4 Kaua'i Me a River (17 page)

We
went back into the kitchen. She pulled some salad makings out of the
refrigerator and asked if I’d do the honors.

“You
never answered my question about how long you two were married before my father
died,” I said.

“I
know. I guess I’m a little touchy about it. See, I took care of your dad for
nearly two years before we got married. Then—’ She stopped and I looked up from
making the salad. She was biting her lip and blinking back tears. It was the
first time I’d seen her show any emotion over the death of my father.

“I’m
sorry. You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,” I said.

“No,
it’s fine. I can’t believe it still gets to me. We both knew what was going to
happen. It wasn’t like it was a shock or anything.”

“But
still, it’s hard,” I said.

“Yeah.
I feel bad that you never got to know him. He was one in a million.”

“Sounds
like it. But I’ve got to say, it’s hard for me to bring up good feelings about
him. And now that I know he knew my mom had been killed and he never came for
me… Well, all I can say is I’m lucky Auntie Mana stepped up when she did. My
brother and I had nobody.”

“Your
father cared for you in the only way he knew how. But he had to keep a low
profile.”

I
stared at her. “A low profile? Sounds like he was anything but low profile.”

“Oh,
it’s complicated,” she said. “And anyway, I’m starving.”

We sat
down to a simple dinner of barbequed chicken breasts and salad. I poked at the
chicken but ate more than my share of salad.

Sunny
looked at my plate. “Are you a vegetarian? I forgot to ask.”

“No,
I’ve been known to knock back many a harmless creature,” I said. “But tonight
I’m more tired than hungry, I guess. If you don’t mind I’m going to head off to
the
ohana
as soon as we’ve cleaned up the kitchen.”

 “Don’t
worry about it. My housekeeper comes tomorrow. I’ll just throw the dishes in
the dishwasher and leave the rest for her.”

I went
off to the guest house thinking how different my life would be if I could just
pay someone else to clean up my messes.

***

On Monday, Sunny pulled up in
front of the
ohana
in the Range Rover. “I’m going to drive since Timo’s
got things to do and who knows how long this court thing will take,” she said.

We pulled in at the courthouse and
Valentine was standing outside with a grim look on her face. I smiled as we
approached but it wasn’t returned.

“I don’t want to go into it
now,” Valentine said when we’d gotten within earshot. “But the preliminary
autopsy report on Peggy Chesterton has been released and it doesn’t look good.”

“They did an autopsy on a Sunday?”
I said.

“Yes, Peggy’s death is all over
the news. After all, her father was the former mayor. I’m sure they called the
ME right away and told him to get right on it.”

“Well, don’t leave us hanging,”
I said. “What didn’t look good?”

“It seems she was extremely intoxicated
at the time of the accident. But the tox screen was inconsistent with regular alcohol
intoxication.”

“So what made her drunk?”

“That’s the million-dollar
question. The ME is considering a more sophisticated test, but he says it might
not be worth the trouble since the markers degrade with time and refrigeration.”

Sunny shook her head. “Poor Peggy.
Makes you wonder what happened. You know, come to think of it she didn’t look at
all good. I wonder if she might’ve been abusing pharmaceuticals or even street
drugs.”

“It’s hard to imagine, but you
never can tell,” said Valentine. “Well, let’s get inside. Judges don’t suffer
late-comers gladly.”

We went up to the second floor.
The courtroom was smaller than the one I’d been in on Maui, but then Kaua'i has
half the number of residents of Maui. The judge was conferring with a court
clerk when we slipped in and took our seats.

I’m not sure what I expected,
but our courtroom appearance took only minutes. Valentine was approved as the
executor of the estate and Sunny and I were noted as being the named
beneficiaries in the will. It was all very matter-of-fact.

The judge ordered the
notification period to begin. Documents were signed and stamped, fees were paid,
and we were back outside in less than half an hour.

“That was easy,” I said.

“Well,” said Valentine. “What we
accomplished today was simply to open probate. The process itself takes months,
sometimes years. And if there’s mediation involved—that is, if someone else
comes forward to contest the will—then it can drag on and on.”

“Oh, great,” I said.

“But don’t worry about it,” said
Valentine. “That’s my job. Your job is to get the documents the judge
requested. Sunny, I’ll need originals of Phil’s life insurance policies, deeds
to the homes, and investment statements. Pali, all I need from you is your
birth certificate.”

I nodded. “I’ve got it at home.”

“Go ahead and fax me a copy.
Before the final settlement I’ll need the original, but I have a hunch that
will be months from now.”

“So, we’re done?” I said.

“I can’t see any reason for you
to stick around,” said Valentine. “I can take you to the airport right now if
you want.”

Sunny and I hugged goodbye.

“Can I ask you a favor?” I said as
Valentine and I walked through the parking lot. “Do you have time to drop me by
the
The Garden Island
newspaper office? I need to check on something.”

“Sure. I don’t have appointments
until after lunch. What do you need?”

“I’m hoping it will only take a
minute. I want to see if there were any news stories about my mother’s death back
in 1981.”

Valentine drove me to the office
on Kuhio Highway and I went inside. She stayed in the car returning phone
calls.

“
Aloha
, can I help you?”
said a young local guy at the counter. “You want to set up a subscription?”

“No, I’m here to see if you can
find something for me in your archives.”

“We post our archives online,
you know.”

“Yes, and I checked it. But this
is about a killing that happened in 1981.”

He squinted up his face as if
realizing I was going to be a tough customer. “I don’t know what we’ll have
from back that far. We had a fire in the building in the middle eighties. Lost
a lot of microfiche. Back then, we put all our archives on microfiche.”

“Would you mind looking anyway?”

“Sure. Give me the date. I’ll
look it up and let you know if we have anything.” 

“Can I give you a month and
year?”

He really squinted at that one.
“That will take a while to go through. How about this? Do you have key words or
maybe a name? We’ve put the big stories from the archives in a computer database.
If I can find the exact date it will speed things up.”

I gave him my mom’s name, Marta
Warner. I figured if they couldn’t find it by her name then the microfiche had
probably been lost in the fire.

He typed in the name.

“Ah. Seems we have a hit for
Marta Warner on April 17, 1981,” he said. “Would you like a copy? We charge a
dollar a page for microfiche images. But I have to warn you; sometimes they’re
kind of blurry.”

“That’s okay. How many pages is
it?”

“Um, looks like just one.”

“Yes, please print it out for
me.”

He left, and a few minutes later
he came back with the print-out. I took a dollar out of my purse.

“Nah. No charge. I looked at the
story. Was she
ohana
?”

“Yeah. My mom.”

“Sorry.” He gave me a
sympathetic nod and we held eye contact just a tad longer than was comfortable.
“We publish good news too, you know? So if you ever want to sign up for home
delivery…”

“
Mahalo
, but I live on
Maui now.”

I folded the print-out and went out
to Valentine’s car. She was still on the phone but she signed off a few seconds
after I shut the door.

“Did you get what you needed?”
she said.

“Yes,
mahalo
. I appreciate
you waiting.”

We drove for a minute and I
said, “I was surprised to learn how long it’s going to take to get the will
through probate.”

“Is it going to cause a
hardship?” she said.

“No, but my car’s sort of on its
last legs.”

“Oh. Well, sorry, but that’s how
probate works in Hawaii. I tried to talk your dad into a trust but he wouldn’t
consider it. I guess he had ‘trust issues’.” She turned and smiled as if she’d
said something funny.

We got to the airport and she
offered to park and come in to make sure I got a flight but I told her to go
ahead and leave. “I’ll get the next flight to Honolulu. From there, flights leave
for Kahului every half-hour or so.”

While I waited for them to call
my flight to HNL I read the old newspaper account of my mother’s death. Three
times.

I learned nothing new. The only
person named in the article was my mom. The story referred to the two men involved
as simply ‘North Shore residents.’ The way it sounded, my mother had simply
been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had taken a blow to the head. No
mention of the police chief’s son, not that that was surprising.

When I got on the plane, I
buckled up and leaned back in my seat. I’d been gone less than three days but a
lot had happened and some things didn’t add up. Why had Joanie called my mom’s death
a murder if everyone else considered it an accident? And why had formerly clean
and sober Peggy suddenly decided to fall off the wagon and drive into a tree? And
why hadn’t Phil come forward to get me when he heard my mother had died?  

I was eager to get home. My
brain worked better in familiar surroundings.

CHAPTER
21

    
Steve
picked me up at the airport. I slid into his spotless black Jetta and felt a
little zing of envy. If things went as Valentine predicted, it would be months,
maybe even a year or more, before I could get a new car. It was the one thing I
wanted that money could buy.

“How
are things at home?” I said.

The
scowl on his face tipped me off. “Well, I guess if one enjoyed living in a
hippie day care center they’d say ‘great.’ I, on the other hand, am finding the
environment a bit challenging.”

“What
do you mean? One kid doesn’t constitute a day care center.”

“True,
if there was only one. Farrah’s up to three now,” he said.

‘Three?
What’s going on?”

“I
should probably let her tell you herself. She asked me to stay out of it.”

“Tell
me, Steve. I have a hunch I may need to practice an eviction speech.”

“Okay,
so here’s the situation so far: a woman dropped Moke off at the store. Then, on
Saturday, Farrah did some of her
juju
nonsense and located his mother. That
afternoon the mother showed up and she’s got two other kids, twin girls. I’m
not good with kid’s ages, but I’d say they’re around four or five. The mom
looks barely eighteen, so I assume she was making babies when she should’ve
been studying for a middle school algebra test. Anyway, she’s got food stamps,
but other than that, she’s pretty much living on the street.”

“Farrah’s
taken in all of this woman’s kids?”

“Not exactly.
She’s agreed to raise Moke as her
hanai
kid, but she’s watching the
other two while their mother’s out supposedly looking for a job. So, in the
space of one weekend, my life has gone from perfecting the topping on my crème
brulee to mastering the art of transforming powdered baby formula into liquid
without lumps. And it’s that soy stuff so it’s always got lumps. And, it stinks
to high heaven.”

“
Three
kids?” I couldn’t get past the number.

“Yep.
And from the looks of things, the teenage mom’s not going to score a job anytime
soon.”

“Are they
all sleeping at the house?”

“Yep.
On Saturday night it was just the kids. But then Farrah started babbling about
‘it takes a village’ and how she couldn’t allow her ‘sister/mom’ to sleep
outdoors anymore so last night we had the entire unwashed tribe.” He shuddered.
“I love Farrah, but I’m afraid if this is the way it’s gonna be, then I’m going
to start looking for new digs.”

“Okay,
don’t get ahead of yourself. This is my house and I’m home now. I’ll have a
talk with her.”

We got
to the house and sure enough, the first thing I heard as I went in was the
screech of little kids. I pushed through the swinging door from the kitchen and
saw my living room in an utter uproar. There were blankets draped from the sofa
to the coffee table and toys scattered everywhere.

I
turned to Steve. “I thought you said these kids were homeless. How come they
have so much stuff?”

“Farrah
took them to Costco yesterday,” he said.

“What’s
with the blankets?”

“When
I left to pick you up there was talk about building a fort.”

Farrah
came down the stairs holding Moke. She was humming and softly patting his back.
If I hadn’t been so overwhelmed by the coup that had taken place I might’ve
found the scene heartwarming.

“What’s
going on here?” I said.

“Pali,
ho’okipa
! Welcome home. Isn’t it cute? The girls are playing house.” We
all turned and looked as two identical faces popped out from a gap in the
blankets.