Primitive Secrets (8 page)

Chapter 15

Storm's hands shook so that she could hardly turn the key in the ignition. Tears ran down her face and the reflectors between the yellow lines looked like stars wavering before her. Trembling, she crawled along for an undetermined length of time before she realized that she was lucky her car still ran. When she noticed philodendrons the size of her living room bordering both sides of the road, her mind clicked into a higher gear. She saw a few lights glittering in the distance and sped up to twenty miles per hour.

Good, Laupahoehoe, a crossroads big enough to pull safely off the road. There it was, a Laundromat, post office, and general store. The store and post office were closed up tightly; one person sat in the Laundromat, spellbound by a supermarket tabloid. Storm rolled to a stop in the gravel parking lot.

She knew her phone was someplace in the bottom of the car. Lying on the seat to feel around on the floor, she felt like curling up in a ball and staying there. The shakes began to roll through her again. When her fingertips touched the rounded, friendly shape of the phone nestled under the passenger seat, Storm moaned with relief.

Her hands trembled so badly that she could barely punch the numbers, but she got through to 911 and reported the accident. She told the dispatcher that she was uninjured and where she could be reached, then hung up.

Then she sat for a moment and stared, unthinking, into the warm glow of the Laundromat. Someone had died on that lonely dark road, the second person in a week with whom Storm had had contact.

The ante had been raised. Surely Hamasaki had been murdered. And whoever was after her thought that Hamasaki had chronicled his concerns, knew that an attorney with Hamasaki's experience and connections would build a case before striking. She, in this person's view, knew what it was. And it had to be big enough to commit murder. She doubted that poor Tom Sakai's case was sufficient. Was it Hamasaki's meeting with S.O.? So what? That only led back to Tom Sakai.

Storm looked around the dark, empty parking lot. The only noise was from the toads belching mournfully in the tall foliage. She searched the briefcase again, but aside from a couple of pens and laundry receipts, the only files were Ray Tam's and Tom Sakai's.

She sniffled. The back of her hand wasn't adequate for her runny nose. Storm turned and rose on her knees to reach into the back seat for her duffel. When she got it in her lap, she flicked on the overhead light and dug for a wad of tissues. Instead, she pulled out a crumpled sheet of typing paper that she had jammed inside.

Lorraine's list. Storm cleared her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt and studied Lorraine's neat script. Even if the list had precipitated the car chase, it hadn't caused the earlier robberies.

Lorraine had written Friday at the top of the page, and the first name under it was Mrs. Hamasaki. She'd placed question marks next to the times, but Aunt Bitsy had called twice, once in the morning and again in the afternoon. For the morning call, Lorraine had written 9:30. That must have been the one when she and Hamasaki had argued.

Lorraine had noted a half dozen or so other people, too. Some of the names were familiar: O‘Toole, Meredith Wo (HKC, Canningham (DCC, and some clients familiar to Storm from working on Hamasaki's cases with him. He had a meeting with Wang, which was fairly common.

Nothing struck Storm as unusual, though she didn't understand the meaning of the letters following Wo's and Cunningham's names.

Sherwood Overton wasn't on the list. If Storm assumed that Overton was the late meeting, then the call from O'Toole might be significant. She figured that Hamasaki hadn't given Tom Sakai's case to Meredith Wo because he couldn't yet reveal that O'Toole had been to see him. So how had Wo known that a cancer patient had visited Hamasaki? Then again, Lorraine knew it, too, so perhaps information had leaked inside the office.

Storm was going to have to make some leaps of faith. Unimed, the HMO, was a common link between several of the most powerful people on Lorraine's list. It was a good place to start digging for information.

She flicked off the overhead light and listened carefully to the simple, reassuring noises of the night. Aunt Maile and Uncle Keone would be starting to worry about her. Suddenly impatient, Storm looked up the empty, dark highway, started the engine, and skidded from the gravel onto the road. It wasn't far to their home. Why wait any longer for the police in this lonely place? She could call them again later.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, though Storm sped past while visually scouring any dark turnouts along the highway. When she made the left turn to head up the slopes of Mauna Kea to Pa'auilo, she paused at the lonely intersection and peered into the night behind her car. The dark was impenetrable; mountain mists had descended from the cooler heights to stifle sounds and veil all but the nearest lights. Storm would never be able to spot a tail if she had one; she'd have to trust the menehane to protect her from here to Aunt Maile's and Uncle Keone's house.

She headed up the half-paved, half-graveled road. Old stands of eucalyptus and koa were the same, but the potholes had multiplied. When she passed the post office and general store, she had two more miles to go. Living room lights of houses perched near the roads endowed the route with the ephemeral characteristics of Brigadoon; Storm could imagine the elves in the clearings.

The people who lived in these woods vowed that certain areas were kapa, or forbidden. As a child, even Storm had seen fireballs, a signal that the night-marchers approached, and smelled the sweet warning aroma of gardenias and pikake. Though the diaphanous lights were most likely the result of subterranean methane, the ghosts of Hawaiian warriors patrolling the slopes of the volcano were a myth that even modern folk hesitated to challenge. Too many old-timers told stories about members of their families and the marchers. Most people who had lived on the mountain for more than a generation wouldn't think of doubting the legends.

Storm's eyes scanned the sides of the rutted road, opaque past the arc of her headlights on the stout tree trunks. Despite the chilly mist, she rolled down her window and took a deep breath of the eucalyptus-scented air. Sometimes the trade winds brought a whiff of sulfur from the live volcano on the other side of the mountain, but not tonight. She turned onto a drive barely marked by a beat-up blue mailbox perched in the same old cockeyed position on its PVC pipe. That was to keep the newspaper from getting wet; Storm doubted that mail delivery had started in the past few years. In fact, most people relied on their trips to the post office. It was how they kept up with local news.

The glow of kitchen lights beckoned. A yellow rectangle widened as the front door opened and a broad silhouette passed through it. By the time Storm was abreast of the house and had turned off the engine, Aunt Maile was beside the car. In the light that reached from the windows, her white teeth gleamed and her dark eyes sparked merriment.

The moment Storm's feet hit the gravel of the drive, the women had their arms around each other. Storm leaned against Aunt Maile. She inhaled the sweet aroma of puakenikeni growing on shrubs beside the house. Maile probably had blossoms in her hair.

“Where have you been, child? We were almost ready to send out a search party.”

“I'll tell you when we get inside,” Storm said. She took another grateful breath of blossom-scented air.

The inside of the house looked exactly the same. Uncle Keone's worn cowboy boots sat on a colorful braided rug by the door. His newspaper had dropped from his hand and drifted across the floor from his favorite reading chair. He awoke with a few snorts when the women came through the door. Storm reached him halfway across the room and they clasped each other in a tight embrace.

“Kid, you wait too long fo' come visit,” he said when he released her. His face creased into deep squint and laugh lines, carved by years of riding the range of Parker Ranch. Uncle Keone, like the other paniolo who rode the thousands of acres that reached from the sea up the slopes of Mauna Kea, was proud of the fact that it was one of the largest privately owned cattle ranches in the United States.

Maile gave him a swat with part of the paper that she'd picked up from the koa-planked flooring. “Hey, gotta use bettah English—no pidgin. Practice, you.”

She peered at Storm and frowned. “You look tired and pale, almost like one haole.” She swayed her wide muumuu into the kitchen. “Storm, you want cuppa tea or one beer? Sit and tell us everything.”

Storm had only enough energy to follow obediently. Uncle Keone was used to following Maile's directions. He grinned at Storm and they both dropped into chairs at the kitchen table. “Beer, please,” Keone said.

Maile cocked an eyebrow at him.

“I'm thirsty,” he explained and shrugged at Storm.

“I'll have one too,” Storm said.

Maile set two longnecks on the table, then plopped a tea bag into a mug. She lowered her voluminous flowered dress into the chair. “'Bout time you're here. Poor Miles Hamasaki. How he wen' make, anyway? A heart attack? Tell the whole story.” She slurped her tea, ignored Uncle Keone's glare at her own pidgin for the word “die,” and focused her keen black eyes on Storm.

Storm took a long pull on her beer and noted with satisfaction that her hands were no longer trembling. She gave her head a shake to unjumble her exhausted thoughts and looked into their wise, weathered faces. “Someone followed me from Hilo. He ran into the back of my car, then I think he went off the cliff at the turn before Laupahoehoe.”

“Lord, honey! Was he drunk?” Maile asked. Uncle Keone set his beer down with a thud and sat up straighter in his chair.

Storm nodded. “I thought so at first, but he wasn't. He was trying to force me off the road.”

“He'd have to be lolo, crazy screw-loose.” Maile sat back in her chair, aghast. “Why would someone do that?”

“I think someone believes I have information they either need or want to hide.” Storm gulped from her beer, took a deep breath, then told them about finding Hamasaki's briefcase and the burglary of her home.

“What do the police say?”

“The Honolulu police don't know about the car that followed me tonight. So far, most of them think I've been a victim of random crime.”

Both Maile and Keone stared at her. “What's the world comin' to?” Maile whispered.

Storm frowned into her beer. “One detective might be starting to wonder.”

“Did you call the police about the accident tonight?” Keone asked.

“Yes, I called 911, but I got tired of waiting.”

“Storm, they'll want to talk to you,” Keone said.

Aunt Maile squinted at her. “That call will have gone to the Kamuela police. It'll be a while before the Big Island cops and the Honolulu cops put the situations together.”

“We gotta talk to them, tell ‘em the whole story,” Keone said.

“I don't know anything about the guy that was following me. I couldn't even see his license plates. And even you thought at first that he was some drunk.”

“You act jus' like city folk. They never want to get involved.” Keone shook his head, disgruntled. “You need to be here, where people take care of each other.”

Storm's chest burned with fear, frustration, and loneliness. This was the end of a trying day. “I get here often enough. You sent me away, remember?” She had had no intention of bringing up the past, but the words bubbled out of her mouth, unbidden. She stuck the rim of the sweating Budweiser bottle in her mouth and took a deep swallow.

Aunt Maile looked at her without flinching, her eyes dark and moist with emotion. Storm had the feeling she'd anticipated this for a long time.

Exhausted, Storm's emotions rose to the surface and pricked through the half-healed scars of loss. “Why did you send me off with Uncle Miles in the middle of my sophomore year of high school?” she asked, her throat tight.

Uncle Keone snorted. “That gang you ran with and those pakalõlõpl…” He grabbed for his shin under the table.

Storm stared. Oh. They'd known all along about her patch of marijuana plants, ten feet high, covered with sensimilla, tenderly cultivated with Parker Ranch's finest manure. They'd never said a word. She had been going to put a down payment on an old Harley one of the guys in Honoka'a had for sale. Talk about counting your chickens.

Aunt Maile took a sip of tea. “Ah, darlin'. You were one angry wahine those days.” She set her mug down as if it were the finest porcelain. “Remember the leather jacket you got for Christmas that year, right before your dad died?”

Storm nodded. She had loved it, almost as much as the motorcycle she had her eye on. Maybe more. The bike was a bit scary. “Well, Miles Hamasaki gave that to you,” Maile said. “He'd been sending gifts ever since your dad's health really went down hill. Acted like they were from your dad and always said not to tell you.”

“Why?” Storm asked, frowning. So they hadn't been from her dad. She didn't feel that gut-wrench of surprise, only an eddy of melancholy acceptance.

“He said you wouldn't like it. You reminded him of himself at sixteen.”

Storm took a gulp of beer. He was right. She would have hated it. She had hated most adult attention those days, unless the person had some high-quality blow and a fast bike. She'd hated Hamasaki for taking her away from Pa'auilo, but she'd seen his good intentions in about six months. Plus, by that time she and Martin had established rapport as mutual hell-raisers. And, one more thing. Hamasaki was helping her with her arguments for the debate team at the new school, and they were kicking ass. That's when some of her classmates started to call her “pit bull.” And contrary to the core, she loved it. But mostly, she loved arguing and winning.

Aunt Maile sighed softly. “We missed you terribly.”

Storm picked at the label on her bottle. “Even after ten years on O'ahu, this is still home.”