“Yeah, story checked out. His family held a baby luau for Kai’s cousin. Kai played guitar. He was still there when the last plane took off.”
Okay, Kawika thought. Forget Kai.
But forgetting Kai wasn’t easy. Joan’s mother lived in a small, well-kept house with so many pictures of Joan and Kai it felt like a shrine. She welcomed the chance to talk. She hadn’t seen the paper—she said it distressed her—and didn’t recognize Kawika’s name. But she recognized Tommy as one of Joan’s high school classmates and greeted him fondly. Then in one long monologue, she recounted her daughter’s life, which, Kawika realized, was actually what he wanted to hear.
Joan had been born in Hāwī, her mother began. Joan’s late father had worked maintenance for sugar companies until the industry failed. Then he moved his family to Waimea and worked for the schools. He earned extra income from the County by traveling around Kohala, affixing little reflective rectangles to highway signs, selectively turning a, e, i, o, and u into ā, ē, ī, ō, and ū. “You can still see his work everywhere,” his widow said proudly.
Joan had done well in school. Her mother showed Kawika and Tommy report cards and honor roll certificates she’d saved, plus photos of Joan in school pageants, dancing the hula, or playing Pele—and once, an incongruous sylph-like version of the enormous Ka‘ahumanu. Her mother had a scrapbook devoted to Joan’s other triumphs, first as Miss Kohala, then as Big Island Beauty Queen, finally as second runner-up in the Miss Hawai‘i competition in Honolulu. The youthful Joan looked wholesome and desirable in swimsuits and in gowns she’d made herself.
“All the local boys wanted her,” Joan’s mother said, “but we told her, ‘Save yourself for someone better.’ She had it all—looks, brains, common sense. Her dad and me told her, ‘Go for reception, not housekeeping. You won’t meet anyone decent changing sheets.’ So she went for reception, and she got it.”
Not “Her dad and me told her, ‘Go for college,’” Kawika thought.
“The Mauna Lani,” her mother said proudly. “That’s where she met Kai, when he came to perform. That’s where she met Mr. Fortunato too. Great husband and a great job—all from working reception.”
Kawika looked at Tommy, who discreetly rolled his eyes. Joan’s mother must have been in denial or shock about Joan and Kai, Kawika realized, but she probably never knew about Joan and Fortunato.
“Well, one thing’s true,” Tommy told Kawika, back in the car. “Joan didn’t go with local boys. We were never good enough for her. Or good enough for her mom and dad. That’s why I gave Joan that stink eye, up at the station. I was still mad at her.”
“Not mad for Kai then?”
“No,” Tommy admitted. “Mad for myself. She’d never have me, right? She wouldn’t have no local guy before she got married. But after she’s married, she cheats with that haole dirtbag.” He turned to his window, his face hidden.
Kawika wondered what to say. “Tommy,” he began, “I’ll tell you something. When I talked with her in Waimea that day, I got sort of envious of her husband too.”
Tommy turned to face him. “Huh,” Tommy said. He sounded unconvinced.
“And today,” Kawika continued, “today, when I saw those pictures, I was so sad for Joan all over again. She was gorgeous. Very beautiful, very smart, very sexy. It’s okay, Tommy. We’re human. Let’s not worry about it. Let’s just find whoever killed Ralph.”
Tommy nodded. A moment later, lapsing into pidgin, he declared, “So, cool head main ting, right?”
Kawika laughed. “Cool head main ting,” he repeated. “I like that. That and stink eye. You got more of that for me?” Tommy laughed too.
Kawika thought about Joan’s sun-bleached Honda Civic, slowly rusting in her mother’s yard. “She didn’t need it,” Joan’s mother had told them. “Not after she got the BMW.” Kawika felt he’d found some missing pieces, understood better the puzzle of Joan’s desires, her fall, the lure of a haole lover. He kept it to himself. It wasn’t relevant to the case. It would be painful for Tommy to talk about. And Kawika had his own desires to brood over, his own potential fall.
30Mauna Lani
The night Patience dined with Kawika—the night they’d spent together, the night of Jason Hare—she hadn’t known him well. She’d wanted him, certainly, but her impulsiveness worried her a bit. Was she falling into what her Bay Area friends called a “PDFF”—a post-divorce fucking frenzy? She couldn’t tell, and she’d been nervous, so she’d chattered a bit during dinner. One thing she’d chattered about was why she preferred Hawai‘i to the Caribbean and other places in Polynesia.
“Here,” she’d said, “I’m in a tropical paradise, but in the United States. I don’t feel like an Ugly American. I don’t worry that my pleasure rests on exploiting downtrodden people.”
She’d regretted it, of course, as soon as she’d said it. So foolish, she’d thought; so privileged and insensitive. But Kawika had handled the moment gently.
“Well,” he’d said, “it’s true the local people—most of them—want you here. And, yes, they’re Americans, whether they admit it or not. They want the jobs, as you’ve said. All the same, they’re capable of feeling exploited. Tourism does rest on their labor. Some are angry. Most just feel a bit …”
“Resentful?” she’d suggested.
“Soiled, I was going to say.”
Now, a few days after she’d dragged Kawika back to bed, Patience spent her early morning as she more frequently did. She brewed her Kona coffee, watched the sunrise strike the top of Haleakalā, then went for a jog. She loved the still cool air and the great mountains of her own island backlit against a dawn more pale than blue.
On this morning she noticed something for the first time: two rivers of headlights flowing down the mountain, one from Waikoloa Village and, further north, one from Waimea. For a moment she was puzzled. Why bumper-to-bumper traffic at
