Shimura Trouble (21 page)

I smiled my answer, and he followed me into the kitchen, where I took out the chilled ginger rooibos tea my father had made a few hours earlier. I chopped some mint and squeezed a quarter of a lemon between his glass and mine.

“Delicious,” Hugh said after a sip. “Thank you.”

“I’m just happy that you didn’t ask me for one of your favorite whiskies,” I said as we walked back outside.

“Oh, my drinking days are over.”

“Marriage will do that to you, I guess,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, I gather that you’re married.” He looked at me blankly, so I confessed. “I Googled you a while back. I saw pictures of you at an engagement party with a beautiful Hong Kong ingénue.”

Hugh winced. “Ming prefers to be called an actor, thank you very much, and she actually broke off the engagement a while back, so I’m once again the extra man.”

My face flushed, and I stilled the urge to put my hands to my cheeks. Hugh must not think I was excited about this turn of events. I was flustered, though. Hugh was the one who’d dumped me; I had not been able to bear the thought of not having him. Now he was a free agent, and I was not. For Michael had become much more than a mentor and friend; he had become the one I could not imagine losing.

“But tell me, Rei,” Hugh said. “I thought you were at death’s door, from what your uncle told me, but you look…” He paused. “You look a bit thin, but rather spectacularly alive.”

“I wish I could have talked to you before you decided to fly here. I was very ill for a short while, but never in critical condition. My fourth cousin Edwin used a ruse to get you to come here. He did a similar maneuver to get my family to Hawaii, you know.”

“Hold on. Weren’t you in the hospital? And wasn’t it your last wish to speak to me?”

“I was in the hospital, yes. But I never said anything about last wishes because I was unconscious for a while, and when I woke up, everyone told me I was going to recover. Hugh, I feel wretched about this imposition on you,” I said, watching his expression darken. “I would offer to reimburse the cost of your flight, but I suspect you flew first class.”

Hugh laughed. “Don’t worry about it for a minute, Rei. I used my frequent flyer miles, as usual.”

“But the hotel—you’re surely staying overnight in a hotel?”

“Actually, I booked the Royal Hawaiian for three nights. I could use the R&R, to be frank. But I won’t quite relax until I understand what led your fourth cousin to his rather bizarre interest in me.”

I explained about the fire, and about Braden’s arrest. As I’d expected, Hugh wanted to know what Braden had been doing in the mountains, the day after the fire.

“He was collecting large, loose rocks; the kind that formed when volcanoes erupted here millions of years ago. Lava rock can be gorgeous, so it’s sought after for landscaping and building stone walls. The rocks are much easier to find and remove in areas where fire has burned away the brush.”

“Is it OK to do that here—just pick up lava rock where you find it?”

“It’s legal if the rocks are on your property. Braden was trespassing on land owned by one of the wealthiest landowners in Leeward Oahu, Josiah Pierce the Second. Mr. Pierce is planning to sell a portion of land to a Japanese developer, and now the developer doesn’t want to pay as much for it, because of the fire damage.”

“Who’s the developer?” Hugh eased a legal pad and pen out of his briefcase.

“Mitsuo Kikuchi. Maybe you’ve heard of him? He’s based in Tokyo.”

Hugh looked startled. “I know him very slightly, but what you’re saying about his bargaining strategy doesn’t surprise me. Kikuchi’s as tough as they come.”

“This isn’t even the worst of it,” I said glumly. “After the fire was extinguished, the police discovered the body of a young woman who worked at a coffee shop that was destroyed in the fire—”

“Hang on.” Hugh pointed at me with his fountain pen. “Are you saying the Starbucks or whatever didn’t evacuate its employees even when threatened by fire? That would be negligence on the part of management—”

“It wasn’t a Starbucks. It was a little place called Aloha Morning that’s owned by a local man, Kainoa Stevens. Kainoa was there the afternoon of the fire, trying to create a firebreak.”

“I should jump in now, I think,” Hugh said. “Here’s the main problem. I’m not qualified to argue cases in the courts here.”

“I expected that. It’s what I’ve been telling Edwin constantly.”

Taking in Hugh’s puzzled expression, I gave him the short version of Uncle Yosh and Edwin’s dreams of regaining Harue’s cottage and land. “Edwin had the mistaken impression, before he invited my father and me to come here, that you and I were still an item, which to him meant you’d be happy to help him win his battle for the land. His hope is to get hold of it before the Pierces sell their land to Mitsuo Kikuchi, and thereby be able to exact a high price. The reality is the military has owned the land since the war.”

“I see. Now another red flag is waving itself at me. I can’t do anything that might possibly work against Mitsuo Kikuchi’s interests, even to the point of giving your uncle advice. My hands are tied because Kikuchi was involved in some real-estate work for Sendai, where you know I once worked.” Hugh looked around, as if suddenly paranoid. “He’s not on the island now, is he?”

“Actually, he is, but I doubt he’ll be walking by this house. His own is in a remote section by itself, right on the water. Anyway, as I said before, I really never expected you to help. These are my problems, and I’ll face them as best I can.”

“No, it’s not your problem; it is Edwin’s problem, or his son’s problem, but certainly not yours.” Hugh sounded almost angry.

“But…they’re family. Like them or not, they’re family.”

“Asian family obligation syndrome,” Hugh said. “The only Asian I’ve met who doesn’t constantly worry about her family is Ming. She didn’t even care that her mother went to the cardiologist for her broken-heart syndrome after the cancelled wedding.”

I smiled at Hugh and said, “It’s very hard to believe that Ming broke your engagement.”

“Oh, I knew she’d had an affair in the past with another actor, and as the wedding approached, he began to remind her of the good old days.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you. It hurts to be left.” I spoke slowly, thinking that Hugh was still charming and sexy, and I was touched that he’d still cared enough to fly from Japan to be with me. But that was it; I could hardly believe that this was the man who’d broken my heart three times running. Perhaps, finally, my heart had healed.

“Well, it’s all water under the bridge. Or how do the Japanese put it?” Hugh broke into my thoughts.

“Water washes everything away.”

“Yes, I think that Mitsuo Kikuchi is reputed to have said that about his son’s dealings.”

“Oh, are you talking about Jiro?”

“I don’t know his name, but he would be in his late twenties, I think, and bit off, mentally?”

“That’s the one! What do you know about him?”

“Jiro was in the news—or rather, was deliberately kept out of the news—about five years ago, when he was in his early twenties. Jiro became too aggressive with a hotel waitress or maid. Because she was a foreign worker, she was convinced not to press rape charges in exchange for a cash settlement and help securing a permanent visa.”

“Mitsuo Kikuchi arranged all this?”

“That’s the rumor, and it’s an old one, which is why I’m unfortunately fuzzy on the details. And keep quiet about it, please. If it ever gets out that I slandered him or his son, Kikuchi would probably send goons after me.”

“I won’t talk about it. But God, my instincts were right! I knew there was something creepy about Jiro when he came up to me in the swimming pool. And Kainoa Stevens thought Jiro was trying to date Charisse. I wonder…”

“You went swimming with Jiro?” Hugh sounded aghast. “How close to these people are you?”

“Don’t worry so much! The house is about a half-mile away, and Jiro lives with a round-the-clock psychiatrist. They have a private pool, but the two of them occasionally visit our community’s pool for some reason.”

“I can imagine the reason.” Hugh shook his head. “Damn it, Rei, you’ve landed in about the most unsafe location in all of Hawaii, walking distance from a suspected rapist. Please tell me that you’ll move into my suite at the Royal Hawaiian!”

I laughed shakily. “You’ve got to be joking. At the moment I’m living with three valiant family defenders.”

“None of whom is home.” Hugh frowned at me. “Please come with me to Waikiki, just for the evening. We can eat something, and then I’ll have the driver bring you back here, once you’re certain that somebody’s home.”

“Come on, Hugh. I’m not your girlfriend anymore! There’s no need to be so protective.” But all the while I was thinking that it would be nice to have a ride into town. After Hugh and I had finished our meal, I could track down Michael at the Hale Koa and try to make amends.

“I know that. We’re friends now, Rei, which is the way it always should have been. And your keeping me company over supper would give me a chance to…well, apologize for the way I ran off to South America, and my other misdeeds.”

I looked at him, thinking that what Michael had predicted would happen, was starting to happen. The ending would be different, though; I’d make sure of that.

T
HE ROYAL HAWAIIAN
was almost as pink as my dress, and pleasingly old. We ate outdoors on the lanai—grilled tuna for Hugh and a small green salad for me. I wasn’t hungry; it was too distracting, being outdoors in Waikiki, sitting with Hugh while Michael was somewhere nearby. When twilight fell and Hugh started yawning, I pressed upon him our house phone number, as well as Tom’s mobile, in the event that a golf date could be arranged between the two of them the next day.

I asked Hugh’s driver to stop at the edge of the green parkland of Fort DeRussey, the military-owned land that surrounded the Hale Koa. But as I began walking to the hotel, I noticed a significant number of people heading toward the Alai Wai Canal. Michael still wasn’t answering his phone, so I decided to follow the crowd.

“Is there a festival?” I asked a local woman at the edge of the crosswalk, before I made the commitment to crossing Kuhio Avenue.

“It’s the end of o-bon season. People start at a Buddhist temple, where they light candles and send them down their canal in memory of their ancestors. The tradition stopped for some years, but it’s come back.”

The green banks of the Alai Wai were lined several people thick, but so many of them were short that it was easy for me to get a good view. The lights blinked and bobbed and slowly traveled along with the current; as I squinted westward down the canal, I could see no end to the lights. If I’d known about this earlier, I would have found my way to the temple to light candles for Harue and Ken Shimura. Instead, I selected two of the most brilliant lights and pretended these belonged to them.

Someone brushed against my back, and I took an extra step to regain my balance. The local crowd was starting to evaporate, and tourists from the bars, having gotten a glimpse of the lights, were pressing in. Drunken-sounding laughter made me realize that it was time to return to the brighter lights along Kalakaua Avenue.

Ten minutes later I walked the curving steps up to the Hale Koa, thinking about the rest of my night. My father, Uncle Hiroshi and Tom were at home; I’d confirmed this with a quick phone call after I’d parted with Hugh. But I’d refused to let Tom pick me up right away as he’d suggested. It was still early in the evening, and I was dead set on finding Michael.

I walked through the Hale Koa’s wide, open-air lobby toward the elevators. I remembered Michael and Kurt’s room number, and knew that the two rooms to the left of it had been reserved by Parker Drummond and Eric Levine. I tried Michael’s door first, with no luck, then tried the other two. The last door was opened by Karen Drummond, wearing a short silk bathrobe.

“Oh, I’m sorry to catch you dressing.” At least, that’s all that I hoped was happening. “I was wondering if you knew where Michael was?”

“It’s no problem.” Karen opened the door wider, and ushered me in. “How wonderful to see you! We were all so worried when we heard you were in the hospital. I’m sorry but we’re getting dressed to go out. We’ve got a dinner reservation in, what, an hour?”

“Forty-five minutes!” came an answering call from behind the bathroom door.

I dutifully followed Karen inside, but felt too uncomfortable to sit down on the corner of the rumpled bed she offered, while she in turn went to a sink in a galley that was a twin to the one in Michael’s room and started brushing her teeth.

“He should be back from sailing any time now. He’s been out for hours,” Parker said from behind the bathroom door.

“Did he take your boat?” I asked.

“No, no, no—it takes at least two to handle her. He went out on a little catamaran,” Parker added as he emerged from the bathroom, buttoning the top few buttons of a mauve and turquoise print aloha shirt. When I looked uncomprehending, he said, “It’s a small sailboat. He checked it out at the yacht club a few hours ago.”

“Well, he hasn’t been answering his phone.”

“He may not have taken his phone on the water because of the risk of capsizing. Those little boats go over easy.”

“Really?” I said, feeling a prickle of unease. “Do you think he wore a life jacket?”

“So you do care about him.” Karen gave me a speculative look, then passed her husband in the narrow area outside the bathroom where there was a sink and mirror. She opened a make-up bag, and began extracting a top-quality arsenal that put my collection to shame.

“He’s an excellent swimmer and seaman, Rei,” Parker said, coming over to sit down next to me. “Don’t worry. If the two of you had plans tonight, I’m sure he’ll make it back.”

“We didn’t have plans. I mean, we had them and then he cancelled.”

“No date with you on a Friday night, when he’s flying out on Sunday?” Parker’s forehead wrinkled. “What is with that boy?”

“Maybe he’s just trying to be on the careful side and give Rei time to rest,” Karen said. “After all, she was just released from the hospital.”

“I’m sure that it’s something I said.” I was regretting what I’d blurted out to Michael about Hugh arriving on the island. I’d thought it was important to be honest, but what I’d said had clearly dashed what faint progress the two of us had made.

I wrote a short note telling Michael that I wanted to talk to him, and slipped it under his door before I took the elevator downstairs again. Against my better judgment, I checked my phone for any voice messages, and came up with zip. Sickened by the prospect of paying over $100 for a cab ride back to our house, I asked the bell captain if there was a cheaper way to get to the Leeward Side.

I was pondering a sheaf of bus schedules when I caught a glimpse of a bedraggled lean man in wet shorts, T-shirt and Topsiders walking purposefully toward the elevator. I paused, wondering if I should wait to let him read the note. No, I decided, there was too high a risk he’d avoid me. I hadn’t come all this way to be meek.

I took off after him, and as my heels clattered against the granite floor, he turned abruptly. His voice was guarded. “How did you get here? This is a surprise.”

“If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain…” I shrugged.

“You look good, Rei. I know I’m a mess.” He ran a hand through his hair.

“With sailing, that’s par for the course, isn’t it?”

“Not exactly.” Michael smiled. “You’re mixing your sports metaphors, but yes, people do get messed up when they’re out in a catamaran by themselves and are distracted enough to capsize.”

“I knew it!” I exclaimed. “I had a bad feeling about you going sailing at night.”

“You worried about me tipping over in a catamaran?” Michael shook his head. “Well, you shouldn’t. It’s the easiest kind of vessel to right; kids do it all the time. Why are you even here?”

“Unfinished business.”

“OK then. I’ll just clean up first,” Michael said easily, as if our heated argument of a few hours earlier had never happened.

“Good!” I moved to follow him toward the elevator.

“You’d be better off waiting down here.”

“If you prefer.” I watched the elevator doors close after him and a half-dozen other hotel guests.

As the lights on the band above the elevators showed the car traveling upward, I tried to think of why he didn’t want me in the room. Maybe he feared I’d once again be moved by his semi-clothed body and attack. How ironic that the undergarment that I was wearing underneath my dress was sometimes referred to as a merry widow, because Michael was the opposite: an unhappy widower.

After about ten minutes in the lobby, watching children skip about, my cell phone vibrated, surprising me. Here comes the brush off from Michael, I bet. I answered it in a sober voice.

“Miss Shimura, this is Josiah Pierce.”

“Oh, hello.” Even though it was an open area lobby, I felt pinpoints of moisture form on my face.

“I heard you became violently ill the day after our meeting. Are you still in the hospital?”

“No, I was released this morning. Thanks for your concern.” My mind raced. How much did he know about my poisoning, and had the Navy reached him yet to tell him about the land?

“I apologize if something in the meal may have sickened you. Have you learned what kind of food poisoning it was?” Mr. Pierce continued in his well-bred tones. “Midori and I are equally mortified that anything she served might have ailed you.”

“The verdict’s still out on what made me sick. That’s the reason the authorities are visiting everyone I ate with that day, plus examining our own refrigerator’s contents.”

“Well, no doubt they’re operating on Hawaii time, which will mean you’ll find out later rather than sooner. I was wondering if you could stop by again, because I have something to discuss with you, and as you mentioned, these things are sometimes better done in person.”

Now my heart was thudding. The man who might have poisoned me, inviting me to return to his house? ‘I’m without a car at the moment, but I can’t stand suspense. Can you please tell me over the phone what you know?”

“Very well then.” Josiah Pierce’s voice sounded stiff. “Actually, the chief reason I’m telephoning is that I did the research, as I promised you I would, on Harue Shimura’s situation.”

“Did you find out something about ownership of the cottage?” I could barely breathe, I was so excited.

“As you know, I inherited my father’s house, and I use his old office as my own,” JP began, as if he was intent on telling the story his way. “He had two file cabinets relating to the plantation, which Midori’s been after me to dump for years, but I haven’t. I guess I had it in my mind that someday a historian might be interested in an account of this long-ago time. Anyway, once I opened the files, I found hundreds of papers relating to the plantation. It was just a matter of looking through folders until I found the employment records for Keijin Watanabe, who later became Ken Shimura.”

“Do you have the originals?”

“Yes, and I’ll have my lawyers send you copies, if you’d like. But to summarize, Keijin came to us from Okinawa in 1910, having signed a contract promising a minimum of five years’ employment. He started at one of our sugar plantations on the Big Island. He was described as an average worker—which meant a very hard worker, in terms of how we look at productivity in retrospect. However, he had a number of citations for drunkenness and fighting with other workers. There was a particularly bad fight with another worker, a well-liked Filipino boy, who wound up losing his sight in one eye. The solution the plantation manager came up with was to move Keijin from that plantation, get him married, and convince him to change his name to avoid having his reputation follow him.”

“So he came to Oahu,” I said.

“Yes, and within the same month of his arrival, Harue Shimura came to Hawaii. My father spotted Harue when she arrived at the docks in Honolulu by herself, without a sponsoring fiancé to meet her. She asked him for a job, in good English. In his diary for that day, he had a notation: “Hired Harue Shimura, well-bred young lady originating from Yokohama, near-fluent in English, both spoken and written. Agreed to salary of $10 per month and marriage to another worker.””

“It sounds almost like a slave being sold at auction block, doesn’t it?” I thought aloud.

“I’m sure my father thought she was a willing participant because, after all, she’d traveled here alone, and there were plenty of women emigrating in search of husbands that for one reason or other they couldn’t find in Japan. After the wedding—at which Keijin changed his first and last names—an employment record was also opened for Harue. She began work shucking cane in the fields, but her production was lower than other women’s; she was weaker, not coming from peasant stock, the luna noted numerous times. The camp medical record notes that she miscarried her first pregnancy. After she became pregnant again, she was reassigned from the field to teach in the plantation school. Her baby was born full-term, a boy named Yoshitsune. A few months after the birth, she resumed work as a teacher.”

“So she never had to carry her baby to the fields,” I said.

“Yes. This was the 1920s, and we’d made significant improvements to the conditions for families, which meant more jobs for women in places other than the fields. You already know what the housing of this period was like, and there were schools at our plantations and most others. Before long, those schools became obsolete as the plantation children began attending regular public schools in Honolulu.”

“Steps toward a normal life?”

“And with that, trouble for your family. The Japanese workers, I’m not proud to admit, were paid less than the other ethnic groups, and Ken Shimura was among the chief agitators for wage parity. There was a strike and, when it finally settled, Ken was reassigned to Maui. Harue and Yoshitsune did not go with him. I can only imagine that my father’s managers didn’t want her to leave the school. Thus the offer of the house, which was recorded in my father’s diary as, “Harue Shimura agrees to remain teaching, and will pay $10 for house on Kalama.”