Bet Your Bones (28 page)
Authors: Jeanne Matthews
Legend has it that there is a beach on the southeast coast of Hawaii near Ninole where the stones are either male or female and they propagate by contact with each other. It was believed that when a male stone and a female stone were wrapped up together in kapa cloth for a period of time, they produced a baby pebble. The early Hawaiians would select a nice looking stone from the beach, dress it up, and take it around with them for a while to games and sporting events, sort of like dating. If the stone pleased them and brought them luck, they would consecrate it as a household god. If things didn’t work out, they ditched it or ground it down to pound taro root. This was the beach where Claude Ann chose to hold her wedding and today the air was sweet with plumerias and ho’oponopono.
Claude Ann’s dress was divine and no safety pins were needed. Her wrist was healed and out of the cast and she looked transcendently happy. So did Marywave. After the wedding she would be going home to Georgia. The doctors had found no physical cause of her fever and nausea and, after running a battery of tests, they determined that her symptoms were psychosomatic, a reaction to worry and stress and acute homesickness. When the decision came down to a question of Marywave’s health versus keeping her in Hawaii, Claude Ann had caved. She agreed that Marywave could live with Hank and attend school in Georgia provided that she spend her holidays and summers in Hawaii.
“I’ll miss her, but maybe it’s for the best.” Claude Ann gazed wistfully at Marywave.
“Hank’ll be the heavy now. He’ll be the one raggin’ on her to do her homework and clean up her room. He’ll be the one who rations the TV and the textin’ and the potato chips. I’ll be the one who takes her paraglidin’ and lets her wear lipstick.” She scowled and plunked a sugar cube into her champagne. “Mama’s gonna keep a real sharp eye on Hank. If he doesn’t do right by my girl, I’ll have his guts for garters.”
Dinah had to smile. Ho’oponopono had its limits. In the case of Claude Ann and Hank, it was more of a truce than a reconciliation and conditions attached. “I suppose Phoebe will help keep Hank in line. She has told you about her plans to pick up his option now that he’s a free agent, hasn’t she?”
“Sheesh. Can you believe it? One of my best friends hot to move in with my ex? It’s too icky. Like incest or something. I told her to choose up sides like everybody else has to do when there’s a divorce. It’s me or it’s Hank.”
For the time being, Phoebe had chosen Claude Ann. She’d caught Claude Ann’s bouquet for the second time. She sat at the reception table and studied it with a plaintive expression, as if mentally counting the petals and playing daisy, daisy, who shall it be.
Da Riddum Bruddahs, a motley, four-piece band from Hilo, finished butchering “Our Love Is Here to Stay” and Claude Ann excused herself to go talk with them. Dinah slid her feet out of her tangerine pumps, stretched her toes under the table, and contemplated the faces of the celebrants. With the cessation of hostilities between Xander and Eleanor, Claude Ann had invited her parents to the wedding. Her father had brought a bottle of his own private stock to the party and, well lubricated on Tennessee sour mash, he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. He was bending Sara Sykes’ ear with a story about piloting his fishing boat through a pod of alligators in the Okefenokee.
Claude Ann’s mother scraped the icing off a slice of the wedding cake as if it were putrid mold and eyeballed Xander as he strolled past strewing compliments and charm. She leaned across the table to Dinah and muttered, “If you ask me, he’s all sizzle and no steak. I give the marriage two years. Three at the most.”
Dinah held her peace. She had been wrong about Xander from the start and she hoped Claude Ann’s mother was wrong, too.
Eleanor had admitted being wrong about Xander. She had confessed her hala and asked his forgiveness for all the years of prejudice and resentment and Xander had asked her forgiveness for profaning the land that had meant so much to her and her father. The burden of anger was lifted and they had kala ‘ana. Everything was pono. Eleanor sat between Jon and Lyssa like a valued family member. Like the matriarch ready to take charge.
Eleanor still wouldn’t tell Dinah whether she had, in fact, met with Patrick Varian and bargained with him over a “box of papers” and a set of bones. She preferred to keep that huna. And Dinah still didn’t know if what had happened on Mauna Loa with the pueos was natural or supernatural, whether Avery had disturbed a nest or Eleanor had summoned the guardian spirits of her ancestors. Dinah had, however, done some research on the bird. It was a native species of the short-eared owl. Its habitat ranged from lowland pastures to mountain forests up to eight thousand feet. It did like to nest on the ground, but it was mostly a daytime hunter and nearly always silent. Dinah filed the experience away in the “Stranger Things” compartment of her brain.
Steve had brought Jessica the Mormon to the wedding as his date. Dinah tried not to interpret this as a message to go pound taro root. Maybe Steve’s makamaka relationship with Jon put her out of bounds. It was probably just as well. She didn’t want to hurt Jon’s feelings either, although she wished he weren’t quite so earnest and vulnerable and brimming over with oxytocin. She had given him fair warning. A relationship that might lead to the possibility of Claude Ann as her mother-in-law could never be consummated.
Jon hadn’t taken her decision to invite Vince Langford as her date at all well. But the spirit of ho’oponopono was upon her and she felt moved to include Vince in the party. Also, she still had a few unanswered questions to put to him.
Her invitation had so surprised and delighted Vince that he’d fallen all over himself apologizing for giving her the third degree and for his failure to make it up the Mauna Loa Road on the night of the quake. She was actually starting to like the guy, especially since he had turned forensics loose on Avery’s car and they’d found traces of Varian’s blood and Raif’s, too. It now seemed likely that Avery had murdered Raif somewhere else and moved the body to Kalapana to dump it.
Dinah took a bottle of Cristal out of the ice bucket nearest at hand. Raif had almost ordered a bottle of Cristal that first night at the Olopana. She wondered if Xander had chosen it as a remembrance. “More champagne, Vince?”
“Sure. I’m off duty.”
She poured him another fluteful. “Did you go to Avery’s funeral?”
“I went. And you don’t have to get me pickled to talk about the case.”
She laughed. He was as cynical as she was. “Was his daughter Tess there?”
“No. It seems she’s hied off to Macau. Her agency doesn’t know when to expect her back in the office. No reason for her to leave the country on my account. I had a few questions about her boyfriend, nothing we can’t figure out for ourselves. Far as I’m concerned, the case is wrapped up in a bow.”
“But Tess and Raif were blackmailing Xander. Can’t you extradite her for that?”
“Xander’s the only witness against her. Unless he files a claim, it’ll remain a private matter. Nothing we can hold her on.”
The afternoon sun streamed through the open-air beach house and the glistening blue waters of the Pacific seemed to stretch into infinity. Da Riddum Bruddahs had picked up the tempo and Xander twirled Claude Ann around the dance floor. He wouldn’t file a claim against Tess. There was nothing she could do to him now and prosecuting her would only prolong the bad feelings that all of the Garsts would rather forget.
Dinah said, “I remember the way Raif looked when he drove away from the airport that day in Hilo. He fired a finger pistol at me and when he saw Avery, he did the same. I wonder now if it was a signal and they had already agreed to meet somewhere.”
“Probably. We’ve searched Wilhite’s office and his house and didn’t find any traces of Raif’s blood, but we’ll keep looking. Never have it said that Hawaii Five-O isn’t thorough.”
“Speaking of thorough, I’ve been wondering how Avery made Raif’s phone ring inside my purse. If he erased all the data, would it still ring?”
“One of the techies in forensics says the subscriber identity memory card wasn’t erased. Whether that was by design or because of some bug in the software, he can’t say.” Vince essayed a sincere expression. “You know, I never seriously thought that you were the one who offed Raif.”
“Of course, not. You merely offered me refuge in one of your lovely Hawaiian prisons if I confessed.” She laughed and so did he.
Dinah was glad to see that even Lyssa was smiling. She seemed to have spent all of her anger and grief and Dinah didn’t think she would throw her life away as recklessly as her mother had done. Not with Eleanor watching over her. It was all well and good if the spirits of your dead ancestors came flying when you were in trouble, but Dinah had to believe that a live guardian spirit was better than a dead one.
The blue waters of the Pacific Ocean glistened into infinity and Dinah drank in the beauty. A month ago, she had arrived in Hawaii a newcomer, a malihini without a clue, and now she felt like an oldtimer, practically a native. Wherever she went from here, she knew she would return, if not to stay, at least periodically.
The band announced a break and Xander stopped by Dinah’s chair and set a small box on the table in front of her. “When Claude Ann told me you’d lost the earrings she gave you, I had another pair made. A souvenir to remind you of all the trouble you’ve gone through with us and for us.”
“Oh, my…You shouldn’t have.”
He patted her on the shoulder and hurried off after Claude Ann. Dinah opened the box and held up the shiny strands of Pele’s tears. Across the table, Jon erupted in laughter.
Eleanor got up and walked around to Dinah’s side. “Come. We talk story.”
Dinah left her shoes under the table and followed Eleanor to a quiet corner. “Don’t keep me in suspense, Eleanor. Are there really bones on Uwahi?”
“Maybe, maybe not. If they’re there, maybe it’s mo bettah they stay buried. Like you Seminoles bury the hatchet when you make peace, eh? I’ll bury my bones. I won’t try to stop Jarvis. What happens, happens.”
“All the same,” said Dinah, “I hope they don’t build that casino.”
Eleanor lifted her plumeria lei to her nose, took a deep breath, and let it fall. “I’ve been thinking about you. You need a life goal.”
“You must have been talking to Phoebe.”
“There’s a position available in my department for a researcher. It’s yours if you want it. You stay and I’ll take the curse off those earrings.”
“That would be a relief.”
“Anyway, you’d like ethnobotany.”
“I appreciate the offer, Eleanor, but I don’t think so. My degree is in cultural anthropology. I’ve been thinking I should go back to Emory and finish my thesis.”
“Ethnobotany, that’s culture plus botany. My kaula, she had a dream about you. She saw a train, a green-eyed dog, an iceberg, and a box of seeds. I think you’re going to need to know something about botany.”
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