I'm Kona Love You Forever (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series Book 6) (9 page)

“Nice
of you to notice.”

“
Darn right I noticed,” he said. “Get over here and let me show you how much I love coming home to you.”

He took me in his arms and I wanted to forget we
had less than half an hour to get to the airport.

***

The flight to Kona is only forty minutes long but throughout the trip the views are spectacular. There’s a good reason why Hawaii Island is called “Big.” It has almost double the land mass of the other major islands, O’ahu, Maui, Kaua'i, Moloka’i and Lana’i, put together. The entire island, all four-thousand square miles, is Hawaii County. It’s the largest county—area-wise—in the entire United States but it has less than two-hundred thousand residents. That’s roughly fifty people per square mile, which leaves lots of open space. A good portion of the island is relatively new, geologically-speaking, covered not in dirt or trees but by freshly cooled lava.

From the plane window I watched as we climbed over the top of Mauna Kea with its telescopes and observatories. Since it was winter the
ground was splotched with large patches of snow. Winter often brings light dustings of snow to Mount Haleakala on Maui, but Mauna Kea gets so much people actually ski on its slopes. There are no lifts so you have to drive up and ski down. I don’t know anyone who’s done it, but Hatch said a few guys at his station brag about skiing Hawaii in the morning and then hitting the beach in the afternoon.

“So, what’s the plan?” Hatch said.

“First thing, I’m going to check into what happened to Lili’s birth certificate.”

“How long
do you think it’ll take?”

“Couple of hours.”

“And then what?” he said.

“And then we can do anything we want. We’ve got
two full days.”

“I’ve never been here before,” Hatch said. “I’d like to look around a little. And…” He took my hand and kissed my knuckles. “I’d
also like to just spend time with you. No clocks, no agenda, no fire bells going off.”

“Sounds great to me.”

We landed and picked up our luggage from a cart they pulled up next to the plane. The airport was open-air, like Maui’s Kahului Airport used to be, with a fresh breeze blowing in from the ocean.

We went to the rental car counter and Hatch
dug out his Hawaii driver’s license. “What’s the best
kama’aina
deal you got going?” he said. “Oh, and you’ll want to see this, too.” He flashed his keychain with a tag sporting the Maui Fire and Rescue emblem. The emblem had the fire service Maltese cross along with his last name and employee number.

The
clerk looked like she was still in high school. Her glossy black hair was pulled into a waist-length ponytail and she had dimples in her tawny cheeks. The dimples deepened as she looked up at Hatch and flashed him a smile.

“You’re a fireman?” she said.

“Yeah.”

She glanced over at me as if hoping I’d ask where the ladies’ room was and give her
some “alone time” with her new-found hero.

“
I can give you a real good deal,” she said. “Will you be the only driver?”

“No, my friend here will also be
driving.”

Friend
? Seriously? And then I realized it would probably have been awkward for Hatch to call me his “girlfriend.” My gender was obvious, and to this kid, a couple of mid-thirty-somethings like us probably fell in the “senior citizen” category. At least he hadn’t referred to me as his “lady friend.”

“
Okay,” she said. She pecked on her computer. “We’ve got a Jeep Wrangler I can let you have for fifty a day.”

“Fifty bucks?” said Hatch. “That the best you can do?” He eyed the next counter down, where a strawberry-blond
clerk at a competing rental agency was giving him a come-hither look.

“It’s normally almost eighty,” said Dimples.

“Make it forty total and you’ve got a deal.”

“
But the taxes and airport fees are more than that,” she said.

Hatch put his hands flat on the counter, as if about to push himself away. “Consider it a public service donation.”

“I can’t do that with a Jeep. But I could probably give you a compact car.”

Hatch looked at me. I nodded.

“Fine,” he said. “But the forty’s gotta include everything. No add-ons.”

The dot matrix printer behind her started chunking out a rental agreement.

“It’s an inclusive rate,” Dimples said. “But you’ll have to fill it up before bringing the car back. Get a receipt. Otherwise we’re gonna have to charge you eight-twenty a gallon.”

We went to the numbered parking space and found the car. Cars didn’t get any more
non-descript than the car sitting there. A sliver-grey Ford Focus with a grey cloth interior and dozens of dings and scratches adorning the door panels, bumpers and hood. The windshield was so smeared it looked as if it’d been wiped off with a greasy hamburger wrapper.

“
Why do people beat on these cars so much?” Hatch said, fingering a particularly glaring door ding.

He documented every dent and mark on the rental agreement and handed it to the security guard as we drove out
of the lot.

“
So, here we are,” I said. There’s no mistaking Kona for Maui. The area around the Kona airport is about as bare as it gets. Red dirt, chunks of lava rock lining the road, and a horizon of flat ocean to the west that stretches for thousands of miles with no other islands in sight. People have likened the North Kona area to the moon, but it would have to be a moon with warm humid air, a well-maintained highway, and a spectacular rugged coastline.

“Yeah.
Where to first?” Hatch said.

“
Let’s drop our stuff at the B and B and then see what I can dig up on this birth certificate. The sooner I get that handled, the sooner we can start relaxing.”

“
Do you want me to go with you? Because I was hoping to start relaxing at about…” He checked his watch. “Eleven-thirty-two. Exactly twenty minutes from now.”

“
I’ll be fine on my own. Tell you what. Why don’t we check in and then I’ll drop you off at the beach? I’ll keep in touch and let you know when I’m done.”

Our B & B was cozy
, with seven rooms clustered around a large palm-studded courtyard. The room we were given was decorated in plantation style, featuring an enormous canopied bed with thick dark wood posts and yards and yards of sheer ivory fabric flowing from headboard to footboard and then cascading on down to the floor.

“Whew,” said Hatch. “That
bed looks like it came from ‘Little Shop of Horrors.’ I hope it isn’t hungry.”

We unpacked and headed back outside.

“I’m going to ask around and see if I can locate the woman who’s listed as the mother on Lili’s current birth certificate,” I said. “The one whose baby died. Hopefully, after all this time, she’ll be willing to talk about it.”

I slid into the driver’s seat. I had to adjust the seat forward about four clicks since I
’m eight inches shorter than Hatch. “Which beach would you like to check out first?”

The
beaches in the area of Kailua-Kona turned out to be rocky and shallow. We saw nothing to compare to Maui’s Ka’anapali or Makena, just small sandy coves and long stretches of black surf-pounded lava.

“I
’ll probably have to go up north to surf,” said Hatch. “The conditions don’t look so good down here.”

“Th
is is where they start the big ‘Ironman’ triathlon,” I said. “They start the swim right here in Kona Bay. So, maybe you should just take a swim and then relax at a bar or something. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” We shared a quick kiss and as I pulled the car back onto the road I looked in the rearview mirror. Hatch was heading for the water looking as happy as I’d seem him in months.

The first place I stopped was
a small local grocery store. The Gadda da Vida is the pulse-point of Pa’ia. Nearly everyone comes through there at some point in the day, and gossip was a commodity almost as valuable as cash.

The store
I picked in Kailua-Kona was called the “Kona Korner Kash & Karry.” It took me a moment to figure out the name because the sign had one big “K” with each of the other words stacked on top sharing the “K.” Quaint, but definitely hard to read. But aside from the confusing sign, the place could’ve been a clone of the Gadda. It was two stories high, with clapboard siding and a small paned window in the front door. Both stores were painted the same color: a shade of unappetizing yellow-green. I had no idea what the color was called. I remembered how thrilled Farrah had been when she’d found five gallons marked half-price on the hardware store discount table. Maybe the name was “Paint-Mixer’s Error,” or perhaps just, “Oops.” It seemed to be a popular hue.

I went through the door and
, instead of a tinkly bell like Farrah’s, a buzzer went off to alert the proprietor to my presence.  Farrah’s bell was annoying, but it was at least cheery. The buzzer had a grumpy “what do
you
want?” sound.

“Can I help you?” said a tiny dark-skinned woman with thinning
dark hair. She hustled over to check me out and I smiled. Farrah maintained it was important to immediately greet any customers who looked suspicious. She claimed it cut down on shoplifting if she put shifty people on notice she had them in her sights.

“
Mahalo
, I’m here to pick up some beer and snacks,” I said. I suppose I should’ve said “buy” instead of “pick up” but I was pretty sure her beady-eyed glare wouldn’t fail to notice if I tried to sneak out a six-pack under my shirt.

The woman pointed to the refrigerator case in the back. I
pulled out a six-pack of Longboard Lager. In the chips and candy aisle I loaded up on kettle chips,
li hing mui
-flavored peanuts and dried wasabi peas.

“Will that be all?” the woman
said as I unloaded it all on the counter.

I took out my wallet and
pulled out some cash. In the most casual tone I could muster I said, “Do you know if a woman named ‘Lokelani Kaula’ still lives here in Kailua-Kona? I’m from Maui and a friend of mine asked me to look her up.”

“
You mean Loke?” The woman eyed me as if I’d tried to slip her a counterfeit twenty.

“Yeah,
that’s right, Loke. She’d be, oh, about my age, I guess. Mid-thirties.”

“Loke isn’t
a Kaula no more,” said the woman. “She marry that guy, Ray Vick. You know Ray?”

Since I’d already explained I was from Maui, I wondered why she’d think I’d know Loke’s husband but I
figured it wasn’t necessary to point it out. After all, I was asking for her help.

She went on. “You may
a’ heard about him. He owns the big coffee farm down the road. The place called ‘Naturally Kona.’ Ray make a lotta money from that coffee…a
lotta
money.” She shook her head as if the guy had unlocked the secret of spinning coffee beans into gold. But then, with organic Kona coffee selling at upwards of forty to fifty bucks a pound, it was darn close.

“
He and Loke live there?”

“Yeah.
They got a nice place. A
real
nice place.”

She rang me up and I hauled my stuff to the car. The beer was cold so I toyed with the notion of taking it back to the B & B before it got warm,
but then reconsidered. We didn’t have a refrigerator in our room but there was bound to be one in the breakfast room. When I got back from the coffee farm I’d ask if they’d mind holding it for us.

“
Naturally Kona” turned out to be over ten miles away, in Kealakekua. I’d used the GPS on my phone, but still I missed the turnoff from the highway and had to double back. The place was marked with a discreet wooden sign about the size of a garbage can lid. It had been nailed to a fence post at the entrance to a rutted dirt road. The road ran
ma kai
, or toward the ocean, from the highway. I turned down the dirt road and bumped along, feathering the brakes on the steep incline.

A minute later I was passing row after tidy row of coffee trees. The trees weren’t tall, maybe eight or ten feet
at the most. They’d been trimmed to nearly perfect spheres of shiny emerald green leaves. Beneath the trees the ground was grassy, but between the rows the earth had been recently tilled, revealing dark reddish brown soil. The orchard resembled an artist’s rendering of Eden; everything healthy, tidy and vibrant. There was nary a weed or bug in sight.

I drove up
and parked in the gravel lot. A hand-lettered sign that read, “Coffee Tours” pointed to a two-story building on the other side of the lot. It was a barn-like structure painted dark brown with white trim. They’d set up a covered area outside the barn with a sign designating it as the tasting room. The tasting area consisted of a corrugated roof over four long tables. The first table held four stainless-steel air pots alongside stacks of tiny white paper cups. The second table held a display of photos and artifacts showing the Kona coffee growing process. The back two tables were used to showcase a sampling of coffee-themed items for sale. No one was out there, which seemed pretty trusting to me. At the far end of the tasting area, a door marked, “Gift Shop,” led inside the barn.