Murder and the Secret Spring Read online

  Murder and the Secret Spring

  Mele Keahi’s Mysteries

  J.D. Winters

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Copyright © 2017 Helen Conrad

  Cover images from Shutterstock.com

  First Edition October, 2017

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Mailing List

  Recipe: Tiramisu

  Also by J.D. Winters

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Aunty Jane was angry with me again.

  “Mele Keahi,” she scolded, shaking her finger. “You one da kine crazy wahine. You got the gift. You got me to teach you how you gonna use it. And you too proud to do it.”

  She thought I was slighting her magic and too lazy to learn how to do it right anyway. Naturally, that just put my back up.

  “Maybe I don’t want to live my life using magic to give me an advantage,” I told her, just being a brat, as usual. “Maybe I just want to live normally, like everybody else does. Is that so hard to understand?”

  “Understand? I don’t understand nothin’ ‘bout you. You got a problem to solve. Learn to deal with it. Using magic is better than flopping around like a silly teenager with an unrequited love.”

  “Whoa,” I said, impressed with her new vocabulary. She didn’t usually go for the big words like that – unless they were Hawaiian.

  We were standing in the backyard of my Aunt Bebe’s house at Miyaki Farms, a big, beautiful flower producing spread that Bebe had been running on her own since her husband, Jimmy Miyaki, had died a few years ago. The yard was hung with vines on every side, all just aching to bloom.

  Spring was on the way. The sun was shining, the morning fog had retreated back over the ocean. Over in the aviary Barnaby the parrot was muttering to himself and shuffling through the fallen seed coverings he loved to play in. Silver, our big grey cat, was lying back in a patch of sunshine, washing his face and looking pleased as punch after a good meal. And I was talking to Aunty Jane, our resident Hawaiian ghost. It was just a normal day in North Destiny Bay.

  Except for one thing. Sami was missing. And Aunty was right—it was a big problem and all I was doing was moping around about it. I wanted him back. It was just killing me.

  Sami was Bebe’s big old loveable black cat. He had golden eyes and a way of blinking at you that made you think he actually cared about more than the next can opening with fresh cat food. He really did love us. Captain Stone, Bebe’s boyfriend, would have laughed at the concept, but I was sure of it.

  “Coyotes probably got him,” Captain Stone, said with infuriating certitude when he heard that Sami had gone missing. “It happens to most cats once they get old and slow.”

  “Don’t say that,” Bebe had said quickly, glancing at me to see how I was taking it. She knew how I felt about that cat. “He’s not old and slow and besides, he often goes off for a few days to do his cat-world things. He’s a very busy animal. He’s got things to do.”

  I nodded. Bebe and I agreed about most things. The only thing we were at odds on was her choice of boyfriends. Captain Stone was not a fan of this particular wahine, and I didn’t like him much either.

  But it was Aunty Jane I was having trouble with today. She stood there in her bright blue muu-muu, with her palm frond hat and her hands on her hips, and I had to smile. All she needed was a ukulele to look like part of a Hawaiian stage show. And I’d seen evidence that she could have handled the singing, too.

  I’m part Hawaiian, and so is my Aunt Bebe, who is my mother’s younger sister. Aunty Jane wasn’t ever a blood relation, as far as I know. In life, she was a good friend of my grandmother’s, and as such, it was the island custom to call her “Aunty”— and Aunty she would always be.

  But we’d hardly got Captain Stone quieted down about the coyotes, when my best friend Jill De Jong started in on the same subject.

  “Well, you know, there’s plenty of wildlife out here in the fields,” she’d noted when she’d dropped by earlier that morning. “Coyotes…”

  “Don’t start on the coyotes.” I shivered, thinking of one I’d seen just the other day, trolling through the vineyard with that nasty coyote smirk on his pointy face.

  “But that’s not all,” she went on earnestly. “You got raccoons as big as bears that come in from Spooner Lake. They make short work of a little cat.”

  “Sami’s a big cat,” I said, but I thought of the time I’d decided to have a pond with goldfish. They’d looked so pretty, flashing like little golden lights as they swam back and forth among the little water ferns. Two days later I came out to find two fat raccoons lolling about on the banks of my pond. They made faces at me when I yelled, then they sauntered off. By then there wasn’t a sign of a goldfish to be found, in or out of water. They’d probably been light snacks for those mean raccoons with their little burglar masks.

  It was a jungle out there.

  I looked out at the acres and acres of grape vines, just beginning to leaf out for Spring. What if Sami was out there hurt? What if he’d fallen into a trap or been caught by a mountain lion? It didn’t bear thinking of. I looked at Aunty Jane. At least she was talking about things other than coyotes.

  The thing is, magic runs in my family. My grandmother used it a lot and it stood to reason that Aunty Jane, her best friend, used it too. Did that mean she was a witch? I hadn’t thought that one through yet—because if my grandmother and Jane were both witches—what was I?

  I knew I was definitely an heir to their special magic touch. Certain elements just came naturally to me. But I’d resisted it and so I hadn’t practiced much — a situation Aunty Jane wanted badly to change for me. Did I want that too?

  Not so much. But I still hadn’t decided for sure.

  I had to admit, there was a certain logic to learning more and using what I could right now. Sami was missing, and maybe, just maybe, I could find him if I used the skills that Aunty was trying to teach me.

  A few days before, Aunty Jane had given me a talisman of sorts, a very old netsuke carved from ancient ivory in the form of a cat. It hung around my neck on a twist of worked leather and held something in it’s secret compartment that I hadn’t figured out how to open yet, but was supposed to protect me and give me magical qualities I didn’t have without it. I’d cried when she hung it around my neck, because I knew it meant something very special to her, and I knew it had been in our family for a long, long time.

  “Your grandmother told me to give this to you when I thought you were ready,” she said at the time. Then she frowned. “I hope I am not too soon.”

  Was she? That was something I just didn’t know. And now, here Aunty Jane was, urging me to learn how to use it. How could I refuse?

  “Alright, I’ll try it,” I said a bit more grudgingly than she deserved. “Bring on your potio
ns and chants. I’m ready for anything.”

  “Okay,” she said with relish. “’Bout time.”

  She started a small fire in the fire pit and threw some tealeaves on the flames. Sparks flew around us. She made me sit on the ground facing the fire, and then she began to hum as she brewed some tea from the rest of the leaves, then poured out a cup for me to sip while she chanted ancient verses from our Hawaiian heritage. She did a simple two-step dance and made graceful hand movements, illustrating her song, and I finished my tea.

  Pausing before me, she took my two hands in hers and said something I didn’t recognize, followed by another soft chant:

  “Goddess of Fire, hear me now. God of Oceans, be merciful to me.”

  Leaning down, she kissed both my cheeks and stood looking down at me. “Nani ka wahine,” she said with slight smile. “Mahalo nui loa.”

  Taking an orchid from her pocket, she presented it to me, then tucked it into my hair.

  And she went back to dancing and chanting, her small, square bare feet scuffing the light red dirt of the garden path.

  I closed my eyes, letting the rhythmic cadences wash over me. I didn’t know what the words meant, but the emotions were plain as day and the feelings they evoked were a warm reminder of home.

  Home.

  Gradually, I was back swimming in the turquoise waters of the bay, the sun hot on my back, snorkeling on the reef, catching tiny zebra-striped fish between my fingers, searching out the beautiful sea anemones, bursting out of the ocean as I came ashore, spraying water everywhere. Running across the sand to a bonfire on the beach, wrapping myself in a thick, warm towel, laughing as the others began to sing and play guitars, loving my island existence, my island family, my island friends.

  An ache was growing in the pit of my stomach. For the first time in a long, long time, I wanted to go home.

  But another thought came snagging into my mind. I couldn’t deny it. The truth was that the thing I was calling “home” was something I’d never really had. It was a dream space, a cloud I could see from below but never touch. I had no mother waiting for me. No loving father. No sisters and brothers. Even my cousins had probably forgotten me by now. Something close to pain sliced through my heart and I winced, crossing my hands over my chest.

  Home. Hah. Hoax was more like it.

  Why was it so easy for people to stray?

  And cats. Here we had a home for Sami. Why hadn’t he come back to it? Was someone or something holding him against his will? Why oh why now? Why Sami? I just couldn’t stand it.

  I opened my eyes and looked up at Aunty Jane, blinking rapidly. Tears were threatening. Tears of self-pity.

  No way! I clamped my teeth down on my bottom lip and forced them back.

  “Sorry, Aunty,” I said gruffly, preparing to rise. “I don’t think it’s working.”

  She stopped and stared. “You going now? I’m not through.”

  I took a deep breath, feeling fragile. “Sorry,” I said again, but I knew I had to cut this short or I was going to end up crying. And that wasn’t what either one of us was going for, was it?

  Chapter 2

  Aunty Jane was truly offended. I swallowed, feeling bad but not sure how to explain to her that I just couldn’t go on with this.

  “It’s…it’s just not working,” I said again.

  She stared at me. “Only ‘cuz you don’t want it to work,” she said in disgust, her hands on her hips as she glared at me.

  I shrugged, half sad, half annoyed, and got to my feet, but before I could answer her, Bebe came out the back door from the kitchen and called out to us.

  “I’m glad I caught you here,” she said, coming toward me. “We’ve got a task!”

  Her dark eyes were shining and she grinned. I had to smile, watching her come through the flowers of her own back yard. My aching pain began to fade away. She was so pretty, so alive. Her dark eyes and hair were evidence of her heritage, her ready smile evidence of her sweet personality. She wore a white wrap-around blouse and skinny jeans, looking young and vibrant. Why in the world was I yearning for an island home far away when I had a warm, loving family member right here?

  Bebe is about fifteen years older than I am. She’d been my mother’s little sister and she’d known me from the day I was born. She looked so young, so warm and inviting, it was a stretch to realize she was also a hard-headed business woman these days.

  “A task?” I asked, brushing off the seat of my jeans and glancing over to see that Aunty Jane was walking off in a huff. Three steps—four—and then she began to melt away into the plant-filled background. It always amazed me and I never could figure out where exactly she went.

  “What kind of task?” I asked Bebe. I hunkered down and doused the fire in the pit, covering the center with sand.

  “Well, maybe more of a mission. I just talked to Jeff Bailey, the president of the Growers Association. They’re all up in arms over the water situation.”

  I nodded knowingly. “You mean the fact that there isn’t any?”

  “Exactly. This darn drought.”

  I nodded again. “I heard that Ray Nichols is digging up half his chardonnay grapes and letting his fields lie fallow. That’s painful.”

  “It is. It’s painful for all of us. We’ve all had to cut way back and so many of the growers are losing thousands of plants. I know we’ve all got to do our part and we in the Grower’s Association are complying as best we can.”

  “Good. It’s got to rain sometime.”

  “Does it?” She grimaced, looking unconvinced. “Even the rain storms that have visited the rest of the state seem to pass us by and we don’t get any. Well, we can hope and we can pray and we can do rain dances. But what will be will be.”

  I made a face. “Of course, no matter what happens, we’ll probably have to make adjustments. Water is so precious and so hard to get around here.”

  “You better believe it. Luckily, since we grow flowers instead of fruit, we can rotate some of the thirstier plants and juggle the water supplies more easily than grape growers can.”

  I thought she was being a bit Pollyanna-ish. I’d overheard talk with the other growers. The situation was really bad and some of them were working themselves up into a special type of rage. That sort of thing could get very dangerous.

  “We may have to do more than that to survive this one. It just seems to be getting worse and worse. They’re saying they’ll start patrolling neighborhoods to see if people are using too much water. There will be fines and maybe even prison terms.”

  Bebe looked unhappy with that thought and I hurried to add, “We’ll think of something. I’m sure of it.”

  She took a deep breath and waved away that entire line of thinking. “Never mind that now. Here’s the deal. The new people who turned Caroline’s house and winery up the hill from us into a restaurant are under suspicion. There’s been a lot of talk about their water supply and where they could be getting it from.”

  “What’s the word on the street?” I asked. “Are they trucking it in from the valley?”

  She shook her head. “No one has been able to figure that out and the city officials aren’t talking. But Jeff and the guys are going wild with speculation. Of course, it doesn’t seem to occur to them to go up there and see what’s going on for themselves.” She grinned. “So they want us to do it.”

  “Us?” My eyes went wide in surprise. “As in, you and me?”

  “Yes. Jeff thought it was a genius idea. He thinks nobody will suspect us of having a dog in this fight as long as we don’t go explaining it to them and if we’re cagy enough, maybe we can get at the truth of it all.”

  “Us being such world-renowned sleuths and all,” I said with some sarcasm. “Uh huh.”

  “Hey, you don’t think your reputation gets around? Believe me, Mele, it does. People know about how you’ve been key in finding the killers in all the most recent local murders, time and time again. So don’t knock it.”

  “Yeah, ma
ybe you ought to ask Captain Stone about my rep,” I grumbled. “He’d give you a different viewpoint on the subject.”

  I noticed she didn’t seem to feel the need to leap in and defend him for a change. Hmm. Maybe they were on the outs again. I could only hope. “So what task did he assign to you?”

  She laughed, looking as though she thought she was going to hand me a treat. “Listen to this. He wants us to go have dinner at The Italian Kitchen up the hill. His treat.”

  Now that was a task I could attack with gusto. A treat indeed!

  “Great! I’ve been wanting to try that place for weeks now.”

  She nodded. “You’ll love it. I’ve only been for lunch, but we finally have an excuse to go for dinner.”

  I blinked at her. “Uh…what is our excuse again?”

  “Undercover work.” Her dark eyes sparkled. “We’re going to the Italian Kitchen as ordinary neighbors, but actually, we’ll be spying for the Growers Association. Fun, huh?”

  I bit my lip. “Uh…”

  “Don’t you get it? We’ll be sneaking around to try to find out how that place gets all this extra water they flaunt in their entryway fountains and the stream they have coursing through their courtyard. We’ll be undercover investigators. Sort of water detectives. Or something.”

  I nodded slowly, beginning to take it all in. “Water detectives or water detectors.” I shrugged. “Cool. Do we get code names?”

  “No. This isn’t deep undercover. More like…’let’s be friends and you can tell me all your secrets’ undercover.”

  I groaned. “In other words, everyone is going to know exactly what we’re up to. Right?”