| |
THE FIRST THING I DID the following morning was call the Mahina PD non-emergency line. Emma made us coffee while I spoke with Detective Medeiros.
To my surprise, Medeiros had actually followed up on the Post-It note I’d found.
“That phone number is Little Jack Horner’s,” Medeiros told me. “It’s a bakery down in Kuewa.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard of it. It’s supposed to be good. That’s why the note said Horn,” I said.
“Yes. We already investigated the area. No sign of Jandie Brand.”
“What about cosh? Why was that about?”
“Not sure.”
I hung up. Emma was watching me.
“So?” She handed me a cup of coffee, already sweetened and doused with cream.
“The phone number is Little Jack Horner’s,” I said.
“Oh yeah, the café in Kuewa. Jandie did a photoshoot from there like a month ago.”
“Makes sense. Darn it, what was I thinking, a murder clue on a sticky note would be right there in the house for me to find? And of course the police have already checked it out. It’s their actual job.”
“Let’s go there anyway,” Emma said.
“Why? Do you think there’s something the police might have overlooked?”
Emma held up her phone, displaying a photo of a smiling Jandie Brand, sitting at an outdoor table, brandishing a pair of chopsticks at what looked like an entire cheesecake in front of her. The caption was stuffed with hashtags:
#lilikoi #pie #passionfruitpie #Hawaii #Hawaiilife #cakevspie #sweet #jungle #beautifulhawaii #tropicaldreams #islandlife #Jandistas
“Jack Horner’s got the famous lilikoi chiffon pie,” Emma said. “I always wanted to try it. You no get class today, ah? We could go now.”
“All the way down to Kuewa? It’s a long way to drive for pie,” I said. “But you’re right, I’m not teaching today, and I don’t have to be in until later. Are you sure?”
“I got a progress report due tomorrow and it’s due noon East Coast time. Which means I really gotta submit it today. And I am teaching class this afternoon. But if we start now, we can get back in time.”
I took our coffee cups to the sink.
“Just to be clear,” I said, “we are not interfering in a police investigation. We’re just going to Kuewa for pie.”
“Oh yeah, hundred percent,” Emma agreed.
Little Jack Horner’s was about forty minutes out of Mahina. The narrow, intermittently-paved road was crowded on both sides by strawberry guava bushes and staghorn fern, and canopied with Albizia trees. Emma almost drove past the hand-painted sign marking the location of Little Jack Horner’s. Tacked on to the main sign was a cardboard placard announcing “Fresh” Eggs Today!!
Emma slammed on the brakes, backed up, and steered into a gap in the foliage. I was thankful we hadn’t taken my car. Having my 1959 Thunderbird scraped up by wayward strawberry guava branches would have broken my heart. At the end of a long gravel driveway was a dirt lot with around half a dozen parked cars. Two of them were late-model Mustang convertibles, obviously rentals. The bakery itself was a tin-roofed plantation-style house with a wraparound lanai. A few patrons were eating and taking selfies at the outdoor tables.
Emma pulled over to the side of the gravel lot and parked. We stepped out into the hazy sunshine.
“I can smell the coffee from here,” Emma said. “Man, I’m hungry.”
“This place must be pretty good for people to come all the way out here on a weekday morning,” I said. “Hey, thanks for driving.”
“Yeah, good thing we didn’t bring your car, Molly. I don’t think it woulda fit up the driveway.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” I said.
Directly inside the bakery building was a counter where we were to place our orders. A woman in her forties seemed to be in charge. She was a certain Kuewa type: leathery tan, sun-bleached strawberry blond hair, wrist tattoo that had blurred over time. She wore a dark-green apron tied over a blue-and-green batik dress.
“You still get eggs for sale?” Emma asked when we had reached the front of the line.
“Sure do. How many dozen you want?”
“Just one dozen,” Emma said.
“A dozen for me too,” I added.
“Rainbow!” the woman barked. The woman called Rainbow appeared from somewhere in the back. She looked to be about the same age and general type as her boss, but the years had been harder on her. “Two dozen eggs for these ladies please.”
“Two dozen eggs,” Rainbow repeated to herself, and went back the way she’d come in.
“Do you have lilikoi pie?” I asked.
“Our lilikoi chiffon pie? Only one piece left.”
Emma and I looked at each other.
“She can have it,” we said at the same time.
“Eh, look at us,” Emma said, “All like da kine, Solomon.”
“We can split it,” I said.
“She’s paying,” Emma added. “What? I drove.”
“That’s fair.”
“We make our lilikoi chiffon pie fresh every day,” the woman said. “You should check in next time you’re in the neighborhood. Now, you can’t make a breakfast out of half a piece of pie. How about our omelet aux fines herbes? It’s our specialty. Eggs are from our own happy hens.”
“I don’t think I’m hungry enough for an omelet,” I said. “Just pie and coffee for me, please.”
“I like try one omelet,” Emma said.
There were no other customers lined up behind us, so we got to chatting while our food was being prepared. Our chatelaine’s name was Phoenix. This was not her birth name, obviously, and in fact she wasn’t the first “Phoenix” I’d met here. Phoenix is a common name among people who have moved to the island to reinvent themselves. Sometimes after escaping a bad marriage or quitting a tedious job. Often after enrolling in witness protection.
“Were you here when Jandie Brand did her photoshoot?” Emma asked.
“Who?” Phoenix lifted the lone pie slice out of the display case.
“Little hapa girl, straight black hair, high voice?” Emma said. “She’s a social media influencer.”
“We get a few of those. They buy one or two things and take up a table for two hours while they take pictures of their food.” Phoenix handed me a tray with two skinny slices of pie (she’d pre-split it for us) and two coffees. “Rainbow will bring out your omelet. Be patient. She’s new.”
“Oh. Is she from...next door?” Emma asked.
Phoenix turned to Emma.
“Be kind. That’s all I’m gonna say. We can all use a little kindness.”
Emma and I found a table out on the lanai. We were surrounded by jungle. It was warm but not too hot, and the coffee smelled delightful.
“What’s ‘next door’?” I asked as soon as we sat down.
“It’s a rehab place for women. Not one of the fancy kind. More like a halfway house.”
“How do you know so much about it?” I asked. “You’ve been here before?”
“Yeah. With the paddlers. We were checking out the sewage situation.”
I paused mid-sip and slowly set my coffee cup down.
“No worries, Molly, their water supply’s fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, it’s just the wastewater. Their heart’s in the right place, you know, trying to help these women out. But they get more people staying there than they’re supposed to. So their cesspool’s overloaded and the stuff leaks out and ends up in the ocean. All these rains we had haven’t helped, you know. The paddlers were trying to raise money to help them close the cesspool and get a septic tank instead. Costs a lot more than you’d think, and there’s the maintenance too.”
“What’s the difference between a cesspool and a septic tank?” I asked. “I thought they were the same thing.”
“A septic tank is enclosed and has to be pumped out every so often,” Emma said. “A cesspool is just a hole in the ground lined with rocks. Eventually the stuff leaks out. Yeah, you should wrinkle your nose Molly, it’s gross.”
“Just letting sewage ooze out into the groundwater? How is that allowed?”
“Lotta places down here in Kuewa are on cesspool. Somehow people trust it to act like some frickin’ enchanted well that magically sanitizes everything. Newsflash, it doesn’t work like that.”
“Well. I just learned something. Now I’m going to try to stop thinking about cesspools and enjoy my tiny piece of pie. Mm, it is good. Emma, how many people do you think know there’s a halfway house next door? If you hadn’t said anything, I would never have suspected.”
“They keep a low profile. No sign outside, and they let the trees grow up an’ hide the building.”
The woman called Rainbow brought out our eggs. She plunked the mismatched cartons on our table and left without saying a word. I opened the cartons to make sure the eggs weren’t cracked. They were intact, and smaller than store-bought eggs and varied in color: white, brown, and blue-green. They also needed to be washed.
“Hey look,” Emma showed me her phone. “Jack Horner’s has vacation rentals.”
I looked at the online listing.
“I bet they don’t have a homeowner’s association hassling them. Where do people stay though?”
“Probably over there.” Emma pointed to a cluster of tiny houses on the far side of the property, just visible behind a screen of trees.
“Those look exactly like the emergency shelters from the last lava eruption,” I said.
“Maybe they are,” Emma said.
“I’ve always been curious about those little houses. What do you think they’re like to stay in?”
“Why, you gonna set some up on your property? Like some kinda super slumlord?”
“No, I was thinking when Donnie comes back it might be fun to spend a night down here. Francesca would enjoy seeing the chickens too.”
Emma and I stopped by the counter again on our way out to buy some creampuffs we’d seen in the display case.
As Emma started to back out of the parking spot, something occurred to me.
“Emma, that place next door. It’s a women’s shelter?”
“More like a halfway house, but yeah, pretty much.”
“Is it possible Jandie’s there? Hiding out from her husband? Maybe she planned her escape when she did the photoshoot.”
“How do you explain the body they found then?” Emma countered. “Her husband said it was her.”
“Maybe he’s bluffing,” I said. “Maybe he misidentified the body on purpose.”
“What for?”
“So the police will stop looking for her and leave him free to track her down? I don’t know.”
“How’s he gonna look for her if he’s in jail? I know, Molly. It would be awesome if Jandie was still alive. But I don’t think she is.
I couldn’t argue with that. Emma guided her car back down the narrow driveway. The only sound was the scraping of branches against the car doors.
“You know the Cloudforest isn’t far from here,” I said. “Do you want to stop and say hi to Mercedes Yamashiro before we go back? I don’t know, maybe we don’t have time.”
“I’m about to go on the highway. Right or left? Pick one. You gotta be more decisive, Molly.”
“Right.”
“I know I’m right.”
“I mean turn right. I don’t get down to the Cloudforest that often. Also, might as well check how things are going with our interns.