Primitive Secrets (13 page)

As soon as she finished the part about the car-chase, Storm's hand flew to her mouth. “Shoot! I forgot to return Aunt Maile's call.” She looked at the kitchen clock. “Almost nine. I guess I can still do it.”

“Be my guest.” Leila gestured to the phone.

Maile picked up on the second ring. “Honey, you all right? I was scared to death.”

“Yeah, I tried earlier, then got busy and forgot. Aunt Maile, Bebe Fernandez was a joy to visit.”

“Storm, remember that guy in Hilo?”

“You mean the one that went off the road?”

“No, the other one.” Storm could hear a newspaper rattling. “Tong Choy. Yeah, that's his name.”

“The guy whose car was stolen.”

“Yeah, that's it. Some guys found him up near where we picked the koali. He was dead, had a broken neck.”

Chicken skin crept up Storm's arms. She sat down on one of Leila's kitchen chairs with a thud. “Who found him?”

“Some locals, looking for pänini, they said. Huh, fat chance they were looking for prickly pear with rifles. They were hunting wild pig. That's illegal on private land. I'm glad we didn't run into them.” Maile snorted her derision.

“For once, I'm kinda glad they had guns. How do the cops think it happened?”

“They're saying he fell. You know Chief Mendoza, can't find his ass with both hands. Storm, you know those fields. You could break your ankle, but your neck?” Maile's voice dropped to a near whisper. “And he had scratches on his chest. One of the deputies told Keone it was like he'd been scored, raked by claws. Mendoza says he slid on some rocks before he hit his head.” Aunt Maile finally had to take a breath.

“Maybe he did.”

“Honey, he didn't have any marks on his head. Uncle Keone asked the deputy. Storm, there was some ancient magic up there. It was Kamapua'a.”

“Now, Aunt Maile….” Despite her conscious rejection of the idea, the hair on the back of Storm's neck stood up. “Kamapua'a had hooves,” she said. “How could he make claw marks?”

“With those teeth.” Maile sounded exasperated.

Storm caught her breath. There had to be other explanations. “Aunt Maile, some animal probably tried to eat him. There are lots of dogs around the area, some hawks, even the pueo…”

“No, the marks were different, and they were bleeding, so they were caused in a struggle before he died. This deputy is one Hawaiian guy whose family's been here since Kamehameha I's time. He told Keone those marks were different than a scavenger's. And they found him last night, around sunset,” Maile continued. “The rain had stopped by then.”

“Right after I saw that thing.” Storm made an effort to breathe deeply, calmly. “Aunt Maile, what have the police said about Kwi Choy? Why did he go off the cliff?”

Storm heard more rattling of the newspaper and Maile cleared her throat. “Well, they said he had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit.”

“See, it was an accident.” Storm felt marginally better.

“Storm, Kwi's friends said he came to Hilo only to visit and drink beer with his friends. That deputy that Keone talked to? He told him that Kwi had deposited a big check a few days ago.”

“He got a better job?” Storm's voice sounded weak, even to her.

Maile didn't even bother to refute that comment. “Something bad's goin' on, I feel it. I'll do a chant to your ‘aamakaa, then talk to that deputy again.”

“Aunt Maile, thanks, but I want you and Uncle Keone to stay out of this. I'll tell the police here.”

“Listen to me, Storm.” Maile's voice had the tone Storm remembered from her early teens. She wasn't going to heed any young upstarts. “I've been around a long time and there are some things which are real hard to explain with modern logic. Sometimes the old legends do a better job.”

“Aunt Maile, you've given me some ideas. I've got to look into some things over here.”

“You watch out, young lady. Or I'm gonna come over there and take care of you myself.”

“Aunt Maile, really, I will. I'll talk to you later this week. And Aunt Maile? Thank you.” Storm hung up the phone and stared, wordless, at her reflection in Leila's kitchen window.

Chapter 20

Leila placed a cup of coffee in front of her friend. “You don't look so good. Someone else get hurt?”

“Got dead, you mean.” Storm kept her eyes on the blankness of the window.

“Jesus, who?” Leila dropped into the chair across from Storm. “What does Aunt Maile say?”

“It's a guy from Hilo. He knew the guy who was driving the car that chased me. But Aunt Maile is taking her Hawaiian spirit thing too far this time.”

“She's usually got both feet solidly on the ground.” Leila raised an eyebrow at Storm.

Storm tried to smile. “It's hard to imagine a woman her size getting adrift on us, isn't it?”

Leila grinned. “So, what does she think is going on?”

Storm knew she could tell Leila about the strange sights on the mountainside without Leila thinking she was nuts. Leila knew her family; she also paid attention to Hawaiian lore. Aunt Maile adored her. Storm related the rest of the story, including Aunt Maile's conclusion that Kamapua'a had protected her from Tong Choy.

Leila sipped at her cup of coffee. “I don't blame Aunt Maile for being worried. Why was that guy on the mountain with you? You need to tell Detective Fujita the whole story.”

Storm suppressed a shudder at the memory of that lonely road and the crash. “Leila, this has to do with something Uncle Miles discovered.”

Leila's eyes were dark with worry. “You mean something that was on Lorraine's list?”

“Someone has stolen or attempted to steal whatever papers Hamasaki might have given me.”

“And it all started with his death?”

“Yup.” Storm chewed a thumbnail. “Leila, it would be just like Hamasaki to make some subtle but threatening comments to Sherwood Overton at Unimed.”

“Why?”

“To get Tom Sakai better treatment. On the other hand, O'Toole probably swore him to secrecy.” She rubbed her eyes. “I don't know! I'm too tired to think clearly anymore. I've got to go home and get to bed.” She pushed herself slowly to her feet.

Leila walked Storm to the door. “Are you okay to go home?”

“Yes, I asked Hamlin to drive by. He'd call if he saw anything suspicious.”

“Drive carefully, you hear?” Leila hugged her friend.

Storm's sleep was disturbed with dark dreams. Hamasaki tried to talk to her, but she couldn't hear what he was saying. Then she sat in a doctor's office, where someone like O'Toole waved a syringe and ranted on a topic that made all the blood vessels in his neck stand out under his florid skin. Lorraine was there, too, with papers that Storm couldn't read because for some reason, she couldn't take her sunglasses off.

When the birds outside the bedroom window began to announce first morning light, Storm opened her gritty eyes with relief. Lorraine had been sitting right on her shoulder, whispering some message into her ear. But Lorraine was speaking a language Storm couldn't understand and Storm's heart was pounding with frustration and fear.

She hauled herself upright and shook her aching head. It was early, but she wasn't getting any more sleep. She'd be better off at the office, distracted by work.

Storm didn't even bother to turn on the lights in the reception area. In another hour, the rest of the staff would arrive. Let them handle it. Without looking at the chair Lorraine had occupied last week, Storm went to her office and closed the door. She dumped her laptop case on the desk, fired up the espresso machine, and slumped into her chair.

Twenty minutes and a half-cup of coffee later, she began reading and preparing for her morning meeting with the partners. She was halfway through a list of questions for them when the pen she was using ran out of ink. Digging in her purse for her favorite pen, she came up with the Montblanc Uncle Miles had given her. When she pulled it out, a piece of paper was stuck under the clip.

Tom Sakai's phone number. Oh brother, of all nights to have suggested taking dinner over. With a sigh, she checked her watch. Eight o'clock: with a baby, they'd be up. She picked up the phone and dialed the number. Maybe this wouldn't be a good evening for them, either. On the other hand, seeing his predicament might jolt her out of her own self-pity.

A woman who introduced herself as Lani answered the phone and cheerfully accepted Storm's offer. She mentioned that Bebe had told them Storm might call. “It'll be nice to meet you,” Lani said. Storm could hear children laughing in the background.

She hung up. Lani sounded nice; the visit might not be so bad. She ruffled through a stack of papers and sighed. Maybe she'd make another cup of coffee before she got back to work. No, she'd be wired by the time the partners came by. Tea would hit the spot, the kind she always shared with Uncle Miles.

Somewhere in the corner of the office, she had stowed the box with Uncle Miles's hand-painted mugs. She found it under a counter with a stack of files piled on top, a sprinkling of dust already covering them. She pulled out a mug and peered inside to see if she needed to wash it out. She did. In fact, coffee residue had formed a sepia stain over the white ceramic and she peered with disgust at what was certainly a cluster of cockroach turds in the goo at the bottom. “Yuck.” She could still smell the sharp odor of stale coffee. She pulled out the others. They were clean; she'd use one of those and soak the dirty one.

In the kitchenette, she ran the tap and waited for the water to get hot. Suddenly, she turned the faucet off with a slap. Wait, if the other cups were clean, then this was probably the mug Uncle Miles had been gripping when he'd died.

But—he didn't drink coffee. She stuck her nose in the cup. Definitely a coffee smell.

Hamasaki drank his strong Oolong or Keemun tea with cream and sugar, or honey if it was around. A tingling started at her fingertips and passed up her arms to the back of her neck and scalp. When she'd gathered the mugs from his recently unlocked office a couple of days after Hamasaki's death, the used one was on his desk and three clean ones were in his lavatory. Except for one that she'd used, she'd piled them into a box and shoved them under the counter, out of sight.

Of course they were all mixed up now, but this was the only dirty mug, so it had to be the one he was holding. Fujita had mentioned coffee, come to think of it. At the time, she thought he had mistaken what was left in the cup for tea. With cream in it, they were practically the same color. You'd have to be looking for tea to notice the difference.

Fujita was right; it was coffee in the mug. So why had Hamasaki been holding a mug of coffee? Storm put a kettle of water on the small stove to boil and wandered back to her office with the dirty mug. Maybe he needed a picker-upper and his guest was drinking coffee, so he decided to have some.

But he'd never done that in the past, and he knew where she kept their communal stash of loose tea, in glass jars in the back of a beat-up filing cabinet in her office.

They started that practice a couple of years ago when someone kept dipping into the tea in the kitchenette and leaving the jars open. The flavor dissipated when the tea was continuously left exposed to air and light, so they ordered a new batch and hid it.

No, he wouldn't have drunk coffee. She was sure of it.

Storm carefully put the cup back in the box and re-checked the others. Except for some dust, they were clean. She sat still, then got up to check the tea supply in the file cabinet. There was plenty of both Oolong and Keemun tea. Storm filled an infuser with Keemun, went back to the kitchenette and finished making the pot. She poured some in one of the clean cups and stood by the narrow window in the small room, sipping while she thought.

In a few minutes, she rummaged through a drawer for a plastic food storage bag and took one back to her office. She sealed the dirty mug in it, placed it back in the box, and stowed it under the dusty files and the countertop.

Meanwhile, she had about twenty minutes to finish her questions on Wo's and Wang's project. She'd have to think about Hamasaki's mug later.

Meredith met Storm in the conference room and Wang's secretary, Diane, brought in a fresh pot of coffee. Cunningham came in a few minutes later.

“Mr. Wang called from his car to say he's running fifteen minutes late. The nurse was late this morning and his mother is agitated, so he couldn't leave her alone,” Diane said.

Meredith sipped noisily from her coffee mug. “Poor Ed. The cost for all that home care is more than a nursing home.” Her eyes were bloodshot. But then, Storm thought, mine probably are, too. Everyone in the firm had to be distressed about Lorraine.

Cunningham took a phone call and carried on a quiet conversation in the corner. Wo seemed to be more interested in the coffeepot than in exchanging pleasantries. Ten minutes later, Wang bustled into the room.

“Thank you for waiting.” Wang sat down at the table, let Diane serve him a mug of coffee, then dismissed her.

All three of the partners seemed subdued. Wang, who usually directed the office staff, asked what time Lorraine's funeral was that afternoon.

Meredith glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes. “Five o'clock. We'll dismiss everyone at four, if you think that's all right.” Meredith's voice had a grim note that drew Storm's attention, though Wang didn't even look up from his notes.

“Sure,” he said. “You have any questions on what information you need to take to the Department of Health, Storm?”

“I'll look through the file and see what data I need, then call Unimed for their statistics.” Storm's pulse picked up. This would give her a great opportunity to see if Sherwood Overton had visited Hamasaki the afternoon of his death.

“Good, let's get going on this.” Wang closed his file and stood up. Storm left for her own office.

Ten minutes later, Storm walked down the hall on her way to the washroom. She heard Meredith's voice in Wang's office. “You all right, Ed?” Wo sounded concerned.

“It's just too much,” Wang mumbled. “Both her and Hamasaki.”

“Hang tough, old man,” Cunningham's voice responded. “We'll make it through.”

Diane was standing outside the door with a sugar bowl, but she caught Storm's eye and shook her head sadly. Both women, without a sound, moved down the corridor.

Storm went back to her office and was gathering what she needed for a trip to the law library when the phone rang.

“Hi, are you all right?” Martin asked.

“I've been better. Martin, when do you have to go back to Chicago?”

“I get a week off for Dad's death. But I've been thinking about some things. You free for lunch Wednesday?”

“I've got a meeting. How about tomorrow?”

“David and I are going over some things. How's tonight?”

“No can do.”

“Busy social life.”

“Hardly.”

“Well, maybe I can cheer you up. Remember that financial data Dad and I were looking over? I got to thinking. Maybe between you, me, and David, we could scrape together enough to buy a hundred shares. We've got to get right on it, though. Do you have sixty-five, sixty-six hundred bucks?”

“Sure, my purse is stuffed with it,” Storm snorted. “You gotta be nuts, Martin. I'd be lucky if I had half that in my entire savings. I'm still paying back student loans. Didn't you just tell me I need a new car?”

“Storm, in a year you could pay back the whole debt and buy a Mercedes. The company went up nine points since we had lunch four days ago.” Martin's voice rose with frustration. “You sound like Dad.”

“Martin, I just can't afford to make a risky investment.”

He let go of an audible sigh. “Storm, I make my living advising very rich people how to make more money. Don't you think I can do my job as well as you? Or Dad? This company got picked up last week by one of the biggest mutual funds in the business. At least let me show you the data I was going to show Dad.”

“I'd love to see it,” Storm said. “And I do trust you, I'm just poor.”

“Look, why don't you meet David and me tomorrow? Meet at David's restaurant at twelve thirty. I'll tell him you're coming.”

Storm hung up the phone slowly. She hadn't seen David since the reading of the will. Given the circumstances of their last meeting, he wasn't going to be turning cartwheels when she joined the brothers for a discussion of finances. Including her had sounded like a last resort on Martin's part, but he'd done it.

Storm sunk her chin in her hand and pondered the last two exchanges she'd had with Martin. Since high school, he had struggled for credibility and acceptance in his parents' eyes, and for years she'd striven with him. In fact, she had always been the black sheep. In the two years after college, she had, to Hamasaki's distress, lived with her boyfriend and worked the evening shift at a Waikiki bar. In those days, Martin worked at a graphic design office. He and Storm had shared some rollicking good times. When the design office lost its downtown lease and went out of business, Martin moved to the higher-profile financial business. And as she got more secure in her profession, he seemed to withdraw.

Lorraine had hinted at the Hamasaki children's envy. It had never entered Storm's mind that she would be a threat to any of them. She had always assumed none of them had wanted anything to do with the legal profession and that their own careers gave them security and satisfaction.

Not all of this discomfort could be due to her, though. If she thought about it, there had been strife about Hamasaki's patriarchal role for a while. That's what Aunt Bitsy's phone call had apparently been about, David and his father's purse strings. These problems had been festering over time. She didn't know all of them, or how long it had been going on, either. She just knew, now, that she'd been excluded.

Still, she had a hunch that a more recent ripple of unease was underfoot. It seemed odd that Martin was pushing a stock purchase so soon after his father's funeral. Was a few days, a week even, really that important? Maybe. This was Martin's realm, not hers.