The Flaming Luau of Death (4 page)

In a heartbeat, all of us, even Wesley, were lined up behind Keniki, kicking off our sandals, waiting for instructions. Azalea retied her sarong lower on her hips. Marigold and Gladdie had stripped down to their bikinis. I’m sure the men playing the stirring island music didn’t miss a beat—but only by dint of their staggering professionalism.

“This step is
’ami.
Bend your knees like so,” Keniki said. “To the right, move your hips clockwise, see?”

All around me hips were swiveling.

“Good! Now,
hela.
Point your right foot forward, like this, and bring it back. Good. Now your left foot. Good. Okay, now
huli.
Rotate around, swaying your hips. Keep going all the way around.”

The drums began to beat faster and, if possible, louder, and we all concentrated on throwing our hips around just like Keniki. Daisy, with all her yoga training, was the hands-down best at undulating her stomach, but then her identical sister, Azalea, was laughing too hard to get her stomach into motion at all. By the time Keniki finished running us through the steps for
kaholo, ka’o,
and
lele,
we were all feeling pretty proud of ourselves.

But then she said we were ready to learn what our hands and arms should be doing. Oh, man. Hands and
arms? While it was fascinating, sure, to see the graceful motions of the dance that told the story, I was not strictly confident that I yet knew my
hela
from my
ka’o.
I stepped behind Wesley, who was having no trouble keeping up with the lessons at all. The song stopped, and we all took a second to catch our breaths. Then Keniki brought out a pile of authentic hula skirts, thick with ti leaves and beautiful beading on the hip-circling belt, and told us to try them on. How cool was this?

“Watch me,” Keniki instructed. “Hands cross at chest to show embracing love.” She demonstrated while keeping up the
haholo
side-to-side step in rhythm with the live music.

I tried my best, but I was just about done in. But not Wes. Wesley was one mean hula girl, swinging his grass skirt in perfect sync with the pounding beat, crossing his arms to perfection. I cast my eye around our hardhulaing group. Liz and Holly, along with most of the sisters, were more like me—a little off beat. We could do the
haholo
step but not while moving our hands. We could cross our hands over our chests to show “embracing love,” but then we lost our step. Who knew the hula was so freaking hard?

Keniki showed us the hand movements to represent a man and a woman. “This is our Holly,” she said, and we all giggled. “In Hawaiian, we say the name the same. Hali. And here is her man.” She made a gesture. “Her Donald. In Hawaiian that is Konala. So all together now. Sway your hips, remember? Keep up your
ka’o
steps. Good. Now make a woman with your hands. That’s Hali. And now let’s make her man, Konala.”

We were all trying very hard to get it right, but then laughing harder at ourselves the more we got it wrong, each of us taking medicinal sips of spiked fruit juice
from our pineapples and coconut shells to keep properly “hydrated” during our extreme efforts. Marigold had been doing a rather nice job of the hula until she accidentally stepped into a deep depression in the sand and lost her balance. Down she went in a pile of grass skirt fronds. Liz also showed a certain flare for swinging her hips, a talent one might not have guessed from observing the quiet young woman at work in L.A. at her CPA firm. And, by the looks of her, Gladdie was having a fabulous time too. Awash in mai tais since the sun went down, Gladiola was now using hand signs to represent Hali and Konala that were much more suggestive than the lovely “hands crossed to show embracing love” that Keniki had demonstrated.

“You need a private lesson,” a male voice coached.

I looked up and met the dark eyes of a very tanned and completely gorgeous man.

“Pardon me?”

The guy smiled and gestured to my hips. “I can’t help but think private tutoring could help here.”

Come on! Some wayward surfer dude, probably just off his board, had wandered onto our beach and was hitting on me. At my own luau. How cool.

“I’m not exactly single,” I said, smiling up at him.

I was totally tickled. What a compliment, really. There were any number of sweet young blond Nichols girls on this beach, all swinging their hips and touching their chests with much more grace than I had done. And this big rock-hard shirtless man was offering his private hula lessons to me. Wait. Was he one of my employees? A waiter? No, I decided. Absolutely not the type.

“When a beautiful woman says she is ‘not exactly’ single, it leaves a little room for negotiation,” he commented.

I laughed a slightly piña colada–enhanced laugh. Had I said “not exactly”?

“So are you or aren’t you…” he asked, “single?”

I tried to keep my hips going to the beat, showing I was a serious student of the art form. “I’m staying away from men right now.”

“So you can’t talk to me?”

“No.” I felt myself blush. Damned Polynesian rum! “I mean, yes, I can talk.”

“Can you sit with me and have a drink?”

“Yes, I can do that too.” I stopped dancing and led him over to our bar, and he asked for a Coke.

“Thanks,” he said, taking a swig from his glass.

I watched him drink and found him utterly fascinating, so confident and comfortable on the beach. And the no-shirt thing really worked for him too.

The band was swinging on a new Polynesian drumbeat. “How about dancing with me? Or would that cross the line? Since you are staying away from men.”

“Well,” I said, smiling despite myself, “that’s probably not a problem either.”

He smiled back. “I’ll leave it up to you to tell me when we get to the part you’re staying away from. Okay?”

I was following him out to the center of the sandy dance area, but then put up my hand to grab his arm. “But I can’t dance to this.”

The drumbeat was getting more and more intense as the boys in the band turned making music into an aerobic workout. About ten feet away, Wesley was still in rare form. While all the women had dropped out, there was Wes in his grass skirt, out on the sand, hips flying, keeping up with Keniki, doing the hula. Just then he looked up. He performed a neat series of
lele
steps to work his way within hearing range of me and the handsome
stranger. Wes was such a snoop. When he had just about made it over to us, the music stopped all of a sudden in a burst of drumbeats. We all applauded wildly.

Keniki gave us each encouraging compliments as we shed our hula skirts, then most everyone made a ministampede for the bar, since learning to hula is thirsty work. My shirtless Polynesian god seemed in no hurry to depart. How nice.

The musicians, all four tan and young and a little sweaty from playing hard, took their break and joined the rest of us near the bar on the beach. After a day of nonstop girl talk, Holly’s sisters seemed delighted to mingle with the boys in the band.

“I should introduce myself,” said my mystery companion.

Normally, I would find his suggestion a very good development. I always liked to know the details. Name. Rank. Serial number. But tonight, I felt all those details were unnecessary. I felt ready for an I-hardly-know-you kind of fling. I smiled myself silly thinking that thought. So what if my love life at home was a mess? I wasn’t at home now, was I? My inner Hawaiian was flying free. I was…oh, my God. I was hanging loose!

“My name is Ekeka,” he said, pronouncing it like
Ay-cake-a.

I looked back up at him, and I thought for a minute the stars in the sky above our heads were beginning to swirl. With the drums in the background, it sounded like the name of some ancient island deity.

“Really?”

He had dazzlingly white teeth, and that was just by the glow of the torches on a dark night. His sunstreaked hair must have started out light brown to begin with but was almost white at the tips, and he wore it
down to his shoulders. “Well, yeah. That’s my Hawaiian name. If you prefer to get mainland, you can call me Edgar. But my friends here call me Cake.”

I smiled down the image of having a boyfriend called “Cake” and enduring witty commentary about having your cake and eating it too.

“This is quite a party,” he said.

“Thank you. We do try.”

“So I guess I’m crashing,” he said, looking pleased with the idea.

“I was wondering about that…” I tried to call him Cake but just couldn’t get the word out. I clearly hadn’t consumed enough spiked pineapple juice to take a man named Cake seriously yet. There was time. “I mean, how did you appear at our little luau? Are you one of the performers?”

“No,” he said, grinning at my guess. “No. I live right over there and heard your drums.”

I turned and looked toward the nearby cliff where he was pointing. It was off to the side and above our small beach, overlooking the ocean. It featured a mammothsize building, whether a resort or a lodge I couldn’t tell in the dark.

“Is that a hotel?”

He smiled again. “No, no. That’s my house, actually.”

I had to look back again. Man, it was huge.

“So,” he said, “you’re having a luau.”

“For Holly. Over there.” I pointed her out. “She works for me, but we’re more like friends for life. She’s getting married in a couple of weeks and…”

We both looked over at Holly. At the moment she was sitting on the sand with the well-toned arm of a good-looking beachboy wrapped around her bare shoulder.

“Bachelorette party,” I said, smiling. “What about you? What are you doing here tonight?”

“When my personal beach is invaded by a pack of fabulous women, I must come down and check it out.”

“Your personal beach?” I arched a brow. We both knew all the beachfront was public, secluded though it may be.

“Sort of like,” he said. “Just tell your friends to be careful to stay on the path back to the parking lot. My staff is pretty good.”

“Your staff?”

“Security,” he said. And then he changed the subject. “So you know who I am, but I don’t know your name.”

“Ah, names!” I said, chuckling. “I’m such an easygoing type of person, I just laugh at all the conventional boymeet-girl stuff. But if you’re into that nonsense—”

“Like learning the name of a beautiful woman? Yeah,” he said, smiling, “I’m uptight like that.”

“Madeline Bean. Or I should really use my Hawaiian name. If I had one.”

“Oh, everyone has one. You know our island history? The missionaries came by here in 1820 and gave the Hawaiian people a written language that has only thirteen letters. Did you know that?”

I decided it wasn’t a good time to admit I had read James Michener’s
Hawaii
more than once, and instead, I just smiled demurely.

However, out of the corner of my eye I caught Wesley, who was eavesdropping outrageously, rolling his eyes. Wes appeared unimpressed with my new admirer. But the thing was, I was breaking in the new, hang-loose Maddie. I liked trying the totally new her out on a totally new guy. Wasn’t this the essence of vacation romances? This was my party, and flirting was certainly allowed, so
I studiously ignored Wesley’s pained expression and asked Cake, “Only thirteen letters in the alphabet?”

“They thought the natives couldn’t learn any more than that, isn’t that sad? But anyway, to figure out what your name would be in Hawaiian, you just have to know how to transpose the alphabet. Madeline would be Makelina.” He said it
mah-kay-leena.
“That’s nice.”

“Or you could just call me Maddie,” I suggested.

“That’s good for me,” Cake said.

From across the sand I could hear faint non-Islandy musical notes. It was the
Queer Eye
theme, ringing out again. Holly grabbed her beach bag and found her cell phone. I swear! Why did that girl bring her phone along to her bachelorette luau? Didn’t she want to have a bit of privacy? I had left my phone back in the hotel room.

“Mad!”

I looked back across at Holly.

She was gesturing with her tiny cell phone, and I pretty much guessed she meant it was for me.

“I’ll leave you with your friends,” Cake said, starting to leave.

Holly walked up to us, handing me the phone as Cake put his hands on my hips. “Remember to swing them counterclockwise. Slowly. Think of having sex. It always works.”

“What…” Holly asked, jaw dropped as she caught Cake’s last words, “was that about?” She looked at me, her face a mix of astonishment and admiration. “Hang loose, Mad.”

I nodded, so pleased with myself. I could be wild. Oh, yeah. I pressed the phone to my ear in order to hear better.

A restrained male voice asked, “What is that guy talking about?”

I realized at once the voice on the cell must be coming directly from Los Angeles, and it belonged to my former boyfriend, Chuck Honnett.

“Hi, Honnett.”

One was never truly free, even on a tiny lava speck in the middle of the ocean.

I
’m taking hula lessons.”

“Did you say”—Honnett’s voice came over the cell phone, deep and full, with equal parts gravel and Texas twang in it—“hula?”

“So what do you need, Honnett?”

“You were looking to talk to me, Maddie. Right? They said it was important, so I’ve been trying to reach you all day long. I’ve called your house and I’ve called your cell phone. Don’t you check for messages anymore?”

Oops. Right. I had left him a message a million years ago, this morning. “That’s not like me, is it?”

“That’s what I thought.”

“I think I’m actually relaxing, Honnett. Neat, huh? It must be Hawaii.”

“Did you say Hawaii?”

“We’re throwing a luau. You’ve got to try it, Chuck. It’s better than Xanax.” And then I continued, “…is supposed to be.”

“I don’t recall you mentioning a trip to Hawaii. Was I not paying close enough attention?”

As Wes and I were keeping this surprise for Holly really tight, and as Honnett and I hadn’t been staying in really close touch these days, he was not in on the secret.
I tried to read something into the pattern of static coming across on the line. How would he react—me jumping on a plane and disappearing 2,160 miles from where he was sitting at the moment?

Not that he owned me. And not that we even knew where our relationship was going.

I waited, but Honnett let the silence run on. He was pissed. He was pissed, but he didn’t want to get into it right now, over a cell phone.

I sighed. This was his trick. He knew me too well. I have this talent for seeing both sides of every issue, even the side that isn’t mine, so he didn’t really have to say a word. I got his point. I could see how a woman, even one in a muddled quasi sorta relationship, who keeps big secrets and shoots out of town without a word could annoy a guy.

But I figured since he wasn’t going to fight about it in words, I didn’t need to apologize in words. Instead, I offered a truce-filled explanation. An event-planner factoid: “It’s kind of like the latest trend, Honnett. Destination parties.”

Give a cop party advice, and you get a chuckle. Guaranteed. With guys who keep their emotions in check, like Honnett, you really catch a break. “So you’re on a beach…at this very minute.” After the shock of my Hawaii trip sank in, he’d gone back to his dry cop’s manner of keeping his voice perfectly even.

“You ever been to Hawaii?”

“Not yet.”

“You should come sometime. It’s wonderful. We’re throwing Holly a bachelorette party, just Wes and the bridesmaids and me. A luau.”

There was a pause.

I put my hand up to my ear to mute the background party noise; loud Don Ho music was pouring out of the
speakers on the beach, mixed with lively conversation as the gang grabbed dinner. “Honnett,” I said, “you starting to think you should have never gotten involved with a girl like me?”

“Did you say
starting?”

I had to laugh. Just when I was beginning to make some decisions about what to do about Honnett and me, like we should put our troubled history to rest, end our relationship, and move on, he goes and acts all goodnatured and cool and adorable. I hate men. Really.

While some women, Holly as a prime example, apparently have no trouble committing to any number of husbands, I am quite the opposite. For me, work is easy but the world of boyfriends is difficult. I have been getting tangled up with Chuck Honnett for almost a year now, and I had the feeling I’d never figure out what I truly had going on with him. I pushed my hair up off my shoulders with my free hand and pressed Holly’s little cell phone harder against my year.

“Here’s the thing,” I said, putting the business first. “This morning Holly got an e-mail that freaked her out. An anonymous threat.”

“What kind of threat?” His voice remained even.

“Someone is trying to get information on an old boyfriend of hers. From eight years ago. She hasn’t seen the kid for all this time, but the e-mailer claimed he would find her if she didn’t tell him where the old boyfriend is now. Which, like I mentioned, she doesn’t know.”

“How specific was this threat?”

“Not very,” I admitted.

“I’m not sure what you want me to do.”

“Isn’t there some way to trace that e-mail? If we knew who sent it, maybe we could convince them to stop bothering her.”

“Well, I’m not an expert on Internet crime, Madeline, but if the sender doesn’t want to let you know who they are, they have ways to keep their identity a secret.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. It’s pretty rare we get a case where the creeps are so technically lame they can’t hide their tracks.”

“We saw the sender’s return e-mail address, though. It was [email protected].” I repeated it more slowly, figuring he was copying it down.

“Look, forward the e-mail to me with the full headers. I’m no expert about tracing e-mail, but I’ve got a few pals around here who might know what to do.”

“Oh, well.” I bit my thumb, annoyed at myself. “It’s not here, Honnett. It’s on Holly’s home PC and the one at work. I’ll have to send it to you when we get back home on Monday.”

“Okay. In the meantime, I’ll look into this e-mail address you gave me, but don’t get your hopes up. Chances are it’s some blind account, or more probably spoofed.”

“Oh.” You don’t have to know a hell of a lot about computer stuff to figure you’ve come to a dead end.

“But see here, Maddie, cyberspace is filled with venom. Nasty e-mails are a dime a billion. People send all kinds of garbage.”

“So, basically, you’re saying you can’t help Holly.” How depressing.

“With vague threats from an unknown e-mailer, probably not as it stands.” Honnett didn’t sound happy about it. But it was just about what I’d figured.

“You still there?” Honnett sounded like he could read my mind. “Better give me the name of the old boyfriend. I might have better luck trying to track that guy down.”

“You sure you have the time?”

“I’m not working this weekend, Madeline.”

“Right. Okay, then.” I quickly told him what little I knew about Marvin Dubinsky.

“Hey, Mad.” His voice was husky, and I remembered his face, his strong jaw and his habit of not shaving for several days. “Any chance you and I can talk about what’s going on with us?”

Ah. The emotional price tag. No favor comes without one.

I held the tiny cell phone out in the air to be sure Honnett caught the last chorus of “Tiny Bubbles.” “I’m kind of right in the middle of the luau, but…”

“You’ll call me when it’s quiet?”

“I’ll call you, Honnett.” As I may have mentioned, it’s hard to know what to do with an old boyfriend who wants you back.

We had always been an odd pairing, Chuck Honnett and me, a homicide detective and a Hollywood party person, the straight arrow and the liberal. The age difference was a factor too, I guess. Honnett was forty-four and wary about dating a much younger woman. But our good points had always outweighed the bad. He was so strong and intelligent and sincere. We meshed in the best sort of ways, mentally, emotionally, physically. He admired me. He took me seriously. I lightened him up. I drew him out. We were great together in bed.

But then it turned out that he wasn’t, in truth, quite as divorced as he’d led me to believe. There were reasons why Honnett hadn’t left his sick wife completely in the lurch. Sure. There are always reasons, aren’t there? But he had lied. And our relationship went to hell. I told him I needed some time to think about where the hell we were going. And I still needed time. And space. And distance.

So we ended our call. He asked me to please stay out of trouble, and I promised I would, but as I pressed the
END
button, I had a brief flash of the broken lamp and the bloodstain on Holly’s bedspread.

What if the two events were connected? What if the jerks who sent the threat to Holly knew she was coming to the Big Island and staying at the Four Heavens Resort? It’s not like we didn’t have reservations in our names. It’s not as if I hadn’t made several thousand plans, all with an e-mail trail of confirmations and receipts. And what if they sent that man to attack her?

Or what if I was just getting completely paranoid?

I spotted Wesley talking to Keniki, perhaps quizzing her on more advanced hula techniques. Azalea and Daisy were seated at one of the round red-and-white hibiscus-print-topped tables, daintily sampling skewers of grilled delicacies, surrounded by all the beachboys. Holly was sitting cross-legged up on the bamboo bar, laughing with the bartender. I shook my head and tried to get back to the “no-worries Maddie” I had been only a few minutes before.

Taking a hand-glazed plate, I walked over to our sushi chef and checked out his offerings. The name tag on his clean black apron said
MORI.

“Hi,” I said.

“What can I make for you?” he asked, alert. He was an older Japanese man with lively eyes.

“You decide.” My father had a theory. Whenever he took our family out to dinner, he told us to order the house specialty. He figured if they sold enough of it, you had a good chance that it would be fresh. My dad, the pragmatist.

“You like tako su?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, smiling. “I like everything.”

I watched as he prepared the octopus, cucumber, and seaweed in vinegar. I took a taste and said, “Fabulous.”
Next, he expertly prepared a small dish of chilled puree of edamame, creamy steamed soybean, with flash-fried lotus root garnish topped with a sprig of shiso leaves. “This is heaven,” I told him.

Wes walked across the sand and sat on the stool next to me. “Holly is too excited to eat,” he reported, looking her way.

“She isn’t too excited to sip, though,” I pointed out. We both watched as she accepted another large coconut from the bartender down the beach.

“Ah, well. Youth,” he said.

“You have to try some of this. Our sushi chef is a master, Wes.”

The gentleman behind the counter smiled modestly. We watched as he worked on a beautiful presentation, making a fresh plate featuring Toro, Hamachi, Kanpachi, Hirame, Aji, Tako, and Anago. He completed the dish, a traditional Japanese arrangement marked by the Zen ideals of simplicity, harmony, and restraint, and presented it to us with a slight bow.

“I’ll share some of hers,” Wes told Mori, looking at my huge plate.

“This wasabi is excellent,” I said, taking another small, perfectly prepared mound of rice, topped with a sparkling fresh piece of raw yellowtail. “It has a fiery yet sweet aftertaste. It’s fresh, isn’t it?”

Wes bit into a matching piece of sushi and relished the subtle flavors. “I think this is the best wasabi I have ever tasted.”

“It must be from Japan,” I decided. Wasabi is the spicy hot root, or actually a rhizome, which is traditionally grated and served with sushi. But despite the huge popularity of Japanese restaurants in the U.S., the delicate and pungent flavor of fresh wasabi is practically
unknown to Americans. Almost all the wasabi served in the United States is actually a mixture of mustard and horseradish that’s been dried and then reconstituted, because wasabi is a highly controlled crop. It can only be grown in the Izu Peninusula and in the Nagano region of Japan, and the growers there guard the plants like gold, not wanting anyone anywhere else to grow them.

“In Japan, we have many nicknames for wasabi. You know one nickname for wasabi?” Mori asked. “Namida.”

“Tears,” Wes translated for me.

“Yes. Very good,” Mori said. “Tears for the fire of the taste!”

“Do you get it flown in?” Wes asked Mori.

“You like?” The chef looked at Wesley, approving his compliment. “I get from my nephew. I get you some.”

“It’s amazing,” I said, trying another kind of sushi, my tongue feeling the spreading warmth from the tiny dab of wasabi that flavored the piece.

“I get you some,” he repeated for me, grinning at our reaction.

“Nowadays, sushi is known as raw fish on a slab of rice,” Wes explained to me. “But actually sushi means vinegar-flavored rice that is rolled with vegetables, fish, or pickles, then wrapped in nori—dried seaweed—and sliced into rounds, or Norimaki.”

“You know too much,” I said, popping another perfect piece into my mouth.

“There are different sushi formats: Nigiri (handshaped), futo (thick), maki (rolled), temaki (handrolled), and chirashi (scattered on top of the rice).”

Our chef behind the counter kept grinning his wide grin, nodding his head.

“You are my favorite teacher, Wesley,” I said with affection.
“And you cannot beat the atmosphere here.” We were seated just ten feet from the waves, with a curtain of stars overhead.

Just then the drums began beating again, loud and slow.

We turned to the stage.

“Will the fabulous bride come up on stage, please?” The bandleader, a very cute Hawaiian boy, was at the microphone. He called out, “Holly! We need you now.” Lots of furious drumming came from the three guys on percussion.

The rest of our gang stopped whatever we were doing, here and there along the beach, and headed toward the stage, whooping it up for Holly. We jostled together, sitting on mats on the sand down close to the performers, clapping along to the beat.

This was Holly’s special moment. She was all smiles as she made her way to the stage, joining the boys in the band. In her cute bikini top and hip-hugging shorts, she danced a little hula for our entertainment.

We all howled our approval.

“Holly, you’re getting married in two weeks, we hear,” said the head beachboy, Matt.

“Yes!” Holly yelled.

We all cheered.

“That is bad luck for us boys,” Matt said, and we all laughed and catcalled from the audience.

“But now the time has come!” he said to her.

“For what?” she asked, her eyes wide.

At the back of the stage, two of the musician/dancers put down their drums and picked up sets of pu’ili, a Hawaiian instrument like a split bamboo rattle. They produced rhythmic rustling sounds by tapping the pu’ili against one another’s bare shoulders and arms.

“Ah,” said Marigold, “they are acting just like bull elephant seals.” Her sisters all giggled. “The strong males battle for dominance, for the right to rule the harem.”