by Toby Neal
Pono worked his phone on the other side of the room, finally coming back. “I’ve got news for you.”
“What?”
“Gerry and Torufu tracked down the two suspects we’ve been trying to nail for the Norwegian’s murder. Guess where they were?”
“No idea.”
“Hiding out at Manuel Okapa’s house. Apparently, the three of them did the Norwegian.”
“Talk about misdirected anger.” Lei frowned. “Now they’ll spend the rest of their lives in prison. How is Stevens’s recruit, Mahoe, doing?”
“He’s recovering. Gonna be okay.” Pono sat down beside her. “Things seem to be wrapping up on the heiau case. Marcus Kamuela brought in Councilman Muapu, who is denying everything, of course. But Esther Ka`awai has also given her testimony, and she even knew the location of the artifacts on Oahu. The team went and found them all. So he doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on.”
“Good,” Lei said, pressing her fingers into her eye sockets. “God, let them be okay, please.” She knew her father would want to support her, but she lacked the energy to call him and tell him this latest development—it was too hard to even speak the words.
Swinging doors opened and a doctor came through, holding a chart. “Leilani Texeira?”
“Yes?” She sprang to her feet and almost keeled over, spots circling in her vision. Pono steadied her as the doctor approached.
“Michael Stevens is your husband?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Dr. Salvato. Your husband’s going to be okay. I had to order a transfusion because he’d lost a lot of blood, but the knife wound was shallow. It cut along his ribs under his arm, about six inches in length, but didn’t penetrate any organs. His arm was also cut, but no permanent damage.”
“Oh, thank God.” Lei had to sit down again.
The doctor frowned. “You all right?”
“Yeah, just relieved.”
“He’s going to have a few more scars to add to his collection, is all. We strapped up his sprained ankle, too.”
“When can I see him?”
“Now. He’s still sedated, but comfortable.”
Lei followed the doctor, but glanced back at Pono. Her former partner made a shooing motion with his fingers, telling her to go on.
The first thing she noticed was how pale Stevens was. His tan lay over his skin like a layer of paint. His cheeks were hollow, his dark hair mussed, and his long frame barely fit on the bed. She felt a surge of love so powerful it made her gasp.
The doctor hung the chart on the wall and nodded that she could approach. She took one of the molded-plastic chairs, dragged it over next to Stevens, and picked up his hand—the one with the wedding ring on it, still shiny and new.
He opened his eyes. “Lei?”
“I’m here.” Her throat closed over the words, and she cleared it. “You sure took your time picking me up from the airport.”
His mouth quirked up on one side. “Got held up by a ninja.”
“I heard you’re adding to the scar collection.”
“Glad that’s all it is. If it weren’t for Keiki, you’d likely be a widow right now.”
She lifted his hand and lay it against her cheek for a long moment. She pressed a kiss into his palm. “I love you.”
He curled his hand away, lifted it to stroke her hair. “Missed you. Come here and kiss me.”
She stood from the chair, and leaned down to give him a peck on the lips. “There.”
His hand, still tangled in her hair, tightened. His arm flexed, pulling her down onto him. She lost her balance, sprawling across him, and he gave a hiss of pain—but now his hand used the grip on her hair to turn her head, and his mouth met hers with hungry intent. Their kiss felt as necessary as CPR, and as life giving. Lei’s body went slack and her eyes closed in surrender, even as she smelled the sweat of near-death on him—and maybe because of it.
“Ahem.” A throat-clearing from the doorway.
Lei scrambled off of her husband and turned to face McGregor, his florid face impassive. Chun, his silent shadow, was the one to look a little embarrassed.
“We need to interview your husband regarding the attack,” McGregor said.
Lei sat back down on the chair and picked up Stevens’s hand again. “Interview away.”
They fetched more chairs. Stevens worked his bed control to sit up straighter, and Lei gave him some water.
“When were you planning to tell me Anchara already had a husband and that he was the one who’d killed her?” Stevens asked. Even with the anesthesia, Lei felt the tension in him, the anger. She squeezed his hand in both of hers.
“We didn’t know that,” McGregor said. “We did know that a man matching the description of your attacker was the one to accompany her into the motel. We tracked the shroud and knew that he’d purchased the one that was found under her body—and two more. We’ve been looking for him ever since.”
Lei said, “I know where another of those shrouds turned up—draped over my aunt’s body in California. That leaves one shroud still unaccounted for.”
“We heard about your aunt from Captain Omura,” McGregor said. He made eye contact with her, and it seemed sincere. “Very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” Lei said. Stevens’s hand tightened on hers in support.
“Getting back to the attack. Tell us a blow-by-blow of what happened.”
Stevens went through the harrowing moments in detail. Lei looked down at his hand, a strong, pleasing shape that she never tired of looking at. She concentrated on the tiny hairs on the back of it, the long fingers, the raised map of veins over muscle and bone. She thought of all that hand could do and shut her eyes on imagining it cold and dead, never touching or loving her again.
Focusing on Stevens’s hand helped screen out how close she’d come to losing him and her beloved Keiki to a jealous maniac with knife skills.
Lei frowned, tuning in to catch the part of Stevens’s story where the man had identified himself as Anchara’s husband. “Michael. This means you and Anchara were never legally married. Didn’t you check that out?” she asked.
“She told me she was being sold in marriage against her will to a man who was a known abuser in her village. That’s why she fled and took the cruise ship job, which turned out to be a sex slavery ring. She said she’d never been married before, and I believed her. There was no way to check any of it.”
“Doesn’t change anything, I guess,” Lei said, but somehow it did. Stevens was hers. Hers alone, and always had been.
“Back to the suspect. We have him down at the station, and we’re looking for an interpreter, because he speaks limited English. What we want to know is how he knew where to find Anchara and how he knew where your home was. Could he be the one behind the shroud threats? Or do you think there’s someone else involved?”
Lei told them about Terence Chang and the longstanding feud with the Chang family. “There’s an open FBI case on Chang. I just checked with Special Agent Marcella Scott, who’s working it. She said they haven’t been able to pick anything up. He hasn’t left the Big Island, and they even have surveillance on his Internet activities, without anything new. He’s my best guess at who has the means, motive, and opportunity to go against us this way. He could have found this man, bankrolled his trip, fed him all the information he needed to kill Stevens and Anchara, paid for the nurse who planted the bomb at my aunt’s house—all from the comfort of his back bedroom.”
McGregor and Chun looked at each other. “We’ll check out the rest of this and let you know what we get from Mookjai with an interpreter,” McGregor said. “But he’s lawyered up already, and he’s a foreign citizen, so we’re not hopeful. We agree someone else fed him information to help him navigate a strange country this well. He had a burner phone on him, and only a few numbers on that. We’re running them down, but so far they’re just other burners.”
“So I’m guessing he gets deported and nothing happens to him,�
�� Stevens said.
“We’re going to fight to keep him here and prosecute him for Anchara Mookjai’s murder, but the evidence tying him to that crime scene is circumstantial. We can get him on attempted murder in your case.”
“On a positive note, you’re cleared of all suspicion,” Chun said. “I thought that might brighten your day. You two will be parents soon.”
“Yeah,” Stevens said. “I guess so.” He tightened his grip on Lei’s hand.
They left, and Stevens gave her hand a tug. “Come back over here.”
“Shouldn’t we talk about the case? I’m not sure we’re out of danger with another shroud floating around out there. And Anchara! She was already married!”
“I’m a bigamist,” Stevens said, grinning. Lei gave him a little punch. The whole thing was terrible and tragic, but somehow Lei could tell Stevens felt as she did—their vows were only to each other now. “I know why she did what she did—she was desperate. But I never would have married her if I’d known she was already married to Mookjai.”
“I know.” Lei let him pull her in for another kiss, filled with promises of what they’d be doing when they were able. Finally, she sat back down on the chair. “I need to go check on Keiki.”
“Go. I’m feeling it now, anyway. This old man needs a nap.”
“I’ll get some backup to make sure you’re safe.” She gave him one last kiss and went to the door, getting her phone out to make some calls.
She had to blink back tears at the sight of Pono, sitting on a chair outside, already on guard. “Got people lined up to keep an eye on him until he’s discharged,” her friend said. “Go check on your dog.”
She didn’t need any more encouragement.
Keiki was out of surgery by the time she got to the modest little animal hospital, and the technicians let her go back into the recovery room, where the big Rottweiler was still sedated to keep her wound stabilized.
“She’s going to recover fine, if there’s no infection,” the vet told Lei. “I was able to remove the knife and repair the internal damage. Your husband made the right call leaving the blade in place.”
Lei sat with the big dog for a long time, stroking her square head and playing with her silky ears. There with Keiki, alone in the antiseptic-, doggy-smelling room, Lei put her head down against her dog’s warm side and cried all the tears she needed to, releasing the stress and grief of the last few weeks.
Chapter Thirty-One
Stevens and Lei sat on the couch the next evening as the news recapped the heiau case. Wendy Watanabe, bright in a turquoise suit, described the “bizarre plot” headed by Councilman Muapu to gather a secret museum of Hawaii’s sacred artifacts to keep them from being lost to the elements or “the disrespect of outsiders.” A clip of Muapu’s square brown face, eyes glittering with conviction, was played.
“In the next hundred years, our most sacred places and the objects that represent our culture are going to be lost—to development, to the elements, to graffiti by kids who no longer remember how sacred they are. The museum was meant to protect that, to safeguard our history and preserve it for those of our blood to see and experience.”
Watanabe came back on. “Mr. Muapu denies having any knowledge of the murder of one of the thieves he employed to steal the artifacts. In his statement to the press, he asks forgiveness for taking this action without bringing it before people for a vote.”
“Wow,” Lei said. She leaned against Stevens’s good side as they ate chili and cornbread. “Seems like Muapu’s not backing down. Going to try to spin this that he was doing it for everyone. I bet he even runs for reelection.”
Stevens set his empty bowl down on the arm of the couch, but not where Keiki, lying on her dog bed with a cone around her neck, could reach it. He couldn’t resist putting an arm around Lei, bringing her in against his good side. He couldn’t get enough of being physically close to her. It had been only a day since he got out of the hospital, and he wasn’t done thanking God that he was still alive. They’d spent most of the time he’d been home in bed, sleeping—and when he felt up to it, doing other things.
Lei’s phone rang and she got up and answered it, picking up their bowls and taking them to the kitchen. He heard her greet her father.
He refocused on the news. They’d moved on to recap the arrest and capture of Red Toaman, Mana Guinamo, and Manuel Okapa in the slaying of the Norwegian art thief.
“Officials involved in the case tell us these men tracked the art thief and killed him on their own. Leaders in the Heiau Hui movement have denied any involvement in the brutal slaying.”
A clip ran of Charles Awapuhi being interviewed. “I had nothing to do with that man’s murder,” he said, his diction perfect and face concerned. “I apologize publicly for holding the artifacts at my house on their way to the museum, but I believed Muapu when he said he was doing this to protect the culture.”
“Wasn’t it contradictory to be a part of stealing the artifacts and also to be organizing a movement to protect them—from yourself?” Watanabe inserted a microphone back into his face.
“I see now that it was misguided,” Awapuhi said. “But I do believe that the sites must be guarded, so that our heritage can be preserved.”
Watanabe came back on. “In a positive turn of events in all this, preservation experts from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu are helping to reinstall the petroglyphs and other artifacts to the heiaus, and a statewide law has been drawn up declaring heiaus and sites with petroglyphs to be historically significant and not to be developed. Literature profiting from disclosing their locations is also banned by the new state law, which will go forward for a vote in the next session.”
Stevens looked over into the kitchen, where Lei was washing the dishes. “Did you hear that, Sweets?”
“What?” She came out, drying her hands. She was wearing that peach silk robe he’d bought before their wedding, and he liked the way it wrapped her like she was a present he’d never get tired of opening.
“The state’s banning mention of the sites in books like Maui’s Secrets and declaring the heiaus protected.”
Someone rang the bell on the outer gate. Lei had increased the security measures at their little house, installing an exterior camera, intercom, and remote gate lock before Stevens got out of the hospital.
They both looked at the monitor near the kitchen door. A man with a truck was standing outside the gate, holding a clipboard. “Wonder who that is.” Lei depressed the button to speak to the man. “Hi. What’s your business?”
“Delivery of baby furniture from Anchara Mookjai,” the man said.
Lei gave Stevens a quick glance, then replied into the intercom. “I’ll be right out to help you.” To Stevens she said, “I know what this is about. Just rest. I’ll handle this.”
He frowned at the mention of his ex’s name, especially in connection with baby furniture, wondering what was going on. He snapped his fingers, and Keiki came over, moving stiffly, and sat at his feet. He put a hand on her collar to keep her from going any farther toward the door.
The news dragged his attention back as Watanabe wrapped up the story and moved on. “Following up with another brutal murder on Maui, a suspect in the murder of pregnant woman Anchara Mookjai has been identified. Danan Mookjai was the pregnant woman’s husband, and a foreign national. He is being held indefinitely without bail until agreements can be made about his extradition, or if he will face charges in the United States for Mookjai’s murder and the attempted murder of a police officer. This case draws attention to the ongoing problem with domestic violence here in Hawaii, and worldwide.”
The front door opened, and Lei backed in, carrying one end of a heavy-looking, hand-carved cradle, the delivery man the other. They carried the cradle into the baby’s room, and Stevens’s hand curled around his Glock as he tracked the movements of the deliveryman, still worried that, even with Mookjai in custody, some new threat would come against them.
One shroud was
still unaccounted for.
“Let’s just put the rest on the porch,” Lei directed the deliveryman. “We have to find space and room for it all.”
Once the man had left and the gate was locked again, Lei came back and flopped down beside him. Stevens narrowed his eyes at her. “What’s all this?”
“Anchara’s baby furniture for Kiet. I broke into her place when I was looking for his name. She’d prepared so beautifully for him that it broke my heart when the landlord said it was all going to Goodwill. So I told him we’d find a family with a new baby that could use it. He called me, and I gave him some money and told him to have it delivered here at the end of the month. Figured baby Kiet should know how much his mama loved him.”
Stevens reached over, played with one of her curls, moved by her gesture. “I love you for doing that.” He turned to look over his shoulder. “But we already have a lot of baby stuff. We can return some of it, I guess.”
“We might need it all,” she said. Her eyes were flecked with shades of brown from umber to burnt sienna, and they’d never looked so vulnerable to him. She took his hand gently and placed it on her belly. “We’re going to need a lot of baby stuff.”
His mouth went dry and his throat tightened. “What are you telling me?”
“I’m pregnant. Yeah, I know. Terrible timing. But I’m pretty sure it happened before we knew about Kiet.” She looked away, and he saw her lips tremble. “Anyway, it’s too late now.”
He brought his hand up and turned her face to his. Tears hung on her lower lashes like tiny pearls as he breathed words into her mouth. “You’ve made me the happiest man in the world.”
She threw herself on him, and he grunted with pain but took her in his arms anyway, where he knew she needed to be. He submitted to a rain of kisses, sniffles, and inarticulate explanations about how she’d been feeling strange ever since that “really special night,” a pregnancy test she’d done in California, and her father moving in with them to a bigger house.
