The House at Sandalwood Read online

  Bill Pelhitt was puzzled. “But did you see him, Mrs. Asami?”

  “Oh, yes. He was a kamaiana haole. About six feet tall and very handsome, I thought. A fine, bronze fellow in a terrible rage. He shouted at her—something about warning her. He was very angry.”

  Pelhitt frowned and rubbed his temple. He had almost hit on my own suspicion, I was sure, but something seemed to have stumped him.

  “Do you think it was someone she knew well?” He laughed awkwardly. “But she apparently knew so many.”

  Mrs. Asami murmured conventional sympathy but it was not, after all, any fault of hers, and I could see that she was at a loss to console a melancholy stranger.

  “I’m afraid that is all we know here, Mr. Pelhitt. Miss Berringer left late that afternoon. We thought she was going on an interisland trip. But when she didn’t return—she paid a month’s rent—we decided she had gone on to the South Seas. Tahiti. Samoa. She hinted to my husband that she was in love, and that she would soon ‘persuade’ the man.”

  Mrs. Asami made a little gesture of apology. “I really am afraid Miss Berringer sounded quite ruthless when she went after a man. That was the impression we got, anyway. Otherwise, there is nothing we can tell you.”

  Reluctantly, Bill Pelhitt got to his feet. I joined him. I was anxious for him to get out of here before he realized the identity of the man quarrelling with Ingrid Berringer. At the same time I couldn’t understand why the answer hadn’t struck him as quickly as it had me.

  I discovered when we reached the car that Pelhitt’s ignorance of the identity of an angry man was based on an absurd misconception. As we drove off, he said with discouragement, “So she was mixed up with a Hawaiian!”

  “A what!”

  “You heard those Hawaiian words. The man was a half-blood of some kind. All that talk about golden—”

  “Bronze.”

  “Same thing. So she was mixed up with one of the locals. You know, it might be one of the fellows in that Hawaiian group on Sandalwood Island. Ili-Ahi, or whatever they call it. There were some that I guess you’d call good-looking.”

  I was noncommittal. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite and agree with him. On the other hand I was terrified for fear he would realize who that quarrelling man might be. I was reasonably sure that the unidentified man, if he was Stephen, had not harmed Ingrid Berringer. But he might well have bought her off, persuaded her to leave, and that might sound bad to Victor Berringer who would be certain to make something suspicious out of it. Worst of all, I wondered when Bill Pelhitt would find out what a kamaiana really was, that a kamaiana-haole was simply a long-time Caucasian resident of Hawaii.

  “A native,” Bill murmured. He said the word distastefully. “Ingrid and a native!”

  “Bill, citizens born in an American state are natives of that state. I’m a native of California. You are a native of—”

  “New York. Upper New York state. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

  I wished I hadn’t brought the matter up. I wasn’t anxious to fight the world’s battles, and I had a headache. I am not sure just when the headache started, but I knew I was getting awfully tired of Bill Pelhitt’s company, especially now that I would have to be careful in discussing the things we had learned at Mrs. Asami’s. I made a rather obvious gesture of rubbing my forehead and, very ashamed of myself, I pleaded, “I wonder if you would mind driving me back out Kalakaua to the Princes Kaiulani, where I can wait for the others. I have this splitting headache.”

  He glanced at me, and the muscles around his jaws tightened. After that one glance he kept looking ahead as we started across downtown Honolulu toward the Ala Wai district and Waikiki.

  “I guess I’ve been boring you. I really didn’t mean to. I thought it might be interesting, kind of like detective work.”

  “And it was. Really, it was!”

  He further upset me by saying with deep feeling, “Thank you, Judith. That was kind of you to say so. I can’t persuade you to go to lunch with me, I suppose.” Before I could answer he went on hurriedly, “But I imagine that wouldn’t help your headache; would it?”

  To accept his negative invitation seemed the least I could do; so I said of course I would be happy to have lunch with him. He cheered up considerably and we drove out to the beautiful Kahala Hilton and had our lunch. I admired the gardens and enjoyed the food, wishing I hadn’t gotten used to eating less in the past nine years. Institutional cooking had somewhat dulled my taste buds.

  My companion talked about his childhood with Ingrid Berringer—how he, being somewhat older, became a kind of guardian to the girl who ran around freely, uninhibited, doing as she pleased, while Victor Berringer was busy adding to his fortune.

  It was not until we were finishing our lunch and had turned to a discussion of the decorative pools, paths, lawns, and the endless varieties of green outside in the gardens, that I noticed the little man two tables away. His hooded, Oriental eyes dropped their gaze rather obviously as I looked his way.

  “Mr. Moto seems awfully interested in us,” I remarked.

  Bill Pelhitt was far less casual than I. He turned and stared with deliberation at the little man who gave all his attention to the fruit salad he was toying with.

  I saw that my companion was taking far too much interest in the little man, and I tried to turn his attention from what probably was a trivial incident. After Bill’s reaction, I was sorry I had ever mentioned the Oriental man, who was minding his own business, after all.

  “We have nothing to hide, Bill. Let him look.”

  “I don’t like it. Who could have hired him? He is hired. Anybody can see that. He’s a private eye.”

  “Private eye!” I sighed. Bill Pelhitt really had an imagination. Because the little man had done nothing else to attract attention to himself, I tried to ignore him. When this proved impossible because of Bill’s nervousness, I began to make a more careful study of the little man. He wore an aloha shirt with a raw-silk suit, and the outfit seemed a little too obviously “tourist” to be true. He was an Islander, I thought, and as I watched him I became convinced that he really was observing us for some reason, possibly in a professional capacity, as Bill had guessed. But who could have employed him? Bill was right, I was now convinced. The most important thing to discover now was the name of the little man’s employer.

  I smiled at Bill and whispered with what I hoped was a teasing air, “When we leave, let’s walk through the gardens. See if he follows.”

  Bill Pelhitt hesitated a minute but then agreed. “Right. Let’s go.” He put on a great performance—I was afraid it might be a bit overdone. “What do you say we take a stroll—dear?”

  I tried not to laugh but to keep a suitably easy expression. “Of course, darling. What an enchanting view!”

  We played along, walking out across the path, running our fingers through the water of a miniature pool, while I looked back and saw that our Mr. Moto had not left the dining room. Were we all wrong about him? He had certainly behaved oddly until now.

  We couldn’t really afford to waste any more time, even in this heavenly spot. I suggested at last that we drive back into the center of Waikiki to wait for the others of our party.

  “If we go through the hotel he’s bound to see us and follow.”

  I shrugged. “Go around the building—through the grounds and out some side way.”

  He knew no more about the grounds than I did, but after numerous wrong turns and mistakes, we did get back to the car and started into town. There was a good deal of traffic, and I had decided we should try to forget our spooky little pursuer. We could hardly have picked him out of all those trucks and cars behind us, I thought. But Bill was attempting to do so, all the same. He kept glancing at the rear-view mirror and making guesses. He was so persistent about it, he infected me with curiosity once more.

  “I never noticed that truck before. Did you see the driver? Pretty small, isn’t he? Could be the one.”

  I scoffed at th
is idea. “You surely don’t think our neat, precise Mr. Moto is driving a truck. Besides, that truck driver is red-haired.” I wasn’t going to tell him that the driver of the cream-colored Toyota beyond the truck and behind a Volkswagen did resemble our spy. Busy thinking about the spy and his probable purpose as well as his employer, I said very little after that and made the mistake of not answering Bill Pelhitt’s second question in a row.

  “Judith, have you got something against me—personally?”

  I was startled back into awareness by his plaintive question and denied guiltily, “Certainly not. Where did you get that idea?”

  “Well, you did have that headache. And then, I suppose I’m not as fascinating as some men you’ve known.” He grinned a little shyly. “Come on, I can take it.”

  With a frankness he probably did not understand the real significance of, I promised him, “You are a far nicer person than I have been used to.”

  Unfortunately, he chose to accept this as a declaration of my interest and his free hand squeezed mine as it lay in my lap. He made no other physical advance but I couldn’t help being relieved when we reached the best-known hotel row of Waikiki, with the Princess Kaiulani, on the mauka side. Across the street, backing on the narrow strip of beach, were the Surfrider and the aged but popular Moana. The latter was the last testament to the romantic Hawaii of Somerset Maugham.

  When Bill had parked and was escorting me to the chosen meeting place on the terrace of the Kaiulani, I began hoping the others would have arrived first. I didn’t want to spend more time alone with Bill Pelhitt. I was sorry for him but I felt that he was trying too hard to find a replacement for the missing Ingrid Berringer. He got a table and chairs for us and there seemed to be no way to avoid a long tete a tete. Tete a tete? Did people have those any more? How much I was still a product of the time before my lost nine years! I wanted to be part of today but I was having problems adjusting. Bill Pelhitt ordered drinks for us. I hesitated as usual. I couldn’t seem to make a choice. It had never been a problem years ago. My fiancé, John Eastman, had always chosen for me. Now, when Bill ordered the ubiquitous Mai-Tai, I accepted it and tried to keep both hands busy pulling fruit out of my glass and sucking on it. It was sloppy, and it didn’t even serve my purpose.

  Bill reached for one of my hands. My fingers curled under his slightly damp touch. My own fingers were sticky, but he didn’t seem to notice. He rambled on with his new theory that a Hawaiian had somehow caused Ingrid to disappear and interrupted himself to say suddenly, “We’ve thrown off our private eye! We haven’t seen him since the Kahala.”

  “Maybe he never existed.”

  He found this appealingly funny.

  “You just won’t let me have my fantasy, will you? Doesn’t matter. I’m beginning to feel a little less lousy. And I did feel lousy when we first arrived here in the Islands, Vic and I.”

  “I’m sorry. It must have been difficult for you. He is a very overbearing man, and then, for you to be on such a mission.” He said something, but I didn’t hear it. As I looked up I saw Stephen Giles crossing the terrace toward us. He was looking angry. I supposed his strike negotiations must have fallen through. But I was so very glad to see him! My smile of greeting must have been bigger than I had meant it to be because his glowering look suddenly thawed into his warm, answering smile. This was only one of the qualities that made it perfectly understandable why Deirdre and Ingrid and now Judith Cameron had fallen in love with him. I pulled myself together, and reminded myself of my position here. I could not even afford to think of Stephen Giles if it was going to affect me this way.

  Stephen’s glance went back to the table where my fingers tried again, more or less on their own volition, to creep out of William Pelhitt’s moist grip. I could hardly believe this sight had caused Stephen’s frown but as he came up to us, the welcoming smile was gone again.

  “You two seem to be enjoying our tourist delights. Have the others been by yet?”

  “Not yet,” I said with what I hoped was a very casual friendliness. “I hope you’ve had better luck than we have.” Bill Pelhitt seemed moderately glad to see him and pulled out a chair for him. I took this opportunity to recover my hand. I felt even more self-conscious when I realized that Stephen had noted this movement as well.

  “I’m afraid our news isn’t encouraging,” Bill said. “We visited a woman who told us about a quarrel between Ingrid and a Hawaiian fellow. Or—as I understood it, a fellow of mixed blood. Probably Oriental and Hawaiian.”

  I watched Stephen while appearing to have my attention fixed on a greedy young dove strutting across the terrace. Stephen seemed unaffected by the results of our visit. Perhaps he believed Bill Pelhitt’s description was correct.

  Offhandedly, he remarked, “I imagine we will find Miss Berringer really did go off on her own, or with company, on some private yacht perhaps. Her father seems to hear from her only when she needs money, so she may be supported at the moment.” He saw Bill Pelhitt staring at him and colored suddenly. I had never seen him embarrassed before. “I beg your pardon. I forgot for a minute ... Actually, I had no right to think or to suggest...”

  Bill sighed heavily and went back to his drink. “Oh, well, it could be true. But somehow, I don’t think so. I’ve got my eye on that half-breed guy, whatever he was called. Judith, what did Mrs. Asami say the guy was?”

  Stephen’s eyelids flickered at Mrs. Asami’s name. Otherwise, he looked at both of us with simple interest.

  I said quickly, “Hapa-haole? Wasn’t that it?”

  “Almost. I guess it was.”

  I tried not to let him see any relief in my manner at his acceptance of an entirely different description. A hapa-haole was usually half-Caucasian. A kamaiana was not necessarily the same thing. I felt that I was doing something misleading in persuading William Pelhitt he had heard other words, but although I was sorry for the necessity to lie, I was not sorry I had lied.

  Bill Pelhitt tossed a chunk of pineapple from his drink to one of the doves strutting about the terrace, but the independent birds weren’t interested. He looked around guiltily, then got up and went across the terrace to pick up the fruit.

  Stephen looked at me. “He seems to be a very kind sort of person.”

  “Seems to be, and is.”

  “You like him?”

  I said lightly, “I like everything in Hawaii.” I avoided his gaze, glanced beyond him, and saw Deirdre and Michiko Nagata loaded down with packages heading toward the table. I felt absurdly uneasy as Deirdre looked from her husband’s back to me. She was obviously under the impression that we were alone. The girls reached the table just as William Pelhitt came back. It was perfect if accidental timing. He still carried the piece of pineapple and we all laughed as he held it out with the sad complaint: “Nobody wanted it. Even the birds turned me down.”

  Stephen drew his wife to him, kissed her on the forehead and then groaned at the number of her parcels. She was delighted by his teasing and grinned at me. I had the chilling notion that her grin for me was one of triumph.

  Michiko broke up the awkward moment by telling me about the purchases she had made.

  “And the prices! Judith, you wouldn’t believe the fantastic prices these days. I haven’t bought any clothes here since last winter and everything has skyrocketed. Look at this swim suit. Ito is going to say I paid for it by the inch.”

  I thanked heaven for Michiko’s calm good sense and for the suggestion she made that we have an early dinner and call it a day.

  Stephen looked at his wife. “What do you say, darling? Shall we eat earlier and then go home? Not stop at the Kaiana hotel tonight?”

  But Deirdre was in one of those contrary moods I recognized from her childhood.

  “I haven’t done half the shops. Please, Stephen, you promised.”

  In the end, because Deirdre had always gotten her way, we spent the rest of the afternoon shopping. I thought William Pelhitt would make an excuse and leave the party, but when we
went on to that apartment high above the Waikiki surf where I had met Stephen Giles, Bill was still with us. Stephen had ordered a number of dishes popular at luaus.

  “Complete with sand in the taro leaves,” he explained and Deirdre added, clapping her hands, “Darling, I was so sick of those luaus where everyone sits on grass and gets beetles in their sandals.”

  Michiko whispered to me while the great helpings of food piled on our plates, “What I wouldn’t give about now for a burger and corn on the cob.”

  Ito Nagata arrived late but joined us during the meal and remarked to Michiko and me in a quiet aside that Deirdre was looking very tired, but she seemed happy—nervously, excitedly happy, I said.

  “Make her rest tomorrow.” Ito said to me. “I’ll try and get over in the evening if I can. They are expecting a baby among Queen Ilima’s family, so you may see me.”

  “Deirdre is just tired, as you said. I mean, it isn’t anything more serious.” I began to feel frightened, the way we all felt when her illness as a child was diagnosed as rheumatic fever and was followed by so many other childhood ailments that might have killed her. Was she never to have a decent, happy, untroubled life?

  We managed to persuade Deirdre that we should return to Kaiana by the early evening plane. We would still have the rest of the trip to make by boat. She asked Stephen, “Can we come back again? Soon?”

  He drew her to him tenderly. “Whatever you like, darling, but you are looking awfully sleepy; so what do you say we call it quits?”

  Bill Pelhitt volunteered to drive us to the airport where he would turn in his rented car. The Nagatas left us in Waikiki and drove across the island to their home in Haleiwa on the north coast. I was more than a little sorry to be separated from them. I felt that my presence in Sandalwood was the last thing that would help Deirdre. I remembered Michiko’s final words to me and I might even act on them.

  As everyone was saying good night, Michiko had said to me in her matter-of-fact, unemotional voice, “I want you to promise me something, Judy. If things get sticky on Ili-Ahi, I want you to come to us. We both want you. I don’t like the situation on that island, and neither does Ito. Stephen should never have married her, but since he did, she’s his responsibility.”