Chapter 37

Elle handedme a pretty box containing a red fascinator to wear at a jaunty angle on the side of my head. "From Edith," she said with a smile. The thing resembled a tiny doll's hat, wreathed in folds of shiny red tulle finished with red glitter. In my micro dress and itty-bitty, quirky hat, I imagined Alice in Wonderland after she drank the potion that made her grow to gigantic proportions.

I was first to greet guests for the ceremony, waving a plume-decorated pen toward the guest book. With the constant stream of arrivals, it seemed as if all of Ohia had been invited to the wedding. The Red Hat Society ladies who were my fellow bridesmaids showed up, each gowned in purple topped by a red chapeau, ranging from Clara's cloche to Pearl's geisha-like headpiece of red feathers and a fan decorated with tiny white orchids. Edith and Josie had stayed the night at the hotel so I wouldn't be seeing them until the ceremony, but I had no doubt they would be dressed in memorable outfits as well.

The lobby became a hubbub of noise and laughter. I managed to get most of the wedding goers to sign the guest book.

But only fifteen minutes before the ceremony was to begin, Keone had still not shown up.

My concern was amplified when Pono, Keone's cousin and Lei's partner at Maui Police Department, walked in wearing a crisp aloha shirt and freshly pressed chinos. Lei soon followed; she wore her usual black jeans with a polo shirt and her badge on her belt.

"The road must be open! Are you here on official business?" I waggled the plumy pen. "Or wedding business?"

"Both," Pono said. "My cuz can't make it, so I'm taking his place walking you in."

"And I'm here to see about the missing girl," said Lei. "Where is she?"

At that point, my emotions didn't know which way to go. Keone wasn't attending the wedding and had sent his married cousin to walk me down the aisle!

AND: I'd found the girl who'd haunted my dreams for the past two weeks and now I could share that excitement with my favorite detective!

I decided to lean into the joy and save the tears for later.

I laid the feathered pen in the open guest book and angled it so anyone else entering would be able to sign it. "Come with me," I told the detectives. "The girl's in a bungalow here on the property. I'm pretty sure it's Maile Ortiz, but for whatever reason she won't tell us her name."

We crossed the immaculate lawn toward the bungalow with Lei throwing questions at me with every step.

"How did she come to be here? Have you ascertained her state of mind? How much has she told you about the circumstances surrounding her abduction? And where has she been for the past couple of weeks?"

I didn't have many answers but I shared the little I knew. "I invited some girls her age over to help her feel more comfortable."

"I'll let you ladies handle this, then," Pono said. "Too many cooks in the kitchen with a matter like this." He turned and was soon accompanied by Lani as she hurried back to work.

I tapped on the door. Sandy answered it, her hand on her hip. "We're done with lunch and TV. Can we go to the pool now?"

"We'll see. I want to introduce you to my friend, Detective Lei. She's here to talk to . . ." I faltered over whether to address the girl as "Maile" since we hadn't yet actually established that was her name.

Lei gazed at the girl sitting on the bed in Sandy's clean clothes. She pressed her lips into a restrained smile, but her eyes were wide and bright. If I was reading it right, she was nearly as overcome with emotion at seeing the child alive as I had been; but she managed to maintain her professional demeanor better than I had.

"Her name's ‘Maile,'" Windy informed us from where she sat on the bed beside the girl. "She wants us to call her that even though her dad called her something else."

Whoa.

Her dad? Who could that be?

I leaned into Lei and whispered. "Mind if I stay for this part?"

"Wouldn't have it any other way. In fact, I should have another adult present for this interview. How about we ‘talk story' with her for a few minutes and see what she will tell us?"

For the next ten minutes Maile Ortiz provided us with a limited, but completely believable, account of her kidnapping. She had been shopping at the Kahului Goodwill store in late December. A bearded man saw her with Barbara Long, and when Maile went over to the toy section by herself, Hugh Dragoon came over and asked her if that was her foster mom.

She didn't answer him because her mom had always told her she shouldn't talk to strangers.

Dragoon told her it was okay for her to talk to him because he wasn't really a stranger—he was a friend of her real mom. He said her real mom had asked him to find her daughter because she needed his help in taking her home.

Maile had asked him, "You know my mom? Is she out of jail now?"

The man said she was, but her car wasn't working so she couldn't come and get Maile. "What he said made sense, because a lot of the time my mom's car didn't work. I was real happy when he said he was there to take me to my mom. Mrs. Long was mean to us a lot of the time. One time I made a mistake and called her ‘auntie' and she made me go to the time-out shed."

Once she arrived at the hermit shack in Ohia she realized he'd lied, but according to Maile, he treated her well.

"He made us food and lots of it. We played games like ?Clue' and he taught me how to play poker. He called me ?Jennifer' or ?Jenny.' I told him that wasn't my name, but he said it was my new name because I was his daughter now."

"Were you scared living out there?" I asked.

She shrugged, her eyes down. "He didn't want me to go to school, and I didn't get to play with other kids or anything, but he was nice to me. He finally told me that my mom was still in jail. He said she'd probably be there for a long time."

She seemed oddly accepting of her fate. It sounded like Maile had been at the whim of capricious adults for her entire life. Her birth father abandoned her; her mother was an on-again, off-again druggie who fed her habit by dealing meth and doing sex work; and the temporary foster mother she'd lived with was a selfish, harsh woman who took in children because it paid the bills. For Maile, the shack where the man lived was no better or worse than any other home she'd lived in.

"After a while, my new dad told me he'd been a soldier in ?I-rack' and while he was gone, his daughter died. Her name was Jennifer Ann. He said I was about her same age and I looked like her."

I pressed, "You said your ‘new dad.' Do you know what his name is?"

I knew it must've sounded odd to Lei that I'd used present tense when talking about the hermit who'd blown himself up. But I felt the little girl didn't need to deal with any more trauma at this point.

"No. He told me to call him ‘Dad.' So I did."

"Okay."

The wedding ceremony was about to begin, and I had to leave. "Do you girls want to come to the wedding with me, or stay here?"

They sang out in unison. "We want to go to the pool!"

Lei agreed to accompany them to the pool. The girls raced into the bathroom to put on the swimsuits that Joe Nakasone had brought with the girls. Lei said she'd let them play for a while and then she'd take Maile down to the Kahului police station to get a recorded statement.

I had an idea. "Why don't you wait until after the ceremony and I'll see if Edith will agree to step in as her legal guardian? You could get the statement done here, instead of subjecting her to a trip to the station. I doubt she's keen on police after watching her mom get arrested and taken away." Edith was a practicing attorney and, even though it was her wedding day, I was certain she'd agree to helping out a little girl.

I hurried back to the lobby and was just in time to be escorted into the chapel on Pono's arm, holding a small bouquet of Edith and Josie's favorite blooms: tiny white dendrobium orchids and pikake flowers.

The ceremony was, as we'd rehearsed, a brief but beautiful event. Edith wore a flattering fitted gown in lavender with a red hat with a veil; glittering shoes peeked out from beneath the hem. Josie wore a flowing muumuu printed with violet and red hibiscus and trimmed at the neckline in velvet. Her veil trailed from the edge of a dyed red lauhala hat.

It seemed like the whole town was packed into the celebration room to watch them take their vows, which were followed by Artie's ukulele rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Then we marched back out.

I walked with Pono since Keone still hadn't shown up.

"What happened to him?" I asked.

"I think it had something to do with work. He said he was at the airport, and he'd get here as fast as he could, but I don't see him." Pono glanced around the grounds as we made our way to the reception area. "Not like Keone to blow off an ‘ohana event like this." Pono raised a thick black brow, glancing pointedly at my dress. "By the way, has he seen you in that?"

I smoothed down the skimpy skirt; my black boy shorts were peeking from beneath the abbreviated hemline again. "No, he hasn't."

Pono grinned. "He's gonna be mad that he missed it."

I peeled away from the crowd, hoping to reconnect with Lei and the girls. The trio of girls were in the pool playing Marco Polo. Luckily, there were no other guests in the pool area. Lei was on her phone as I approached. I waited to speak until she ended the call. "How's it going?"

"Fine. Maile's still not saying much about how she got here to the Hotel Hana, but I'm hoping the girls are making her more comfortable about opening up. Great idea bringing them in on this."

"Are you ready to take her statement?"

"Yeah," she said. "I'm going to start by asking where she's been recently. Don't forget, I'm conducting an ongoing home invasion and attempted murder investigation into what happened to Barbara Long."

"True. But you don't think she had anything to do with what happened to her foster mom, do you?"

"That's what I need to find out."

That sounded ominous.

I glanced at the pool. The three girls were laughing and splashing, an idyllic scene. For once, all three kids, who'd been through so much, were acting like the children they were.

Could Maile have been involved with what happened to Barbara Long? My stomach tightened at the unwelcome thought.