Too Hot Four Hula: 4 (The Tiki Goddess Mystery Series) (26 page)

His smile was wide as a rainbow when Kiki snapped the picture.

“You think I could end up on TV? I mean, if your show ever comes back on?”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure we won’t be back on the air, but you never know,” Kiki said.

“Keep my photo on file just in case,” he said. “If you ever need extra security, then I’m your man.”

36

IN NO TIME AT all they’d bid aloha to their fans and were loaded up in the van.

“Where to, boss?” Pat asked Kiki.

“Trish, can you find La Mariana Sailing Club on your notebook? I’ll punch in the address.”

“Looking,” Trish called from the back seat. “It says something about Sand Island.”

Precious wanted to know, “Are we going sailing? Or to the beach?”

“You know I can’t sit on the beach,” Lillian whined. “I can’t take the sun.”

“We are not going to the beach,” Kiki said. “We’re going to La Mariana Sailing Club. It’s a restaurant at a marina. I guess it’s near Sand Island.”

“Great. I’m starvin’,” Flora spoke up between sips of “special” water.

Trish called out from the way-back, “This says Sand Island used to be called Quarantine Island. They used it to quarantine ships carrying contagious passengers.”

“Good idea,” Pat said. “Somebody should make all the mainland planes stop there.”

“During World War II they used it for internment camps for Japanese Americans, Italian and German expatriates living in Hawaii.”

Lillian clapped her hands over her ears and started singing la la las.

“What’s she doing?” Flora asked Precious.

“She does that when something makes her sad and she doesn’t want to hear it,” Precious said.

“So where are we going exactly, Trish?” Kiki shouted. “We need to get moving.”

“Take Nimitz Highway to Sand Island Parkway,” Trish said.

“We’re not far,” Kiki told them.

“Why are we even going there?” Lillian asked. “I don’t want to see old internment camps where they locked up Americans.”

“We’re going there to search for Bautista. I’m pretty sure he killed Em’s ex to steal Louie’s Booze Bible from him.”

“How do you know that?” Flora crossed her arms and rested them on her stomach. “I saw everythng you did in that garbage dump. I didn’t see one single clue.”

“That’s because it was
all
one big clue.” Kiki lowered the visor and checked her makeup in the mirror. “Is there an address for the La Mariana, Trish?”

Trish was silent for a few seconds then said, “It’s not on Sand Island. It’s on Pier Street right before you cross over to the island.” She gave Kiki the address, and Kiki punched it into the GPS.

“Whew.” Lillian was smiling again. “No camps.”

“So what did you see that convinced you this guy has Uncle Louie’s Booze Bible?” Trish asked.

“He’s a hoarder, but he’s selective. He doesn’t hoard just anything. The place is full of Hawaiian memorabilia from the forties, fifties, and sixties. When I literally fell into a box full of old retro recipe books, I realized that if Bautista even laid eyes on the Booze Bible, it was the kind of thing he’d covet. Louie started writing back in the sixties when he opened the Goddess. All those old legends he made up, all the drink recipes, the doodles in the margins, why that notebook would be like a platter of poopoo to a fly for a guy like Bautista.”

“Do you think he wanted it enough to kill Em’s ex to get it?” Precious clutched the armrest as Pat made a sharp left in front of a city bus. Lillian squealed and covered her eyes.

Kiki went on unfazed. “I think he may have gone to Phillip’s because he was still mad about losing a parking space. Maybe Phillip asked him to step inside, or maybe Bautista strong-armed his way in, saw the notebook, and things got out of hand.”

Pat added, “Em said Phillip had a gun. Maybe Bautista somehow wrestled it away, shot Phillip, and wiped off the prints.”

“Then he saw the notebook and couldn’t resist taking it. Unfortunately, that was a big mistake. A big one. If he has the Booze Bible, that will connect him to the apartment and the murder,” Kiki said.

“That and the fact that he disappeared the day of the murder,” Trish reminded her.

The lady inside the GPS said, “You have reached your destination.”

Kiki turned to look out the window as Pat pulled up in front of La Mariana Sailing Club.

“Oh my gosh,” Precious said.

“Wow.” Trish started snapping photos.

“Look at all that
bamboo
,” Lillian marveled. “And those tiki torches.”

“I haven’t seen a place this classically tiki since Eisenhower was alive. Talk about truly tacky tiki.” Kiki smiled at the sight even as she blinked back tears. “Ladies, stick to the classics. Don’t think of ordering anything but a Mai Tai, a Tropical Itch, or a Blue Hawaii once we’re inside, or it just won’t be right. We’re gonna party like it’s 1955, and we’re gonna catch a murderer while we’re at it.”

Pat let them all out and drove off to park. Kiki and the others passed beneath the Kon Tiki Room sign as she entered the open restaurant space full of tables covered with tapa-print tablecloths and surrounded by high-backed peacock wicker chairs.

The walls were lined with woven
lauhala
and bamboo. Lights made of glass fishing floats hung from a ceiling dotted with strands of mini twinkle lights. There were shell chandeliers and booths book-ended by carved tikis.

“Wow. It’s like the Goddess,” Lillian said.

“On steroids.” Kiki checked out the room. A hostess greeted them and said she’d put some tables together for them.

In no time at all they were comfortably seated and sipping on the restaurant’s world famous Mai Tais out of official La Mariana tiki mugs.

“What now?” Pat asked Kiki.

“Now we eat lunch and ask about Bautista.”

They ordered either the ahi
poke
or burgers. While they waited for their lunches and congratulated each other on their flawless street performance in front of the Lokelani, Kiki picked up her drink and slipped away to chat up the bartender.

“Aloha!” she greeted him with a smile as she slid onto a bar stool.

The tall, dark-haired local gentleman wearing a red and white aloha shirt flashed a smile. She guessed he was in his early sixties, not much younger than she. His nametag said Joe.

“What can I do for you?” he said.

“I’m from Kauai. I just wanted to tell you this Mai Tai is wonderful.”

“Lucky you live Kauai, eh? Just visiting?”

“My friends and I are here for almost a week. I just love this place. There were so many tiki bars around years ago. It’s a shame to see them all disappear. I hope this one lasts.”

“We’re holding on. The old crowd is dying off, though.”

“I hear you.” Kiki allowed a sympathetic note to creep into her tone. She waited a minute before she asked, “Is Damian Bautista working today? He’s an old friend.”

“Really?” He looked doubtful.

“Yes. Does that surprise you?”

“Damian hardly says two words to anyone.” He reached beneath the back of the bar and pulled out a damp towel and proceeded to wipe down the bar top. “Comes in, does his job, and goes home.”

Kiki shifted around on the stool and leaned closer. “Where’s home?”

He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Like I said, he doesn’t say much.”

Kiki handed him her empty tiki mug. “I’d love a refill, Joe.”

“Sure.” He started mixing ingredients. “I hate to tell you this, but the police are looking for Damian, too.”

Kiki made her eyes wide. “They
are
? Why?”

“He’s wanted in connection with a murder.”

“No way.”

The bartender nodded. “Yeah.”

“Gosh, then I
really
feel sorry for him. Like you said, he’s always seemed like a nice, quiet sort.” Kiki was flying by the seat of her granny panties and she knew it, but she pressed on. “You don’t have employee home information that you could give me, do you? I’d really like to try and touch base. At least leave a note at his place.”

When she was young she never would have believed being a senior would have advantages, but no one suspected a harmless little old lady could be up to anything shifty.

He hesitated a minute, then topped off her Mai Tai with dark rum, shoved in a straw, and pushed the tiki mug back across the bar.

“Hang on a minute. I’ll see what I can find.” He glanced around the room. It was still early yet, and the lunch crowd was light. He left the bar and was back in two minutes with a sticky note in his hand.

Before he handed it to Kiki, he made sure no one was watching.

“Here you go. I took this off Damian’s emergency card.”

Kiki looked at the address in Honolulu.

“That’s somewhere in Chinatown,” the bartender said. “Don’t go wandering around down there at night, okay?”

“Of course not. Thank you
so
much. I do appreciate it.”

“I’d rather you find him before the police do. If he’s innocent, he must be scared to death. See if you can talk him into turning himself in.”

“If he’s innocent?” Kiki lowered her voice. “Do you think he did it?”

Joe shrugged. “Nothing surprises me anymore.”

“He certainly doesn’t need to be scared of a little old lady like me,” Kiki said. “I sure hope he didn’t do it.”

37

LOUIE CALLED TO let Em know his demonstration was set for eleven a.m. in the Coral Ballroom, so she showered, slipped into the sundress she’d worn to lunch with Phillip, and left for the conference center.

The minute she walked in, she was approached by Lamar dePesto. Outwardly Em smiled. Inwardly she groaned. He was just as smarmy as she remembered. His participant’s badge dangled from a lanyard around his neck with eight miniature gold swizzle sticks clipped to his nametag. Everyone who didn’t know already would have no doubt he’d won the Western Regionals every year.

“Ms. Johnson.” DePesto was decked out in an aloha shirt and a straw Fedora with a seashell hatband. “I just heard you’re a ‘person of interest’ in your ex-husband’s murder investigation. I can’t say I’m surprised after catching you red-handed in my suite.”

She tried to hide her shock. She hadn’t seen a paper or the morning news. The HPD must really consider her a prime suspect if they were officially announcing she was a “person of interest.”

What next? An arrest?

She half expected a SWAT team to descend on her any minute now.

“I was all set to apologize to you, Lamar, but since you didn’t catch me doing anything but looking around your room, I’ve changed my mind. The only thing I regret at this point is that my impulsiveness might have jeopardized my uncle’s chances of winning your contest.”

“Are you accusing me of rigging the contest? That’s as insulting as your accusation of my involvement in theft and extortion. Besides all this slander, we’ve never had so many problems at this contest.
Never
. The hotel is all over me because your uncle lost a stupid monkey. The Shriners are up in arms because one of their members desperately wants that monkey back. They’re demanding
I
do something about it. Those old hula dancers of your uncle’s are not only a constant nuisance, but there’s now an Internet petition circulating around demanding they be allowed to perform whenever and wherever they want, a petition that also asserts this hotel is down on locals. You can imagine how
that’s
going over with management.”

Apparently, dePesto wasn’t finished. “Thanks to your uncle and his entourage, once word gets out, the contest committee will be lucky if we can even contract with any hotel in Waikiki next year.”

The lights flickered. It was time to find a seat for the next demonstration.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Lamar,” Em said. “I’m here to support my uncle.”

She turned on her heel and walked away. There was one empty seat at the end of the first row of chairs. Em slipped into it, pulled out her cell, and set it on vibrate. She shoved the phone into her pocket and set her purse on the floor beneath her chair.

The stage lights were off, and the room lights dimmed. Four hotel workers carried in two potted palms and set them beside either end of the bar, adding a touch of tropical ambiance. She knew that had to be Louie’s doing and part of his presentation. They had no sooner exited when a couple of seconds later, the exotic strains of Martin Denny’s “Swamp Fire,” complete with monkey howls, ululations, and bongo beats accompanying a vibraphone, drifted through the ballroom.

The crowd hushed at the first note. A tall, buxom woman with flowing black hair dressed in a leopard-print sarong stepped out of the wings carrying a flaming torch. She walked to the bar and touched the flame to the wick of a short tiki torch standing in a bucket of sand. As soon as the tiki torch caught fire and blazed steadily, the woman sexily strolled to the other end of the bar and lit a second torch before slinking off stage. No sooner was she out of sight than a muscular bongo drummer with a low-slung
malo
tied around his hips strode in. He sat cross-legged on the floor beside one of the potted palms.

The crowd applauded in appreciation. If their reaction was any indication, Uncle Louie would definitely garner extra points for his “delivery” portion of the competition. An entertaining and confident delivery coupled with confidence, knowledge, and hygienic preparation were vital elements toward a final score.

Louie waited in the wings long enough for the applause to die down, and then he appeared on stage wearing his signature baggy white linen pants, an original silky—a vibrant red and yellow vintage aloha shirt from the 1940s—a black
kukui
nut lei, and his white Panama hat.

He paused dramatically near one of the burning torches. His voice boomed out of the clip microphone attached to his shirt collar.