The House at Sandalwood (4 page)

I told him I would be down immediately and then, when he left, I found myself locking the door. Recalling where I was, I turned the simple skeleton key to unlock it and put away my suitcases, still packed, in the closet. There was an adjoining bathroom, a barn-sized room obviously used as a bedroom or perhaps a sitting room in the old days. It had a modern porcelain toilet, but the bathtub was large enough to drown in, and stood high above the floor on gaudily carved legs. I loved it. I only wished I might plunge into a tub-full of hot water at once, to rest and relax. I was exceedingly tense. And I was worried.

Three

I took a couple of minutes to recover that calm Ito Nagata had imagined he saw in me at our afternoon meeting. Then I went down to meet Ilima Moku. I chose the front staircase, however, still hoping that I would see Deirdre somewhere, that some door would be open in this empty house and she would come dashing out in her impetuous way. The place seemed deserted. The wide front stairs had one landing at the turn and creaked madly. I announced my presence by footsteps that seemed even noisier because there were no others to echo them.

I met Ilima in a remarkably pleasant kind of all-purpose family room at the back of the house opposite the big kitchen, the serving pantry, and the dining room across the hall. Because of the intense growth of foliage everywhere around the house, the light from two table lamps brought two pools of golden light to this “family sitting room.” I guessed that elsewhere on this or other islands in the state it would still be dusk, with the orange and Vermillion post-sunset light still giving a semblance of day to the world. Ilima and her husband were both there, obviously waiting only for my arrival, and I was startled to find a young woman, who was also present. She was still breathless and Moku explained that she, Kekua, had been running to “report” to them.

Kekua was a lush, gorgeous girl with her mother’s great earth-brown eyes, which were unreadable, and a figure whose rich, dark curves would have delighted readers of
Playboy
magazine. She was clearly more modern than her mother and father, but the royal blood of Hawaii was evidently still present, even though she wore a miniskirt and what appeared to be a bikini top that was far from adequate to fill its purpose.

“Kekua grew up with Stephen,” Ilima explained and I remembered the girl’s father saying that his daughter had a “crush” on Stephen Giles. But Kekua, flashing her father’s magnificent smile, corrected them now as we were introduced.

“I didn’t exactly grow up with him. I happen to be ten years younger, but we all played together, Steve and the rest of us in the village. Matter of fact, once or twice Steve earned money babysitting for me. He wasn’t too crazy about it, and I must have been a brat, but Mrs. Giles didn’t believe in allowances. It was work or no money,” she laughed. “And now we work for him! How’s that for the world turned upside-down?” Moku cut in gently, “Kekua, we can talk about this later, after we find Mrs. Steve.”

It seemed odd to hear them talk of my niece as “Mrs. Steve.” She had always seemed so childlike, but of course, I hadn’t really known her after she was twelve.

“I suppose we’d better get with it,” Kekua agreed. “But we’ve been combing the island. Poor Yee—that’s the Korean cook—” she explained to me, “he and two of our men from the village are wandering through the Ili-Ahi gulch behind the house here.”

So we had finally reached the crucial matter after all this awkward rambling. But possibly they didn’t know how deeply I was involved with anything that concerned Deirdre.

“Is she lost? Was she out walking?” I asked them all. “Please tell me! I am her aunt, you know. There are no other close relatives. Where should I start?” I looked from one to the other. Ridiculously, I felt as if I were ready for a quick sprint out the door, as if the woman they had been searching for was still a child of five or six.

Her husband and daughter looked to Ilima as their spokesman. The massive and queenly woman straightened a little.

“Yes, Miss Cameron. We didn’t like to tell Stephen. He is so busy with this waterfront deadlock.”

“It may go either way tonight,” her husband put in. “So we thought, since you knew young Mrs. Steve well and all...”

“Yes, yes! Please!”

Maddeningly, they all looked at me again. Ilima said, “Everyone from Sandalwood is out scouring the island. The servants here, and my own people from the village. We thought you might know how the young lady behaved—the kinds of places she hid—when she was in your care.”

I walked up and down the room, trying to pull my thoughts together, to remember.

“She ran away as a child when there were problems, but I did begin to understand something of her thinking. I always found her. But you see, I don’t know any of the hiding places...” Remembering the old days, I rephrased this. “I mean—any of the safe places on the island. Where did she go when this happened before?”

“We’ve covered that,” Kekua put in brusquely. “A little glade across the island on the trail to our village. It’s below Mt. Liholiho. There’s a series of falls, and the falls run into the river. But she wasn’t there this afternoon.”

Finally I understood the “problem” Ilima had mentioned to me when I arrived. But the idea of trying to find a Deirdre determined not to be found, on an island full of jungles, falls, mountains, and unknown if nonpoisonous insects was appalling.

“Can you tell me why she went off by herself today? It might help if I knew what triggered this.”

Kekua shrugged. “I’d been to Honolulu looking for a job. Steve was busy; so I talked to his office manager and then caught the noon plane to Kaiana. I operated the motor across the bay for two passengers. Paying passengers.” She told me confidentially, “I pick up a little mad money like that now and then. One of the men was a fascinating
haole
and...” She stopped as if she found it hard to picture the other man. “The other was younger. I took them to see Deirdre, but she wasn’t in the house. It’s funny, because Mother had seen her only half an hour before.”

Ilima nodded. “She saw them. I am sure of it. Two Caucasians.”

Were we getting closer to the real reason for Deirdre’s flight?

“Who were these men who came to see my niece? And why couldn’t they stay?”

Ilima reminded me, “They were strangers and there is no possible place for them to stay, unless they are guests of Sandalwood or with friends in the village. One of the men from our village, Andrew Christian, was making a trip back across the bay and agreed to take the two gentlemen to Kaiana. They said they would spend the night at the new Kaiana Hilton.”

“What did they want with Deirdre? Why not see her husband? Who are they?”

Ilima said, “The name given, I believe, was Berringer. I don’t recall the younger man’s name.”

Kekua hesitated. Then she smiled broadly. “He wasn’t the kind you would remember. But Victor Berringer ... ‘Vic,’ the other man called him. Ah! Cold as ice and smelled of money. Not friendly at all. But a man with lots of power ... You can tell. I think it was something unpleasant he came to—”

“Be quiet.”

Moku and his daughter looked at Ilima. It was easy to see that the queen of Ili-Ahi still held her sceptre.

“You do not talk like that about a
haole
, and a
malahini
too! A man older than your father. I did not like his eyes. But you are right in one thing, my daughter. His eyes were like cold waters far out from shore.”

The name was familiar but at the moment I was too upset to care about the cold-eyed strangers who had intrigued Kekua.

“Perhaps if Deirdre could see me,” I suggested and started to the front of the house. “I could walk about. Do something. Be seen by her if she is hiding somewhere around here.”

Moku hurried after me, his impressive bulk shaking the hall floor.

“Maybe with a light. Here. I left one on the veranda.” He added, “She will return soon. She has done so before. Let me show you the places where she goes sometimes to read or to draw the flowers here and to press the flowers. She makes little patterns. Very pretty.”

I looked back as we crossed the dimly lighted huge living room. The woman and her daughter were talking. The older woman gave her a little push as if to send her after us, but Kekua said abruptly, “I know Mrs. Steve better than you do. She isn’t going to thank me for interfering.”

Outside the house as we crossed the grassy clearing, Moku took my arm.

“Careful. The
emu
is just to your right.” I avoided this pit, at the same time seeing the movements of the island’s population for the first time. Two men with Oriental features, Japanese or Korean, I thought, came around the veranda from the jungle-covered gulch below. They had found nothing, but looked drenched although they wore shiny slickers and boots. It was odd to see such cold-weather clothes in this climate, but even across the clearing my companion’s flashlight recalled the mud-encrusted boots, and the water dripping off their rain slickers.

Then Moku inadvertently reminded me of the real identity of the man who had come all the way to Ili-Ahi to meet Deirdre. He remarked, “The younger man who came over to meet Mrs. Steve had not so much force. He seemed afraid.”

“Afraid!”

“I mean to say, embarrassed. Not wanting to come. He said while I myself heard, ‘She is pretty and gentle. She marries the man. It is always the way. It is not a crime to marry the man another woman wants.’ ”

So the men were concerned with Ingrid Berringer who had been with Deirdre when they met Stephen Giles. Recalling Ito’s hints about Ingrid, the girl who seemed to have vanished, I realized her father would not be visiting the island on a social call! Deirdre had always preferred peace to quarrels, and it was undoubtedly this timidity or gentleness that caused her to run away instead of meeting these unwelcome visitors.

“Miss Berringer’s father, was he really angry?” I asked.

He did not want to say so, but it was apparent that Ingrid Berringer’s father intended to make trouble.

We passed two women, one Japanese and the other, a younger, Filipino girl who, Moku explained, worked at Sandalwood House to earn her tuition at the university. He introduced us. The pretty Filipino girl said, “We’ve looked everywhere, Moku. Except—” She glanced at him with what was an obvious attempt to keep her suspicions from me. “You know. Those places.”

“What places are they?” I asked when the two women had gone on to the house.

“They have been following the river’s course, except near the cottages. Our river runs past them and empties into the gulch behind the Giles house. It was the cottages they did not enter.”

These must be the cabins built by Stephen Giles’s father: Sandalwood Heiau, the development that killed him.

“Hadn’t we better look through them?” I suggested. Our path crossed a little footbridge at this point, and I got a good look at the side of one of the cabins in a glade and facing the river. It was an imitation of the original Hawaiian grass huts, although there were windows and the grass was painted straw. But I found it charming. And I remembered suddenly that when she was small, Deirdre had a little pup tent on the back lawn and insisted on covering the canvas with acacia branches to imitate South Seas grass huts.

“Let’s look in there.”

“Ah, Miss Cameron...” He was so obviously upset, I realized I had said something either shocking or alarming.

When we had crossed the dark little bridge, I turned along the path that led past several cabins facing the river. The river itself was calm, looking jellylike under the first stars and the occasional flashes of Moku’s light. He barely caught my arm before I had gone beyond his reach.

“No, Miss Cameron! The
heiau
is hated. You are on the
heiau
land now. Everyone is afraid of it. You would not find her in those cabins.”

“Why, for heaven’s sake?” All around me the coco-palms fluttered and rustled, although I felt no breeze. They seemed very busy, like gossipers whispering.

“It is a sacred place,” he began. I said I understood that. “There are certain memories connected with the
heiau”
he went on. “The
kahunas
, that is, the priests in the old days placed it
kapu
for what Steve’s father intended.
Kapu
—forbidden. It should not be a place for
haoles
to make money and to bring their
malahini
friends and soil it with their
haole
ways.”

I thought I understood his objections, but they weren’t helping me to find my niece.

“We might just look past the cabins,” I suggested tentatively. “I wouldn’t do anything to ... soil them with my
haole
ways, but I feel we could then eliminate this area and go on, for a little while.”

He did not stop me, but I found myself alone as I went on, feeling my way between new, moist growths, bushes, young trees, and what seemed to me a surprising richness of great multicolored blooms: hibiscus, plumeria, orchids, and red blossoms that glowed in the distant glitter of Moku’s flashlight like fireworks sprays. As I moved beyond the area of his flashlight and became accustomed to the blue-dark, I discovered that the starlight overhead seeped through, offering at least a minimum of light to see my way past the cabins. I glanced in at the first of these and saw how the entire project had not been completed. There were three steps—mere plank steps—up to the doorway. Several cabins nearby had no doors. The interior of the first cabin, left unfinished, showed me that the general family room was to be an imitation of the ancient grass huts, but probably with luxurious, Waikiki kinds of touches. There were no windows, and the flooring was carpeted with blown palm fronds, dust, dead flowers, endless greenery. And no doubt a great many insects. I slipped on something that appeared to mash like a beetle, and felt another creature scamper across my instep as I rushed out and down the steps.