Page 7 of Pau Hana: Cat cozy Humor Mystery (Paradise Crime Cozy Mystery Book 5)

The next morningI was jolted awake by what felt like someone shoving me—it was Tiki, giving me a kick. After a romp with Keone, we’d taken showers, then gone to my house for a meal with Aunt Fae, after which Keone drove home to his place in Hana, much closer to the airport for his morning flight.

I’d gone to bed almost alone. But not quite.

From the moment I’d arrived in Ohia, I’d had an intruder sleeping with me: Tiki.

I’d fashioned a nifty cat bed for her to share with her offspring, which she’d reluctantly used as long as her kittens were small. Now that four of the five had been adopted, the scruffy calico had reinstated herself next to me. Although I think she was a bit relieved we’d not offloaded them all, Tiki was doing her best to wean the last kitten and get back her pre-mom mojo.

Barely awake, the boom that came next shook my bed with the force of a seven-point earthquake.

The state of Hawaii is earthquake-prone in general, with five active volcanoes threatening to do their thing at any given time. The closest one to us is Haleakala, or “House of the Sun,” only a dozen or so miles inland, or mauka, from Ohia. Haleakala hadn’t erupted for over two hundred years, but maybe its day had come again.

I lay panting after the shock of being so rudely awakened as Tiki jumped off the bed and scuttled over to her basket, where Misty cringed and mewed in fright. She jumped in like a good parent, throwing her body over her endangered young. From the basket, she yowled for me to “do something.”

“I would if I knew what it was,” I said. “Give it a minute.”

I waited for a second jolt, or boom, but none came.

I glanced over to the nightstand. The clock read five forty-three a.m. Almost light outside, but not quite.

“I’m not going back to sleep,” I told Tiki. “Might as well get up.” I tossed aside the covers and dressed for work, all the while prepared to hit the deck if necessary.

Downstairs in the kitchen, I put on coffee. Aunt Fae showed up before it stopped perking.

“What was that noise?” she exclaimed. She’d cut her hair shorter recently, and it stood up around her head in tufts. Her brown eyes were wide, her cheeks pale. “It shook the whole house!”

“I think maybe an earthquake?” I voiced my private worry. “Or maybe a plane crashed at the airport.”

“My stars. Whatever it was, I’m sure the whole town’s up and at ‘em trying to figure it out by now.”

She was right about that.

* * *

The post officedidn’t open until nine, but by six-thirty a.m. when I arrived, a small crowd had gathered in the dirt parking lot between the building and the Ohia General Store. It appeared that Opal and Artie were doing a gangbuster business selling hot coffee and their famous cinnamon coffeecake to the milling, worried crowd.

I’d taken Sharkey to work in case I needed to follow up with the little girl situation. I parked behind the post office in my official spot, unmarked but honored by the tradition of leaving the postmaster the space closest to the back door. This was fine because we already had two handicap spots out front, where the customers entered.

I crossed the lot, weaving my way through the gathering of early risers, greeting a familiar face here and there.

“Hey, Kitty Kat,” said Artie, detecting me as he usually did and reaching out for my hand. I took his and patted his shoulder in greeting. “We just sold the last of the coffeecake. Can I get you something else? A banana? Some yogurt?”

“Thanks, Artie, but I’m good. Did you and Opal hear that boom this morning?”

“Sure did. Maybe Pele’s trying to tell us something.”

“Pele?” I was still unfamiliar with Hawaiian lore.

“She’s the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes. We love and respect her, but when she’s not happy, she lets us know it. Sounds to me like someone got on her bad side.”

“You think it was an event up on Haleakala?”

“That seems to be the consensus.”

I peeked inside the store. Opal was six-deep in customers, so I opted to linger in the doorway.

I craved another cup of coffee before heading over to work, and I hadn’t taken time to eat anything either, but I didn’t want to add to the chaos. With my lofty advantage of being nearly a head taller than almost everyone else in there, Opal spied me and waved me over.

“Kat, good morning. Did you hear it?”

“Sure did. Why else would I be down here so early? I’m hoping to find out what happened, like everyone is.”

“Can you stick around for a few minutes? I’m out of nearly everything so I’m going to close up for a bit. I’ll reopen when the next batch of coffee’s ready.” She rang up the last customer and asked me to flip the sign to Closed! Be right back.

Artie came inside. He locked the door behind us. Opal swiftly pulled the used filter and damp coffee grounds from the big coffee machine and replaced them, moving with the practiced ease of a Starbucks Employee of the Month. She wiped her hands on a tea towel and shoved a bowl of ripe bananas toward me. I grabbed one and peeled it.

“Whew,” she said. “We haven’t gone through that much coffee since the last time it flooded out here. Seems everyone got shook out of bed and came over here to talk story and try to see what’s what.”

“Does anyone know what that boom was?”

“Lots of speculation, but not much information. I think the big money’s on it being an earthquake. The coconut wireless is tossing around all sorts of theories—plane crash, meteor coming down, sonic boom.”

“Well, whatever it was—no aftershocks,” I said.

Artie mumbled something. Opal put a comforting hand on his forearm. “Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We can’t be sure about any of it.”

I leaned in. “What was that you said, Artie?”

“I said, Kaho‘olawe. They’ve been bombing that little island for my entire lifetime. They stopped some years ago and cleaned up the island, but that boom sounded like a bomb to me.”

“Bombing an island? Here in Hawaii? Who would do that?” I said.

“No one’s bombing it these days,” said Opal. “If the blast was from Kaho‘olawe, it’s likely it was just an old, unexploded shell that went off.”

“That sounded too big and nearby to be an old shell,” Artie rebutted. “And I kinda know my explosions.”

Artie proceeded to explain how the U.S. military began using the small island off the southwest coast of Maui for bomb practice after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The targeting and bombing continued much longer than Hawaiians thought was right.

“Nobody talks about it anymore,” he said. “Hawaiians have been replanting and reclaiming the island since the military turned it back over to us. But Kaho‘olawe’s just another example of a long string of abuses our people have had to put up with.”

The coffee machine beeped, and Opal popped up and started pouring freshly brewed Kona coffee into big thermal pots. “Enough about that. We’ve got customers waiting.”

I grabbed a to-go cup, filled it, and trudged back to the post office. It was too early to open for business, so I went in through the back and kept the lights off as I navigated to my office. I booted up my computer—maybe I could find out something online.

My co-worker, Pua, entered a few minutes later.

“You hear that huge noise?” she said.

“I heard it, but no one seems to know what it was.”

“I know what it was.” She took off a powder-blue cardigan with pearl buttons to reveal a sheath dress worn with low cream-colored heels. Pua is the queen of one-upmanship. She does it without even trying or intending to, I’ve come to believe.

She’s the polished yin to my careless yang. I’m tall; she’s short. I wear plain, movement-friendly clothes in neutral colors; Pua dresses as if she’s giving a fashion show for Ann Taylor. I allow my desk to get cluttered; hers seems as if she’s just disinfected it for a surgical procedure.

“My niece’s cousin’s neighbor is married to a Maui firefighter,” she said. “They were called out to an explosion not far from here a little after five thirty this morning. They brought in aid from all over the island to deal with the fire that followed.”

“Huh. What blew up?” Some primitive, psychic alarm signal tripped inside me; my heart began to pound. This was going to be bad. Very bad.

Pua lifted a perfectly arched brow. “I’m trying to tell you—the house of that recluse guy out on Halepua‘a Road blew up. I doubt you know about him because he hardly ever comes to town. We almost never see him.”

Shock made my knees go weak; I grabbed the doorjamb for support.

I hadn’t told Pua anything yesterday about the girl or my errand out there, nor did I want to now. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her . . . well, maybe it was, a little . . . more that I knew she’d want me to stay out of it. “Wow, Pua. That’s awful. Was anyone hurt?”

“That I don’t know. I heard the house was completely obliterated, though, and burned so hot it set the area around it on fire.” She hung the cardigan on a padded satin hanger and hooked it on the back door. “They have to wait for things to cool off. They aren’t able to search for remains yet.”

I gulped; my coffee was threatening to make a reappearance as I pictured Hugh Dragoon and the unknown little girl, blown to ashes. “Yikes. Okay. I’ll be out of my office soon. I’ve got some calls to make and computer work to do first,” I said. “It’s still early, and Opal has a new pot of coffee done. Why don’t you go get some and pass on the news?”

Opal and Pua were friends, and Pua could gossip to the next link in the chain. Opal might even tell Pua about my “case” out there, and save me the trouble. Yeah, Pua would likely be miffed I hadn’t scooped her in, but we could add my omission to our list of past relationship snafus.

In the meantime, I needed to hear what Lei had to say about this latest development. There was no doubt she’d have heard of the disaster.