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“I TELL YOU WHAT,” LEILANI said, “Do you know gated subdivision by shopping mall? I hear something is available—”
“Oh, Leilani, I really don’t want to live in a gated subdivision by the shopping mall. It’s not worth it for me to buy a house unless it’s one I love. Otherwise I could just move into Donnie’s house and not buy anything.”
This might have seemed like a negotiating tactic, but I wasn’t bluffing. I wanted the Brewster House. I wasn’t going to let Leilani stampede me into some charmless mall-adjacent subdivision.
“Leilani, I know it’s going to be hard to get a mortgage, but don’t people buy and sell houses in tsunami zones all the time? There must be some way to get financing. They aren’t all paying cash outright, are they?”
“I tell you, way to do it is refinance your house,” Leilani said.
“I don’t have enough equity in my house. I already squeezed out every penny to do the remodeling. I’m barely above water.”
“And your fiancé Mister Donnie?”
“He wants to help, but he’s maxed out too.”
Paying for Davison’s education had turned out to be surprisingly expensive. Davison had an athletic scholarship, but it didn’t come close to covering the soaring costs of his fancy mainland college. Archery was not enough of a big-time sport to earn Davison a full ride.
“Then forget about Brewster House. Anyway, you don’t want house that gets washed away with lava and tsunami.”
“The Brewster House has been there for over a century,” I said.
“Pah. I tell you what, Maw-ly. We don’t give up on Brewster House yet. But for now, I show you other options. Just to see.”
“Is there anything else in the Russian Road neighborhood?” I asked. “I mean, I know there aren’t any official listings. But do you know of anyone else who might be willing to sell?”
“No. In Russian Road houses do not often come available. Usually they stay with family.”
“I see. Well, just for future reference, the house being haunted isn’t a problem for me. If anything, I’d say it’s a plus.”
“Ah, you are brave girl. Now we make date for us to tour different houses I pick for you. No obligation. Nice day out in automobile. You tell me when.”
I couldn’t blame Leilani for trying to steer me into an easier deal. I would probably do the same thing in her place. I supposed I could humor her and waste an afternoon looking at ugly, boring houses I had no intention of buying. It would show her I was keeping an open mind.
“Fine,” I agreed, grudgingly. “I’ll look at the other houses.”
I finished setting up the appointment with Leilani, then called Emma to share the news. When she answered the phone, I heard party noises in the background.
“Emma, you’ll never guess—”
“Hey Molly. Sorry, I can’t talk very long.”
“What are you doing?”
“Sherry just got in. The crew took her out to the Pair-O-Dice for dinner.”
“Sherry Di Napoli is here already? On the island?”
“Yeah. It’s just the crew, sorry, otherwise I would’ve invited you.”
“No, I understand. It would be kind of awkward, me being engaged to her ex-husband and everything.”
“So what was your news?” Emma asked.
“Well first of all, the Brewster House is officially haunted.”
“Congratulations?”
“No, that’s good, because it means Davison won’t want to live there.”
“Yeah, that’s a big plus.”
“But now Leilani’s trying to steer me into some awful subdivision.”
“You gotta get a different agent.”
“Leilani is the only one with an in to the Brewster House,” I said.
“Leilani. Well, you know how I feel about white people who move here and give themselves Hawaiian names. Oh, our drink order is here. Gotta go.”
“I got arrested,” I said, but Emma had already hung up.
I should do some research on the history of the Brewster House, I realized. Supernatural phenomena often have very ordinary explanations. There might even be something that would help to explain Melanie’s death. I went online and looked up the history of the Brewster House, but didn’t find anything. Adding “haunted” to my search keywords simply turned up someone’s defunct travel blog.
I called Pat, but I went straight to voicemail. Pat was probably already back home by now, halfway up the mountain and well off the grid. The phone service there was intermittent at best. I left a message.
It was only eight-thirty. Too early to go to bed. There was no point in calling Donnie. He already knew the whole story about the Brewster House, and besides, we’d never had a spend-hours-on-the-phone kind of relationship. Donnie didn’t have hours to spend on the phone. He was probably sitting at his computer, ordering supplies for the Drive-Inn or filling out payroll paperwork.
Maybe I could get some useful reading done. I dug the journal out of my bag, the one I had grabbed on the way down to the police station. I tore off the plastic and skimmed the article titles:
Using the Teaching Portfolio to Anticipate Programmatic Assessment;
Personal, Reflective Writing: A Pedagogical Strategy for Teaching Business Students to Write;
Converging within Divergence: Overcoming the Disciplinary Fragmentation in Business Communication, Organizational Communication, and Public Relations.
I realized I was feeling sleepy. Maybe it wasn’t too early to turn in after all. I retrieved the murder mystery I was reading, and headed off to bed.