The Howling Cliffs

by Mary Deal

  Sara could afford this home with its spectacular views. A year earlier, she had completed yet another series of children's computer games. Advances and royalties flowed to her like rushing water. Her instant wealth, after having grown up dirt-poor among the Sacramento River Delta farmlands, made her acutely aware of how others around her continued to suffer. She had developed a keen sense of who among those she encountered could use a bit of help. If not for the income from her digital brainstorm when she first set fingers to keyboard, she could not help where she viewed needs. Those objectives were concentrated and managed through her Foundation.

  Somehow, she and Huxley became newsworthy on the island. Their activities turned up in the Kauai newspaper. It reported Sara's purchase of a Kauai home for the MIA search veterans to use as a layover to and from Vietnam.

  The paper reported about the serial killer Sara helped nab in California, almost at the cost of her life, and how she and Huxley now helped with other cold cases. The newspaper reporter had done a lot of homework because neither Sara nor Huxley had disclosed all of that information when sought out for an interview. The articles about them opened Kauai residents' acceptance. Yet, as Sara mixed into the local scene, many shied away. She wasn't sure if being a haole, non-islander, caused those reactions or if the newspaper articles cast her specifically into just another wealthy person the struggling locals envied. Yet, before one missing girl finally came home, the family had sought out her and Huxley for help in locating their run-away teenager. During the two months on Kauai before leaving for Vietnam, and with their involvement with the veterans, she and Huxley attempted to dodge the publicity and hoped it would fade away.

  Birdie was on her knees in her flower bed almost the same as Sara remembered the day she left for Vietnam. Birdie stood and stretched. Sara smiled and held up a mug. “Good morning, Birdie.”

  Birdie's sun hat and big round sunglasses shielded her face. The rest of her body was covered with her usual trousers, long-sleeved shirt, boots and gloves. It was a little too much protection way too late. Birdie would always be entrenched in dirt after the early morning rains traipsed through and softened the ground, and before the sun became too hot. She waved a garden trowel. “Hi, neighbor. You're back.” Ka'imi's friendly whine came from somewhere in Birdie's yard.

  Sara approached wearing a bright print Bali batik sarong and hair wet from the shower. She leaned toward the rock wall and offered Birdie a mug of Kona coffee and sat it within her reach as she sipped hers. Ka'imi stood beside her, tail wagging and tongue hanging. The four-foot-tall lava rock wall, with its decorative corner posts and capstones were quite pleasing to the eye. The wall was tall enough to graciously separate the lots but low enough to maintain friendships and allow flowers and vines to decoratively drape. “Got in last night.”

  “Saw your lights on.”

  “Heard Ka'imi when I came in.”

  Birdie dropped the sunglasses to dangle on the string around her neck. She carefully stepped between her flowers, steadied herself with a hand on top of the wall and scanned Sara's yard. “Where's your blue-eyed superman?” She picked up the mug and sipped.

  Sara could only chuckle. If Birdie were a little younger, she might have thrown herself at Huxley's feet when introduced. With the energy that woman had, she might consider herself still young enough to be that foolish. Sara easily loved Birdie. “Have you tried meeting someone new?”

  “Who's gonna notice me?” Birdie pulled her chin back. “I'm a walking antique.”

  “So you think there are no guy antiques still upright?”

  Birdie had to laugh as coffee splashed over the rim of the mug. 'Okay, so how'd your trip go?”

  “Found some remains. Hux went straight back to the Mainland to get them identified.”

  Sara recounted her time in Vietnam in as short a detail as possible. They had only found that one set of remains in the time allotted them to be in the country, but the find was the most important event in the world at the moment for Huxley, the veterans, and Esmerelda. The search party was already planning their next trip, to resume at the spot on the trail where the present search ended. Birdie was one person who wanted to know details about everything military. Sara ended up heading over to Birdie's yard to sit and chat.

  As she reached the front walk, she noticed the large yellow Hibiscus flowers with deep red centers bordering the yard across the cul-de-sac had opened their faces like sunflowers did toward the morning sun. While the yards, fences, and bushes and shrubs of other homes were neatly manicured, the hedge fronting that lot was tall and overgrown, its long stems arching out over the sidewalk. A couple of times when Sara had passed by, the garage door had been left open exposing a space crammed full of furniture and tall vases and many other belongings looking to be Asian. The residents could have opened a storefront with all those items. At least they kept it neatly contained inside their garage and not spread all over the front yard like many homes around the island. Sara couldn't imagine why anyone would collect so many possessions and then simply store them away.

  Since buying her home, she had not seen anyone around that property. Its overgrowth of greenery blocked the view. The house seemed well-kept. Maybe this was the owner's second home, which was common practice in The Islands. Yet, it looked as though someone was definitely there now.

  Birdie met her at the gate. Ka'imi nearly pounced on Sara with her tongue lapping and tail flipping wildly back and forth. Suddenly, Ka'imi lunged through the gate and out into the street. “Ka'imi!” Gentle Birdie's tone was reprimanding. Ka'imi kept running, past Sara's house and toward the end of the cul-de-sac. Birdie stepped out into the street and whistled sharp and shrill and then called again. “She loves to wander. Even went to sniff around all the relics in that guy's garage over there once.” Birdie smiled and shook her head. “Since retiring, I think her training's gone haywire. She'll sniff anything now.”

  “Maybe she still wants to work.”

  Ka'imi slowed, turned and stood looking and then finally came sauntering back. Birdie snapped her fingers and pointed to the ground at her feet. “Heel!” Ka'imi obediently followed behind her as they made their way to the lanai in the back yard. “You going back overseas again?”

  “Can't say right now.” If she could be approved again, then she would accompany Huxley and share any part of his life. One thing was certain, Vietnam affected her deeply. Being able to see that part of the world and experience things that most never will left an indelible memory, one that she could never forget.

  Sara watched Ka'imi's swaggering gait. Her hip dysplasia seemed worse than she remembered. Ka'imi seemed slower, too, but could definitely move around when she wanted to. Birdie had said Ka'imi's arthritis was too advanced to consider hip replacement. It didn't seem to bother Ka'imi, probably due to the pain killers Birdie faithfully fed her.

  Ka'imi eased into a comfortable position to lie at Sara's feet. When Sara held the mug on her lap, Ka'imi stood and tried to lap the coffee inside.

  “She knows you, Sara, knows what you stand for.”

  “That's not possible, is it?”

  “She's a great watchdog, tame when she chooses to love a person, but a real bitch with attitude when she's on to something.” Birdie's smug expression told of her love for the animal.

  “But she's not a working dog anymore, right?”

  “Once trained, twice smart.” Birdie savored a sip of coffee. “She loves to wander though. When I first got her, she kept sniffing and wandering into neighbors' yards. That didn't go over too good.”

  A mournful howling came from a distance. Ka'imi perked and growled low. The howling continued.

  “What is that ghastly sound?” Sara had heard it several times when she first moved into the neighborhood but paid it no mind. “Is that a dog?”

  Birdie raised an eyebrow, listened briefly and shrugged. “Well, it's not Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday? Dogs are allowed to howl on Tuesday?”

  “The disaster alarms a
re tested every Tuesday. They're those big yellow speakers on poles down at Homesteads Park.” Birdie thumbed in no particular direction. “Below us on the lower plateau.” Birdie waited, and then smiled. “It sets the dogs to howling because it hurts their ears or something.”

  “Some alarm, but it's not Tuesday.”

  The howling in the distance had stopped.

  “That's right. So that dog had to be up on the howling cliffs.”

  “Okay, clue me.” Within the short period of time when Sara first met Birdie, she had been updated on just about everything that happened in their little neighborhood. Yet, she hadn't tried to learn about the howling. She had to smile.

  “There's this spot up off one of those steep trails.” Birdie motioned with a hand signifying it was a distance away in the back of their location. “If I ever take Ka'imi for a walk up there, I'll bet you anything she'll start howling. Most dogs start in with their yodeling when they're high up on that one trail. The locals call them the howling cliffs.” Birdie took a breath, scrunched up her mouth and raised her eyebrows. “Something strange is going on up there. Dogs' senses are beyond human.”

  That could be true about most dogs. “Has Ka'imi exhibited any tendencies that might hint at what's going on, you know, since she's trained in forensics?”

  “Had no reason to investigate anything with her.” Ka'imi knew she was being talked about and went to sit beside Birdie's chair. Birdie petted her head. “But I do keep her on the leash when we're out. If she picks up a scent that interests her, she's off after it. If she heard that howling when she's off leash, she'd take off in a second.”

  Chapter 7

  Being a life-long lover of dogs and knowing as much as Sara did about them, they would not howl consistently at a location for no reason. That would be strange indeed, something from which Sara's curiosity couldn't let go. “I'll take Ka'imi up for a jog one of these days.”

  “So now you want to go experience the howling for yourself?” Birdie looked surprised and amused.

  “Yep.” Birdie wasn't fully aware of her curiosity about things.

  “We've been looking after your property. That kid, Maleko Aka, who lives in that hovel on your other side.” She thumbed toward the south side of Sara's property. Sometimes Birdie used a lot of hand gestures. “You haven't lived here long enough to know the neighbors. Watch out for him.”

  Birdie could be spouting some gossip, but if someone seemed threatening to others, Sara would surely listen. “What's with the warning? Has he been mean to Ka'imi? I remember seeing her growl at him a couple of times.”

  “He doesn't like her, that's for sure, but I keep her away from him now.” Birdie spent a moment again rubbing the top of Ka'imi's head. “I use your trail to go down to the river to take a swim in private. If I see Maleko climbing it, I think I'd rather turn on the hose and stand under it.”

  “Why don't you just go to Wailua Beach, or Lydgate Park?”

  Birdie snickered. “Me in a bathing suit in public? At my age, my thighs look like two leftover wieners the morning after the barbeque.” Birdie sometimes made herself the brunt of a joke and laughed.

  Sara had to laugh. “I don't believe you said that.” They sat silently for a moment, both smiling as Sara shook her head. Then she remembered the trail behind her house, something she would investigate. “That trail looks fairly steep.” Sara has seen it but not yet ventured down it. “I saw the wooden stakes stuck into the ground along the way. Wonder why the previous owners didn't put in a hand rail.”

  “County probably wouldn't allow it.” Birdie looked dubious. “County could close that trail, too, if word of it gets out. It's safe, though. The stakes are stuck in deep.”

  Sara sipped her coffee while wondering about Maleko. Since returning from Asia, she intended to remain on Kauai till her newly purchased property was refurbished to house temporary guests. Non-stop flights were now coming directly to Kauai. Her island home would be a perfect stop-over for search parties that crossed back and forth between the Mainland and Vietnam.

  Birdie made Maleko sound like someone to avoid. Sara needed to know just how that might affect anyone staying in her house. She had met Maleko face to face once and his mannerisms did seem peculiar. They spoke only a few moments. He asked if he could continue to maintain and use her lava rock trail down to the river. He mentioned he was a musician and start-up artist. He had used her trail when painting en plein air to produce some landscape scenes of the gorge behind their properties.

  Maleko had many visitors that generated lots of traffic in and out of their quiet neighborhood. Birdie had once asked the police to make sure he wasn't dealing drugs. They investigated and learned he had a small sound-proofed music studio built onto the rear of his house. Artists and music lovers accounted for the traffic.

  “He may paint pretty pictures but he's a little loony, if you ask me.”

  “Oh, Birdie, why would you say something like that?”

  “He's maybe twentyish, and I think his door swings both ways. Know what I mean? Maybe he's mahu. I haven't seen any regular girls around his place.”

  Sara didn't care which way his door swung. She was curious about a guy that seemed a bit peculiar and who had a lot of visitors. “Why do you call him loony?”

  “You remember what I told you about them never finding his sister, Leia?”

  “Of course. So you think that he's never gotten over the trauma?” If that was what made him seem strange, she and especially Birdie needed to be sympathetic.

  Birdie tapped her temple. “It must have rattled his upstairs tenants.” She motioned toward the street. “That house across the circle there, with those yellow hibiscus flowers, that's the first house built in this cul-de-sac. It's where Maleko had his fight with those young boys.”

  While Birdie was something of a self-appointed neighborhood watch, she could turn a small occurrence into a full-blown mystery. She and her husband had never had children, so she treated everyone along the street as family.

  When Birdie first related the story about Maleko's missing sister, it triggered Sara's memories that her own little sister's life was cut short. Her parents, blind drunk and speeding, sailed their car over a levee embankment into the Sacramento River. Later came the three miscarriages Sara had in her twenties while married and living in Puerto Rico. She felt deprived and responsible for not being able to know those children and grieved for their unfinished lives. The mystery of her miscarriages was understood when she was told about chromosomal abnormalities, where the chromosomes in the fetus did not divide properly as the first trimester began. It was actually a blessing that those abnormal fetuses did not go full term. However, after three such pregnancies, her doctor had warned that should she carry a baby to full term, it could be malformed in some way. She and her husband decided not to have children and then her marriage fell apart.

  Perhaps that deprivation had not been eliminated but only repressed through the years. Memories of Esmerelda's murdered husband, Orson, refreshed those feelings of unfinished lives. More recently, having found another MIA's scant remains told of a life cut short. Now Leia's case cried out to be solved. Sara had to know more. “How well do you know Maleko?”

  “He was friendly for a while.” Birdie would divulge anything to her new neighbor, knowing Sara was not a gossiper, even though some information was best left unspoken. “Neighbors said after Leia went missing, his family moved to Honolulu. Then his dad died. His mother left Maleko both this house and the one in Honolulu and moved to the mainland. He sold off that house on Oahu and moved everything here.”

  “That was a double loss for him. Does his mother come back to see him?”

  “I've never seen her. Neighbors haven't either.”

  “I can't believe the woman wouldn't come back… wouldn't stop looking for her daughter.”

  “Maybe it's made her a little off-center, too, like what it's done to Maleko.”

  “So you avoid him?”

  “No, he av
oids us, especially me since I got Ka'imi. He evidently hates animals.” She took a sip of coffee. “Our street name translates to peace. That's one of the reasons I chose this house. I hope it stays peaceful.”

  Chapter 8

  The homes on Maluhi'a Street, a cul-de-sac in a newer subdivision, sat on half-acre lots with the houses built closer to the street. The rear yards were expansive and provided plenty of space for private entertaining. Older subdivisions on Kauai were less expansive. Most houses and yards were so small that people set up picnic tables in their garages and carports when entertaining large groups or extended family.

  From Kuamo'o Road to the farthest end of the cul-de-sac was about the length of a football field. The Wailua Homesteads area was rural and devoid of commercial traffic, another reason Sara chose to buy there.

  On the north side of Birdie's lot, an apartment was attached to the back of her garage which she had turned into an incredible greenhouse. A large old mango tree stood in the middle of her lot with patches of leaves now turning brown and orange, as they did before fruiting. If the abundance of new red-brown leaves was a sign of produce, Birdie was in for a bumper crop. A macadamia nut tree grew near the greenhouse with its branches extending over the opposite neighbor's fence. Birdie shared the nuts with those neighbors. Sara had already tasted the delightful roasted macadamias which became her favorite snack. Judging by the sizes of Birdie's two trees, they would have been planted long before her single-storied white house was built.

  Sara chose to purchase her particular two-story, four-bedroom, three bath house because it had a detached ohana house, as the Hawaiians called it; a self-contained cottage. It stood on her south side closer to the wall that separated hers and Maleko's lot and blocked some of the view of his house.