Spider Bones(26)

Kelp surrounded me.
I watched the green-black clumps slowly coalesce. The dark circle closed in.
Something brushed my foot.
I looked down.
Saw a snout. Membrane-hooded eyes. Cold. Primordial.
The shark stretched its jaws, revealing razor-sharp teeth.
I awoke, damp with perspiration, nails digging little crescents into my palms.
The sky was gray. A moisture-laden breeze wafted in from the window.
I checked the clock. Six forty-five.
The house was quiet.
I rolled onto my side. Pulled the quilt to my chin.
Much as I willed it, sleep would not return.
I tried every relaxation trick I knew, but my mind focused only on the dream.
My nighttime fantasies are typically not Freudian puzzlers.
Bareback on the horse? OK. Most of us know that one.
Katy? Fine. I was worried about her.
The gold blaze? The kelp? The shark?
At eight I gave up and went down to the kitchen.
Ryan had already cranked up the espresso machine. Good. The thing scared the crap out of me.
"Perry closed that beach." Ryan pointed to the local section of the Honolulu Advertiser. "Got to hand it to the lady. She's really something. And looking pretty good."
Only if you're sighting down a penis. This time I didn't say it.
I skimmed the article. It reported that Halona Cove was closed to swimmers until further notice, but offered no explanation.
Sipping coffee and crunching toast, Ryan and I formulated a plan.
First, we'd visit the Punchbowl. The girls might not be thrilled. Tough. It was Ryan's pick. And a good one. I'd been there.
The Punchbowl is an extinct volcanic tuff cone located smack in the city of Honolulu. The crater was formed when hot lava blasted through cracks in coral reefs extending to the foot of the Koolau Range.
Hot lava?
Relax. That eruption was 100,000 years ago.
There are various interpretations of the Punchbowl's Hawaiian name, Puowaina. Most translate it as something like Hill of Sacrifice. Supposedly, native Hawaiians used the place for human sacrifice to the gods. Legend has it taboo violators were also executed there. Later, Kamehameha the Great had cannons mounted at the crater's rim to salute distinguished arrivals and to kick off important celebrations.
In the 1930s, the Hawaii National Guard used the Punchbowl as a rifle range. Toward the end of World War II, tunnels were dug through the crater's rim to construct batteries to guard the island's harbors, Honolulu and Pearl.
In the late forties, needing a final resting place for World War II troops lying in temporary graves on the island of Guam, the U.S. Congress voted funds to establish the national cemetery. Eight hundred unknowns from the Korean War followed. In the mideighties, Vietnam casualties joined the mix.
Ernie Pyle is buried at the Punchbowl. So is Hawaii's first astronaut, Ellison Onizuka, killed on the Challenger.
After the Punchbowl, we'd drive up to the north shore, hit the beach, and try some of Hawaii's famous shave ice.
Finally, hours of camaraderie under their belts, Lily and Katy would stay home, together, and the grown-ups would enjoy a night on the town. We needed it.
Though our little band would not have been mistaken for the Brady Bunch, the day went reasonably well.
The adult night out proved pivotal.
     
 

      RYAN CHOSE THE RESTAURANT. HIS CRITERIA? PROXIMITY TO Waikiki was the only thing I could come up with.
We ate at the Ha'aha'a Seafood and Steakhouse, the Hawaiian Walmart of dining establishments. My first misgivings came with the table.
We were seated in a dark corner, inches from a band whose repertoire was probably fixed right out of Moanalua High. I placed the graduation year at circa 1965.
My second clue came with the menu. Six of nine pages were devoted to drinks, most with names formed from incredibly bad puns. Son of a Beach Daiquiris. I Lava Party Bacardis. O'Lei Margaritas.
Ryan ordered a Kona beer and jerk mahimahi. I went with a virgin colada and cilantro shrimp.
The drink wasn't bad. Hard to mess up pineapple juice and coconut cream.
Ryan and I chatted while awaiting the food. Shouted, actually. Over such memorables as "My Waikiki Mermaid" and "Pearly Shells."
Ryan apologized for Lily. I apologized for Katy. He offered to relocate from the Lanikai house to a hotel. I told him that was unnecessary.
Overhead, a mirrored disco ball sent fragmented light spinning the room. Groovy.
"Not exactly the way to a girl's heart." Ryan's face went sapphire as a colored spot aimed at the stage lighted our table.
"Depends on the girl. Why did you pick this particular place?"
"Proud Seafood and Steakhouse. What could disappoint?"
"I'm pretty sure ha'ahea means proud." I'd seen the word in English and Hawaiian on a headstone at the Punchbowl. "I think ha'aha'a translates as humble."
"Oh."
The band picked up tempo. The lead singer crooned, "Oh, how she could yacki hacki wicki wacki woo."
Ryan's neon brows climbed his neon forehead.
Forty minutes after ordering, we were served by a waiter different from the one who had handled our drinks. This man had a leaping tiger tattooed the length of one biceps and a central incisor inlaid with what looked like a gold martini glass. His name badge said Rico.
"Careful." Rico lowered towel-held plates to our table. "These suckers are hot."
Doubtful. My shrimp were trapped in a pool of congealed grease.
"That it?" Rico asked.
Ryan ordered another beer.
"Enjoy the show."
Ryan and I nodded politely.
"It's hapa haole music."
"Didn't think it was the gospel hour."
Rico and I both frowned at Ryan.
"Really?" I flashed Rico my most disarming smile. "What is hapa haole music?"
Rico hitched one feline-enhanced shoulder.
"Sometimes the song's done traditional, you know, four-four time, but the words are in English, so that makes it half English, half Hawaiian. Sometimes the words are in Hawaiian but the beat is hyped, so that makes it hapa haole." He thought a moment. "Not all Hawaiian songs with haole words are hapa haole. Sometimes the words are Hawaiian and the music isn't."
All righty, then.
The cuisine lived up to my expectations.
As I chewed shrimp the texture of all-weather radials, the band played the inevitable "Tiny Bubbles."
"Did you know that Don Ho served in the air force?" Ryan asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Did you know that he had ten kids?" Ryan spoke between bites of incinerated fish.
"Impressive," I said.
"As am I."
"Indeed."
Ryan reached over and brushed my jawline. My pulse jumped as fire burned a path below his fingers.
"Have you thought about giving it another try?"
"It?" I swallowed.
"Us."
And Lutetia? Hadley Perry? I restrained myself by a thin, thin strand.
"Mm. Tell me more about Don Ho," I said, wanting safer ground.
Ryan settled back in his chair. "Ho started singing at a bar called Honey's out at Kaneohe. The joint belonged to his mother."
"Honey," I guessed.
"Yes, sugar lump?"
The quip hit like a hot poker to the heart. Buttercup. Sweet pea. Though I'd always chided Ryan for his goofy endearments, secretly I'd loved them. I wondered who else was being so honored.
"Honey's was a hangout for marines from the base out there," Ryan continued, oblivious to the emotions he'd triggered. "Ho moved the business to Waikiki back in the sixties."
"I thought he performed at a place called Duke's." My steady voice belied nothing.
"That was later. Then he hit the big time."
"And the rest is history."
"Hi Ho."
I gave up on the crustaceans and laid down my fork.
"Is Ho still alive?"
Ryan shook his head. "He died a couple years back."
At that moment, a sequence of unrelated events coincided on the great space-time continuum that forms reality as we perceive it.
As Rico placed a coaster on our table, a swirling light particle danced off his tooth. Glancing down, I noticed the coaster's sole design element, a cheesy male totem from another time.
Bang!
The previous night's dream flashed in my brain. A horse's white blaze gone gold. Equine teeth.
More images popped.
A maxillary fragment.
Crumbling adipocere circling a drain.
A lopsided gold sliver with two tapering points.
An open-beaked duck.
A pointy-stemmed mushroom.
Rico.
My hand flew to Ryan's wrist. "Ohmygod! I know what it is!"
"My arm?"
I released my grip.
"The gold thing Danny and I found. I found." I was totally psyched. "The fragment we thought was part of a dental restoration. Well, I did. Danny wasn't sure. But the dentist didn't think so. Craig Brooks. He was right. Well, he was wrong and right. It was dental but not a restor-"
Setting his fork on his plate, Ryan raised two calming hands. "Take a breath."
I did.
"Now. Slowly. In English. Or French. But comprehensible."
The band segued into a way-too-twangy rendition of "Hawaii Calls."
I reeled in my thoughts.
"I'll bet the bandstand the thing we found with 2010-37 is a broken dental inlay."
"Whose bandstand?"
"Look." I spun the coaster and pointed to the logo. "What's that?"
"A Playboy bunny."
"The whole Playboy shtick is passé now, but it was huge in the sixties. Did you notice Rico's tooth?"
"Shaken, not stirred."
I rolled my eyes, a gesture wasted in the dark.
"I had a North Carolina case in which the victim had a dental crown with a gold symbol shaped like a Playboy bunny. It's how we finally got him ID'ed."
"Did he also have Eat at Joe's tattooed on his-"