Mai Tai One On Read online

  Table of Contents

  Mai Tai One On

  Title Page

  Copyrights

  Dedication

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  Tropical Libations from Uncle Louie’s Booze Bible

  About the Author

  Mai Tai One On

  They would have found the body sooner, if it hadn’t been two-for-one Mai Tai Night

  Six months ago, if anyone would have told Em Johnson she’d end up divorced, broke, and running the dilapidated Tiki Goddess Bar on the magical North Shore of Kauai, she would have told them to shove a swizzle stick up their okole.

  As if all that isn’t bad enough, when an obnoxious neighbor with a grudge is found dead in the Goddess luau pit, suspicion falls on Em and the rest of the Goddess staff. With the help of a quirky dance troupe of over-the-hill Hula Maidens, Em and the cast of characters must band together to find the killer and solve the mystery before the next pupu party.

  “I want to be a Hula Maiden, too! Reading this fresh, funny mystery made me yearn to hang out at the Tiki Goddess, sip one of Uncle Louie’s drinks and watch a certain super sexy fire dancing detective entertain the crowd. This is a story for anyone who’s ever been to Hawaii, dreamed of going to Hawaii, or wondered what it would be like to live in our 50th State. I loved this book!”

  —Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  “MAI TAI ONE ON is that rarest of novels—one that is both emotionally satisfying and laugh out loud funny. As a part-time Hawaiian resident, I absolutely fell in love with Jill Marie Landis’s spot on glimpse into a Hawaii that most tourists never see. Smart and sassy, fun and endearing, MAI TAI ONE ON will sweep you away. Once you meet the quirky, real-as-your-best-friend Hula Maidens, you’ll wish the book would never end.”

  —Kristin Hannah

  “Jasmine-scented jungle, jewel seas, white beaches; an irresistible glimpse at real life on the North Shore of Kauai. MAI TAI ONE ON is a fun and fabulous book.”

  —Stella Cameron

  Title Page

  Mai Tai One On

  Jill Marie Landis

  Bell Bridge Books

  Copyrights

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead,) events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Bell Bridge Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  eISBN: 978-1-61194-034-3

  Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2011 by Jill Marie Landis

  Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

  Visit our websites – www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  Cover design: Debra Dixon

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo credits:

  Tropical still life (manipulated) © Mycoolsites | Dreamstime.com

  Tiki God (manipulated) © Annsunnyday | Dreamstime.com

  Knife © Yurafx | Dreamstime.com

  :Mtmo:01:

  Dedication

  To all of my hula sisters, past, present and future:

  You are a constant source of inspiration,

  laughs and aloha.

  Mahalo!

  1

  Drinks on the House

  They would have found the body sooner if it hadn’t been two-for-one Mai Tai Night.

  Before all hell broke loose at the Tiki Goddess Bar, Emily Johnson was hustling back and forth trying to wait tables and bartend, wondering if her uncle, Louie Marshall, had slipped out for a little hanky-panky. She couldn’t care less that the seventy-two year old was romantically involved, but why did he have to disappear when the bar was the busiest?

  Drenched in the perpetual twilight that exists in bars and confessionals, she sloshed an endless stream of sticky, pre-made mai tai mixer into hurricane glasses. Then, just the way Louie taught her, she added double jiggers of white rum and topped off the concoctions with a generous float of dark Myer’s.

  Six months ago, if anyone would have told her she’d be living on the North Shore of Kauai divorced, broke, and managing a shabby—albeit legendary—tiki bar, she would have told them to start spinning on a swizzle stick.

  Em checked her watch. It was 7:45. Not only was her uncle MIA, but her bartender, Sophie Chin, was an hour and a half late. With no time to worry, Em convinced herself that sooner or later, Sophie would show. The twenty-two year old desperately needed the job. In the three months that Sophie had been working at the Goddess, she’d never been late, so Em didn’t mind cutting her a little slack.

  When Em’s cell phone vibrated, she pulled it out of the back pocket of her cargo shorts and flipped it open expecting to hear Sophie’s voice.

  It wasn’t Sophie. It was her ex.

  “Em, we need to talk.” His voice was muffled by the noise in the crowded bar.

  “We’ve done all the talking we’re going to do, Phillip.” Em tucked the phone between her shoulder and ear hoping it wouldn’t slip and fall into the ice bin beneath the bar.

  She thought she heard him say, “I want the Porsche.” Em laughed.

  If he hadn’t screwed half the women in Orange County they would still be married and he would still have his precious Porsche. Now they were divorced and she had sold the only asset she’d been awarded in the split.

  She glanced over at the small stage in the back corner of the room where the musicians were about to start the evening’s entertainment.

  “I’m busy, Phillip. Don’t call again.” She snapped her phone shut, shoved it back into her pocket, and wished it was that easy to forget how he’d humiliated her.

  A tourist walked up to the bar asking how long it would take to get his order. There was no time to dwell on Phillip. She had to focus on making drinks until Uncle Louie or Sophie appeared.

  On stage, Danny Cook, singer and guitar player, began to warm up the crowd with his rendition of Tiny Bubbles. He reassured the audience he was not in any way related to the infamous voyager, Captain Cook, who discovered the islands and started the first real estate boom. Behind him, his cousin, Brendon, tried to keep time on a drum set that had seen better days.

  Back in the ladies room, the Hula Maidens were fluffing and primping, adding final touches to their “adornments” before they took the stage. An enthusiastic group of mostly seniors, the Maidens relied on dramatic costuming to distract from their not-so-great dancing.

  Em topped off the tray of tall shapely hurricane glasses with pineapple slices, cherries and lime wedges car
efully skewered onto miniature plastic swords. For a final touch she added brightly colored paper umbrellas—warning flags that the drinks were packing a memorable headache.

  She was about to heft the tray to her shoulder and step out from behind the bar when a ruddy cheeked, overweight female tourist with a sunburn and a bad perm burst through the front door screaming for help.

  Em rushed around the bar. “What’s wrong?”

  The woman kept screaming. Patrons set down their drinks and stared.

  Em grabbed a glass of water off a nearby table and tossed the contents in the woman’s face.

  The screaming abruptly stopped. The tourist gasped. “There’s…there’s… there’s a man roasting…in the barbeque pit…outside!”

  “That’s Kimo, our luau chef,” Em said. “In fact, we have plenty of tickets left so if you’d like to—”

  “No!” The woman yelled. “He’s not cooking. He’s…burning up! You have to do something! It’s horrible. It’s…” The woman’s eyes rolled up and she collapsed.

  All over the packed room, chair legs scraped against the scarred wooden floor. Dozens of rubber soled thongs slapped skin as locals and tourists grabbed cameras and ran for the door.

  There was a strange odor in the air. Em glanced around the nearly empty room. Danny Cook was still singing. Only Buzzy, the aging hippie who lived down the road, continued to gnaw on some barbequed ribs. Nothing had fazed Buzzy since he had some bad mushrooms back in the 70’s.

  Em propped the unconscious tourist against the carved tiki base of a bar stool and followed the crowd around the corner of the building to the back parking lot. Two and three deep, folks ringed the imu. Em hoped to God, Kimo, the cook, hadn’t tripped and fallen into the luau pit where he roasted pig.

  Em gagged and covered her mouth as she got closer. The air smelled like a mix of singed hair and burning rubber.

  “Call 911!” Someone hollered.

  “Did already!” At least five people yelled back.

  Though the last thing she wanted was to see Kimo roasting, Em forced her way through the throng to get to the edge of the pit. Her pulse was hammering even before she saw a man’s body lying face down atop the coals. Fully clothed in a pair of baggy navy blue shorts and a stained white T shirt, he was short and stocky with thick calves that showed above the tops of his black rubber work boots.

  The melting boots gave him away.

  “Ohmygosh, that’s Harold,” Em whispered. Afraid she’d pass out, she took a deep breath and immediately wished she hadn’t. She gagged again and tried to concentrate on the crowd.

  Kimo suddenly materialized at her side.

  “Poor buggah,” he mumbled. “Uh oh. Here comes Uncle Louie.”

  Em spotted her six-foot-three-inch uncle’s thatch of white hair above the crowd. She shoved her way back out of the circle and ran to his side.

  Louie was still spry, attractive, and the picture of health. He had been an impressionable eight-year-old when Victor Bergeron’s Trader Vic’s Restaurants were all the rage in his home town of San Francisco. At twenty, dreaming of exotic jungle haunts, tiki drums, and cocktails named after WWII bombers and airmen, he set off to explore Polynesia. Against his family’s advice, he married an island native, settled down and established the Tiki Goddess Bar on the North Shore of the northernmost inhabited Hawaiian island. Then Louie Marshall sat back and waited for the world to come to him.

  Every day he donned one of over fifty loud aloha shirts, a kukui nut necklace, baggy white linen shorts and flip flops. Most days he worked from sunup to well into the next morning. He was tan as a coconut and physically in great shape. He still surfed. Only his mind was failing, or so Em had been told.

  “What’s going on?” He tried to see over the crowd. When Louie looked down at Em, his expression went blank for a second, as if he had no idea who she was or what she was doing there.

  Em glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to see Marilyn Lockhart trailing behind Louie. The Hula Maidens were convinced the woman they nicknamed “the defector” was after him. Marilyn wasn’t a young gold digger. She was sixty-five if she was a day. She had danced with the Maidens until she became fed up with their antics—she wasn’t the first—and went on to join another troupe.

  “Someone fell into the luau pit, Uncle Louie,” Em could barely get the words out.

  Louie’s face may have paled. He was too tan for Em to be sure.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Harold Otanami.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “He’s dead.” Em figured there was no way Harold wasn’t dead by now. “At least I hope so,” she mumbled.

  Roasting alive was too horrific to imagine.

  “Dead! After all these years.” Louie shook his head. “I can’t imagine that old bastard gone.”

  The sound of sirens echoed along the coastline. The Kauai Police Department’s substation and the Hanalei fire station were side by side, a good twenty minutes away.

  Em’s gaze drifted to the luau hut, a lean-to shelter built not far from the pit. Beneath the thatched roof, the remains of tonight’s traditional smoked kalua pig lay spread out on a huge wooden table that served as a carving board. Seeing the roasted pig carcass complete with its head so soon after viewing poor smoldering Harold nearly did her in.

  She noticed some folks were actually taking photos of Harold’s remains. Others, pale and shaken, huddled together in small groups. Neighbors were starting to gather, swelling the crowd.

  “We’ve got to get these people back inside,” she whispered.

  “Are the Hula Maidens ready?” Louie glanced over at the dark green, wooden building that housed the Tiki Goddess Bar and restaurant.

  Em noticed most of the aging dancers had left their makeshift dressing area in the bathroom to join the crowd around the pit. The huge sprays of variegated leaves pinned atop their heads stuck out like spear tips. They looked like a squadron of tropical Statues of Liberty.

  “When aren’t they ready to dance?”

  Without warning, Louie cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Drinks on the house!”

  2

  Sophie Shows Up Late

  The minute Sophie Chin saw six cop cars in the Goddess parking lot she was tempted to drive straight back to the ‘Jungalow,’ a small studio she rented from one of the Hula Maidens. Instead, she forced herself to take a deep breath and keep going.

  Not everything is about you, Sophie. Get over it.

  It was one thing to talk about starting over. It was another to convince other people that you’d changed. Every time she saw a cop car, she flinched. Every time she saw a cop, she was certain he was looking for her. On Oahu, she was one of the first people to get questioned whenever anything happened in her neighborhood. Typical when you had an arrest record and lived on an island.

  At least that’s the way things had been in Honolulu. She was hoping her prior arrest wouldn’t come to light on Kauai. At least not for a while.

  Instinct told her to run for it, but she couldn’t have negotiated a U turn anyway. The highway was jammed with rental cars, rusted out local beaters and pick-up trucks. The bumper to bumper crawl down the winding two lane road had added to her already late arrival and mounting frustration.

  Trying to stay calm, she reminded herself how just a month ago three cop cars had been dispatched to the Goddess when a Karaoke crowd went sour. A visiting flight attendant and a bank teller had a lover’s spat and both men ended up with black eyes. Everyone quickly joined in. Tables and beer bottles flew. Not unusual with the late night crowd.

  But tonight in the parking lot, a uniformed cop was busy rolling out yellow plastic crime scene tape, cordoning off the luau pit. There was a definite stench in the air as Sophie edged her beater Honda into the only available space in the side lot and grabbed her purse. She glanced in the rear-view mirror. Her dark, island eyes stared back. Long ago she’d given up wishing she didn’t look so much like the Chinese half of her
family. She’d grown accustomed to the cocoa colored skin she’d inherited from a hapa –half-Hawaiian—great, great somebody in the family tree. In the islands, looking “local” helped more than hindered.

  She raked her fingers through her black hair. She wore it two inches long and right now, the tips were tinted day glow orange. A line of metal rings pierced her right eyebrow.

  Too late to think about a makeover.

  She slid out of the car and headed for the front door.

  Inside, the bar was a madhouse. Locals were lined up shoulder to shoulder. Every seat at every table held a tourist. Tabletops were littered with empty paper luau trays and dirty glasses.

  Through the dim light, she saw Danny Cook valiantly strumming away on stage as the Hula Maidens struggled to execute a dance number. All over the island, ancient Hawaiians had to be spinning in their graves.

  Sophie nudged her way through the throng. Once behind the bar, she tossed her purse in a safe spot and edged toward Em Johnson who was busy filling red plastic Solo cups with ice.

  “Did the pork go bad? It smells gross out there.”

  Years ago, her Chinese grandfather had owned a plate lunch restaurant in Honolulu. An outbreak of botulism shut him down for weeks. Grandpa loved to joke and say, “Hard get fresh monkey.” But everyone inside the Goddess looked perfectly healthy.

  “Harold Otanami fell into the imu.”

  Sophie gasped. “What? No way.”

  “A tourist ran in screaming that someone was roasting in the pit. Sure enough, it was Harold. He must have fallen in.”

  “Is he badly injured?”

  Em shook her head. “He’s dead. It was horrible.”

  “You saw him?”

  “Everyone saw. People were taking photos. Uncle Louie yelled ‘Drinks on the house’ just to get them all back inside while the police investigate.”

  Em looked as if she’d been dragged through the parking lot by her hair. She was thirty-four-ish. The blue eyed haole beach girl that Sophie always wanted to be until she was thirteen and found out in junior high that you were supposed to hate haoles or at least act like it if you were going to avoid trouble.