The House at Sandalwood (12 page)

I followed Mrs. Mitsushima into the hall. The little woman was fluttering anxiously.

“Such a long time! Mr. Steve will be cross and make noises.”

“Does Mr. Steve often shout and make noises?”

“Not often to Mrs. Steve. To Mrs. Steve he is very, very gentle.”

I was relieved at this. He might have a temper, but he seemed extraordinarily understanding with his young wife, which was admirable, under the circumstances.

The nearest telephone extension was in Stephen Giles’s study. I went in. Mrs. Mitsushima backed out, closing the door with a solicitude that made me self-conscious. The instant I took up the phone I felt that a hurricane blast of Celtic temper was loosed upon me.

“What the devil is going on there? I’ve been hanging on this telephone for an hour. Is it you, Judith?”

Remembering my own Scottish family with its sudden irritability which I never took seriously, I calmed him down at once.

“Sorry, Mr. Giles. Deirdre and I were finishing lunch.” Having blown off he behaved in exemplary fashion.

“It is about that time, isn’t it? Sorry. Could you get away in about half an hour and meet me at the dock? I want to discuss something before I get home.”

I didn’t like to agree. It was a bad start to have secrets from Deirdre. If she learned to mistrust both Stephen and me, it would be disastrous.

“I don’t think it would be wise. By the way, have you seen Mr. Tiji there at the airport? It was his brother who was hurt.”

“I’ve been with them since they brought Sam over. Ito Nagata and I flew in. But it seems to have been too late. Ito and the Tijis were old friends. It’s a rotten business. I hope to God it wasn’t my fault. I feel bad enough about it as it is. I had the
heiau
setup inspected before they began to work. It seemed okay. Sammy slipped on the brush that had been lashed to the roof—the others all assured us of that. But the brush has been there for God knows how long ... Anyway, this isn’t your responsibility. How is Deirdre taking it?”

“Splendidly. She and I took coffee and saki to the men. She cheered them up and was wonderful with them.”

“I know she was. She is always warm-hearted and good. I never doubted that. But please meet me. I’ve got to talk to you. About her.”

I thought of how terrible this would be if Deirdre found out about it. But if I could reassure him, briefly, definitely, it might end these murky doubts of his.

“I’ll do the best I can.”

“Good. Thank you. I am more obliged than I can say. I was really desperate before you came. I didn’t know what I was going to have to do.”

As he was speaking, his voice faded slightly and I was sure I heard a click on the line. I rushed to cut off anything more damaging he might say.

“I’m sure you have chosen something she will love, even if it is small. Don’t worry about it. Deirdre will appreciate it because it comes from the person who loves her.”

There was a long silence. I could hear all kinds of twittering, buzzing, roaring and snapping noises on the line. But after what was probably little more than sixty seconds, I was immensely relieved to hear Stephen say, “I understand. I hope she will like it. Be sure and give her my love.”

The study door opened abruptly. Nelia Perez looked in and pointed overhead. Skillfully, she mimicked someone listening upstairs. I nodded. She made an okay sign with her thumb and forefinger and left. I said to Stephen, “I certainly will, and don’t worry. She will like it, whatever it is.”

He cut off the connection. I waited a few seconds, heard another click, and set the phone back. By the time I was out in the hall Nelia sidled up to me and whispered, “She was listening in upstairs.”

I nodded. “Yes. Thank you.” I would have to find some excuse to leave the house in a few minutes. I wasn’t sure how long it would take for Stephen Giles to finish his business on Kaiana and come across the channel, but I didn’t want him to spend time looking for me down at the landing when Deirdre would expect to see him within half an hour or so.

I knew I would have to tell Deirdre about the telephone call. Presumably, she would be waiting to find out what had been said. In remembering the part of the conversation she had heard, I could only thank heaven she had not overheard any more. I was going up to find her when I heard footsteps pass the top of the stairs and when I reached the upper floor I saw that she had gone out onto the
lanai
and was leaning on the wooden rail with her chin resting on her knuckles. She didn’t look around but called to me, “I’m out here, Judy. Come on out.”

The air outside was damp and curiously enervating. The perfume of flowers in warm tropic shade, and the greenery everywhere below surrounded us in waves. I found my nervousness and anxiety fading under the double onslaught of air and plants. Then Deirdre looked at me, a sidelong, furtive glance entirely unlike her usual appearance of frankness.

“Did he talk very long?”

“No. But he asked me about you, of course.”

“I’m not sick! He doesn’t have to hire spies to watch me.”

“Deirdre!” I felt particularly awful because, in part, what she’d said was very perceptive.

She twisted her lower lip petulantly for a few seconds before sneaking a hand out to cover mine on the rail.

“I didn’t mean you. What else did Stephen want?”

“He was worried about a little present for you. I suppose he wasn’t sure. He didn’t say what it was, but it will prove he was thinking about you.”

Her doubts seemed to vanish. “Judy, it’s true. He does things like that. He sometimes asks Ilima when she is here. Or Mrs. Mitsushima. But can’t you give me a hint about my present?”

“I wouldn’t if I could. It would spoil his little surprise.”

Her fingers tightened convulsively on my hand as she looked away toward the steep path down to the landing. I wondered if her husband could have arrived so rapidly, and if she had perhaps seen him from the house.

“What is it?”

“That creepy man. The one who came this morning with Mr. Berringer.”

So William Pelhitt was tired of hiding behind flame trees and had come out in the open! His presence also gave me a handy excuse to leave her. I said, “He has no business hanging around here when Mr. Giles isn’t around. I’ll go and shoo him off. Meanwhile, you can be ready and looking your prettiest when your husband comes.”

She panicked at once.

“I’ve got to change. I want to look my best. I must, you know.”

“Right. He’ll be here in less than an hour.”

“Half an hour,” she corrected me.

“I’m sorry. I forgot—half an hour.”

She went into the house on the run. I leaned over the west rail and watched William Pelhitt. He seemed to be exploring the area, looking down at the gulch into the tangled thicket that bordered the path on the west. He didn’t like that view at all, and turned and walked up toward the clearing. I called to him. He jumped like a terrified fugitive from justice. He was behaving very mysteriously.

I waved to him and there was nothing for him to do but stop and acknowledge me with no real enthusiasm. I went in to the back staircase and down to catch him. He had reached the
emu
and was examining that hole in the ground when I caught up with him. He may have thought I was crazy, or that I had a mad, unrequited passion for him.

“Do they really cook food in that hole?” he asked with distaste, and a clear attempt to get me onto some safe topic. “Don’t you eat grit and dust with it?”

“Not that I’ve heard. Were you on your way to the house, Mr. Pelhitt?”

He smiled vaguely, asking me to understand.

“I couldn’t put up with it any longer, being constantly under the gun.”

“The gun. Meaning Victor Berringer.”

“Right on! And to be honest, I was hanging around here trying to figure out what might have been done with Ingrid.”

I was rigidly on guard at once. “What makes you think anything was
done with
Miss Berringer? And even if there were a remote possibility that she had been murdered, it is far more logical that she was killed in Honolulu. That’s a big city, full of foot-loose tourists looking for—” I caught myself, ashamed of the insinuation. “I beg your pardon. I have no knowledge of Miss Berringer whatever. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No. You may be right about her. It’s the not knowing that’s so bad.”

I moved back from the pit. I had to be on my way to meet Stephen Giles, but I didn’t want to start in that direction until William Pelhitt was gone. I started to stroll along the trail that wound over to the Hawaiians’ village. He stared at the grove, then, to my relief, joined me on the trail. His eyes were nervous, unsure. His face with its suggestion of flabbiness was weak. I wondered why I didn’t dislike him as I disliked Victor Berringer. But there was a terribly human vulnerability about him.

“I was going to stop by and see Stephen Giles, but I just didn’t have the nerve. That man knows something.”

“Impossible,” I insisted. “Mr. Giles and I know only that Deirdre couldn’t have anything to do with your friend’s disappearance. Mr. Berringer became convinced today, I am sure.”

He looked at me in his troubled way. “Certainly not. I’d put my money on Giles himself. He’s the one.”

That shook me. I let him walk on and turned back. He stopped but I said, “Good afternoon,” and he went on. I waited until he was out of sight, swallowed up in the shimmering foliage that had caught the afternoon sunlight. I came back and looked for another way to get down to the little dock without passing Sandalwood. At the western border of the clearing I walked close to the first tangled gray roots, mentally kissing my best white thong sandals good-bye as they became encrusted with fresh mud.

But among those tangled roots I made out a bridge over the drainoff area from the west fork of the Ili-Ahi River. It was quite a charming little rustic bridge with rickety-looking rails made of the grayish wood that appeared to have been young when these were the Sandwich Islands. The bridge was barely two planks wide, but it served my purpose to avoid being seen from Sandalwood House. The path to and beyond the bridge was in complete shade, like a tunnel carved from ancient thickets and jungle vegetation, the sort of rich, water-retaining vegetation rapidly being replaced on the other islands by stone monoliths and freeways for an ever-expanding population.

Small as the island was, I suspected a newcomer like myself could easily get lost by wandering off this little footpath into side paths. By the time I had crossed the bridge which shook underfoot, I could see an opening in the thicket ahead and hear the pleasant roll of breakers nearing the narrow strand of beach. This took my mind off the constant expectation of finding spiders and other insects in the thicket. Wherever they were, they certainly did not appear to my eyes, or perhaps it was simply that the atmosphere was so dark and thick with humidity that I didn’t see what was all around me. I pushed aside the last fern and the giant leaves, the biggest I had ever seen, and watched a motorboat put in at the copper light with two men. Stephen Giles and my longtime friend Dr. Ito Nagata got out. They looked around, obviously not expecting to see me.

I must have seemed to materialize out of the thicket behind them, because they had their backs to me and were staring along the path by which Ito had first brought me to Sandalwood. Stephen started in surprise and turned around as I called. Ito, with his Oriental self-control, pretended he had not been startled.

“Judith,” Stephen began, taking my hand to shake it and then holding it, possibly forgetting he had it, he said “I’ve asked Ito to tell me as much as he knows about my wife. I think I should know in order to protect her. But whenever we talk about Deirdre’s past, we seem to arrive at you. I don’t want to pry into your own affairs, but they concern Deirdre.”

Ito and I exchanged glances, and mine was quite furtive. I didn’t want Stephen to think we shared some terrible secret about Deirdre. Ito said, “I felt certain things should be discussed. We can’t expect Steve to be in the dark, if he is going to protect his wife from fellows like Berringer.”

“He has moved onto the island,” I told Stephen who didn’t like this at all. He tightened his grip on my hand.

“Impossible! To all intents and purposes this is private property. We pay enough taxes, God knows! And no one else owns a foot of Ili-Ahi except the native Hawaiians who have always lived here.”

“Yes. And they’ve taken him in. Rented a house to him, I suppose.”

“But why? They would resent him as much as we do. A
malahini
and a
haole
to boot!”

Ito had looked up quickly as I mentioned Berringer’s push to remain on the island. In his quiet voice he managed to make Stephen and me suddenly aware that Berringer was not to be removed so easily.

“I’m afraid Victor Berringer has found a way around their objections. If I read the Hawaiians correctly, they want him as a wedge to cause you trouble.”

“I’ve always gotten along well with the village. Moku and his family are among my best friends. Why do they need a wedge against me?”

Dr. Nagata kept his gaze on his own fingernails as he explained what I was beginning to understand. “To get you to stop working on that resort project in the sacred grove.”

“Oh, God! That again! I wouldn’t put it past them to have caused poor Sam Tiji’s death today.” He saw Nagata’s expression and after an awkward moment he said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. Judith, do you agree with Ito?”

“I’m afraid so. They wouldn’t go near the grove. Not even today when Deirdre and I offered them coffee and saki.”

Stephen grinned suddenly, a single ray of light and charm in that hard face of his. “Saki! Whose idea was that? Yours, I’ll bet.” Then, before I had time to answer, he said, “Never mind. Nothing is wrong with Deirdre. You see that, don’t you? You do see that?”

“Nothing is wrong.” A little bewildered by this plea for assurance so soon after our discussion of the accident in the grove, I began to feel more secure. Maybe he
was
talking of Deirdre’s physical health, after all. “She is perfectly all right. I just left her a few minutes ago, dressing to look her best for you when you arrive... Stephen, you
did
bring a little present of some kind?”