Fire Prayer

by Deborah Turrell Atkinson

  Hamlin caught up to Storm and gently touched her arm. Storm could tell he knew he’d touched on a sensitive area and wanted to change the subject before it grew into a dispute. They needed this long weekend to linger over wine-soaked, unhurried dinners and breathe deeply of the peace that was Moloka‘i. They needed long walks under the stars, cuddling before the cozy fireplace of the Lodge, and retiring to the sophisticated and cozy cabin-style rooms.

  “Devon Liu’s situation is sad, that’s for sure,” Storm said, to put the difference behind them. She was glad to be distracted by the sight of a bandy-legged, cowboy-hatted figure who stood by the low platform that passed for a baggage claim, just inside the chain link fence.

  “Uncle Keone,” she shouted, and dashed toward him.

  The man, whose skin was darkened by the weather to a leathery mahogany, wrapped his arms around her. “Hey, honey girl. It’s been way too long.”

  “That’s cuz you won’t leave the Big Island and come to Honolulu,” Storm teased.

  “Not. We just been plenny busy lately, clipping calves and training colts. I been meaning to come see Dusty Rodriguez for months. When Maile and I found out you’d be here, nothing would keep us away.” The lines around Keone’s eyes radiated like the warmth of the sun. “Plus, get chance to pick out some good cutting horses. Dusty got the best.”

  “He gets his cattle from Parker Ranch, doesn’t he? We once helped him round them up and load them on the barge.”

  “Sure enough.” Keone sighed. “That was quite a few years ago, back when your daddy was still alive.”

  Hamlin caught up to Storm and Keone. “Keone, it’s great to see you. How’s life on the Big Island?”

  “It’s good,” Keone said and grabbed Hamlin in a hug. “But it’d be better if we saw more of you two.”

  Storm linked her arm with Keone’s. “When can we see the horses?”

  “Soon,” Keone said, and gave Hamlin a wink. “Depends on what else you need to do.”

  “I need to make a run into Kaunakakai, but other than that, I’m going to relax,” Storm said.

  “From what I hear, you need a vacation.”

  “I’m fine,” Storm said, but her smiled disappeared as she took in the glance that passed between Hamlin and Keone. “I wasn’t hurt in that cave, just scared.”

  “You were damn lucky not to end up drowned like those surfers,” Hamlin said.

  Keone put his arm around Storm’s shoulders. “Let’s just thank our lucky stars that you and Aunt Maile’s ‘aumakua got the job done.”

  Storm’s hand went to the little gold pig she wore on a chain around her neck. Aunt Maile was not only a registered nurse, she was a kahuna lā‘au lapa‘au, or native healer, and believed deeply in the ancient Hawaiian traditions. She’d sent the necklace, their shared family totem, to Storm during her last case. The emerald-eyed charm had been a gift for Storm’s thirtieth birthday, and Maile’s timing with its arrival had been prescient. The case, though Storm would never admit it, had left a thread or two of silver in her dark hair.

  “Where is she?” she asked.

  “Out gathering limu before the tide comes up. She’ll meet us at the ranch.”

  “What’s the medicinal use for limu?” Hamlin asked.

  “All kinds of things.” Keone grinned. “But mostly it makes me happy, especially when the chef has fresh ahi tuna coming in. He and Maile are in cahoots. They going make one fresh poke to have with our beer, um, cocktails tonight.”

  “Yum,” Storm said, conjuring pictures of her aunt in the kitchen with the chef, adding the fresh seaweed, ground kukui nut, and other seasonings to the raw fish dish.

  A golf cart pulling a trailer piled with bags drew parallel to the baggage claim counter. No mechanized, hidden workers or conveyor belts here; bags got piled on and off by hand and in one sweep.

  “Dusty’s out front,” Keone said, and pointed to a white van with the Moloka‘i Ranch logo printed across the side. Like most things on the island, the vehicle was covered with a layer of red dirt.

  Storm remembered Dusty from his visit to Parker Ranch because at fifteen, she’d thought he was hot. Especially for an old guy. Now she realized he’d been around thirty, or her present age. But he’d seemed so different than Uncle Keone, who’d essentially raised her, and the other men she knew. Keone may have been a father figure, but Dusty definitely wasn’t. He’d been sort of an unattainable movie-idol type, like that Magnum P.I. actor Tom Selleck, though she would have swallowed her tongue before she told anyone.

  One day, Storm rounded a corner of a barn and saw him leaning into a woman, one hand on the wall behind her and one inside her blouse. The woman, a pretty brunette named Darlene, was fast closing the gap between them. Storm had whirled on the heel of her boot and scooted back around the barn, her face burning with embarrassment.

  A few days later, she’d overheard Aunt Maile whispering to Keone, who chuckled. “Guess he hasn’t grown up yet.”

  Maile made a snorting noise, kind of like a horse when you tighten a girth too quickly. Storm knew that noise; the last time she’d heard it was when she got caught playing hooky with Howie DeSilva and had to spend an entire weekend weeding Aunt Maile’s herb garden.

  Storm regarded Dusty’s approach with interest. He was still over six feet tall, and broad shouldered with thick black hair shot with gray, but his eyes had changed. His gaze was direct, not flirtatious, and conveyed a touch of sorrow.

  His quick grin erased any sadness Storm thought she’d seen and he grabbed her in a jovial hug. “More beautiful than ever,” he said, and Storm was glad her blushing cheeks faced away from Hamlin and Keone.

  Dusty, oblivious, released her and grasped Hamlin’s hand. “Great to meet you.” He grabbed their bags. “You two travel light.”

  Storm and Hamlin were the only passengers in the van, so they sat on the bench behind the driver’s seat. Keone rode shotgun to Dusty, who asked Hamlin if he’d ever been to Moloka‘i.

  “This is my first time. Storm’s told me about it, though. She loves coming here.”

  “How long since you been here?” Dusty asked Storm. He regarded her in the rear-view mirror. “I haven’t seen you since the Big Island.”

  “That was a long time ago. I was here with friends about ten years ago, right after the fire on Moloka‘i Ranch.”

  “A brush fire?” Hamlin asked.

  “If only,” Dusty said. He turned left onto the highway, a winding picturesque two-lane road that led east, through grazing lands and fallow fields toward the town of Maunaloa and Moloka‘i Ranch. There was a long pause before he continued.

  “Someone burned down the ranch owner’s home one night. Those were hard times.” The corners of his mouth turned down at the memory.

  “Are people more accepting of the ranch’s presence these days?” Storm asked.

  “I think so.” Dusty shrugged. “But it might be that we’re all getting older. Ten years ago, there was a lot of friction. Seemed like the ranch owners were just here to make money, wouldn’t pay any heed to the people who call this place home.” The sadness returned to his eyes. “People lost their favorite fishing spots, couldn’t get to the old Maunaloa cemetery to visit their families’ graves. They felt betrayed.”

  He pointed to a sign that greeted visitors leaving Moloka‘i Airport.

  ALOHA

  SLOW DOWN

  THIS IS

  MOLOKA‘I

  “We want to keep the lifestyle here. The population’s only about seventy-five hundred people and half of ’em are related. Still no traffic lights, you know? But it’s hard, and maybe not realistic all the time. We can’t close ourselves off from the rest of the world. We talk more now, have meetings.”

  “How did the land owners and the local people get so far apart in their points of view?” Hamlin asked.

  Dusty took a deep breath before he answered. “My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that big land owners and l
ocals, they have different perspectives. In the old days, land was the source of life for the Hawaiians. They didn’t have a western concept of land ownership.”

  “Like Native Americans on the mainland?”

  “Similar.” Dusty’s expression became thoughtful again. “We all know it’s hard to get people to accept change, and who knows how much to accept. But if we’re going to survive as a culture, we need jobs. Moloka‘i’s unemployment is the highest in the state.” He looked briefly into the back seat at Hamlin and Storm. “What’s the rate in Honolulu?”

  “Things are good right now. It’s under ten percent,” said Hamlin.

  “It’s twenty, thirty percent here. We need work, but just when we think we can trust a big land owner to give us fair jobs and still honor our lifestyle, you get someone like that software guy, McAfee, who begged to buy a big wedge of land from an old family, then auctioned it to the highest bidder.” Dusty shook his head with disgust.

  Hamlin had been staring out the side window. “I can understand people’s reluctance to give up their land, but violence just antagonizes people. That protest ten years ago—didn’t someone die?”

  Dusty didn’t answer for a second or two, and Storm saw his shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. “Yup. Those were bad times.” He seemed to settle himself deeper in the driver’s seat.

  A few uncomfortable seconds passed before Keone spoke. “Storm, you been riding much since you moved to the city?”

  “No, and I miss it. I guess I could go to Waimanalo, but I haven’t had the time lately.”

  “Dusty’s got a roundup tomorrow.”

  Dusty perked up. “She’s good, you know,” he said to Hamlin. “Won a coupla trophies for barrel racing back in her teens.”

  Hamlin’s eyebrows shot up and he looked at her. “She never told me.”

  Storm shrugged in embarrassment and poked Uncle Keone in the shoulder. “Tell him the real story.”

  Keone chuckled. “How old were you? Thirteen? You’d been training Butterfly for weeks, getting ready.”

  Storm turned to Hamlin. “Butterfly was my mare. Best horse in the world. We’d been looking forward to the all-state rodeo for months. The best paniolo in the islands compete there. Butterfly could feel my nervousness, and she wanted to do a good job for me. When I let her go at the gun, she jumped out so fast, I lost my seat and bounced over the back of the saddle. All I could do was flop around and hold on to the saddle strings. The reins were flying behind and I didn’t even have my feet in the stirrups.”

  Keone and Dusty were laughing out loud. “And she won.”

  “Butterfly won. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “People thought it was an act. You should have heard the applause,” Keone added. “But when the announcer called Storm’s name, a silence fell over the crowd cuz nobody believed the race was for real. And Storm walked right up to the microphone, grabbed it, and proclaimed that her horse had won the race. She stuck a carrot—you had those in your pocket the whole time, right?—in the big silver cup and let Butterfly work it out with her lips. The audience loved it.”

  Hamlin grinned at Storm and her discomfort. She rolled her eyes at him, then caught sight of a hand-lettered sign by the side of the road. A‘ole La‘au and right under it, Momi’s Organic Foods, 7 p.m. Tuesday.

  “Is that one of the meetings you were talking about?” Storm asked, trying to change the subject.

  “What’s a‘ole’? Hamlin asked.

  “Means ‘never,’” Dusty said. “As in ‘never develop La‘au Point.’ And that’s a meeting, all right. Activism isn’t dead and gone, just more stable.”

  “Same people who were protesting ten years ago?” Hamlin asked.

  “Some of ’em. A few, like Lambert Peole, dropped out. I hardly ever see him, though I heard a rumor he’s been calling on a woman in Kaunakakai. Jenny Williams, a nice gal with a real smart kid.” A note of regret seemed to linger in Dusty’s voice.

  Storm didn’t dwell on that, because the name caught her attention. Jenny Williams was Tanner Williams’ ex.

  “Lambert Poele was the leader of the protest group back in the nineties. He got arrested for the fire, right?” she asked.

  “They let him go. No evidence against him, just hearsay. He was the only suspect without a good alibi.”

  “Was anyone else arrested?” Hamlin asked.

  “Nope. Tanner Williams and Skelly Richards were with women that night and Connor’s mother said he was home with pinkeye.”

  Interesting detail for Dusty to remember, Storm thought, and almost missed Hamlin’s next question.

  “Skelly Richards. Isn’t he the guy that owns Hawai‘i EcoTours?” Hamlin asked.

  “Yeah,” Dusty said, and pulled into the drive leading to the Lodge, a rustic yet sophisticated structure with spectacular views in all directions. “He’s had his troubles, too. Got into using meth for a while, but he’s gone to NA for a decade and he’s had his little business almost as long.”

  Storm stole a sidelong glance at Hamlin. This was the guy Devon Liu, owner and CEO of the mega-business Pacific Shipping and Transport, wanted to sue for millions. She wasn’t sure, but Hamlin might have slouched a bit in his seat.

  “You ever meet a guy named Brock Liu?” she asked.

  Dusty hopped out of the driver’s seat and opened the van’s sliding door. “Sure, he stayed here a few weeks ago. Had a fancy room and ordered a lot of room service.” He shrugged at Storm’s inquisitive look. “He had a girlfriend, from what I hear.”

  “That the heavy-handed guy your appaloosa gelding dumped?” Keone asked. “I think I saw him the weekend I was here checking out your brood mare.”

  “The same,” Dusty said.

  “Thought so.” Keone grinned and turned to Storm. “Why you asking?”

  Hamlin answered. “He may have disappeared in a kayak accident.”

  “Here on Moloka‘i?” Dusty asked.

  “He rented a kayak from Hawai‘i EcoTours and never came back.”

  Dusty screwed up his face. “I carried his bags to the car the morning he left and could have sworn he said he was heading for the airport.”

  “You know what day that was?” Hamlin asked.

  “Not offhand, but we can find out from the hotel registration desk,” Dusty said.

  “Did you drive him?”

  “No, he had his own SUV. Musta had it shipped over, cuz nobody rents them here. Dollar and Budget are the only car rental places, and they don’t want people going off road. Too dangerous. Landslides, flash floods, private land and all.”

  “Maybe he borrowed it from a friend.”

  Dusty looked doubtful. “It had Honolulu plates.”

  Dusty took Storm’s and Hamlin’s duffel bags and put them on a waiting cart. “He got sort of friendly with one of our cowhands. Let’s get you checked in, and we’ll head to the stables. We’ve got a mare about to deliver and Makani will be there. You can ask him.”

  “We’ll meet you at the stables,” Keone said. Hamlin nodded his agreement.

  Storm kept her mouth closed. She’d meet them, but later. She couldn’t help feeling Dusty knew more about Brock Liu than he let on. He knew Skelly Richards and his personal history, he knew about Lambert Poele’s love life and the rumor that Brock had a girlfriend. The coconut wireless worked faster than electricity on this island, so why hadn’t he heard where Brock had gone? And where was that conspicuous SUV?

  Chapter Three

  Storm stowed her clothes in a dresser drawer and put on jeans and a t-shirt. She turned to Hamlin, who was still unpacking. “I’ll meet you later. I need to run into Kaunakakai and visit Tanner Williams’ ex. I also want to pick up some things.”

  “Don’t you want to see the mare give birth?”

  “I’ll probably be back before that happens. And you can talk to Makani about Brock Liu.”

  Storm didn’t like seeing the disappointment in his eyes, but
she wanted him to talk to the cowhand and think about Devon Liu’s case. Liu was a powerful businessman in Hawai‘i, with land holdings throughout the islands. He was the type who met senators for an afternoon drink and knew their kids’ names. He’d be hard to say no to, even if there was no proof the tour company had been remiss. Plus, there was no evidence yet that the son had died. What if Brock Liu had a sweetheart here that his father, a highly opinionated individual, didn’t approve of? Or if Brock had tired of working for his father?

  But Storm had a bad feeling this wasn’t the case, though she couldn’t put her finger on why she felt this way. Probably it was because when people in Hawai‘i disappeared, the outcome was often an unhappy one. Though the vast majority of island citizens were friendly and helpful, avarice, addiction, desperation, and malevolence existed here, like anywhere else. Plus the towering cliffs, miles of rocky coastline, impenetrable jungle, and the unpredictable geology of old and active volcanoes made it easy to get rid of someone. Storm wasn’t even going to consider Aunt Maile’s ghostly legends: she didn’t want to believe Night Marchers, malevolent spirits, or angry warriors of old were among the reasons Brock Liu missed his board meeting. She worried, though, that the young man had suffered an accident, probably in the ocean.

  Then there was the rub with Hamlin, who was less discriminating than she when approached by influential clients. Storm believed many people who filed negligence or wrongful death lawsuits found it easier to live with the idea that someone else was responsible for a death than the deceased or, God forbid, themselves. And she didn’t care how much influence certain clients had.

  She walked back through the Lodge, head down, lost in thought. In Hamlin’s defense, it would be difficult to turn away a client with Devon Liu’s clout, as any other lawyer would pounce on the case without a second’s hesitation. And Liu, as president and CEO of the billion-dollar Pacific Shipping and Transport, could put a serious crimp in the practice of an attorney who pissed him off.

  Then again, maybe Hawai‘i EcoTours neglected to include Brock’s lifejacket with the kayak, or a paddle had broken. Hamlin was right, he had to check it out.