Iced in Paradise Read online

  “What? Dat’s illegal. He needs one warrant for dat.”

  “I thought so.” I remember the luggage stored in the back of Killer Wave. “Actually, there’s something you can help me with.” I gesture toward the surf shop and we make our way inside.

  The back storage room is just an add-on, done by my grandfather maybe before I was born. The makeshift roof is coming apart, and there’s a ring of black mildew in the corner of the ceiling.

  “This place is a damn mess. Your dad gotta do someting about it.”

  “Yeah, if you can keep him still for twenty-four hours.”

  Underneath a worktable sit two rollaway suitcases. Out of familiarity, I open Dad’s maroon one first. I was with him when we went to Costco to buy luggage for college, and he ended up buying a matching one. His is a lot more worn than mine, given all the travel he does.

  After I put it on its side and unzip, a bunch of Killer Wave Hawaiian shirts spill out.

  “Plenty shirts,” Pekelo observes. “Why same kine?”

  “It’s his brand. Every color in the rainbow. And writing glows in the dark.” I hold one up to him. “What you think?”

  “Lolo,” Pekelo says.

  Yup. Just what I had thought. My father has lost his mind. “Pupule, yah. I couldn’t stop him. He doesn’t listen to me.”

  “Tommy Santiago, he no listen to anybody. Especially to girls.”

  That hurt a little, but I also felt vindicated. I wasn’t just imagining Dad’s slight against my gender.

  I hesitate a moment before pulling the zipper on Luke’s roller bag, a hard-shell kind decorated with a blown-up Union Jack graphic. Luke was dead and I was invading his privacy. And I’m sure I might be interfering in Sergeant Toma’s investigations by taking a peek. But I do it anyway.

  Unlike my father, Luke is a light packer. I feel embarrassed to see plaid boxers folded into rectangles à la Marie Kondo.

  “The dude’s neat,” Pekelo says with a hint of respect. His military training has given him an appreciation for uniformity, at least in terms of underwear.

  There are T-shirts, shorts, and a couple of short-sleeved shirts, all still donning clothing tags. “All his stuff is new,” I say.

  “This a new Australian brand. Some catalogs for them come in the mail to the shop.” Pekelo goes into the retail part of the store and brings back a stack of thick catalogs, both glossy and matte. He dumps them atop the worktable. “Here, dis one.”

  I quickly leaf through it, and on an inside page is a note from the founder, his photo taken with a familiar woman.

  “That’s Luke’s girlfriend. I met her last night. Celia Johnson.”

  “She’s one champion surfer herself,” Pekelo comments. “Won the Gold Coast title in Australia.”

  I feel a pang of sadness. I picture her hearing about the death of her boyfriend. Even though I didn’t get a very good first impression of her, I wouldn’t wish this kind of bad news on anyone.

  A car door slams shut outside. We walk over to the front door to check it out. Our mystery neighbor is leaving in his white van. I wonder what he had to say to Officer Andy.

  “Who dat?”

  “Not sure. I think he’s moving into Auntie Lulu’s place. Andy Mabalot questioned him, I think. Kelly and I saw him here last night.”

  “Damn suspicious,” Pekelo says.

  I don’t have time to chitchat about our mystery neighbor. “I need some wheels to get to the North Shore.”

  “Kelly took the Toyota or else you could use. How about Mama Liu?”

  I hesitate. Money’s been tight, plus in my sensitive state, I don’t know if I can stomach her erratic driving.

  “I’ll call Court,” Pekelo volunteers, and I’m thankful. Turns out she was heading back to the shop to pick up some anniversary leis that she needed to deliver. “She goin’ to North Shore anyways. She give you one ride.”

  “Thanks,” I say. I don’t move from the middle of the Killer Wave sales floor.

  “You scared for go back in.” Pekelo has me figured out. “C’mon.”

  I follow him out the door. He rips off the crime tape outside Santiago’s and wads it into his fist. Much of the water on the floor has evaporated, but there’s still a visible wet spot. Assorted trash, possibly from tourists—a couple of our long blue spoons, a felt purse in the shape of a pizza slice, a red scrunchie, a gold origami crane, and a plastic bowl—are scattered on the ground. If this had been the crew on Law & Order, you probably wouldn’t have seen all these forgotten bits of evidence. But then, this isn’t the island of Manhattan; this is Kaua‘i, with a dwindling police force that investigates more stolen bicycles than murders.

  “Dis mess, too,” Pekelo says.

  I try to blame it on Sammie because yah, she should have cleaned the place before closing. Pekelo asks for a bucket, mop, soap, and bleach, and I go through our small kitchen toward the cleaning closet. I pass by our large ice freezer and find that Sammie didn’t bother to replace a block of ice that she used. That girl needs to get her head into work instead of guys, I think.

  Once Pekelo has the cleaning gear, he works quickly. He spreads bleach on one particular spot, and I notice a red liquid leeching out. I feel sick to my stomach again and go outside for a breath of fresh air. I pull down my sunglasses from the top of my head and adjust them over my eyes. What was Luke doing here at the shack? Either he came in the middle of the night or at the crack of dawn. And how did he get in? I had checked the front door and it was locked.

  The Lee’s red minivan swings in and stops in front of the flower shop. After Court jumps out of the driver’s side, I practically run out and leap into my friend’s skinny arms, almost knocking her down.

  “What happen, Leilani?”

  “I’ll tell you on da road. Lemme use your phone to get ahold of the fam.”

  No one seems to be answering his or her phone. Pekelo helps Court load long boxes of leis into the back while I send a group text:

  Call me at this number. I’m using Court’s phone. Emergency.

  Pekelo tells me that he will lock up the shack after he finishes cleaning. As we pull onto the highway, I feel overwhelmed with Pekelo’s and Court’s kindness. It’s then I start to cry, and bits of the story come out in between tears all the way from Waimea to Po‘ipū to Līhu’e and, finally, Hanalei Bay.

  It’s not like me to be all weepy. “I guess you in shock,” Court says as I wipe my face on some tissues she has in the car. The tissue box is covered with needlepoint that makes it look like Spam musubi. Court is crafty like that, just like my mom, who does embroidery for friends and family.

  “My hanabaddah gettin’ all over your phone,” I tell her. I try to clean it and my sunglasses with the tissues. Court shakes her head and takes her sticky phone from me without any reservations. “No worry. Your snot is my snot.”

  “I probably look awful.”

  “That’s da ting, Leilani. With your body, you could walk in a room wid no makeup, maybe covered in hanabaddah, and all da bruddahs be gathering ’round you.”

  “Dat’s so uji.” I can’t help but crack a smile.

  “Sounds gross, but it’s true.”

  “At least I’m not having one of my attacks.”

  “What’s dat?”

  “I told you. In Seattle I’d get these panic attacks. No can breathe right.”

  Court narrows her eyes, as if this is the first she’s heard of them.

  We’ve reached Cannons Beach, and Court parks next to some overfilled garbage cans. Feral chickens are furiously pecking at some discarded fast food. “Sorry I can’t stay,” she says.

  “No, no.” I blow hard into my wad of tissues and my right ear even pops. “You da best.”

  “Nah, you da best,” Court says.

  I jump out of the minivan, noticing a row of police cars. I put on my sunglasses again to mask my swollen eyes. Has Toma broken the news to my family yet? I see some uniformed police officers by the judges’ table—a surfboard on to
p of two sawhorses—in the distance by the shore. On the other side of the beach are the gray roots of a banyan tree. That’s the Santiago spot. In fact, Baachan’s sitting in an upright beach chair underneath a giant blue umbrella. Laid out below are towels on which open Tupperware containers reveal the last of our Filipino leftovers.

  Dad is with Mom on the same towel. She’s also safely shaded by an umbrella, sitting in a low lawn chair, her hiking sticks nearby. Wearing a probably recently woven green-palm-leaf hat, Dad is on his side, lazily eating something—maybe lumpia—with his hands. Sophie has her earbuds on and she sits with her knobby knees together while Dani is drawing in the sand with her finger.

  I hold this image in my mind. This is a moment in which the Santiagos are happy. A family having a good time at the beach. I know that this is going to end in a matter of minutes, seconds. But it did exist right now.

  D-man walks toward me. He looks at me with concern. Somehow he knows what has happened. I grab him by his T-shirt. “Don’t tell Toma anyting about what happened with Luke and my dad,” I hiss in his ear.

  He looks almost angry, or at least defensive. “I’m no snitch, Leilani.”

  As the uniformed officers descend on the beach, they remind me of black ants seeking their next piece of sustenance. My father, a juicy morsel.

  My family finally realizes that the police presence is not routine. My parents look at their phones, exchange glances, and start poking their screens with their fingers.

  “I’m here,” I say loudly, now only a few feet away. I’m fully aware that I’m the one who will be breaking the rare spirit of ‘ohana taking place.

  There’s no time to beat around the bush. “I found Luke. Dead. On the floor of Santiago’s this morning.” There’s a split second of silence, and all I hear is the familiar roar of the waves.

  “No, Leilani, how?” My mother balances herself up in the sand with her hiking stick.

  Dad, on the other hand, asks no questions. He puts his face in his hands—they are dark and calloused, the fingernails rimmed with dirt.

  In the distance, I see the Japanese surfer Nori, Rex, and Kelly coming out of the water in their wet suits, carrying their surfboards.

  A woman with a long stride cuts through the sand toward me. “So there you are,” Celia says. “Where’s Luke? Your father says he called him to take a taxi. Nobody knows where he is.”

  “Ah—” Now my tongue seems out of my control. I cannot form words.

  “He’s dead,” Sophie pipes up. I had forgotten that she was there. “He’s dead and Leilani found him.”

  The black ants are now around us, surrounding us. There’s the chief ant, Dennis Toma. He calls my father’s name and asks him to follow him. He wants to take him and my mother to the station to answer some questions.

  “I come, but my wife needs to rest. You can come by the house tomorrow.” I give my father props for looking after Mom.

  Through this, a guttural scream. It’s the girlfriend, Celia. Her beautiful freckled face has become ugly, contorted. Curse words spill out of her, one after another, mostly directed toward my father, who has gotten up and is brushing sand from his shorts. “What the hell did you do to him? I knew you were no good.”

  Andy goes to her side. She’s a head taller than him and, next to her, he almost looks like a child. He says something softly in her ear, and it’s like he’s put a spell on her. She quiets, and they walk together to one of the squad cars.

  “I gotta go with them,” my dad announces. He’s wearing the same Killer Wave Hawaiian shirt and it looks all wrinkled and worn, as if he has slept in his clothes.

  “They’re not arresting you, are they?” Sophie asks.

  “No, baby.” Dad ruffles her hair and places his hat onto her head. “Everything will be okay.” He leans down to kiss my mother’s forehead.

  I feel like throwing up again, but after Dad collects his slippahs and begins to follow Toma, he says to me, “I’m depending on you, Leilani. Keep everyone together.”

  Dani is now in full-out crying mode in my mother’s lap. In the green hat, oversize for her head, Sophie walks out to the parking lot to watch our father being put in the backseat of the patrol car. I lock eyes with Baachan, who remains in her chair. She doesn’t look scared or shocked. She is damn pissed, and I can feel the heat of her anger several feet away.

  One of my dad’s best friends on Kaua‘i, Rick Chen, who lives close to Hanalei Bay, comes by and helps us collect our sandy towels. Rick is kind of like Kelly, in that his face rarely shows the worry that he holds inside. “Is it true, Leilani? That the police think your dad killed someone?” They’ve been so close, like brothers, and we spent a lot of holidays together. Mom says that Uncle Rick knows things about Dad that no one else does.

  Behind him is his wife, Auntie Barbara, holding on to a leash attached to their black Labrador, Duke. Even with the sun, Barbara’s face looks as pale as an obake, a ghost. Her dyed-black hair is swept off her face in a bun held together with a scrunchie decorated in the same pattern of the bandanna that Duke wears around his neck. She’s a vet technician, and the Chens probably have at least a dozen assorted animals in their house. I don’t know why, but she and Dad have never really gotten along. Maybe she gets in the way of the bromance. Either way, that doesn’t affect my relationship with her. She squeezes my shoulder and, letting down Duke’s leash, begins to put some of the dirty Tupperware in used ABC Store bags.

  “Dad had nothing to do with it,” I tell Uncle Rick. “Tell everyone who thinks different.”

  “I know that he didn’t,” Rick says. And he says it with such confidence that for a second I feel a little lighter.

  D-man offers to drive a couple of us in his car back to Waimea, but I shake my head. “It’ll be tight,” I tell him. “But we need to be together.”

  On our drive home, I put on Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole’s music. I know it’s old-school, but it’s my mother’s favorite. Somehow his soothing voice and the strumming of the ukulele calm us, even Baachan, and soon she and the girls have dozed off in the backseat.

  Mom is still awake in the passenger seat, her hiking sticks in between her legs. “Why do they think he was involved?” she whispers, more to herself than to me. “And where was he? Where could he have been?”

  I keep my eyes on the highway. I don’t have any answers.

  When we get home, I rustle the backseat passengers out. “Everybody gotta bocha tonight,” I tell them. Maybe it’s because of our Japanese side, but hot baths seem to make everything a little better. The girls are first, and they don’t mind sharing the tub. Baachan’s next, and she comes out with her hair down and dripping with water, looking like an angry troll who just survived a drowning.

  I tell my mother as she gets ready for her turn that I’ll wash her back, one of my father’s regular rituals. Before my mom goes in, I check the bathroom. As I suspect, it’s a mess. The linoleum floor is slick and our flimsy bath mat is soaking wet. Animals, I think. I take a boro-boro, holey rug and sop up the water. The last thing I need is Mom taking a tumble. Because our bathroom is usually a disaster, she’s careful to keep it free from all her expensive medications, which she stores in their bedroom. After she soaks for about five minutes, I take a soft sponge shaped like a giant bone, push it into the warm bathwater, and scrub my mother’s bare back. Mom’s skin is like a typical haole’s: She has freckles and sun spots all over. It’s strange to be doing something she would be doing for me to feel better. For so long, Mom was my Superwoman. The one who was playing beach volleyball with the guys, making and mending clothes, and cooking up the best grindz.

  “Oh, that feels so good, Leilani.” And then, as if a switch had turned on, Mom breaks down in the bathtub, her tears running into her bathwater. I keep rubbing her back with the sponge. “It’s going to be okay, Mom. You know he didn’t do it,” I say, though not confidently enough to convince myself.

  “No, it’s the boy,” she says. “He was young, with everything in fron
t of him. Who could have done that to him?”

  By the time I take my bath, our rickety water heater has stopped producing much hot water at all. My skin feels cold and clammy, and soon I’m starting to get chicken skin. So much for the healing effects of a hot bath. Instead, I feel today’s events stick to me even more.

  Once changed into an oversize T-shirt, I suddenly realize that I haven’t told Travis anything. I open my laptop on top of my bed and try to Skype him, but he doesn’t respond. I have to be lame and use Facebook to message him:

  Sorry. The police have my phone. A lot of shit has happened. I’m okay. We’re all okay. Kinda.

  I wait. No immediate response. I lie back on my bed and fall asleep for I don’t know how long. I don’t have my phone to tell me what time it is. Based on the darkness and silence, it seems late. I take a deep breath and dangle my arm toward the floor by my wall. I feel something. It’s hard and smooth. A phone, one that I’ve never seen before. When I touch the screen, I see the lock-screen image.

  It’s of Luke Hightower, tanned with a dazzling white smile. He’s next to another haole man, older, with thick silver hair. They are inside some building, standing in front of an old wooden surfboard. But wait, is that a scratch on his screen? The nose of the surfboard is dark, but when I take a closer look, there’s no mistake. It’s a swastika. The two smiling haole men are posed in front of a surfboard decorated with a symbol of Nazi pride.

  Chapter Four

  I STUMBLE OUT OF MY BEDROOM, trying to process what I’ve just seen on Luke’s phone. Him, smiling next to a surfboard donning a swastika. Was he a white nationalist? I mean, that doesn’t make sense. I need some ice cream to get clarity. And a cigarette afterward.

  Fortunately, there’s still a corner of mango ’n cream in the carton, which I dig out with a teaspoon to make it last. While licking the spoon, I sit on the couch and stare at the full moon visible through our opaque drapes over the window.

  Something squeaks behind me.

  “Who dat?” I say, accidentally spitting out some precious ice cream.

  “Me,” Dani steps into the lit hall. She’s wearing dad’s old University of Hawai‘i Wahine T-shirt. It’s XL and almost reaches her calves. Her blond, wavy hair is shaped like a tangle of dried seaweed. It’s going to be tough to comb it out in the morning.