The Flaming Luau of Death (13 page)

Into the large mixing bowl, I added additional ingredients. I diced up half a dozen small jalapeño peppers, humming along to the divine musical combination of the steel guitar, double bass, and ukulele. From the excellent sound system, Bill Tapia strummed and sang “Hapa Haole Hula Girl,” which of course made me think of Keniki once again.

I sighed, and Wes looked up. “Life,” I explained. “Death.”

He nodded, thoughtful, and added, “Food.”

“Food.” I looked at the harvest of ingredients on the vast outdoor counter and perked up.

Wesley was still hard at work. “I’m almost done with these freaking sugarcane sticks, you evil genius,” he said, laying his knife down into a small puddle of sweet cane juice. “I’ll make the sauce next.”

While he moved over to the gas range, I crushed about a dozen cloves of garlic and added them to my bowl, stirring them together with all the other ingredients. I love, above all else, spicy flavors mixed in subtle relationship with sweet. It’s all about balance. But in this creation, our new recipe for Keniki, more flavors were called for. I grated fresh ginger root until I had about four tablespoons, and then counted out half a dozen plump limes and began juicing them. The idea was to combine the tart and the sweet, the savory and the hot, together into the mild ground chicken base, and then finish the appetizer
with the candy-treat zing of fresh sugarcane, until the entire concoction blew everyone’s taste buds to smithereens. At least that was the goal.

As we worked, I asked Wes what he thought had been going on with Kelly Imo and his sudden death.

“What worries me,” said Wes, a man who virtually never worries, “is the way in which Kelly died.”

“In the ocean,” I agreed. “I know. It doesn’t make sense that a healthy young man could have such an accident.”

“What,” Wes asked gingerly, “if Holly hit him over the head so hard that she…”

“She what?” I asked, suddenly startled. A flood of scenes flashed quickly before me. Holly bashing Kelly with the lamp. The hotel maids removing his dead, lifeless body and cleaning up. Jasper Berger tossing Kelly’s lifeless body into the sea in the dark of night. It was simply impossible to believe. “You think Holly may have accidentally killed him?”

“Not exactly.”

“Wes. Be serious. She couldn’t have hit him that hard. And what happened to his body? I know the Four Heavens has a reputation for customer service, but disposing of bodies has to be beyond even them.”

“I’m not saying she killed him,” he said, shocked at my suggestion. “But what if she hit him so hard he got a concussion. Maybe he was working out by the cliffs later that night and just got woozy for a moment. Maybe he lost his equilibrium.”

I felt a little sick. What if Wes were right? “Don’t tell your theory to Holly,” I said quickly. “Let’s wait to see what the coroner says.”

It seemed even more important now that we get answers to what happened to Kelly Imo. Whatever strange
business he had been mixed up with, whatever sent him to Holly’s hotel room yesterday, whatever other troubles he had accumulated in his life, we needed to find out fast. That’s the direction in which I was certain we should be looking for answers.

For the time being, though, I was grateful to have the cooking project to distract me. I cracked a dozen eggs—they would help the mixture bind together—before I added the last ingredients, some fish sauce and plenty of salt and pepper. Then it was just a matter of mixing the ground chicken into all the minced and chopped herbs and juice with my bare hands. This sort of finger mixing can be extremely therapeutic.

As I kneaded the lemongrass and spices into the ground chicken, Wes finished stirring up his impromptu sweet chile dipping sauce. He planned to transport it to the luau in a large ceramic bowl, and I watched as he put the covered bowl into the refrigerator. Then he came over to help me begin our huge construction project.

“Okay, then,” I said, looking up at the prepared ingredients. “Some assembly required.”

Wes waited for me to take the lead. With the tip of a teaspoon against my palm, I quickly rolled about one ounce of the chicken-lemongrass mixture into a ball, then molded that portion onto the top of a sugarcane stick, lollipop-style. It only took a second or two. Then I made another. Wes joined in. It was, of course, a race. Wesley Westcott, born competitor. Every culinary challenge an Olympic event.

We each had a large black platter beside us, and soon the mountain of four-inch-long sugarcane sticks became flatter and flatter as our neat rows of chicken appetizers materialized and grew, herringbone-patterned, around the rim of the large platters.

I looked up, certain I had finished ahead of Wes, only to discover him checking his watch, his platter completely full. How does he do that?

“It’s almost five-thirty,” he said, covering the trays with plastic wrap from a restaurant-size roll.

“We’re great,” I said. “Let’s just toss these trays into the refrigerator and we’ll pick them up on our way to the heliport.” Our plan was to fry them fresh at the luau. We had borrowed an enormous wok from the hotel kitchen and had procured a huge jug of peanut oil for that purpose.

“Right. The thing is, I need to find Holly,” Wes said. “Rather quickly.”

“Yeah,” I said, “where is our girl?” I picked up a cordless phone from the outdoor kitchen counter and dialed her room. No answer. I dialed each of her sisters’ rooms, one after another. Again, nothing but automated offers to leave voice mail, which I ignored. I tried our room even, but of course no one was home. I called over to the spa, but a rather frosty-sounding Paloma said Holly had never returned to the spa that entire afternoon. And the rest of our gang, like Wes, had left long ago.

“Well,” I said, getting off the phone, “they could all be in the bar, picking up Hawaiian wrestlers.”

He smiled.

“Or maybe out by the pool,” I said. “Or snorkeling. Or at the beach. Or in one of the cafés.”

“I think I may need to write off my little gift for Holly.”

“What? Your gift?”

He nodded. “It’s time sensitive.”

“What did you get her?”

“I made a reservation. This was months ago, back when we were home. I was meaning to tell her about it,
thinking I’d have half a second with her alone, but we’ve been apart all day long. It was going to be my bridal shower gift.”

“What was?”

“I made a reservation for Holly to go swimming with the dolphins over at the Grand Waikoloa. The reservation, however, is for six o’clock. Tonight. And she’s not gonna make it, is she?”

“Oh, Wes. That sucks.”

“Mad, it is the most amazing experience. You simply cannot imagine it. You remember, I swam with wild dolphins in the Red Sea and I’ll never forget it.”

That stopped my train of thought. “You swam with dolphins in the Red freaking Sea? I never heard about that.”

“When I took that trip to Egypt. Anyway, I wanted our Holly to have a transcendental spiritual encounter while she was here this weekend. That’s what I wanted to give to her before she got married. Oh, well.”

“Can you reschedule?” I asked.

“No. These dolphin encounter sessions are booked up months in advance, and it’s too late to—”

“Wait!” I had the solution. “Why don’t
you
go? You can go and take that spot.”

“No,” he said, looking up at me, finding his own solution by the look of him.
“You
go.”

“What?”

“Yes, Mad. You go. It will be great. I’ve already swum with dolphins. In the wild.”

In other words, swimming around in a tank with a couple of tame hotel dolphins wouldn’t extend Wesley’s list of world adventures. But it would mine.

“But I have so much on my mind, Wes. So much more to figure out.”

“You’d be doing me a favor,” Wes said, knowing how to get my attention. “Please.”

“You know what? I think I will,” I said, feeling that giddy, I’m-a-free-spirit zing.

“This is perfect,” Wes said, happy again. “The Grand Waikoloa is just down the beach. Five minutes to get there in the car. You better get going.”

“Okay!” I was in Hawaii and I was about to swim with dolphins. What could possibly be cooler?

“Oh, but wait.” He looked annoyed. “They may have a cancellation policy and a waiting list. If you tell them you have come in Holly’s place, they may tell you to leave and take the first person that’s waiting on standby. Shoot.”

“It’s okay,” I said, as agreeable as a large mai tai and a happy bout of cooking can make a girl. “I’ll be Holly Nichols for an hour and go swim with some nice old dolphins.”

W
es waved good-bye. He was perched on a chaise longue, his feet up, out on the lanai of the Presidential Bungalow. He was speaking quickly into the cordless phone as I left, busy calling all over the place, leaving voice messages for our gang. He was spreading the word that they all had a free night on the island, dinner wherever and whenever they chose, and of course they were welcome to join us at Kelly Imo’s memorial luau if they wished. We would all meet up at midnight at a little club called Breeze back in Kona, where we intended to pick up the party pace once again. We’d toast our bride-to-be and shower her with bachelorette party gifts. That was the plan.

Meanwhile, I ducked out of the Presidential Bungalow and dashed over to our room, which suddenly appeared much smaller than it had. Slumming around in that five-thousand-bucks-a-night palace down the beach had already turned my head. Ah, well. A small slice of the fine life was still sweet. I quickly changed into a yellow bikini, a tiny thing I’d been dieting for a month to make “work,” and then covered it up again with a pair of hip-hugging blue board shorts and a cropped tee. What the outfit lacked in subtlety, it made up for in beach chic, as
I was once again all about expressing my newly unveiled wild inner child.

Okay. Keys. Altoids. I looked about the room one last time. My cell phone winked at me from the corner of the desk where I’d left it perched in its charger. A message had come in while I’d been out all day. Maybe Holly? I dialed the message number and heard Chuck Honnett’s voice. Chuck. Oh, yes. The reality show that I was about to return to tomorrow—my real life—had not simply vanished. Damn.

But I was being unkind. Harsh. Honnett was not calling to guilt-trip me for running off and kissing some almost naked Hawaiian stranger. Naturally, he didn’t know anything about Cake. But my own conscience was making my stomach feel a little twisted, just thinking about Honnett and Cake at the same time. Some wild child I turned out to be. I breathed in and out, trying to think calm thoughts, and listened to the message playing back as Honnett made apologies for bothering me on my weekend away. Like he had any reason to feel apologetic this particular weekend. Oh, man. But then he started saying he’d found the information I’d asked him for, how he’d gathered some stuff on his end about Holly’s maybe-husband, Marvin Dubinsky.

“Mad, I know you’re on your holiday, but I wanted to get this out to you, in case it makes a difference. I wouldn’t have troubled you, but when you hear what I found out, you may want to know the details as soon as possible.”

What was this? So I sat on the edge of my bed, listening to Honnett, his voice all Texas twang but yes-officer serious as he gave his report.

“Dubinsky is a pretty successful fellow. You hadn’t told me that part. He owns a couple of decent-size companies
that are traded over the counter, which is brokerspeak for damned important. You know what that means? He’s loaded. All the companies have something to do with biogenetics, improving plant genetics, stuff like that. That’s the best I can tell you now. Here’s the thing. There is no mention of a wife in any of the biographies filed with his businesses, but we did turn up a valid marriage license from Nevada. He married Hollyhock Miranda Nichols. We’re still checking on annulment or divorce records, but nothing has turned up yet. So that’s that. I also think you should hear about where Dubinsky is currently located.”

I hooked the small cell phone between my shoulder and ear and looked around the room for anything I’d need when I swam with the dolphins. I grabbed my large canvas beach bag and tucked in a tube of sunscreen, a darling mini-shampoo from the bathroom, and a widetooth hairbrush for after.

“Here’s the thing,” Honnett’s voice continued. “Dubinsky moved over there a few years ago. To Hawaii.”

I dropped the mini-conditioner.

“Odd, ain’t it?” the message continued. “That’s where he’s headquartered now, as a matter of fact. Has a company called BotaniTech.” He spelled it out. “Out there on the island of Hawaii, which as best I can understand it must be the same damned island you are on right now. Don’t that beat all? Say, you call me if you need anything else.”

Honnett was good. I was bad. I got it. But there was suddenly much more to think about than that.

Marvin Dubinsky on the Big Island. Hadn’t I called that one? And of course Holly had mentioned to me that Marvin had been some sort of plant genius. So it seemed
extraordinarily coincidental that we had become mixed up with another plant expert, Kelly Imo. Not to mention Claudia and the rest of the Bamboo herd. How did they all connect? But I couldn’t take the time to process it all right now. I looked at my watch and upped my pace. I had a date with a dolphin.

I flip-flopped down the sidewalk on the way to my parking space, knocking at each Nichols sister’s door absentmindedly, thinking mostly now of Honnett’s bombshell of a message. Liz Mooney and the Nichols gals were just not home, so I scrambled into the rented convertible and hit the road. What was Marvin Dubinsky doing, anyway, winding up so damned close to us here on this island? How had all roads led back to Holly?

At the Grand Waikoloa Village, I let the valet park my Mustang and literally ran down to the dolphin enclosure, located out near one of the vast man-made lagoons all the way around at the back of the resort. The architectural style of this hotel was unlike the subdued opulence and authentic low bungalows of the Four Heavens. Here, luxury was of the megasize man-made variety, from huge man-made waterfalls to huge man-made trams to huge man-made snorkel bays.

I arrived at the Dolphin Excitement office a little breathless and gave the name on the reservation: “Holly Nichols.”

“Hey there, Holly.” Another waiting dolphin-besotted adventurer, a sunburned young man, saluted me with two fingers to his forehead. “I’m Gabriel Swan. From San Francisco. Nice to meet you.” His swim trunks were covered in a pattern of green and orange angelfish. “That’s kind of a private joke,” he said, noticing my gaze. “Are you an angel person?”

“A what?”

“Angels. They are everywhere.” He winked at me. “’Course you know that.”

The athletic young woman who was leading our group encounter with the dolphins looked up from her clipboard. “There will be three of you with us this afternoon. We are awaiting the arrival of just one more guest.” In the meantime, she had us sign a few forms, which held the dolphin group free from liability no matter what happened to us in their lagoon. I signed merrily away. Holly Nichols. Holly Nichols. Holly Nichols. If this were the extent of my bad-girl behavior, I could hardly balk at a little forgery!

“You know someone named Denise?” Gabriel asked me, looking startled.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Denise? That name mean something to you, Holly?”

I almost giggled. Holly. “Well, I don’t think so. Should it?”

“I should say so,” he told me solemnly. “I think there is someone named Denise who needs your help very badly.”

I looked up at him again. “Why do you say that?”

“It’s coming through loud and clear. From the other plane.”

“It is? How do you…?”

“Just something your fairy told me,” Gabriel said, his demeanor perfectly sane despite the conversation.

“My fairy.”

“We’ve all got them, you know. Buzzing around, sitting on our shoulders. I have always been sensitive to fairies. I can see them. That’s my gift.” His deep red face broke into a bashful smile, large overbite revealed by rather chapped lips.

I shaded my eyes and asked straight out, “You mean you see fairies flying around me?”

“Oh, of course I do. That one there”—he pointed to an area near my left breast—“is very worried, though. She’s the one who told me about Denise.”

I swear, I know absolutely no one named Denise. I thought about it a bit harder. No. No Denises whatsoever. It’s not that I believe in any of this stuff about fairies and angels and what-all. Of course I don’t. But I like to keep an open mind. What can that hurt? The Big Island is the New Age Mecca, drawing believers in crystals, angels, and dolphins by the hundred. I like to give every spiritual group respect, whatever strange thing they believe, just for showing the optimism to believe in
anything
in our weary world.

“Oh, hey!” said our dolphin guide, looking up. Our guide was a very fit young woman in her early twenties with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Her name badge said:
MEG
. “Here she comes now, I think.” She was looking across the lawn at a lovely elderly woman who was approaching our shed at a trot.

“I’m here!” the woman called out to us. “Don’t worry. I made it.”

Meg checked her clipboard. “You must be Millie Reisch.”

“Yes. That’s right. It’s me. I’m late, but that’s my husband’s fault. I told him to wake me from my nap at fourthirty. But did he wake me? Oy.”

Millie had to be in her seventies, a woman with quite a substantial bosom trussed into a daringly low-cut one-piece swimsuit with a skirt, and she looked damned good in it. Her voice gave a hint of New York.

I glanced over at Gabriel. “Gabe, do you see Millie’s angels?”

“What’s that?” Millie asked, her eyes shining. “You should forgive me, darlings, but angels, schmangels. What I want to see are the dolphins.” And then Millie turned to me. “Be careful, young lady. You know these dolphins have amazing powers. They can tell if a person is pregnant. Yes. They have some special perception. I mention this,” she said, giving me a gentle dig in the ribs, “just in case you’re trying to keep any secrets from your husband here.”

“Mrs. Reisch,” I said, instantly dizzy from the sheer number of misconceptions. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. But I think you must be mistaken! I’m not married. In fact, I just met Gabriel here a few minutes ago. And I am not in any danger of setting off the dolphin pregnancy police.”

Millie chuckled as she signed on the dotted line of the liability forms. “I’m kidding. I’m kidding. And call me Millie. Only my boyfriends call me Mrs. Reisch.”

“I’m Madeline,” I said, and we smiled at each other.

“I thought you were Holly,” Gabriel blurted out, suddenly concerned.

“Yes. That, um, too,” I said very casually, as if I hadn’t just made a hysterically huge mistake my very first minute of assuming Holly’s identity. Some undercover spy I would make. Right. Sheesh. “Madeline Holly Nichols. But everyone calls me Holly.”

“Oh, yes?” Gabe asked. The angels must have been telling Gabe a different tale, because he looked completely unconvinced.

Millie, on the other hand, instantly launched into a story about her oldest grandson, Adam, who was an honor student at Rutgers. His girlfriend back in high school was named Madison, which was almost like Madeline. What a small world.

And then before we could get any more of Millie’s
family’s history, Meg told us it was time to go swimming with the dolphins, and we followed her out to the man-made dolphin pools.

With Meg, we waded knee-deep into the shallow water of the pool, while another of the Dolphin Excitement staff members opened the gate, which allowed the animals to swim out into the enclosed dolphin lagoon in which we were waiting. Three dolphins joined us, circling around in the warm water with ease.

“I’d like to introduce you,” Meg said, “to Romeo and Juliet, and their grown-up son, Little Willie.”

We couldn’t hold back on the oohs and ahhs. It was impossible not to be amazed by the beauty of the dolphins and their power in the water as they swam swiftly around us.

Meg held a special trainer’s whistle in her teeth and gave it a toot. The dolphins circled nearer, and the female named Juliet came to Meg and rolled over onto her side in the water, allowing Meg to hold Juliet’s flipper and stroke her neck.

Meg kept up a constant patter, telling us everything we’d ever need to know about dolphin behavior and the wonderful care these dolphins in particular were getting. I noticed a number of hotel guests had gathered near the edge of the deck on a bridge over the lagoon, watching us and the dolphins playing in the water. We were, after all, just a few more players in this resort’s never-ending mega-man-made show. I heard a child ask his mother why he couldn’t swim in this lagoon right now and heard her valiantly try to explain about costs and reservation policies to a seven-year-old.

“Here’s Little Willie,” Meg said, standing next to me in deeper water now. “Let him roll over and you may pet him. He likes that.”

I’m sure. Why should he be different from any other male? I smirked to myself and patted Little Willie.

“He’s really taken with you,” Meg said approvingly. “Look,” she called to Millie, who was having a fine time getting to know Romeo. “Look how much Little Willie likes Holly.”

It was true. Little Willie looked at me deeply with one of his glassy eyes. And although he was a large gray rubbery-skinned sea creature, I felt he was saying something to me with his long deep gaze. Gadzooks. Little Willie was tying to communicate.

Gabriel called to me from a few yards away, where he was getting to know Juliet. “Say, Holly, listen to Little Willie.”

This was almost too hilarious. But then, of course, I was torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to ask Gabe to translate for me. See, this is where irony will get a girl.

“Okay, Gabriel,” I said, giving in. “What is Little Willie saying?”

“Oh, only that he loves you, Holly. And he’s a little worried. He thinks you are in danger.”

Just then the large dolphin turned over and submerged below me, coming up gently underneath so that I was astride him and then taking off, not too fast, and giving me a ride. It was the most amazing thing ever.

“Oh, I want to do that,” called Millie, looking for a way to hop onto Romeo.

“No, no,” said Meg, swimming over to us. “We are not to ride the animals. I don’t know what got into Little Willie. But it is not our policy to force the animals into acting like playthings. Sorry, Millie. I think Little Willie has just really taken a shine to Holly.”

The crowd standing by the gate applauded when I
came by on my slippery steed. All except a band of intense Japanese tourists, men in suits, who just stared and pointed cameras.