Twenty Blue Devils (2 page)
Please, mother Pele, we meant no harm. Please forgive our ignorance. I am returning these stones so that they can be placed in the volcano where they belong, and our lives can return to normal.
Sincerely,
Therese Druett Scott
Cripes.
Brenda sat back with pursed lips and let out a thoughtful breath. Therese, whose gifts lay more in the direction of a sweet-tempered disposition than an abundance of brains, might have things a little scrambled, but she was apparently right about one thing: something was amiss at the Paradise Coffee plantation.
She rose thoughtfully and headed for the door.
Mrs. Laney, who had been eagerly awaiting more information, was indignant. “And that's all you're going to tell me? That it's from your cousin?"
"What?” Brenda was already in the hallway, re-reading the letter as she walked. “Oh...I need to make a phone call, Ruby..."
"I don't understand,” Therese said in that soft, appealingly hesitant voice of hers. “How do you know about my letter?"
"It came right to me,” Brenda said. “I'm the one who opens them."
"But—aren't you in California, at Kings Canyon?"
"Not anymore. Therese, I'm here at Hawaii Volcanoes. I've been trying to get back here for years. I've been here since March."
"Oh,” Therese said. “Nobody told me."
There was nothing surprising about that. The two branches of the family were not in frequent contact. Brenda was a Lau by birth, her father a native Hawaiian, her mother a Tahitian-born Chinese who had moved to Hilo in 1950 to marry Brenda's father. Therese was a Druett, half-Chinese, half-American. Her mother—Brenda's aunt Celine—had been a famous beauty who had been swept off her feet by Nick Druett, the swashbuckling young American newly come to the South Seas to make his fortune, which he very soon did. They had had a daughter, Maggie, not long after they married (well, before they married, but nobody talked about that); then, ten years later, as something of a surprise, along had come the beautiful Therese, now twenty-eight.
Living as they did in two different hemispheres, the Laus and the Druetts didn't see each other often, but there was affection between them, and Brenda was particularly fond of Therese, eight years her junior. Therese had never quite taken up life in the real world, but she was warmhearted and without guile. What you saw on the surface was all there was underneath.
"Therese, I had no idea these things were going on at the plantation."
"No, well, you know my father. He doesn't like to advertise things. Brenda—will those stones really go back into the volcano? I mean, I know you think it's silly but..."
Brenda opened her hand to look at the two glassy pebbles, black and shining on her palm. “Yes, honey, I'll see to it personally.” She would too. On tomorrow morning's routine drive around the caldera she'd stop at the rim of Halemaumau Crater, Pele's private volcano, and drop them over the edge. And hope her boss wasn't anywhere around to see.
"It's not that I really believe in the curse,” Therese said unconvincingly, “but I just didn't know what else to do. I mean, I know that it's just a myth, but I didn't think it could hurt."
"Of course not,” Brenda said gently. “Therese, what does Brian think about all this?” Brian, Therese's husband, was the plantation's operations manager.
"He just shrugs it off. You know how he is. He says these things just happen on their own sometimes."
"Well, they do,” Brenda said. They did too, but this time she thought there might be more to it. “Um, is Brian around? It'd be nice to say hello."
"No, he's off communing with nature on Raiatea,” Therese said with no sign of irony, then added a small tinkling laugh: “I would have gone too, but of course I had to stay home with Claudine and Claudette."
Every year Brian spent a week or ten days roughing it at a favorite camping spot on the mountainous, barely populated island of Raiatea, a hundred miles from Tahiti, possibly the only man in history who considered Tahiti a place to get
away
from. He'd convinced Therese to come with him once—her first camping experience—and the much-pampered young woman had been appalled at the lack of comfort, hygiene, and amenities that went along with it She'd also been bored stiff, not that she'd admit any of it to her adored Brian. So when the twins came along later she'd used them as a heaven-sent excuse to stay at home while he continued to make his annual pilgrimage alone. She hated being apart from him, she'd told Brenda once, but anything was better than going ten days without a hot shower and doing your business in a hole in the ground.
"I almost forgot,” Brenda said. “Congratulations. I didn't know that you and Brian had gotten married."
"Married?” Therese said vaguely. “No, we're not married, we're—well, the same as ever. You know."
"But your letter said he was your husband. You signed it Therese Scott."
"Oh.” There was a moment's hesitation, and Brenda would have bet she was blushing. “I just thought Pele would think of me as a more sincere person if I was married."
"This is nothing to concern you, Brenda,” Nelson Lau said. “We can take care of it here in Tahiti, thank you."
Brenda turned her head from the receiver and sighed. Her brother was not one of the world's great telephone personalities. The Stanford-educated Nelson was the only one of the Laus who had gone back to Tahiti from Hawaii, accepting Uncle Nick's job offer of the company's comptrollership fifteen years ago, almost the minute he'd gotten his MBA. And there he'd been ever since, very likely the most straitlaced man in French Polynesia and getting more so every year. Nelson actually wore a suit to work. In Tahiti.
"Nelson, how can I help being concerned? People have been hurt. Brian's almost been killed, and Therese—"
Muffled noises of exasperation came from the telephone. “Oh, for heaven's sake, you're making a mountain out of a molehill. Therese has always had a way of blowing things up out of proportion. You know what an extraordinarily suggestible—"
"Nelson, I want to know: Do all these accidents have anything to do with that awful gangland business?"
"Does
what
have anything to do with that awful gangland business? You mean all that rain last April?"
"Don't be funny, it doesn't suit you. Tell me honestly: Is this some kind of sabotage? Revenge? Are they getting back at Nick?"
"Now, really, how would I possibly know that?"
"What do you
think?"
"I think...Brenda, I simply don't want to discuss it."
"Fine, but what are you doing about it?” As always, talking to Nelson brought out the bossiness in her in self-defense.
"Doing about it?” Nelson laughed, a sharp, incredulous whinny. “What would you suggest?"
"I think we should get John's advice."
Pregnant pause. “Thank you, no."
"Nelson, be reasonable. John's an FBI agent. Surely—"
"Brenda, the FBI is absolutely the last thing we need."
"I don't mean officially. He wouldn't have any jurisdiction in Tahiti anyway. But he'd know about this sort of thing; it's his job."
"Absolutely not. Out of the question."
Brenda sighed again, which she did frequently when speaking with her older brother. Nelson had a way about him that made it next to impossible to have a simple difference of opinion with him. All you could do was have a fight with him. Either that, or give in.
"Nelson, John's part of the family too. For God's sake, he's our brother. He's
your
brother. He has a right—"
"Brenda,
no
. There's nothing John can do. He wasn't involved before, and nothing's going to be served by getting him involved now. That's the crux of it."
No, that wasn't the crux. The crux was that the FBI agent in the family was Baby Brother; a baby brother who, like Brenda, took more after the Hawaiian side of the family than the Chinese. Consequently, John was five inches taller and sixty muscular pounds heavier than Nelson, with umpteen light years more—well, presence. When John was in a room you noticed him. Nelson could swing from the light fixtures by his teeth and have a hard time getting anyone to notice.
As a child, being four years older, Nelson had been the more dominant one, and if he hadn't been exactly despotic, he had been pretty damned high-handed; with Brenda too, for that matter. Then John had hit puberty and things had turned around, and Nelson had never gotten over it. To ask John for help was for Nelson an unnatural act. And he was never going to change.
"All
right
, Nelson,” she said, “all right."
"Brenda, I mean it! Now I want you to promise me. No John."
"All
right
, Nelson."
"I want a promise."
"I promise, Nelson."
"You promise what?"
Sheesh.
“I promise I won't call John."
Nelson sniffed. “All right, then."
"John, this is Brenda. There's some funny stuff going on in Tahiti."
She had waited until the weekend to call, not out of deference to Nelson, but because she wanted to think things over. Was she making a mountain out of a molehill? After brunch, when Gus and the kids, stir-crazy from the week's incessant rain, left for a Disney matinee in Hilo, she made herself a pot of tea, put her feet up, and pondered. The longer she thought about it, the less it looked like a molehill, and finally she had placed the call to Seattle and laid it all out for John.
To her annoyance he didn't agree with her. “Look, sis, all I can say is, if the Mob was out to get Nick, they'd get him. They wouldn't be piddling around with sorting machines. Besides, it's ancient history. Why would they wait all this time to come after him?"
"Well, how do you account for it, then? I mean everything put together. And don't tell me Pele."
"How about coincidence? Businesses have bad luck. That's why they're always going under."
Looked at honestly, it was what she would have said herself—if it had involved somebody else's family, somebody else's business, but of course it didn't. “You're probably right,” she said meekly. “I'm sure you are. I—I guess I'm being silly, but I can't help worrying and I didn't know who else to turn to but you."
John let out a long exhalation. He was resigning himself, she thought complacently. She'd always been good at getting around John.
"Oh boy,” he breathed, and then, after a moment: “All right, what do you want me to do, Brenda?"
She laughed. “That sounds more like my kid brother. One thing you could do is check your FBI files, or the Justice Department files, or whatever, on the whole Gasparone case and see what you can find."
"What is there to find? It's ten years old."
"Twelve. But maybe somebody who's been in jail all this time just got out. Couldn't that be why these things just started happening?"
"Well, yeah,” he said grudgingly. “But I still don't think those guys would be fooling around with stuff like this if they really had it in for Nick."
"But you'll check?"
"Yes, sis, I'll check."
She plowed ahead. “And I think you ought to talk to Uncle Nick and the others about it. It just occurred to me—they'll be coming into Seattle soon, won't they? Aren't they due for a visit to the roastery?"
This, John thought, was nothing but soft soap on her part. Since it was the end of October, she knew as well as he did that they would shortly be making their fall trip to Seattle. There would be three of them: their brother, Nelson, in his role as comptroller; their cousin Maggie—Nick's daughter and Therese's older sister—who was the plantation's personnel manager; and, of course, Nick Druett himself, the founder, the owner, and the force behind it all. They would be coming for their quarterly business conference with Rudy Druett, another nephew of Nick's, but from his own side of the family. Rudy, the son of Nick's long-dead brother, was manager and toastmaster at the Caffe Paradiso plant on Whidbey Island, where the company's beans were roasted and its American business strategies plotted.
"Yeah, I'll bet it just occurred to you,” grumbled John, who wanted it understood that while he might be malleable enough, he wasn't any dunce.
"And don't they usually come to your house for dinner after the cupping?"
"They
always
come,” John said. “We're having them out next Thursday. I'll be picking them up at the roastery."
"Great, that'll give you a chance to bring it up with them."
"I don't know, sis. Nick's not the kind of guy who's going to appreciate my butting in. If he wants to talk about it he'll bring it up on his own."
"John, you know that Uncle Nick is never in a million years going to admit there's something he can't handle. You're going to have to do it."
"Yeah, but I don't like—"
"I'm relying on you, John."
Silence.
"John?"
"Jeez,” he exclaimed, “you know something, Brenda?"
"What?"
"Sometimes you can be every damn bit as bad as Nelson."
"Heaven forfend,” Brenda said.
Brian sat bolt-upright in the unzipped sleeping bag, not sure what had brought him awake with his heart pounding. A sound, a light, a movement in the bushes?
"Anybody there?” he called into the darkness, still muddled with sleep.
There was no answer, of course, and after a few seconds, as consciousness flooded back, his pulses stopped their hammering and he quieted down. What animal was there on Raiatea that would harm a man? And there was probably no other human being within ten miles. Silly to react like that, but he had had such a strong, sudden sense of...of
presence
. It had been a dream, naturally—what else?—although it seemed to him that he had been dreaming about Therese. He had surprised her with some silly gift she'd wanted and she had laughed...
He lay back and resettled himself in the bag. Around him the night was silent and soft, the southern constellations as brilliant as diamonds. An exquisite little breeze, heavy with the fragrance of orange blossom and gardenia, flowed over his face. Hibiscus trees, silhouetted against the star-flecked sky, drowsed at the edge of the clearing. From far away, near the lagoon, came the weird, repetitive cry of some seabird, a hollow, echoing wuh...wuh...wuh...