Maui Widow Waltz (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series) Read online

  He tapped on the door before popping his head into my room.

  “You didn’t mention your pal Lisa Marie’s got a Ph.D. in pushy.”

  I groaned and sat up in bed.

  “She said to tell you—and I’m quoting here—‘chop, chop.’ Said she’d meet you at your shop at eight—sharp. And get this—she told me she takes cream in her coffee. The cow kind. From the sound of her voice, I’d suggest you not even dream of offering her the fake stuff.”

  I stood in the shower letting the water sluice down my face. How had I gotten to this point, where sucking up to a spoiled, probably-widowed-before-marriage mainlander was my only hope of staying in my house, getting my bills paid, and keeping my business out of the clutches of a shark like Tank Sherman? The thought of handing over my hard-earned contact files to that slime revved up my survival instinct. In less than twenty minutes I was showered, dressed and dashing out the door to pick up a pint of fresh cream.

  ***

  My friend Farrah waved at me through the window in the front door of the Gadda-da-Vida Grocery. She unbolted the lock and pulled hard to open the humidity-warped door. “Hey, girl. You been hanging out here long?”

  “Just a couple of minutes. I have a client who’s craving fresh cream for her coffee.”

  “She toting a coconut?”

  “Pregnant? I sure hope not. She’s the fiancée of that guy who disappeared off Kapalua. You know, the empty fishing boat that washed up on the beach? It’s been on the news.”

  “Whoa,” she said. “That’s a downer—for both of you. So the wedding’s off?” She turned and I followed her to the back of the store.

  “No, she wants to go through with it,” I said. We stopped in front of the humming dairy case. “She doesn’t believe he’s dead. And if he doesn’t show up in time for the ceremony, she’s got a guy who’s offered to stand in for him.”

  “You mean like a body double? Is that legit?” She handed me a tiny carton marked ‘heavy cream.’ The price sticker said six dollars.

  “Uh-oh, I just remembered I don’t have anything smaller than a hundred,” I said, glancing down at the fake straw beach bag that doubled as my purse. Lisa Marie’s ten one-hundred dollar bills were tucked in my wallet, ready to take to the bank.

  She laughed at what she must have thought was my feeble attempt at humor. “Oh, sure. I bet you’ve got a whole bagful of Benjamins there. But no worries. I’ll catch you later.” She asked me if I wanted a paper bag for the cream, but I knew the correct answer—the green answer—was mahalo, but no.

  “So,” she said, “you gonna let me do the flowers?”

  I nodded.

  “How about performing the ceremony? Did you clue her in about me and the Church of S and L?”

  “It looks good. I mentioned you could do it and she didn’t make the sign of the cross or flash me a Star of David necklace or anything.”

  “Good. I think I’ll wear my purple bat-wing caftan. It rocks in the photos.”

  “You look like Glinda the Good Witch in that thing.”

  “Yeah. But brides love it. I make ‘em all look skinny.”

  Farrah Milton’s been my best friend since third grade. We were inseparable all through school, only parting when I went off to the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. She stayed back on Maui to run the funky grocery store she’d inherited when her parents died in a car accident when she was seventeen. We share a lot in common—we’re both the offspring of 1970’s flower children who came to Hawaii seeking free love, top-notch weed, and lax transient laws. She was named for Farrah Fawcett, a not-so-subtle nod to her dad’s obsession with the original Charlie’s Angels. She looks nothing like “angel” Jill Monroe, however. Whereas Jill’s hair was blond, with that signature blow-dry hairstyle, Farrah’s is a waist-length tumble of tea-colored frizz. Jill had blue eyes, Farrah’s are espresso brown. All of the Angels had slim leggy bodies, but Farrah’s figure is curvy, with a bra cup size at least five letters down the alphabet. If she’d been born a century earlier, she could have passed for ali’i—those plump royal Hawaiian gals who were sexy in a bountiful Mother Earth kind of way.

  “Wish me luck,” I said. I pulled open the stubborn front door and the annoying tinkle bell attached to the doorframe seemed to urge me to get moving. “From what I’ve seen so far, I’m pretty sure her DNA’s sporting a few Bridezilla genes.”

  “Hey, don’t sweat the DNA; it’s her FICO score that counts. With all this wet, it’s a miracle some bummed-out bride hasn’t hijacked a jet to Tahiti. If we don’t see sun pretty soon we’ll all be flipping burgers in Honolulu.”

  “True,” I said, recalling Noni’s face as she delivered Tank Sherman’s ultimatum. I glanced at the Felix the Cat clock above the cash register. It showed seven-fifty-five. “Oops, gotta run. Mahalo for the cream.”

  When I stepped outside, Lisa Marie was standing next door in front of my shop furiously text-messaging on a fancy cell phone.

  “You’re late,” she said as I approached, key in hand.

  “I am not.” I glanced at my wrist for the watch that wasn’t there.

  “We had an eight o’clock meeting. You should have been here at least fifteen minutes early to turn on the heat and get the coffee ready.”

  “Coming right up,” I said, hoisting the cream carton like a trophy. I didn’t think it wise to mention my shop had no heat.

  “I take half and half,” she sniffed. “If you’re going to work for me, I think you better make an effort to learn my preferences.”

  Luckily, the coffee maker was in the back dressing room. I took advantage of the brewing time to silently mouth a few clever comebacks—in both English and Hawaiian.

  Once coffee was served and the wedding planning underway, the chip on her shoulder wobbled a bit.

  “I miss Brad. I know he’s all alone, washed up on some deserted beach. Like the guy in that movie, Cast Away. It was so sad. I got the DVD to watch it again the day after they found Brad’s boat. Remember the part where Tom Hanks comes home and his fiancée, Helen Hunt, has gone and married somebody else?”

  I nodded. Actually I didn’t remember, because I’d never seen the movie. But it sounded sad.

  “Anyway, I’m not doing that to Brad. When he’s able to come back to me, I’m going to be there, waiting. Our reunion will probably be all over the news. I’ll need to remember to cry, but just a little. Not enough to smudge my make-up.” She dabbed the corners of her eyes as if rehearsing and then went on. “But in any case, either the wedding will be all ready to go, or it’ll be over and we’ll get to watch it together on the video. He’s going to be so proud I went ahead and got us married on Valentine’s Day just like we planned.”

  I took a deep breath. “Lisa Marie, there aren’t too many deserted beaches on Maui. I think if Brad had washed ashore, someone would’ve found him by now and called the Coast Guard.”

  “Well, what if he has amnesia?” she said with a triumphant tone in her voice. She smiled and nodded her head in a gotcha. Her eyes locked on mine. I was pretty sure she was waiting for me to slap my forehead and declare myself a dimwit for not considering the amnesia factor.

  Instead, I turned away to conceal an unavoidable eye roll.

  “You know, like on The Young and the Restless?” she said.

  I smiled and shrugged.

  “How about General Hospital—you watch that one, right?” Her voice had taken on the tone of a grade school teacher prompting a student who’d botched an easy subtraction problem. “Well, believe me, people in tragic accidents get amnesia all the time.”

  ***

  That night Brad Sander’s disappearance was still the lead story on the local TV news. After six days of an exhaustive ocean and shoreline search of both Maui and Molokai, the Coast Guard had found nothing. They vowed to keep looking, but it sounded more like a formality than a commitment. The TV anchor read a statement from the officer in charge in which they announced that evidence pointed to the victim falling into the
ocean while trying to bring aboard a ten-pound ono fish tied to the stern. Their theory was supported by the fact that the boat had washed ashore at Kapalua, the most likely place an unmanned boat would have drifted that night given the wind and ocean currents.

  I looked over at Steve, and he slashed a finger across his throat.

  “She said he’s a strong swimmer,” I said.

  “You think even Michael Phelps can out-swim a shark?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Kevin McGillvary, understudy to the absent bridegroom, arrived right on time at eleven o’clock the next morning. A thunderous internal combustion engine boomed in the alley behind my shop and I peeked out half expecting to see Tank Sherman landing a helicopter in the narrow parking strip. The noise turned out to be an enormous black Hummer—a vehicle that looks plenty menacing even before you factor in its ridiculously low gas mileage and the price of fuel on Maui. Lisa Marie was perched high in the passenger seat and a guy with the proverbial ‘chiseled good looks’ was manning the steering wheel.

  They parked in an ‘employee only’ parking space. Actually, the car took up the better part of two parking spaces. I spied on them as the driver got out and went around the front of the car to assist the bride-to-be with the long leap back to earth. I wondered if he carried a stepstool like those shuttle drivers at the airport, but from my vantage point I couldn’t tell.

  The pair came up the three stairs to the back door and I took a cleansing breath and reached for the doorknob to let them in. I didn’t like clients parking in the alley or using the back entrance, but I instinctively knew better than to reprimand Lisa Marie. It had been only a day since I’d put her cash in my bank account—my first deposit in almost two months.

  “I hope you have the coffee ready,” said Lisa Marie.

  “Freshly brewed.”

  “Good. Maybe you’re trainable after all. Oh, this is Kevin. And this is Pali.” She gestured toward me, thumb extended as if hitching a ride.

  “Ho’okipa—welcome. It’s nice to meet you,” I said, shaking Kevin’s hand while trying to read his eyes.

  “Yeah, you too.” The guy’s face was as closed as a pro poker player wearing mirrored sunglasses. He was tall and powerfully built, with Calvin Klein model good looks, and dark wavy hair gelled to perfection. He appeared a bit older than Lisa Marie, maybe late twenties or early-thirties. He wore a pale blue Nike golf shirt and crisply-pressed khakis. Clamped to his left wrist was a gaudy gold Rolex.

  I usually size up men relative to their martial arts potential, and this guy looked like a black belt waiting to happen. My stomach did a little bump and grind, and I had to bite back the audible swoon I’d have made if it had been me and Farrah checking out surfers at the beach. After all, Kevin was a client—sort of. As I ordered my libido back to its hole, I decided if Brad Sanders ever did show up I might allow myself the opportunity to reassess the Kevin situation.

  Having reined in my lust, it dawned on me that Kevin’s looks were not only hot, but puzzling. The photo of Brad Sanders they’d run on TV showed a pale, fleshy-necked guy wearing a rumpled dress shirt with a button-down collar. He sported a shopping mall haircut, a geek goatee, and funky wire-rimmed glasses. The photo was a portrait shot, so it didn’t show his wristwatch or his physique, but judging from what I could see I imagined a black plastic Casio and a belly paunch. Physically and sartorially, the contrast between Kevin and Brad was day and night.

  I offered the couple a seat on the sofa in the front office while I stayed in back to pour the coffee and prepare the fitting room for Lisa Marie’s try-on session. I sniffed the cream, determined it free of deadly pathogens, and placed the carton on the tray along with three brimming Hilo Hattie mugs. I slipped through the bead curtain beaming like Martha Stewart presenting a flaming dessert, but neither of them looked up. While we cranked up our caffeine quotient, we made idle chatter about the ongoing crummy weather. No one mentioned the search for Brad.

  There was a lull in the conversation and Lisa Marie turned to me. “Are there any castles on Maui?”

  “Castles?”

  “Yeah, you know. Fairytale castles, with turnips and molts.”

  “Turrets and moats?”

  “Yeah. And a drawstring bridge and all that.”

  “A drawbridge?”

  “Yeah. Why do you keep repeating everything? Just answer me. Is there a castle over here or not?”

  “Not that I know of. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, I was looking through my celebrity wedding scrapbook and my very, very, very favorite wedding was Tom and Katie’s. You know, at night, in that castle in Italy? Little Suri was so adorable as flower girl.”

  “Ah, yes. That wedding was pretty spectacular. But Bill Gates chose Hawaii. In the daytime, by the ocean—just like yours is going to be.”

  “Who’s Bill Gates?” said Lisa Marie.

  “Actually,” Kevin chimed in, “Gates’ wedding was on the island of Lana’i, not Maui. And it was on a golf course overlooking the ocean, not on the beach.”

  Score one for Mr. GQ.

  “You’re right. It was on Lana’i at Manele Bay. But in any case, it wasn’t in a castle.” I turned to Lisa Marie. “Bill Gates is the richest man in America.”

  “He’s rich because he’s an astute businessman and a software genius,” Kevin said in a voice that let me know he felt I’d slighted Gates by merely focusing on his wealth.

  “Brad’s a software genius. Everybody says so.” Lisa Marie said this in a voice so small I thought it might have come from inside my own head.

  A few moments of tight silence followed.

  “And I’m going to be a software genius’ wife!” she said, perking up as if she’d been hit with a defibrillator. “Okay. Enough of this sitting around, I want to see some wedding dresses.”

  As I led them back into the fitting room, Kevin’s eyes flicked across the four gowns I’d displayed for Lisa Marie’s inspection. He frowned as he turned over the first price tag.

  “Five thousand bucks? You must be joking.”

  “It’s Vera Wang, Kevin.” Lisa Marie shot me a sideways glance complete with arched eyebrow.

  “Usually the bride brings her gown with her or she orders one from a local bridal shop at least four months in advance,” I said. “But since Lisa Marie needs a dress on extremely short notice, and she said she’d prefer a designer label, I managed to pull together a few rentals.”

  What I didn’t let them in on was the begging, pleading and bribing I’d done a few hours earlier at a bridal shop in Kahului. Lucky for me the owner’s daughter had just picked up her high school senior pictures and she hated them. She claimed the photos, taken by a local school photographer, made her look fat and cross-eyed. I’d offered Steve’s services for quick retakes with a money-back guarantee. In return, I’d received four sample dresses the shop owner was willing to rent. The immediate problem solved, I knew I faced more begging and pleading with Steve once I got home.

  “How much does it cost to rent one of these things?” Kevin said, flipping over the tags on the remaining three gowns.

  “They range from a thousand to eighteen hundred, plus alterations.”

  “A thousand bucks to wear a dress for a couple of hours? I’m obviously in the wrong business.”

  “You’re Brad’s business partner, right?” I said, making an effort to tone down the shrill that had crept into my voice. “At DigiSystems, a company the news reports refer to as a ‘multi-million dollar tech company’.”

  “Yeah. Actually, I can’t complain. Brad brought me in during the start up. He’s the hardest working guy I’ve ever met.” He lowered his eyes and shook his head. “Not the greatest with the business side of things, but that’s my job. Now, I’m not sure what we’re gonna do...” He ran a hand through his carefully coifed hair.

  “Kevin,” Lisa Marie said. “We’re going to do what Brad would want us to do. We’re going to focus on getting this wedding set up. Right here, right now.”
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  He nodded but didn’t look up.

  “Hey,” she continued. “Remember that time when he didn’t come to his own birthday party?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “The guy was a maniac. We put on this huge bash for his twenty-third birthday but he stayed in the lab running QC on the beta of version three until one o’clock in the morning. I’ll say this about Brad: the dude was focused—and stubborn.”

  “Shut up, Kevin,” said Lisa Marie. She had enough steel in her voice to build an aircraft carrier. “You make it sound like he’s gone forever. He’s not. He’ll be back soon and you’ll be eating your crows for talking trash about him being dead.”

  “Tell you what,” he said. “You girls knock yourselves out here. I’ll wait for you in the front.” He turned and parted the beaded curtain to leave. A few seconds later I heard the springs groan in my old sofa.

  For nearly an hour I listened to Lisa Marie ponder aloud the pros and cons of the four gowns. The neckline on one was too high; there were too many bows on another; the color of the third was “icky;” and so on. It was like watching Goldilocks on crack. She tried on each dress at least three times.

  At half-past noon I asked for her decision.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “They all pretty much suck. Maybe this isn’t going to work out after all.” She plucked her handbag off the floor and disappeared behind the dressing room curtain. I heard her rustling around as she put on her street clothes.

  “I could have a dress made for you,” I said in a sprightly buck up tone intended to shore up my morale as much as hers. Gathering steam, I went on, even though she hadn’t made a peep from behind the curtain. “We could use a local seamstress. It would be a one-of-a-kind original.”

  “And how much would that cost?” Kevin growled through the plywood wall. He’d been so quiet the past hour I thought he’d fallen asleep. I heard the sofa springs retract, and a few seconds later he poked his head back through the beaded doorway. Strings of shiny plastic beads draped across his shoulders making him look like a hunky back-up dancer on a music video.