Lana'i of the Tiger (The Islands of Aloha Mystery Series) Read online

  LANA’I OF THE TIGER

  JoAnn Bassett

  Copyright © 2012 JoAnn Bassett

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

  First published by JoAnn Bassett

  Green Valley, AZ 85614

  http://www.joannbassett.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Places, events, and situations in this book are purely fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Further, this story takes place on the island of Lana’i, Hawaii, which was recently purchased by a new owner. The author assumes many changes will occur on the island as a result of the new ownership. Hopefully, they will all be changes for the good.

  First distributed in the United States of America

  Also by JoAnn Bassett:

  “THE ISLANDS OF ALOHA MYSTERY SERIES”

  Maui Widow Waltz

  Livin’ Lahaina Loca

  MAI TAI BUTTERFLY

  Discover the latest titles by JoAnn Bassett at

  http://www.joannbassett.com

  CHAPTER 1

  Living on the dole isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Neither is living on the lam. I ought to know, since I was doing both after I stuck my beak in some pretty deep kukae back home on Maui. I got sucked into a witness protection program and banished from the island because I knew too much. Unlike the lepers, I didn’t get sent to Moloka’i, but darn close—the next island over, Lana’i. So there I was, just hanging out, waiting for the government to finish its undercover sting on a nasty Mexican drug cartel and round up the usual suspects.

  The feds assured me if I kept out of sight while they put their case together for a grand jury they’d return me, safe and sound, after I’d testified. If I didn’t go along with the program, then I was on my own.

  I’m a big fan of self-preservation, and the word on the street was the cartel had put a price on my head. The insulting part was my scalp price was pitifully low—a kilo of Maui Wowee. The guy I’d fingered was ground floor on the proverbial totem pole so my testimony wasn’t going to be bringing much to the party. Wanting me dead was probably more about the cartel sending a message to other potential snitches than worrying about what I’d say. But times were tough. There were plenty of low-lifes on Maui who’d snuff their own grandma for a key of weed. So after about two minutes of pondering, it was pretty much a no-brainer for me to take the feds up on their offer.

  Lana’i is only eight miles away from Maui, but it’s light years away from normal. First of all, everything’s different. There are hardly any people, only thirty miles of paved road, and one very rich guy owns the whole darn island—literally. The place even smells different. Up in Lana’i City, they’ve got more pine trees than palm trees. That’s because it’s about sixteen hundred feet above sea level and bone dry. I’d been sent there in mid-November. With Christmas just around the corner, the pines and cool misty air gave the place a kind of New England holiday charm. In Dole Park they’d strung hundreds of lights on a humongous pine to make it look like a giant Christmas tree. But I wasn’t having any of it. I didn’t want Christmas in Vermont, I wanted to be home.

  The feds didn’t expect me to do much while I waited. I was supposed to just sit around and keep my head down. This made the time tick away at a distressingly slow pace. Back home I’m a wedding planner, and Christmas is my peak season. You’d be amazed how many brides think they’ll save money by rolling the ceremony and honeymoon into one. Truth is, nothing comes cheap in Hawaii. My standard fifteen-percent commission had allowed me to live quite comfortably as long as I had weddings on my calendar.

  But my day planner was blank. I’d pawned off my upcoming clients to competitors—a painful experience—and left under cover of darkness. My old life was in a kind of suspended animation. It was like those dead rich guys who have their heads frozen assuming one day somebody will thaw them out and stick ‘em on a new body. My house in Hali’imaile was being cared for by my roommate and my shop in Lahaina was shuttered, awaiting my return. To squelch curiosity about my whereabouts, my contact for the Witness Security Program, or WITSEC as the feds call it, had concocted a rumor that I was busy doing a hush-hush wedding for a reclusive zillionaire in Las Vegas. Busy? Hardly.

  But I was pre-occupied. I had to learn a bunch of stuff in short order. Like a new address, a new name, and a new life story. I’d hoped I’d be allowed to invent my own story. You know, something sexy like I’d come to Lana’i to write my next best-selling vampire novel, or I was the wife of a Saudi prince and I’d had to flee my palace in Riyadh to avoid being stoned to death after being picked up driving the Bentley in the desert.

  But no, the sorry tale I’d been given was simply I was a new military widow and I’d come to Lana’i to rest and recover from the shock. That sort of jived with the frugal lifestyle the feds had cobbled together for me, and it allowed me to lurk around not saying much, since I was in mourning.

  My name on Maui is Pali Moon. Okay, that’s not my so-called ‘real’ name—not the name on my birth certificate—but it’s the name everyone knows me by over there. For my time on Lana’i, the feds gave me a haole name to go along with my haole looks: blondish brown hair, hazel eyes and tending toward wiry body-type. My new name is Penny Morton. For some goofy reason they thought keeping my initials the same would help me remember it. And Penny kind of rhymes with Pali, so I guess it works. But the Morton part made me think of salt. And salt made me think of earth, and thinking of earth made me think of the Hawaiian word for land, ‘aina. That’s what I am, a kama’aina, a native-born Hawaiian. And like most Hawaiians, I’m a homebody. So although Lana’i was home to some really nice folks, it was in no way home to me.

  On that Tuesday three weeks before Christmas the phone in my rented house began to ring. Calls I got were usually a wrong number, or somebody butt-dialing their cell phone, but I lunged across the living room to answer it. Why not? It was the biggest event of my day.

  “How’s it going, Penny?” It was Detective Glen Wong of the Maui County Sheriff’s Department. He was my WITSEC contact. “Just thought I’d check in and see how you’re doing.”

  I envisioned him drawing a line through an item on his to-do list that read, Check in with PM.

  “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” I said. “I’ve been here more than three weeks now. How’s it going with the grand jury?”

  “You know this isn’t a secure line,” he said. “Are you asking me when we’re going to get those tickets to Disney World?”

  “Yeah, whatever.” ‘Disney World’ was our code for my testimony before the grand jury on the mainland. I didn’t think I had enough information about the cartel to make the trip worthwhile, but Wong had convinced the feds I did. That was why they’d granted me the all-expenses-paid island getaway.

  “Well, your cousins tell me it’s best to wait until after the holidays,” Wong said. “They say it gets crowded during school breaks. We’ll probably be looking at going sometime after the first of the year.”

  “Tell my cousins to hurry it up. I’m tired of waiting. I can’t imagine sitting here twiddling my thumbs until January. I want to see Minnie and Mickey now.”

  There was a pause. “Your cousins know best, you know. It’s their party.”

  “Look, I seriously can’t take this waiting around anymore. It’s bad enough I don’t have anything to do. But I don’t know anyone here. I’m
starting to talk to the walls. And, worse, they’re starting to talk back.”

  “That’s your own fault, Penny.”

  I figured his next line would be a snarky comment about how I’d brought this on myself by snooping in police business and pissing off a homicidal drug lord, but he surprised me.

  “You ought to get out more, maybe find a job. I hear they’re hiring seasonal workers at the hotels over there. I can send you a copy of your résumé if you’d like.”

  When he said ‘send’ he didn’t mean email. I wasn’t allowed to have a computer. Wong and I did everything the old fashioned way, by snail mail, cash, and government hand-outs.

  “You have a copy of my résumé?”

  “Absolutely, Penny. And it shows nobody can tidy up a hotel room better’n you.”

  “And I speak English.”

  “Yeah, that too. Go talk to them. With your credentials, you’re as good as hired.”

  ***

  On Friday, with fake résumé in hand, I took the shuttle bus up to the Four Seasons Lodge at Koele. It’s only a few blocks up the road from Lana’i City, but it’s about as far up the food chain as you can get. The whole place is done up in what they refer to as Hawaiian Plantation-style, but it looked more English manor-house than pineapple farm worker to me. The lobby was spacious and polished, like no one up there ever did a lick of work in their life. I half-expected the dude at the front desk to send me packing when I showed up in the only half-decent outfit I’d brought with me, a pair of baggy off-white polyester pants and a garage-sale tunic. But he simply smiled and directed me down the hall to the housekeeping supervisor’s office.

  “Hello, Miss Morton,” said the woman behind the messy desk. She stood to shake my hand, then sat back down and scooped a pile of papers to one side so she could fold her hands in front of her. The badge on her uniform identified her as Kate, but that name seemed as fake as Penny Morton. The woman was clearly Southeast Asian, probably Filipino or Thai. Hard to believe her parents had dubbed her Kate or even Katherine at birth.

  “Thank you for meeting with me,” I said reaching across the desk to shake her hand. Since I’d been self-employed for going on three years I was a little rusty on interview etiquette, but she smiled and gestured for me to sit down so I guessed I was doing okay.

  “May I see your résumé?” she said. “I usually get them in advance, by email.” She shot me a look that made me squirm as I handed over the single sheet of paper.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t send it to you earlier. I’m afraid I don’t have a computer.”

  “No computer? On Lana’i? How do you manage?”

  Good question. “Well, I expect I’ll be getting one soon. I just moved here.”

  She sat back and took a couple of minutes to peruse the résumé. I took the opportunity to check out her office. The windowless room was tiny, about eight by ten. It was painted that industrial shade of white called ‘eggshell,’ and the only furniture was her desk and chair and the rather creaky wooden guest chair I was sitting on. The wall behind her was papered with government-issued posters about worker’s rights, minimum wage, equal opportunity, and what-not. They were printed in both English and Spanish.

  “It looks like you’ve had quite a bit of experience in the hotel industry, Miss Morton.”

  “Please call me Penny, and yes, I’ve pretty much done everything.”

  “But you’re applying for a housekeeping position,” she said. “I’m surprised. You know it doesn’t pay as well as working in the restaurant or in guest services.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. You see, I’m a recent widow, and lately it’s been hard for me to deal with people. I see a honeymooning couple and I just…” I broke off, and tried out a little routine I’d been practicing in the bathroom mirror. It involved blinking my eyes really fast while I sniffed and tightly pursed my lips. At first it felt pretty contrived, but after a little practice I’d gotten it down to where I hoped it looked at least somewhat convincing.

  She reached behind her, picked up a tissue box and handed it to me. Snap! Looked like I might need to come up with an Oscar speech after all.

  “I’m so sorry to hear of your loss,” she said. “You’re so young.”

  “Yes, well, my husband was in the military, so it wasn’t totally unexpected. But still, it’s a shock.”

  “I can’t imagine,” she said, slowly shaking her head. “So, do you have a shift you’d prefer? We’re hiring for both check-out cleaners in the mornings and turn-down service at night. Some people prefer coming in early and getting work out of the way so they can be home for their….” She stopped short, as if realizing I might really start up the boo-hooing if she mentioned husbands or kids. “…uh, so they can be home for their afternoons.”

  Good save, Kate.

  “Is the pay the same for morning or night shifts?” I said.

  “Yes, you’ll start out at minimum wage. But if you meet your room quotas and there are no guest complaints or house rules violations, we can see about giving you a twenty-five cent raise in a month or so.”

  Twenty-five cent raise? I wanted to laugh. The nightly room rate at the Four Seasons started at more than three-hundred bucks and went up to ten times that. Obviously the ridiculous prices weren’t a result of overpaying the help.

  “Also,” she went on, as if trying to talk me into the job, “many of our guests are in the habit of tipping the housekeeping staff. From what I hear it’s possible to make ten or even twenty dollars in tips every day.”

  Hallelujah. With bank like that rolling in, I might be able to grab a hamburger at one of the local cafés every week or so.

  “That sounds good,” I said.

  “So, when can you start?”

  “I’m pretty much available now.”

  “Well then, let’s get the paperwork handled so we can get you on the schedule.”

  She reached into a desk drawer and brought out a stack of papers. “First, I’ll need you to fill this out.” She handed me an official Four Seasons Hotel Employment Application.

  “Then, we’ll need you to take this down to the police station and get your fingerprints done. It’s for identity purposes.” She slid a blank fingerprint card across the desk.

  I started to reach for it, then snapped my hand back as if the card had burst into flame.

  “Is there a problem?” she said.

  “No…” I dragged the word out while I tried to come up with a logical excuse for not wanting to roll my fingertips across a police department inkpad. “It’s just that, well, I don’t understand why this is necessary. As you can see, I’ve worked in many hotels and restaurants here in Hawaii, mostly on O’ahu.”

  “Oh, I know it’s an inconvenience. But we must have official ID. You see, our guests are our first priority. And many of our hotel visitors are, well to put it bluntly, wealthy people. It’s important to know who will be in their rooms. Also, we have to establish your right to work in the United States. The federal government’s gotten really tough with the hospitality industry on immigration issues.” She shot me a conspiratorial smile that said, of course we know you aren’t the illegal riff-raff we need to weed out, but everyone has to follow the rules.

  “I understand completely. May I take this with me and bring it back later?”

  “Certainly. But remember we can’t offer you employment until your file is complete.” She stood and I followed suit.

  “Thank you for coming in, Miss Mor—oh, excuse me, Penny. It was my pleasure to make your acquaintance, and I look forward to working with you.”

  I assured her the pleasure was all mine, and then thanked her for her time. I walked through the spacious front lobby, sucking in the rarified air of the wealthy and entitled. Too bad I didn’t live in that world. Even worse, the way things were going, I wouldn’t even be allowed to scrub the toilets in that world anytime soon.

  CHAPTER 2

  “What do you mean you didn’t take the job?” said Wong when he called
on Monday to see how things had gone. “I went to a lot of effort to grease the skids.”

  “I don’t want greased skids. I want outta here. There’s no way I’m going to sashay into the Lana’i City police station and leave my fingerprints on their computer.”

  “Sorry to break it to you, Penny, but your fingerprints are already there. It’s part of Maui County.”

  “No, my other fingerprints are there. Not my fake ones.”

  “Look, I realize you’ve had some doubts about the police before, but everyone’s on board with this. You have nothing to worry about.”

  “Just the same, I don’t want to be telling any more lies than necessary.”

  “So, what now, Ms. Morton?” Wong’s voice had slipped into the cranky zone.

  “I think I could do this just as easily at home. I’m keeping out of sight, not talking to anybody, not drawing attention to myself. Why can’t I do this back home on—”

  He cut me off. “How many times do I have to remind you this isn’t a secure line? You are home, Ms. Morton. You’re husband’s combat fatality was a truly disturbing event for you, but we’ve done everything we can to allow you time to rest and recover. Until you’re ready to move forward with your life, all I can say is please enjoy your time at the taxpayers’ expense. Most young widows don’t get an opportunity like this. And don’t forget, we still have that trip to Disney World coming up.”

  “I’m willing to go to Disney World, no problem. But why do I have to wait here while my cousins fool around getting it set up? Seems to me they aren’t in any big hurry to make it happen.”

  “We’ve been over this a hundred times, Penny. I know you’re bored, but there’s only one way this is going to happen and it’s out of our control. If you keep up the whining, I may have to move you closer to Disney World while we wait. It’s your call. You can amuse yourself where you are, or get ready to move to someplace much further away.”