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

  “I’d have to check,” I said. “With only a few days to buy the fabric; take Lisa Marie’s measurements; cut out the pattern; and then assemble the main pieces for the first fitting it probably won’t come cheap. But it would be an original gown that could be passed down to her daughter.”

  “Like there’s ever going to be a daughter,” Kevin muttered. I anticipated an outburst from Lisa Marie, but apparently she didn’t pick up on his cynicism about Brad Sanders ever contributing to the gene pool.

  “You’re right. I deserve an original couture design,” she said. “When can I start interviewing seamstresses?”

  “I don’t think you grasp the situation here, Lisa. In order to—”

  “It’s Lisa Marie. Only Brad gets to call me Lisa.”

  “Sorry, Lisa Marie,” I said. “A wedding gown in less than a week is a minor miracle. Let me call a woman in Wailuku who does alterations for all the local dress shops. She’s the best on the island. If she can’t do it, you’ll have to fly over to Honolulu and find an off-the-rack gown.”

  “No. I’ve decided I want an original. I don’t care how much it costs. And not another word out of you, buster.”

  Kevin stepped all the way into the dressing room and crossed his arms tightly across his chest. He looked as if he was dying to say something, but he stayed silent. Then he turned on his heel and went back out. This time I heard his footsteps cross the floor. I winced as he slammed the front door and the thin plank walls of the plantation-era building shuddered in response.

  “Don’t mind him,” Lisa Marie said. “He’s always been a nervous Nelly. Brad told me when they were first getting the company started Kevin used to freak out all the time about money, patents, industrial spies, all of it. Now I guess it’s my turn to put up with him while we try to get this wedding ready. I hope Brad comes back before too long. I don’t know how much of Kevin’s uptight crap I can take. Especially since I’m trying to get ready for the biggest day of my entire life.”

  My conscience nagged. I asked Lisa Marie to have a seat on the dainty stool next to the dressing room step-up while I perched on the bottom step.

  “You know, the Coast Guard’s pretty sure Brad fell overboard.” I didn’t know how far I could push her, so I eased into it, trying to remember the high points of the hostage negotiation class I’d taken during my air marshal training.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Well, it’s extremely difficult to make it back to shore if a person falls into open water during the night.”

  “And your point is?”

  “Lisa Marie, Brad may not be coming back. Do you understand that? Are you prepared to accept that?”

  “You don’t know Brad. I do. Brad wants to get married on Valentine’s Day, and so do I. Even putting up with cranky Kevin is worth it because by next week I’ll be Mrs. Bradley James Sanders, wife of DigiSystems founder and president.” She narrowed her eyes. “So tell me, what’s going on with you? It sounds to me like maybe you’re trying to weasel out of doing this. What is it—do you want more money? Are you afraid you won’t be able to do what you promised? What?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that. I was just thinking—“

  “Well, stop thinking. From the looks of things, thinking’s not your strong shoot. Just answer me this: Are you going to do what you said you’d do and put on my perfect Valentine’s Day wedding or not?”

  “Of course. I just—”

  “No, stop. No more negative vibes—I need to stay positive. Don’t talk to me unless you have something cheerful to say.” She reached into her purse and brought out a hard-sided glasses case. Flicking it open, she plucked out a pair of Chanel tortoise shell sunglasses and slipped them on. She stood up and gestured for me to move out of her way. I watched as she gazed into the full-length mirror, turning her head from side to side admiring her reflection.

  I fantasized shaking her by the shoulders and yelling, snap out of it—he’s dead. But instead, I bent over and started retrieving the tangle of wardrobe bags she’d tossed across the fitting room floor. When I straightened up, she’d vanished without so much as a tah-tah.

  I spent the next three hours phoning vendors. Concerned that my usual contacts would snub me for asking them to perform miracles on such short notice, I began each call with, “Sorry to call at the last minute, but…”

  In every case, the response was, “No worries, Pali. What do you need?”

  Seems I wasn’t the only one feeling the pinch from the rotten weather.

  A few of them asked if they could get back to me with prices, but by four o’clock I’d managed to secure most of the services I’d need. I ordered a wedding cake from Keahou’s Cakes up in Kula, videotaping from Mikey O—who worked at the Lahaina Video Plus Store and used their off-the-shelf inventory on the sly—and I’d gone next door and reconfirmed with Farrah about doing the flowers and conducting the ceremony.

  I’d promised to return the rental dresses by four-thirty, but before I did that I needed to make one last call.

  “Hi, Akiko,” I said, holding the phone receiver between my chin and shoulder as I finished zipping a heavily-beaded gown into its protective bag. “This is Pali Moon. Remember me? I met you at Leilani’s dress shop last summer. I mentioned I had a wedding planning business in Pa’ia called ‘Let’s Get Maui’d’.”

  “Ah yes, I remember you.” She didn’t sound like she did, but was too polite to say so.

  “How’re things with you?” I said. Any response would have been acceptable except swamped.

  “Not bad. Kinda slow.”

  I pumped a fist in the air.

  “Can I come over to your place and talk to you about doing some work for me?”

  “You got a gown needs hemming?”

  “Better’n that.”

  “Two gowns?” Her voice squeaked in anticipation. I cringed, knowing when she heard the job specs any delight she might be feeling at the moment would be trashed. I picked up a pen and asked for directions to her house. I didn’t have a notepad handy, so I jotted the address on the back of my hand.

  “I need to make one quick stop on the way, but I can be there in about half an hour.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Akiko’s ancient clapboard house was on a steep street in a working class area of Wailuku. The scrabbly front lawn was littered with little kid’s toys—a faded plastic Big-Wheel tricycle, a sodden refrigerator-size cardboard box with a hole cut in the side for a door, and a confetti of limbless action figures and naked Bratz dolls strewn about as if they’d come down with the rain.

  I found a parking spot on the street across from her house. I set the brake and checked it. My ancient Geo was prone to whims of escape whenever I left it on anything approximating an incline. As I climbed out, I heard the creak of a screen door. Akiko had come out onto her porch, smiling and waving. She seemed to have shrunk a couple of inches in the six months since I’d first met her. She probably weighed less than ninety pounds.

  I crossed the street and picked my way up the cracked sidewalk.

  “These grandkids,” she said, eyeing the clutter in the yard. “I tell them to pick up, but eh, do they listen? So, you give me some dresses to hem and I can ignore this mess for another week.” She chuckled and her eyes disappeared in a fan of wrinkles.

  We went inside where chaos continued to reign. Akiko was rumored to be a perfectionist with a needle and thread, but housekeeping apparently rarely made her “to do” list.

  “Where are the dresses?” She said, eyeing my empty arms. “You just want a quote?”

  “No, I don’t need a quote. I need a dress.”

  A tight crease formed between her eyebrows.

  “A dress? You need me to make you a dress from scratch? I not do that for years and years.”

  “This is kind of an emergency.”

  She gestured for me to follow her into the kitchen. “I’m going to make us some tea.”

  While we sipped green tea, she talked about t
he rain, the slowdown in business and the eminent delivery of her fourth grandchild. From a back bedroom I heard the hush and roar of a TV sitcom laugh track. After about a half hour, the sound of stubby bare feet on wood floors was followed by giggling and a slamming door.

  “Tutu?” A girl of about ten or eleven popped her head in the kitchen doorway. “The boys locked the door again.”

  Akiko looked up at the clock and sighed.

  “I gotta get these keiki their dinner.”

  “I apologize for coming over so late.”

  “No worry. You say you need a gown? Why not just order one from Honolulu and let me alter it?”

  “There’s no time for that. I need it right away. The wedding’s next Thursday—Valentine’s Day.”

  She snorted with such force I was glad she’d finished her tea or it probably would’ve shot out of her nose.

  “You kidding, right? This some kind of joke?”

  I shook my head.

  “A week? No way.”

  “At least give me a price.”

  “A million dollars. I’ve got my three grandkids here ‘cause my daughter’s going to the hospital to have the next one. No way a dress in a week.”

  “Akiko, I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate. This girl is in a really sad situation.”

  “Pregnant?”

  “No. Worse.”

  “What’s worse? She on her death bed or something?”

  “Did you hear about that guy who disappeared off the fishing boat? The haole from Seattle who’s been on the news?”

  She squinted, nodding.

  “This girl is his fiancée. They planned a Valentine’s Day wedding.”

  “So? No man, no wedding. Why she need a dress?”

  I explained the stand-in groom and Lisa Marie’s insistence that the wedding proceed on schedule.

  “I’ll need to charge a lot of money to finish a dress so fast. She needs to pay me for no sleep and buying Mickey D’s every night to feed these keiki.”

  “No problem. She’s willing to spend money. The most important thing to her is that she gets married on Valentine’s Day.”

  “What if they find that boy’s body?”

  “No worries. I promise you’ll get paid no matter what.”

  Akiko agreed to come to the shop the next morning after she’d put the grandkids on the school bus. I asked her to bring pictures of two or three gowns she knew she could finish in time.

  “What if she doesn’t like any of them?”

  “It’s my job to make sure she does.”

  ***

  My cell phone rang as I was getting ready for bed that night. It was Steve. He hadn’t been home for dinner, but we don’t keep tabs on each other.

  “I’ve got a favor to ask.”

  “Not a good night for favors, I’m afraid. It’s been a long day and I’m already in my p.j’s”

  “Actually it’s not so much a favor as an opportunity.”

  I chewed on that for a moment.

  “You still there?” he said. I hummed my presence and he continued. “A friend of a friend of mine needs a place to stay. He got injured and can’t work for a few weeks. He’s pretty busted up and he’s willing to pay good money for room and board.”

  “Room and board? I don’t even give you board.”

  “Pali, work with me, okay? My friend swears he’s a really great guy. He’s just going to be laid up for a while. If you want, I’ll do all the cooking. How about it?”

  “What’s his problem?”

  “Busted up his leg real bad. He gets out of the hospital tomorrow.”

  “I suppose he’ll want the downstairs bedroom.” I wasn’t thrilled to have to give up my first floor room and camp out in the spare room upstairs next to Steve’s.

  “He’s willing to pay five hundred a week.”

  Whoa, why didn’t he say so earlier? For that kind of money, I’d hand over the whole house, with gourmet room service and a chauffeur. But I hadn’t yet asked Steve about doing the retake photos of the high school girl, so I played it cool—I’d trade a favor for a favor.

  “Okay. I guess I could move my stuff upstairs for a while.”

  “Mahalo, Pali. I’ll call and let him know.”

  I hung up the phone and went out to the garage for cardboard boxes. While boxing up the contents of my dresser drawers, I avoided looking at my bed. I’d jumped at the chance to make some extra money. But gazing around the familiar room I began to doubt my decision. This was my home, my private space. What if this guy turned out to be a chronic bed wetter with bone-deep B.O.?

  My hippie parents had been gone from my life for decades, but my Auntie Mana often told me stories about them. And right then, their mantra of turn on, tune in, and drop out stood in sharp contrast to the motto I’d recently adopted: hang on, give in, and suck up.

  CHAPTER 4

  Lisa Marie brought a long list of wedding gown must-haves to our meeting on Friday morning. She prattled on, describing multi-tiered flounces, seed-pearl beaded bodices, and seven-foot trains. She kept flipping through her celebrity wedding scrapbook, and from the looks of things, she was hankering for a glitzy get-up that would weigh in at about thirty pounds.

  “Not gonna happen.” I said while Akiko stared at the back wall in what could have passed for a catatonic trance.

  “You said she was the best.” Lisa Marie spit it out as if she’d caught me in a bald-faced lie.

  “She is.” I glanced over at Akiko to see if she appeared insulted at being talked about as if she weren’t there. From the looks of it, she’d gone into a Zen state, imagining herself someplace else entirely. Apparently no offense taken.

  “Here’s how it goes, Lisa Marie. You pick from one of these three basic dress designs and Akiko will spend every waking minute between now and Valentine’s Day creating a stunning gown that will make Brad’s eyes pop out when he sees you. Or, you can hold out for something else and you’ll be on your own to find it.”

  Okay, the Brad’s eyes popping out image was a little macabre, even for me. But Lisa Marie didn’t even blink.

  “It better be gorgeous.”

  “You’ll be gorgeous; your gown will just accentuate the fact.”

  She smiled for the first time that morning.

  Farrah stepped out of her store while I was stashing fabric samples into the back of Akiko’s ancient seaweed-colored minivan. The dressmaker was still in the back room, measuring Lisa Marie from every possible angle

  “Ad-bay oos-nay,” Farrah said in a low voice, nodding toward my shop door.

  “Mainlanders can figure out pig Latin,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “The Coast Guard’s got some dish on your Brad Sanders dude. The TV said they’re doing a press conference at three.”

  My stomach clenched. I looked up at the sun peeking through the clouds. Not quite noon.

  “Listen, what are you planning for flowers?” I said in a voice that even to me sounded like a fake attempt at calm.

  “Don’t you want to chill on that until we hear what they say about the missing dude? No use digging ourselves any deeper.”

  “No. I don’t care what they say. We need to move forward.”

  “Da kine, okay then. I’m thinking cymbidium orchids—pink—and lots of white pikake for fragrance. It’s a no go on the tuberoses she wants. Wrong time of year. I’m figuring about five hundred bucks ought to cover it.”

  “Can you push it to eight hundred?”

  “Eight hundred bucks for flowers? For a little beach wedding? If you weren’t already my best hoa aloha, I’d be whipping out the b/f/f tiara and planting it on your head. Let’s see. How’s a plumeria-draped arbor sound? And I’ll get flashy white and green orchid leis for the guests. By the way, how many guests we talking about?”

  “She said less than a dozen. Her family, of course. And I imagine a few of Brad’s co-workers will be coming over; probably more for the ghoul factor than to support Lisa Marie.”

  �
��Too weird. Well, don’t sweat it, I’ll get abundantly creative.”

  “In this case, less isn’t more; more is more.”

  “Da kine. I got it.”

  By early afternoon I finished lining up the remaining details—printers, caterers, guest favors, hair and make-up, limo service, all of it. My friends and colleagues had all gushed their gratitude for the business. The only glaring omission was a venue. I told everyone I’d be back to them that afternoon with the exact location.

  I called the pricier hotels with private beaches. Since Brad Sanders’ disappearance had made him something of a local celebrity, I was concerned a public beach could attract the press or curious onlookers. Maui’s notorious for local gossip. If just one vendor slipped up and told his cousin who told his neighbor who told his boss’s wife, a beach parking lot would fill up with looky-loos hours before Lisa Marie’s “perfect” wedding.

  “Not possible,” sniffed the special events coordinator at the Maui Prince Hotel. “We limit our beach access to weddings coordinated by our in-house bridal staff.” The sentiment was echoed by the Grand Wailea, the Four Seasons, and all the other high-end Wailea hotels. I didn’t bother calling the Ritz-Carlton in Kapalua because not only did I figure the response would be the same, but it creeped me out to imagine conducting Brad’s proxy wedding on the beach where his empty boat had washed ashore.

  I was left pondering if I could hold it at a less swanky oceanfront hotel or one of the more obscure public beaches. I hadn’t asked Lisa Marie if she had a particular beach in mind, and I wasn’t even sure where she was staying. Maybe her hotel would sanction a quickie wedding on their property if I cajoled—a nicer word than bribed—someone at the concierge desk.

  I called her cell.

  “What is it now, Pali?” she said in an annoyed tone that made me want to pipe, Sorry, wrong number and hang up. “I hope this is good news. I’m just about to get a massage and I don’t want any stress following me onto the table.”

  “Yep, I’ve got great news. Everything’s lined up for next Thursday. Only one little detail left to decide.” I took a breath to allow her time to congratulate me on being so damn good at my job. All I heard was the low murmur of New Age flute music in the background.