The Green Room

by Deborah Turrell Atkinson

  “Don’t get too excited. I’m meeting Hamlin for dinner. You’ll have to entertain yourself tonight.”

  About an hour later, Storm sat on the lanai of a notable Hawai'i Kai restaurant, one of Hamlin’s and her favorites. The live entertainment, a trio Storm enjoyed, was about to begin, when Hamlin called to tell her he was going to be fifteen minutes late. He’d had a crucial phone call just as he was leaving the office and now he was stuck in rush hour traffic on Kalanianaole Highway.

  Storm didn’t mind, though. She ordered a glass of merlot and some of the restaurant’s special seared ahi sashimi and sat back in her chair. The guitarists were tuning, the sun was setting in a cranberry glow over the ocean, and a breeze ruffled her hair. She thought about the strange delivery Nahoa had received last Saturday. If someone had hoped to rattle him enough to affect his performance at the meet, they’d accomplished the opposite. No one had come near his final score.

  The restaurant wasn’t busy yet, and no one sat near her. She looked around and decided she could slip behind a potted bougainvillea to use her cell phone.

  Aunt Maile answered cheerfully, sounding as close as next door, instead of 300 miles away on the Big Island. In the background, Keali'i Reichel sang from his album Lei Hali'a. Storm pictured her aunt, playing Reichel’s soothing music and preparing supper, and she felt a pang of hali'a for the simpler, less confusing days of childhood. Back then, people were either good guys or bad guys, and jealousy was painful, but rarely life-threatening, though she hadn’t realized it then.

  “How are you, Aunt Maile?”

  “Keone and I are fine, love. But you sound troubled. Is Ian all right?” Aunt Maile never referred to him by his last name, unlike Storm and the rest of Hamlin’s friends.

  “He’s fine. His limp is getting better and his practice is booming. I’m waiting now to meet him for dinner.”

  “At a nice, romantic spot?”

  Storm grinned. Aunt Maile and Uncle Keone loved Hamlin. Funny, because she might have expected them to want her to meet a nice Hawaiian man. But she should have known they’d see past culture and skin tone straight to his soul.

  “Very. I’ll bring you both here next time you’re on O'ahu.”

  Aunt Maile laughed. “I can’t wait. Now tell me why you called.”

  Storm hated to bring the subject up, but Aunt Maile had always been able to sense people’s true motives. “I saw Nahoa Pi'ilani last weekend. He lives near Pupukea, and he’s a really good surfer. He took Robbie and me out with some friends of his.”

  “That’s wonderful.” Maile’s voice became thoughtful. “I wonder how Rochelle is after all these years.”

  “Me too, though she hated me after the accident.”

  “Not your fault. She was a troubled woman before she lost her husband.”

  “Nahoa seemed happy to see me, though, and he sent a friend to me for legal advice. He’s a handsome guy, and by the way he looked at Leila, I think he knows it.”

  Aunt Maile chuckled. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “But Aunt Maile, some kid brought him this package. Inside was a lei o manō.”

  “AuwĒ.” All the merriment went out of Maile’s voice as she voiced the oath. There was a pause while she turned down the music in the background. “Did he know the boy?”

  “No, he was just an innocent kid. He even asked for an autograph.”

  “What did Nahoa say when he saw the weapon?”

  “He asked the boy where he got it. I got the feeling the kid felt bad when he saw our reaction. He said some guy had paid him.”

  “Sending a lei o manō used to be a challenge to battle. But when the old Hawaiian chiefs did it, they made sure the recipient knew where it came from,” Maile said. “What was Nahoa’s reaction?”

  “He said someone was trying to scare him and we all assumed he was referring to the big surf meet this weekend.”

  “How did he do?”

  “He won.” Storm was proud of him. “In fact, he was great.”

  “Then we have to hope he answered the challenge and it’s over.” But there was a note in Aunt Maile’s voice that told Storm she was worried.

  “When one chief challenged another, what would happen?”

  “They fought to the death, and the winner would dislocate the loser’s joints and break all his bones. The victor wanted to make sure his enemy wouldn’t return in another powerful form, like a shark or a boar. Sometimes he would even consume part of his victim to gain his mana, or power.”

  “Ugh.”

  “But only a coward would send a warning or threat in secret.” Aunt Maile sounded grim. “It was probably a tasteless joke.”

  “Yeah,” Storm said. She caught sight of Hamlin making his way through the tables. “Hamlin’s here. I’ll get back to you later.”

  “Be careful, love,” Maile said, and they disconnected.

  Hamlin bent over and kissed her. “Sorry I’m late. A client?”

  “No, Aunt Maile. I called her about the package.”

  “Good idea. What did she say?”

  “It’s a threat,” Storm said. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

  “I read about it somewhere. Those old Hawaiians were brutal.”

  “You think it was meant to threaten Nahoa?”

  “Sure, someone was trying to intimidate him. Nasty way to do it, too, if you know Hawaiian legend.” A waitress stopped by the table and Hamlin looked up at her. “I’ll have a glass of what she’s having,” he pointed his thumb toward Storm’s half-empty wine glass, “and a couple of menus.”

  Storm shoved the plate of seared ahi toward Hamlin. “I saved some sashimi for you.”

  Hamlin picked up a set of chopsticks, dredged a piece of fish through the special wasabi sauce, and popped it into his mouth. “I’m starved.”

  “I was.”

  “You’re worried.” He pushed a wayward lock of hair from her forehead. “But Nahoa’s okay. The threat didn’t work, did it?”

  Storm smiled at him and shook her head.

  “So, do I need to distract you?” He ran one finger gently around the curve of her ear.

  Storm gave a little shiver and edged closer to him. “You’ll have to work harder than that.” She grinned. “But I do have my appetite back.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  In a couple of hours, Storm’s concerns about the parcel had faded to a lurking unease. The menu was filled with tempting dishes and neither she nor Hamlin had been able to make up their minds, so they ordered different entrees and shared. The restaurant was so accustomed to people doing this that waiters brought extra plates. She had shutome, or swordfish, which came with a red Thai curry basil peanut sauce. Hamlin ordered coriander-seared ono, or wahoo, and mussels with Kalua pork, taro hash, and Polynesian coconut crab. They took their time, and when they finally pushed away empty plates, Storm sighed with contentment.

  “Want to share dessert?” Hamlin asked.

  “You’re going to go for a long walk tomorrow, while I’m going to be sitting on my derriere in the car. I’ve got to drive out to Haleiwa.”

  “You do?”

  “I forgot to tell you. I want to talk to Stephanie about her case and she can’t get any more time off work.”

  “Wish I could go.” Hamlin ran his eye down the menu. “Did we have to order the melting hot chocolate soufflé ahead of time?”

  “Yes, thank God. I love it, but the most I could eat now is a few bites of sorbet.”

  The waiter showed up as if he operated by telepathy.

  “We’ll have a scoop each of haupia and lilikoi sorbet, to share.”

  Storm sighed happily. “My favorites.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re going to make me fat.”

  “No way,” Hamlin said, and slid his eyes over to hers.

  “You’re bad,” Storm said, and he just smiled.

  Chapter Ten

 
Storm didn’t even think about checking the messages on her cell phone until the next morning, when she went home to grab a bite of breakfast and feed Fang. The cat had already let herself in the kitchen pet door. She was sitting in front of the refrigerator when Storm walked through the front door, and she made scolding noises to let Storm know she’d been waiting.

  Storm rooted through the refrigerator, sniffed at a carton of milk, which still smelled okay, and dumped the remainder of some fishy stuff in Fang’s dish. She ground coffee beans, started a pot of coffee, and checked her answering machine while she waited for the coffee to finish brewing. There was a message from Ben Barstow, and when Storm called the number he’d left, she got his voice mail. She left her cell number and figured she’d catch up to him later.

  By the time she sat down, dug into her cereal, and started the crossword puzzle in the morning paper, Fang had finished her fish and jumped into Storm’s lap. This not only obliterated Storm’s view of the paper, the cat’s feet dug into her thighs. Storm got up and dumped the remainder of her breakfast into the cat’s dish.

  “This is why you’re huge,” she told Fang, and washed out her dishes.

  Storm kept a bathing suit and beach towel in the trunk of her ’72 Volkswagen Beetle, and she decided to take her board, which fit if she put the top down. This meant that she would only take the freeway from her Kahala cottage as far as the Likelike Highway to Kaneohe. There, she’d get on Kahekili Highway to Kamehameha and wind along the coast through Ka'a'awa, Hau'ula, and Lā'ie, where the Brigham Young University-Hawaii campus was located. It was her favorite route, more scenic than the faster-moving H-2 freeway up through the center of the island.

  As an afterthought, Storm threw some toiletries and a change of clothes in a duffle, and added dry cat food to Fang’s bowl. The cat looked up at her with round yellow eyes.

  “Don’t eat it all at once, or you’re going to have to catch mice.”

  Fang kept looking at her, and Storm reached down and stroked her. “If I spend the night, I’ll call Robbie to come over and play with you.” The cat made a satisfied murrrp noise, and rubbed against Storm’s legs.

  ***

  Storm’s phone rang as she was negotiating a sharp curve through Kahulu'u. She downshifted the Beetle, followed the car in front of her around the heavily shaded bend in the road, shifted into third, and picked up her phone.

  “Storm,” Ben’s voice said. “Can you talk?”

  “Briefly, I’m driving.”

  “Okay. It’s probably not a big deal, but I thought I’d tell you that your cousin didn’t come home Monday night after surfing. His girlfriend is a friend of mine. She asked me Tuesday morning if I’d seen him. They were supposed to get together.”

  “She called you?”

  “No, I went out to Chun’s Reef for dawn patrol. She was there with a couple of friends.”

  “What about last night?”

  “I don’t know. I went to Chun’s again this morning, but didn’t see her. I heard she was at Outside Himalayas, though. That was some big surf,” he added, “and people are talking about a new tow-in contest.”

  “Doesn’t sound like she’s too upset. What do you think?”

  “She was probably looking for him. She’s not the type to let on she’s worried.” Ben paused. “Um, he kind of has a reputation.”

  Surprise, surprise, Storm thought.

  “But he’s been seeing Sunny for a couple months now. I mean, without messing around. That’s why I thought I’d see if you knew anything.” Ben paused. “People talk and she may have heard, but I didn’t want to bring it up.”

  “You probably know more about his friends than I do,” Storm said. “Look, I’m on my way out to Haleiwa to see your mom, so I’ll give you a call this afternoon.”

  Storm ended the call and gripped the steering wheel. Ben had seemed more concerned that Nahoa’s girlfriend would find out Nahoa was cheating than he was about his disappearance. And the girlfriend was out surfing, but then again, that’s where she figured she might see him.

  His friends might not be losing sleep, but Storm felt a niggling anxiety. Few of the people who’d seen the lei o manō on Saturday knew what it meant in terms of Hawaiian legend. They looked at it merely as an artifact. At the most, a challenge. But the person who sent it knew it was a threat.

  And a threat is still a threat—maybe a worse one—if the person on the receiving end doesn’t recognize it as such. Storm wondered about surfer Ken Matsumoto’s death. As a Japanese national, would he or any of his friends know if he’d received a threat by way of an artifact? A half mile down the road, Storm pulled into Ka'a'awa Beach Park and dialed the Honolulu Police Department.

  “Detective Brian Chang, please,” she said to the receptionist.

  She considered it a stroke of luck that Brian, Leila’s boyfriend, picked up his line.

  “Hey, Storm. Wish I could have been with you this weekend. Robbie’s talked of nothing else. What’s up?”

  “I wish you could have been, too.” Storm could hear the rattle of papers in the background, as if someone were giving him forms to sign. “Brian, did Leila tell you about that package my cousin received?”

  “Robbie did. A club with shark’s teeth. One of those Hawaiian warrior things, I gather. Robbie said it was cool.”

  “Nahoa handled it pretty well, and he didn’t let on that it could be a threat.”

  “A threat?” The background paper shuffling ceased.

  Storm took a deep breath. “Do you know if Ken Matsumoto got any packages before he died?”

  “I don’t think so. It would be in the report, which I’ve read, but I’ll check with the officers who handled it.”

  “Could you tell me about Ken Matsumoto’s injuries?”

  “What do you want to know? It was classified an accidental death.”

  “Did he drown because a series of waves held him under water too long?”

  “As I remember, he had a head injury, but let me get back to you. One of the officers on the scene plays rugby with me and I have to talk to him about practice, anyway.”

  Storm’s phone rang about fifteen minutes later and she turned into the huge parking lot at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Lā'ie. Brian Chang had talked to his colleague about Matsumoto’s injuries.

  “No packages.” Brian sounded relieved. “He had extensive head injuries, consistent with the material in the reef where he’d been surfing, and a V-shaped contusion, probably from his surfboard. His family is devastated, but satisfied with that explanation.”

  “So he drowned?”

  “Right, there are caves and shallow coral beds out there.” She heard Brian get up and close the door. “The ME reported that the contusion probably would have killed him if his lungs hadn’t filled with water first.”

  Storm could hear a note of something, dissatisfaction perhaps, in his voice. She waited him out, and he continued.

  “He had other injuries, too.” Brian’s chair creaked, as if he leaned back in it. “Both femurs were broken, all three major arm bones. One knee and one hip were dislocated, plus—and this is what bugs me—he’d had two back molars pulled. His gums were still bloody.”

  Despite the hot sun, a chill crept over Storm.

  “He must have been one tough SOB. I’d have been home with an ice pack.”

  Storm doubted that, as she once saw Brian play a game of rugby with a cracked wrist, but she kept quiet, knowing that he hadn’t finished.

  “It’s pretty unusual to see so many broken bones, though the surfers we talked to say it could have happened if he got pounded inside one of those caves. The washing machine effect, I guess.”

  “And the teeth?”

  “We asked around and one of his friends reported that he’d been to the dentist that day.”

  “He had a lot of friends?”

  “He moved here six months ago from Japan. He apparently was pretty cocky, but no one seem
ed to have any malice for him. He hadn’t been around that long.”

  Brian sighed and his chair creaked again. “Storm, there’s no evidence of foul play. The case is closed. In the last four days we’ve had an eleven-year-old girl disappear from her Kailua school yard and a tourist stabbed by a prostitute in Waikiki. We’ve got our hands full of ongoing crises.”

  “I see,” Storm said, and she did. “Thanks, Brian.”

  “You bet. I’ll see you soon.”

  Storm looked both ways when she pulled back onto the highway, but her thoughts were on Ken Matsumoto and Nahoa. Matsumoto’s death was sad, but not particularly suspicious. Brian would have told her if he’d received a package like Nahoa’s, or been threatened in some other way, but she wondered if he might not know about it.

  She vowed to herself that right after her meetings with Mrs. Shirome and Stephanie, she’d talk to a few of Nahoa’s friends and check on who his girlfriends might be. It would be a relief to find out Nahoa was shacked up with a cutie in Waianae.

  Storm had to put her worries aside for a while. Mrs. Shirome was delighted to see Miles Hamasaki’s niece and so grateful for the personal visit that she put out plates of mango bread, star fruit, coconut manju, and enough iced tea to float an armada. The frail, white-haired lady talked story for nearly a half hour and Storm had three of the flaky manju pastries and two big glasses of iced tea before she could convince Mrs. Shirome to get out the will. The older woman was changing the primary beneficiary of a trust from her daughter to her grandson, at her daughter’s request. Both were worried about the boy’s future, as he wanted to be a professional surfer.

  Storm tried, with great tact, to advise an educational fund, but the old woman had made up her mind. Because Storm was leery of getting grease spots from the manju on the documents and she was having difficulty concentrating with Mrs. Shirome’s ongoing chatter, she ended up slipping the papers into her brief case to read more carefully later. She told Mrs. Shirome she’d have them rewritten and sent to her for a signature.