The House at Sandalwood (26 page)

“What on earth is
mokihana
? It sounds like a native curse, and we have enough of those already.”

Nelia explained that berries found on Kaiana Island were strung, along with fragrant
maile
leaves, to make as good a freshener as could be found.

“At least, that’s what my family uses. Mrs. Stephen has some in the dresser drawers and in her own closets. We might use them and then I could make some more before she gets back from the hospital.”

We went up to Deirdre’s bedroom, the large pink one that she apparently did not use, and there were leis of
maile
leaves and the scented berries hanging in her closet as Nelia predicted. I took them out for immediate use.

“There are some in her dressing-table drawers,” Nelia called to me as I was leaving. “Fresh ones that Mrs. Nagata brought over a month ago,” she explained. “They’ll do the job.”

“Fine.” I didn’t want to remain here too long. With Deirdre away I preferred not to be wandering around among her personal things.

I was out in the hall when Nelia called me back. “Miss Cameron? In the dresser drawer here. A letter. It’s sealed.”

“Then don’t touch it. Coming?”

She came along, shaking her head. “It’s addressed to Mrs. Stephen all right, and I know that writing. Why would that girl write to Mrs. Stephen?”

I scarcely heard her. I had just identified the voices of Michiko and Ito Nagata downstairs and went to meet them. Although they obviously had come here on their way to pay a condolence call in the village, they were excited about something else, some secret. As we went around the house examining the damage done by the storm, Michiko looked at Ito.

“We should keep it a great mystery. She will appreciate it more.”

“What mystery? Appreciate what?”

They wandered around the living room with me, obviously not too impressed by the way I had repaired the damage and refurnished the room. Ito was too polite to be honest, but since decorating was Michiko’s job, she shuffled things around and managed to change the entire look of the room by the most minute details. Meanwhile, I followed, feeling gauche and untalented, and also dying of curiosity.

“Ito, what is it? Please don’t keep me in suspense.”

He watched his wife rearrange the hanging of two matted water colors showing Sandalwood in earlier days, and asked me if I knew that I was important enough to be spied upon. I felt a sudden depression.

“Ito, no! Not the police! I’m on parole. I haven’t done anything. They must know that.”

While Ito was denying any such idea, Michiko said with amused impatience, “Ito, my love, I hope you don’t have to convey bad news very often. That was a terrible way to phrase it. No, Judy. It’s something you and we and Steve are all in together. We’ve got a detective watching us.”

“But that is ridiculous. What could the police possibly—?” Ito put in, “That’s just the thing, Judy. It isn’t the police. It’s a private detective. We are being honored by the attentions of a genuine private eye.”

“Mr. Moto!”

They looked at me. Michiko laughed. “Perfect description. So you’ve noticed him too.”

“He followed William Pelhitt and me when we were at Ka-hala the other day. How did you find out about this business?”

Ito said proudly, “That was Michiko’s trick. The night I came over to attend the birth of Kamehameha Kalanimoku, Michiko followed me.”

“But why, for heaven’s sake? Don’t tell me you thought Ito was up to some shenanigans!”

Michiko gave him one of those sloe-eyed looks, half laughing, half sinister, that I had always admired. “He’d better not try any. The truth is, I saw that creepy little penguin the day we splurged up and down Waikiki. Then, night before last, as Ito drove away from the house, I caught a glimpse of the fellow again in the car lights. He was parked across the street in a little cream-colored Toyota. So I slipped on sandals and took my car and putt-putted off toward the airport. I figured if he followed Ito, he would be there. Sure enough. He missed Ito’s plane by a hair, and I watched him. He telephoned. Then he took the last flight to Kaiana.”

Ito put in with husbandly pride and some amusement, “She bought a scarf, took off her belt, looked as unlike our
Vogue
-ish Michiko as you can imagine, and followed my—I think TV calls it a ‘tail’.”

“Only he was no longer tailing my sinister husband,” Michiko announced, excitement creeping into her calm, self-reliant manner. “He was on his way to meet someone.”

I almost scared myself by my shout: “The man who hired him! And I know who it was. Berringer said he saw you night before last. He tried to make it sound sinister.” They were properly impressed by my guesswork. I added, “Actually, it was the other way around. You saw Berringer. I should have guessed. The old troublemaker tried to make me believe— God knows what. May I get you some breakfast? Or is it lunch?”

“Neither, I’m afraid, Judy.” Ito’s suddenly apologetic manner puzzled me until Michiko explained brusquely. “It’s the funeral. Ito thinks we are betraying you and the Giles family, but it isn’t a matter of choice. The Mokus have been friends of my family since the years of Queen Liliuokalani. As a matter of fact, they were very good to us Japanese and Koreans when we came.”

“Michi—” Ito began, but I said I understood. I had never before heard her speak in such a way about her people, or heard her refer to her ancestors this way, as if she were part of them and they part of her today. She was so very modern in appearance and speech, one was inclined to forget her ancient roots elsewhere.

“You are sure they would resent me?” I asked as the Nagatas left Sandalwood. But they didn’t even stop to answer me. I did understand, but I was sorry. Sorry most of all for Stephen. I was sure he felt deeply the break between the Hawaiian village and Sandalwood.

I went out into the clearing after the Nagatas left the house. The men in the sacred grove had finished cleaning up and were beginning to dig out stumps and unwanted tangles of vines and bushes. I heard them talking about the damage to the papaya orchards from the storm, which meant more problems for the islanders, whatever their race. Stephen saw the Nagatas as they were leaving. He said something to the foreman and crossed the grove to the village trail. I knew what he was going to do and that he would be disappointed. It might even be dangerous for him.

He stopped the Nagatas, and I could see that they were trying to dissuade him. I turned away. It was awful to spy on him. Besides, I was thinking far too much about him. A few minutes later, making the beds with Nelia Perez, I heard Stephen come racing up the stairs two at a time and into his bedroom. Nelia motioned to me.

“My father says he’s bull-headed. But I like that in a man.”

“Sometimes it can be troublesome. I’m sure he doesn’t realize how the Mokus feel. It might have been different if the work on the grove hadn’t started again, so soon.”

Out in the hall Stephen’s voice called my name sharply. “Judith!”

I dropped a pillow out of its pillowcase and went into the hall, followed by Nelia’s eye-rolling pantomime which said, plainer than words, “Now, you’re in trouble,” or perhaps, more generously, “Now
we
are in trouble.”

I approached him and said calmly, “Yes, sir.”

He had just grabbed up a dark jacket and was putting it on in the hall. The color gave him a strangely subdued look, but there was no mistaking his scowl.

“Judith, I wish you wouldn’t discuss me with the help.”

“You must know the help always discusses an employer.”

“This is something you don’t understand, believe me. The Nagatas may think they are close to the Hawaiians but they haven’t lived with them for a hundred years, as we have. We understand each other.” His brief burst of temper had already faded, and I probably should have left it there. Long ago I had gotten into endless trouble minding other people’s business. But I tried once more.

“Stephen, you have a moral right. Even a responsibility. I don’t deny that. Only, all this can’t mean much when they don’t want anyone from Sandalwood. They blame the invasion of their sanctuary for Kekua’s death. And you’ve gone back to work on that sanctuary.”

“My God, Judith! You’ve been through it. That grove is exactly like any other acreage on the island. There isn’t an inch of it that has any sacred importance, except in their superstitions. And when we break for lunch, I intend to go to the village, to make an appearance and show them the Giles family cares about their loss, cares about that poor child who died.” He reached out to touch my hand, a friendly motion to show that all was forgiven. Unfortunately, the whole impact of his argument hit me, and I pointed out, feeling a little sick at the necessity. “Don’t you hear yourself—the enormous gulf between
you
and
they
! A minute ago you included the Gileses and the village as
we.
But every move you make is against their interests and their beliefs.”

“Their interests! God Almighty! If the Sandalwood
heiau
isn’t going to bring them prosperity, a chance to sell their handiwork and their fruits and even their beef cattle ... Judith, keep out of this. I know what I am doing. Believe me!”

I was sure he hadn’t the faintest idea of their real feelings, but I nodded. I felt so shaken I couldn’t speak. I knew he was right in one sense. I had been interfering. But I had an excuse, which was no excuse, under the circumstances. I loved him.

He went down the stairs. When he reached the landing he slowed, nearly stopped, then went on. I wondered if he was remembering last night when he dropped the candle there and we both fumbled for it. And afterward, when he kissed me.

No matter. As soon as Deirdre returned, I would find an excuse and leave Sandalwood, eventually leaving the Islands as well. There had to be some legal provision to get me out of here without violating my parole.

“Well, he’s gone,” Nelia came out into the hall, swinging a pillowcase over one shoulder. “She’s lucky, that niece of yours. In a way.” I must have stiffened, because she added in a slightly flurried voice, “to have Sandalwood and the estate, you know.”

Having worked with me all morning, she had earned herself a break. She suggested we take our lunch down to a cove west of the river’s outlet. “We can swim in the clearest waters of the Islands. And you know how clear most of the waters are around here!”

I thought of the burial service that would be taking place at the other end of the island in a few hours. It seemed insensitive for us to be swimming and picnicking at such a time, but the day was hot and muggy. We had been working for some time, and maybe no one at the village would know. I weakened and we sneaked into Mr. Yee’s kitchen while the Gileses’ chef was taking his noon siesta. I found that picnics in Hawaii were a good deal more healthy and less standardized than the sandwich-and-thermos lunches on the mainland.

We found bananas, brown and huge, but not overripe, and a pineapple already cut into long, delicious sticks. We took two sticks, wrapped them and added a couple of rolls Mr. Yee had just baked. For at least an hour that day I felt free of the pinching, nagging worries which had made my stay at Sandalwood oppressive. The little cove was inside the long coral reef and there was coral underfoot, but at Nelia’s suggestion I borrowed a pair of Deirdre’s old, light beach sandals that she wore when she swam here. By the time I had swum out to the reef and then over to the copper light on the boat landing and back, I felt like a new woman in that buoyant water.

Nelia and I were eating our lunch under the shade of a thick, twisted Ohia tree that looked a hundred years old, but Nelia laughed when I remarked on its age.

“They look like that when they’re pups.”

“Nothing in Hawaii is quite what it seems,” I said, growing philosophical under the spell of the humid air and the incredible aquamarine clarity of the water before it crawled up the beach in its lacey patterns of foam.

After a little while, Nelia remarked thoughtfully, “I don’t know but what
malahinis
are wrong when they think we are different. People turn out to be just about what they seem. It’s just that they are trying hard to be something else, maybe. But —take love and hate. My boyfriend says he’s had times when he hated me. After a quarrel, you know. He couldn’t hate me so much though, if he didn’t actually love me just as much. So if you weigh up both sides of people’s actions, you find they pretty well balance. Take poor Kekua. If she’d been having a big love affair, which she wasn’t—I’d know—then it would be logical that the man might have loved her enough to kill her if he couldn’t have her. That’s if he loved her enough. But love isn’t what made Kekua tick.”

I sat up on one sand-covered elbow. “What made you say that? Was there a lover at all in her life?”

She waved away the notion with scorn. “Whatever killed Kekua, it wasn’t any love affair. But between you and me, little old Kekky was doing all right in the dollar department.”

I watched a big outrigger canoe sailing across the bay, its mainsail a gaudy red and gold, but I was thinking of Nelia’s words.

“You think she was blackmailing someone?”

“That’s putting it pretty crudely. All I’m saying is that people are true to their character. If they love something, they can hate just as hard, but the love is still there. And the same goes for greed. Greedy people don’t change. When I was a lot younger, they sent Kekua to a school in Kaiana City one time. That’s where I met her. She found out I’d driven to the pool on the windward coast with my boyfriend instead of going to the movie house. I had to pay her a dollar a week to keep her from telling my pa, until her family decided to take her home. They didn’t like our
haole
ways.
Our
ways, mind you.”

Beyond the bright outrigger a prop plane was headed out over Kaiana Bay toward Ili-Ahi. It did not surprise me too much, since my mind was on other things, but Nelia pointed out its importance. She got up, shaking white sand off the deep, marine blue suit she wore.