Lana'i of the Tiger (The Islands of Aloha Mystery Series) (17 page)

“Uh, why don’t we get everybody
inside and we can go over the past week and a half. It’s been kind of
interesting around here.”

We got inside and Ewa plopped
down on the sofa. “I’m exhausted,” she said.

“Why don’t I make you some tea
and bring it to you in your quarters?” I said. “Darryl and I can go over the
business stuff.”

Ewa shot Darryl a look at that
dared him to ask her to stick around and participate.

“That’s a great idea, hon,” he
said. “You go on back and I’ll put Ekana in his crib while Penny makes the tea.
You should rest.”

I prayed the baby would embrace
the opportunity to hit the hay as much as his mom had. I really needed to come
clean with Darryl and try to elicit his help in getting to the bottom of the
Tyler Benson mess.

 When the tea was made and
mother and child were safely ensconced in the back bedroom, I sat down with
Darryl in the kitchen.

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
he said as soon as we’d taken our seats.

“Big time.”

“Are we gonna get sued?”

“No, no, nothing like that.”

I took a deep breath and plunged
in.

CHAPTER
21

 “Okay, so let me see if I’ve
got this right,” Darryl said when I finally stopped talking. “The Hollywood guy
who stayed here, Tyler Benson, was going to marry Deedee Diamonte. But then Deedee
called the tabloids and tipped them off about the wedding. That totally pissed
off Tyler and he didn’t want to marry her anymore.”

I nodded.

“So that night you and Tyler
went out for a drive. Sometime around the time you were gone Deedee was
murdered in her room at the Lodge and they also found a dead paparazzi dude under
her balcony. And now the cops think Tyler Benson killed both of them.”

I nodded again.

“So, why don’t you just go down
to the police station and clear it up? Seems like this Tyler guy couldn’t have
done it if he was driving around with you.”

“Yeah well, unfortunately, it’s
a little more complicated than that.”

At that point Ekana started
wailing in the back room.

“Ewa will get him,” Darryl said.
“He’s probably just hungry. All that kid does is eat, poop and yell.” His words
didn’t reflect the obvious fatherly pride I saw on his face.

A few minutes later, the house
was quiet again.

“Okay, so what’s the
complication?” he said.

I told him about my concern
about the time of death. How the ME had given a three-hour window, which meant
that although Tyler was with me for most of the time, he still had a short amount
of time when he was unaccounted for.

“Well, you could vouch for him
for
most
of the time,” he said. “That would help, don’t you think?”

I took a deep breath and
marshaled my courage. If Wong knew what I was about to do he’d have grabbed me
by the scruff of the neck and dragged me onto a plane so fast I’d—

Wait a minute. He was going to
do that anyway. No reason not to sing like a mynah bird.

***

Darryl stared at me for a good
half-minute before saying anything. “Okay,
now
let me see if I’m
following you. You’ve got drug kingpins after you?”

Kingpins? I’d never thought of
them that way. Scum suckers, bowel lickers, kid killers, and low-lifes seemed
more descriptive. But Darryl had called them ‘kingpins’ like they were royalty,
masters of the realm. It made me mad.

“They’re not kings of anything,”
I said. “They’re slimy bastards who get kids hooked on stuff like meth and
crack. They ruin people’s lives and tear apart families. Your so-called
‘kingpins’ have murdered five people in Hawaii, and four of them were women.
Now they’re gunning for me.” My voice came out a lot louder than I’d meant it
to. Ekana started bawling again.

Darryl stood up. I thought he
might huff out of the room, but instead he came over and put his hands on my
shoulders and gave them a little squeeze. I couldn’t help it, I choked up. I
rubbed the wetness from the corners of my eyes before Darryl could accuse me of
crying.

“You must really be scared,” he
said. “I can’t imagine having guys like that after me. Is there anything Ewa
and I can do to help?”

Funny you should ask.

***

It wasn’t easy asking other
people to lie for me. I’d already done enough lying to last me a lifetime, and
here I was recruiting people to play ‘liar, liar, pants on fire’ right along
with me. Growing up, my Auntie Mana had only one ironclad rule: no matter what
you did, tell the truth. She’d go to bat for you, no matter how bad the
situation, as long as you didn’t lie about it. I’d thought about her a lot in
the past month.

“I need you to help me stay
hidden from the police,” I said. Darryl’s eyebrows shot up and he pulled his
mouth into a grimace worthy of a stone tiki.

“You want me to commit perjury?”
he said.

“It’s perjury if you fib in
court. In this case, I prefer to think of it as ‘creative memory.’ Besides, I’m
not asking you to make up a story or anything. I just want you to pretend you
haven’t seen me.”

“You planning on staying here at
the White Orchid?”

“No, I’ve got somewhere else to
go. But the cop who’s asking around about me will come here. He knows I worked
here.”

“Is it one of our Lana’i cops?
‘Cause I know ‘em all, and there’s no way I’m gonna get away with shining ‘em
on. Those guys have known me since I was a little kid.”

“No, it’s a Maui cop. His name
is Detective Glen Wong. He’s a real sharp guy. I just need you to act a little
less than sharp.”

“What’s with that? Seems
everybody on the other islands thinks of Lana’i as some kind of pathetic
backwater. I felt it when we were in Honolulu. ‘
Oh, you’re from over on
Lana’i? How nice.
’ Well, me and Ewa love it here. We live here by choice.
Our kids are safe and happy, and our school is good, and—”

“Look, Darryl, this isn’t an
indictment of you or your island. I’m simply asking you to commit an error of
omission. When Wong asks about me, I’d really appreciate it if you’d simply say
you have no clue where I am. Or, you can just shake your head or something if
you don’t want to say anything that could be held against you later. You know,
‘you have the right to remain silent’?”

“I’m sorry, but it really cranks
me to have to play the dumb ass to some off-island
detective
who
probably already thinks I’m two pineapples short of a load just because I live
here.”

I considered backpedalling,
telling Darryl if he didn’t want to do it, I’d be okay. But instead I said,
“Wong’s got his faults, but he’s not like that, really.”

Darryl worked his jaw back and
forth a couple of times. “Okay, but this will just be between you and me,
right? Ewa doesn’t know the guy who stayed here is accused of the murders up at
the Lodge because she’s been so busy with the baby she hasn’t been watching the
news.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“And I’m not going to tell her
about you being involved in that drug stuff, either. She’ll just worry and
that’s not good for her breastfeeding. I’ll tell her you’re hiding from a guy
you owe money to. And I’ll say the cops are looking for you because the guy’s got
a brother who’s a cop.” 

Seemed I wasn’t the only
accomplished liar in the room.

Darryl paid me my wages from a
locked cash box he kept above the refrigerator. I thanked him and gave him a quick
hug. “Tell Ewa I really appreciate her giving me the job. I’m sorry I can’t
stay on next week to help. I enjoyed working here, and I appreciate her
teaching me to make excellent French press coffee.”

“You take care, Penny. And don’t
worry. As far as we’re concerned, we haven’t seen you since we left for
Honolulu.”

“
Mahalo
, Darryl.”

I went out the back door and
crept alongside the greenhouse hoping to keep out of sight of Mr. Ho. I saw his
shadow moving around inside, and it pained me to not be able to give him a
proper
aloha
since I was leaving. Maybe I’d reconsider and come back to
visit after I’d made my appearance at ‘Disney World.’

***

I walked back to Auntie Cora’s.
I’d put my hat and scarf back on and I’d resumed the
tutu
walk. After a
block or two I was so nervous it was hard to keep up the slow pace.

I had to get back to the Lodge.
It’d already been an hour since I’d left and Kate had probably chewed her nails
down to the quick.

“Auntie Cora, do you have a
car?” I said as I came into Cora’s kitchen. She was sitting at the table with a
tabby cat in her lap.

“A car? Of course I have a car.”

“May I borrow it? I need to
drive up to the Lodge.”

“Why don’t you take the shuttle?
It takes you right to the front door.”

“Yes, that’s true. I took the
shuttle this morning. But I don’t want to wait for it. I’m kind of late for an
appointment.”

She eyed me as if she’d quickly
figured out my real reason for wanting to borrow her car was something to do
with my being in hiding. She set the cat on the floor and stood up.

“I start it up every now and
then,” she said. “And my neighbor put a new battery in for me a few months back.”
She took a key ring off a nail near the back door.  I followed her out into her
tiny backyard.

“I don’t know how much gas it’s
got,” she went on. “You might have to get some. You see the price of gas these
days?”

“I’ll bring it back full, I
promise. I really appreciate you letting me borrow it.”

We headed toward an old shed
with a roof so covered in pine needles it looked thatched. “This actually was
my husband’s car, God rest his soul. He loved this machine like another wife, maybe
even a mistress.” She chuckled as if conjuring up memories of better times.

She unlatched the hasp on the
shed and I peered inside. It was dark, but even without the benefit of decent
lighting I could tell the car hadn’t been driven for a while. It was so covered
in dust I couldn’t be sure of the exact color. It was a low coupe, two-door,
with a long low hood like some kind of souped-up kid’s car.

“How long has it been since
you’ve driven this, Auntie Cora?” I said.

“Can’t quite remember,” she
said. “Must’ve been right after Willie passed.”

“And when was that?”

“February first.”

“Oh, almost a year now.”

“No, February first, nineteen
ninety-nine. Willie was really looking forward to seeing the century change.
But he didn’t make it.”

Auntie Cora handed me a maroon
shop rag and I rubbed it across the driver’s side window until I could see
inside. The interior seemed to be in excellent shape.

“I think it’s a Ford,” Auntie
Cora said.

I pulled on the door handle. The
door opened with the hinge giving way with only a slight squeak. Pretty
impressive, given the car’s vintage and the fact that it’d been parked for over
a decade.

I slipped inside and sat on the
cool black leather of the full-size bucket seat. The interior was mostly black
with lots of wood-looking trim and chrome details. The dash had both a
speedometer and a tachometer, and there were old-style knobs on the radio. The
numbers on the round speedometer went from zero to one hundred forty. The
three-spoke steering wheel looked way bigger than the steering wheel on my
crummy little Geo back home. The glove box was decorated with a chrome logo of
a snake, coiled and hissing.

“I think this could be a Shelby
GT,” I said. In college I’d dated a ‘car guy’ for a while and I’d made it a
point to learn enough automotive trivia to impress him.

“Oh? I thought Willie said it
was a Ford,” said Auntie Cora.

“Well, yes, it was built at a
Ford Mustang plant, but it’s a special model. Do you know what year it is?”

“Willie got it new. Let me see,
that would’ve been right after he became foreman. I’d say nineteen sixty-seven,
maybe sixty-eight.”

“A late sixties Shelby GT 500 is
a classic,” I said. “This car’s worth a lot of money.”

“It is? But it doesn’t matter. I
can’t sell it. One of the last things Willie said to me was,
Don’t ever sell
my car
.”

 “Then maybe I shouldn’t drive
it.
Mahalo
anyway,” I said. I got out and carefully closed the door.

Auntie Cora stepped over and
yanked the door back open. “No, no. He loved to show it off. He’d be happy someone’s
taking it out on the road. Just drive careful.”

I wiped the windows off enough
to see out the front and back and then wiped a patch off the front hood. The
paint job turned out to be a deep blue with fat white racing stripes. There was
probably much more to see, but it was going to take a car wash and a complete
detailing to reveal the car’s full glory.

I got back inside and rolled
down the window. Auntie Cora handed me the keys. I pumped the gas pedal a
couple of times and turned the key. The car sputtered once and then roared to
life. It rumbled like a volcano about to blow. I felt like I’d raised the dead.

Smoke belched from the tailpipe
as I cautiously inched my way out of the shed. I looked in the rearview mirror.
Auntie Cora was waving. I shot her a
shaka
as I turned onto Lana’i
Street. The engine throbbed under the hood like a beast on the prowl.

CHAPTER
22

There was no sneaking around
town in Willie’s Shelby GT 500. The engine growled in a bass register so low it
probably set dogs to howling. I wouldn’t know, though, since I was moving too
fast to hear any downstream effects. I’d been gone almost an hour and a half by
then and I was worried Kate might’ve left her office. I tried to take it easy,
but the car had only two speeds—stop and go like hell. I roared up to the Lodge
and turned into the self-park area. I felt like all eyes were on me as I searched
for a space wide enough to avoid door dings.