Lana'i of the Tiger (The Islands of Aloha Mystery Series) (15 page)

“I’m here to pick up some
registered guests,” he said. He gave a name and a room number. I wasn’t sure if
the name was somebody in his golf group or he’d just made it up.

The guy who drove the Four
Seasons dinghy out to meet us wasn’t the same smiley bellman who’d taken us out
before. Instead, he was a big guy who looked like he would’ve been offered a
full-ride scholarship as a linebacker for the University of Hawaii football
team if he’d kept his grades up. He told us when to step down into the dinghy
but then he didn’t say another word for the rest of the short trip back to the
hotel dock.

When he was out of earshot, I
said to Ono, “Not a very friendly dude.”

“Nope. And I’ll bet he makes
half what the first guy makes doing the same job.”

“The hotel’s allowed to pay them
differently?” I said.

“No, I’m talking tips. I’ll bet
the last time that dude earned a tip was like never.”

***

Ono drove me back to the White
Orchid, but when we rounded the corner to Kua’aina Street there was a Lana’i
cop car parked out front.

“Not good,” I said, pointing to
the white sedan.

“You want me to take you down to
your house?”

“If you wouldn’t mind. I don’t
want Wong to see me. I was supposed to be out running. And I
really
don’t want him to see you.”

Ono drove me back to my house. I
thanked him for the fun afternoon but left it at that. No kiss, no hug, no heartfelt
mahalo
for letting me know my best friend’s been shacking up with my
boyfriend.

“Pali,” he said as he helped me pull
the picnic stuff out of the Jeep. “I’ll be leaving in the morning, but I want
you to know I’ve got your back. If you need anything, and I mean anything at
all, give me a call.”

“
Mahalo,
Ono, I
appreciate that
.
”

 “And, I’m sorry I had to tell
you about Farrah and—”

“No worries. I’ll get over it.”

But as I walked up the sidewalk
to my lonely little rental house, I wondered if I’d lied. Again.

CHAPTER 19

It was a struggle juggling the
cooler, the folded-up tablecloth and my beach bag while I unlocked the screen
door to my enclosed porch. The porch was cool and dark. I put the cooler down
while I fumbled with my key ring to find the right key for the front door.

“You know this means you’ll be
leaving Hawaii,” said a voice from the deep reaches of the shadowy porch.
Startled, I dropped the keys.

“What the hell?” I turned toward
the voice. “What’re you—?” I didn’t get to finish before Detective Glen Wong
stepped over and grasped my wrist.

“Penny,” he said looking into my
eyes as if he were trying to hypnotize me. “I’m disappointed in you.
Very
disappointed.”

“Let go of me,” I wrenched my
arm away and Wong released his grip.

We stared at each other. I was
used to staring down
kung fu
opponents, and Wong probably had a lot of
experience staring down perps, so neither of us yielded.

“Your car is parked over at the
White Orchid,” I said. “What’re you doing here?”

“I’m continually amazed by your
lack of faith in me, Ms. Morton. What is it? You think I lack even the most
rudimentary surveillance skills? You think I wouldn’t have caught on that your
sailor boyfriend had tracked you down? You didn’t think I had the wherewithal
to figure out the two of you were down at the beach today?”

“I thought I was in witness
protection,” I said. “Not jail.”

“Well, it’s all moot anyway,” Wong
went on. “With all the media crawling around this island and your pal Tyler
Benson demanding we bring you in for questioning, I couldn’t let you stay in
Hawaii any longer even if your boyfriend hadn’t shown up.”

I reached down and snatched my
keys up off the porch. Then I unlocked the door. Wong followed me in.

“By the way,” I said. “How’d you
get inside the porch? The screen was locked.”

“Penny, Penny, Penny,” Wong
said, using the voice they probably teach recruits at police academy to make a
suspect feel stupid. “This is my rental house, remember? I’m simply letting you
stay here. You’re my guest. The only name on the lease is mine.” He pulled a
set of keys from his pants pocket and jingled them in front of my face.

“So, as I was saying,” he went
on, “you have exactly one hour to get packed and ready to go. The last plane to
Kahului leaves a little after seven. We need to be on it so we can connect to
our mainland flight.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going where we’re going. Even
if I knew our final destination I wouldn’t be permitted to tell you. Last thing
the program needs is for you to call your boyfriend to say ‘good-bye’ and then have
him show up in Chicago or Seattle or wherever.”

“Chicago? I can’t go to Chicago
in December. I’ll freeze to death. I don’t even own a coat.”

“You worry too much about the
wrong things, Penny.”

He put a hand on my shoulder and
steered me toward the bedroom door. “Now go in there and get packed. We leave
in an hour.”

He took a seat on the sofa. A
few seconds later, I heard him yakking on his cell phone.

I went in and opened the suitcase
I’d laid out on the bed a couple of days earlier. I started banging around, emptying
dresser drawers and muttering obscenities. But I didn’t put a thing in the
suitcase. I was just making noise while I figured out what to do.

***

I tucked a clean tee-shirt, an
oversize sleep shirt, and two pair of panties in my beach bag and took it down
the hall to the bathroom. Wong got up from the sofa and followed me to the
bathroom door.

“What?” I said. “I can’t pack my
toiletries in private?”

“I want to make sure that’s all you
had in mind.”

“I need to pee,” I said. I
started to push the door closed in Wong’s face.

“Leave the door open.” He
flat-handed the door.

“What are you, a pervert?”

“No, I’m the guy who’s been
tasked with maintaining surveillance on an uncooperative witness. The door
stays open.”

Wong went back to the living
room. I ran a small amount of water in the sink and closed the stopper. Then I
turned the tap way down to make a dripping sound into the pool of water. I opened
my beach bag and threw in a small cosmetic bag along with my toothbrush and a tiny
hairbrush.

I stepped up on the edge of the
toilet seat and carefully slid the window above the toilet open as far as it
would go. Then I carefully popped out the screen and sent it sailing into the
bushes below. I reached down and picked up my beach bag and threw it out the
window. I put my right foot on the toilet tank and pulled my left leg up and
over the window sill. I straddled the sill for a couple of seconds and then
pulled my right leg up so I was perched on the sill. I looked down at my target
landing spot, took a breath and launched myself up and out. I crashed through
some thick bushes on the way down but I managed to keep from crying out as the
branches scraped my hands and face.

I hit the ground hard but intact.
I stood up, ruffled the leaves out of my hair, snatched up my beach bag and
headed down the street.

Now what? I didn’t know anyone
on Lana’i. Even Darryl and Ewa weren’t due back until tomorrow. I was pretty
sure Wong had heard the commotion in the bathroom and by now had realized I was
gone. It wouldn’t take him two seconds to figure out I’d probably head back to
the White Orchid.

I sprinted to Dole Park,
cautiously looking over my shoulder, trying to spot Wong before he spotted me.
As I rounded the corner on Lana’i Avenue, I saw it—Auntie Cora’s little yellow
bungalow.

I dashed toward her lattice-screened
porch hoping she was like the majority of Lana’i long-timers and never locked
her doors. I pulled the handle and the screen door yielded with a plaintive
screech. Seemed Auntie Cora wasn’t a big fan of WD-40.

 I crossed the porch in three
strides, but before I had a chance to knock on the front door, Auntie Cora had
opened it.

“Ah, you’ve come to visit me. How
nice.”

I was breathing heavy from the
sprint and the adrenaline rush of fleeing Wong. “Hello Auntie Cora. It’s me, Penny,
from the
tai chi
class.”

“I know who you are. You think
I’m so old I don’t remember a new friend? Come in, come in.”

We went inside and she offered
me a seat. “You in some kind of trouble? You look like a girl in trouble.”

I nodded.

“You stay right there. I’ll get
us some tea.”

She brought out a stoneware tea
service with a small square pot, two tiny cups and saucers and a plate of
saltine crackers.

“I’m sorry I don’t have cookies.
I usually have cookies but I haven’t had a chance to go to the store.”

“This is fine, auntie. I should
have let you know I was coming.”

“So, what is this trouble you
are in?”

I wanted to tell her the truth,
but she struck me as the kind of lady who saw things in black and white. Right
and wrong. Good and bad. And fleeing from the police probably didn’t fall on
the correct side of any of those absolutes.

“Auntie, I’ve gotten word that
some bad people have come here to Lana’i looking for me,” I said. I was hoping
she wouldn’t want details, especially since I hadn’t worked out the details.

“What kind of bad people?”

“Uh, well you know my husband
was in the military, and he got killed, and uh,” I stammered along, praying
that something brilliant would pop into my mind. It didn’t.

“Oh my! Was your husband in
Special Forces?”

I hadn’t thought of that.
Sounded good to me. I nodded.

“So you can’t talk to me about
what he did. Maybe he was in SEAL Team Six? They are very brave men those
special forces soldiers. But perhaps the enemy has vowed to track them down and
seek revenge. And even harm their families.”

Auntie’s imagination was
clicking on all cylinders. You go, girl.

“Yes, the enemy is vicious,” I
said. “They’ll stop at nothing.”

“Oh my poor girl. So, do you
need a place to hide?”

I nodded.

“I am a proud American,” she
said. “I don’t care what happens to me. I will hide you here in my home for as
long as you need.” She came over and put her arm around my shoulders and pulled
me into a hug. “Don’t you worry. You are safe here.”

I felt like such a fraud. Did
the end always justify the means? Was it worse to abandon Tyler if he was
innocent or use phony patriotism to get an old lady to help me hide from the cops?
Luckily, I didn’t have time to ponder the ethics.

“
Mahalo
, auntie,” I said.
“I’ll need to leave soon, but if you can let me stay here for a day or two, I’d
really appreciate it.”

We drank our tea. After enough
time had passed for her to not put two and two together, I brought up the
situation with Tyler.

“Have you heard anything new about
the murders up at the Lodge?” I said.

“Oh, it’s very sad, very sad. I
think that man, you know, that movie man, must have found his girlfriend in bed
with that fat man and he killed them both. That’s what everyone is saying.”

“You know, I’m not so sure
that’s true.”

“Oh?” Her eyes sparkled with
anticipation.

“Yes, you see, the movie man, Tyler
Benson is his name, was a guest at the White Orchid but he spent most of his
time up at the Lodge at Koele. The night of the murders he and his fiancée had
a little spat. I think that happens a lot right before people get married.
Anyway, he came down to talk to me about it. I suggested we take a drive to get
his mind off his troubles. We drove down to Kaumalapau Harbor to watch the
sunset.”

 “Oh, that’s romantic, watching
the sunset down there.” She grinned. 

“No, it wasn’t like that. I was
hoping he’d see the beautiful sunset and he’d calm down.”

 “Hmm,” she said. “But maybe he
didn’t calm down. Maybe the more he thought about it, the madder he got.”

“I don’t think so. He didn’t
seem that upset. But I’m not sure, because he brought me back to the White
Orchid at about eight-fifteen. It takes about ten minutes to get to the Lodge
and get the car parked.  The medical examiner estimated the time of death for
both Miss Diamonte and Mr. Romano at between six and nine o’clock that night.”

“So he was with you most of the
time, but for a short while you don’t know where he was.”

“Yes,” I said. “And now I’m in hiding.”

“So you can’t go to the police
and tell them he was with you. That’s not so good for him.”

“That’s right. If I go to the
police, I’ll put myself in jeopardy from the people who are after me. But if I
don’t tell the police he was with me, I may be responsible for allowing an
innocent man to be accused of murders he didn’t commit.”

“Are you sure he didn’t do it?”
she said.

“I don’t know. If I knew for
sure, it would be a lot easier to decide what to do.”

She squinted her eyes at me and
leaned in. “Dead husband, terrorists coming for you, and now you’re the only one
who can speak up for the movie man. You know, I’m seventy-two years old and I
never heard of a girl with so much bad
laki
as you.”

“
Laki
?”

“You know, ‘luck’, like it
sounds.”

“Auntie, have you ever heard the
saying,
If it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all
?”

She nodded.

 “Well, you’re looking at her.”

CHAPTER
20

Auntie Cora was kind enough to
offer me her second bedroom and half-bath. I’d have been happy with a spot on her
sofa. I woke up throughout the night with nightmares of being chased. I’d go
back to sleep and the unseen threat would come back. I remember foul hot breath
on the back of my neck and then a thin knobby hand reaching for me. Just when
I’d feel a clawed finger touch the middle of my back I’d jerk upright in bed. When
the sun finally peeked through the pine trees I got up. No use trying to fool
myself that I’d get any more sleep if I hung out in bed.