The Green Room (6 page)

Chapter Ten

Storm didn't even think about checking the messages on her cell phone until the next morning, when she went home to grab a bite of breakfast and feed Fang. The cat had already let herself in the kitchen pet door. She was sitting in front of the refrigerator when Storm walked through the front door, and she made scolding noises to let Storm know she'd been waiting.

Storm rooted through the refrigerator, sniffed at a carton of milk, which still smelled okay, and dumped the remainder of some fishy stuff in Fang's dish. She ground coffee beans, started a pot of coffee, and checked her answering machine while she waited for the coffee to finish brewing. There was a message from Ben Barstow, and when Storm called the number he'd left, she got his voice mail. She left her cell number and figured she'd catch up to him later.

By the time she sat down, dug into her cereal, and started the crossword puzzle in the morning paper, Fang had finished her fish and jumped into Storm's lap. This not only obliterated Storm's view of the paper, the cat's feet dug into her thighs. Storm got up and dumped the remainder of her breakfast into the cat's dish.

“This is why you're huge,” she told Fang, and washed out her dishes.

Storm kept a bathing suit and beach towel in the trunk of her '72 Volkswagen Beetle, and she decided to take her board, which fit if she put the top down. This meant that she would only take the freeway from her Kahala cottage as far as the Likelike Highway to Kaneohe. There, she'd get on Kahekili Highway to Kamehameha and wind along the coast through Ka‛a‛awa, Hau‛ula, and Lā‛ie, where the Brigham Young University-Hawaii campus was located. It was her favorite route, more scenic than the faster-moving H-2 freeway up through the center of the island.

As an afterthought, Storm threw some toiletries and a change of clothes in a duffle, and added dry cat food to Fang's bowl. The cat looked up at her with round yellow eyes.

“Don't eat it all at once, or you're going to have to catch mice.”

Fang kept looking at her, and Storm reached down and stroked her. “If I spend the night, I'll call Robbie to come over and play with you.” The cat made a satisfied murrrp noise, and rubbed against Storm's legs.

***

Storm's phone rang as she was negotiating a sharp curve through Kahulu‛u. She downshifted the Beetle, followed the car in front of her around the heavily shaded bend in the road, shifted into third, and picked up her phone.

“Storm,” Ben's voice said. “Can you talk?”

“Briefly, I'm driving.”

“Okay. It's probably not a big deal, but I thought I'd tell you that your cousin didn't come home Monday night after surfing. His girlfriend is a friend of mine. She asked me Tuesday morning if I'd seen him. They were supposed to get together.”

“She called you?”

“No, I went out to Chun's Reef for dawn patrol. She was there with a couple of friends.”

“What about last night?”

“I don't know. I went to Chun's again this morning, but didn't see her. I heard she was at Outside Himalayas, though. That was some big surf,” he added, “and people are talking about a new tow-in contest.”

“Doesn't sound like she's too upset. What do you think?”

“She was probably looking for him. She's not the type to let on she's worried.” Ben paused. “Um, he kind of has a reputation.”

Surprise, surprise, Storm thought.

“But he's been seeing Sunny for a couple months now. I mean, without messing around. That's why I thought I'd see if you knew anything.” Ben paused. “People talk and she may have heard, but I didn't want to bring it up.”

“You probably know more about his friends than I do,” Storm said. “Look, I'm on my way out to Haleiwa to see your mom, so I'll give you a call this afternoon.”

Storm ended the call and gripped the steering wheel. Ben had seemed more concerned that Nahoa's girlfriend would find out Nahoa was cheating than he was about his disappearance. And the girlfriend was out surfing, but then again, that's where she figured she might see him.

His friends might not be losing sleep, but Storm felt a niggling anxiety. Few of the people who'd seen the
lei o manō
on Saturday knew what it meant in terms of Hawaiian legend. They looked at it merely as an artifact. At the most, a challenge. But the person who sent it knew it was a threat.

And a threat is still a threat—maybe a worse one—if the person on the receiving end doesn't recognize it as such. Storm wondered about surfer Ken Matsumoto's death. As a Japanese national, would he or any of his friends know if he'd received a threat by way of an artifact? A half mile down the road, Storm pulled into Ka‛a‛awa Beach Park and dialed the Honolulu Police Department.

“Detective Brian Chang, please,” she said to the receptionist.

She considered it a stroke of luck that Brian, Leila's boyfriend, picked up his line.

“Hey, Storm. Wish I could have been with you this weekend. Robbie's talked of nothing else. What's up?”

“I wish you could have been, too.” Storm could hear the rattle of papers in the background, as if someone were giving him forms to sign. “Brian, did Leila tell you about that package my cousin received?”

“Robbie did. A club with shark's teeth. One of those Hawaiian warrior things, I gather. Robbie said it was cool.”

“Nahoa handled it pretty well, and he didn't let on that it could be a threat.”

“A threat?” The background paper shuffling ceased.

Storm took a deep breath. “Do you know if Ken Matsumoto got any packages before he died?”

“I don't think so. It would be in the report, which I've read, but I'll check with the officers who handled it.”

“Could you tell me about Ken Matsumoto's injuries?”

“What do you want to know? It was classified an accidental death.”

“Did he drown because a series of waves held him under water too long?”

“As I remember, he had a head injury, but let me get back to you. One of the officers on the scene plays rugby with me and I have to talk to him about practice, anyway.”

Storm's phone rang about fifteen minutes later and she turned into the huge parking lot at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Lā‛ie. Brian Chang had talked to his colleague about Matsumoto's injuries.

“No packages.” Brian sounded relieved. “He had extensive head injuries, consistent with the material in the reef where he'd been surfing, and a V-shaped contusion, probably from his surfboard. His family is devastated, but satisfied with that explanation.”

“So he drowned?”

“Right, there are caves and shallow coral beds out there.” She heard Brian get up and close the door. “The ME reported that the contusion probably would have killed him if his lungs hadn't filled with water first.”

Storm could hear a note of something, dissatisfaction perhaps, in his voice. She waited him out, and he continued.

“He had other injuries, too.” Brian's chair creaked, as if he leaned back in it. “Both femurs were broken, all three major arm bones. One knee and one hip were dislocated, plus—and this is what bugs me—he'd had two back molars pulled. His gums were still bloody.”

Despite the hot sun, a chill crept over Storm.

“He must have been one tough SOB. I'd have been home with an ice pack.”

Storm doubted that, as she once saw Brian play a game of rugby with a cracked wrist, but she kept quiet, knowing that he hadn't finished.

“It's pretty unusual to see so many broken bones, though the surfers we talked to say it could have happened if he got pounded inside one of those caves. The washing machine effect, I guess.”

“And the teeth?”

“We asked around and one of his friends reported that he'd been to the dentist that day.”

“He had a lot of friends?”

“He moved here six months ago from Japan. He apparently was pretty cocky, but no one seemed to have any malice for him. He hadn't been around that long.”

Brian sighed and his chair creaked again. “Storm, there's no evidence of foul play. The case is closed. In the last four days we've had an eleven-year-old girl disappear from her Kailua school yard and a tourist stabbed by a prostitute in Waikiki. We've got our hands full of ongoing crises.”

“I see,” Storm said, and she did. “Thanks, Brian.”

“You bet. I'll see you soon.”

Storm looked both ways when she pulled back onto the highway, but her thoughts were on Ken Matsumoto and Nahoa. Matsumoto's death was sad, but not particularly suspicious. Brian would have told her if he'd received a package like Nahoa's, or been threatened in some other way, but she wondered if he might not know about it.

She vowed to herself that right after her meetings with Mrs. Shirome and Stephanie, she'd talk to a few of Nahoa's friends and check on who his girlfriends might be. It would be a relief to find out Nahoa was shacked up with a cutie in Waianae.

Storm had to put her worries aside for a while. Mrs. Shirome was delighted to see Miles Hamasaki's niece and so grateful for the personal visit that she put out plates of mango bread, star fruit, coconut manju, and enough iced tea to float an armada. The frail, white-haired lady talked story for nearly a half hour and Storm had three of the flaky manju pastries and two big glasses of iced tea before she could convince Mrs. Shirome to get out the will. The older woman was changing the primary beneficiary of a trust from her daughter to her grandson, at her daughter's request. Both were worried about the boy's future, as he wanted to be a professional surfer.

Storm tried, with great tact, to advise an educational fund, but the old woman had made up her mind. Because Storm was leery of getting grease spots from the manju on the documents and she was having difficulty concentrating with Mrs. Shirome's ongoing chatter, she ended up slipping the papers into her brief case to read more carefully later. She told Mrs. Shirome she'd have them rewritten and sent to her for a signature.

The older woman was a pleasure, as long as Storm didn't let herself feel pressured by the fact she'd told Stephanie Barstow that she'd be in the restaurant around lunchtime. But they hadn't named a specific hour, and she needed to spend time with this client, too. When Mrs. Shirome wasn't refilling Storm's iced tea, she would tap Storm's arm with a shaking forefinger to tell her another anecdote about Uncle Miles, which amused Storm.

By the time she left Mrs. Shirome's, it was one-thirty. Upon her arrival at Damien's, the popular seafood restaurant where Stephanie worked, Storm crammed her car between a double-wheeled pickup and a Hummer, grateful that the old VW was small and already had plenty of door dings. The outside seating area was crowded with sunburned tourists huddled under Cinzano umbrellas, and Storm picked her way over and around beach bags and snorkeling equipment.

Stephanie was hovering inside the door. “Where have you been?” She twisted her hands together.

“What's wrong?”

“Let's sit down.” Stephanie gestured to a table in a corner of the restaurant. The interior of the place was dark, especially compared to the glare outside, and delightfully cool.

She pulled out a chair. “Can I get you something to drink? A sandwich?”

“No thanks.”

Stephanie dropped into the chair across from Storm, rearranged the silverware, and refolded the napkin. “Marty's in town.”

“He's not threatening you, is he?”

“No, but he's seen Ben.”

“Ben told you?”

“No, someone saw Marty at Food Town. When I confronted Ben, he finally admitted Marty had called.”

“Ben didn't want to tell you about it? Wasn't he worried for you?”

Stephanie shrugged. “I don't think Marty's going to come beat me up. He's the manipulative type, and his threats are more psychological.” She chewed on her lip. “He'll use them on Ben.”

Her eyes flitted around the room. “Have you heard about the big tow-in surf meet?” She met Storm's gaze for the first time. Storm shrugged. She wasn't sure she wanted to reveal yet that she'd heard about it from Ben.

Stephanie plowed ahead. “Marty and this old friend of his are the promoters. They're putting the event together.” Storm began to guess why stress was rolling off the woman in waves.

“You know what I mean by a tow-in, don't you?” she hissed. “The surf's so big they have to use jet skis to get the surfers out to the waves.” Her voice got louder with her distress. “There's a huge swell predicted for this week, continuing through the weekend. Thirty to thirty-five, Hawaiian style. That means it could get as high as fifty foot faces.” Stephanie's voice broke. “And the holding period started already.”

“What's a holding period?”

Stephanie swallowed. “It's what the promoters do to make certain they have a specific break reserved for a surf meet, when they expect the surf to be the best. It's supposed to keep other surfers away.”

“And Ben?” But Storm already knew the answer.

Stephanie opened her mouth, but no sound came out on the first try. “His dad offered him a spot in the lineup,” she finally croaked.

Storm took a deep swallow from the water glass that sat on the table. “What did Ben say?”

She could understand Stephanie's fear; participating in a contest like this was to flirt with death. And here it was, being run by the boy's estranged father.

“Not much. He's afraid I'll have a fit.” Her eyes filled with tears. “So he acted nonchalant, which is how I've always known he's hiding something. Then he told me about the sponsorships.”

“Sponsorships?”

Stephanie nodded. “There are sponsors, big companies who want their products marketed by participants in the meet. The sponsorships can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Plus, it's a way to make a name for himself.” Her mouth twisted wryly. “He could quit bagging groceries.”