Two To Mango

by Jill Marie Landis

  Little Estelle squinted at the carved face on the stool.

  “Excuse me, buddy,” she said before she parked next to her daughter’s table. She signaled Sophie to bring her another Shark’s Tooth Frenzy.

  “You really should slow down, Mother,” Big Estelle warned.

  “I was only in first gear.”

  Big Estelle sighed.

  Lillian was delightfully cowed, but her eyes were red and puffy. She wore a perplexed look behind her bejeweled glasses as she patted her cotton candy hairdo into place and then raised her hand.

  “What Lillian?” Kiki figured it was best to let her have her say so that they could move on. “What’s the matter now?”

  Lillian whispered, “I was just wondering . . . do people actually dance hula at funerals?”

  Kiki could almost forgive her. The woman still had Iowa corn silk between her teeth, which also accounted for the pink tint of her hair.

  “Yes, Lillian. People dance at funerals. Do you think I would have volunteered us if it wasn’t done?”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Right. Sorry. Now Flora, will you please call the family and tell them we’ll be there?”

  “Mitchell was a kumu. He had his own halau . . .”

  “I know he had his own hula students. I also realize he wasn’t just any kumu, he was renowned. One of the best teachers in Hawaii. But that doesn’t mean we can’t dance at the memorial as a sign of respect. Time is of the essence, though. I want us on that program before it fills up. Plenty of hula halau will come from all over the islands and probably even the mainland to pay tribute.”

  “Do you really think they’ll want us?” Suzi asked.

  Kiki thought about it for a moment.

  “Flora, tell them Kimo will donate three trays of his famous miso mahi mahi for the memorial luau.” Kiki wasn’t above bribes. Her husband Kimo wasn’t only head chef of the Tiki Goddess, but half Hawaiian, or hapa haole, depending on who you were talking to. He was as well known for his spectacular pupu platters, entrees, and island style cuisine as Louie Marshall, owner of the Tiki Goddess, was for his legendary cocktails.

  “Why wouldn’t they want you all to dance?” Little Estelle piped up from the Gad-About. “Once word gets out that Lillian was flashing her boobs at the Happy Days Care Center, they’ll all be lining up for the show.”

  2

  Call to Action

  Em Johnson emerged from the crystal clear water off Haena and paused to take in the deep blue sky and sun-kissed morning and thought, lucky I live on Kauai.

  She wrapped her long blond hair around her hand, twisted the water out, and, as the surf lapped around her calves, she looked for her beach towel. She’d left it on the sand somewhere.

  Movement drew her eye to the curved trunk of a coconut palm a few feet from the waterline where Detective Roland Sharpe was holding her aqua striped towel. Tall dark and handsome, he looked like a page out of one of the Studly Hawaiian Men calendars that tourists bought by the dozens.

  Roland was a man of few words who rarely smiled, but Em figured that might be out of self-defense since one glimpse at his rare smile could be devastating. It didn’t help that he moonlighted as a fire knife dancer, tossing flaming knives to the sensual beat of native drums at parties and luaus. The sight of him all oiled up was enough to tempt her into forgetting the vow she made when her divorce was final; she was through with men.

  Roland’s gaze skimmed her bikini. Dripping wet and self-conscious, Em picked her way around the worn coral and rocks lining the beach in front of her Uncle Louie Marshall’s cottage on the beach. It was just a coconut’s throw from the Tiki Goddess Bar. He had owned the local gathering place and watering hole since the ’70s.

  When she reached the tree, Em held out her hand, and Roland handed her the towel. She whipped it around her body and tucked in the ends.

  “Taking the morning off?” He crossed his arms across a bright aloha shirt. She tried not to stare at his biceps beneath the hems of his short sleeves.

  “Sophie came in early to set up. I’m hoping to get some office work done; pay some vendors and take care of catering bookings.”

  Leisure mornings were few and far between since she’d taken over the management of her uncle’s bar. She had no intention of staying on Kauai when she first arrived, but the island had slowly worked its magic on her. The lush green mountains with their silver ribbons of waterfalls, the sound of the surf lulling her to sleep at night, the crystal clear ocean and laid back lifestyle of perpetual summer were all too much to resist.

  She’d met Roland a few months ago when their next door neighbor’s body had been dumped in the luau pit behind the bar. He’d been assigned the case. Not only had she met Roland, but another perk of having a dead body turn up on the premises was that business had doubled overnight. Thanks to all the media coverage, the Tiki Goddess was the happening place to be, not just on the North Shore but on all of Kauai.

  “Looks like Kiki’s got her gang assembled,” Roland said. “I saw all the cars in the lot when I came in.”

  “Honing your detective skills?” Em headed across the sand toward the screened-in lanai that fronted the house. Roland followed along, the thick rubber soles of his utilitarian black shoes sinking in the soft sand. She knew he’d rather be barefoot.

  “Are they practicing?” He sounded hopeful. Everyone on the island knew the Maidens were hula challenged.

  “Kiki called an emergency meeting.” Em hadn’t paid much attention when Kiki told her why. “Something about a wardrobe malfunction. Lillian’s pareau slipped and exposed her . . .”

  “Stop.” His hand shot up to cut her off. “I don’t need to imagine any of those women naked in my head.”

  “Don’t worry. I don’t know all the details, but it’s probably not that bad. With that bunch there’s always an emergency.”

  Following island custom, Roland slipped off his shoes when he reached the bottom step. Em brushed the sand off her feet before she opened the wood framed door to the screened in lanai. He followed her inside.

  “I heard they’re dancing here every night now,” he said.

  “Thank heavens they don’t all show up. Get too many of them on the stage and it turns into a wrestling match. There’s not enough room for all of them in the front row.”

  Roland was careful not to let the screen door bang.

  Uncle Louie’s parrot, David Letterman, was in a wrought iron cage in the living room just off the lanai. The red macaw started pacing back and forth on his perch. Bobbing his head, he shrilled out a garbled, “Where’s the jigger? You wanna another jigger full, Dave?”

  Dave taste tested all of Louie’s tropical concoctions.

  “That would drive me nuts,” Roland winced. “Does that thing ever shut up?”

  “Only when he’s passed out or watching TV.”

  “Awk! Awk! This one’s a keeper, Dave!”

  “Why is he talking to himself?” Roland glanced over his shoulder. The huge cage took up one corner of the spacious living room beside a bamboo tiki bar on wheels.

  “He repeats whatever my uncle says to him.”

  Roland looked around the interior room. “I didn’t see Louie’s truck in the lot. Is he gone?”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s at a sleepover at Marilyn Lockhart’s.”

  She tried not to worry whenever her Uncle Louie stayed out all night without calling. A seventy-two-year-old shouldn’t have to check in, but since their neighbor’s murder, even though the killer was behind bars, Em liked to know when her uncle was going to pull an all-nighter with his significant other.

  “That explains the frown.” He pressed his forefinger against the crease between her brows. “I knew Kiki had a beef with her, but I didn’t think you did.”

  “Kiki
doesn’t like her because Marilyn left the Maidens for another hula group. They call her the Defector. I personally don’t have a problem with Marilyn as long as she doesn’t hurt Louie.”

  “What makes you think she would?”

  “I heard she’s a serial bride. We’ve lost count of how many husbands she’s had.” Em frowned and pressed her finger against the frown lines between her eyes. “According to Kiki, until Marilyn came along, Louie hadn’t dated a woman seriously since Auntie Irene died.”

  The former Irene Kakaulanipuakaulani Hickam, Louie’s Hawaiian wife, had been instrumental in helping Louie establish the Tiki Goddess. And though he was often broke, Louie kept the place limping along as a tribute to her memory. A life-sized portrait of Irene still graced the wall behind the stage, and every night at the end of the hula show, Louie led the crowd in a song he’d written to his late wife.

  He hadn’t changed a thing in the bar in the eleven years since Irene had been gone—which accounted for the dilapidated condition of the place. His habit of lending money to people who rarely paid him back curtailed any improvement projects. But his generosity was something Em was trying to curtail. Admittedly, without much success.

  Em added, “Kiki is more worried about the bar than Louie. She’s afraid Marilyn will get her hands on the place and turn it into an upscale restaurant. If she ever did, there goes the Maidens’ main venue for performing.”

  “Kiki’s always worried,” Roland noted.

  “So what’s up?” She didn’t mind him showing up unannounced.

  Roland smiled. “Maybe I came by just to see you.”

  “Maybe not. You’re on the clock. I saw the KPD issue cruiser in the driveway.”

  It would be great if he had come by just to see her, but he never stopped by on the county’s dime.

  They’d had an encounter on the beach one night shortly after she and the Maidens had helped solve the murder/kidnapping case. Not an encounter, actually. It was only a few long, hot kisses and some pretty determined groping on a moonlit beach and was as far as they’d gotten before she put the brakes on and told him it was too soon after her divorce for her to get involved.

  At first she thought maybe she could, but she couldn’t. And she hadn’t.

  “It’s not official business,” he insisted.

  She cinched up her towel and tried to concentrate on what he just said instead of the way his gaze kept slipping down to her towel.

  “Oh, really?”

  “I need your help.”

  She tried not to sound disappointed. “You need some catering done?”

  He could have called for that. Stuck out on the far reaches of the North Shore, the Goddess wasn’t exactly centrally located.

  “I never in a million years thought I’d be saying this after what happened the last time you all got involved, but I need help with a case.”

  “With a case?”

  “Case of rum!” David Letterman shrieked. “Unload another case of rum!”

  Em fantasized riding alongside Roland in his unmarked squad car, pulling drivers over for seat belt infractions and expired car registrations. That was as close as she wanted to get to crime solving after what happened before.

  “I need you and, unfortunately, Kiki’s bunch of coconuts.”

  “The Hula Maidens? You have to be kidding.”

  “Mostly you. But I could use them as a diversion.”

  She started to laugh, but he was wearing his stoic detective face.

  “You’re not kidding, are you?”

  “Nope,” he said.

  “You made me promise to drop the Nancy Drew act, remember? Besides, last time the Maidens tried to help you solve a murder, I ended up kidnapped. If it hadn’t been for Kiki and the girls I’d have been shark bait.” She’d never forget the way the women had come to her rescue in the nick of time.

  “I had all it figured out. I was on the way,” he reminded her.

  “They got there first, remember? I’m not a cat. I only have one life.”

  “Hear me out, okay?”

  “Do you want some coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Saltwater was pooling on the lauhala mat at her feet. “Well, I need some. And I need to change. Have you got five minutes?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Sure.”

  “Have a seat. I’ll take a quick shower and get dressed. I’ll think better after a mug of coffee.”

  “Don’t get dressed on my account.”

  “Ha ha.”

  She was back in eight minutes, showered, changed and towel drying her hair with one hand, a mug of coffee in the other. She took a sip of the dark Molokai brew.

  “Sure you don’t want some?” she asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Okay, so go ahead. What’s up?”

  “Last night a guy named Mitchell Chambers died in the taro patch behind Fit to Be Thai-ed.”

  “I heard the food is awful.”

  He shrugged. “I doubt it was the food that killed him.”

  “I’ve never heard of him. Did he live around here?”

  Roland shook his head no. “He was thirty-five, a well-known kumu hula who lived on the West Side. According to his friends, he was feeling really down after a visit to his doctor. He had congenital heart failure, and his prognosis wasn’t good. They took him out to eat in Hanalei. In the middle of the meal he started sweating profusely and was nauseous and said he wasn’t feeling well and stepped outside for some air. When he didn’t return, they went to get him and found him dead.”

  “Dead in the taro patch.”

  He nodded. “He’d been under a doctor’s care and died within twenty-four hours of an exam at the clinic. He was morbidly obese and on various heart medications. The coroner declared it a coronary, and there will be no autopsy. The family is dead set against it since the coroner deemed it unnecessary.”

  “You don’t sound sure about it.”

  “I can’t shake the feeling there was some kind of foul play involved.”

  “You think he was murdered? Why?”

  “Six weeks ago one of his female dancers, Shari Kaui, died. She was barely thirty. Same halau. What are the odds two of them would drop dead so close together?”

  “She just dropped dead?” Em snapped her fingers.

  “She suffered from an autoimmune disorder, and her symptoms were pretty severe.”

  “But you think she may have been murdered?”

  While Em waited for an answer, Roland turned to face the porch screen. Em followed his gaze. They watched the ocean roll slowly over coral worn into flat slabs in companionable silence.

  “There was no sign of foul play. Her symptoms were normal for someone with hemolytic anemia that had worsened: fatigue, dizziness, shortness of breath and eventually, heart failure. The toxicology report didn’t show anything suspicious but then again, you have to know what to test for if you’re looking something out of the ordinary in her system. I’ve got nothing but a hunch to go on,” he admitted. “But it won’t go away. It all seems too coincidental to me.”

  “That’s all you have? A hunch?”

  “My grandmother was what you’d call psychic.” His expression dared her to laugh.

  “You think you’re psychic too?” She couldn’t believe it. He was the most no-nonsense guy she’d ever met.

  “Let’s just say I’ve learned not to ignore a hunch.”

  “We don’t need any more murders up here.” Em ran her fingers through her damp hair. She sat down on the rattan sofa and curled one leg under her, drank more coffee.

  “After that last fiasco, are you sure you want the Hula Maidens involved?”

  He had to be totally desperate to even think about it.

  “I
need someone who can get close to Mitchell’s students. I don’t want the Maidens to know you’re snooping around, though. It would be great if they signed up for the hula competition that Mitchell’s halau is sponsoring so I have someone on the inside.”

  “Won’t they cancel the competition now that he’s gone?” Em could only hope. The Maidens were only loveable to those who knew them well. Most of them were as contrary as old nanny goats, not to mention too rhythmically challenged to carry off a competition hula.

  “I heard some of his dancers talking outside the morgue last night. They were all full of the-show-must-go-on and he’d-want-it-that-way kind of talk. Will you talk Kiki into it?”

  “You want me to have Kiki enter the Maidens in a hula competition and then slink around looking for a killer? They’re going to wonder what I’m doing there.”

  “They can’t know what’s up. I’d like you to blend in, work behind the scenes, just see what you can pick up.”

  “But I can’t hula.”

  “I’m willing to bet you could dance as well as they do after an hour lesson. But don’t worry, all you have to do is hang around. Help with costumes or something and keep your eyes and ears open.”

  “Be part of their entourage?”

  “Exactly. The Maidens will make a perfect diversion without trying.”

  “What about Sophie? She’s younger, tougher, and she can hula.”

  “I don’t want her in on this.”

  “Because she was your number one suspect last time?”

  “You believed that right up until the end, too. The less we broadcast it, the better. You know there’s no such thing as a secret on this island.” He got up and walked to the sofa, totally focused on her. He was the first and only man she’d been attracted to since she’d dumped her husband in a messy divorce in Orange County, California.

  She was getting warmer and not from the coffee. Em smiled up at him.

  “I’d rather work with just you,” he said.

  “Really?” He was six-two, and Em had to tip her head back to meet his serious dark eyes.

  “Really.” He was staring intently now. “But you can let Sophie in on it if you absolutely have to.”