“You must have made a miraculous recovery for them to leave you on your own, the first day out of hospital?” Hugh’s green eyes were looking at me with the skepticism I’d anticipated.
“I wouldn’t call it miraculous. In fact, I have some explaining to do. Tea?”
“Never thought I’d ask for this, but do you have any iced?” He pushed back a lock of damp blond hair from his brow.
I smiled my answer, and he followed me into the kitchen, where I took out the chilled ginger rooibos tea my father had made a few hours earlier. I chopped some mint and squeezed a quarter of a lemon between his glass and mine.
“Delicious,” Hugh said after a sip. “Thank you.”
“I’m just happy that you didn’t ask me for one of your favorite whiskies,” I said as we walked back outside.
“Oh, my drinking days are over.”
“Marriage will do that to you, I guess,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, I gather that you’re married.” He looked at me blankly, so I confessed. “I Googled you a while back. I saw pictures of you at an engagement party with a beautiful Hong Kong ingenue.”
Hugh winced. “Ming prefers to be called an actor, thank you very much, and she actually broke off the engagement a while back, so I’m once again the extra man.”
My face flushed, and I stilled the urge to put my hands to my cheeks. Hugh must not think I was excited about this turn of events. I was flustered, though. Hugh was the one who’d dumped me; I had not been able to bear the thought of not having him. Now he was a free agent, and I was not. For Michael had become much more than a mentor and friend; he had become the one I could not imagine losing.
“But tell me, Rei,” Hugh said. “I thought you were at death’s door, from what your uncle told me, but you look…” He paused. “You look a bit thin, but rather spectacularly alive.”
“I wish I could have talked to you before you decided to fly here. I was very ill for a short while, but never in critical condition. My fourth cousin Edwin used a ruse to get you to come here. He did a similar maneuver to get my family to Hawaii, you know.”
“Hold on. Weren’t you in the hospital? And wasn’t it your last wish to speak to me?”
“I was in the hospital, yes. But I never said anything about last wishes because I was unconscious for a while, and when I woke up, everyone told me I was going to recover. Hugh, I feel wretched about this imposition on you,” I said, watching his expression darken. “I would offer to reimburse the cost of your flight, but I suspect you flew first class.”
Hugh laughed. “Don’t worry about it for a minute, Rei. I used my frequent flyer miles, as usual.”
“But the hotel-you’re surely staying overnight in a hotel?”
“Actually, I booked the Royal Hawaiian for three nights. I could use the R &R, to be frank. But I won’t quite relax until I understand what led your fourth cousin to his rather bizarre interest in me.”
I explained about the fire, and about Braden’s arrest. As I’d expected, Hugh wanted to know what Braden had been doing in the mountains, the day after the fire.
“He was collecting large, loose rocks; the kind that formed when volcanoes erupted here millions of years ago. Lava rock can be gorgeous, so it’s sought after for landscaping and building stone walls. The rocks are much easier to find and remove in areas where fire has burned away the brush.”
“Is it OK to do that here-just pick up lava rock where you find it?”
“It’s legal if the rocks are on your property. Braden was trespassing on land owned by one of the wealthiest landowners in Leeward Oahu, Josiah Pierce the Second. Mr. Pierce is planning to sell a portion of land to a Japanese developer, and now the developer doesn’t want to pay as much for it, because of the fire damage.”
“Who’s the developer?” Hugh eased a legal pad and pen out of his briefcase.
“Mitsuo Kikuchi. Maybe you’ve heard of him? He’s based in Tokyo.”
Hugh looked startled. “I know him very slightly, but what you’re saying about his bargaining strategy doesn’t surprise me. Kikuchi’s as tough as they come.”
“This isn’t even the worst of it,” I said glumly. “After the fire was extinguished, the police discovered the body of a young woman who worked at a coffee shop that was destroyed in the fire-”
“Hang on.” Hugh pointed at me with his fountain pen. “Are you saying the Starbucks or whatever didn’t evacuate its employees even when threatened by fire? That would be negligence on the part of management-”
“It wasn’t a Starbucks. It was a little place called Aloha Morning that’s owned by a local man, Kainoa Stevens. Kainoa was there the afternoon of the fire, trying to create a firebreak.”
“I should jump in now, I think,” Hugh said. “Here’s the main problem. I’m not qualified to argue cases in the courts here.”
“I expected that. It’s what I’ve been telling Edwin constantly.”
Taking in Hugh’s puzzled expression, I gave him the short version of Uncle Yosh and Edwin’s dreams of regaining Harue’s cottage and land. “Edwin had the mistaken impression, before he invited my father and me to come here, that you and I were still an item, which to him meant you’d be happy to help him win his battle for the land. His hope is to get hold of it before the Pierces sell their land to Mitsuo Kikuchi, and thereby be able to exact a high price. The reality is the military has owned the land since the war.”
“I see. Now another red flag is waving itself at me. I can’t do anything that might possibly work against Mitsuo Kikuchi’s interests, even to the point of giving your uncle advice. My hands are tied because Kikuchi was involved in some real-estate work for Sendai, where you know I once worked.” Hugh looked around, as if suddenly paranoid. “He’s not on the island now, is he?”
“Actually, he is, but I doubt he’ll be walking by this house. His own is in a remote section by itself, right on the water. Anyway, as I said before, I really never expected you to help. These are my problems, and I’ll face them as best I can.”
“No, it’s not your problem; it is Edwin’s problem, or his son’s problem, but certainly not yours.” Hugh sounded almost angry.
“But…they’re family. Like them or not, they’re family.”
“Asian family obligation syndrome,” Hugh said. “The only Asian I’ve met who doesn’t constantly worry about her family is Ming. She didn’t even care that her mother went to the cardiologist for her broken-heart syndrome after the cancelled wedding.”
I smiled at Hugh and said, “It’s very hard to believe that Ming broke your engagement.”
“Oh, I knew she’d had an affair in the past with another actor, and as the wedding approached, he began to remind her of the good old days.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you. It hurts to be left.” I spoke slowly, thinking that Hugh was still charming and sexy, and I was touched that he’d still cared enough to fly from Japan to be with me. But that was it; I could hardly believe that this was the man who’d broken my heart three times running. Perhaps, finally, my heart had healed.
“Well, it’s all water under the bridge. Or how do the Japanese put it?” Hugh broke into my thoughts.
“Water washes everything away.”
“Yes, I think that Mitsuo Kikuchi is reputed to have said that about his son’s dealings.”
“Oh, are you talking about Jiro?”
“I don’t know his name, but he would be in his late twenties, I think, and bit off, mentally?”
“That’s the one! What do you know about him?”
“Jiro was in the news-or rather, was deliberately kept out of the news-about five years ago, when he was in his early twenties. Jiro became too aggressive with a hotel waitress or maid. Because she was a foreign worker, she was convinced not to press rape charges in exchange for a cash settlement and help securing a permanent visa.”
“Mitsuo Kikuchi arranged all this?”
“That’s the rumor, and it’s an old one, which is why I’m unfortunately fuzzy on the details. And keep quiet about it, please. If it ever gets out that I slandered him or his son, Kikuchi would probably send goons after me.”
“I won’t talk about it. But God, my instincts were right! I knew there was something creepy about Jiro when he came up to me in the swimming pool. And Kainoa Stevens thought Jiro was trying to date Charisse. I
