O'ahu Lonesome Tonight? (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series #5) (10 page)

I mindlessly flipped
through the channels until Jeff came out of his room. He looked stricken.

“Everything okay back home?”
I said.

“No.”

“You want to
talk about it?”

“Not really.”

I changed the
subject. “Stuart and his wife Natalie have invited us to dinner at their place.”

“Won-der-
ful
,” he said, dragging out the word. “I can’t think of
anything
I’d rather do right now.”

“I thought as
much. But I need to go.”

“Why?”

“You know why.
It’s family. It’s kind of ironic, don’t you think? All my life I’ve been
bitching about not having any
ohana
and then
when I finally get some I inherit this bunch.”

“I’ll stick
around here and wait for Steve,” Jeff said.

“I’m really
worried about him,” I said.

“Yeah, me too.
  By the way, how are you planning to get
to your brother’s place? Steve’s got our car, remember?”

I called Stuart
and explained the situation.

“Your friend’s
still not back from surfing?” he said. “Haven’t you heard? A bunch of surfers
had to be rescued out at the North Shore. Maybe your guy is one of them.”

I didn’t say
anything.

“Sticking
around there waiting won’t help, you know,” Stuart said.

“I know, but
Jeff wants to stay, just in case.”

“Fair enough.
But I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes. You
mind waiting outside? Parking’s a bitch in Waikiki.”

“No worries.
I’ll be downstairs.”

I hung up and
grabbed an umbrella. “Call me the minute you hear from Steve,” I said to Jeff.
I headed for the door and my phone started up. The caller ID showed STEVE’S
CELL.

I answered
without saying ‘aloha,’ or even ‘hello. “We’ve been so worried about you! Where
are you? Are you okay?”

“Calm down. I’m
good. I had a little excitement, though.”

“We heard some
surfers had to be rescued up there. Is that what kept you?”

“Matter of fact, yes.
Hang
on,
I’m
just getting off the freeway. I’ll be there in ten minutes and tell you the
whole story.”

“We’ll be
here.”

I clicked off
and Jeff said, “What about Stuart? Isn’t he already on his way?”

“Crap.” I
looked at the clock and then dialed Stu’s number. I got his voice mail. “Stu,
something’s come up. Can we make it six-thirty instead of six? Call me back,
okay?”

When I didn’t
get a call back I said to Jeff, “Maybe Stu doesn’t answer his phone in the car.
I’ll go downstairs and tell him what’s happening.”

A big tan
Mercedes sedan was idling in the portico when I got off the elevator.  I
went outside and the bellman rushed over. “Miss Moon, I was just about to call
your room,” he said. “There’s a gentleman here to pick you up.”

Stu grinned and
gave me a finger wave from the driver’s seat. He was wearing a silly-looking
blue baseball cap with the Mercedes emblem emblazoned on the front.

“
Mahalo
,
” I said to the bellman. I started
rummaging in my purse for tip money.

When I pulled
out my wallet the bellman said, “No worries. Mr. Wilkerson has already taken
care of me.
Very generously.”
He grinned as if Santa
had brought him a new bike. He opened the passenger door and I slid onto the
cool leather seat.

I gave Stuart a
kiss on the cheek and then said, “I need to ask you a favor. Steve called and
he’s on his way. Can we wait a few minutes until he gets here?  He said
he’d had to be rescued up at the North Shore.”

“No can do. My
wife’s got dinner ready and waiting. I’m sure your friend’s harrowing story
will keep for a couple more hours.”

“But I told him
I’d be here.”

“When did you
talk to him?”

“A few minutes
ago, when he called.”

“Well, you told
me you’d come to my house for dinner two
hours
ago. So I win. Don’t
forget to buckle up.”

He shot out of
the portico as if someone had waved a checkered flag. I winced. The sidewalks
of Waikiki are filled with a constant stream of pedestrians and I was amazed
Stuart hadn’t mowed down a few people as he rocketed across the sidewalk and
out onto the street.

We roared down
Kalakaua
, shooting through yellows about to be red, and
zigzagging around jaywalking tourists.

“Uh, is there a
reason you’re driving so fast?”

He laughed.
“This isn’t fast. You should’ve seen how Dad drove. He used to clock his time
from point to point and try to beat his record every time he got in the car.”

“Tell me about
Natalie.”

“What’s to
tell? You’ll meet her soon enough.”

We shot down
Diamond Head Road and then onto
Kahala
Avenue. Soon
we were in a neighborhood of stately houses on expansive lots. One house had
dozens of white Grecian-type statues in a yard festooned with
intricately-shaped topiary and severely-clipped hedges. It looked like a
tropical attempt at a formal English garden. Behind the elaborate garden was a
sprawling oceanfront home.

“What’s going
on there?” I said pointing toward the place.

“The Greek’s?
Yeah, that guy’s something else. He owns a
bunch of
souvlaki
joints on
O’ahu
and Maui. Who’d of
thunk
Japanese tourists would go
wild over gyros and ouzo?”

Another block
down, Stu slowed to take a speed bump. “I hate these things. Some a-hole had
the city put these in. Said he was worried about his kids. I say, ‘If you’re
kids are so stupid they walk in the street,
then
maybe
they shouldn’t grow up.’ You know what I’m saying?
Darwin’s
survival of the fittest and all.”

We pulled into
the circular driveway of an ivory-colored, two-story home with a tile roof. The
place was a mini-mansion. It was across the street from the oceanfront homes,
but it was still a jaw-dropping residence.

“You live
here?”

“Since last February.”

“Wow, Stuart.
This is amazing.”

“It’s ‘Stu,’
okay? When you call me ‘Stuart’ I feel like I’m in trouble or something.”

The front doors
were inlaid with beveled glass and the foyer was tiled in shiny ivory-colored
granite. The floors beyond the foyer were some sort of reddish-colored wood. My
mind wandered to a documentary I’d seen about disappearing hardwood forests in
Southeast Asia, but I put it out of my mind. The walls were white—almost
blindingly white—and there were skylights in the foyer as well as the sitting
room beyond the dining area. The house had an open floor plan, which made it
seem to go on forever.

A tall woman of
about thirty with Asian features and glossy shoulder-length dark hair stood at
the far end of the foyer. She was dressed in a silky red blouse over an
ankle-length slim black skirt. Stu had mentioned she was pregnant but from the
looks of things she was one of those women who doesn’t show it until the baby
is a few weeks from making an appearance. The outfit looked understated, but
two years of wedding planning had given me an eye for quality tailoring. I
figured her minimalist outfit probably cost more than everything I had in my
closet back on Maui.

She stepped
forward and extended her hands. On her left hand, an enormous diamond twinkled
in the bright light streaming through the skylight.

“Welcome to our
home,” she said. Her voice was low, with a slightly British accent.

“
Pali
, this is my wife, Natalie. Nat, this is my
half-sister,
Pali
.”

I reached out to
shake hands but instead she grasped my hand with both of hers and held it. Her
hands were cool and dry. There was something about the way she stared into my
eyes as she gripped my hand that sucked me in, as if she were hypnotizing me.
“Stuart tells me you’re staying in a penthouse in Waikiki.
How
charmingly Bohemian.
Are you enjoying your stay?”

“Very much so.”

“Excellent.
Well, since Stuart is a bit tardy bringing you out here, I think we should go
immediately to cocktails. Or do you insist on having a tour?”

“Thank you, but
the tour can wait,” I said. “Your home is gorgeous. Did you decorate it
yourself?”

Natalie uttered
a low chuckle.
“Oh my, what a lovely compliment.
No, I
had
David,
of David Peralta Interiors do the living
spaces and I engaged Ray
Yashimoto
of Island Paradise
Landscaping to design the garden. It was a huge undertaking, but Stu was kind
enough to indulge me.”

Stu beamed as
if his wife had just handed him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

“Hey,” said
Stu. “I say, ‘if the wife’s happy, everybody’s happy,’ right?”

The rain had
stopped for a while so Stu ushered us to the back yard where an azure pool,
edged in the same creamy granite tiles as the floor in the foyer, glinted in
the late afternoon light.

“Are you a
martini girl?” said Stu as he handed me a conical-shaped glass big enough for a
foot soak.

“I guess I am
now,” I said. My smile had begun to feel a bit tight but I kept it going.

“Stu makes the
driest martini in the Western Hemisphere,” said Natalie. “He’s very proud of
that accomplishment.”

I was used to
reading the unspoken language of couples, but this couple had me baffled. Was
Natalie’s wit as dry as Stu’s martini, or was she pissed off about something?
Hard to tell.

“Of course
Nat’s not drinking,” Stu said. “She’s bearing her burden with grace.”

“Ah, well, a
stiff upper lip is in my blood,” said Natalie. “Keep calm and carry on and all
that.”

 I’d drunk
less than half of the high-octane beverage when a tinkling bell sounded from
the house.

“Seems we’re
being summoned,” said Stu.

“I’m not in
favor of that bell,” Natalie said. She turned to me. “Don’t you feel it’s
demeaning? I’ve repeatedly asked Stu to come up with a more appropriate means
of notification, but he seems to take pleasure in being beckoned to table like
a servant.”

Stu smiled and
put a hand on Natalie’s shoulder. She stiffened.

“After you,” he
said to me.

We were served
dinner by a maid in an old-fashioned black uniform with a lace-edged white
apron. The uniform seemed out of place in the tropical setting, but there it
was. She was a thin Asian woman, probably in her mid-twenties, but it was hard
to tell due to the silly uniform and her refusal to make eye contact. She
whispered to Natalie in a foreign language but never spoke to either Stu or
myself. She kept her head down and moved around the room as if trying to remain
invisible.

The dinner
conversation mostly involved a blow-by-blow accounting of Natalie’s home
renovation projects. My mind wandered, since not only was I not one bit
interested in the pros and cons of travertine versus granite, but I was anxious
to learn what had happened to Steve up at the North Shore. I noted that
although she talked pretty much non-stop, Natalie never alluded to her
‘condition.’ In my experience, self-absorbed pregnant women rarely missed an
opportunity to lord it over the rest of us. So it struck me as odd that Natalie
never brought it up.

After a
luscious dessert of mango crème
brulee
with toasted
coconut topping, I tapped my wrist and asked Stu if he’d tell me the time. He leaned
forward as he’d done at the
Moana
and thrust his
gaudy Rolex under my nose. I was starting to wonder if he didn’t know how to
tell time.

“Oh, wow,” I
said. “It’s nearly eight. I should really be going.”

“I’ll get my
keys,” said Stu.

“
Mahalo
, but that’s not necessary,” I said. “Jeff
said he’d pick me up at eight. And since the rain’s let up he’ll probably enjoy
getting out for a little drive.”

At that point,
the maid came in and started picking up dessert dishes. Stu shot her some
stink
eye
but she apparently didn’t notice because she kept working.

Stu leaned in
to Natalie. “Tell your sister to come back later,” he said.

Natalie spoke a
few words to the maid and she skittered from the room.

“I really don’t
mind driving you back. I’m going into Honolulu anyway. I’ve got a meeting in
thirty minutes.”

“A meeting?
But it’s night-time.” I said.

“Oh, it’s
nothing,” Stuart said.
“More of a ‘meet for a drink’ kind of
thing.
Not an actual business meeting.”

“Well, thanks
for the offer,” I said. “But by now Jeff’s probably already on his way. He
should be here any minute.”

I hustled
toward the foyer, digging through my voluminous purse for my phone. With my
back to my hosts I set the land speed record for text messaging.

“Do you think
he’ll be able to find the house?” Stu said. “It’s dark out there.”

I spun around.
“He’s fine. He’s got the address.”

Natalie glided
into the foyer and stood beside Stu. “Ask her,” she hissed in his ear.

“
Pali
, I’d really appreciate an opportunity to see you again
before you leave
O’ahu
,” he said. “Maybe lunch, just
the two of us?”

“Oh
my gosh
, is that a
Wyland
?” I
said. I pointed to a three-foot high sculpture of a breaching whale in an
alcove off the foyer.

“Good eye,”
said Stu. “We bought that at
Wyland’s
gallery in
Lahaina
. That’s before I knew you lived over there, of
course.”

I thanked them
both for a lovely dinner and beat a hasty retreat for the front door. I
explained my quick departure by saying it was indeed pretty dark outside and I
should wait outside to flag Jeff down.