Lana'i of the Tiger (The Islands of Aloha Mystery Series) (2 page)

Good save, Kate.

“Is the pay the same for morning
or night shifts?” I said.

“Yes, you’ll start out at
minimum wage. But if you meet your room quotas and there are no guest
complaints or house rules violations, we can see about giving you a twenty-five
cent raise in a month or so.”

Twenty-five cent raise? I wanted
to laugh. The nightly room rate at the Four Seasons started at more than three-hundred
bucks and went up to ten times that. Obviously the ridiculous prices weren’t a
result of overpaying the help.

“Also,” she went on, as if
trying to talk me into the job, “many of our guests are in the habit of tipping
the housekeeping staff. From what I hear it’s possible to make ten or even
twenty dollars in tips every day.”

Hallelujah. With bank like that
rolling in, I might be able to grab a hamburger at one of the local cafés every
week or so.

“That sounds good,” I said.

“So, when can you start?”

“I’m pretty much available now.”

“Well then, let’s get the
paperwork handled so we can get you on the schedule.”

She reached into a desk drawer
and brought out a stack of papers. “First, I’ll need you to fill this out.” She
handed me an official Four Seasons Hotel Employment Application.

“Then, we’ll need you to take
this down to the police station and get your fingerprints done. It’s for
identity purposes.” She slid a blank fingerprint card across the desk.

I started to reach for it, then
snapped my hand back as if the card had burst into flame.

“Is there a problem?” she said.

“No…” I dragged the word out
while I tried to come up with a logical excuse for not wanting to roll my
fingertips across a police department inkpad. “It’s just that, well, I don’t
understand why this is necessary. As you can see, I’ve worked in many hotels
and restaurants here in Hawaii, mostly on O’ahu.”

“Oh, I know it’s an
inconvenience. But we must have official ID. You see, our guests are our first
priority. And many of our hotel visitors are, well to put it bluntly, wealthy
people. It’s important to know who will be in their rooms. Also, we have to
establish your right to work in the United States. The federal government’s
gotten really tough with the hospitality industry on immigration issues.” She
shot me a conspiratorial smile that said, of course we know
you
aren’t
the illegal riff-raff we need to weed out, but everyone has to follow the
rules.

“I understand completely. May I
take this with me and bring it back later?”

“Certainly. But remember we
can’t offer you employment until your file is complete.” She stood and I
followed suit.

“Thank you for coming in, Miss
Mor—oh, excuse me, Penny. It was my pleasure to make your acquaintance, and I
look forward to working with you.”

I assured her the pleasure was
all mine, and then thanked her for her time. I walked through the spacious front
lobby, sucking in the rarified air of the wealthy and entitled. Too bad I
didn’t live in that world. Even worse, the way things were going, I wouldn’t
even be allowed to scrub the toilets in that world anytime soon.

CHAPTER
2

“What do you mean you didn’t
take the job?” said Wong when he called on Monday to see how things had gone.
“I went to a lot of effort to grease the skids.”

“I don’t want greased skids. I
want outta here. There’s no way I’m going to sashay into the Lana’i City police
station and leave my fingerprints on their computer.”

“Sorry to break it to you,
Penny, but your fingerprints are already there. It’s part of Maui County.”

“No, my
other
fingerprints
are there. Not my fake ones.”

“Look, I realize you’ve had some
doubts about the police before, but everyone’s on board with this. You have
nothing to worry about.”

“Just the same, I don’t want to
be telling any more lies than necessary.”

“So, what now, Ms. Morton?”
Wong’s voice had slipped into the cranky zone.

“I think I could do this just as
easily at home. I’m keeping out of sight, not talking to anybody, not drawing
attention to myself. Why can’t I do this back home on—”

He cut me off. “How many times
do I have to remind you this isn’t a secure line? You
are
home, Ms.
Morton. You’re husband’s combat fatality was a truly disturbing event for you,
but we’ve done everything we can to allow you time to rest and recover. Until
you’re ready to move forward with your life, all I can say is please enjoy your
time at the taxpayers’ expense. Most young widows don’t get an opportunity like
this. And don’t forget, we still have that trip to Disney World coming up.”

“I’m willing to go to Disney
World, no problem. But why do I have to wait here while my cousins fool around
getting it set up? Seems to me they aren’t in any big hurry to make it happen.”

“We’ve been over this a hundred
times, Penny. I know you’re bored, but there’s only one way this is going to
happen and it’s out of our control. If you keep up the whining, I may have to
move you closer to Disney World while we wait. It’s your call. You can amuse
yourself where you are, or get ready to move to someplace much further away.”

“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 floors 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.