The House at Sandalwood Read online

  Nelia and I saw each other when she came down to the kitchen for Deirdre’s supper.

  “No,” she said in answer to my first question. “She’s not ready to see you yet, but I think, between you and me, she’s coming around. She really wants to be friends with you. It’s just—well, you know ... Anyway, all she will eat is toast and soup. Any of the lomi-lomi salmon left? That will be for me. That and the pork, and some beer.”

  I asked about Queen Ilima. “Do you think she will ever forgive the Giles family? Surely, the new baby should comfort her a little.”

  “It’s her sister’s baby. Still, Ilima may soften too. Some day.”

  “Will they ever allow any of us haoles to visit Kekua’s grave?”

  With a nervous little shiver, Nelia said, “The Kalanimokus are buried on that mountain above the village at the source of the river. Unless you’re a pretty good hiker, it’s no picnic. They’ve always chosen that area because it is hard to get to, through all that swampy patch at the base of the mountain. Of course, Mrs. Steve is devil-bent to go. She and Kekua were friendly, you know. But you can depend on it, Queen Ilima will never let her leave Sandalwood unless—that is, until Mr. Steve gets back.”

  In the end our brief dinner together was the only bright spot in the long night. Nelia slept in the guest room, and I in mine. As I closed my door I thought, when this murderer is found—and it has to have been a stranger, not someone I love—I will leave here. Or was I hedging? I had said I would leave as soon as Deirdre recovered.

  Where would I go? Back to California. Or farther east. There was a world there. Mine had been confined too long—it was time I saw that world. If only Deirdre and Stephen could be happy together, I knew that in spite of my own infatuation, I would be relieved. Enormously so.

  I heard sounds occasionally in the night. A wind blew up and when I looked out the window toward the north and west, I could see rain clouds hanging over the distant peak below which Kekua had been buried today. I looked out into the hall several times. Always one light was on in Ilima’s room, and always the door was open a foot or so. But Deirdre did not leave her husband’s room.

  I got back to sleep again and awoke a little after a clouded sunrise. I may have heard a sound without being aware of it, but when I opened my eyes to see someone standing beside the bed, looking down at me, I blinked and I may have cried out. It was only Nelia Perez, still in her nightgown. She was looking tense and reached out one hand. I backed away, but her finger touched my lips and my eyes opened wide.

  She whispered, “She made it.”

  I tried to ask, “Made what?” but I had to push her finger aside. “What is this all about?”

  “Sh! Queenie doesn’t know. The old dragon’s finally fallen asleep. I could hear her snoring.”

  I sat straight up in bed but kept my voice down. “Deirdre?”

  “Read this. I found it on her bed.”

  It was one of Stephen’s letterheads folded twice and sealed with a bit of Scotch tape. My name was scrawled on the back of the paper in the childish writing that reminded me of Deirdre’s letters to me in prison. I had the unpleasant sensation that I was back at the institution. Eagerly I broke the tape seal.

  Darling Judy:

  Forgive me. I’ve been horrid. A real louse. Hold off Queen Ilima. I’m going to Kekua’s grave and plant a little slip from our shower tree. She always liked it. Please, please don’t let Ilima or her family know.

  Love,

  Deirdre

  “Good heavens! You don’t mean you let her go!” I was already out of bed.

  “Not me! My room was farther away from her than yours is. I just heard one of those stairs creak and on a hunch I went to her room. Gone. Evaporated!”

  Things didn’t look quite so bad to me. “Maybe I can call someone from the village to ... No. They’d only contact Ilima. But you must know the—” Her face clearly told me that was out. She shook her head vigorously.

  “And get the whole gang to put a curse on me! Not little Nelia, thank you! I’ve my own problems without having kapus thrown in my direction.”

  I knew I would have to go after Deirdre. “A trip like that could be very bad for her. She could have an attack and no one about to help her.”

  “Excuse me, miss, but she isn’t that sick. Whatever palpitations are, they can’t be as bad as a heart attack. Anyway, she went under her own steam. I had a hunch, just a hunch, mind you, that she intends for you to follow her. It’s all so pat. She knew someone would find the note and give it to you. And she must know you’d go after her.”

  I was grabbing clothes and dressing. As I gave orders I managed to keep my voice down. “I’ll have to go anyway. We can’t take the chance that this is some trick of hers. You go to Stephen’s room and keep the door closed. When you know Mrs. Moku is awake, make a bit of noise to let her think Deirdre is still there, but keep the door locked.”

  “I don’t think it’ll do any good. Queen Ilima is no fool. But I’ll do the best I can.” She hurried off.

  While I got into slacks, I looked out the window. I thought I saw Deirdre in something pink, far up the village path. I scrambled into a turtleneck sweater and pulled it down. I opened the hall door as carefully as Nelia. She was right. Ilima Moku had fallen asleep. I could hear the even sound of her breathing.

  I slipped down the stairs and on the ground floor I began to run toward the front door, which would be the shortest way to the village path. The grass around the emu was wet and glistening. My sandals and my bare feet were soaking wet by the time I reached the trail and of course, Deirdre was now out of sight.

  There were patches of blue sky between the great, puffed clouds with their dark lining, and as I went along the trail, slowing now and breathless, I kept going into shade and out of it. The trail was dappled with sunlight, but off to the west and the north it was raining over the peak of the mountain. I tried to remember the name. Liholiho? Lunalilo? It didn’t matter, but thinking about it kept my mind off my legs which were definitely beginning to tire, and I realized I had only begun mv hike.

  But Deirdre would be tired also. She had only just returned from the hospital. It terrified me to think of a girl with a bad heart hurrying along this rough and twisting trail ahead of me. If I could only call to her, I could at least tell her to take it easy, tell her I wasn’t trying to chase or catch her. I just wanted to be certain she didn’t kill herself. I had passed this way only days ago but since that time we had gone through a storm that was little short of a hurricane, and the trail was littered with debris. I found myself climbing over broken tree limbs thick with greenery, all soggy and dripping.

  I began to catch glimpses of the sea on the west, breathtakingly clear and blue, but beginning to darken in wider and wider patches under the rapidly shifting clouds. I came to a sharp turn that had been masked by the hibiscus blossoms blown across the ground and into a bush where they appeared to sprout beside pale yellow, star-shaped flowers. Beyond the turn, however, I caught sight of Deirdre below and to the east of the village trail. She appeared to be waist-deep in ferns. She must have reached the turn-off to the mountain burial ground, but she had not yet started to climb.

  I called to her. Nothing happened. I tried again and then a third time, hoarsely, but my voice was swallowed up in that immense and luxuriant jungle. I made my way through a barrier of broken ferns that still seemed alive. They fell across the trail like hundreds of stiff cobra heads. The wind flung a palm frond in my face and I was momentarily blinded. I screamed and threw the thing away from my face. To my relief and surprise I now saw Deirdre again, in her pink shorts and halter and the little candy-striped jockey cap. She seemed to be on rising ground. She must have started up the mountain.

  Then she looked back. I could have sworn she saw me. I waved frantically and called, “Deirdre! Stop! Please wait for me! Deirdre!” But she turned her head away and went on. It was odd and disquieting. I followed, running now. She did not look back at me again. So her note t
o me had been, in one way, a lie. She was not really apologizing—she was very obviously avoiding me. Or, as Nelia suspected, leading me on. That was a curious thought.

  Shortly after, I found the turn-off leading to the burial site of the Hawaiian family. On a small, flat, stone marker was carved simply: KALANIMOKU. I could catch glimpses of the sea on the west beyond a strip of coco palms, their fringe in the path of the wind, fluttering exactly as they did on picture postcards. I turned my back to these and headed east and north, where the path began to rise. The wind hit stronger as I climbed. I was sure I had seen Deirdre somewhere along here, but she was nowhere in sight now. I studied the ground, thankful that the rain squalls hadn’t hit this area yet.

  Then I came to a fork in the steep, climbing path over very black earth. I didn’t know what to do here until I had studied the ground. On the higher climb there were several footprints that looked fresh. Small feet, like Deirdre’s. But could I be sure? I took a few steps between the prickly, unknown vegetation on the upper trail and saw a tiny pink knitted ball dangling from one of the bushes. The waistband of Deirdre’s pink shorts was decorated with these miniature balls of yarn. It was a sign impossible to ignore, so I started to climb. Almost at once the trail closed behind me.

  By the time I had walked for ten minutes, tearing away the interlacing growth that also crawled around thick tree trunks, I began to wonder if I would be able to find my way back. I no longer saw any signs of Deirdre. I had gradually entered a swampy area that was heavily forested, with much of its mossy growth rotting. I remembered that this mountain and one on Kaiana received four hundred inches of rain a year. This was said to be the highest rainfall registered in the world.

  Hearing the ripple of water, I was about to turn back when I saw another of those pink balls of knitting yarn on a half-log that formed an uncertain bridge over this sector of the Ili-Ahi river. Although the water flow was heavy here, and raindrops had already begun to penetrate the canopy of immense vegetation overhead, the river at this point was still narrow. Within this jungle world the air was hypnotically thick with flower scents. It was not sweet, but, rather, was compounded of a strange, almost bitter perfume of the flowers’ aromas plus the wet earth and the smells of millions of crowded, scrambling tropical growths, almost all unknown to me. The river tumbled past me at this point and downward from some collecting pool near the mountain peak. Then it wandered across the island to the falls beside Sandalwood and on into the sea near the landing for the boats that crossed Kaiana Bay.

  Seeing the tiny pink ball on the log bridge, I decided I had been right. Absurd or not, Deirdre was either playing a joke on me, leaving tracks for me to follow, or perhaps, subconsciously, she wanted me to follow. Either way. my spirits were considerably raised. She must mean exactly what she said in the note, that she was no longer angry with me. She would surely have stopped somewhere around here. I was worn out, and I considered myself a strong, healthy woman. I crossed the bridge, which wobbled and shifted under my feet. It was not very stable and had been laid over boulders and on top of a huge, fallen tree trunk coated with lichen and green slime. Lianas trailed everywhere from the trees and foliage overhead that enclosed me. Sweaty and wet all over, I felt as if I were in a bathhouse whose walls were rapidly smothering me.

  Bird sounds were faint and far away, but there were rustlings close at hand, so close I could hear, or perhaps sense, the little sounds above the noise of the stream rushing down past me, beneath the trembling log that seemed barely to support my body. Across the log, on slippery, moss-covered ground that seemed to sink spongelike underfoot, I could not even find the continuance of the trail. I must have wandered in this strange, uncomfortable Eden for some minutes before giving up and making my way back toward the log, using the sound of the river as my guide.

  If Deirdre had tired by now—and I myself was exhausted—she simply could not have gone beyond this area. I called her name several times but the result was an eerie sensation, as though the sounds of my own voice were sucked in by all the Ili-Ahi swamp’s unseen denizens. Then I reached the river at a point a little above the improvised bridge, which was masked from me by a huge banyan tree, at whose feet anthuriums grew, looking artificial as they always had to me, Stiff and shiny, a gorgeous red that was softened with pink, but never quite real. Brushing aside the tangled vines, I heard my name called. Thank heaven! It was Deirdre sitting there across the river, her back against a boulder, her sandals beside her, and her feet splashing in the foam that lingered as the waters rushed by. She waved to me while I wondered how I could have missed her when I was on that shore of the river. Where had she hidden?

  “Hi! Led you a chase, didn’t I?”

  “You led me a chase, all right. Honestly, Deirdre!” I raised my voice. “Why? Don’t you know you could have killed yourself?”

  Deirdre was looking mischievous but even at this distance her young face appeared strained and very white.

  “I know, wise old auntie. Why don’t you come and stop me?”

  “What I ought to do is spank you.”

  “Try!” It was a curious challenge.

  I made my way around endless tentacles belonging to the banyan tree, its roots everywhere, and reached the point opposite where Deirdre sat, the point from which I had crossed on the log bridge to this side. The bridge was gone.

  Twenty

  I thought I had miscalculated the place. I moved out as far as I dared on the slippery ground and looked down the path of the river. It descended rapidly about twenty yards beyond this spot. I couldn’t be mistaken about the bridge. It had been here. I could identify each boulder, as well as the big, dead tree where the log bridge had rested. Long ago, several cleats seemed to have worn away from a wooden contrivance that fastened the bridge securely at this end.

  Deirdre called suddenly, “Be careful. You’ll fall in.”

  Even though I remembered her many moods, I was surprised at the concern in her voice now. Whatever trick she was playing, there was nothing malign in it, since she obviously wished me safe now.

  “What happened to the bridge?” I asked calmly.

  “There.” With her wet, bare toes she pointed to the river’s edge just beyond her feet. The long bridge had come to rest against the shoreline and bobbed there, looking as if it might float away and down the stream that bubbled and foamed below us.

  I studied it, wondering what on earth I was going to do now. I called to Deirdre, “I hope there’s another way to get down off this mountain.”

  “I don’t see how,” she shrugged. “It’s all a swampy mess behind you. The trail up to the burial ground runs from this side.”

  “Now, look here, Deirdre, if you saw that the bridge was going to come loose, why didn’t you call out and warn me?”

  “Can’t hear you!”

  I raised my voice, then realized she heard me quite well. She paddled her feet vigorously in the water as she informed me that Stephen had called her late last evening and told her he would be home in the morning. “He said he explained to the hospital why I left. He said you would take care of me, and if I behaved I wouldn’t have to go back.” She added in a sudden, querulous impatience, “He thought of you. Always you! He even said at the end: ‘Tell Judith when I will be back.’ ”

  “Of course he did, Deirdre. I am acting as housekeeper. I should know how many people will be at dinner, if nothing else. What has all this got to do with that log falling?”

  Sulkily, she kicked at it. “I did that. It hurt, too. It was heavy. I just slid it off the rocks and let it float right here.” She looked up. “Judy, I’ll let it go against those boulders and you can step on it easy from where you are, if—”

  “If!”

  “Darling auntie,” oddly enough, she seemed to be sincere in calling me that. “Please promise to go home to California. Or China. Or someplace else. As long as you are here, where Stephen can see you doing everything right, everything better than I can do it, I’ll lose Stephen. Won’t you pr
omise me, Judy? Please?”

  It was heartbreaking that she had felt it necessary to go to this much effort just to get rid of me, especially since I was leaving anyway. She must have planned that I should follow her, knowing I would be trapped by this stream.

  “I promise, dear. I meant to leave when Stephen came back from Honolulu.”

  “Oh, Judy, darling! Swear.”

  “I swear. Now, do be careful. Don’t exert yourself too much.” But she was already on her feet, scrambling over the slippery ground. She knelt by the center of the log and began to free it from its entangling vines and the debris washed against it.

  “Take it easy,” I called, watching anxiously.

  “I got it off those upper rocks. I can get it back on these rocks a little farther down. I can do things too, you know.”

  “Yes, dear. Very clever.” But she worried me to death. She was trying to boost the log over against a boulder and looked as if she was exerting tremendous energy. I shifted my foot along the river’s edge, tried a rock about two yards out in the stream. The torrential force edged my foot off the rock and my leg plunged into the cold, rushing water. While I was recovering my balance on the shore, Deirdre got the log jammed between a boulder and the fallen tree trunk. She cried out and I waved to her to stop.