The Black Thumb

by Frankie Bow

  “And several notorious deaths on property,” she said.

  “Did you say several deaths? I just know about Melanie’s. There are more?”

  “Of course there are deaths in Brewster house,” Leilani snorted. “How you think Brewster House is haunted to begin with?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I TELL YOU WHAT,” LEILANI said, “Do you know gated subdivision by shopping mall? I hear something is available—”

  “Oh, Leilani, I really don’t want to live in a gated subdivision by the shopping mall. It’s not worth it for me to buy a house unless it’s one I love. Otherwise I could just move into Donnie’s house and not buy anything.”

  This might have seemed like a negotiating tactic, but I wasn’t bluffing. I wanted the Brewster House. I wasn’t going to let Leilani stampede me into some charmless mall-adjacent subdivision.

  “Leilani, I know it’s going to be hard to get a mortgage, but don’t people buy and sell houses in tsunami zones all the time? There must be some way to get financing. They aren’t all paying cash outright, are they?”

  “I tell you, way to do it is refinance your house,” Leilani said.

  “I don’t have enough equity in my house. I already squeezed out every penny to do the remodeling. I’m barely above water.”

  “And your fiancé Mister Donnie?”

  “He wants to help, but he’s maxed out too.”

  Paying for Davison’s education had turned out to be surprisingly expensive. Davison had an athletic scholarship, but it didn’t come close to covering the soaring costs of his fancy mainland college. Archery was not enough of a big-time sport to earn Davison a full ride.

  “Then forget about Brewster House. Anyway, you don’t want house that gets washed away with lava and tsunami.”

  “The Brewster House has been there for over a century,” I said.

  “Pah. I tell you what, Maw-ly. We don’t give up on Brewster House yet. But for now, I show you other options. Just to see.”

  “Is there anything else in the Russian Road neighborhood?” I asked. “I mean, I know there aren’t any official listings. But do you know of anyone else who might be willing to sell?”

  “No. In Russian Road houses do not often come available. Usually they stay with family.”

  “I see. Well, just for future reference, the house being haunted isn’t a problem for me. If anything, I’d say it’s a plus.”

  “Ah, you are brave girl. Now we make date for us to tour different houses I pick for you. No obligation. Nice day out in automobile. You tell me when.”

  I couldn’t blame Leilani for trying to steer me into an easier deal. I would probably do the same thing in her place. I supposed I could humor her and waste an afternoon looking at ugly, boring houses I had no intention of buying. It would show her I was keeping an open mind.

  “Fine,” I agreed, grudgingly. “I’ll look at the other houses.”

  I finished setting up the appointment with Leilani, then called Emma to share the news. When she answered the phone, I heard party noises in the background.

  “Emma, you’ll never guess—”

  “Hey Molly. Sorry, I can’t talk very long.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Sherry just got in. The crew took her out to the Pair-O-Dice for dinner.”

  “Sherry Di Napoli is here already? On the island?”

  “Yeah. It’s just the crew, sorry, otherwise I would’ve invited you.”

  “No, I understand. It would be kind of awkward, me being engaged to her ex-husband and everything.”

  “So what was your news?” Emma asked.

  “Well first of all, the Brewster House is officially haunted.”

  “Congratulations?”

  “No, that’s good, because it means Davison won’t want to live there.”

  “Yeah, that’s a big plus.”

  “But now Leilani’s trying to steer me into some awful subdivision.”

  “You gotta get a different agent.”

  “Leilani is the only one with an in to the Brewster House,” I said.

  “Leilani. Well, you know how I feel about white people who move here and give themselves Hawaiian names. Oh, our drink order is here. Gotta go.”

  “I got arrested,” I said, but Emma had already hung up.

  I should do some research on the history of the Brewster House, I realized. Supernatural phenomena often have very ordinary explanations. There might even be something that would help to explain Melanie’s death. I went online and looked up the history of the Brewster House, but didn’t find anything. Adding “haunted” to my search keywords simply turned up someone’s defunct travel blog.

  I called Pat, but I went straight to voicemail. Pat was probably already back home by now, halfway up the mountain and well off the grid. The phone service there was intermittent at best. I left a message.

  It was only eight-thirty. Too early to go to bed. There was no point in calling Donnie. He already knew the whole story about the Brewster House, and besides, we’d never had a spend-hours-on-the-phone kind of relationship. Donnie didn’t have hours to spend on the phone. He was probably sitting at his computer, ordering supplies for the Drive-Inn or filling out payroll paperwork.

  Maybe I could get some useful reading done. I dug the journal out of my bag, the one I had grabbed on the way down to the police station. I tore off the plastic and skimmed the article titles:

  Using the Teaching Portfolio to Anticipate Programmatic Assessment;

  Personal, Reflective Writing: A Pedagogical Strategy for Teaching Business Students to Write;

  Converging within Divergence: Overcoming the Disciplinary Fragmentation in Business Communication, Organizational Communication, and Public Relations.

  I realized I was feeling sleepy. Maybe it wasn’t too early to turn in after all. I retrieved the murder mystery I was reading, and headed off to bed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  PAT AND I SAT IN THE little-used microfiche corner of the documents room of our campus library, trying to find out what we could about the Brewster House. Pat knew how to wrangle the microfiche, which required the user to wrestle temperamental rolls of film onto uncooperative spindles. The trick was to keep the coiled film from springing out in all directions like snakes from a can. At one time, the library had gotten a grant to put all of the microfiche resources online, but ended up losing it when some ill-timed legislative penny-pinching choked off the required institutional support.

  “This index isn’t very intuitive,” I said. “I don’t know how we’re going to find anything about the Brewster House.”

  “All human errors are impatience.”

  “Are you quoting Kafka at me?”

  “That’s your bad influence, Molly. No one to blame but yourself.”

  “So it wasn’t called the Brewster House back then?”

  “No. Not until later.”

  “There sure isn’t any shortage of tragedy in these old stories, is there? I just read about an elderly man who had been out for a walk, minding his own business, when he stepped into a lava tube, fell in, and died.”

  “Like your student.”

  “I know. It was so sad. And no one would ever have known what happened, if it hadn’t been for those hikers finding him.”

  Lava tubes would form when an underground lava flow cooled and hardened around the edges, forming a large tunnel just below the surface. Often they left only a fragile crust where the ground used to be, a trap for the unwary hiker. Lava tubes were an excellent reason never to stray from the main path.

  As Pat concentrated on the headlines in the old newspapers, my attention wandered. I caught sight of a lone figure on the other side of the little document room. I thought I recognized the distinctive roundness of his head.

  “Iker.” I stood up from behind the microfilm reader and waved him over. I hadn’t seen Iker Legazpi since the tragic afternoon at the Brewster House. Pat greeted him briefly and went back to examining micro
films.

  “Oh, Molly.” Iker clasped my fingers in his plump, dimpled hands. This was as physical as he got. Iker would never have intruded on my space by initiating a hug. “Such a terrible thing which has happened. But you are turning your mind to your work. It is the best way.”

  Even though it was summer and we were off-duty, Iker was dressed, as always, to show respect for his workplace and his profession. He wore a long-sleeved light blue Oxford shirt and a dark blue tie. His side-parted brown hair was groomed so carefully it almost looked injection-molded. He reminded me of one of those little toy people you put into the tiny toy trucks, except for the dark blue sweat stains spreading under his arms.

  “What are you doing in the documents room?” I asked.

  Iker rewarded my inquiry with a detailed explanation of the archived financial transactions he required for the research paper he was working on. He enlightened me further on their relationship to some complicated new set of federal accounting regulations. And then he said,

  “Poor Melanie, may she rest in peace, she was asking me many questions about this research.”

  “Melanie was asking you about your research?”

  “Yes.”

  “Melanie was interested in your accounting research?”

  “Such a sad young woman.” Iker was solemn. “It was good of you to be a friend for her, Molly. I am afraid I may have bored her, but she acted as very interested. She was so kind.”

  “Melanie was kind? You’re talking about Melanie Polewski, right?”

  “This is a surprise to you?”

  Melanie didn’t care about Iker’s accounting research, I was sure of it. This was obviously part of her campaign to poach all of my friends and acquaintances, which started practically the minute she stepped off the plane. She insinuated herself into Emma’s paddling crew, she flirted with Donnie every chance she got, and I just discovered she’d been cozying up to Iker. The only person her transparent ingratiation tactics had never worked on was Pat, who had remarked, “She must think I’m as dumb as a post.”

  “Your friendship with Melanie was difficult at times,” Iker said.

  “I suppose it was. It seems petty to worry about it now she’s gone.”

  “You must acknowledge it,” Iker said, “and then you must forgive her, so that you will have peace. It is our duty to turn the other cheeks.”

  “Got it,” Pat shouted from the other side of the room. I’d almost forgotten he was over there at the microfiche viewer. Iker went off in search of his documents, and I sat back down with Pat to see what he had discovered.

  “Friday, February 4, 1881.” Pat read from the flat screen as he turned the knob to advance the film. “Friday morning, message was received at the police station, Deputy-Marshall Parker left for the scene of the death on horseback, unseasonably stormy weather, blah, blah, blah. Here it is. After arrival at the residence of Asa and Mary Brewster, it took but a short time to ascertain the particulars regarding the tragedy. Their daughter Flora, seventeen years of age, had fallen from a height of some three stories, inflicting almost instant death.”

  “Was she murdered, or was it suicide? Do they know?”

  “Suicide. It’s a sad story.” Pat cranked the knob and the tiny print flew by until he reached the page he was looking for. “The older Brewster girl was diagnosed with leprosy. Then her younger sister woke up one morning with a pink spot on her cheek. Flora, the older one, was afraid they were both going to be sent to Kalaupapa, the leper colony.”

  “Their parents were going to send them away?”

  “No. Not the parents. The government.”

  “They could do that?”

  “Yes. Thanks to An Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy. The Board of Health was empowered to arrest any person suspected of having leprosy and to deliver them to a place of isolation. They finally settled on Kalaupapa, on the island of Molokai. It’s a naturally inaccessible peninsula.”

  “They could take children?”

  “Yup. The government would hire people to go out and look for patients. Sometimes they’d grab kids right out of school. The parents didn’t have anything to say about it. If you were ‘accused’ of having leprosy, they’d drag you into the hospital and make you stand on a platform naked, and a crew of medical men would peer and prod at you to decide your fate.”

  “That would have been terrifying for a young girl. So what happened?”

  “No kidding. ‘After a frantic search of several days, a deputy found the tiny and battered body of little Constance Brewster, six years of age, on the bank of the river below.’ Flora threw her younger sister and then jumped.”

  “How horrible. Those poor girls.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think they suffered. The bottle of laudanum in Mrs. Brewster’s bedroom was found emptied. Flora made sure the younger girl’s death was painless. Flora probably helped herself to some too.”

  “Would one bottle of laudanum be enough to put two people out?” I asked.

  “Laudanum is tincture of opium. A couple of drops would have been enough.”

  “Don’t they just treat leprosy with antibiotics now?” I asked. “Isn’t it called Hansen’s Disease?”

  “Yeah. Any time someone brings up how much better things were back in the good old days, I like to remind them about things like antibiotics and vaccines.”

  “Flora and Constance Brewster. What happened to the parents?”

  “It doesn’t say. You still want the Brewster House?”

  “Of course I want the Brewster House. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  I probably sounded more confident than I felt.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “EVERYONE READY TO EAT?” Donnie asked.

  “I’m ready to eat.” I smiled as Donnie offered his hand to help me up from the couch. Donnie’s home cooking was top-notch, and worlds away from the food on offer at Donnie’s Drive-Inn. The Drive-Inn had to cater to popular tastes. But at home, Donnie cooked for us.

  And now for Davison too, I suppose, although let’s be honest, Davison would be perfectly happy to eat every meal at Chang’s Pizza Pagoda. Sadly, it looked like Davison was going to be a fixture at the dinner table for the rest of the summer.

  As the three of us made our way to the dining table, I saw Davison wobble and then steady himself. Thanks to Donnie’s cosmopolitan attitude toward underage drinking, Davison was already half in the bag before dinner had even started.

  “I thought Davison should be here when we discuss our family plans,” Donnie said.

  “Really?”

  “Of course. He’s part of the family too.”

  Davison raised his wine glass and grinned. “One big happy family,” he slurred.

  “If you say so.” I didn’t really feel like discussing family planning in front of Davison, but he was already so out of it, it was almost like he wasn’t even there. So over exquisitely slow-cooked osso buco with gremolata, Donnie and I talked about children. When, how many, how they would be raised (Catholic, of course; I felt strongly about it, and Donnie had no preference). Donnie was well aware—although he phrased it as tactfully as possible—that at our stage of life, our remaining childbearing years were limited. He suggested starting sooner rather than later.

  I said I thought we should wait for my tenure decision, and I didn’t think we could handle more than two. Betty Jackson (who had four already, and one on the way) had done the math for me. She’d pointed out to me that with two children, there was only one possible fight going on, between Child A and Child B. With three, there were three possible fights; Child A could fight with Child B and Child C, and then Child B and Child C could fight with each other. As N, the number of children increased, the number of possible fights went up on the order of N-squared (the exact formula was (N x (N-1))/2, if you’re interested). So with five children, Betty and her husband Niall had to contend with up to ten concurrent squabbles.

  Donnie finally agreed to up to two childre
n, if they came. If it didn’t happen, though, we weren’t going to stress out about it, or go to heroic lengths to get pregnant. We would take what came to us and be grateful. If we were blessed with two, we would start taking precautions.

  There. We had just made it through our first important negotiation as a couple. This had gone better than I had expected.

  “Coffee?” Donnie asked.

  “Yes please.”

  Why did people insist on telling me marriage was hard? It wasn’t difficult as long as one applied a little common sense.

  The minute Donnie left the room, Davison leaned toward me.

  “Eh Molly.” He rolled my name out, lingering over the bilabial (M) and liquid (L) consonants. “I think I like see you hapai.”

  The idea that Davison might have been listening to our conversation hadn’t even occurred to me. He looked like he was dozing off, and after a while I had forgotten he was even there.

  “Why do you want to see me pregnant?” I asked, warily. “You’d really like a little sister or brother?”

  “I like see you get some a these, ah?” He gestured lewdly at his chest.

  I stood up and marched into the kitchen as Davison’s prolonged belch resonated in the dining room behind me.

  “Donnie, I think Davison may have had a little too much to—”

  “I’m glad we’re talking about this,” Donnie interrupted. “I was afraid you were going to say you didn’t want children. You’re so independent. It’s good Davison’s finally going to get a little brother. Oh, or sister, of course. I think he . . .”

  Donnie saw my expression and trailed off.

  “What is it?” he asked, cautiously.

  “Really, Donnie? We’re going to bring an innocent child into the world to be a plaything for that sociopathic...look. I’m sorry, but I am not letting your creepy son anywhere near my babies. And that is not up for negotiation.”

  Donnie opened his mouth, and closed it again. He blinked quickly, his eyes shining as if I had just slapped him.