Torch Ginger

by Toby Neal

  “Is that where the cult meets for . . . worship?” Lei wasn’t sure what to call it.

  “Yes.”

  “I bet that’s where Tiger, aka Jim Jones, is holed up,” Lei said. “How soon can I come join the festivities?”

  “Soon. I want to get you established as one of my employees on a spiritual quest.”

  “I’ll be at the store later today.” Lei held her foot up and jiggled it. She’d put on a chiming anklet of tiny metal clappers. “With bells on.”

  “So that’s the cover story?” Stevens asked.

  “Yes, I’m Lani. Single name. Looking to find myself through fun and spiritual frolics.”

  They spent another hour working out details for communication. Lei would check in with Jenkins twice a day by phone and would keep away from the station, just going from home to the Health Guardian unless she could unobtrusively work something in for her cases.

  “They’re watching me,” Jazz said. “They know I’m talking to the police.”

  “Then we’ll just have to leave you alone so the attention dies down.”

  The older man nodded. “I’m not sure how far they’d go to protect the cult, and I don’t want to find out.”

  Chapter 20

  Lei hit the gas, her cop light flashing in the back window of her truck. Jenkins and Stevens followed. At the end of the older man’s tale, all their cell phones had gone off, one after the next. They’d pushed Jazz out of the house and locked it up, Lei tossing the belled anklet into her truck.

  A body had been discovered in a gulch in Kapa`a.

  It wasn’t long before she pulled up behind the medical examiner’s van and the patrol vehicles on the side of the road in a rural area outside of town and got out, stepping into long grass. Yellow crime scene tape already marked the area.

  She waited for Jenkins and Stevens and then pushed through the underbrush, picking her way down a slope covered with scrub guava trees and lantana. A knot of officers marked the discovery at the bottom of the gulch; she slipped between them.

  The medical examiner, Dr. Hasegawa, crouched over a small, curled white hand and pale arm protruding from the red clay soil. Becky, standing behind him with her arms loaded with tools and sample bags, gave Lei a quick smile and Stevens a longer one.

  “Hey. What’s the situation?” Lei asked.

  “Some kids out exploring with their dog found the body,” Becky said. “They saw the hand sticking out of the dirt. That big rain we had washed a lot of the soil off her—she wasn’t buried very deep.”

  “Trowel,” Dr. Hasegawa snapped.

  Becky handed him the implement.

  He carefully uncovered more of the body, using a wide-bristled brush to flick the dirt off and the trowel to dislodge the soil.

  “Can we help?” Lei asked. Stevens crouched behind Dr. Hasegawa, his eyes scanning the ground.

  “Get these uniforms out of here and any other nonessential personnel,” the ME said. “Senior detectives only.”

  Impatient to a fault, he was known as a hard-driving perfectionist. The doctor wore rubber boots and a coverall, properly dressed for his work, and his eyes behind their wire-rimmed glasses never left the body.

  Lei turned to the patrol officers, who’d heard and were already shuffling off, grumbling. The detectives leaned in to get a better look as the woman’s face emerged, a waxy gray-blue tinge to the skin, swollen and mapped by enlarged black veins. Black hair, tangled with soil, formed a muddy halo around her face. In spite of the decomposition, Asian features were apparent, and the only mark on her was a dirt-filled bullet hole in the center of her forehead.

  Lei found her hands had balled into fists, nails digging into her palms. The pain anchored her. She sucked a few relaxation breaths, but the sweetish smell of decomp ruined the effect.

  They watched as Dr. Hasegawa got Becky working as well, and soon the two of them had the remains clear of the shallow grave. The dead woman wore shorts and a T-shirt with the Island Cleaning logo on it. Her feet were bare and clean of anything but remnants of clinging soil.

  “I think I know who this might be. Lisa Nakamoto from Island Cleaning.” Lei wished she’d remembered to put Vicks under her nose, an old trick against the smell.

  “Who?” Stevens asked.

  “She’s been missing. She was involved with the meth lab operating out of the Island Cleaning building and probably involved with the vacation rental burglaries. Fury and the narco guys have been looking for her and the other workers ever since the lab got busted.”

  “Don’t see any blood trace around or in the soil,” Dr. Hasegawa said. “And she didn’t walk here. So you’ll need to find the original scene.”

  “Looks like it might have been a nine millimeter.” Stevens leaned close to the bullet hole.

  “We can’t determine that without the bullet or casing,” Dr. Hasegawa said, bagging the woman’s hands for trace. Becky’s camera clicked as she took photos of the body. The rest of the crime scene team arrived, and the detectives backed off to let them do their business.

  “I know what a nine mil bullet hole looks like,” Stevens said stubbornly as they walked toward the cliff. “I’ve seen a lot of head shots—looked like an execution.”

  “Well, I vote we go get some lunch, let the techies do their thing,” Jenkins said. “We’re probably not going to get this case anyway.”

  “You never know.” Lei pulled on guava saplings to climb back up the vegetation-covered slope. “And the mansion burglary case is ours. Lisa is connected to that.”

  “Thought you were doing the serial one hundred percent.” Stevens flipped the brim of her ball cap as they reached the top. “Thought you were going to immerse yourself in the undercover role.”

  “Damn,” Lei muttered. “I did say that, didn’t I? I’m going to the Health Guardian after this. Okay. The usual for lunch?” She raised an eyebrow to Jenkins.

  “Yeah. Let Anuhea get an eyeful of the fresh meat in town.” Jenkins whacked Stevens’s back. “Follow us.”

  Lei followed Jazz into the verdant dim interior of the Health Guardian. She took the sacking apron Jazz handed her and tied it on over her hemp dress, filling a pocket with the honey-flavored organic candy he wanted her to give out. She’d styled the black wig in a simple braid, and plain reading glasses sat uneasily on her nose.

  Lei couldn’t rid herself of a creeping sense of urgency even though she wasn’t on the new murder case. Fury had joined them at lunch after visiting the dump site and all the talk had been about possible reasons for Lisa Nakamoto’s murder (though identity hadn’t yet been confirmed) and the whereabouts of Darrell Hines, her dealer boyfriend. Lei detached herself reluctantly, donning a role that had begun to feel like a silly long shot. She’d stopped at the drugstore, throwing the glasses on at the last minute.

  “Pretty simple setup,” Jazz said. “I’m going to use you for busing, stocking, cleaning. The customers order at the bar over there and take their food to the tables outside. You just bus the tables and keep things neat, and do whatever needs doing.” He led her over to the juice bar, where a bemuscled and ponytailed young man worked the blender.

  “This is Dan. Dan, Lani. Show her the ropes.” He vanished through the clashing curtain of bamboo beads into the back.

  “Hi.” Lei extended her hand to shake. She felt unexpectedly shy, blinking myopically through the reading glasses. In fact, they were keeping her from seeing, so she took them off and stuck them in a pocket of her apron.

  “Hey, Lani,” Dan said with easy friendliness. “Come back here and I’ll show you where things are.” She slipped behind the bar for the rest of her orientation.

  Many hours later she signed out with a wave to the helpful Dan. Her wig itched unbearably; the tattoos on her wrists were peeling from dishwater and her feet ached. She hopped into her stuffy truck with a sigh of relief just to be sitting, and turned on the engine and the AC. Her eyes wandered to the poster of Jay Bennett taped to the glove box, and she reached to
rip it down—tired of his accusing eyes on her—when her cell rang. She picked up instead.

  “Hello?”

  “Yo, Sweets.”

  “J-Boy. Calling to see how I survived the Health Guardian?”

  “Yeah. Stevens wanted me to check in. Said I’m your ‘liaison’ with the task force from now on.”

  “That’s right. Well, nothing much interesting. No new intel and my feet hurt. I dropped a lot of comments about being on a personal journey, searching for spiritual meaning, blah-blah. No takers. On the plus side, I learned how to make a spirulina smoothie with a protein booster.”

  “I’ve gotta drop by and see you in action. Spirulina? What the hell is that?”

  “Blue-green algae. Highly beneficial to the nervous system. Anyway, I did get invited to a drum circle at the nudie beach. I think Dan the juice bar guy is hoping I’ll take it all off and boogie.”

  “You gonna go? Want a chaperone?” Lei had to laugh at Jenkins’s hopeful tone.

  “Nah. I can handle Dan. Seriously doubt he’s even heard of the cult.”

  “What did Jazz have to contribute?”

  “He just lay low in the back. I hardly saw him. But all in all, it was okay as a first day. What’s happening with the Lisa Nakamoto case?”

  “Not much. Fury is working it with Flea Arizumi. He’s looking to interview any of her connections.”

  Alika was a friend of Lisa’s, and he’d been concerned about her disappearance. Good thing Lei was going running with him tomorrow morning or she might have had to turn him over to Fury as a lead.

  Instead, she could talk to him herself and see what he knew.

  Chapter 21

  Tuesday, October 26

  Lei stood next to her truck, stretching in the early morning. Light filled the air like gold dust, gilding the river mouth and illuminating the mountains across Hanalei Bay in a sharp demarcation. The beach was mostly clear, the debris from the flood having washed out to sea with a recent swell, and Lei couldn’t wait to get going. Keiki tugged at her leash impatiently, sniffing the air.

  Alika’s black Tacoma pulled up next to hers, one of the only vehicles in the sandy parking lot. A two-man canoe was strapped to the sturdy pipe racks framing the truck bed.

  “Hey,” Lei said.

  Alika jumped out of the cab and beeped the door locked.

  “Good morning.” He walked toward her, his golden-brown eyes alight. Before she could react, he pulled her in for a kiss. He knocked her ball cap off—and he tasted fresh, like minty toothpaste. Her hands moved up, learning the muscled contours of his body. She eased away, and met his eyes.

  “Good morning to you, too.”

  Alika took his time taking in her changed appearance. “What happened to your hair?”

  “Going undercover. The hair had to go—I have to wear a wig.”

  “You’ll do anything for your job. I respect that.”

  A charged look passed between them. He stepped in close, bringing his hands up along her shoulders, stroking her neck, traveling slowly up to rub and caress her shorn head. It felt indescribably good.

  One hand cupped her skull gently as an egg while the other wrapped her in close against him. She sank into his kiss as naturally as diving into the ocean. Lei felt a warm languor filling her veins with honey, a blissful mindlessness taking over. She couldn’t help contrasting the clash of her encounter with Stevens with the entrancement of Alika’s arms.

  It seemed she craved them equally—salt and sweet.

  Keiki butted her head against Lei’s thigh, breaking the spell.

  “So. Let’s do this.” She scooped up the cap and put it back on.

  “I had another idea. I’m missing practice with the club, so I borrowed a canoe for us to take out.”

  “I’ve never paddled before.”

  “What? Local girl like you? They didn’t raise you right over on the Big Island,” Alika teased as he whipped off the straps securing the canoe.

  It took both their effort to lift the fiberglass shell, sleek and cigar-shaped, off the racks and carry it to the water. Alika went back and brought out the iako, or outrigger, a stabilizing contraption made of carbon-fiber plastic with an attached ama, or float. He clipped it into brackets on the hull. The sleek canoe was completely sealed, all of a piece, with adjustable molded seats flush with the top of the hull and recesses for their feet in a molded plastic interior.

  Keiki whimpered anxiously. Lei shared her feeling as she looked at the tippy little craft.

  “Oh no. Keiki counts on her run for exercise.”

  “No one’s around. Why don’t you let her off the leash and we’ll paddle along the shore? She can run and keep up.”

  Lei unclipped the leash, giving the dog the signal to sit. They launched the canoe, pushing it into the water and jumping in. It tipped precariously and Alika stabilized them with his paddle.

  “Keep your weight distributed across both sides of the hull with your hands,” he instructed until she was settled in her plastic seat. He showed her how to dig deep on the downstroke and switch sides, and after some initial wobbling, Lei picked it up. She glanced back and saw Keiki sitting where she’d been told, looking mournful.

  “Keiki, come!” She called, and burst out laughing as, instead of running along the beach, the dog leapt into the water and swam after them.

  “She’ll get her exercise, all right,” Alika said.

  They paddled along the shore just outside the wave line, the big dog’s head bobbing in their wake as she tried to keep up. Every twelve strokes on one side Alika would call, “Hut—ho!” and on the hut Lei was warned to change, and on ho she was supposed to switch sides. She sprayed Alika and herself with water and smacked the paddle into the side of the canoe, but she soon found a rhythm that made her shoulders burn with satisfying effort. Keiki finally figured out she couldn’t keep up and swam in, trotting along the shoreline with eyes on her mistress.

  They paddled the length of the bay and drifted a bit at the end, getting their breath. Lei watched the light play through the clear water in dancing streaks, bouncing off the smooth, pale sand of the bottom.

  “Whew, that’s a workout.” She plucked the sweat-soaked tank top away from her body.

  “Jump in and cool off.” Alika stowed his paddle under an elastic strap and stripped his shirt off over his head. He lifted an iron bar that had been tucked up into a compartment in the hull and tossed it overboard. A length of nylon rope spun out behind it. The water wasn’t deep, only fifteen feet or so, and Lei could see the bar hit the sand on the bottom. “We don’t need to worry too much because the wind’s not up yet, but never get out of a canoe without an anchor.”

  “Aye, aye, captain.” Lei gave a mock salute and stowed her paddle as he stood up, rocking slightly, and dove into the crystalline water. She didn’t have a suit on but decided her running clothes were fine. She stood up, and the canoe promptly pitched her into the water.

  She came up spluttering, and Keiki barked in alarm from the shore, jumping in and making for Lei like a big black missile. Alika laughed, and they both dove down to find pebbles for Keiki to fetch.

  Alika finally grabbed the gunwale of the canoe on the side with the outrigger and hauled himself up. Lei enjoyed the sight of his tanned back flexing as he lifted himself up and into the canoe. He sat in his seat and stabilized the rocking little craft with his paddle.

  “Now you.”

  Lei was able to eventually haul herself aboard, hooking a leg over the side and sprawling in her seat. She saw laughter in a flash of his gold-flecked eyes.

  “Don’t say anything,” she warned.

  “I know better. You’re actually doing great for a beginner.”

  They paddled back to the pier and hauled the canoe up, boosting it onto the sturdy racks. Alika lashed it down.

  “I’ve got something to tell you.” Lei bent and stretched her knotted shoulders. “Lisa Nakamoto’s been found.”

  “She all right?” He leaned over,
stretching beside her, muscled arms surprisingly limber.

  “No. She’s been murdered.”

  He stood up. A darkness passed over his face, twisted his mouth. He covered his face for a second with his hands, blew out a breath.

  “I can’t believe it. What happened?”

  “We found her body yesterday. The rain had uncovered it. Got a call late yesterday—a positive ID on her.”

  “Oh my God. Shit like this just doesn’t happen on Kauai.”

  “You’d be surprised at what happens on Kauai, sheltered boy. Lisa was into something major with that meth lab. It’s priority one to find Darrell Hines, the guy who you told me got her into it. The detectives on her case are interviewing all her friends and family, so I was wondering if you had any more information we could follow up on.”

  “I may have a lead for you. Are you working her case?”

  “No. I’m on another one that’s taking a lot of my time. But I’ll be able to get any intel you give straight to the team who’s on it. We’re also concerned about the rest of the cleaning crew. They must be in hiding.”

  “I had a bad feeling about Lisa.” Alika turned and they headed toward the showers, Lei clipping the leash on to Keiki’s collar. “I knew she was into something over her head. I wonder if she tried to turn them in and they killed her.”

  “Maybe.” Lei put Keiki under the shower. She rinsed the dog down while Alika showered under the other rusty metal spout. She handed him the leash as she got under the cold stream of water.

  Done rinsing, she hung her head down and shook it, stood back up. Her cropped hair was almost dry.

  “There—good to go. I think I’m getting to like having a buzz. So what was that lead you had for me?” She took Keiki’s leash and headed for her truck.

  “I think my grandmother knows Darrell Hines’s mother,” he said, following. “I met the lady at my grandma’s. She might know where he is.”

  “Pretty good tip. I’ll call that in right away.”