I'm Kona Love You Forever (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series Book 6) (25 page)

“You think?”

“I do.”

There I go saying that again.
Where did I get the nerve to expound on the complexities of love? As if I had even a nickel’s worth of expertise in the matter. How does that go? You know, “talk the talk but can’t walk the walk?”

I felt like a fraud. I’d
talked enough. It was time for me to get on my feet and start walkin’.

CHAPTER 28

Lili asked if I’d take her to Shayna’s and I readily agreed. It’d be nice to have the cabin to myself for a few hours, especially since I had a delicate matter to resolve. I decided to call Farrah before I called Hatch. She answered on the first ring.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” she said. “I was worried you’d jumped off a cliff.”

“Trust me, it crossed my mind,” I said.

“Where are you?”

“I’m still on the Big Island. A lot has happened in the past couple of days. I’ll be coming home tomorrow morning, but I had to talk to you first.”

“About?”

“Don’t mess with me, Farrah. You know what about.”

She laughed. “I was
going for cool. You know, like in our
keiki
times when we both got scared when we slept outside on the
lanai
, but neither of us would be the first to admit it?”

“I really blew it, didn’t I?” I said.

“You mean with Hatch?”

I
didn’t answer. Her attempt at “cool” had already been well established.

“I don’t know,” she said. “
I think he’s more bummed than mad. He’s come in the store every day since we got back asking about you. So, I take it you two haven’t talked?”

“I don’t know what
to say.”

“How about starting with, ‘Sorry, my bad’? I mean, girl, his
bruddahs
were all there. He ended up with, like, a three-egg omelet on his face.”

“I know. I
feel terrible about it. I don’t know why I froze. I guess I never imagined he’d ask me in public like that.”

“Well, he is a
public
servant,” she said.

“
Very funny. How did Ono propose to you?”

“It was
mega-romantic. A full moon was rising over Ala Wai Harbor. We were sitting on the deck of his boat and he looked over at me and said, ‘How would you like this to go on forever?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ I knew what he meant ‘cuz we’re groovy like that. We don’t need to say much to know what the other one’s thinking.”

“Maybe that’s our problem,” I said. “It seems
like all Hatch and I do is talk.”

“
Well, you aren’t talking enough now. Are you gonna call him?”

“
I don’t think so. There’s no way I can do this over the phone. I’ll stop by his place when I get back tomorrow. If he’s kept to his work schedule, he should be off duty.”

“
When he comes in the store, do you want me to say anything?” she said.

“No. I
’d rather surprise him.”

“
You sure you want to do that? I mean, how’d the surprise thing work out for him on Wednesday night?”

We said our good-byes
, and I hung up wondering if I should text Hatch and alert him I’d be stopping by. But, before I could make up my mind, my phone chimed. I hurriedly answered it. No sense doing something hard when something easy was so close at hand.

“Pali?”
It was Lili.

“Yeah, are you okay?”
I said.

“I’m
fine, but everybody here is going nuts. Would you mind coming back here and getting me? David says he’d like to get out of here, too.”

I told her I’d be right there. I walked to the car
, toying with the idea of taking fifteen seconds to text Hatch. But it struck me as kind of a chicken’s way out. Email, texting, FaceBook. Instant communication was supposed to bring us closer together, but what it really does is give us a way to keep everyone a safe distance away.

I owed Hatch an explanation and an apology. Anything I had to say was going to have to be done the hard way.
The scary way. Face to face.

***

It annoyed me that Lili and David weren’t waiting outside when I pulled up at Shayna’s. So far, I was batting a thousand with the cranky dog but it was only a matter of time before its puppy brain would realize I had way more bark than bite. And when that happened, I was pretty sure Fido wouldn’t hesitate to claim his pound of flesh.

I beeped the horn and waited.
Nothing. I shut off the car and went to the gate. The dog snarled. I wished I had a Milk Bone, or even an old tennis ball, to distract it. We locked eyes.

“C’mon, give me a break,” I said. “I’m only
here to pick up some people. It’ll take five minutes, tops.”

The dog
flattened its ears and snarled louder.

I put a hand on the gate
latch and the dog flew at it like I was dangling a porterhouse just out of reach. I pulled my hand back.

“Fine.
We’ll play it your way.” I crossed my arms and waited.

About two minutes later, the front door opened and David and Lili came hurtling out onto the porch.
The door slammed behind them. They stood toe-to-toe, apparently arguing about something. I was still standing by the gate; the dog still shooting me doggie stink eye. Finally, Lili looked out toward the street.

“Why didn’t you come
in and get us?” she said. “We’ve been waiting forever.”

“
My friend Fido here is playing TSA and I showed up without a boarding pass. There was no way I was going to take off my shoes and try to make it past his ‘meal’ detector.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Never mind. Let’s go,” I said.

“Could you take me to my dad’s?” said David.

“Are you sure?” I said. “I thought he kicked you out.”

“He did. But I need to talk to him,” he said.

They both climbed in the back seat and I drove to Pono’s. No one said a word on the way over. I felt like a taxi driver hauling a feuding couple to Thanksgiving dinner with the in-laws. When I pulled up at the house I turned around and stared at them. The car had child safety locks so there was no way they could get out before I’d gotten some answers.

“Okay, something’s going on
, and I think I deserve to know what it is.”

They flicked their eyes to each other to see who would get stuck answering. Lili lost.

“David’s sister, Shayna, saw their dad’s truck parked in front of their mom’s house on the day she, uh, you know.”

“She’s sure about that?” I said.

They both nodded.

My mind went six directions at once. Pono and Gary were buddies
, and I’d seen the respirator in Gary’s carport. The two of them could have easily overpowered Malia and wrestled her out to her car. But then, Shayna was the one who gave Malia her insulin. Had she gotten rattled by Pono showing up and overfilled the syringe? Or maybe Shayna had turned around and gone home when she saw her dad’s truck, thinking she’d come back later. After years of watching her parents bicker, maybe she wasn’t willing to referee another argument. Or, maybe Shayna had given Malia a normal injection, but after she left, Pono said something that pushed Malia over the edge and she’d overdosed herself. She might have had second thoughts and staggered out to her car and passed out with the car running. But, if so, what had Shayna meant by saying she’d “messed up”?

My whirling thoughts were interrupted by Lili
’s peevish voice. “Would you unlock the doors so we can get out?”

“Oh, sorry.”
I clicked the locks open and the two kids scrambled out. I watched as they gave each other a quick hug before slowly making their way up to the house. By now the sun had gone down and night was settling in, turning the tranquil neighborhood into a scene from a black and white photo from days gone by. There was no porch light on at Pono’s house, but a faint blue flicker danced across the sheer curtains in the front windows.

I jumped out of the car. “Wait,” I said. “I’m going with you.”

CHAPTER 29

Pono had been drinking.
A lot. The odor of hops and malted barley hung in the air of the tiny living room like formaldehyde in a biology lab. David and Lili had found the front door unlocked and marched inside, but I’d hung back in the doorway in case I had to make a quick dash for back-up.

“Whaddaya doin’ here?”
Pono slurred. He was draped across the sofa, wearing only baggy plaid boxers and white socks so dirty that in the harsh glow of the TV they looked like they had black rubber soles. The television was tuned to professional wrestling or cage fighting, I couldn’t tell which. I try to avoid passing judgment on that form of entertainment. After all, I’d been kicking and grappling my way to self-actualization for most of my life. But to get paid to fake punches or seriously maim someone while blood-thirsty onlookers hooted for more? No thanks.

“Dad, I need to talk to you about something,” David said.

Pono grunted and reached for one of the many beer bottles lined up on the floor in front of him. He tipped it up, found it empty, and then heaved it across the room. The bottle hit the edge of a door frame but, surprisingly, didn’t break.

“How ‘bout that?” Pono said. “I can’t even bust a
beer bottle no more.”

David flicked on the overhead light and his dad put up a beefy arm to shield his eyes from the glare.

“Shut that off! Damn kid. Come here makin’ trouble.”

“Sit up, D
ad,” David said. He grabbed a stretched-out knitted afghan from the back of the sofa and threw it over his father’s lap. “And make yourself presentable. You’ve got women visitors.”

“What women
vis’tors? I don’ see no women. All’s I see is a little girl and some cop-faced gal looks like she’s come to arrest me or sump’un. You here to arrest me?”

David looked at Lili. “This isn’t gonna work. There’s no use trying to talk to him when he’s like this. My mom used to—”

“Don’t you bring her into it,” Pono roared. “She had nuthin’ to do with it. I made a deal with the devil and it’s come back around.”

Lili looked at David and I looked at both of them.

“We should leave,” I said.

The three of us backed out of the room
, leaving Pono to his blood sports and overworked liver. Nobody said a word as we got in the car and drove off.

A deal with the devil, huh?
I had a hunch the devil in question wasn’t some beer-fueled figment of Pono’s imagination, but more likely a living, breathing citizen of the Kona community. But who? Gary, Shayna, or someone who had yet to cross my radar?

***

When we got back to the coffee farm, Loke was outside waiting for us. She was wearing a shawl over her shoulders to ward off the chilly night air, and she pulled it tight as she walked over to the car.

“Thank heaven you’re here,” she said. “Charlene just left. She asked where you’d gone
, and when I told her you’d gone to Shayna’s to pick up the kids, she screeched out of here like I’d said her house was on fire. The woman looked positively out of her mind. I was worried for you. I was afraid maybe she’d flipped out or something.”

“Actually, we just came from Pono
Onakea’s. Do you know him? He’s David’s father.”

“I know who Pono is,” Loke said. “He’s kind of a legend around South Kona.”

I didn’t have time to delve into that before Charlene’s purple PT Cruiser came bouncing down the rutted dirt road into the parking area. The lot was lit by a white-hot pole light that cast stark otherworldly shadows across the area. 

“She’s b-a-a-ck,” Loke said. “Do you want me to
go get Ray?”

“
You probably should,” I said. “The more the merrier when it comes to dealing with crazy.”

Charlene
slammed out of her car and stomped across the lot to where we were standing.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she said. She’d put up a finger and was about to poke it into my sternum
, but I blocked it.

“Calm down
,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

“I will
not
calm down. You come over here with your accusations and half-assed complaints. Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong. And Pono? Seriously? You’re gonna take his word over mine? I’m a medical professional, remember? I’ve delivered more than half the kids in South Kona. That makes me something of an expert in what’s good and not good for these kids.” 

I looked around and was relieved to see everyone looked as confused as I was.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“I know you talked to Pono
, and I can only imagine what he said. Well, this was his idea, not mine. I was merely upholding my Hippocratic Oath.”