“Nahoa was never a loser,” Storm said softly.
Pua now cried freely, and Storm put an arm around her shoulders. Storm’s eyes also filled with tears, and she was filled with helplessness at her friend’s grief.
A knock on the door stirred both women from their misery. “Must be the police,” Storm said. She went to the door, unable to shake off the sadness that filled the room.
“Come in,” she said, and the two police detectives who had visited before stepped into the room.
Their attention turned to Pua, who sat sniffling on the sofa. “Was anyone injured?”
“No. This is Nahoa Pi‛ilani’s sister, Pua.”
The officers looked from Storm’s sad expression to Pua’s swollen eyes. “We’re sorry about your brother.”
“Thanks,” Pua said dully.
“We think Pua scared the guy away,” Storm explained. “She let me out of the bathroom.”
“How was the door blocked?” Detective Yamamoto asked.
“I knocked something out of the doorknob,” Pua snuffled.
“There’s a nail on the carpet here,” Detective Ursley called from the hallway. “Probably was jammed in that little hole. You’d locked the door from the inside?” she asked Storm.
Storm shuffled her feet. “I was scared.”
“I would be, too,” Ursley said. She gestured toward the bedroom. “Have you checked to see if anything is missing?”
“Not really. We made sure he was gone and called you.”
“Why don’t you take a look now, while we check out the house?”
“He started my computer.”
“Really?” The cops looked at each other. “Usually they steal ’em.”
“Can you get fingerprints or anything?”
“Maybe, but the powder will make a mess. Let’s see if we can get prints from the doors first. Of course, to do us any good, they’ve got to be on file.”
“The Department of Motor Vehicles takes them, don’t they?” Storm asked.
“Only your thumb. We’ll need a whole set, which means either your intruder has a record or was printed for some other reason, usually work-related.”
Storm followed Ursley into the bedroom and showed her the dumped briefcase items, scattered floppy disks, and strewn clothing. The computer screen was in sleep mode.
Ursley put on a pair of orange goggles and lay on the floor to examine the laptop. “I don’t see anything on the keyboard at all. It looks wiped clean, though I see fingerprints all over the screen. Those are probably yours.”
After a few minutes of watching Ursley scrutinize the computer screen and housing, Storm sat on the floor and began to sort through the contents of her briefcase. She had four floppy disks stacked next to her. “A floppy is missing.” She poked through the briefcase pockets. “I had five. The missing one was labeled ‘January cases.’ Damn, I’d typed in information on Mrs. Shirome.”
Officer Yamamoto walked into the room. He carried a mobile phone on a newspaper. “I heard this ringing. It was outside, in a hibiscus hedge.”
Storm gave a little gasp. “It’s mine. I hadn’t even noticed it was gone.”
Yamamoto handed it to Ursley. “Let’s check it for prints.” He addressed Storm. “Was it turned on?”
She nodded.
Ursley examined it with her orange goggles, then handed it to Storm. “You might want to check the call log.”
“It’s already at the call log,” Storm said. An ominous weight sat on her. This person had been looking for information, and he’d found a lot of it. Who she’d talked to, their phone numbers, what was on her computer, whose cases she was handling. For once, Storm was glad she didn’t have many high-profile clients, plus she was behind in her recordkeeping. Her call to Rodney Liu, the labor union official, would be on the phone, but she hadn’t had time to record the details of her conversation. She certainly hadn’t recorded today’s revelations about Nahoa’s and Stephanie’s affair, not that she ever would. Nor would she be inclined to write down anything with regard to the 80K Stephanie had taken.
Storm stared at the face of the phone and thought about what could have precipitated the break-in. She’d witnessed a couple of confrontations in the last two days. Gabe’s surfboard assault on Sunny might have been deadly. Stephanie had used bad judgment in two ways that she knew about. The affair was probably fairly widely known, but Storm assumed that the stolen money was not. Except for Barstow, who knew about it? More important, who cared that she knew? Storm didn’t know the answers to these questions. But what bothered her even more were the questions she didn’t know to ask.
If anyone had been following her, she’d left a trail a kid could follow. From her open conversation with Mo‛o and Buster yesterday and her meeting with Warren Yee, the jujitsu sensei, to her contact with Pua in front of hundreds of people on the beach this afternoon, she had been marching in plain view up and down Haleiwa’s narrow and congested main street.
There was nothing she could tell the detectives that would lead them to her trespasser. Nothing in particular that she could pinpoint as the incentive for a burglary.
The two officers got back to work on the house. Ursley picked up the briefcase with a coat hanger hook, and shone her flashlight carefully over it. “I don’t see any prints here, either. We prefer not to fume electronic equipment with superglue, but if you want, I could take the computer case and a floppy or two back to the station.”
“You think you’ll find anything?” Storm knew the answer to that question by looking at their faces. They were going through the motions, trying to make her feel better.
“Never mind. Work on finding who killed Nahoa, okay?”
“There’s a whole team on that one,” Ursley said.
“Any progress?”
Ursley and Yamamoto looked uncomfortable. “We can’t talk about an ongoing investigation.”
“I understand,” said Storm.
Yamamoto walked out of the bedroom and came back a few minutes later. “Looks like he came and went through the sliding door on the makai side of the house,” he said.
“That’s what we thought.” Pua had wandered into the bedroom.
Storm, meanwhile, stowed all items back into her briefcase and purse without noting anything else missing. She probably wouldn’t notice until she needed it. She fought the urge to hide her purse and left it with the briefcase on top of the unmade bed. She might never know if the intruder had found what he was looking for.
She and Pua went out to the kitchen, where Yamamoto handed Storm a form. “Better fill this in for insurance purposes. And call us if you find anything else missing.”
“Thanks for coming out.”
“Lock your doors, okay?” Ursley said, and the two left.
Pua began to wash out the wine glasses. “When’s your friend getting here? I don’t want to leave you alone, but you need to get ready for dinner.”
“I’m okay. I’m sure the burglar’s long gone. The police car was pretty conspicuous.”
“I guess so.” Pua fumbled with the soapy sponge.
Storm touched her arm. “How are you doing?”
Pua’s face was pale and drawn. “Not so well. I don’t know what I’m going to do without Nahoa.”
“It’s got to be awful for you,” Storm agreed. “I’m here if you need me.”
“Even after all this time? I should have called you long before today.”
Storm shrugged. “I’ll be here.”
Pua clasped her arms across her chest as if she were cold and turned to face Storm. “Storm, there is one thing. Will you help me find who sent him the package? Who hated him enough to leave him in the water,” her voice dropped to a choked whisper, “for the sharks?”
Storm could see Pua struggle with her emotions. The image of the somber group on the beach, hauling the heavy mass to shore, returned to her. She also remembered Gabe’s maliciousness and how easy it would be to cause a death, even if it resulted from a flash of temper or a perceived insult in the water.
“The police are asking the same questions.”
“You and I both know that people here won’t talk to them as easily as they will to a pretty face, one with ties to the community.”
Storm wanted to disagree, but she knew better. Both women remembered a boy who’d been a leader at school, and who’d attended Ke Kula Maka’i, HPD’s training academy. He’d come back to work on the Big Island, and though he was still a local boy, people got a little quieter when he was around. They’d report something outright dangerous, but they wouldn’t discuss the size of someone’s pakalolo patch or whether Auntie so-and-so’s sixteen-year-old had too many beers before he drove home. She and Pua knew that it was often these gossipy tidbits that led to a truth, like pebbles along a trail.
Pua’s sad eyes beseeched her. Nahoa’s death hurt even Storm, who hadn’t seen him for years. It must have shattered Pua’s world.
Storm sighed. “I’ll keep poking around.”