4 Kaua'i Me a River (6 page)

“You really ought to eat
something,” he said placing the plate of toast in front of me. His own once full
plate was now nearly empty.

“I know, but I’m so nervous.”

“That’s why you need to eat
something. Nothing worse than bad news on an empty stomach.”

I forced down a few bites of
toast and then checked my watch. It was nearly eight-thirty.

“I should get going,” I said.
“The meeting starts at eleven.”

“That’s two and a half hours from
now. It doesn’t take more than an hour and a half to get to Hanalei.”

“But there could be traffic.”

He laughed. “On Kaua'i?”

“Remember that construction at
the Hanalei Bridge?”

“All right. You’re probably better
off driving than sitting here stewing. Call me when you get there.”

I promised to call and then leaned
in for another long hug. “I’m sorry to be acting like such a baby,” I said. “I’ll
make it up to you.”

“Good. I’m counting on it.” He
gave me a quick kiss.

I went out to the car and had to
shoo a chicken away so I could back out of the parking spot. I drove out of the
resort and made my way to Highway 520. The highway goes through a tunnel of
eucalyptus trees on the way to Lihue. In the cool green of the tree tunnel I
began imagining how good it would feel to just drive wherever the road took me and
forget about going to the lawyer’s office. If I made a left once I passed Lihue
I could go up and see Wailua Falls. Or I could head south and visit the harbor
at Nawiliwili. The cruise ships come in at Nawiliwili so there would probably
be shops and restaurants I could poke around in while I bided my time
pretending to be at the meeting. I’d tell Hatch the meeting had been uneventful
and that Valentine Fabares hadn’t told me anything new.

But as I continued past the turnoff
to Nawiliwili and then past the road to Wailua Falls, I knew I wouldn’t be
playing hooky after all. As Farrah had wisely observed, “The truth shall set
you free.” I guess I wanted freedom from the nagging questions about my mom more
than I was willing to admit.

***

I arrived in Hanalei a few
minutes after ten. It was too early to show up at the lawyer’s office so I
found a parking spot and sat in the car. I put in a call to Hatch but he
must’ve already left for his game because I had to leave a voicemail. I did
some deep breathing exercises I’d learned in martial arts to take my mind off agonizing
over the meeting ahead but it was useless. Had my mom been so selfish she
hadn’t given a diddly-damn about me or my brother and had taken her own life? Or
had she chosen feeding her drug habit over feeding her kids? What if I learned she’d
died from a gruesome genetic condition that I’d probably inherited?

As I sat there dreaming up
morbid scenarios, I felt the weight of not knowing gnawing on me like an insect
burrowing underneath my skin. I became desperate to find out what happened. I
got out of the car and took the stairs two at a time.  The sign on the door
said, “R. Albrecht and Associates, Attorneys-at-Law.” No mention of ‘esquire’. Looked
like the associates had overruled Albrecht on the signage but he’d refused to budge
on the letterhead.

I went inside and a smiling receptionist
looked up from pecking on her computer.  

“
Aloha
. May I help you?”
she said. Her teeth were blindingly white. In order for me to get teeth that
white I’d have to give up coffee for the rest of my life. Nice teeth, but no
dice.

“
Aloha
. My name is Pali
Moon and I’m here for an appointment with Valentine Fabares at eleven.”

“Certainly. Please have a seat
in our waiting room. Would you like coffee or tea?” She started to get up, but
I declined anything to drink.

“Then go on in. Most of the other
family members are already here.”

Family members? What family
members?

I went through a doorway into the
small waiting room. Chairs were positioned around the walls. Four women were waiting;
none seated next to the other. In the far corner a pimply-faced teen-aged boy muttered
into a cell phone.

I sat in the only remaining chair
that wasn’t next to someone. I tried to discreetly check out the other women,
but they were busy checking me out so eye contact became awkward. I picked up a
magazine from a stack on a low table in the middle of the room. It turned out
to be a months-old copy of
People
with a cover photo showing a smiling Sandra
Bullock and her bad boy ex-husband, Jesse James. In my business I’d seen plenty
of goody-goody women desperately in love with guys they thought they could
‘make over.’ By the time the couple showed up at my door, the guys had been house
broken enough to agree to the concept of marriage—most notably the benefits of having
someone to do their cooking and cleaning and the promise of sex every night—but
it was easy to spot the guys who’d already mentally deleted the vow about “forsaking
all others” before they’d even taken it. 

I flipped through the magazine,
not focusing on either pictures or words. Instead I used it as a blind to peek
over while I scoped out my so-called ‘family’ members. Who were these people?
None of them looked even vaguely familiar nor could I detect any family
resemblance. Did my mother have step-sisters? Maybe cousins?

By the time eleven o’clock
rolled around the tiny waiting room held six women, including me, and the one sullen
teen-age boy.

A door on the other side of the
room opened and a woman stepped into the doorway. She was definitely someone
Farrah—or probably my hippie mother—could relate to. She had waist-length brown
hair, parted in the middle. The hair looked a bit oily; like it got washed once
a week and this was day six. The woman wore a long orange Indian-print cotton wrap
skirt and a plain white scooped-neck tee. I looked down and expected to see
worn
rubba slippas
on her feet but instead she wore bright yellow Crocs;
those clunky molded-plastic shoes that look like something Minnie Mouse would
wear on a date with Mickey. But unlike Farrah, the woman standing in the
doorway wasn’t curvy. In fact, she looked like she hadn’t eaten a decent meal in
weeks.

“
Aloha
. And
mahalo
to everyone for being so prompt.” Her wide smile pulled her cheeks taut against
well-defined cheekbones. “Let’s move into the conference room, shall we?”

The teenager stayed put while
the rest of us trooped down a short hall. We entered a room with an oval wooden
table with eight chairs around it. On one wall, a wide window faced the mountain
dubbed “Bali Hai” in the old movie,
South Pacific
. In the far corner sat
a small flat-screen television on a rolling cart.

While everyone found seats
around the table I gawked out the window. By the time I turned to take a seat the
only chair available was the one at Croc-woman’s left. I sat down.  As we
settled in, a guy in more-or-less professional attire—starched beige cotton
aloha shirt, tan slacks and brown leather loafers—came in. He closed the door
and stood in front of it with his arms crossed like a bank guard trying to look
official.

“Again,
aloha
, and
mahalo
for your presence here today,” said Croc-woman. She smiled at the guy standing by
the door and he gave her an ‘atta-girl’ nod of the head. “Please accept my
special
mahalo
to those of you who took time off from work and traveled
to be here today.” From the looks of things she was talking to me. The other
women looked like they’d taken time off from retail therapy at Honolulu’s Ala Moana
Shopping Center and then a fifty-dollar girls’ lunch at the Royal Hawaiian.

“My name is Valentine Fabares. My
surname is French so it’s pronounced, ‘Fah-bray,’ but I’m born and raised here on
Kaua'i. I’m the attorney of record for the estate. I’m joined here this morning
by my colleague, Tim Abbott, the CPA who assisted me with the financial
reports.” The guy by the door raised his hand as if the teacher was taking
roll.

 “Is this everyone?” said one of
the women at the table. She had a prominent mole at the side of her upper lip
and it was hard not to fix on it. Also, she looked older than the others by at
least a decade. But it was hard to judge ages. As I scanned the group I guessed
there’d been a fair amount of nipping and tucking, not to mention Botox. The lip
mole woman went on, “I mean, are there others who aren’t here today?”

 “Just one,” said Valentine. “But
besides her, the people sitting at this table constitute the entire group representing
the named heirs. There may be unnamed heirs who come forward later as a result
of public notification, but I doubt it. But please, let’s agree to hold all questions
until after the reading of the will, shall we?”

Reading of the will? My mom had
a will? Why had it taken thirty years to unearth her will? And why isn’t my
brother here?

“Let’s begin.” Valentine Fabares
cleared her throat and began reading the last will and testament of one Phillip
James Wilkerson, the Third. The will started off stating his birthdate, place
of employment and addresses of various homes he claimed to own. The guy must’ve
been loaded. He had three homes on various islands in Hawaii, two on the
mainland, and an apartment in Portofino, Italy.  Then Valentine read a line
that stopped me cold, “I have used other names during the course of my lifetime,
including the names Jim Wilkes and Coyote Moon.”

I sucked in a breath. For a few moments
I held it in. It was as if a cog in my brain had frozen up and shut the whole
thing down. I had to consciously remind myself to do stuff that was usually automatic,
like breathing and blinking.

So, this meeting wasn’t about my
mother or how she died. This meeting was about my
father
, Phillip James
Wilkerson, the Third. He’d taken off when I was just a baby, but not before claiming
me as his child. I’d often pondered my parents’ names on my birth certificate
and wondered if they were fake. My mother’s name was listed as Martha Warner. The
name typed on the ‘father’ line was Coyote P. Moon, of Hanalei, Hawaii.

CHAPTER
7

Valentine Fabares kept on reading,
but for the next few minutes I didn’t take in much of what she said. I was
otherwise occupied, listening to a seashell-like rush of sound that blotted out
the world around me. I’d long ago given up any hope of finding my father so
being invited to the reading of his will was about as shocking as being fingered
for a crime I hadn’t committed.

“…and my fourth wife was Linda Gardner
Wilkerson, by whom I had two children, Kali Elizabeth Wilkerson and Nathaniel
Robert Wilkerson. Their last known address was 2025 Apu’a’a Street in Honolulu,
Hawaii. The children’s social security numbers are…” At that point, I tuned out
again. How had Wilkerson gotten everyone’s addresses and social security
numbers? Had Valentine already read my address and social security number? How
had I missed that?

She went on reading, “My sixth wife
was Susanne Marie Beatty Wilkerson. This union produced no known children. Her
last known address was…”

I looked up at a clock on the
wall. Valentine had been reading for more than five minutes. She ended with, “This
is my last will and testament, hereby sworn to and witnessed on this day,
Thursday, the fifth of August, 2010.”

The room was hushed. The
youngest-looking of my father’s former spouses dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.
Two others looked as if they were dying to dig out their smart phones and
update their Facebook status. The blousy blond sitting next to me glared as if daring
anyone to say a good word about the deceased.

“So that’s it?” said Lip Mole
Woman. “What about the money? And if Phil had six wives and one of them isn’t
here, why are there seven women, including you of course, sitting at this
table?”

It seemed to take a couple of
the gals longer than necessary to do the math.

“I’ll take your last question
first,” said Valentine. Her voice sounded like she’d gone to the same Homeland
Security hostage negotiation class I had. We’d been taught a voice tone referred
to as ‘CLC’—calm, low, and clear. We did a series of role plays learning to speak
as if we were discussing the weather when we knew perfectly well the guy we
were talking to had a loaded gun shoved to the temple of a terrified hostage. My
negotiator voice had come in handy more than a few times in dealing with overwrought
brides. A blue ink spot on the bodice of a four-thousand dollar wedding gown? Use
the CLC voice to talk her down off the ledge. Or how about dealing with a
trophy-wife stepmother showing up in the same dress, three sizes smaller, as the
mother-of-the-bride? Again, go with the CLC voice to review the options.

Valentine smiled as she looked
around the table and then she nodded to the guy standing by the door. “Pardon
me. I was remiss in not asking everyone to introduce themselves. Shall we do
that now? I think after all the introductions are made, you’ll see why we have
six people here this morning instead of five.”

Valentine gestured for the woman
on her right to begin. I pulled out a little notebook and pen I keep in my
purse. I had a feeling I may need to remember who was who later on. The first
woman said her name was Linda Gardner, formerly Linda Wilkerson, and she’d been
Phil’s fourth wife.

The lip mole woman introduced
herself as Phil’s first wife, Margaret Chesterton. She said she went by ‘Peggy’
and she was the mother of Phil’s two oldest children. She said her father had
been chief of police for the Kaua'i Police Department before becoming the mayor
in 1982. She went on to say she’d known Valentine Fabares for years, even
decades.

“I remember when you first passed
the bar exam,” she said. “Daddy introduced you at a Chamber of Commerce event
and you inadvertently referred to him as ‘Chief Chesterton’ instead of ‘Mister
Mayor’.” She shot Valentine a smug smile that wasn’t returned.