I watched her head for the closed-off area and lope along the footpath, stepping off into the bushes where every so often a small placard named one of the protected plants—plumeria, hibiscus, hapu'u fern, and others with too many vowels for me to even think about trying to pronounce out loud. If I lived to be a hundred, I'd never be able to decipher the Hawaiian language.
The lawyer just stood on the old path, watching her.
I followed, staying back, but couldn't figure out where they were going or why.
Nina bent down, and when she straightened, she showed David something in her hand. He raised both his hands as if he didn't want to touch whatever it was. Nina looked up, saw me, and thrust behind her whatever she was holding.
I walked closer to them. "Miss Wesley," I said. "What's that in your hand?"
She shook her head. "Nothing. It's nothing."
"May I see?"
She tried to move past me back toward the boat, and I could see she was, in fact, holding something that looked like… "Miss Wesley," I said. "That's not a lava rock, is it?"
"I…I…" She looked around and then took off running—well, in her case, more like galloping.
I stared a moment, trying to figure out what the heck was going on before saying to David, "Come back to the observation deck, please." Then I followed Nina.
She went straight to the boat and climbed on. I was right behind her, and Koma was right behind me.
She sat hunched over in the back of the boat, her hands in her lap, the lava rock cradled there. She looked up at us with frightened eyes. "I'm sorry. I just wanted a memento, and I thought it might bring me luck. I read somewhere if you pray to Pele, she might grant your wish—even for a lover."
Koma was beside himself. "Oh, no, lady. Didn't you hear what Miss LeClair said about Pele and how mad she gets? You better let us put that back, sistah, or you're going to be really bad sorry."
She sighed and offered up the rock. Koma gently took it from her, holding it between two fingers, and left.
Nina huffed and curled her hands into fists and laid them in her lap.
I sat down beside her. "You thought Pele might give you a man if you prayed to her?"
She nodded and pulled some breath spray from her purple-and-yellow polka-dot fanny pack. She spritzed it into her mouth. "No lava rock? No problem. I can reel this one in on my own."
I patted her hand, noticing that mine looked like a child's on top of hers. "You might want to think about praying for something else besides a man anyway, Miss Wesley. I've had a man, a good one by most standards, and believe me when I tell you they're not all they're cracked up to be."
I sat with her quite a while longer, listening to her plan for seducing the lawyer, which included dressing in seductive island wear, getting him to her room under false pretenses, ordering champagne and strawberries, and then performing her own special hula for him.
Somehow, David Sherwin didn't really seem to me to be worth all that effort.
I nodded a lot but didn't comment. Then I climbed out onto the planked observation deck to see Koma leading my tour group back up the path.
They all got on the boat, and I spent a few minutes taking questions about the grotto, any great places to eat near the resort, whether the food served at luaus was "normal or funky," tee times, and, of course, possible strip joints to visit.
When they were done giving me the third degree, I walked from the front to the back of the boat, silently counting heads. Hmm. I walked back up to the front and began again. I had not been wrong the first time. I only had seventeen passengers. After a quick assessment, I knew David Sherwin was missing.
Had he gotten lost on the path and not heard Koma rounding everyone up? Had he fallen down? Had his bladder called him aside to relieve himself in some out-of-the-way spot? Or was he just so fascinated with the Dolby quality acoustics that he wasn't ready to leave yet?
I went forward and clicked on the PA mike, tapping it so the group would know I meant business. "Okay, Gabby's tour group," I said so there was no doubt whom I addressed among the boat's passengers. "I'm told several of you have dinner reservations at Starlight on the Lagoon. I'm missing Mr. Sherwin, and I need to go find him. You all should wait right here, please, because anyone else who goes wandering about will cause another delay in getting back to the resort, and you don't want to miss out on the fabulous cocktails at The Lava Pot happy hour."
I motioned to Koma, who followed, and we went back to the footpath where I'd left the lawyer.
David was nowhere to be seen.
"David?" I called out. "Mr. Sherwin?"
We stood and listened, but there was no answer except for the mating call of a nearby nene bird looking for a little female companionship.
Koma and I looked at each other, heading farther back along the path, ultimately entering the cave side by side.
I never liked it in there. Even considering the occasional low-level ground lighting that had been installed, it was pretty dark, moist, and smelly. "It sort of reminds me of the fumes from underground manhole tunnels back home," I said. "So not cool."
He laughed. "City girl."
But the grotto cave was more like an alien landscape, not like the city at all. Desolate, echoing, cold, creepy.
I had the weird feeling that when I emerged from within the cave, I'd find myself in a time warp, and it would either be thousands of years in the future or thousands of years in the past. A girl could never be too sure about these things, and the knowledge my fully charged cell phone was in my pocket was reassuring—in case I had to call in a dinosaur alert or notify NASA of a spaceship from Mars. But there was probably no signal in the cavern, so the phone was mostly useless.
We must have walked for eight or ten minutes when we came to an area where the lights seemed to malfunction. It was quite dim, and I could barely tell where I was going, but not so dark I couldn't see the crumpled form lying a few feet away. I stopped suddenly. Koma stopped too and reached for the flashlight hung on his belt. He switched it on and shined it down into the recesses of the cave.
"Oh my God," I said.
Koma took hold of my arm above the elbow, his fingers digging in. The beam from his flashlight began to waver. He moaned.
We didn't move any closer. We didn't need to. I could tell by the atrocious red, yellow, and orange volcano shirt illuminated in the flashlight beam that we were looking at David Sherwin.
He was twisted in an unnatural way, and he was awfully still. Beneath his head was a dark puddle, and his scalp looked odd. I felt sure he'd sustained a head injury.
"You think he's dead?" Koma asked.
"Maybe." I took another look but didn't go any closer. "Probably."
He shook his head. "I told you it was kapu to mess with the lava rocks. That Pele, man, she's one mean bitch."
MURDER ON THE ALOHA EXPRESS
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
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