The House at Sandalwood Page 28
“There isn’t any more. I hoped and prayed I’d never have to come here again but Vic made me go with him to the Orient. It would have been strange if I refused. And I might’ve lost my job. And then ... just as if fate led me, I had to come with him to this very island. This hell hole! All I could do was to make noises like it could have been Mr. Giles here. I mean—I did blame him. I figured he’d led Ingrid on. But now, looking back, I can see how it was. And I walked right into that Hawaiian girl here. But it wasn’t only her, that little blackmailer. It was that grave. I got this fixation that it would be uncovered. It just haunted me.”
I moistened my lips. “Did you kill Kekua?”
Stephen had raised his head. He was listening. Then he repeated, “You don’t have to tell us anything, Pelhitt.”
Bill said softly, “I know. But you see, I didn’t kill her. She made me meet her a couple of nights ago to pay her another hundred and fifty dollars. I thought I’d scare her. I threatened her and she ran right across the grass to the path. Then she looked back at just the wrong time and fell right through those bushes ... and fell ... and fell...” He covered his mouth. His eyes looked haunted. “She ... kept falling,” he mumbled.
Stephen moved to the door. He turned back before opening it.
“I’m afraid they are here.”
The room was very still for a minute. Then Bill Pelhitt stiffened, walked slowly toward Stephen. “Better get it over with.”
Stephen opened the door and they went out together.
By the time I was permitted to leave Hawaii upon the agreement to furnish my address to the court at all times during the next six months, I was at least satisfied that the friends I left behind me were as reasonably happy as they could be. That was a consolation and a great relief.
With Deirdre back in the Honolulu Hospital, this time for tests and a checkup, she couldn’t see me off but she insisted that Stephen drive me to the airport for the morning coast flight. I would have preferred to say good-bye to them both together in Deirdre’s room, but I couldn’t argue with the new and grown-up Deirdre.
“I owe you more than I can ever repay, Judy,” she whispered as she drew me down to the bed with her arm around my neck. “If I hadn’t blacked out all those years ago, the jury’s verdict would have—”
“Don’t think about it. We made our plea and they didn’t believe it. They would probably have accused you of lying to protect me. Now, dear, write to me.”
“You know I will.” She hugged me again, looking over my head to warn Stephen severely, “You take extra-special care of her.”
Stephen said he would. Deirdre rang for the nurse, who arrived with a lei of vanda orchids.
“Let me do it,” Deirdre demanded and I bowed my head again while she dropped the lei, ice cold, over my head, kissed my cheek, and pushed me in a friendly way. “Go on. Take my husband!”
I said, “I never like men who are in love with their wives.” At the door I smiled at her once more, we made smile gestures of a parting kiss, and I went out into the hall with the nurse, who looked back with a big sigh.
“It restores one’s faith in marriage. They are such a handsome couple.”
“They are, thank God!”
Stephen came out a few minutes later and we left the hospital, making small talk about the weather, which was perfect, and about the prospect that I would have a smooth flight. He asked me once what I planned for the future, and I dismissed the matter lightly.
“I may just enjoy my freedom for a little while.” I hesitated. “May I ask you a question?”
“Judith—” He glanced at me, then back at the highway. “You know you can.”
“What do you plan to do about the grove after all this has happened?”
I think he was surprised at this subject, which was apparently not what he had in mind. He shrugged. “It no longer seems to matter. I’m confining my interests now to the shipping. We’ve done well there, and no kahuna curses. Nothing stronger than strike threats.” He smiled grimly, and explained, though he didn’t have to. I had guessed. “It was my father’s death, I think, more than the grove itself. I seem to have been the prey of a superstition there that was far worse than the kapu Ilima’s family believed in. My notion was that if I finished and made a success of the Sandalwood heiau I would put my father’s spirit to rest. That’s a pretty primitive thought for this day and age, isn’t it?” I couldn’t disagree, though I understood his feelings very well. He shook off these thoughts which even now appeared to trouble him. “Anyway, Deirdre is coming along wonderfully. It was her suggestion, by the way, that she see a psychiatrist, and Ito Nagata recommended someone. Deirdre met the man this morning for the first time. She seems to feel that he is a friend already. Someone to talk to who is paid to listen, as my little girl calls him.” Yes, I thought, Deirdre suited Stephen perfectly. With all his conflicts earlier in our acquaintance, he knew that he wanted his wife to be just such a girl as Deirdre. He added, “When this psychiatrist thinks she can handle it, Deirdre wants to testify, at least get into the record what she saw the day her mother died.”
It seemed unimportant now that the years were gone. I tried to dissuade him but he said stubbornly, “She wants to. And I want her to. We’ve got to clear your name.” There seemed no point in arguing about it. I touched the small, delicate orchids around my throat and remembered how much orchids had meant to me when I was a girl. Knowing this was the peace symbol between Deirdre and me, I felt that this wreath of little flowers strung on a bit of twine meant more to me than all the flowers in the past.
At the airport Stephen bought several leis and dropped each one over my head while I protested, feeling ridiculous. We laughed a good deal. He kissed me, a very slight brushing of his warm mouth on my cheek, each time he dropped the lei, but always it was a laughing gesture. As he dropped the last lei and kissed me, his forefinger traced my lips. I saw his eyes, the depths, the expression, and looked away quickly.
Good-byes were yet to come. I had said good-bye to Michiko and Ito Nagata the night before, but there they were, waiting to add fresh leis, cinnamon carnations, pikake, white ginger, and my commonplace favorite, pink plumeria, and before I knew it I was crying. It was a wonderful thing to have friends like this, people who had always believed in me, long before Deirdre’s memory made the truth official.
Ito hugged me at the last before sending me on my way. “Me ke aloha, Judith.”
“You brought me my aloha greeting, and now my aloha farewell comes from you, my dear friend,” I told him lightly, but he knew the feeling behind my words and understood my gratitude.
We hugged each other again and I rushed to board the big plane. I moved into my window seat, thankful for the dozen leis that doused my own perfume and gave me sufficient excuse for my red eyes. I looked out the window and pretended to make out individual faces. My view was blurred by tears, but I was intensely relieved to be putting two thousand miles between me and Deirdre and Stephen. My relationship with them had cost too much nerve-wracking tension, too much passion that had to be restrained. And I couldn’t help thinking of William Pelhitt. That damnable Berringer family, father and daughter! What pain they had caused!
The plane lifted off the runway, circled, headed out toward California, and I had no more time for tears. Although I occasionally thought of Deirdre’s husband, the memories receded further and further into the past. My future was going to be quite different, and it would be free of the strangling ties that had nearly ruined both Deirdre’s life and mine. I looked out the window. I had never seen a sky so vividly blue. We were soon far above sea and clouds, but I took the sky for my omen, and my spirits lifted with the soaring plane.
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