The House at Sandalwood (21 page)

“Kekua down there. She falls, you think?”

I didn’t know what to do first... Kekua? Logically, it would have been Ingrid Berringer—
she
was the missing girl. But, of course, Kekua had been missing since yesterday. Young, vital Kekua, so used to this island and Sandalwood’s dangers, was much too sure-footed to slip and fall in that way. Yet she had done so. It was an appalling accident. Even from this height it seemed evident that she was dead. No living person could lie in that unnatural, twisted position.

I got Mrs. Mitsushima into a chair at the back of the
lanai
and rushed in to the hall telephone. The Moku family were not on the emergency list but I found a listing that might be helpful:
Village Store—Fred
Kalanimoku
.
I called this number and after an agonizing wait, heard the proprietor’s easy, pleasant voice.

“Can someone call Dr. Ito Nagata to the phone?” I asked, hearing my own voice sounding breathless and panic-stricken.

“Dr. Nagata is on his way to the Sandalwood dock in the jeep. Maybe you will see him on the way. A new Kamehame-ha is born here. You know about that?”

“No. I didn’t. Congratulations. I’m very—happy for everyone.” I didn’t have the courage to tell him about Kekua.

I set the telephone back and called Mr. Yee and Nelia Perez. Mr. Yee was cross because I had interfered with his careful examination of a problem oven. When I told him about Kekua he caught his breath but did not panic or even get excited in any way.

“I will find some of the men in the fields and we will descend the gulch.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Yee. I didn’t know what to do. I was frantic.”

Mr. Yee nodded gravely. “That is understandable. You are a female.”

I was so grateful to him, I let this pass. Then I asked Nelia Perez to take care of the dried linens in the machine, while I went out to catch Ito Nagata who would probably be driven here along the cliff-side road. As I started, Nelia called to me.

“I forgot to say, Miss Cameron, Mr. Stephen just phoned. He was in a big hurry but he wanted you to know Mrs. Stephen is doing
well.”

Thank God for that! Then I remembered the girl’s body in the
flowery pool of the Ili-Ahi gulch. “They had better not come back until Kekua is...” I couldn’t finish. The accident was too horrible, and coming at this time, when Kekua’s family was celebrating one of the happiest occasions, it seemed even more ghastly.

Nelia said, “Mr. Stephen wanted you to know he’d call again this afternoon and talk to you.”

“Don’t tell him about this yet.”

“Okay, if you say so. I can’t figure how she could’ve been so clumsy. Kekua wasn’t like that.” Nelia looked a bit pale, but she was by no means overcome. She made her observation with a kind of scientific detachment.

Tearing my apron off, I hurried across the grass and into the grove. This would cut off several hundred yards from the village trail.

Through the grove I could see half a dozen men and women striding up from the boat landing toward the village. All of them were obviously part Hawaiian or purebloods. They had the deep, polished mahogany skin and the regal, straight-backed walk that made them wear their weight so well. They were all happy, all obviously on their way to meet the newest “Kamehameha.” I noticed that the little individual streams on the way to the village were clogged with debris and one of the foot bridges had been crushed, possibly by the boulder that had fallen and had come to rest against a tree stump.

I passed the bungalow set deepest in the grove, with its back window frames facing out on the clearing at the end of the cliff road. I didn’t have long to wait. The jeep belonging to one of the Hawaiians from the village bounced around the last cliff and into the clearing. Moku himself was at the wheel. I hadn’t counted on that. Ito Nagata was with him. I signaled to him and even before the jeep stopped with a terrific jolt, he leaped out and came to me, taking my hands.

“You look awful, Judy. What has happened? It is Deirdre, I suppose.”

“Yes. That, too.” Moku was grinning down at us. I tried to smile but couldn’t. I whispered, “Moku’s daughter Kekua is at the bottom of the gulch.” It was so bluntly said that Ito started and for a few seconds didn’t quite understand me. He looked exhausted. He had probably been up for the past thirty hours.

“Dead?” he asked as he reached up into the jeep for his surgical bag. I nodded. I couldn’t get any words out. I was too conscious of Kekua’s father sitting there above us with his beautiful smile lighting his dark face. I said abruptly:

“I’ll go back. Can you tell him ... please?”

“You are absolutely certain?”

I wasn’t. I only knew what the little figure had looked like from the height of Sandalwood’s creaking old
lanai
. I started back the way I had come, through the Hawaiians’ sacred grove. Dr. Nagata and Moku took the village path, Moku still avoiding the grove, and yet they reached Sandalwood before I did. I saw that Moku knew. The strong face looked darker, set in a new heaviness. Moku and Ito disappeared around the east side of Sandalwood, where there appeared to be a trail down the side of the falls where the Ili-Ahi river tumbled into the gulch below.

By the time I got to the edge of the steep path up from the landing and got a clear view of that flower-and-rock strewn pool, I saw that Mr. Yee was down there with two other men.

“Be careful!” Nelia Perez called to me from the lower
lanai
.

I stopped abruptly. I was just below the
lanai
on the gulch side of the steep landing path. There was a spot here about two yards long where the shrubbery had broken away and apparently fallen into the pools and jungle vegetation far below.

Before this breakaway in the wall of hibiscus and bougainvillea, the bushes had presented what seemed to be a safety wall. Now that they were gone the place was revealed in all its danger. A few steps more on crumbling soil and anyone might plunge into the gulch, including myself.

As I stood there studying that break in the foliage, I remembered the crackle of branches I had heard in the night. It seemed all the more terrible that I had heard Kekua Moku fall and had turned over and gone back to sleep. But what had she been doing out here last night at—what time was the accident? I hadn’t looked at my clock. I could only guess now.

But the greatest mystery still remained: her reason for wandering
around out here alone at that hour.

Or had she been alone?

Nelia Perez had dropped a clothespin. I looked up. Clearly, she was nervous and her fingers shook but she had gotten on with the work and I found myself equally anxious to try and keep occupied. I went in the door beside the golden shower bushes and helped little Mrs. Mitsushima finish the laundry. When I went out to change the sheets on the lines, I was more nervous and shaken than ever. I couldn’t forget that I must have heard the girl die.

When Ito Nagata and Mr. Yee had finished their examination, Moku quietly insisted on carrying Kekua’s broken body up from the pool. He would not leave Kekua at Sandalwood, even briefly. He did not even enter the house. As I went to Moku to try and express something of our feelings, I heard his deep, powerful voice very clearly: “My wife was right and I was wrong. None in my family should have worked at Sandalwood after the grove was profaned. It is ended. No more friends. We do not set foot on this ground again. Dr. Nagata, you will tell this to Mr. Stephen.”

I tried to speak to him but Moku turned away from me with Kekua in his arms. He had partially wrapped her body in his own bright aloha shirt and Ito Nagata’s jacket, and his massive head was erect. He did not look down at the light burden in his arms. Ito passed me on his way to the telephone in the hall. He gave my shaking hand a quick, understanding squeeze. I wanted to thank him, but I knew I didn’t have to say anything. That too he understood.

Apparently, the Hawaiian villagers themselves were going to arrange for Kekua’s funeral and burial. Ito called a Honolulu number on Oahu instead of the local Kaiana Island people across the bay. I realized that something besides the accident troubled him. I heard him use the title “lieutenant” and wondered if he were talking to the police. Afterward, I started into the dining room across the hall to give him privacy, but he motioned me back as he called Michiko and explained his delay. He told her briefly of Kekua’s death, and I could tell that Michiko was compassionate enough not to ask questions about the tragedy. She asked how I was taking it, and sent a message to me before urging her husband to return home soon. Ito grinned at me faintly before promising.

“I will. I’ll get back and catch up on some sleep, I hope.” He replaced the telephone and added, “She says if things get too rough, don’t forget she wants you to keep my aunts away!”

It was dear of her and I said so. Then I volunteered to get Ito some coffee or whisky, but he opted for tea. He drank the scalding brew as I sat down across from him at the huge dining-room table.

“Ito, you think there’s something odd about Kekua’s fall.” He looked at me over the rim of the cup. I had a curious sense—very unusual because of the relationship between my old friend and me—that he was being deliberately bland and impassive.

“Not in the least. It seems very simple to me. It was Moku who wondered if it were, in fact, an accident. I think the girl got too near the edge, slipped, and fell. Probably she was looking at something below, and ...”

“She couldn’t have been. The bushes covered the view of the gulch at that spot. Anyway, why should she do that at such an hour? It would be dark down there. Nothing to see, even if she were farther along, at the corner of the building.”

Ito studied the tea leaves. “We have no idea what time it happened. We couldn’t know for sure without further study and an autopsy. Real life doesn’t turn up those snap judgments coroners and medical examiners are always making in detective novels.”

I took a breath, hesitated, then blurted out, “But we do know. Actually, we know the very minute she slipped and fell.”

“What!” I had startled him with that.

“What I mean is,” I explained, “I heard it happen, I’m almost sure. But I didn’t look at the clock.”

I had his full attention now. He was taut with suspense. “Did you see anyone ... what did you see exactly?”

I explained then about the sounds and how I had gone back to sleep afterward. “I’m sure that’s when it happened. The only thing is ... what was she doing out near the gulch at that hour?”

He considered my question. “Conceivably, she was returning from a visit across the bay. Before she fell through those bushes, there appeared to be a fairly strong barrier along the path. And no one knew better than the Mokus where it was in the gulch.”

Since he hadn’t brought up a possibility that occurred to me during his questions, I suggested, “Could she have just come from some meeting? With a boyfriend, for instance?”

“Do you have a candidate in mind?”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “I am thinking of one. When Mr. Berringer and William Pelhitt arrived here the first time, she made it pretty obvious she admired Victor Berringer.”

“But he wasn’t even on the island last night. Ilima Moku told me this morning that he had gone over to Kaiana to meet someone.”

I realized that Ito Nagata knew very little about Deirdre’s attack, about our meeting with Berringer in the bay, and the fact that he had returned with me and with William Pelhitt. He knew very little, yet he should have seen Berringer in the Hawaiian village, for I had watched Berringer and Pelhitt take the trail to the village after they left me last night. But had they turned around and retraced their steps, going back to Kaiana? There was the phone call Berringer made while I was with Deirdre and the doctor in that hotel room. Setting up a later meeting, one that was secret from me, and even, perhaps, from Pelhitt? Actually, we couldn’t be sure where anyone was the previous night, except Ito and the expectant mother, of course.

A short time later I walked with Ito Nagata to the boat landing. We were both surprised to see one of the Hawaiian villagers there. He explained to the doctor, “I am to take you across the bay. It was agreed when you came to care for Lili-ha, Queen Ilima’s sister.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it. I’ll just be able to make the afternoon plane.”

The Hawaiian got into a handsome boat that I recognized as the one Berringer had used and criticized the previous night. Ito and I said good-bye.

“We’ll be getting together very soon, Judy. And don’t worry about Deirdre. I’ll drop in at the hospital on my way home.”

“Don’t be silly. You haven’t been to bed since—well— when?”

He smiled. “No. I had two or three hours in the night. They gave me a little place to myself, and I made the most of it. I can sleep anywhere and at any time—always could. Wayne used to say that was why I never made the squad at UCLA. I’d go to sleep in the first huddle.”

He stepped into the boat and I heard him ask the Hawaiian something. The young man’s voice reached me across the water as I turned away.

“I am told to warn you, Dr. Nagata. Sandalwood is under
kapu
. You understand what is
kapu
?”

“Perfectly,” Ito said in a sharp voice. Then the motor started up, and I walked away rapidly.

I didn’t know how things would be if the entire Giles properties were put under a curse. The
kapu
of the old-time Hawaiians was as strong as the more familiar “tabu” that we mainlanders associated with the history of the Polynesians. I thought grimly that Sandalwood had already been bad luck for Stephen’s father, for Deirdre, for Kekua Moku, and possibly even for Ingrid Berringer.

But this was carrying superstition too far. There was no evidence that Miss Berringer had been here more than once or twice. One might as well say Honolulu had been placed under
kapu
, since she had certainly spent more time in the city. Why I should be thinking about Ingrid Berringer when young Kekua had just lost her life so tragically, I didn’t know. Their only connection was Sandalwood... And Sandalwood, like the grove, was under a curse. Was that the connection then? The bad luck had spread to so many I began to ask myself if Ingrid Berringer actually had been murdered, as Berringer obviously believed.

By the time I reached the house, Mrs. Mitsushima, looking very frightened, informed me that Mr. Stephen had called twice and was on the line again, demanding to speak with Miss Cameron.

I ran inside the house which seemed extraordinarily silent in spite of the roar of the falls beyond the far side of the building. I could hear Stephen’s voice through the receiver as I picked up the telephone.