I'm Kona Love You Forever (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series Book 6) (15 page)

“Why would they do that?
Nah, they liked her at her work. They only laid her off ‘cuz a all the budget cuts we been having.”

“
So, you don’t think she was depressed?”

“
Sure she was. I’m jus’ saying I’ve seen her worse. And there’s no way she’d a done this now. Her boy was getting married this month. Over on Maui. She said she was gonna buy a plane ticket and go to the wedding. And that wasn’t like her to do things like that.”

“
She told you all this?”

“
Sure. Back when she was workin’ we’d see each other every week or so. But ever since she got laid off we pretty much talked every day. Look, Malia was a complainer but she was straight up. If she said she was gonna do something, she did it. She tol’ me she’d never been on an airplane in her life but, by golly, she was goin’ to Maui.”

“
Okay, but if it wasn’t suicide, what do you think happened?”

“I
don’t rightly know. Maybe it was an accident. Or an evil-minded person. You know, sometimes there’s like them serial killers and all. They just pick people at random.”

“
But she was found in her car with no signs of a struggle,” I said. “She apparently died of asphyxiation.”

“
You mean from sniffin’ the gas fumes?”

I nodded.

“Well, maybe she died from sniffin’ fumes, but that don’t make it suicide. I’m tellin’ you. That poor woman was bound and determined to see her baby boy get married on Maui. Come hell or high up water.”

CHAPTER 17

I left and had almost made it back to Malia’s house when Edie “yoo-hooed” me again. I stopped and turned around. She waved her hand in a “come closer” gesture so I retraced my steps back to her house.

“I forgot to tell you somethin’
important,” she said in a whisper.

“
What’s that?”

“
You believe me that she wouldn’t do this, right?”

“I
must admit it seems odd she’d end her life now,” I said. “But it’s hard to know what people are really thinking or feeling. And unless the authorities find something to the contrary, it’s probably going to be ruled a suicide. There’s just no evidence of foul play.”

“
But you’ve got to stop them. You could tell them to look harder. You know, tell them how she told me about going to the weddin’ and all.”

“Why don’t you tell them, Edie?
She confided in you, not me.”

“They won’t listen to me.”

“Why not?”

“I got some so-call
ed “history” with the police in this area.” She said the word “police” with a long “o” sound and a heavy accent on the first syllable. There was something about Edie’s demeanor that led me to believe she had good reason to assume they’d ignore her suspicions. She struck me as a woman who may’ve cried “wolf” a few too many times.

“
Are her people okay with thinkin’ she did this to herself?” she said. “Or are they thinkin’ like me?”

“As far as I can tell
they’ve accepted it. They all agree she was depressed and unhappy and she’d threatened suicide before.”

“Well,
maybe so, but here’s somethin’ I forgot to tell you: someone should take a good hard look at her next-door neighbor, Gary.” She pointed to a plain green one-story house to the south of Malia’s. It was the home of the gawker who’d been hosing down his truck when I’d dropped off Lili and David. His house was in worse condition than Malia’s, with a big patch of roof shingles missing and a falling-down carport that sagged so low it would’ve been impossible to park even a little car like my Mini Cooper in there.

“What
’s the deal with him?” I said.

“He and Malia
never saw eye to eye on nuthin’. She called the cops on him more’n a few times. Finally, they wrote him up.”

“For what?”

“For being a darn fool. He used to keep dogs—you know, them fightin’ dogs. And sometimes one or a’tuther of those dogs would get loose and go to her place and mess with her kids. A few years ago one of ‘em bit her boy pretty bad. The cops called the animal control people and they came and took all the dogs. Far as I know, Gary and Malia haven’t spoke since.”

“Huh. But
Malia was found in her car. And from what I hear, she was a very large woman. How would Gary be able to get her out to the car and then keep her there until she suffocated?”

“You
ever get a good look at him? Believe me, that boy could hunt bear with nuthin’ but a piney stick.”

I thanked her for the information
, but I wasn’t about to go snooping around the house of a beefy guy who’d been cited for raising out-of-control fighting dogs. From what I’d learned in my criminology classes at University of Hawaii, the kind of people who abuse animals are also pretty okay with hurting people. And, as Edie would put it, “they’re partial to weapons.” I can hold my own when it’s hand-to-hand, but hand-to-gun or hand-to-knife puts me at a serious disadvantage.

But
if Malia’s next-door neighbor hated her, and might have sought to seek revenge, how could I not take Edie seriously? The family deserved to know and I’m not good at leaving intriguing stones unturned.

I trotted up
the short driveway to Gary’s house and knocked. The guy who answered filled the doorframe. He hadn’t looked that big washing his truck. He wore a stretched-out white “wife-beater” undershirt and red knit bike shorts that left way too little to the imagination. His arms and shoulders rippled with muscles and he had thighs as big around as my waist.

“Huh. S
eems you changed your mind after all,” he said. He reached up to scratch the back of his neck and the odor from his hairy pit nearly made my eyes water.

“
Aloha
,” I said. “As you probably know, your neighbor died yesterday.”

“
Yeah? What’s it to me?”

“I was hoping
you could tell me—”

“
Look, far as I’m concerned, good riddance.” He shut the door in my face.

I
headed back down the driveway. As I passed the carport, I looked under the sagging roof and saw a black rubber contraption lying against a rotted support beam. I glanced back at the house. The door was still closed and the window blinds shut tight.

I poked at the rubber device
with my foot. I knew what it was. I’d actually worn one when I was in training to become a federal air marshal. One day they’d trooped us down to what looked like a ship container and locked us inside. Then they opened a hatch on top and dropped in some pellets that hissed and smoked when they hit bottom. We’d practiced putting on our equipment a dozen times or more, but there’s nothing like sucking live tear gas into your lungs to see if you’ve been listening.

I
bent down to take a good look at the gas mask. It wasn’t new; in fact, it appeared well-worn, with cracks along the strapping. Something about the mask was curious, however. Everything else in the carport was coated with dust. But the lens on the mask was shiny and clear, as if it’d been recently wiped off.

I looked
back at Gary’s house one more time. Did I dare take the gas mask with me? Then I recalled another lesson from criminology class: chain of evidence. If evidence is touched or moved, it’s inadmissible.

I left the mask
where it was and hurried back to Malia’s to see how the family meeting was coming along.

***

David and Lili were out front. David leaned against a porch rail, arms crossed. Lili faced him. Every few seconds she dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

“Everything okay?”
I said.

“Not hardly
,” said David. “My sisters have ganged up on us. Shayna says everyone wants us to put off the wedding until—”

“Until
never
,” said Lili.

“No, they didn’t say that,” said David. “They said that out of respect for
Mom we shouldn’t get married for a while.”

“I see,” I said.

“I don’t,” said Lili. “You promised me we’d get married at the end of January. I quit school and everything.”

“But this kind of changes things, don’t you think?
” said David. “I mean, we need to have the funeral and—”

“I can’t believe
this is happening,” Lili broke in. “Why would your mom do this to you—to
us
? You said she was so happy when you told her we were getting married.”

“That’s why we need to honor her by putting it off for a while,” said David.

“I
really
can’t believe you’re siding with them.” Lili made a pouty
fft
sound and scowled.

“David, what can you
tell me about your mother’s neighbor, Gary?” I said. I nodded my head in the direction of Gary’s house.

“He’s a
n ass-wipe.”

“I sort of got that from talking to Edie across the street.
She said Gary was holding a grudge against your mom. She even hinted he may have had something to do with what happened.”

“Yeah, well,
you gotta be careful with Edie. She’s a nice lady, but she’s kinda paranoid. When we had that earthquake a few years back she ran through the neighborhood screaming about radical terrorists. Said she saw some guys in turbans down on Ali’i Drive in town. She said they’d probably blown up the telescopes on Mauna Kea and that’s what caused the shaking.”

“Still, your mom and Gary didn’t get along, right?”

“He kept a bunch of mean dogs. Every time one of them escaped my mom would call the cops. When I was a kid, one got in our garage. I went in to take it back to Gary’s but it went after me.” He traced an ugly red scar on his lower leg. The scar ran from his knee to a few inches above his ankle.

“Yikes, that looks serious
,” I said.

“Yeah,
it was twenty-eight stitches serious. And my mom was seriously pissed. She’d just started at the parks department and wasn’t eligible for insurance for two more weeks. But they paid the bill anyway.”

“Edie said your mom got laid off because of budget cuts,” I said.

“Yeah. It bummed her out, but she understood. She was in charge of park renovations. But what with all the cut-backs they weren’t doing renovations anymore.”

“Did you know your mom was invited to a park blessing at Higashihara Park? It
’s supposed to take place this Saturday.”

“No lie? That’s
too bad. She loved park blessings. I don’t remember he saying anything about it, though.”

“When
was the last time you spoke with your mom?” I felt bad reminding him he’d never be talking to her again, but I wanted to check out Edie’s contention that Malia wouldn’t have missed the blessing.

“
About a week ago. I think it was a Sunday.” He bit his lower lip.

“
The blessing would’ve already been scheduled by then, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh yeah.
They plan those things way in advance. They put it in the paper and everything. I can’t believe she didn’t mention it.”

“Maybe she
didn’t want to go since she didn’t work for the parks department anymore,” I said. “Maybe she thought it would make her feel sad, or even embarrassed, about losing her job.”

“My mom?
Hardly. She didn’t know the word ‘embarrassed.’ She’d overhear people on the street call her fat and she’d tell them to shut their face or she’d sit on ‘em.”

“It’s getting late,” I said. “I’ve got the room for
one more night but after that I need to get back to Maui. How about you, Lili? Do you want to go back home to Maui or stay at Shayna’s?”

“I can’t go yet
,” she said. “I want to stay for the funeral. You want me to be there, right David?”

He pulled her close. “I don’t know how I’d get through it without you.”

I took the two of them to dinner at Jackie Rey’s. I’d really enjoyed ‘aloha hour’ there with Hatch on Saturday and I wanted to try the full menu. It put a pretty big dent in my entertainment budget but at least I could write part of it off as a client business expense. I ordered the seafood trio. It featured four grilled jumbo shrimp, a buttery piece of mahi-mahi, and three large tender scallops. David and Lili both ordered the Black Angus cheddar burger with fries.

“
It’s funny,” Lili said. “No matter how big the menu is, we both always order the exact same thing.”

“
And if they’ve got a hamburger, it’s a no-brainer,” David said.

After dinner, I dropped David at his dad’s and
then drove Lili to Shayna’s. She wasn’t eager to share quarters with David’s crabby big sister, but I was leaving early the next morning and I wouldn’t have time to take her over there.

“
Would you come in for a minute?” Lili said, as we pulled up at the house. “I don’t know Shayna and I want to make sure she really meant it when she told me I could stay with her until the funeral.”