Ms America and the Offing on Oahu

by Dempsey, Diana

  I don’t try very hard to disabuse Shanelle of the notion that Mario Suave has a crush on me. Not while we’re returning to our room so I can change out of my blood-soaked dress—because Shanelle determined we were still going to the luau, macaw bite or no macaw bite—nor while we make our return trip downstairs to join the festivities already in progress.

  After all, there are sadder prospects to ponder than that of a gorgeous, successful, desirable man panting after your bones. And it’s a nice change from imagining myself crownless and incarcerated for homicide.

  There’s a large gently sloping grassy area between the hotel and the beach and that’s where the luau takes place. By now the sun is down and Party Central is illuminated by strings of white lights encircling the palm trees and the tiki torches Keola lit at sunset. The delectable aroma of roast pig fills the air. As Shanelle and I approach, we see long buffet tables covered with brightly colored sarongs and runners of fishing nets strewn with shells and sand. The tables are ready for the platters of food that will emerge soon from the kitchen. Tall baskets are scattered here and there, filled with stalks of brilliant red ginger. A band is playing Hawaiian music, complete with ukulele and slack key guitar. Slim young lovelies with wreaths of pink plumeria on their heads have begun to hula, their hips swaying under raffia grass skirts. Behind the music we hear the surf’s timeworn rhythm.

  If anything, the assembled multitude is more raucous than it was before. That’s because the mai tais are flowing and everybody’s been “lei’d.” Ha ha. Shanelle and I order libations of our own and stand back to assess the crowd. “My mother and Jason are here somewhere,” I tell her.

  “I see Trixie,” Shanelle says. “Look who she’s talking to, over there by those two leaning palm trees. Misty Delgado’s husband.”

  So she is. The husband—tall, buff, and blond—looks good dry as well as wet; the last time we saw him was poolside, when he reduced a Ventura Aerial Tours brochure to confetti.

  “Maybe Trixie can pry some useful information out of him,” I say.

  “Maybe it’s a good sign for Misty that he’s still here in Hawaii,” Shanelle adds. She starts laughing and pointing. “Look!”

  “Oh God.” One of the young hula women is trying to rope my mother into learning to hula. Hazel Przybyszewski is having none of it. She scowls and scuttles away, slapping the woman’s outstretched hand when she persists. “She’s going to slap that woman’s face next if she doesn’t give up,” I say.

  The woman soon finds a more willing pupil. Jason.

  I watch as my husband, in white pants and the silk tropical print Tommy Bahama campshirt I bought him for the islands, winks at the woman and shimmies his hips. She giggles and gestures for him to mimic the hula’s gentle sway. Which he does. Perfectly.

  Shanelle lets loose an admiring whistle.

  “He always could dance,” I tell her. Jason may have put on a few pounds since his football days, but he can still shake it when he wants to.

  The next man to grab our attention is His Highness Keola Kalakaua, clad in a sky-high headdress and Hawaiian loincloth. He positions himself next to the band and commandeers the microphone. “Aloha, ahiahi,” he croons. “That means good evening in my beloved language of Hawaiian.”

  “Oh, no,” I whisper to Shanelle. “He’s going native.”

  “Welcome to the Royal Hibiscus luau,” he goes on. “I hope you are enjoying the pupu appetizers and getting ready for the main feast.”

  My mother sidles up next to me. “Did you see what your husband did?” she hisses.

  “Hello to you, too, mom.”

  “If I were you, I’d tell that so-called hula teacher to keep her hands off what doesn’t belong to her and never did.”

  “That’s okay, mom.” I eye Jason, who’s been abandoned by the hula girl and is now standing next to Dirk Ventura. The chopper pilot is his usual dark and chiseled self. I’m more worried about his influence on my husband.

  “That’s another one.” My mother cocks her chin at Keola. “Does he even own a pair of pants? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him anything but half naked.”

  Shanelle chuckles. “That may be how he looks best, Mrs. Przybyszewski.”

  By now Keola is regaling the crowd with tales of his royal lineage. “When my ancestor King Kalakaua had his fiftieth birthday luau, a long time ago, man, he had fifteen hundred guests to feast. We don’t have so many tonight! I’m glad.”

  The crowd, pretty liquored up by this point, claps and whoops in agreement. I have a feeling it doesn’t take much.

  Keola goes on to describe the main attraction, the kalua roast pig, with whom I’m feeling a certain kinship tonight given my own prolonged bleeding episode. That poor beast has been roasting for hours in a pit dug in the sand, lying among wet banana leaves and burlap sacks. His day is not going to improve from here.

  “We have a lot of entertainment for you later under the moon,” Keola reassures us. “So relax and enjoy our native delicacies. Eat the pig, eat the poi, made from the root of the taro plant, and be sure to try the sweet potatoes, different from what you get back on the mainland, yeah.”

  My mother throws out her hands. “He can’t even talk right! Why do they give him the microphone? Royalty, my you know what.”

  My mother recovers from her agitation sufficiently to dine, and Shanelle and I need no encouragement. We spy other revelers shamelessly loading their plates, including Magnolia Flatt and Sally Anne Gibbons.

  “Sally Anne’s in kind of a party muumuu tonight,” Shanelle mutters.

  Indeed she is. Navy blue with a ruffle not only at the shoulder but also at the hem.

  “She doesn’t look drunk yet,” my mother says. “But I bet she’ll be soused later.”

  Given that our figures are going to hell in a handcart, Shanelle and I don’t even consider missing dessert. We dip into both the coconut cake and the pineapple pie. I’m licking the last of the cake frosting off my fork when a loud drumbeat amps up the excitement. A line of muscular Hawaiian men wearing loincloths, samurai-type headbands, and leis made of long grass run out near the band and strike fighting poses. Cheers and hollers rise from the crowd and get even more high-pitched when the posing men each brandish a baton that shoots out flames at both ends.

  “This is what they call the flame dance,” Shanelle shouts to my mom.

  My mother shrugs. “They start knife throwing, they can call it a show.”

  The action gets more frenzied by the moment. Hula-dancing hotties shake their booty, baton-wielding macho men toss their flaming wands in the air, and the drummer pounds a beat so relentless I think I’ll hear it in my head till dawn.

  Then I notice a piece of drama the luau organizers could not have scripted. Standing near the front, facing each other and shouting, are Dirk Ventura and Misty’s husband. I can’t hear what they’re saying but I can guess the topic is the hot tamale Misty Delgado. In short order the shouting match escalates. I watch as Misty’s husband jabs a finger in Ventura’s chest. Then Ventura goes one further and with both hands pushes Misty’s husband in the chest. He stumbles backward a few feet but then recovers his footing and races forward to punch Dirk Ventura smack in the nose.

  Ventura flies backward, tripping as he goes. He lands flat on his rump but he’s not the only casualty of the punch. On his way down he topples one of the flame-throwing dancers in mid throw.

  “Oh, no,” I breathe.

  Oh, yes. Because the flame dancer, eyes wide in panic, careens sideways and watches helplessly as his fiery baton goes seriously awry. There’s no way he can catch it. Nobody can. It’s loose and spinning and it will go where it may.

  Which is right into Sally Anne Gibbons. Shanelle and I aren’t the only ones screaming when the baton hits her corpulent self and sets her muumuu on fire. I watch in horror as Sally Anne staggers, her mouth open in a petrified yowl and her arms rising pitifully in the air. But who rushes to the rescue but Jason.

  Quick as a flash he barrels int
o her and gets her horizontal on the grass. Then he whips his new Tommy Bahama campshirt up over his head and uses it to smother the flames.

  It’s over in seconds. I’m damn impressed. Everyone else seemed paralyzed—including me—but in the heat of the moment, literally, my husband had the wherewithal to leap to the rescue and save Sally Anne from what might have been a terrible burn. As it is, she has got to be suffering. This makes my macaw bite look like a paper cut.

  I ram forward through the stunned crowd like a woman possessed. I get to the front just in time to see Sally Anne raise her head, stare into the eyes of my half-naked husband hovering above her, and faint dead away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Island time or no island time, it’s only a few minutes before sirens announce the arrival of the ambulance come to transport Sally Anne Gibbons to the hospital. I watch as Jason, shirtless now, accepts praise and back slaps from all comers. He does it nicely, too, repeatedly declaring it was nothing and anybody would have done the same thing and he was only glad he could help.

  It’s clear, though, that nobody did do the same thing. It was Jason who came through.

  I take my place in the Shake The Hero’s Hand line and eventually work my way to the front. I hug my husband. “That was fabulous. You were really a hero tonight.”

  “Hero, huh?” He winks at me. “That should be good for something.”

  I give him a playful slap on his naked pecs.

  “Sorry about ruining that shirt,” he says. “You bought that special for this trip and it was expensive.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We can always get another one.”

  “You saw that woman went and fainted when she saw me?”

  “You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  We get separated as a new gaggle of fans, female and tipsy, shoves closer to fawn over Jason. He grins at me as I step away.

  I look around. It’s pretty clear the party’s over. Nothing like serious bodily injury to someone other than the kalua pig to bring a luau to a swift conclusion. By now the crowd has thinned to but a few.

  My mom is one of the lingerers. I find her next to me. “So your husband is finally good for something,” she says.

  “Mom, that’s not nice. He really helped Sally Anne.”

  Then she notices the mini condom on my finger. It takes a while to calm her down from the story of that incident. I don’t tell her somebody pushed me. She’d freak out and decide I’m next to go the way of Tiffany Amber. It sure does seem as if somebody doesn’t like my investigating, somebody besides Detective Momoa, and they are warning me. Okay, maybe threatening me. And it’s probably the murderer doing it.

  I’m full of secrets at the moment, I realize. It’s a full-time job keeping track of who knows what about my life right now. Who knows Oahu PD has me under the microscope for Tiffany’s murder? Who knows Sebastian Cantwell is threatening to rip the Ms. America crown off my head? Who knows I’m sort of blackmailing him to keep him from doing it? The only thing I’m clear on is that my mother and my husband don’t know about any of the three.

  Jason comes up to us a minute later and looks at my mom. “You ready to go back to the Lotus Blossom?”

  She puts her hands on her hips. “About time you asked, Mr. Big Man. By the way, did you even notice that your wife has an injury, too?”

  “Mom …”

  Jason may not have noticed my wounded finger before but I don’t blame him for that. When I’m done giving him the same censored version of the tale I just gave my mom, he eyes me and says, “How about I drive your mother back to the hotel and then come back here and you and I have a nightcap?”

  Somehow I have the idea he doesn’t just want his heroism rewarded. I wait for him in the lobby, keeping a goodly distance from Cordelia. He returns in a new shirt and a serious mood. We settle in cozy upholstered chairs in the nearly deserted lobby lounge and order Irish Coffees.

  “So tell me how you got that macaw bite,” he says.

  I feel his eyes on my face. I’m not quite sure what to say.

  “You didn’t just fall into that bird, Happy.” His face assumes an even more worried expression. “Somebody pushed you, right?”

  I won’t lie to him. “Yes.”

  “Because you’re trying to investigate how that California girl died?”

  This is the problem with someone knowing you from when you’re fifteen years old. They know you pretty darn well. I sigh. “Probably.”

  “You are, aren’t you?” he presses. “Trying to find out who killed her?”

  “I suppose. Maybe.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s dangerous. You could get seriously hurt.”

  “I’m not seriously hurt.”

  “Not yet.” He takes my hands. “Leave this to the cops.”

  “Because they know what they’re doing.”

  “Exactly. And they have guns. And aren’t working alone. And have been trained for this. And have done it before.”

  “You know, I’m not dumb—”

  “No one’s saying you’re dumb!” He’s getting exasperated. This is sort of an old argument we’re having. He leans closer, still holding my hands. “I don’t want you to get hurt. Or worse. Are you listening to me?”

  “I’m listening.” About as well as Rachel listens to me, though.

  The thing is, I’m not really worried about getting hurt. Maybe I should be, but I’m not. And this whole macaw thing just goes to show that I’m getting closer to figuring out the truth. And if I do, not only is my tiara safe on my head, but people will recognize me for something other than my looks. They’ll recognize me for my brain cells. For once.

  Jason kisses the palm of one hand, then the other, then raises those big brown eyes of his to mine. “I don’t want to go back to the Lotus Blossom,” he whispers. His breath on my face is warm.

  “We have a problem, though. Shanelle.”

  “I have this crazy idea that this hotel has other rooms. How about I go to the front desk and find out?”

  We end up in a suite, not a swanky one on the penthouse floor like Sebastian Cantwell’s but nevertheless one with an actual extra room. I’ve never stayed in a hotel suite before and I know Jason hasn’t, either.

  Jason pulls two beers from the mini bar and we go sit on the balcony. The suite has an ocean view. From far away, as the night lengthens, I hear the tinkle of glass against glass and snippets of laughter and conversation. And always the ocean. I even feel its salt kiss on my cheek.

  You can guess how Jason and I end the evening. We’re not exactly teenagers again, but for a few hours at least, we might as well be.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  In the morning, another first for this trip: room-service breakfast. Jason and I return to the balcony, both in the fuzzy hotel robes, and consume bacon, eggs, and sourdough toast with strawberry jam while watching far-away boats ply the ocean waters and nearby surfers ride the waves. We even catch sight of dolphins swimming, their smooth silvery bodies cresting the surface of the sea.

  “Is it my imagination,” I ask, “or is this the best coffee you’ve ever had in your life?”

  He sips his. “What do they call it? Kona?”

  “I think so.” I set down my cup in its saucer. “So have you been thinking about the pit school thing at all?”

  “Not really.”

  “So even though you could go now, you don’t really want to?”

  He looks at me. “Do you need a new project now that you’ve won the pageant? And that’s getting me to go to pit school?”

  I’m a little hurt. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

  “I just know you, Happy.” He laughs. “You always want something to work on.” He spreads jam on a fresh piece of toast. “I don’t mind, it’s how you are, but you know, I’m happy now. I don’t think I’ll be any happier if I go to pit school.”

  I guess he and I are different that way. Once I get one th
ing accomplished, I’m ready to tackle another. “I guess you’re right. I don’t want to be a nag about it.”

  “Good. And so you know, it’s not like I’m not thinking about it. I’m just not ready to pull the trigger.” He finishes his toast, wipes his mouth, then bounds out of his chair. “I’m going to hop in the shower and then it’s off to Best Buy.”

  “Flat-screens again?”

  He nods. “I’ve almost decided which one I want.”

  An hour or so later, when Jason and I have left the fantasy of our Oahu suite behind, I dress, put a fresh bandage on my memento from Cordelia, and prepare to continue my investigation. After all, what did I tell Jason the night before? That I’d listen to him. I didn’t say I’d do what he asked.

  With that reasoning, the sort my teenager would be proud of, I go down to the front desk to ask them to put a call through to Sally Anne Gibbons’ room.

  The pretty young woman at Reception shakes her head. “She’s not in her room, Ms. Pennington. We found out this morning that she hasn’t been released yet from the hospital.”

  “Oh no! Is she all right?”

  “We were told she’s fine but to be on the safe side the doctors kept her overnight for observation.”

  I get the directions for the hospital and stop off at the hotel café first to pick up a coffee and a muffin for Sally Anne.

  “You want me to make you your breakfast drink?” the girl at the counter asks me.

  “I’ll take it later, thanks.” Maybe I’ll have it for lunch. I’ve been eating so much high-fat food lately, it wouldn’t hurt to make my midday meal fruit and wheat germ.

  The hospital is cheerier than most, what with the abundance of tropical plants in the main reception area and the sunlight streaming in every window. Sally Anne’s room is on the third floor. I find her not by inquiring at the nurse’s station but by homing in on the bellowing female voice I hear the second I step out of the elevator.

  She may be supine in a hospital bed with monitors attached to her body but Sally Anne is still Sally Anne. Maybe that’s why she’s in a private room. The staff couldn’t bring themselves to foist her on another ailing individual.