. At least David and Thom are keeping her occupied. They’re probably much better company than I am right now. I don’t have it in me tonight, the requisite happy face for the final night of Girls’ Week. This whole trip has been a colossal failure.
My sole accomplishment was to ruin my chances at a cover story for Outdoor Adventures. Now I’ll have to slap together some fluff piece about Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, something bland and impersonal. Even worse, I ruined this week for Rae. Hawaii was our dream vacation, and instead of enjoying sunsets and gorgeous waves, I turned it into an inane crusade to find a girl who’d rather not be found. A girl who might have a perfectly valid reason to disappear. What is wrong with me?
I haven’t found Lise, haven’t made sense of the visions that sucked me into all this. Who is that guy prowling the woods and what has he done? What will he do? I have no answers. As far as I know, he’s still out there.
On the far end of the street, the bright lights of the School for Free Thought beckon. I hear the occasional laughter of students strolling around the campus, making the best of their Saturday night. Two months ago, Lise might have been one of them.
I wander along the fence that encloses the campus, searching for an entrance. Maybe I’ll run into some students, get their take on this elusive girl. A two-minute walk proves this an impossibility. The Free Thought gate is locked, a guard stationed at the entrance. Unless I check in and somehow score a visitor’s pass, I’m not about to gain access to the school or its inhabitants. Another dead end.
I sink down onto the curb, let myself wallow for a moment in the shadows. The air is moist, swollen with impatient raindrops. The humidity has brought my hair to a state of unrepentant frizz, but Tucson will cure that in a hurry. I lay my head against my knees.
I don’t know how long I sit there—ten minutes? twenty?—but at some point I become aware of movement somewhere in the square. I look up. A slim hooded figure steps out from the Dumpster area. I can’t make out much at first, just a gray sweatshirt, athletic shorts, and a knapsack slung over one shoulder, but when the figure moves beneath a streetlight, I catch a glimpse of a familiar face.
It’s Jocelyn.
Or Lise.
I know exactly where she’s going.
twenty-seven
Sure enough, the girl stops in front of Ono Place. She produces a key and quickly lets herself in. I wait for a light to go on in the building, but the windows remain dark. Whichever twin has entered the restaurant does not want to be seen.
I rise from my place in the shadows, mind racing. Is it her? Is this how Lise Nakagawa has been subsisting these last six weeks? It’s not a bad setup. Ono Place must have a refrigerator and bathroom. It has a roof to keep out rain and a constant supply of electricity—more amenities than Wakea Ranch could offer, certainly. And if anyone spotted her, she could claim to be Jocelyn. Lise couldn’t pull off a twin swap for long, but a few minutes? Who would think to doubt her?
I jog across the street. This is it. My chance for answers.
The door is still unlocked when I get there. I turn the handle and push it open, fingers groping the wall inside for a light switch. Success. The restaurant lights up, illuminating tables, chairs, a pair of ceiling fans, and, partially obscured by the countertop, a Nakagawa girl.
She’s crouched on the floor, staring in the direction of the door with the look of a frightened, half-crazed animal, her hood pulled back to reveal long, dark hair. The unzipped knapsack lies at her knees, along with a roll of garbage bags. Is she here to steal food?
“This is private property!” The girl stuffs the garbage bags back into her knapsack, frantic. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“That’s right,” I agree. “Marvel’s private property. Which means you shouldn’t be here, either.”
She fishes a key out of her sweatshirt. “I think this indicates I do have permission to be here. And a reasonable expectation of privacy. If you don’t want to face trespassing charges, you’d better leave.”
The threat of legal action immediately tips me off. This isn’t Lise that I’m dealing with.
I sit down at one of the tables, not about to let a teenage girl get the better of me. “Actually, Jocelyn, I think that key belongs to your sister. But I’d love to know how you got your hands on it.”
Jocelyn’s eyes dart around the room as she works out her options.
“Maybe Lise gave it to you?” I suggest.
“Maybe,” she says, breathing harder.
“You’re not out with Kai tonight,” I observe. “Still pissed at him for blowing your cover?”
She peers at me, jittery and poised to flee, but does not reply.
“Kai won’t keep lying for you, Jocelyn. You know that. He told me the truth, and he’ll tell the police eventually, too. They’ll come asking where you were that night, what happened, and sooner or later, you’ll have to tell them. You can’t hide her forever.”
Her body goes still. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on. You think I don’t know about this place? It’s the last place your sister was seen. I know why you’re here. I know you’re here for Lise.”
Jocelyn stands and stares at me, fish-mouthed. She’s used to being smarter than everyone else, but I’ve caught her out. There’s nothing she can say, no ready deflection she can offer, and I know then that I’m right. She and Lise must’ve planned a meeting tonight. If I’m lucky, Lise will still show, and I’ll finally get a crack at her.
“I’m not here to make things any harder on you, Jocelyn, but your mother needs to know where her daughter is,” I say. “I know you had your reasons, but you can’t carry this forever. You have to tell someone.”
All the blood has drained from Jocelyn’s face. “I can’t,” she says, not moving. “I can’t do that.”
“You’ve been sneaking around long enough,” I say. “Lying to your parents’ faces like you don’t know what’s what. At this point, wouldn’t it be easier to just come clean?”
“No.” Jocelyn’s voice has shrunk to a whimper. She covers her face. “I can’t.”
I approach her and place a hand on her shoulder. “They’ll be mad for a while, but they’ll forgive you eventually. They’re your parents, honey. Your mom and dad are always going to love you.”
Jocelyn pulls away from my touch. “Not me,” she says. “They forgive her for everything. She can slut it up with half of Puna, get drunk, get high, fail classes, run away, they don’t care. But me? I don’t get a free pass. If I’m not out there making them look good, I’m nothing.”
Jocelyn grips the counter as if she might faint, probably imagining her tarnished reputation, the legendary chewing-out she will receive. Unlawful obstruction of an investigation, providing a false statement to a police officer—I bet this girl knows every law she’s broken.
“Where is she?” I ask softly.
Jocelyn says nothing but her gaze drifts toward the kitchen door.
My heart beats a little faster. It hadn’t occurred to me that Lise was already in the building, but it makes sense. She could’ve been camping out here the whole time. I take a few steps toward the kitchen and pause. What do I say to her? How do I convince Lise that she can’t spend the rest of her life in hiding, when I don’t even know what she’s hiding from?
I lower my voice so t
hat the girl in the kitchen can’t hear me. “I need to know. Why did Lise run away? What happened?”
Jocelyn stares at me for a second and then she begins to laugh, a thin, incredulous sound. “You don’t know,” she says. “You don’t know anything. You followed me over here, but you don’t have a clue, do you?”
“I know you are a serious, responsible person who wouldn’t have helped her sister disappear without a good reason. Is she in some kind of trouble?”
“Trouble,” Jocelyn repeats. “Of course she’s in trouble. Lise’s always in trouble. And here I am again, handling it. Story of my life. When I screw up, it’s my responsibility. When she screws up, it’s still my responsibility.”
Sensing Jocelyn’s not about to clarify anything, I head for the kitchen. “I’m going to talk to her.”
Jocelyn scurries after me, babbling incoherently about the future, about her good intentions, about how wrong it all went, but I’m done with her. I want to hear it from Lise.
I flip on some lights, discover a cramped room with a stainless steel food-prep area. A few finishing touches remain incomplete. The lack of a sink leaves a conspicuous hole in the counter, and half of the drawers in the room are missing pulls. On one counter, I spot a screwdriver, screws, and half a dozen matching drawer pulls, as if the job were only recently interrupted.
“Where is she?”
In reply, Jocelyn stops outside a large metal door. Although the door has a latch for a padlock, no lock is currently in place. Jocelyn’s fingers hover above the handle, but she doesn’t grasp it. Her half-dazed eyes rest on the screwdriver and drawer pulls.
Too impatient to wait for her to snap out of it, I brush her aside and tug open the door. A blast of cool air greets me.
Inside, the light blinks on, revealing a walk-in fridge, largely empty but for a few cartons strewn around the shelves and stacks of cardboard boxes marked SOUP in the center of the floor. And there, her back pressed to the boxes so that all I can see is her dark head, sits Lise.
