Free Shimura Trouble by Sujata Massey Page B

there was a deed giving the Shimuras claim to the land, Edwin would have been able to use it for his earlier lawsuit.”
    “You’ve said from the start that you don’t trust Edwin,” my father said. “So it’s better for us to verify all the facts personally.”
    “But you’re supposed to be relaxing, not running around doing research.”
    “It won’t be so bad for me, if you help out. Hiroshi and Tsutomu are helping, too.”
    “How?”
    “My brother agreed to talk to a realtor about land values, and Tsutomu is going to try to reach the lawyer Edwin worked with before.”
    I blinked water out of my eyes, thinking that my father had done more groundwork than I thought him capable of. Still, I doubted a land records search would turn up anything more than we had already learned from the appraiser’s report we’d seen the evening before. I said, “We must find a way to speak with Uncle Yosh privately. He probably could tell us some things that would make the situation clear. But do you want to do that, Dad? I mean, you’re closer in age to him, and a man.”
    “I don’t think so. Yesterday when we met, he refused to speak Japanese. He’s deeply conflicted about his identity. You have more of a…colloquial way about you than I do. You’re the American. I believe you’ll be more successful.”
    “We’ll see,” I said. “But I hardly know how to bring it up, with Edwin always hovering and interrupting.”
    “You might ask Great-Uncle Yoshitsune to take you shopping before you prepare the meal. That will give you some privacy.”
    As my father and I climbed out of the pool, I shot a glance over my shoulder. Jiro and Calvin were together on lounge chairs on the other side of the pool, far enough that they couldn’t over hear us—or so I hoped.

A FTER PHONING UNCLE Yosh to set up our next-day shopping trip, my father and I set off for Honolulu. It was midday, so there was little traffic, and I had a chance to enjoy the massive mountains on the north side of the highway, and the sparkling sea on the south, although I knew I should ban those words from my vocabulary; in Hawaii, north and south were replaced by mauka, meaning ‘mountainside’, and makai, which meant ‘toward the sea’.
    That morning at the coffee shop, I’d learned the terms while reading both the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin newspapers. There had been articles about a series of fires on the Leeward Side. The scrubby, dry fields and mountains were perfect fodder for errant fireworks and sparks coming from electrical lines—and the region was also full of arsonists. Adding to the situation was the scarcity of roads on the Leeward Side, and the challenge of fighting fires that often started high in the mountains. As I drove, I saw the same blackened field that I’d noticed when we’d driven in from the airport. The field had burned all the way up to the edge of Farrington Highway, making me realize that the highway had another role: firebreak.
    I was starting to spook myself, so it was a relief to see regular, paved roads spreading out on either side of the freeway as we neared Honolulu. After we passed the exits for Pearl Harbor, it was time to jump on to Nimitz Highway. The route was straightforward but tedious, full of trucks, buses and traffic lights, and it was only when we finally turned right on King Street and began to see shop signs in Chinese that I relaxed. This was Chinatown on a small scale, graceful early twentieth-century buildings with curved facades and faded business names like Liang and Sons and Kowloon Traders. Mahogany-colored ducks hung in windows, and storefronts were cluttered with bins of glorious tropical fruit and vegetables.
    I was excited about the shopping, and also wondered if Liang and Sons might be connected to the Liangs who’d taken over the Shimura family house. Perhaps, but I wasn’t about to stop in and ask, as the building appeared vacant.
    My father raised a hand in triumph as he spotted Little