Free The Flaming Luau of Death by Jerrilyn Farmer

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    “I wanted to show you something, okay?”
    “Of course,” I said. “What is it?”
    Holly unfolded a paper napkin. I had ordered some custom-printed ones, and they had turned out rather well. They were yellow, with hot pink lettering. They featured a little picture of a skewered shish kebab on fire, and the words said: HOLLY NICHOLS’S FLAMING BACHELORETTE LUAU , and then the date.
    “You like?” I asked.
    “I love,” she said, “but look at this.” She turned the paper napkin over, and I noticed she had drawn two small sketches. By the dim light of the flickering tiki torches, I wasn’t sure I could make out what she had drawn.
    Wes pulled the napkin closer and looked up at her, surprised. “What’s this?”
    “Maddie asked me to think about that man. She wondered if I remembered anything else about him.”
    Wes flashed me a glance, but asked Holly, “Where did you see this?” he asked.
    I pulled the napkin close and saw two symbols:It looked like Asian writing of some sort.
    Not far from us, there were swords of flame twirling high into the air. We couldn’t help but look up, even as we chatted back and forth about Holly’s napkin, pausing until the dancer caught the baton and we heard no hiss of singed flesh.
    “It’s the design I saw on that man’s T-shirt. The one who grabbed me in my room.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “I’m positive. There’s a car parked out near the road that had a sticker with the same exact symbols. I’m good with design, Maddie. I copied it down to show you. I know these are the same marks that were on that guy’s T-shirt.”
    “Those are kanji characters,” Wes said. “These two are pronounced yama and aoi. ”
    “Really?” Holly looked relieved. “It makes sense to you?”
    “Yama aoi. It translates,” he continued, “to mountain hollyhock.”
    We looked blank.
    Wes said, “It was on the guy’s T-shirt, you say. I guess it could be the name of a business.”
    The fact that Wesley knows how to read Japanese and is familiar with kanji is just something we have learned to take for granted. In fact, it is easier to think of the handful of things the man doesn’t know than to catalog all the ancient arts he has mastered.
    “Mountain hollyhock?” I was puzzled.
    “Mountain Hollyhock,” Holly repeated, but her voice was shaky. “Well, that’s impossible.” Her face looked pale in the low light. “That just can’t be.” She was beginning to sound pretty upset.
    “What is it, Holly?”
    “It’s just…” She stammered, looking the worse for wear. “It’s just that that was my nickname.”
    I stared at her.
    “Yes. I’m telling you! Mountain Hollyhock.”
    “What? Somebody actually called you Mountain Hollyhock?”
    “Yes. Years ago. Like a private nickname. The super weird thing is, it was Marvin’s nickname for me. All through senior year.”
    “Marvin Dubinsky?” I asked, floored. I had to speak up louder, because the drums onstage were working up to their finale. “Your husband Marvin Dubinsky called you Mountain Hollyhock?”
    “Let’s just refer to him as my prom date, okay?” Holly suggested, her voice strained. “Anyway, listen. Marvin used to write me little poems in haiku. He used to joke that I was as tall as a mountain.”
    “That’s romantic,” Wes said.
    I smiled. Boys were so clueless.
    Holly added, “…and my real full name is, well, you know. Hollyhock. So…”
    This whole thing was extremely, blazingly, scarily weird. We looked at one another, thinking it all over.
    “Mountain Hollyhock,” Holly repeated, looking fairly spooked. “I guess it could just be a coincidence, right?”
    What are the odds that a random creep is gonna show up, hide in a girl’s hotel room, and pounce on her while wearing a T-shirt bearing a Japanese phrase that refers tothis same girl’s obscure high school nickname? And all on the day she received a threatening e-mail trying to track down the high school dude that gave her that