Free Haole Wood by Dee DeTarsio Page B

and wouldn’t meet my eyes.
    “Oh, come on,” I said. “Look at her.” I pointed to my teeny Halmoni, wearing an orange and yellow print cotton Hawaiian house dress. “She’s a healer. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.” I was pretty sure. “Why would she kill him?”
    “He was a hot-shot developer with a lot of power. And, he wanted her land,” Officer Morgan said.
    “He told me she refused to sell, and that was that.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Exactly, what?”
    “Mike was known on this island for never taking no for an answer. He would have gotten this land, one way or another.”
    “My grandmother wouldn’t have sold. Where would she have gone? She’s not rich, but she doesn’t need the money. He couldn’t have forced her.”
    Detective Imada sighed. Unless Jean Paul Gaultier has a new fragrance I am unaware of, Eau de Buried Cabbage, the detective was sporting another firecracker batch of kimchi. Maybe it was his interrogation technique. “He probably could have forced her,” he said. Nearly visible fumes of garlic wafted out of his skin. “Mike Hokama had a couple of politicians in his back pocket and with a few funky tax shenanigans, they could have driven your grandmother out.” He nodded over at Halmoni, sitting quietly at the table, drinking her tea. I couldn’t tell from her expression how much she understood, or what she thought. Or smelled. She invited them to sit at the kitchen table with her.
    “I had my grandmother’s jeep. How would she have gotten to his house and back, in the dark?”
    “He only lives about a mile from here. Which your grandmother knew.”
    “I would imagine a lot of people know where Mike Hokama lives.” I shrugged my shoulders and mouthed off with backwards jazz hands, which I found to be a little more grown up than an eye roll. This was Maui’s finest? “You’ve got to have more than that.”
    “Look. We all know and like your grandmother.” He nodded at Halmoni. “But it looks like Mike Hokama may have been poisoned. And, your grandmother has the know-how to do it.”
    “Come on. You don’t really think she would have done this.” I swiped my hair back behind my ears.
    “She has no alibi, she has a motive, and the fact that he was poisoned puts her on our POI list?”
    “Poi?” I was totally confused.
    “Not that kind of poi,” Detective Morgan said. “Person of Interest. Although I’m sure hearing that about your grandmother also gets stuck in your throat.” He ducked his head. I’m not sure if he was sympathizing or ashamed of his partner’s trite poi joke.
    I nodded.
    “We don’t want to scare you,” Detective Morgan continued, “But this is very serious. We are just doing our job and we have to be very thorough. We won’t know exactly how he was poisoned until we get the autopsy results back. And, she was seen at Hokama’s place earlier in the day.”
    “What? Impossible. Why would she have been there?”
    Detective Imada shrugged his shoulders. “She told us she had an appointment with him. She said he asked her for help with stomach problems he had been having and she took him some of her herbs for tea. I imagine he brought up trying to buy her property again, and that probably made her angry.”
    “Objection!” I called out. I hadn’t spent years in front of the TV for nothing. “Conjecture.”
    He held up his hand. “I’m just trying to explain things to you, how the DA may lay things out. We’ll have more questions for you and your grandmother, and the more you can find out,” he jerked his head toward Halmoni, “the sooner we can solve this case.”
    The men stood up. “And don’t go anywhere,” Detective Imada added.
    “What? You mean I can’t go back to San Diego? I have to—”
    “That’s exactly what I mean. You need to stay put until we’ve completed our investigation.”
    “Me?” My hand flew to my chest and I squawked like Flipper. “But, I—”
    “We know, we know,” Detective Morgan said, jingling his