The Black Thumb

by Frankie Bow

  Leilani muttered something I couldn’t understand.

  “Sorry, Leilani, what was that?”

  “Melanie wants to be feeling of power,” Leilani said. “Is very pushy. Like a man. Pah!”

  Leilani wiped her mouth in a gesture of disgust, one manicured hand gripping the steering wheel.

  Oh, Melanie. How on earth did you manage to antagonize Fontanne Masterman so badly she didn’t even want your money? Melanie sure had a way of stirring up trouble everywhere she went. Maybe it was her way of convincing herself she mattered, or something.

  “I need to send a quick text.” I pulled my phone out and brought up Honey Akiona’s contact information.

  Fontanne hated Melanie check the tea again

  “So why police think you kill Melanie?” Leilani asked. “She is annoying pest, but you do not go around and kill each annoying pest.”

  “Pest. Good idea. Hang on.”

  Check tea for pesticide, I texted.

  “It’s not going through. No reception this far out of town. You were asking why they’re blaming me for what happened to Melanie? They have this idea we had some kind of rivalry. Detective Medeiros actually used the word catfight. It was almost more insulting than being accused of murder.”

  “I think you make good choice, looking at other house,” Leilani said. “Brewster House, I tell you, is bad house. Very bad.”

  “Yeah. I think I’m starting to see your point.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  “I WAS THINKING THE Brewster House might be too big for us,” I shouted over the thrumming of the wind. “All those rooms to keep clean. And I noticed the house seemed noisy. I don’t think I’d like living with all of those strange sounds.”

  Leilani laughed. “Oh yes, the lava tubes.”

  “The lava tubes?”

  “When wind blows, it goes into lava tubes underneath house. Lava tubes are like pipes of organ. Makes terrible noise.”

  “That was the loud sobbing noise? It was wind blowing through the lava tubes?”

  “Yes, as I said so. Is very loud and miserable sound.”

  Of course it was the wind. What else could it have been? And now I thought of it, maybe the Brewster House could work for us after all. We could close some rooms off, and use only the ones we needed. And then all I had to do was have Davison come by on a windy day. He’d think twice about visiting again.

  On the other hand, I wondered whether I’d really enjoy staying in the Brewster House for the long term. I imagined Donnie and me trying to sleep in the upstairs bedroom on a rainy night, the rain lashing the windows, the wind in the lava tubes shaking the foundations and filling the rooms with unearthly moaning...

  “Are we going to look at anything with a cottage in the back?” I asked. “Donnie’s adult son might come to stay with us from time to time, and I’m sure he’d want his own separate living quarters.”

  “No, not this time. Is called `ohana. I remember for later. So you invite me to wedding?”

  “Well, it’s kind of soon to talk about a wedding. I mean, I guess things are back on track but we haven’t exactly set a date. That reminds me. I need to make a phone call. I forgot to tell my parents they can come back and meet Donnie now.”

  “Do what you like. Make phone call, take nap, read book. I drive, you relax.”

  Sure, it’s easy to relax when your stomach is growling and the wind is snatching pieces of your hair and beating you about the face with them.

  “I never had a chance to get lunch,” I said. “I just realized, I’m hungry. Can we stop somewhere?”

  “Stop where?” The narrow highway ahead wound through abandoned cane fields. Once in a while we’d crest a hill and get a glimpse of the blue Pacific. This wasn’t the Los Angeles megalopolis. There weren’t any restaurants or gas stations or convenience stores to mar the view. No billboards. Not even a hand painted sign leaning on the side of a parked truck, announcing dried fish for sale.

  “Maybe when we get to the house next to the mall,” I sighed, resigning myself to a good hour of hunger pangs.

  “I have food,” Leilani indicated the chin-high jumble in the back seat. “You help yourself. You are welcome.”

  I reached into the back seat and gently tugged a bag of peanut clusters from the pile of clutter. I noted with relief the candies inside were individually wrapped.

  “Thanks.” I unwrapped one and popped it into my mouth. “Mm. These are delicious. I haven’t seen this brand before. Where did you get them?”

  “From Galimba’s Bargain Boyz, I buy big pack. I always keep in car for something to eat on busy days. Sometimes on hot day they melt into flat shape. But always taste good.”

  “I can feel my blood sugar rebounding already.” I helped myself to another and called my father’s cell phone number. It went to voice mail.

  “Hi, Dad, Mom. It’s me. So, Donnie and I are back on, I think. I mean, we’ve worked things out. So no rush, but when you get a chance you guys should probably come back to Mahina and meet him.”

  Leilani was driving us up the hill now, away from the ocean toward the new subdivision. The dense jungle gave way to broad green fields where wild sugarcane grew on abandoned plantation land, and then we were driving through the jungle again, towering mango trees in full bloom on either side.

  I was grateful I didn’t have pollen allergies. Stephen Park, my ex, used to claim to suffer terribly from allergies. I suggested his breathing might improve if he quit smoking. He disagreed, of course, and insisted his two packs a day of Gudang Garams had nothing to do with it.

  What if Melanie had been snooping inside the Brewster House, and had decided to take in the view from the upstairs balcony? Maybe pollen blew up from the vegetation around the river, triggering a violent allergic response just as Melanie was standing close to the railing. Melanie’s death could have been an accident.

  But what a convenient accident it would have been. An affair between Melanie Polewski and Scott Nixon seemed more likely the more I thought of it. It would have been classic Melanie to start something with her married department chair. And Scott Nixon was hardly a model husband. The only question was how could Nicole have killed Melanie? I couldn’t even figure out how I was supposed to have killed Melanie.

  “You are very quiet,” Leilani said. “You are dreaming of beautiful new house?”

  “You know me too well, Leilani.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  THE SUBDIVISION HAD no trees, just raw dirt and gravel. Most of the houses were still under construction, although two or three looked inhabited (in the normal way, not like the Brewster House). They were all single-story kit homes, in plain rectangular shapes, and came in light blue, sand, pale green, or grey. While they shared some design elements with the island’s older sugar plantation houses, like corrugated metal roofs and vertical strips of wood siding, they completely lacked the detail and charm of their earlier counterparts.

  Each house in the new subdivision had a cylindrical concrete water catchment tank, meaning they were too far out of town to get county water. I knew several people who had catchment water systems and were perfectly happy with them, but I wasn’t ready to take on the responsibility. I didn’t like the idea of having to get water trucked up when rainfall was sparse. And I was not at all comfortable with the responsibility of monitoring my water filters to guard against Leptospirosis, Salmonellosis, and other things that can show up when rats use your water tank as a swimming pool.

  Leilani drove to the end of the cul-de-sac and parked in front of a sand-colored house with a tan metal roof. Of the four, the tan-on-tan was my least favorite color combination.

  “Utility poles hidden in back of house,” Leilani said. “I know you prefer. Gives unobstructed view.”

  “The view is nice. You can see right down to the bay.” The view didn’t make up for the neighborhood’s charmless kit-home architecture and bleak gravel yards. We walked inside to find an interior designed to avoid offense. The floor cove
ring was beige tile, and the kitchen counter was a brown granite-patterned composite. Someone had left a plastic cup by the sink.

  “Pah! I throw away.” Leilani picked up the cup with a manicured thumb and forefinger, looked in vain for a trash can, and then disappeared down a hallway. Only the living/dining area had the tile; the rest of the flooring was cheaper wall-to-wall carpeting.

  “Shame on who left this!” I heard her say from somewhere down the carpeted hallway. “Filthy! Ah, here.”

  I heard the cup clatter into an empty trash can, and Leilani reappeared in the kitchen.

  “Is open plan,” she said. “You like it?”

  “It reminds me of something.”

  “Ah. It means you like?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  My vague recollection didn’t have anything to do with the house, which by the way I did not like. Leilani’s throwing away the cup had plucked some string of memory.

  Emma. At breakfast the day before, Emma had taken my paper cup. I pulled out my phone and angrily punched in her number.

  “I saw you take my paper cup yesterday morning, Emma. Right before you left and went to the lab. Why?”

  “Hello to you too,” Emma said.

  “Emma, tell me. Yes or no. Did you have me drink out of a paper cup yesterday at breakfast, and then take the cup with you when you left the house?”

  “What would I want with a used cup?”

  “Great question. What would be on a used paper cup that could possibly interest you, a biologist with 24-hour access to the genetics core facility?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Molly. Where are you?”

  “Way out of town, looking at some—” I stopped mid-sentence, not wanting to hurt Leilani’s feelings. But Leilani, probably accustomed to customers’ emotions flaring, had quietly slipped out into the gravel backyard to give me some privacy. I saw her through the window, checking her own phone. The sky was darker now, and the wind was kicking up, ruffling her long strawberry-blonde hair.

  “—looking at some subdivision-of-the-damned out in the middle of nowhere. It’s within walking distance of nothing. It has Navajo White walls and vertical blinds and wall-to-wall carpet. It’s horrible.”

  “Well, you should get back to your house-hunting,” Emma said. “I have to—”

  “Did Donnie call you?”

  “What?”

  “Donnie knows you have access to the genetics core facility.”

  “Molly, you’re being ridiculous.”

  “No, I’m making sense of your otherwise indecipherable behavior. And Donnie’s sudden apology. Donnie asked you to compare the hair from Davison’s shower drain with my DNA, didn’t he?”

  The line was silent.

  “Emma?”

  “What?”

  “When we were arguing, I told him, test the hair for DNA if you don’t believe me. I guess he took it literally, and you went along with it. You called him and told him the results this morning. Didn’t you?”

  “You can’t prove it.”

  “I know your phone number and your carrier. Give me your password. I’ll look up your call records online. I’ll see if you called him or not.”

  Emma sighed.

  “You should know I chewed him out pretty good for even thinking you’d hook up with that little pisher Davison.”

  “Were you ever going to tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now. And listen, Molly, you’re not in any position to be mad at anyone. Just be grateful you have a friend like me.”

  “Grateful? For what?”

  It had started to drizzle, making it impossible for Leilani to continue pretending she wanted to stand in the backyard.

  “Listen.” I lowered my voice as Leilani came back inside. “This is about trust. Donnie didn’t trust me. And you enabled his checking up on me just like he’d make someone applying for a fry cook job do a drug test. Can’t you understand how insulting this is?”

  I heard the beep of my call waiting.

  “I have to go, Emma. My parents are calling. I’m not done yelling at you, though.”

  “Yell all you want,” Emma said. “I saved your—”

  I pressed the call button.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” my father said. “Listen, we’re in Kimo’s Coffee and Nuts, and we want to pick up a little present for Donnie. What kind of coffee should we get him? Does he like any of the flavored coffees? Hazelnut? Vanilla?”

  “Do they have hemlock?”

  My father was silent for a moment.

  “Aw, Molly, sweetheart.”

  “What’s going on? I heard my mother ask. “Did she change her mind again?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  “YES, TELL MOM I CHANGED my mind again. Because Donnie had my DNA tested behind my back.”

  Leilani disappeared discreetly down the hallway.

  “Your DNA? Why’d he do that, peanut? Is he worried about children?”

  “He thought I—he assumed I had been somewhere I hadn’t. And instead of just asking me about it, and then believing what I told him, which is what a normal human being would do with someone they actually trusted, he got Emma to test some hair he found against a DNA sample I left on a paper cup. And here’s the other thing. Emma doesn’t even think she did anything wrong.”

  “You know,” my father said, “the new technology does bring up some interesting privacy—”

  “Dad, interesting is not the word. It’s not interesting. It’s sneaky, manipulative, controlling and paternalistic. Anyway, I am through with Donnie. I’m out on a real estate tour right now. I’ll let you go.”

  Leilani had returned to the kitchen and was pretending to admire the inside of the dishwasher.

  “Leilani, I feel like I’m wasting your time here. I’m sorry. I’ll have to go home and think about my financial position.”

  “You are right, Maw-ly. This house, not so much charming. I show you another, close to shopping. Great for single girl.”

  She had heard my phone conversation, apparently.

  “You are independent woman,” she continued. “You make own decision. Don’t let man keep you from buying house you want.”

  I now had no immediate reason to trade up from my little one-bathroom house, but I supposed I could look at one or two more places before I met with Honey Akiona. The drizzle had progressed to rain, so we ran out to Leilani’s car where I helped her wrest the top into a closed position. Now the interior of the car was shielded from the wind, I could actually get some of my reading done.

  The first few pages of Melanie’s phone records didn’t have anything that jumped out at me, and I quickly tired of reading down pages of numbers. I brought out the browsing history and began reading through printouts of the pages Melanie had viewed. They were full of phrases like “owner carry financing” and “mandatory AQB criteria.” I couldn’t imagine how those things could have possibly been of interest to Melanie.

  I looked up from the printouts and watched the fields of wild sugarcane pass by. Trying to read in a moving car had made me a little queasy, and the chocolate peanut clusters sat heavily in my stomach. I flipped to the next page and saw something about real estate appraisers.

  “Leilani, maybe you could help me understand this. Have you heard about some new federal law about how real estate agents are supposed to interact with appraisers? Listen: It is unlawful to coerce, extort, collude, instruct, induce, bribe, or intimidate an appraiser. It’s like those signs you see in zoos about bothering the animals.”

  “Always there is new law. I do not pay attention. You should not worry about every little law. If you do not know, then they cannot blame you.”

  I was pretty sure that wasn’t how it worked, but I didn’t want to get into an argument with my real estate agent.

  “Whoa, look at this. Civil penalties can be imposed of up to $10,000 per day for first violations and $20,000 for subsequent violations.”

  “Maw-ly, it is summer. You do not need t
o work every hour. Look, is beautiful ocean view.”

  “This isn’t for work. These are printouts from the websites Melanie Polewski was visiting before she died. For some reason she was looking at all these pages about this finance reform law.”

  “Do not believe everything you see on computer. On computer, people say for sale by owner is best way to sell, to avoid agent fee. Is not true. Yes, maybe you avoid agent fee but you get lower price for your house, and house takes longer to sell. Then there is paperworks.”

  “This might have been what Melanie was asking Iker about. It seems strange she would go to all this trouble just to make a good impression on him. Leilani, do you think Melanie was thinking about getting a real estate license or something? Is this the kind of stuff you’d need to know?”

  “Do not think about Melanie. What is word? Frenemy. She was frenemy.”

  “Frenemy. That is the word. Anyway, my lawyer says I have to read through all of Melanie’s phone records and browsing history before I see her this afternoon. She told me I’m the only one who can tell if any of it means anything. Because I knew Melanie better than anyone. Isn’t that sad?”

  “You say you have phone records?” Leilani asked. “Is recorded every word?”

  “Just phone numbers and call times. No transcripts of the actual conversation, though.”

  “Ah.” Leilani seemed to relax. I wondered what kinds of things Melanie had been telling Leilani about me over the phone. Considering what Melanie had written about me in her appalling “book,” I could only imagine.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to get through this whole stack of printouts by this evening. It’s not exactly beach reading.”

  “Listen, Maw-ly, I did not mention before, but I think you will like. I have house for sale in Russian Road neighborhood.”

  “Really? I thought you said those never come up for sale.”

  “Not exactly Russian Road, but very close. Also old and beautiful, like Brewster House. But smaller. Maybe needs some fixup.”

  “It sounds perfect. Could we see it today?”