Isle Be Seeing You (Islands of Aloha Mystery Book 9)

by JoAnn Bassett

“Of course not.”

  “Then, why did you?”

  He crossed his arms. “You know why.”

  “I thought I did. Now I’m not so sure. Give me three reasons you asked me to marry you.”

  He shrugged. I felt like I was back in hostage negotiation class.

  The clock ticked but I refused to look away.

  “Um. Okay. Well, I thought you were lovely.” The Aussie accent was back, big-time. “And we have fun together. I mean, it seemed you’d be fun to grow old with.” He cleared his throat. “What’s with this cross examination? This is stupid. If we can’t be a family, what’s the point?”

  This time I got up and went around the table. I knelt at his side, but he kept his face turned away. “We are a family, Finn. We’re more than that. We’re ‘ohana. We’ve got Farrah’s kids in our lives. I’m their god-mother and you’re their favorite uncle.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I’m sorry you won’t get the chance to be a dad, ‘cuz you’d be a great one. But we have a great life and I’m going to fight for it. Go ahead with your meeting in Lahaina. But tell that lawyer of yours that getting a divorce from me won’t be a slam dunk. No way I’m going to make it easy.”

  He turned and met my gaze. Bloodshot eyes, pale cheeks and sweaty upper lip. Good. I’d have been a lot more nervous if he’d appeared calm and composed.

  “Really?”

  “’til death do us part, dude. No do-overs.”

  He went to the living room to call and cancel his meeting. As I strained to eavesdrop, it occurred to me neither of us had mentioned the word “love.”

  CHAPTER 25

  I’m pleased to report Steve would’ve considered the afternoon a proper welcome home lovefest. We spent most of it in bed. Every now and then Finn would pad to the kitchen to retrieve something from the refrigerator. He hauled back a small wheel of brie we ate with our fingers, followed by a container of almond-stuffed olives and a box of seriously under-salted crackers we used to make tiny cold cut sandwiches with greasy mortadella and dry salami from the Gadda deli.

  By five p.m. the bed looked like a high school cafeteria after a food fight. Little dabs of cheese littered the covers, along with fragrant oil smudges on the sheets and bits of cracker everywhere. I got up to use the bathroom and Finn laughed at my retreating form.

  “Check it out when you get in there. You’ve got an entire cracker stuck to your back.”

  I didn’t care about any of it. The messy bed, my tender but happy “lady parts,” or our still unresolved—or at least unspoken—decision on how we’d go forward. Nothing mattered except Finn was home and our marriage no longer in peril.

  At about six we took a shower together. It was tight in the shower-over-tub contraption in the master bath. The shower curtain kept sucking in and sticking to us as we took turns standing under the stream. Finn gently lathered me, and I returned the favor. When the hot water cooled to tepid we still didn’t get out, instead clinging to each other as if we finally became aware of how close we’d come to never enjoying this again.

  Once out of the shower we dallied, not even bothering to get dressed until I remembered Steve could come home at any moment.

  “Sorry, but I didn’t get a precise ETA from him. Hopefully he’ll call before barging in, but you never know.”

  “It’s okay. I’m pretty much over the jet lag. I think I’ll throw on some shorts and go see Ono. He must be dying to know how things went.”

  I leaned against his naked chest, suddenly possessive. “Don’t go.”

  “I’ll only be gone a few minutes.”

  “I know. But not yet, okay?”

  I leaned back to look at him and he shot me a slow smile. “Okay. But you’re asking a lot of a guy who’s just flown four thousand miles.”

  I stared into his lapis blue eyes. The whites were still bloodshot from his long flight but the color never failed to startle me. I recalled when I’d first met him and I’d wondered if he was wearing colorized contact lenses. Smiling at my originally passing him off as a vain “pretty boy” I gave him a quick kiss.

  “Ready to tell me where you’ve been bunking this past week?”

  He shrugged. “You know the line.”

  “If you tell me, you gotta kill me?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, at least I’d go in peace.” I kept the smile going for a few more seconds, then sucked in a breath. “It’s not easy staying behind. I worry, you know.”

  “Believe me, it’s no picnic for me, either.”

  “There’s life after government service. I’m living proof.”

  “And so you are.” He wrapped his solid arms around me and squeezed. “So, Ms. Private Sector, may I have your permission to take a quick trip to Pa’ia to give my regards to my worried brother?”

  “Of course.” My pulse hitched. “But don’t believe everything he says, okay?”

  He put his hands on my shoulders and stepped back as if appraising me. “Funny. That’s what he said about you.”

  ***

  Finn came back an hour later. I’d used the time to tidy up the bedroom and make myself presentable. When he pulled in I was on the front porch, in an ancient ladder-back rocker Steve had picked up at a yard sale. The inky night sported only the first twinkling of a few stars.

  “How’d it go?”

  He pulled me into a warm embrace. “About how you’d expect. What’s the deal about you getting in the middle of this witch doctor thing?”

  “It was a misunderstanding. And the guy isn’t a witch doctor. He’s a kahu. When Ono and Farrah moved into their house they forgot to get it blessed. Then Farrah started seeing a ghost in the back yard and she freaked out. I helped them hire the guy.”

  Finn plopped down in a chair next to the rocker and I resumed my seat. “I hear the dude didn’t come cheap.”

  “A thousand bucks.”

  “I also hear that not only didn’t he come cheap, he didn’t come at all.”

  I hung my head. “He finally showed up. But it was after I’d lied to Ono.”

  “Hey, you did the right thing. Maybe not the lying part, but I prob’ly would’ve done the same thing under the circumstances. But we’ve got to get on the same page with this money lending stuff, don’t you think?”

  “I know. I’m sorry about throwing away money like that. But you were gone and Farrah was so worried about the kids. I couldn’t say ‘no.’”

  “Yeah, that’s number four.”

  “What?”

  “Remember when you asked me to give you three reasons I wanted to marry you? Well, your soft heart is number four, followed by number five which is your inability to say ‘no.’”

  “I say ‘no’ all the time.”

  He grinned. “Not to me, you don’t.”

  He leaned in and gave me a soft kiss.

  I took his hand. “We’re going to get through this not having kids thing, aren’t we?”

  “I hope so. I also hope you won’t resent it when I hit middle age and want to buy a red sports car.”

  “No problem. As long as you make sure to get two sets of keys.”

  I let a few seconds of silence go by. “You know, you never said you married me because you love me.”

  He slowly turned toward me. “Right. Well, that sort of goes without saying, don’t you think?”

  “I think I need to hear it now and then.”

  “Duly noted. As do I.”

  “I love you, Finn.”

  “And I love you, Pali. But here’s the rub. I think love is a decision, not a feeling. Way after all the squishy stuff is gone, I’ll love you. Every day I’ll wake up and make the choice to love you until I draw my last breath. You can count on it. If you need me to remind you I will. But trust me, I don’t need to remind myself.”

  We watched the moon slide toward the looming bulk of Haleakala. More stars appeared, first one at a time and then clusters, like popcorn popping over an open flame. I felt enveloped
in the velvety warmth of a Maui mid-summer night.

  “You hungry?”

  “For food? No. Are you?”

  “Not really.”

  After what could’ve been as little as ten minutes or as much as half an hour, the quiet was broken by my phone chiming inside the house.

  “You need to get that?”

  “I’ll check it later.”

  Finn reached over and laid a hand on my thigh. “You want to talk about what’s going on with Doug Kanekoa? Ono caught me up on what happened and I couldn’t believe you hadn’t said anything about it.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess I’ve been so worried about our marriage blowing up, I had to set aside my feelings about Lani’s death.”

  “Is it true Doug’s the primary suspect?”

  I blew out a breath. “Yeah, at this point he’s the only suspect. But that may change. I want to show you something I found in his office.”

  ***

  I retrieved the bloody envelope from where I’d hidden it in the magazine. We sat at the kitchen table. The overhead light seemed too bright after the comforting darkness of the porch, but I wanted Finn to get the full impact of the letter’s message without having to strain to read it.

  My attempts at covering up my racing pulse and churning stomach were dashed when my hand shook as I pulled the single piece of paper from the creased and mottled envelope.

  Finn grimaced and pointed to the rust-colored spatter. “What’s that?”

  “Blood.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  I glanced at the writing, but handed it over before reading it one more time. It’d be rude to keep him waiting, and besides, I’d practically memorized the whole thing. I couldn’t keep myself from re-reading it over his shoulder, though. The note was on plain white paper, the kind you buy by the ream for a copy machine. The precise handwriting was in blue ballpoint pen.

  Ku’uipo,

  Forgive me for leaving so soon. And forgive my decision. I made it look like a break-in to make it easy on you. I can’t do this anymore. Sorry for the mess.

  I love you. I know you are mad at me, but I need your help. Don’t tell DJ and Maia what happened. I love them and don’t want them to think bad of me. I’m committing a mortal sin and I will face God for it but please don’t burden our keiki. I don’t want them to think I didn’t love them enough. Pray for me. When we got married, you promised to love and honor me forever. Please honor me now.

  Your Leilani

  Finn turned his head and looked at me. “Oh. My. God.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She killed herself?”

  My voice was thick. “Looks that way.”

  “How?”

  “It seems she shot herself.”

  “And he’s taking the fall?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what? Why’d she kill herself, or why did he confess?”

  He held up his palms. “Well, both.”

  I pulled out a chair and sat down. “Here’s my theory so far. I think Lani must’ve had some kind of medical problem. A serious medical problem. Doug mentioned she’d been regularly disappearing and then lying about it. He followed her one day and the GPS showed she went to that clinic by the hospital.”

  “The GPS? I wouldn’t think Doug’s old Jeep would have that.”

  “It doesn’t. But when I visited him in jail I—”

  “Whoa, wait right there. You went to the jail?”

  “Yeah, with James, Doug’s brother. He’s a lawyer and he’s representing him.”

  Finn shook his head as if trying to dislodge water from his ear. “Okay, okay. You need to start at the beginning. Sheesh. I leave for a few days and all hell breaks loose.”

  I filled him in, backtracking to when Doug told me he thought Lani was having an affair and his plans to secretly surveil her. I recapped how he’d acted nonchalant the next day, as if he’d changed his mind, and how on the weekend of Lani’s death they’d fought and he’d farmed the kids out to the neighbor.

  Finn crossed his arms. “Wait a sec. They had a fight? Maybe this letter is bogus. Maybe Doug killed her and concocted this letter to cover it up.”

  “Have you ever seen Sifu Doug’s handwriting?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I have. The guy can barely print. Even his signature is undecipherable.”

  “So? Maybe he had someone else write it for him.”

  “Remember that old saw about two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead? And besides, Doug would never ask someone to do something like this to save his own skin.”

  “Maybe you don’t know the guy as well as you think.”

  I bit back a harsh retort. After years of unbridled loyalty to my sifu, my go-to response was to always shield him from attack. But Finn had a point. Maybe this suicide note was part of an elaborate scheme. And I was being played.

  “I don’t know what to think. But this looks like Lani’s handwriting. And she loves her kids so much it’s understandable she wouldn’t want them to think she killed herself. You know, kids don’t get over stuff like that.”

  Finn looked at the kitchen clock. “You wanna hit the sack?”

  “You’re ready for another round?”

  He laughed. “Nah, you’re safe there. But I’m tired and I’ve got a feeling we’ll both be awake long before daybreak.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Finn was right, of course. It wasn’t so much that I woke up early as I never went to sleep in the first place. The time I spent tossing and turning became a long series of what-ifs; my mind playing various scenarios like movie trailers, complete with the booming voice of that guy who always starts by saying, “In a world where…”

  Did Lani end her own life or did she ask Doug to shoot her? Or, God forbid, had he murdered her and then fabricated the note he’d ordered me to find in his office? One place to start would be to find out which doctor’s office Lani had visited the day Doug followed her. I’d have to come up with a plan. No use going door-to-door at the clinic asking if she was a patient. Thanks to federal HIPAA laws I’d be greeted with a blank stare or a pointed finger ordering me to leave the premises.

  One small consolation was the alleged suicide note had put to rest the theory that Lani had been killed during a bungled home invasion. The note referenced Lani and Doug’s children by name, not to mention it was nearly a full page long. Not typical of a drug-addled burglar trying to cover his tracks. But had she shot herself, or convinced him to do it for her?

  As much as it pained me to admit my sifu could be so cold-blooded, I had to add a third possibility to the mix. In the heat of yet another vicious fight, had Doug shot Lani and then concocted a suicide note to cover it up? His everyday scribbling could be hiding the fact that although he’d had the same nun-based education she’d had, he’d chosen to put it behind him. Until now.

  Which led me back to my wanting to find out where she’d gone the day he followed her. I had a feeling in order to get to the bottom of the how and why Lani had died, I’d need to determine motive. If Lani’s final trip to Kahului had been to a gynecologist to be treated for a sexually-transmitted disease it’d throw a whole different light on things than if she’d been told she had a heart defect.

  Before I headed out I left a note for Finn, signed with a little heart. Okay, that’s not my usual MO, signing stuff with hearts, but I was in a mushy mood. I’d spent the last week fretting about being dumped by the man I loved so I figured a little schoolgirl sentimentality was in order.

  I drove down to my shop. I considered going next door to fill Farrah in on the latest developments but figured I wasn’t ready for it to be all over town. Farrah was always quick with a “pinkie-swear,” but she was equally quick to break it if Ono played the spouse card.

  I fiddled around at the shop until eight o’clock when I called James. Not revealing this bombshell to Doug’s lawyer was unfair, even though I was still unsure how much I w
as willing to share.

  “I finally got a chance to clean out Doug’s drawer,” I said.

  “And?”

  “I found what appears to be a suicide note.”

  “What?” He yelled so loud I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “How long have you known this?”

  “It took me a while to find it.” I mentally patted myself on the back for the quick, and relatively truthful, save.

  “But Doug sent you there almost a week ago. Don’t tell me it’s taken six days.”

  “As you know, there were complications. I didn’t see it at first, and then—”

  He cut me off. “Enough with the excuses. Where is it?”

  “I’ve got it here in my shop.”

  “Great. You find material evidence of Doug’s innocence that should’ve been turned over to me immediately, and you’re keeping it in an insecure location where it could get damaged or stolen at any moment. Tell me, Pali, are you nuts or just stupid?”

  I chose not to respond.

  “Who else has seen it?”

  “Uh, pretty much nobody.”

  He blew out a breath. “Doug trusted you. He even trusted you over me, his attorney. And now you pull a stunt like this? You better hope the court will allow the note into evidence.”

  “But Doug doesn’t want it made public.” I was already regretting my decision to bring James up to speed.

  “Too bad. My job is to defend my client. Stay right where you are, Pali. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  The phone went dead. I’m sure he was wishing we’d been talking on a landline so he could’ve slammed the receiver down with a bang.

  I hurried over to the Gadda. Farrah had put in a little business corner up front with a fax, a high-tech copier and scanner. I had an ancient copier at my shop but the note was too important to trust to last-century technology.

  I slipped in the front door and headed straight to the copier. Farrah was in back, deeply involved in “talking story” with a regular, so I hoped I’d be able to get in and out without being seen.

  No luck.

  “Hey, Pali. How you doin’?” Timo, a big local guy who worked at the Pa’ia Fish Market came in and lumbered over. He leaned in, making no attempt to conceal his effort to read over my shoulder. I’m sure he would’ve comped me a fish sandwich if I’d willingly offered to let him see the note.