The Secret of Shower Tree

By Virginia Coffman

IT STARTED on the ship. Claudia, a bride of a few days, was ecstatically happy as she sailed to join her new husband in their exotic Hawaiian home. Then she began to hear the rumors...

OBVIOUSLY, they weren't true. But privately, she had to admit that Stephen was an enigmatic man, although irresistibly attractive. He did not even try to conceal the fact that there were strange secrets in his past...

BUT HE had not told her what those secrets were. And she could not begin to guess how they would blight her happiness and alter her life!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Candlewood Books
• Release date: Jun 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781933630625

Book preview

The Secret of Shower Tree

Written by Virginia Coffman

Candlewood Books

****

ISBN 978-1-933630-62-5

Published by Candlewood Books at Smashwords

Copyright © 2012 by Candlewood Books, a division of Harding House Publishing Service, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

CHAPTER 1

Often as I wait at our home in Honolulu for the Inter-Island evening flight, I think again of the house at Kuhio, and I wonder if perhaps on this visit he has driven up the steep canyon to look at the Golden Shower Tree. Surely, he knows that if nothing is done the house will soon revert to the rainy jungle walls that enclose it on three sides. Perhaps he has seen signs of what happened there . . .

No. That can't be. There are no physical stains in such deaths; only mental stains . . .

During these uneasy minutes of waiting, I wish always that he may be too busy with board meetings and problems of the factory and plantation to think of Shower Tree; for then it would return to him—all the memories—and I cannot bear to see him suffer that again.

Shower Tree! How can he help remembering his family home, the place where we spent part of our honeymoon? Not his first honeymoon, of course. That was spent cruising the South Pacific, during which his first wife, the enchanting Lily, the one they called child bride, twice almost managed to drown, and once fell briefly in love with a tattooed movie—Maori, Stephen must often think of Golden Shower Tee, where his daughter was born. We never speak of it though, nor of the nightmare days and nights that ended inevitably, as I knew they must, in our confrontation with the truth, with the ugly face of terror.

In one sense, Shower Tree is with us daily, on the thousand labels of the Hawaiian Shower Tree Fruit Company, which is the base of the Helsing fortune. And the loveliness of that painted golden bush on the label is as deceptive at the perfectly formed web that hides a waiting spider.

The spinning of the web began for me on a rainy, humid March morning I little less than I month after my marriage to Stephen Helsing in San Francisco, as the white Pacific liner brought me to I harbor I scarcely knew existed, on the small Outer Island of Kuhio, in the Hawaiian group. I had been awake before dawn, thinking of my husband—his quick anile and authoritative charm; his first surprising though romantic proposal hardly two weeks after we met, so unlike his usual reticent aloofness, inherited, perhaps, from some long-ago Scandinavian ancestry. There were moments when I still believed I would wake up and nod the lovely dream of my marriage and honeymoon vanished with the coming of day.

I could scarcely deceive myself into believing he had fallen madly in love in less than two weeks with Claudia O'Neill, a rather ordinary, twenty-six-year-old librarian, despite the rush he gave me after watching me that first day with the Student Tour I conducted through the San Francisco Museum of Pacific Art. There was his divorce from his first wife for me to remember. There must originally have been a great love there, he was so bitter about her now.

But he had asked me to share his life, this tall stranger with the look of his Canadian and Danish ancestors. He had fascinated me the moment I saw him watching me that afternoon in the Artifacts Room, and in the six weeks since, I had had no reason to change my mind. It had been Stephen's first idea to fly me to his home called Golden Shower Tree to be married in the presence of his blind sixteen-year-old daughter, Linnet. But something made him change his mind, and the ceremony took place in San Francisco with only my landlady and a business associate of Stephen's for witnesses along with a very mature cable of congratulation from his daughter, which couldn't help suspecting was composed by someone else, perhaps Linnet's young female companion, Enid Brooke.

Much of our honeymoon had been spent in a leisurely drive up the Coast, before we spent a week in San Francisco in the position of what I thought of as an old married couple—delicious experience to me.

Five weeks after the day I saw the attractive stranger observing me in the museum and fell in love with him almost at first sight, we boarded the Pacific cruise liner in San Francisco, on what Stephen called our second honeymoon, this time as an old and well-adjusted married couple. It was this second honeymoon which was to bring us in another week to my future home at Golden Shower Tree.

What we hadn't counted on was the tragedy at Shower Tree the day before our landing, which forced Stephen to leave the ship in Lahaina, Maui, and fly to his home to supervise the search for the body of his daughter's young companion after her inexplicable accident at Golden Shower Tree.

I must arrive at our new home without Stephen beside me, but that seemed a small price to par for our six weeks of happiness. Still, I could not help thinking that the unfortunate Enid Brooke's death was so frightful omen for our future life at Shower Tree.

On that March morning as I leaned over the ship's rail and watched our approach to the island that would be my home, I tried to think only of my meeting with Stephen within an hour or so, but my troubled thoughts kept returning to Enid Brooke's fall from the high valley perch of Golden Shower Tree into the jungle depths below. Surely, since she had been young Linnet's companion for two years, Miss Brooke knew the dangers, if any, of the house called Golden Shower Tree. It was a peculiar accident, to say the least. Several times during our first month of marriage, I had suggested to Stephen that we should return to his home so that I might get acquainted with my young stepdaughter, but Stephen was not a man to be persuaded to anything against his own judgment. I still had the feeling that he wanted his daughter to get used to the idea of a stepmother before he introduced us.

The lush, jungle-green shoreline of Kuhio had paralleled the course of the liner since dawn. With a special effort, the ruing sun momentarily challenged the tropic dampness, and the shadow of the ship seemed to wing rapidly along the shoreline, as if fleeing the murky dark within those rain forests.

A young teen-ager leaning beside me on the rail said to me, Hey, Claudia, looks like a great pad for King Kong; doesn't it?

I laughed, partly because she and I had become friends on the voyage; we had teamed up in the shuffleboard tournament to win, and both of us had failed to swim the length of the pool three times without stopping. But her description of the wand shoreline was surprisingly apt, I thought, as I stared at the mass of dark, twisted foliage and ancient hau trees that grew down to the water's edge and trailed their roots in the foaming surf. It was a perfect hideaway for King Kong and the rat of his Jurassic friends.

Oh-oh, said the teenager, looking behind me at the companionway cross the deck. Here comes Old Glamor-Bore! ‘Scuse me, Claud. I just can't go her.

I shared something of my teen-age friend's feeling toward our exotic fellow passenger, lush-lipped and lush-hipped Kapiolani Mori, whole brother was the Helsing Company doctor on Kuhio Island. To women less endowed with full curves and all the beauty of two races, it seemed that Miss Mori and her languor were becoming a trifle obnoxious.

My teen-age friend scrambled off the ship’s rail, pulling at her stretch pants, which very nearly fails to cover their assigned territory. Don't you let her needle you, she said in parting. You're just as pretty as she is, and lots nicer. Of I don't see you again before you and, lots of luck. I think he's super. If his kid likes you half as well as this teen-ager does, believe me, you got no problems, Pardner.

She thrust her hand out and I took it as one partner to another. I really wanted to hug her, for it occurred to me quite suddenly that she and I few other youngsters on the voyage had been I great comfort to me when I wondered how I would be able to make my blind stepdaughter Linnet Helsing, accept me.

Then away the girl went into the crowd of passengers rushing to the rails to watch our entrance into the nineteenth-century harbor that Stephen said had once been the center of the whaling industry. The picturesque little semicircle of pure blue water was dotted now with bright-sailed catamarans and rather more sailboats than I had expected to see. It was not, as I had supposed, a dead harbor of a dead industry. I did not know whether I was glad or sorry that the one industry that seemed to control many of the small wooden nineteenth-century buildings visible from the ship, and even the exquisite necklace of golden bushes that rimmed the waterfront, was Stephen Helsing's Hawaiian Shower Tree Fruit Company.

What do you think of the little corporation you've married, Claudia? remarked Kariolani Mori as she joined me at the rail. In spite of my own and my teen-age friend's antipathy to Miss Mori, I was anxious to keep on good terms with her, since me was my prospective neighbor, and from all I had heard, though not from Stephen, she spent a good deal of her time at Golden Shower. I suspected that her attitude toward me might be explained by some past relationship with my husband, and I could not help feeling sorry for anyone who lost Stephen’s affection. I had promised myself the day Stephen an I were married in San Francisco that I would never be jealous of his past, of the lovely girl he had divorced long ago of the other women who must have existed later ...Was his neighbor, dark-eyed, voluptuous Kapiolani, one of them?

I smiled at her question now, pretending not to notice the faintly malicious tone she used.

I leave Shower Tree Company to Stephen, I said easily. It's no concern of mine.

Really? It should be. Everything about our Bluebeard man should concern you.

She was busy lighting a cigarette and pretending not to look at me, but I knew she sensed my start of surprise, and it annoyed me to have my emotions spied upon. I laughed, making a rather good job of it, and lied so fluently I astonished myself.

Not that old Bluebeard line. Really, Miss Mori, you are behind the times.

She could not get her lighter working properly, and raised my hand and helped her hold it steady. She seemed to find an absorbing interest in the very ordinary lighter. So he's told you about the engagement, she said. I suppose it was because of my being aboard that he told you. I must say, it doesn't sound like Old Steve. He's always been the soul of tight-lipped discretion. That tiresome Enid Brooke used to say getting him to talk about his past was like drilling through a kiawe thicket with a can opener. Poor Enid!

That certainly sounds like Miss Brooke, I said, wondering at the dead young woman's close knowledge of my husband; for Stephen had scarcely mentioned this employee of his until her tragic accident yesterday. I wished Miss Mori would go somewhere—anywhere!— so I could enjoy the approaching red-sailed catamaran. The raft had a full complement of Hawaiian musicians, laden with exquisite leis, which were no more colorful than their happily appropriate muumuus and aloha shirts. Borrowing a trick from my vanished teen-age friend. I stepped up on the bottom rail and peered down at the churning white foam as the liner stuttered to a standstill in order to take on these romantic musicians and greeters from a catamaran. Would Stephen be on the catamaran, waiting to board, waiting to place a moist, fragrant lei of plumeria or precious pikake or carnations around my neck?

I was keenly disappointed when the catamaran sailed around the stern of the big liner and I realized I would not see the musicians and Stephen board after all. I wanted to rush through the ship's passage opposite me and be present by accident so I could wave down to Stephen, but here was Miss Mori beside me, watching me in such a way that I felt my pride demanded I stay where I was and let Stephen find me, rather than vice versa.

Miss Mori leaned against the rail and stared at the shoreline, especially the big sign on the roof of a factory at one side of the semicircular harbor. The sign said nothing. It consisted simply of a painting of a full, golden bush, which suggested to me that the Hawaiian Shower Tree Company was pretty confident of the fame of its symbol. The symbol was further emphasized by the necklace of live shower trees around the shoreline.

I stared at the sparkling water, which was beginning to lose its glitter under the first rush of raindrops.

Did Stephen think of having his company advertised like that? I asked Kapiolani. I would not nave criticized him, certainly not publicly, but it seemed to me almost an excessive use of the island for advertising.

Kapiolani misunderstood me entirely.

Not at all. Those were planted long after Shower Tree put, the island on the map. My brother, James, got the ordinance passed to plant them. It was that or have the shoreline covered by billboards. Lloyd Venner's idea. He's the manager at Golden Shower. His wife is Lily's sister. After the divorce, they stayed on to look out for things. She smiled in her full-lipped, knowing way. I suspect Maggie and Lloyd found they could do better with Stephen than with poor Lily, who had nothing.

Before I could stop myself, the question came out, a question that had that had given me many sleepless hours. What was Stephen’s first wife like? I did not feel too comfortable knowing that Lily Helsing's sister was still at Shower Tree. I thought at once of a sinister and evil type of housekeeper who might make things even more difficult for me. Kapiolani raised her thick, well-shaped dark brows. You speak about Lily in the past tense. Is that how Stephen thinks of her? I shouldn't have thought it. My brother James saw Lily hanging around a luau over at the Venner’s beach place that month, though Maggie denied it for some reason. Maggie is Lily's sister. But there was Lily still in her blond ponytail.

Ponytail! I repeated, amazed. But her daughter—Stephen's daughter—isn't she nearly grown? Lily Helsing must be in her mid-thirties. Older than me, I thought, clinging to that tiny feminine superiority, the only superiority I had over the lovely child bride, the fair Lily, the woman who had been Stephen's first and perhaps his only, real love.

Kapiolani shrugged. People referred to her as Stephen's child bride when Linnet was nearly nine years old. However, you needn't worry about tripping over child brides at Shower Tree. Lily's sister, Maggie, who has been running things there, is as unlike Lily as . . . as you are.

I did not like that addition, especially since I suspected that it had been said maliciously. Also, I was not interested in Lily's sister, but in that incessant picture of the enchanting child who just happened to have a half-grown daughter that she had deserted. If she was still seen hanging about her beach house, I had every suspicion that she might also be seen hanging about Shower Tree.

I tried to tell myself the repeated description of Stephen's first wife only made me jealous, but it was more than that. It made me feel sick, with a kind of anguish that was greater than jealousy. I knew the divorce charge had been adultery, a charge that must have left permanent scars on Stephen’s emotions, his pride as a man; for he had not elaborated in any way when, several weeks ago, I had asked him the grounds of the divorce.

What is his daughter like? Linnet . . . a lovely name. Is she pretty?

As soon as I asked, I could have bitten my tongue, for the question revealed my ignorance of a subject most men would have discussed at length with their wives, under the circumstances.

Kapiolani had the good taste, however, to overlook this odd lapse in my knowledge, and I was grateful to her. She turned away from the strange, graying harbor water, which was now being pelted by huge tropic raindrops.

Not bad, she said. Darker than either Lily or Stephen. Blind from an accident at the time of her father's divorce, you know. Rather an odd creature, really. Ah! Here they come. Over here, Jimmy.

The greeters from shore must have come up to our deck. Had Lily's daughter, Linnet come with Stephen? I swung around toward the ship's interior, feeling stifled, hoping I did not look as frightened as I felt. It seemed impossible that the events of the past six weeks had occurred to me. I was once again Claudia O'Neill, to whom the Stephen Helsing of Shower Tree was still a forceful and romantic stranger with a mysterious past.

The Hawaiian group of musicians and singers seemed to dissolve among the tittering, excited passengers, whom they decked with leis and kissed good-naturedly, just as a handsome young Japanese with an armful of leis was greeting Kapiolani. There was no other Islander near us. Stephen had not come aboard. I had a sudden cowardly desire to run away and hide in my stateroom until the ship sailed and carried me away. For I felt I was a woman not exciting enough even to bring my husband to meet me at the ship.

Claudia Helsing, my brother—Dr. James Mori. said Kapiolani giving him a look that carried the first real warmth of feeling I had seen her reveal.

Aloha, Claudia. Aloha nui. He dropped a deliciously cool lei of small pale and exotic pikake flowers over my head, brushing my cheek with a kiss. Welcome to Kuhio, Mrs. Helsing. Steve sent me to escort you in style to the Golden Shower Tree. Both he and Lloyd are out scouring the mountains. But you know about that.

I didn't know about that. The girl whose accident yesterday had brought Stephen rushing home could not have had anything to do with this scouring of the mountains. But I knew Dr. Mori so little that I was a trifle hesitant to question him. He and his sister, Kapiolani, might get together and find out just how little I knew about Golden Shower and my husbands business.

Dr. Mori's word—and more, his smile, which in ordinary circumstances would merely have been a pleasant addition to his lean good looks—now gave me the courage I needed. I thanked him and shook his hand, somewhat to his surprise, I think. But he reacted quickly and said to his sister. This it great, Kapi. The two prettiest girls on board, and I get to walk the both down the gangplank! How about your baggage? And the hand stuff? I'll bet you two bought out every shop on Waikiki.

Kapiolani shrugged indifferently. Not while there is still San Francisco. Incidentally, I’m afraid I am broke, Baby Brother. Isn’t it time for my dividend check?

She's a greedy one, Dr, Mori told me confidentially, taking his sister's arm and mine. Kapi. I sent your last dividend check to the Saint Francis. Looks like you'll have to go hungry until June. Hey! We're moving again. Well be docking any minute. Let's go.

He must hive seen something of the disappointment and hurt on my face, because he added, By the way, Mrs. H., Steve would be terribly sorry to miss you like this, but there just wasn't any other way. You do understand . . .

I understood perfectly, I felt my own selfishness in wanting to take Stephen away from a situation as tragic as the death of his daughter's young companion. But the disappointment remained, all the time, along with a growing uneasiness

As it was, Kapiolani gave her brother an odd look, with a smug understanding that seemed to hold little feeling for the dead Enid Brooke.

Dr. Mori ushered us to the companionway, and we descended, Kapiolani going first. All the way down he kept up a running patter. The reason for this began to puzzle me by the time we reached B deck and lined up behind a hundred other passengers