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

  “Fine, I got it. I’ll see about taking up basket weaving.”

  ***

  I have a black belt in kung fu. I don’t say that to brag, but rather to point out how I used to spend a lot of my free time back home. Over on Lana’i the only fitness activities I’d found were ‘sit and stretch,’ which was offered twice a week at the Senior Center, and tai chi, which was open to the public every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning in Dole Park. I went one Monday morning and I was the only person there under the age of sixty. Tai chi is healthy and relaxing, but it’s boring. I mean, I was used to kicking and screaming, and here I was silently moving in slow motion. The whole practice felt like martial arts for the meek.

  So, to keep up my skills, I began practicing my kung fu forms every morning in my living room. But without a guan—a martial arts gym—I couldn’t really get my blood pumping. I was used to sparring with other members at Palace of Pain, the guan I belong to in Pa’ia. Not only was fighting a great way to burn calories, but it kept me sharp. With every day that passed on Lana’i I felt a tad less confident, a bit more flabby. It was as if my self-esteem had developed a slow leak.

  That’s why I took up running. I never ran on Maui because there was too much traffic. My house is in a hilly area called Hali’imaile. The only roads up there are skinny two-laners that cut through an agricultural area. Tourist and local drivers alike are known to barrel down those roads going twice the posted speed limit. Without any shoulders to escape to, a runner is just road kill waiting to happen.

  But on Lana’i the roads were virtually empty. Okay, only thirty miles of the roads are paved, but dirt roads aren’t a big problem for runners.

  The next morning, as I was sprinting through town on my way out toward the Garden of the Gods, I turned on Kua’aina Street. About halfway down the block I passed a plantation-style home with a hand-written sign in the window that said, ‘Help Wanted.’ It didn’t look like the kind of place that would demand fingerprints, and besides, it had a huge greenhouse in the back. Maybe helping out in a greenhouse would be fun. I’d never done much with plants. In fact, my scraggly lawn over in Hali’imaile was the blight of the neighborhood. I could picture myself getting jiggy with Mother Nature. Why not?

  I walked up and down the block, cooling down and rehearsing my BS. It was annoying, all this lying and subterfuge, but if it helped me get a job to pass the time, and it kept Wong from dragging my sorry butt over to the mainland to wait for the grand jury, then I’d lie until my teeth cracked.

  I knocked on the screen door and a young, very pregnant, woman came out of a back room. She smiled at me and came to unlatch the door.

  “Aloha,” she said. She blinked in the bright sun and put up a hand to shield her eyes as she held the door open. “Come in, e komo mai.”

  “Aloha, have I disturbed you?” I said. “I was just out for a quick run and I saw your sign in the window.”

  “No worries, you didn’t disturb me. The doctor wants me to keep off my feet.” She patted her bulging belly. “I’ve got a whole new appreciation for my mother. I guess it takes nine months of this to realize what I put her through.”

  I wanted to say, you think this is bad, let’s talk when the kid’s fifteen, but instead I said, “So I’ve heard. I don’t have any children of my own.”

  “Well, I’m not complaining, but I’ll be glad when this little dude decides to make his entrance. I feel like any day now my neighbors are gonna start advertising whale watch tours.”

  We smiled at each other, seemingly both silently agreeing we could dispense with the small talk and get down to business.

  “So, you’re here about the job? Do you have any experience?”

  Uh-oh, it never occurred to me that maybe they’d want someone whose thumb wasn’t every color of the rainbow but green.

  “Uh, not really. I’m a quick study, though.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t have much time to train you. We need someone who can hit the ground running, like tomorrow. I’ll be flying over to O’ahu as soon as my water breaks.”

  “Maybe if you showed me the greenhouse, and what needs to be done, I could write down some notes, and take it from there. I’m kama’aina and I’ve done all kinds of jobs, from restaurant work to tourism gigs, and really, I learn fast.”

  She looked puzzled. “You’ve worked in tourism? I thought you said you didn’t have any experience.”

  “Well, not with plants.”

  She turned to look toward the backyard. The greenhouse wasn’t visible from where we were standing, but we both knew it was back there somewhere.

  “No, you misunderstand,” she said. “We’re not hiring a gardener. We have a great gardener, Ho Wing Shu. Do you know him? He lives over on Lana’i Avenue. He designed the entrance gardens at the Manele Beach Hotel. He’s a highly respected horticulturist here on the island, and he’s been in the paper lots of times.”

  “I’m kama’aina from O’ahu, but I’m new here on Lana’i.”

  “Oh, well then you probably don’t know him. Anyway, we’re a bed and breakfast. See the sign?” She pointed out the window to a small wooden sign hanging below their rural mailbox. I couldn’t read the words on it through the screen door. “Yeah,” she continued, “we’re the White Orchid Bed and Breakfast. We’ve got a four-star rating on Trip Advisor.com. You know, on the Internet.”

  I shot her my most winsome smile. Could I have lucked into anything more perfect?

  “So you’re looking for someone to help with the guests?” I asked. “What type of work? Housekeeping, cooking, taking reservations?”

  “Well, pretty much all of the above. We’re just a two-person operation, my husband and me. We only have three rooms, but we clean the rooms, help the guests with local activities, fix breakfast, and so on. We do most of our guest reservations online but we also take them by phone, or even the occasional walk-in. Running a B and B is a lot of work, but we love it.”

  I kept the smile going. This would be perfect since most of the people I’d be dealing with would be visitors who probably wouldn’t give two cents about who I was or where I was from.

  She went on. “The only problem is this is a temporary job. I plan to be at my mother-in-law’s on O’ahu no more than a week or two. I might need you to stay on for a while after that, but that’s all. I’ve had a few applicants, but everyone wants something more permanent.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Sorry.”

  “A few weeks is no problem,” I said. “I’m a new widow, over here from Honolulu to recover from my husband’s combat death and get through the holidays. Back home, I lived on base, at Hickam, when my husband was in Afghanistan, but now…”

  “Oh, I am so sorry,” she said. “Would you like to sit down? Can I get you something to drink? I feel horrible not asking you sooner. Where are my manners?” She’d turned an unhealthy shade of pale at my mention of widowhood. I imagined her hormones had probably kicked into overdrive at the thought of being left alone with a newborn.

  “No, no, don’t worry, I’m doing fine. It’s been a while now. Every day it gets easier.”

  She looked shocked at my cavalier attitude.

  “No, what I mean is, I loved my husband very, very much. But we were only married a short time and we didn’t have kids, or even our own home. It’s hard, of course, but I’ve gotten a lot of support from the military.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier for you to stay over there for the holidays, with the other military wives?”

  “No, actually it’s just the opposite. They take one look at me and they see their worst nightmare. It’s best for everyone if I handle this on my own.”

  I felt like such a fraud, like an emotional con artist. Why hadn’t the feds come up with something less heartbreaking? I still thought my Saudi prince story was a better way to go.

  “Well, then it looks like this might work out for both of us,” she said. “Would you like a tour?”

  She showed me around her home. All of the f
loors were polished hardwood, and the walls were adorned in sepia-toned prints of hula dancers on the beach. The front room, or as she called it, the ‘great room’ was a cozy sitting area with a small sofa and two overstuffed chairs that were clean but had seen better days. There was a small fireplace against the far wall.

  “Is that an operating fireplace?” I said.

  “Oh yes, we use it a lot. It can get pretty nippy up here on winter nights.”

  “Where do you get the wood?”

  She smiled. “Look around. These Cook Island pines sometimes drop ten-foot branches when we get a big storm.”

  That was less than comforting.

  The three guest rooms were similar, but not identical. Two rooms had queen beds, and the other room had a queen and a set of bunk beds. All had attached bathrooms with toilet, sink and shower.

  “The larger room is for families,” she said. “You’d be surprised how many kids we get here. I think the parents are afraid to stay at the Four Seasons. The kids might break something.”

  Yeah, I thought, like dad’s wallet.

  “Every morning we pick fresh fruit and serve it with breakfast. We’ve got mango, papaya, bananas—all kinds of trees. We even have some strawberry plants in the greenhouse.”

  She went on. “My husband, Darryl, makes muffins or scones to start with. Then, when the guests are seated, we offer them egg dishes. Sometimes to order—like specialty omelets or bacon and eggs—or sometimes he just makes a sausage and egg casserole. He’s got all kinds of recipes he’ll leave for you.”

  I was getting a little nervous. I usually scarfed down some yogurt or cold cereal for breakfast. Whipping up omelets and casseroles wasn’t my strong suit.

  “You look worried. Don’t be,” she said. “We promise a full, healthy breakfast. If you want to buy some muffins at the store and fix some oatmeal with fruit, that will be fine. The only thing you’ve got to get perfect is the coffee. People on the Internet rave about our coffee.”

  “I’m a big fan of the stuff myself.”

  “Good. Because we use the best Kona beans and we grind them fresh for every pot. We use French presses and each table gets their own press so they can help themselves.”

  “I’ve never done that.”

  “It’s simple. If you can operate a bicycle pump, you can make French press coffee. It’s the same principle.”

  She showed me where the cleaning supplies were kept and then she opened the linen closet. “We wash our own linens here, but we only change the guests’ sheets every three days, unless there’s an accident. The guests know that they don’t get new sheets daily, so it’s not a problem. The washing machine is out in the carport and I dry everything on the back clothesline. People go pupule over the smell of sheets dried in the fresh air. I guess back on the mainland hardly anybody does that anymore.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t about to tell her I’d check on the sheet-drying situation when I was over on the mainland testifying against a murderous drug cartel.

  “By the way,” she said. “How long have you been here on Lana’i?”

  “Not quite a month.”

  “Have you gotten your electric bill yet?”

  “No.” Truth was, I was never going to get an electric bill. Uncle Sam—my new Sugar Daddy—paid all my bills. He fed me with an electronic food stamp card (which I hated using at the local grocery store because it always garnered stink eye from the hard-working clerk), and he intercepted all my mail. I didn’t even get stuff addressed to “Occupant.”

  “Well, you’re in for a shock,” she said. “Our electric bills are outrageous. Hundreds of dollars. That’s another reason why I dry stuff outside.”

  I nodded.

  “Oh!” She clamped a hand on her belly. “The little bugger’s kicking a goal in there. Sco-o-o-re!” She threw her hands up in mock celebration, but she looked like she was in pain.

  “Do you need to sit down?”

  “I probably should. Why don’t I make you a cup of coffee while we work out the details?”

  “Better yet,” I said, “why don’t I make you a cup of coffee? Consider it a training session.”

  “I’m off coffee,” she said. “I’m stuck with herbal tea. But you could make me some tea and then make yourself a small French press of coffee. How’s that sound?”

  “Sounds good. At least that way if I mess up, I’ll be the only one who has to drink it.” She led me into the kitchen. Hawaiian-themed coffee mugs were visible through the glass-fronted cabinets. I pulled out two mugs and took the tea kettle off the stove and filled it with water.

  “Oh my gosh, I did it again,” she said. “I never even asked you your name. As you can see, I’m way too distracted to be running a guest house.” She put a hand over her mouth in embarrassment.

  “No, it’s my fault. I should have told you earlier. My name’s Penny Morton. Just Penny, not Penelope or anything fancy like that.”

  “Well, Penny, I’m Ewa Fontaine. My first name’s pronounced Eh-va, but it’s spelled E-W-A—the Hawaiian spelling. There’s an Ewa Beach over on O’ahu, right?”

  “Yes. Up toward the North Shore.” I was glad she’d been named for a well-known beach. If it had been some obscure place on the windward side of O’ahu, I wouldn’t have had a clue.

  “You must miss being over there. It’s so different from here.”

  “Oh yeah, it’s different all right.”

  She led me to the breakfast room, which was a small alcove off the main kitchen. There were three tiny tables covered in tropical print oilcloth tablecloths. The chairs were so spindly I was afraid she might not be able to balance herself on the tiny chair seat. She took her time sitting down.

  “As you can imagine, the only bad reviews we get are from ali’i-sized people,” she said once she got settled. “Everything here on Lana’i is kind of small. During the pineapple days, most of the folks were short skinny guys who burned up every available calorie working in the fields all day long. The women worked hard too. They didn’t have conveniences like we have today.”

  “I figured these plantation houses had been built with small people in mind,” I said. “My rental’s only five hundred square feet.”

  “That sounds about right. This B and B is actually two houses we put together. My husband added on all the guest bathrooms himself. When we moved in, there was only one indoor toilet in the whole place. The second house hadn’t been modernized yet.”

  We finished our tea and coffee and I went back outside and resumed my run. My feet barely touched the ground as I took a loop around Dole Park before heading for home.

  I could hardly wait to tell Wong I’d found a job, all by myself.

  CHAPTER 3

  The next morning I made my way down to the White Orchid Bed and Breakfast at six-thirty. Ewa had asked me to arrive by seven, but I was too excited to wait around any longer. I skipped up the front steps and rapped lightly on the front door. A guy’s face came into view through the small four-pane window. He smiled and opened the door.

  “Hey, aloha! Ewa told me she’d found a new girl. You must be her.” He pushed the screen open for me to come inside.

  Whew, what a hunk. From all appearances, that baby of theirs was getting some Grade A genes. Ewa’s husband was a poi dog, what we Hawaiians call people with mixed ethnicity. He looked Asian, Hawaiian, and haole. I’ll bet his family tree sported a whole fruit salad of ancestors. He wasn’t tall by American standards, but he was taller than most of the locals, probably five-ten. He was toned and ripped from neck to feet, and he sported a set of biceps that would make my best friend Farrah, back home on Maui, weep. He was darkly tanned, highlighting his wide smile and espresso brown eyes.

  “My name’s Darryl,” he said, extending a hand.

  “I’m Penny.” We shook hands. Then he leaned in to whisper to me.

  “I’m so glad to see you. Ewa’s been a wreck worrying about this. It’s not like we have that many guests, but she didn’t want to have to cancel on
anybody. Or send them up to the big boys on the hill.” He nodded in the general direction of the Four Seasons Lodge at Koele.

  “Yeah, I understand. You work hard to build up a good reputation, and then your life gets in the way,” I said.

  “Exactly. Anyway, like I said, it’s great you’ve agreed to help us out here. Did Ewa go over your duties?”

  “Not everything. We talked in general about taking reservations, cleaning the rooms and making breakfast, but I’m not one-hundred percent sure of everything I should be doing.”

  “No worries. I made you a list. It’s kind of a check-list, but don’t feel you have to follow it to a ‘T’ or nothin’. I thought it might help, though.”

  He handed me a three-page list of tasks. At the top of the first page it said, Reservations & Check-in; on the second page, Breakfast; and on the third, Cleaning and Check-out. It detailed things I needed to know, like how to process a credit card payment and where the toilet plunger was kept. Obviously, Darryl had spent some time on it.

  “Wow, this is perfect. This will really help when Ewa’s not here.”

  “Don’t forget I’ll be gone too,” he said. “We’ll be staying with my folks over in Mililani, and as much as we’ll probably want to get outta there in a day or so, there’s no way my mom’s gonna let us. This is her first grandchild.”

  “I understand.”

  “I hear you’re from over there.”

  It took me a few seconds to make the connection. “Oh yeah, from O’ahu, you mean?”

  “Yeah.” He eyed me suspiciously.

  “I’m sorry. I’m still kinda freaked out from everything that’s happened.”

  “You mean, you husband? I was really sorry to hear about that. I wanted to thank you—and him—for his service. Guys like that are heroes, you know? I mean, real American heroes.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re probably tired of talking about it.”

  “No, it’s good to talk about it, but I’m still kind of getting used to it. Sometimes I just space out. You know, sometimes it feels like it never happened.”