The Black Thumb

by Frankie Bow

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  I ADMIRED THE PERFECTLY-preserved Victorian houses of Russian Road as we passed through. Each was set on a vast, velvety lawn. We left Russian Road behind and continued up the narrowing street that paralleled the Hanakoa River. Trees closed overhead as we rose in elevation, and the houses became sparser and seedier. Every so often the road bent and I could glimpse the deep Hanakoa River gulch. Finally, Leilani turned right onto an even narrower cul-de-sac, whose infrequent houses were outnumbered by overgrown vacant lots. At the very end loomed a ramshackle Victorian, magnificent in its decay.

  “Wow. That house is something,” I exclaimed as Leilani’s Le Baron rolled slowly to the end of the street. “I’m not so sure about this neighborhood, though. What’s with all of those tiny A-frame shelters in the backyard? Aren’t those for roosters? I’m not sure I want to live near a cockfighting house.”

  “Is not to worry. River is in back. You will hear river, not roosters.”

  She pulled up and parked. I climbed out of the car and looked the house up and down.

  “I’d have to get a home inspector out here. It looks like a lot of work. The stained glass window, though. Is it original?”

  “Yes, is original. And affordable for you.” She told me a number that made me perk up. At that price, I could afford to put quite a bit aside for repairs. I would have to. The exquisite pillared front porch listed to one side in a way that signaled expensive carpentry work ahead.

  I pulled out my phone, snapped some photos, and sent them to Pat. The signal was almost nonexistent this far up the mountain, so it would take a while for my pictures to go through. I sent a text message to follow up: Fabulousness mauka of Russian Road.

  I did not send anything to Emma, because number one, Emma didn’t appreciate glamorous decay the way Pat and I did, and number two, I was still mad at her for sneaking my DNA.

  I didn’t send anything to Donnie either. I was even madder at him than I was at Emma.

  “Come and see,” Leilani said. “You like haunted house? Here is haunted house.”

  I shrugged. The only advantage of a “haunted” house had been as a Davison repellent. But Donnie wasn’t my problem now, so neither was his terrible son.

  Leilani and I tiptoed up the sagging steps of the front porch and peered through the cloudy glass of the front door. The narrow hallway opened into a little parlor off to the left. Further along, panel doors were half-open to reveal a dining room to the right, with termite-eaten beadboard and peeling rose-pattern wallpaper. Wires sprouted from the entryway ceiling where a chandelier used to hang.

  “Can we go inside? Do you have a key?”

  “No lockbox. If you are interested, I get key.”

  I didn’t believe Leilani forgot the key. The interior was probably in even worse condition than it looked from outside, and she didn’t want me to be put off right away. She’d get me to fall in love with the exterior and the view first.

  We stepped carefully on the weedy stone path around the side of the house, past the kitchen in the back (an obvious addition) and into the overgrown backyard. Yellow caution tape crisscrossed the back door of the ramshackle kitchen addition.

  “Are there structural problems?” I asked.

  “No structural problems. Is built on lava. Tape is to keep away intruders.”

  A tiny patch of lawn in the back was surrounded by thick jungle. Whoever was maintaining the landscaping was doing the bare minimum. I could hear, but not see, the Hanakoa River roaring down the gorge toward the ocean.

  “This looks like the kind of place where kids on Halloween dare each other to go up and ring the doorbell.”

  “Look,” Leilani said, “Backyard has north exposure, so is shady in afternoon.”

  “It is nice and cool back here. So if this is north, the front of the house faces directly south. I could put in solar on the front-facing parts of the roof. I wonder if it could support the weight.”

  This all seemed like a lot of work. The exterior was in bad shape, and Leilani’s evasiveness about the key made me certain the interior was even worse. I had a perfectly good house in downtown Mahina, close to campus and shopping, and I had already fixed it up the way I wanted it.

  “You know what, Leilani? Let me think about it. I really need to go home and get ready for my meeting.”

  “Sure, I drive you back to town. But first here is something you must see.” She motioned me toward the edge of the yard.

  I snapped one more photo of the backyard, texted it to Pat, and then went to see what Leilani was talking about. She reached in, parted some vines, and stepped into the wall of greenery. I followed her.

  “I’m not sure I’m up to the renovation this house would need,” I said as we picked our way through the dense foliage, “but it sure has amazing potential.”

  I took out my phone and snapped another photo, this time skyward, the jungle canopy surrounding an oculus of gray afternoon sky.

  “I didn’t see a For Sale sign anywhere.”

  “Neighbors don’t like For Sale sign. Makes neighborhood look bad.”

  “Leilani, where are we going?”

  I felt a hard shove, and the ground disappeared.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  EMMA WAS RIGHT. MY upper body strength was pathetic.

  I managed to grab some kind of root, from which I dangled for approximately one second before my fingers slipped. I dropped into the dark, and landed abruptly in a puddle. Pain flared in my ankle. I looked up at the splotch of light coming in from the skylight far overhead.

  Well, I’m not high-jumping out of here, I thought.

  “Maw-ly!” Leilani shouted. “You okay? I get help.”

  For a second I believed she truly intended to help me. But I heard her footsteps retreating, and then I heard her car start and drive away.

  I realized why Leilani didn’t have the key to this spooky old house. It was because the house wasn’t actually for sale. I was at the bottom of a lava tube, in the neglected yard of an abandoned house at the end of a remote country road in the hills above Mahina. And the only person who knew I was here was the one who had pushed me in.

  I pulled my phone from my bag, dialed 9-1-1, and was horrified to see there was no signal. I stood slowly, favoring my injured ankle. I dialed again, and reached the phone as far toward the patch of sky as I could.

  Nothing. I sat back down and rested my face in my hands.

  Could I pray? The last time I’d been to Confession was over a year ago. There wasn’t any penalty for praying when you were behind on Confession, was there? I hoped not.

  I shall walk through dark valleys, I...my mind blanked.

  Hail Mary, full of grace...what came after that? I couldn’t remember anything. I’d have to make up my own prayer.

  Please get me out of here. Or if not, then please make my death painless. Don’t let my parents find out. I guess that’s not realistic. Don’t let them be too sad, then. Please forgive me for all the times I was petty and self-centered. I’m sorry I couldn’t have been a better Catholic, like Iker Legazpi.

  When did Leilani decide to dump me into a lava tube? It must have been right after I’d stupidly asked her about Melanie’s browsing history.

  Melanie had something on Leilani Zelenko, and it had to do with those regulations she’d been researching. This was why Leilani suddenly “remembered” this house. She’d had been bending the rules left and right to get her deals through, and Melanie had figured it out. But why would Melanie blackmail Leilani? What did Melanie want from her? Melanie had all the money she needed.

  I yelled up at the skylight for help, but I could barely hear myself over the rushing of the rain-swollen Hanakoa River. I stood up again and felt my way along the wet, mossy wall in the direction of the road. It was a dead end, blocked with chunks of lava rock. In the other direction, toward the river, I thought I saw a glint of light. I recalled one of Kafka’s aphorisms, something about there being innumerable hiding places but onl
y one escape, and maybe it isn’t the real escape, and anyway there are a lot of paths that look like the real escape but in fact there is no way to the destination. Or something; it depends on how you interpret it and which translation you prefer.

  Kafka, I realized, is of little use in an actual emergency.

  Keeping my left hand on the wall of the lava tube, I limped toward the light. The tube narrowed, and I hesitated. I was going to have to crawl on my belly through a space that didn’t look big enough. What if I got stuck halfway in, like Winnie-the-Pooh? Well, then I’d starve to death in a stuck position instead of starving to death while moving about freely.

  I put my bag down, slipped my phone into my bra, got on my belly and used my elbows to pull me along. I felt a button pop off my blouse, and at some point the seam under my right arm ripped open. I was close to the opening now; I could see the sky through it. Maybe if I tilted my head to the side, I could stick my face out and yell for help? I scooted forward, my elbows pressed to my sides, trying to think about anything except what a narrow space this was. Escape ahead, I thought. Just another few inches, and I’d be free. Or at least my face would be free. The opening was a horizontal slit, facing slightly downward, and too narrow to fit my body through. I scooted right up to the opening, knocking a few crumbs of lava rock loose as I peered out.

  I watched the pebbles of lava cascade out of sight. It was probably five hundred feet straight down to the river. I was looking down the side of a sheer cliff.

  This obviously was not going to be my escape route.

  “Help!” I shouted out into the air, because why not? Then I wiggled backwards a few inches, worked the phone out of my bra, switched it on, and wormed my arm out and down through the hole, into the void. To accomplish this I had to pull one shoulder up to my ear and push the other one down. I dialed 9-1 and then extended my arm out as far as it would go. I turned the phone this way and that until I saw a flicker of a bar: a signal!

  I moved my thumb to dial the last digit. The phone slipped from my hand and plummeted to the river below as I stared disbelievingly.

  I scooted backward until I was safely inside the tube, sustaining scratches, pulled buttons, and torn seams as I went. I kept going until I reached the place where I had left my bag, moving in reverse the whole way. Finally I had enough room to stand up again.

  Maybe Leilani would have second thoughts. She knew Honey Akiona was expecting to meet me, and might report me missing. Leilani could come back and tell me it was just an accident, and if I didn’t press charges she’d give me a break on her commission or something. That was likely, wasn’t it?

  No. It wasn’t likely. Leilani didn’t give Melanie a second chance.

  I found a relatively dry patch of lumpy pahoehoe lava to sit down on, and tried to think.

  What did Melanie want from Leilani?

  Melanie wanted the Brewster House.

  But Fontanne Masterman disliked Melanie, and refused to sell to her. Melanie had never been able to take “no” for an answer. So she looked for some leverage to use against Leilani, and she found it in those regulations.

  And there was no way for Leilani Zelenko to give Melanie what she wanted. Leilani couldn’t force Fontanne Masterman to sell. If Leilani was facing anything like those penalties I had been reading about—prison time, and fines of twenty thousand dollars a day—she must have been desperate to find a way out. Leilani only had two choices: face the penalties, or get rid of Melanie.

  I still had the phone records in my bag. I pulled them out and flipped to the end. The last item was an incoming text from Leilani’s phone number. June 10, 2:29 pm.

  So Melanie hadn’t gotten up to use the bathroom. She was responding to a text from Leilani.

  Leilani must have been upstairs in the master bedroom, waiting. But then what? How would Leilani have triggered Melanie’s allergic reaction? With latex gloves? It was possible.

  I was starting to get hungry. I rummaged in my bag, but all I had was a tin with two breath mints left. I wished I had some more of those peanut clusters Leilani was always eating.

  Peanut clusters!

  Melanie wasn’t averse to blackmail, but I knew she enjoyed using softer methods of persuasion as well. She liked to think of herself as irresistible to men and women alike.

  She is very pushy, Leilani had said. Like a man.

  I could imagine Melanie trying to negotiate with Leilani in her usual way. It may have worked with Melanie’s unhappily-divorced dissertation advisor, but maybe it hadn’t gone so well when she tried it with Leilani. A trace of peanut candy in Leilani’s mouth would have been enough to induce Melanie’s anaphylaxis. It would have been easy for Leilani to push an incapacitated Melanie over the balcony, where Flora and Constance Brewster had met their end over a hundred years earlier.

  I had just solved Melanie’s murder. And now my brilliant induction would die with me.

  I struggled to my feet again.

  “Help!” I yelled at the fading skylight.

  There was no answer.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  RED AND BLUE LIGHTS pulsed around me.

  My first thought was, do angels have red and blue pulsing lights? I had never read about it in the Bible, but then, my Bible knowledge wasn’t very comprehensive.

  My second thought was, how could I already be dead? I couldn’t have been down here more than a few hours. I thought I was in better shape than that.

  My third thought: I can’t die now. I still have eight more pounds to lose.

  I rubbed my eyes and shifted on the lumpy lava rock. It was night, and I had dozed off in a sitting position. I stood up carefully. My throbbing ankle and sore neck assured me I still inhabited my earthly body, for the time being.

  “Help!” I yelled, as loud as I could, aiming my voice at the light. “Help! Down here!”

  A husky female voice shouted, “Ova hea!”

  Then came more voices, and someone switched on a floodlight. Hot white light illuminated the mossy walls and the black trickle of water along the bottom of the tube. A growling engine sound echoed through the space, and a sling contraption dropped down through the skylight, toward me. It stopped a few inches above the wet floor of the lava tube, swaying. I understood what I needed to do. I put my bag over my shoulder, and then climbed into to the sling. My ankle blazed with pain, and my hands were shaking so hard I wasn’t sure I could hold on. (For the record, it was still easier than climbing into a canoe.) The sling rocked alarmingly as it ascended. I squeezed my eyes shut, held on tight, and whispered a little prayer of thanks, over and over.

  Strong arms hoisted me onto solid ground. Someone in a firefighter suit (why?) led me out of the jungle to the small back lawn. As my legs buckled underneath me, my mind registered wet grass, but refused to take any further action on the matter. I sat on the damp lawn and stared at nothing in particular. Someone tucked a scratchy blanket around me. Flashing lights and uniformed police officers and people in reflective vests—was all of this for me? Shadowy shapes lurked around the periphery, curious neighbors perhaps. I heard a roaring noise in my ears, as if the Hanakoa River had risen up to the top of the gorge and was about to spill over.

  The next thing I knew, I was being bundled into the back of an ambulance. I had never been inside an ambulance before. I wanted to get up and touch all of the shiny equipment, but I was lying down and a thermometer was under my tongue and something was squeezing my upper arm and sitting next to me was a young man in white. Maybe he was an angel? I’d never heard of an angel taking someone’s blood pressure, though.

  Then I saw Detective Medeiros standing with Donnie outside the open back doors of the ambulance. They seemed to be talking, and then Medeiros nodded and Donnie climbed into the ambulance with me. Of course, neither of them was up to date on how mad I was at Donnie for convincing Emma to steal my DNA, not to mention how furious I was at Emma for going along with it. But at the moment, it was hard to feel outraged. I was grateful to be alive.
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br />   The young man in white prodded my sore ankle while Donnie held my hand tightly.

  “How did you know where to find me?” I asked.

  “You need to rest.”

  “I don’t want to rest. I want to know what happened.”

  So Donnie told me.

  When I was late to my meeting with Honey Akiona, she phoned Detective Ka`imi Medeiros, demanding to know what secret government holding cell the police had thrown me into. An alarmed Detective Medeiros called Donnie, but Donnie was working the Drive-Inn’s dinner shift and wasn’t answering his phone. So Medeiros hopped into his squad car and drove straight over to Donnie’s Drive-Inn.

  With Detective Medeiros at his elbow, Donnie had called Emma Nakamura, and told her I hadn’t shown up for my meeting with my lawyer, and no one knew where I was.

  When Emma wasn’t able to reach me, she called Pat, but Pat’s phone reception at home was unreliable, and she couldn’t get through. So Emma drove all the way up the hill to Pat’s house.

  At Emma’s urging, Pat checked his phone, and found one—just one—of my photo texts had come through. The one I had taken of the jungle and the sky, right before Leilani Zelenko had shoved me into the lava tube.

  Pat was able to extract my location from the GPS information embedded in the photograph. Pat and Emma drove back down the mountain, far enough to get a strong phone signal. They pulled into the empty parking lot of the only business within miles, Atsuka’s Orchid Nursery. From there, Emma called Detective Medeiros back with my coordinates. Detective Medeiros took it from there.

  “Thank you, Donnie. I guess I can’t be mad at you now. Since you helped save my life and everything.”

  “Mad at me? Why were you mad at me?”

  “You had Emma test my DNA against the hair clump. You didn’t believe me when I said it wasn’t my hair.”

  “Oh. Of course I believed you, Molly. It’s just...I overreacted. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m very sorry. My actions were inexcusable.”