Chapter 10

The next morning I went for an early morning lap swim with the turtles in Ohia Bay. Humpback whales, here in the islands for their annual birthing and breeding festival, tail-slapped and breached in the ocean outside the bay, while a rainbow trailed down from a cloud.

All of it was going on at once in an over-the-top episode of Hawaii awesomeness that couldn't banish the worried blues I was experiencing about Tiki's ongoing absence.

Wrapping in my towel, I headed over to Opal and Artie's market. Ohia General Store was a little mercantile with a big porch right next to the post office and across the street from the beach, which had helped our friendship deepen in the months I'd been in Ohia.

As was their custom on a Sunday morning, my dear senior friends were seated on their porch before opening the store. Opal popped up from her chair as soon as she saw me coming up from the beach wrapped in a towel. "Kat! I've been seeing your missing cat flyers all over town. How is the investigation going?"

"Got any malasadas or coffeecake?" My tone was leaden. "I need carb therapy."

Artie, blind but very good at navigating his world, was also an exceptional musician. He gave the strings of his acoustic guitar a dramatic strum. "That does not sound like it's going well."

"As a matter of fact, it's not." I flopped into Opal's vacated chair. "I want to drown my sorrows."

"On it." Opal, who read runes on the side and loved to dress the part, wore a red holiday scarf held in place with a rhinestone reindeer pin, complete with a pulsing, light-up nose. "But you can't tell Artie anything about what's going on until I get back with your breakfast." She hurried off into the depths of the building.

Artie leaned over to me, smiling conspiratorially. "Breakfast? It's more like sugar, spice, everything nice, and a cup of coffee to chase it down," he said. "Calling it breakfast is a bit of a stretch." Artie had diabetes, and keeping his blood sugar under control was an ongoing challenge as he was the cook for the store's ready-to-eat treats.

"I don't care. I need all the feel-good chemistry I can get."

Artie's bushy brows drew together in concern. "This sounds like it's gotten personal."

"It has, and I'll tell you why when Opal gets here again." I leaned back in the chair, tightening the towel around myself. I shut my eyes and tried to relax as Artie broke into an acoustic guitar version of "Silent Night."

Opal soon reappeared with a holiday-themed paper plate loaded down with a pile of tasty malasadas that a local bakery delivered every Sunday, along with a giant square of delicious-looking cinnamon covered coffeecake, still steaming from baking, a pat of butter melting in the middle of it. "You came at the perfect time, I just pulled this out of the oven."

I stuffed one of the haupia coconut pudding filled malasadas into my mouth and chewed as I waited for the gently steaming cake to cool. "Mmm," was all I could say, for a good long minute. "Mmm-hmm." I chased the pastry down with fresh Kona coffee and then dug my fork into the moist, buttery coffeecake. "Yep. I needed this."

After a few bites had taken the edge off of my craving and Artie's mellow music, along with Opal's maternal, completely accepting gaze had soothed my emotional upset, I was ready to tell them what the real problem was. "It's not just that fancy cat Lady Sapphire that's missing. Tiki is gone too. I haven't seen her in three days."

Opal gasped, covering her mouth with a hand.

Artie stilled the strings of his guitar and cupped a meaty brown hand around his ear. "Say that again?"

I repeated it, the delicious food turning to ash in my mouth. I shoveled more in anyway and gagged it down with a slurp of coffee.Comfort eating was one of my go-to stress relievers, but this meal meant I would have to take an extra jogging lap around new Ohia this evening. That was no hardship since I planned to go looking and calling around the park for Tiki again.

Opal unfolded one of the guest camp chairs and sat in it as if her knees had given out. "Tiki would never leave you on her own."

"I don't know. Tiki's a cat, after all. She does what she wants." My lips felt numb, and I had to make them move. I drank more coffee, staring at the crumbled cake on my plate.

When you opened your heart and let people or animals in, they disappeared and left you alone, cold, lonely, and scared . . . just like my parents had when they died in the accident with me in the car when I was nine. They'd died and gone to heaven, leaving me to freeze to death in the snowbank that killed them.

I had developed my touchphobia after being unconscious in that car for hours until I was rescued by first responders using the Jaws of Life. Somehow the rough grip of that rescue by the paramedics had caused me to associate human touch with loss and trauma.

I was always trying to protect myself from the next time something bad would happen . . . until I'd moved to Ohia and come to believe the price of keeping my heart closed was too high.

So I'd lowered my guard, and now look what had happened. My beloved cat was gone, leaving me to mourn her.

Inevitably, I thought of Keone.

Mr. K.

My boyfriend, with the twinkly brown eyes, great body, smart mind, and many skills. He was even a good investigator and partner.

I had said the L word to him.

He was bound to dump me.

Opal snapped her fingers in front of my face, and I realized she had already done that several times."Let's go inside. We can't open the store until I read the runes and see what they have to say about all this."

Normally I loved when Opal read the runes. I was fascinated with her process, a combination of intuitive interpretation and symbology that used an ancient form of communication to bring messages from the beyond.

But not today. "I just want to be left here with my carbs." I pulled my plate closer and embraced it. "I'm fine. It's fine."

"Nope." Opal shook the pocket of her pants, and I heard the familiar rattle of the kukui nut shells from which she'd made her personal set of Nordic runes. "A reader always keeps their totems close to their body, to absorb their personal energy," she told me once, when I asked her why she always carried them in her pocket. "And serious rune readers make their own set. No commercial set can quite capture dynamic energy like a person's own creation."

Artie stood up, tucking his guitar under his arm. He took my elbow in his big hand. "Come on, Kat. Bring your breakfast and you can eat it in the kitchen. We need to tune in and see what the universe has to say about all this."

Opal picked up my plate. "Can't you tell she's reliving her trauma?" She told her husband. "We need to support her."

The idea of these two elders supporting me, a strapping six foot one woman in the prime of her life . . . but of course, they meant emotionally. The two of them wrapped their arms around me, one on either side, and walked me through the store after Opal paused to hang up the OPENING LATE TODAY sign on the door.

"Our customers will have to wait," she said. "Kat needs us more."

The Pahinuis' apartment was located through a door behind the checkout counter. On the other side of the door, a pass-through storage area lined with shelves of supplies for quick stocking was a favorite haunt of Artie's; he kept a comfy armchair there. Beyond that, a locked door marked PRIVATE guarded their living realm.

Opal unlocked that portal, and we stepped into a warm, colorful kitchen, redolent of cinnamon and baking.

The smell shocked me out of my weird funk. "This reminds me of our house," I said. "Aunt Fae is baking up a storm now that Keone and I brought her fresh supplies from Kahului when we were in town on the investigation."

"You can tell us all about it after I read the runes for this situation," Opal said."But for now, I don't want to know anything besides the fact that Tiki is missing."

I sat down like a bag of dropped rice at the couple's humble Formica table. Artie went to the stove and cut himself a generous piece of coffeecake, shoveling it onto a plate and adding a fork.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one in need of carb therapy.

And for once, Opal didn't remind him about his blood sugar; she was too busy settling herself at the table, having dumped the contents of the rune pouch into her hand.

Once Artie was seated with his coffeecake, Opal took off her festive red velour scarf and spread it on the table. Without further ado, she shook the handful of kukui nut shells into her cupped fingers so that they made a musical sound as they moved. She breathed on them and tossed the shiny black totems onto the cloth.

By some quirk of physics, two of them rolled off the table and bounced onto the floor.

Opal's pale blue eyes sought mine. "As we often see, there are runes that don't want to be counted in a reading."

I nodded. We had noticed that this often seemed to happen, even though Opal used the scarf's soft surface to try to corral all of the symbols from getting away.

Opal removed a pair of reading glasses from her front pocket and slid them onto her long nose. She peered through them at the reading, muttering to herself. Finally, she prodded one shiny black shell that lay on top of another with a fingertip. "This one is fortuitous. This is the rune of spring, and life, and new beginnings. It is topmost on this reading. A very good sign."

I straightened up a little.

While the runes were often vague or confusing, the gist or general tone of the readings seemed to come true. I found reassurance, a question, or a caution in what she interpreted.

Opal pointed to another of the shells. "This is the one we need to watch out for. It's a warning. Loss and grief and a hard season are at hand." She got up abruptly and searched a nearby drawer for her drawing book.

I was familiar with her process: after tossing the runes, she often sketched her discovery, and later shared closer or more detailed interpretations. When I asked why she didn't just take a photo of the casting, she'd said that the organic process of drawing what she saw helped her uncover deeper meaning.

"What I notice overall here is a time of testing. A time of worry and grief, and of confronting old wounds," she said.

I shivered, flashing once again to my parents' death and all my past issues. It had taken my dedicated Aunt Fae, Keone's patient love, a passionate, crazy cat named Tiki, and a quirky Hawaii village to begin to heal me.

Even so, I could still return to a dark place easily, and right now I was tempted to stay there as I considered the loss of my beloved pet.

Artie set his big, warm hand over my cold one as it rested on the table. His gentle touch, instead of repelling me, grounded me in my body and reminded me of the present rather than sending me into the past. "We're here for you, Kitty Kat."

Opal met my gaze and smiled. "This is, overall, a very hopeful reading. Yes, there is darkness here. Worrisome things are afoot. Grief and sorrow are a theme. But so are happiness and new beginnings."

"And if that's not what the first Christmas was about, I don't know what is," Artie said. "After all, we're celebrating the birth of a child, born long ago and far away in a manger."

"Yeah, we forget that's the original story in all the hustle and bustle of Santa and elves and reindeer," I agreed. I wasn't religious, but I've always loved the story of baby Jesus's birth, how the animals, wise men and shepherds worshiped a humble infant King as He lay in a manger with His loving parents and the bright star of the east shining over the scene.

I sat tall and rolled my shoulders back. "Thanks so much for all of this, Opal. Artie, you too." I turned my hand over to grasp his."I don't know what I'd do without you both."

"You'd cry and be sad, and then you'd be fine," Artie said. "It's the way of things." His wisdom made my eyes prickle.

"And then you'd run off and shag that hunky pilot of yours," Opal said.

"You're both right—but the upshot is I'm glad to have you two in my life." I picked up my fork and dug into my delicious breakfast. "After this I'm going surfing with Mr. K to burn off these calories. The day is bound to get better."

Opal smiled at me. "That's the spirit, Kat. The universe has a way of balancing things out. Even in the darkest moments, there's hope for a new beginning."

I finished eating as Artie tuned his guitar, filling the room with soft holiday melodies. I closed my eyes and let the music wash over me, feeling the warmth of the kitchen and the love of my friends surround me.

Opal gathered up her runes and placed them in their pouch. "I think that's enough for today," she said. "We've gotten a good sense of what's to come, and now it's up to us to face it with courage."

I nodded. "I won't stop looking until I find all of the missing cats."

As we said our goodbyes and I walked out of the Pahinuis' apartment, I took a deep breath of sea-laden morning air and felt a surge of energy. "Time to go surfing and get a fresh perspective."

I pep-stepped over to Sharkey the SUV, parked at the beach; but it wasn't until I was well on my way to Koki Beach and meeting Mr. K that I remembered—I hadn't asked Opal about the girls who'd been seen buying cat food in the store.