Chapter Nine

The next few days passed; I fell into a rainy day routine. From time to time I peered through my spattered window as if it was possible to see Makana Stream churning around the bridge in a torrent. The carpenter crew couldn’t risk getting blocked in the valley during an unexpected downpour, so they put off work on the house until clearer weather was forecast. It was distressing that the guesthouse opening was getting pushed back. I was almost out of cash, with nothing coming in. What little Jamison would give me for Mother’s painting wouldn’t last long, and I really didn’t want to sell any more antiques. Things would get desperate soon.

The rain let up on Friday morning to a dull drizzle, burned off by breaking sunlight before nine o’clock. Mr. Gonsalves brought in his crew and put them right to work. Floral wallpaper went up in the hallway. New carved balusters and front door trim were delivered, based on the designs Jamison had supplied, and little by little the splintered wood was replaced. Mr. Gonsalves had not scheduled any of his crew to work late over the past several weeks, he told me. At my request he was keeping an eye out for any unexplained absences on the truck rides out of the valley.

Several times I looked in on the progress the carpenters were making, then headed back to the carriage house and my room, where I had somehow managed to squeeze in another small art table. Something like a dream had taken hold of me when the rains began, carried rare and precious in the mist, and I spent the days getting it down on paper.

My original plan had been to do a series of watercolors from scenic places around the property. The problem was that every time I sat down with my sketchbooks, a different perspective of the bridge rose up through the lines I was making, like a submerged memory floating to the surface. Eventually I gave in to the impulse, and let pencil and hand and eye fashion the illusions that wouldn’t be stilled.

Auntie May brought me a tray of sandwiches and milk on Tuesday when I skipped lunch and had forgotten dinner, too. Other times I fixed a bowl of Wheaties or ate ice cream with a spoon right out of the carton, regardless of the time of day.

By the end of the week, the art table was crowded with tubes of paint and brushes. I sagged in my chair without pushing anything aside and propped up my mother’s painting—which in my mind I was calling The King’s Crown. Then I set one of my own watercolor paintings next to it.

Shadows on my mother’s painting of the bridge intrigued me, and I leaned forward. There was a golden highlight out of place on the stonework railing. Where there should have been the shadow of overhanging trees, there was an unnaturally light patch of sunshine. The lighting technique was so elementary that I felt certain my mother hadn’t made a mistake. What are you saying to me? I wanted to ask the painting. What message was my mother trying to send?

By late Saturday afternoon, I had several more studies of the bridge taped up around my room, crowding out the windows and blocking the closet door.

Time to get back to the real world. Whatever that was.

I hadn’t spent much time in the library since the afternoon with Jamison. Now, feeling less troubled by the memories of our times in the house, and looking forward to seeing him again, I curled up on the horsehair chair to leaf through the loose pages of the petroglyph sketches Vivian had given me. The house was filled with weekend quiet and the faintest stir of a gentle breeze.

The manuscript began with an examination of the simplest stick figures, circles and dots chipped into stone from ancient times, and ended with several rough sketch maps that lacked place names.

My curiosity satisfied, I was about to put the folder away on a shelf when I spotted an unidentified landmark penciled on one of the maps. It was a large boulder next to a stream in a narrow valley. Chicken skin crawled across my arms and up my neck that brought on a shiver before I could concentrate again.

A Hawaiian stone wall was marked as running from what was now the Yamamoto farm in a diagonal line through the forest to the rock. I felt sure that’s where the bridge was.

Unsure of whether the rock wall could be found in the underbrush all these years later, I hurried out of the house and crossed to the upper road without stopping at the carriage house for a jacket. Perhaps this would be a dead end.

The sky was getting overcast, but warmth left-over from the midday sun combined with my excitement to push me on, angling through the Yamamotos’ tall grass toward the seemingly impenetrable forest. After a few false starts, I found the first toppled stones, picking my way along the top of the wall from one standing section to the next until I was deep enough for the road to be completely out of sight. I knew I was getting in over my head, but the greenery was too much like my paintings to turn around now. Here in a lush world that had been carried one tiny seed at a time—on wind and waves to a distant shore—here, it was possible to believe that you could take a coincidence and turn it into a message from the past.

All of a sudden, I was pitched forward off the wall by a blow to my shoulder. I blocked my fall with my left hand outstretched but ended up crashing with both knees into a clump of fallen branches. Waterlogged moss softened my landing, but my wrist was bent back, and in the sharp urgency of pain, I didn’t look around fast enough to see the attacker. My heart was pounding, and I was wheezing in gasps that I tried to stifle while I lay still and collected my thoughts. Should I play dead or strike back?

I rolled over on a fist-sized rock that I clenched in my right hand to use as a weapon, when it occurred to me that it had likely been used as a weapon already. My throbbing shoulder telegraphed the reminder. I couldn’t hear any telltale snapping branches or tromping feet heading in my direction, so I pulled myself upright and peered through the forest maze, baffled at how I’d been taken by surprise. For days I’d sensed a watching presence as I moved around the house. This was different. I was being given a warning far more threatening—more personal—than broken windows.

I shook out my hair and brushed off the leaves and wet moss sticking to my pants. I was worried that I’d lost my bearings when I fell, but there was the wall, leading me out of the wooded tangle that had dimmed under the overcast sky. A clearing shone more brightly ahead—and then I could see the road. I was out and free. I still had the rock gripped tightly in my hand, but I didn’t drop it on the ground, even when the carriage house came into sight and beckoned to me with the promise of safety and a telephone.

When I got back inside, I went to my room and changed into a skirt and blouse. Auntie’s door was closed, so I tiptoed downstairs and paged through the telephone book for the listing I needed. Before I picked up the receiver, I took a deep breath. Then I dialed the number and asked to be connected to Captain Maddox.

****

Johnny dashed up the walkway to the house as Captain Maddox was leaving. “Mom told me the police are here,” he puffed. “Where’s the squad car?”

Captain Maddox and I had completed a tour of the house, having noted walls that had once been ripped apart, and broken windows in various stages of repair. He’d declined my offer to lead him through the forest to where I’d been struck down, satisfying his investigation by taking me for a drive past the beginning of the rock wall. I was starting to realize that my fall had been due to being thrown off balance, rather than brute force. My wrist was tender, but my shoulder wasn’t swollen.

“And who’s this young man?” the captain asked in the measured speech he’d been using since he’d arrived. He was wearing the same tweed jacket he’d had on at the Art Academy, giving the big man the look of someone either miscast for his detective’s role, or in disguise. He repeatedly mopped the steady trickle of sweat collecting on his forehead with a handkerchief.

I introduced Johnny and explained to him that the captain was driving an unmarked car. He gave the plain black Chevy in the turnaround a scowl.

“Interested in detective work?” the captain asked in a conversational way.

Johnny shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

“So what do you think has been going on with the broken windows around here lately? Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary?” Captain Maddox was no Sam Spade roughing up a witness.

“Nothing special.” Johnny wrinkled his nose. “Someone’s been prowling around, all right. Lei-Lei thinks it might be the farmers, trying to scare her off. To keep the guesthouse from opening.”

The captain nodded and stuffed his handkerchief in his pocket, as if he was packing up for the day. “I’m going to go talk to them now.”

Johnny gave him a mischievous smile that made me nervous. “I think it’s about the treasure.”

The captain’s face showed no outward sign of emotion, but he pivoted his sizeable mid-section toward Johnny. “What treasure is that?”

“It’s just a silly story from a long time ago,” I interjected too late to undo the damage. Why send him poking around skeletons in the closet and getting thrown off-track? “Our family might have been influential once, but there’s nothing left now, as you’ve seen.” The sparsely furnished rooms hadn’t been lost on him.

Even though sweat piled up on his brow, he didn’t take out his handkerchief. “I’ll check into any burglaries in the neighborhood,” he said, with a wry smile. “Maybe I’ll turn up some jewels that have gone missing.”

I laughed to cover up my alarm. As I’d guessed at the Art Academy, he was no one’s fool and was making that clear.

Beyond the veranda, a wide lawn stretched to where our driveway ran out to the valley road. The captain surveyed the expanse from left to right, holding his hands loosely behind his back, then asked for directions to the Yamamoto’s house. I told him to drive past the stone wall. He’d see their farm on the right.

After he drove off, Johnny and I ambled back to the carriage house on the path, talking about his homework assignment that was due on Monday. “You’re not mad that I was talking about a treasure, are you?” he asked out of the blue.

“No, but you’ll give people the wrong idea.” I studied him suspiciously. “Is that what you tried to do?”

“Captain Maddox doesn’t look like a detective. I just wanted to test him out. And did you see that suit? Geez, he must have bought it at Sears Roebuck. In Chicago. During a blizzard.” He slapped his knee at his own joke.

“You were expecting Charlie Chan, I suppose.”

“No, but…Oh, remember that one where Charlie Chan is at the wax museum...”

I didn’t pay much attention to him as he retold the movie all the way to the carriage house. My thoughts were on the mysterious intruder who had now turned his sights on me.