Maui Madness (Zoe Donovan Mysteries Book 7) (12 page)

“We had the party in one of the villas,” Malie informed us. “It was pretty spectacular. Still, I have to side with Zoe on this one. However wonderful this place is, it doesn’t compare to the house you’re staying in on the north shore. What I wouldn’t give to live in that house.”

“You could always marry Keoke,” Ellie teased.

Malie blushed. “Keoke and I are just friends.”

Based on Malie’s blush
, I’d say Ellie hadn’t been all that far off in her suggestion that Malie might be interested in our host.

“
Does anyone have room for dessert?” Malie asked. “They have a fantastic selection. Perhaps we can share something.”

“I’m game,” Ellie chimed in.

“Me too.”

We took another look at
the menu and decided to share two offerings: pineapple upside-down cake glazed with Myers’s Rum and a brownie sundae made with an Oreo crust. 

After we ate
, we took a quick tour of the grounds. The intricate network of pools, the lush gardens, and the fantastic location were enough to convince me that a romantic getaway with Zak was going to have to be scheduled in the near future. The three of us asked a couple who were sitting and chatting on a bench near the entrance to take a photo of us, which I immediately posted to my Facebook page. My friends and family at home would be happy to see Ellie smiling and having such a good time.

W
e continued to travel south after we left the resort. The drive was breathtaking as the lush landscape gave way to an area that was both barren and remote.

“
This is where we turn off to the area’s black sand beach, if you’d like to take a look,” Malie offered.

“The sand is black?” Ellie asked.

“Yes. Unlike typical sand, which is made up of ground coral and shells, black sand is ground lava that turns hard at the water’s edge. It isn’t the best beach for sunbathing, but it’s a good place to snorkel or dive; not only is there abundant sea life but green sea turtles are drawn here as well.”

“Let’s stop on the way back. I’d like to try snorkeling
, but I’d hate to be late to meet your uncle.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Malie continued down the road.

Malie’s uncle lived at the end of a dirt road off the main highway. The house, a large two-story colonial with single-story wings on either side, was built of red brick, and each of the nine large windows gracing the main structure was framed with shiny black shutters. Atop the rooftops of the wings were a series of dormers with pane windows and artistic trim. Lush green lawns, densely planted flowerbeds, and hundreds if not thousands of dark red roses surrounded the building.

“Wow, your uncle
’s house is fantastic,” I complimented.

“I’ll
take you on a tour,” Malie offered. “I’m sure Uncle Rory won’t mind. In fact, he may offer to do it himself. He loves to show off all the furniture and artwork he’s collected in his travels.”

We
walked up the seven steps to the front door and rang the bell. A tall, thin woman in a tidy maid’s uniform answered.

“Malie,”
she said, hugging her warmly. “It’s been so long since you’ve been to visit.”

“I know
, Maggie. I guess I’ve been busy. We’ll catch up later. These are my friends, Zoe and Ellie.” She pointed to each of us in turn. “We’ve come to talk to Uncle Rory about a shipwreck we hope to find.”

“He’ll love that.
A fair warning, though,” Maggie said, smiling at Ellie and me, “once you get him started talking, you may not be able to get him to stop. Rory does love an audience. I think I saw him heading toward the library a little while ago.”

“Thanks
. I’ll look for him there.” Malie hugged the woman one more time before we headed down a long hallway.

The room
we entered was unlike any home library I’d ever seen. Thousands of books were stacked on mahogany shelves that were arranged along all four walls on two levels. The first-level shelves were about six feet tall, with two sets of stairs, one on each end of the room, leading to the second-level stacks. The ceiling was high, allowing the two stories to be open to each other. In the center of the room on the bottom level was a long hardwood table surrounded with hardwood chairs. The room was spectacular, but in my opinion the most spectacular feature of all was a grand old desk and a red leather chair tucked into a large bay window overlooking the rocky shore of the Pacific Ocean.

“Uncle Rory,” Malie
greeted a jolly-looking older man who appeared to be in his late seventies. “These are the friends I was telling you about.”

“I’m happy to meet you both.
”

“Your home is gorgeous,” I
said.

“Thank you. I am very proud of what I have created. It has taken me many years to get it just right.
”

Rory hugged Malie. “I’m so sorry to hear about Anton.”

Malie hugged Rory back.
She’d admitted to us on the way over that her uncle had never really liked Anton, but he appeared to care very much for his niece.

“Is there anything I can do?”
he asked.

“To be honest
, I’d like to forget about Anton’s murder and focus on the relics. The more I talk about it, the more the whole thing seems to affect me.”

“Certainly.
Please have a seat. Let’s take a look at what you’ve brought.”

Malie emptied the bag she’d brought onto the surface of the table.

Rory picked up the first item and began to examine it. He made a few notes on a yellow legal pad and then picked up the next piece. He quietly and methodically examined each item before setting it aside. I could see this was going to take a while, so I asked if it was okay to look around.

Rory’s collection of books was more than impressive. There were
first editions of James Joyce’s
Ulysses
, as well as a copy of
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
. It looked as though he had a complete set of Dickens, as well as complete sets of several Russian authors, including Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The thing that struck me as the most awesome was that Uncle Rory seemed to have a wide range of books, from modern mysteries to valuable classics and beautiful poetry volumes by such authors as Walt Whitman and Emily Dickenson.

“Your collection is fantastic,” I commented as I removed a leather
-bound book with yellowed pages from a shelf and opened it to find a handwritten dedication.

“You like old books?” Rory asked.

“I’m not a collector. As a matter of fact, I’ve never even read most of the wonderful books you’ve so carefully assembled. But I do have an appreciation for literature. It must have taken you years to collect all of this.

“Generations
, actually. My grandfather and father were both collectors. Some of these books belonged to my grandfather’s grandfather. I treasure each and every one as if they were my own children. Come, let me show you a few of my favorites.”

Rory got up and walked over to a locked cabinet. He removed a book.

“This is a signed copy of
The Longest Day
by Cornelius Ryan. It’s a first edition signed by the author to Eleanor Roosevelt. It says, ‘To Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, whose husband nearly led the way to victory.’”

“Wow, it must be worth a fortune.”

“Maybe not a fortune, but it is among my most prized possessions. I also have quite a few less valuable but still dearly loved books on Hawaiian history, as well as a signed copy of
The Catcher in the Rye
. It is not as old as some of the others but treasured all the same. And I have a first edition of Walt Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass
, as well as a copy of the final edition of that work, which is referred to as the deathbed edition.”

“Wh
ich is your favorite?” I asked.

“Actually
, my favorite is a magazine rather than a book.”

Rory unlocked a glass cabinet and took out an old
Life
magazine. “This is one of five million copies of the first publication of
Old Man and the Sea
.”

“I thought
Old Man and the Sea
was a book.”

“It was
, but it was also featured in the magazine.”

“I think I found something,” Malie interrupted from the table
, where Rory had left her to look through old shipping journals. “It looks like the initials on the silverware we found are the same as the ones found in this old photo.”

Rory returned to the table. He pulled out a small magnifying glass and looked closely at a photo of recovered items from
a British freighter that sailed in the early 1800s. “You know, they found that wreck not all that far from the area where you were diving. It was ten—no, twelve years ago—but I suppose there are still things down there that have never been recovered. If this is from the same ship, what you probably found is drift. Where exactly did you say you were diving?”

“
South of Maui, near Kaho‘olawe.”

“Malie
told us you knew a lot about the history of the island,” I said.

“Yes,
Kaho‘olawe has a rich history I find fascinating. For native Hawaiians, Kaho‘olawe is a sacred island, deeply rooted in our culture and religion. In ancient times, the island was inhabited by people who made their living mainly by fishing and farming. Indications of these early times can be found in the carved petroglyphs, or drawings, on the flat surfaces of the rocks. Some of the oldest and largest Hawaiian shrines are located on Kaho‘olawe. I have a book about the island, if you are interested.”

“I’m only on the island for a
short time.”

Rory got up and took a book from a high shelf. “Take it and look it over. You can give it
to Malie to return when you leave.”

“Thank you,” I
said, accepting the old tome. “I really appreciate this.”

“I enjoy finding one as young as you with a love of history. I find it a rarity these days.”

If I were going to be honest, I’d have to tell him I wasn’t as much of a history lover as Uncle Rory assumed, but believing this to be true seemed to make him happy, so I didn’t say anything.

“So about the relics
. . .” Malie said.

The elderly man
returned to the table, picked up one of the items, and looked at his notes. I could tell by the way he moved that he was a deliberate person who wouldn’t be hurried.

“It looks
as if you have items from more than a single vessel,” he began after studying each item carefully. “While the silverware is English, the coin is clearly Spanish, and the mark on this knife . . .”

Rory held
up the knife and looked at it more closely. “I’d like to keep a few of these items for a day or two so that I can do additional research.”

“I’m sure that will be fine
with Pono,” Malie said. “Do you think we have anything?”

Rory hesitated. He picked up one of the cannonballs and rolled it betwe
en his hands. “You just might.”

“So how
’s the trip going?” my dad asked the next morning. I’d returned from my morning run and was relaxing by the pool. It was another beautiful day in paradise as the bright sun reflected on the waves crashing into shore. The surf report mentioned that we were due for a couple of days of larger than normal swells, so Levi and Zak had both opted to hit the water for a few hours before we were supposed to meet up with Pono and Malie, who had decided to attend the hearing Anton’s partner, Kingsley, had arranged regarding the real estate development they’d wanted to build on the north shore.

“It’s been really fun
,” I said. “We’ve been busy diving for buried treasure.”

“Do tell.”

I filled my dad in on the dive we’d made on Monday and the relics we’d found. “Ellie and I went to the south shore yesterday with Malie, the woman who told us about the suspected wreck. Her uncle is some big historian. You should see the library in his house. It’s bigger than the public library in Ashton Falls. And talk about elegant. It’s two stories tall, with an open-beam ceiling and thousands of books of every genre and language. You would love it.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Dad agreed.

“Rory has tons of old books about all the different ships that sailed in the area centuries ago. I have no idea how he knew which books to look for, but he seemed to know just what we’d need to identify what we’d found.”

“And did he think you found anything of significance?”

“Maybe,” I answered. “We’ve mostly just found some random artifacts that seem to be from a variety of sources, but Levi found this large object that was so covered in sea crud that you couldn’t even tell what it was. Once it was cleaned up a bit, we could see it was a large cross. Pono, the man who originally found the debris field, e-mailed a photo of it to Uncle Rory after he got back from diving yesterday, and Rory said he’s almost certain the cross was part of a manifest from a ship called
The
Isabella
.”