Part 13 (1/2)
Lei started the truck and rolled out of her surveillance spot under an overhanging jacaranda tree. Detective Reyes from HPD pulled up to take her place. They were collaborating with several detectives now that the bodies were piling up, and Reyes and his partner had been particularly interested in helping after their sad experience with the Betsy Brown case.
It had been a long, hot afternoon, and the sunset sparkling on the ocean off Diamond Head as she rounded the turn toward her grandfather's neighborhood did nothing to lift Lei's mood. She'd had way too long to sit with a pair of binoculars fixed on a dying man's house with nothing to do but think about the trouble she was in and how much she missed Stevens.
”Shake it off,” she said aloud. ”It is what it is.” Dr. Wilson-isms, she called them, those distillations of wisdom from her therapy work with the police psychologist in Hilo.
She did just that when she pulled up in front of her grandfather's immaculate lawn in his Punchbowl neighborhood. Getting out of the truck, she stretched high, hung low, shaking out her arms and legs from the hours of confined inactivity. No one but the white Home Care Nursing van had come or gone from Woo's house in the four hours she'd watched it.
She worked the knocker on the front door. Her grandfather eventually answered it, and she took one look at his pale face, lines etched deeply beside his narrow mouth, and said, ”I'm here to take you to dinner, Grandfather.”
He just nodded, his silvery buzz-cut head wobbling on a neck she'd never realized was so fragile, and slid gnarled feet into a pair of rubber slippers on the top step. She drove them to their favorite noodle house and ordered saimin. When he'd had some sips of green tea, a little color came back into his face.
”Detective Kamuela told me he was coming to question you.”
Soga nodded but didn't speak. Took a few more sips of tea, slurping it to cool it on the way down. She waited for him to put the tea dish down.
”What happened?” she asked.
He folded his hands, knotted with work and calluses, on the table in front of him.
”He wanted to know, did I know what this fortune cookie phone number was about? I told him no.”
”Tell me more.”
Soga's eyes, with their heavy eyelids, pierced her with a sad and accusing stare. ”He said you found it in the box I gave you, and you called it. The phone belonged to a man who'd been shot.”
”Yes. He told me that too.”
”He said that the victim was an a.s.sa.s.sin. That he'd killed a lot of people, including the man . . .” Words seemed to fail him. He took the wooden chopsticks out of a paper sleeve, ran them against each other to knock off splinters.
”Yes. Charlie Kwon, the man who abused me. I told him I called the number because I was curious. I had no idea it was anything but a possible friend of my grandmother's.”
”Your grandmother. She had no friends.” Those deep brown eyes looked up at her again, then down. ”She was angry, your grandmother.”
”You've said things like that before. That she was the one to keep me and Maylene out of your lives. Do you think-she had anything to do with calling this man? This a.s.sa.s.sin? Having him kill Kwon?”
”I don't know,” Soga said heavily. The saimin arrived, a great steaming bowl of savory broth and noodles enlivened with strips of egg, chives, rice cake. They busied themselves eating for a while and Lei noticed that his color was better and he seemed to be relaxing.
”When did you eat last?” she asked.
”I don't remember.”
”Does that happen often?”
”I don't need much, at my age.”
”Grandfather. You have to take care of yourself.” She reached over, put a hand on his. ”It's not good to forget to eat.”
”For you to tell me these things . . .” He shook his head, a hint of a smile around his mouth. ”You don't eat well.”
”You're right. We can both do better taking care of ourselves.” Lei finished her saimin, at least all that she could capture of the noodles amid the broth, and pushed it away. ”Now. Tell me from the beginning. What did he say to you, and what do you know? I need to be warned about what's coming.”
”He came with his partner Ching. They sit with me in the living room. They ask me what I know about the box. I say it's my late wife's things, and I gave it to you for keepsakes. They ask, do I know what's inside? I say letters and photographs, maybe a small little thing or two.” He set the bowl aside, still half full. ”I ask what this is about. They tell me about this man who shoots Kwon and other people, that he's dead and your number on his phone. You said you got the number from the box. Now I'm worried.” His hands, when he brought the napkin up to dab his mouth, were trembling. ”I tell them I don't know anything. And I don't.”
”But you do, Grandfather. You know my grandmother, what she was capable of.”
”Yes.” He did not elaborate.
”So would she? Have called an a.s.sa.s.sin?”
”I don't know. I like to think not, but she an angry woman, your grandmother. She want to have someone to blame for Maylene dying, for you going to live with Rosario.”
Lei was increasingly glad that her loving, generous aunty Rosario was the one to have taken her in and not the Matsumotos. Despite the very real affection she had for her grandfather, her grandmother seemed to have been a hard and bitter woman.
”Well.” Lei touched his gnarled hand. ”Hopefully, he will close his case quickly.”
”I hope you are right.” They drank more tea, and Soga insisted on paying the bill. On the way back to his house, he said, ”When do I meet your fiance?”
”Who?” A curl had escaped the FBI Twist and bounced in her eye as she turned her head to look at him. ”You mean Stevens? He just came for the weekend.” Lei felt a blush rising in her neck and was glad the darkness hid it from her grandfather's sharp eyes. ”He's not my fiance.”
”But he was. And he should be again.” She'd told Soga she had someone when he'd asked, that they'd had problems but were working them out.
”You been spying on us?” She made her voice playful. ”We want to be together; it's true. But I don't know how. One of us has to give up our work to be with the other.”
”You should get married,” Soga said, opening his door at his house. ”I don't have forever to see my great-grandchildren.”
The blush intensified as Lei pictured Stevens holding a baby. Their baby. It was a flash of vision-his face, filled with joy, smiling at her. The baby a wrapped bundle with a head of dark curls and tilted sleeping eyes.
It was the first time that idea had done anything but terrify her. Now she felt a tug of longing somewhere deep inside. Probably my dried-up uterus casting a vote, she thought. Trust biology to win over good sense. She wouldn't know the first thing about being a mother.
”We'll see, Grandfather. Next time he visits, I'll bring him to meet you. You'll like him, I think.” She walked him to the door. ”Don't worry about that other thing.”
”I will try not to.”
”Love you.” She leaned over, kissed his leathery cheek. ”Good night, Grandfather.”
The next day's surveillance was long, punctuated only by a phone call with Stevens. Lei told him about Kamuela's phone call to her, his interview of her grandfather.
”When do you go make your statement?” he asked.
”I have to go by Kamuela's station after work. We're doing stupid surveillance of these two DyingFriends members. Sophie said she's seen them in the second level of the site, but not the third, where all the gory pictures are. My day is seriously dragging.”
”Better than being the lieutenant of a station with all these b.a.l.l.s in the air, schedules to juggle, reports to fill out-and all I'm doing is missing you.”