We walked through the cell phone store, a scrap heap of mangled metal and plastic. The acupuncture clinic was the last step before we went back to the station, and I was eager to get it over with.
When I walked into the front room where there was a reception desk and a couple of chairs, I felt something was wrong. The place was too empty. Though the fire had begun behind the clinic, the wind had whipped it down the center before it could cause much damage. There had been no decoration on the walls beyond a couple of cheap posters of Chinese sights, and no personal items at all.
“See the stains on the floor tiles?” Mike asked, pointing to the strange outlines on the floor. “We call them ghost marks. They’re produced by dissolution and combustion of tile adhesive.”
While Mike and Ray surveyed the back of the building, analyzing the point of origin, I nosed around the reception area, looking for the stuff I expected to find-insurance forms, appointment books, and so on. Nothing. I found only couple of ballpoint pens, a deck of worn playing cards, and a box of rubber gloves in one of the drawers. Each of the three small treatment rooms was similarly barren-the remains of some built-in cabinetry, a tiny restroom with a single toilet.
“Looks like they pulled out,” Ray said, coming inside to join me. “You said your dad used to own the center, didn’t you? He know the current owners?”
“I’ll ask him. See what he can give us on all the tenants.”
Mike was behind him. “You know whether the center was profitable?”
“Last year, when my dad was sick, we all sat down and talked about money. Back then, the center was owned by a trust-with my parents as the trustees. No mortgage. My dad called it a cash cow, mostly income and little expense. But he’s getting older, and he wanted to sell off the real estate to make things easier for my mom in case anything happened.”
I took a deep breath. I didn’t like thinking about the possibility that my dad would pass away. I relied on his quiet strength too much.
“He went to a shopping center convention in Arizona and hooked up with some big mainland company that was looking to expand here in the islands. I think he sold them seven properties in all. He walked away with cash, though I’m not sure what kind of financing they have.”
Ray was snooping around the inside of the acupuncture clinic while Mike was taking notes. “My sense is that the new owners are landlords rather than builders,” I continued, “so the place was worth more to them intact, even after the insurance.”
“Good information. Let me know if your dad knows anything else.” He hesitated for a moment. It felt like there was something charged in the air, and it wasn’t just the smoke. “Tell your folks I said hello.”
There it was. That sense that he had once been part of my life. “I will.”
“I’m going to stick around here for a while,” Mike said. “I’ve got a couple of the guys from the fire last night coming over to walk around some more with me, see what they remember. I need to do some calculations, figure out the fire load.”
“What’s that?” Ray asked, coming back to join us.
“The total amount of fuel that might be involved in a fire. I count up what was here in the building that might have been fuel. I figure out the origin of the fire, then I examine that spot for sources of ignition. Then I evaluate those ignition scenarios to see if they’re capable of creating sufficient heat energy to cause the fuel that was present here to burn.”
“We’ll leave all that stuff to you,” I said. “Science was never my strong point. You’ll call us with whatever you find?”
“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” Mike said.
“We’ve already done that,” I said. “And see where it got us.”
BETRAYAL
Once I dropped Ray at UH to meet Julie, I couldn’t stop yawning. But because my father had sold the center only a few months before, I knew his records would be relevant and I wanted to pick up whatever he had. Since his heart surgery, he had closed the office he’d kept in Salt Lake, moving all his paperwork into Haoa’s old bedroom.
“Are you sleeping enough?” my mother asked, as soon as she opened the door. “You look very tired.”
“Just temporary,” I said, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “Shift change.”
“You should go to your room and take a nap. I’ll make up the bed for you.”
“Thanks, but I want to get back home.” I sniffed the air. “What’s cooking?”
“Chicken long rice. I’ll make you a plate.”
My father was sitting at the kitchen table, a pile of papers around him, half-glasses perched on his nose. An old Alfred Apaka CD was playing softly in the background, and he wore a T-shirt proclaiming him the world’s best grandfather. “Aloha, Tutu Al,” I said, kissing the top of his head and calling him by the nickname his grandchildren had given him.
I sat across from him and he started handing me papers. “Lease agreements for the center,” he said. “Liliha kept the records for me, on computer. She’s going to e-mail you the spreadsheet up to the time the center was sold.”
I hadn’t known that Liliha was involved in my dad’s business, but it made sense. She had been a secretary and bookkeeper at KVOL when Lui met her, quitting her job when their first child was born.
My father shook his head. “When this center first opened, I knew every tenant personally. They gave me the rent, in cash, and I gave them a paper receipt. Now, everything is on computer. Some tenants were on automatic pay-the bank sucked the money out of their account, dropped it into mine the first of the month.”
“Made it easier for you,” I said.
He shook his head. “Nothing easy about business these days. That’s why I wanted to sell everything. I won’t be around forever, you know. I want things to be easy for your mother.”
“Enough, old man,” my mother said. “You know the saying, only the good die young. You will live forever.”
I laughed. My parents had bickered like that for as long as I remembered. Mike and I had done the same thing, a combination of our family legacies and all that free-floating testosterone between us.
We talked for a while, and I kept yawning, even as I devoured the shredded chicken and the short, gooey noodles. Finally I couldn’t stay any longer, and I gathered the papers up, kissed my parents, and got into my truck.
Only by blasting a CD could I stay awake enough to keep my truck on the road down to Waikiki, and as soon as I pulled into my parking space I had to lean my head against the steering wheel and rest for a minute before I went inside.
I fell asleep almost as soon as I crawled into bed, though it was only six o’clock outside. I slept till midnight, when I awoke with a full bladder and an empty stomach. After I took care of the bladder, I pulled on shorts, a T- shirt, and rubber slippas and headed out to Kuhio Avenue to handle the stomach.
Sitting at a table by the window at Denny’s, listening to an instrumental number by Hapa coming out of the speakers, I stared out at a couple of drunken twenty-something guys laughing and mock brawling on the street. The way they were having so much fun reminded me of the good times Mike and I had had-and then of the vodka in Mike’s water bottle.
There was something seriously wrong with that. But what could I do about it? I could say something to Mike, but I doubted it would do any good. If anything, it would make the relationship between us that much more strained.
I could go to his boss-but that would mean a suspension, maybe losing his job. I could never do that to him, even after what he’d done to me.
I didn’t know any of his friends; he’d always been careful about keeping our relationship a secret, though he’d met my family and Harry, Terri, and Gunter. He’d never introduced me to his parents, either. But I had met them once.
A week after Mike returned from his conference, I woke up with a yellowish discharge and pain when I tried
