Chips, HoHos, and Murder

By Kate Lindman

Alice K. Lambert is the wealthy and successful owner of Lambert House, a large and elegant ADA-certified bed and breakfast on Maui. Alice enjoys good champagne in the morning, cooking and baking creatively, surfing, traveling, and advocating for persons with disabilities. Most of her guests are friendly and eager to explore the wonders of Hawaii. Then one day, gentle Elmer and nasty Thelma Ford arrive from Reno, with Thelma loudly announcing that Elmer now has the brain of an eight-year-old. Elmer had suffered a stroke and brain injury while on his job as a firefighter. Thelma had to quit her teaching job to take care of him and soon turned into a very angry woman who took out her frustrations on Elmer while cutting him off from family and friends. Within two days of their arrival, Thelma managed to insult and berate other B&B guests, staff, and most everyone she met on Maui. After an unpleasant zip line tour, Thelma spent an angry evening in her room, gorging on chips and HoHos. That was her last known activity. It took two days to find Thelma’s body at the site of a new hot tub. She was murdered, and the suspect list was endless.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781640271746

Book preview

Acknowledgments

Great appreciation to Adria Roblee-Hertzmark for her early collaboration in plot and character development, writing segments of the first two chapters, and sharing her surfing knowledge. Thank you to my beta readers—Samantha Payne, Kerry Burrell, Helene Buntman, and Barbara Moranchek—for reading the first draft and providing me with great suggestions. Thank you to my friends for their encouragement, especially when I was most discouraged.

Prelude

There are so many shadows. Everywhere I look, there are shadows. I stay on the visible solar-lit pathway, as instructed, not sure why I agreed to go out so late at night. The note that I was to bring with me was specific about location. I need to meet my accuser out of the shadows. I need forgiveness. I want to forget the now. I want to go back to the way it was before I became such a horrible person.

Once, I was happy, delighted with my life, my job, my friends, and especially the core of my life. He was thoughtful, caring, and oh so loving. We were two halves of one persona—complete.

We met at a party at his friend’s house, both of us aged twenty-two. I felt him watching me as I danced with his friend. Almost shyly, he cut in, introducing himself. I smiled, and we danced rather sensually.

We went on the usual dinner and movie dates. We walked by the river. We hiked in the mountains. We laughed. We talked and we talked. We entered each other’s minds, trading thoughts and secrets that became our own. We were lovers, entwined in soft and ferocious eroticism. When I was not with him, I ached with emptiness.

When we could, we traveled, enjoying each adventure. We went to Santa Fe, a favorite destination, always staying at the same hotel, full of romance and the charm of old New Mexico. On the second day, when he was leaving for his early morning run, I felt a breath-stopping premonition and asked him not to go. With a reassuring, lingering kiss and a smile, he went out the door. We had agreed on a lazy in-room breakfast, which I scheduled for an hour later.

When he did not return, I knew then that my foreboding was correct. There had been a terrible accident. My love, my other half died that day, hit by a runaway truck, and my life stopped too.

I continue walking on the shadow-banked path, nearing my destination.

Many years later, I married a noble man. I felt comfortable and safe. Our intimacy was satisfying. Did I love him? I loved the idea of him. I called him my gentle hero and shared his brave deeds with everyone I knew and sometimes with complete strangers.

I was a fifth-grade elementary school teacher and was quite good at it. I was even voted best elementary school teacher of the year for three years in a row. I enjoyed the eager and curious young minds that were at the dawning of creativity and determining their own future.

Our chosen career paths allowed us to be an enviable couple, sought after for our exuberance and our complementary careers. Then came the fateful day that again changed my life. My fears became reality when he was hurt on the job.

Initially, I took a leave of absence from my teaching to care for him. I don’t think anyone is prepared to become a full-time caregiver to someone who was once strong and then lost it all. At first, I thought he would get better and we would go back to our lives before the event. Within a year, when that didn’t happen, I quit my much-loved job.

Over time, I started to resent him because every day was torment. He was no longer my gentle hero but someone with fears. He was not my remembered lover. Then I began to resent everyone as if they were responsible. I even blamed those birds, hurting the goslings. I wanted to kill them but could only break their developing wings. I am truly a horrible person. Can I change that?

Someone is coming out of the shadows. I immediately recognize the face. You? I start to walk away, then I feel an unimaginable pain in my head. I am dragged into the darkest shadow, yearning for my gentle hero.

Chapter

1

Alice Kay Lambert sat on her private lanai, ¹ savoring a flute of Dom Perignon while gazing at the ever-changing ocean hues and reflecting on the pleasures of owning and operating Lambert House.

Breakfast had been successful that day. She had served—in addition to the usual fruit, pastries, and choice of beverages—a Thai omelet accompanied by jasmine rice and, for the less adventurous, a traditional french omelet with herbes de provence and gruyere with toast. Her current guests, many of whom were leaving that day, were quite a good group. In particular, a gregarious New Zealander entertained the other guests with exaggerated and humorous stories of his exploits. He was leaving that day. And several other guests were as well. She would miss this group; they had been fun.

As with other inns, Alice did not always have great guests like this. The highly demanding ones were sometimes irritating but just part of any B&B. Every once in a while, there was a memorable one and not always for their great qualities. One time a family from Scotland stayed in the two-bedroom suite. The daughter, Bella, was fourteen and enthralled with American TV. Her parents wanted to go out to dinner. Bella refused to go, claiming she was not hungry, so her family just left her without asking Alice if it was okay. They weren’t even out the door when Bella turned on the big-screen TV in the movie room. She then raided the B&B kitchen refrigerator for Coke and took a piece of leftover pie, which she ate from the pie pan. She found some ice cream in a container, added chocolate sauce, and then watched MTV at high volume nonstop until American Idol started. With songs she knew, Bella stood on a coffee table and sang in her loud and very off-key voice. She spilled chocolate on the couch, which she didn’t even attempt to clean up. Her parents came back, looked in on her, smiled, and went on to their suite. All Alice could hope was that they would choose another place next time.

It was Friday, a day she often had a big changeover of guests. Alice did a mental count of her current and anticipated guests and their accommodations. A Swiss couple and a lone Sri Lankan man were staying an additional week in two of the single rooms on the second level. An American family in the three-bedroom cottage was staying an additional four days. They loved the Honu² Cottage for the easily accessible shower with a drop-down chair in honu motif and rails that twelve-year-old Katrina could use independently.

Katrina had a rare form of cystic fibrosis. She could walk with someone beside her to prevent falls and required some minimal assistance for dressing and personal-care activities. The family chose Lambert House because of its well-known attributes as a disability-friendly inn. Katrina said she especially enjoyed the swimming pool with its ease of entry via the vibrantly colored dolphin-themed hydraulic chair. While in the pool, she wore a buoyancy belt to prevent undue fatigue.

Due to arrive was a Chinese couple on their honeymoon who would be staying in the final single room, the Anthurium Room. She was also expecting a group of friends from Oahu for her two-bedroom Surf Cottage. Two people from Japan would reside in her two-bedroom Hibiscus Suite. Finally, an American couple from Reno, Nevada, would be in her one-bedroom Plumeria Suite. The inn would be full.

Fortunately, Lambert House was not only well equipped; it was well staffed. So she didn’t have to worry about cleaning, laundry, gardening, or any other routine bed-and-breakfast tasks. It was a former plantation house a few miles southeast of Pa’ia on Maui that Alice bought and renovated after the tragic death of her second husband, Teodoro. While his death had left her in the life-altering situation of never having to work again, she didn’t want to do absolutely nothing, so she quit her job as a professor of comparative literature in Boston and bought the house and its remaining surrounding acreage with rolling hills to the ocean to open a bed and breakfast, which luckily paid for itself. Although it did not turn much of a profit, it was enough for her to live on and still have the rest of her inheritance to keep for her travels, good champagne, as well as financing for her advocacy efforts for persons with disabilities.

The renovated Lambert House kitchen allowed Alice to fulfill her passion of cooking while demonstrating her culinary creativity and expertise. Alice learned to cook as a child during her family travels all over the world. Later, she participated in various international culinary training programs where she could turn her knowledge into artistry. Alice loved nothing better than wandering through a spice souk, absorbing the incredible scents, which she visualized into exquisite creations. She had the amazing ability of merging imagination with culinary knowledge. Alice remembered a lively discussion she had with Kyle after a class at the Thai Cooking School in Chiang Mai. They were creating all possible culinary uses of lemon grass and ginger. Lemon-grass-ginger frappe was a definite stretch, but when in practice, they tried several variations. The final recipe turned out to be extraordinary. To this day, it is featured at Chez Kyle in Honolulu as a chef’s choice dessert along with a special tribute to his co-creator, Alice K. Lambert.

Since there was not much for her to do between checkout time and check-in time four hours later, she decided to go surfing as she did most days when the conditions were right. Her favored surfing spot was a walk or four-wheel ride through the property to a gate then across the highway to another trail taking her down to the water.

Today Alice walked, stopping to quietly watch a nesting nene³ couple in the corner of her land, which Alice had named Nene’s Niche. It was close to a month since Maman had laid her eggs, so it could be anytime now. And she seemed a bit restless today, with Papa standing guard nearby.

This approximate quarter-acre parcel Alice had tastefully walled off to keep her Lambert House guests out. She posted a Department of Land and Natural Resources notice about not touching or feeding the nenes and also the history of Hawaii’s state bird and its status as both vulnerable and protected. The year Alice purchased her property, a nene couple had nested under a similar bush in that corner. As they were still on the endangered-species list, Alice contacted Hawaii’s DLNR, who came to monitor the situation as this was a first nesting in the area. Usually, nenes nested further up on Haleakala. Under DLNR direction, Alice offered to absorb the costs of temporarily fencing the area to protect the new nene habitat. Alice was delighted that her resident nene couple had three beautiful goslings. This family stayed and foraged Nene’s Niche for almost a year. They periodically returned for grassy treats though Alice was sure the goslings now had lifelong mates of their own. After that first nesting, Alice put up the permanent protective wall and this year brought the first new nesting near the original site. Alice wondered if this was one of the original goslings. And Pumpkin only tried once to take on these great birds. Now he kept a respectful distance, just watching with apparent admiration and a little trepidation. He had also taken on sentry duties during nesting time to keep out unwanted predators, such as mongoose and other cats.

Alice noticed that the female nene was starting to become more active. It was getting close. Alice would return later to see if she could catch a glimpse of any goslings.

Continuing toward the water and latching the pedestrian gate behind her, Alice enjoyed watching the ever-changing water patterns on her way down to the sea.

After returning from two glorious hours of surfing, Alice took a shower and got ready to receive her new guests. Most of them seemed to have been on the same flight from Honolulu as they all were scheduled to check in around the same time. Golda, the Lambert House greeter cat, waited patiently on the steps of the porte cochere for the first to arrive. She led the way for the group of friends from Oahu, who turned out to be two gay couples. They all loved Golda and were quite friendly and warm at check-in. Alice couldn’t help but hope they became Oahu regulars. Golda then escorted in the second to arrive—the Chinese newlyweds: Li Deshi and Wu Meizhen. They seemed quite nice, were from different parts of coastal China (Shandong and Hong Kong respectively), and had met at the University of California at Berkley, where he was studying engineering and she was studying mathematics. They also were both renowned wind surfers. The Japanese duo were the next to arrive, who turned out to be mother and son, Tomiko and Akira Yamamoto, which explained why they had booked the two-bedroom suite. They both seemed to speak and understand very little English. Golda also fawned over them. The three sets of guests all said they liked just about any kind of food and had no dietary restrictions. Finally, an hour after they were supposed to arrive, the last couple came: Thelma and Elmer Ford from Reno, Nevada. Alice was alerted to their arrival by hearing Thelma yelling, Elmer, hurry with the luggage! Don’t you see that I need to lie down and rest?

Upon entry to the check-in room, Thelma did all the talking. We are the Fords, spelled F-O-R-D, just like the great American car company. My husband’s brain is now acting at the level of an eight-year-old because of a stroke and traumatic brain injury he had while on the line of duty as a fireman. He has become a real burden to me, always needing to go to the doctor or physical therapy. Even our friends have deserted us! Thelma had many dietary restrictions. She didn’t eat any nasty foreign food, vegetables, or anything she couldn’t recognize. And she also instructed Alice to keep those dirty cats away from her, as she was allergic. On the way to their suite, she kept yelling at Elmer to hurry, claiming she was having palpitations and needed to take her medicine despite being able to walk quickly. Elmer had a look of resignation on his face. He made two more trips to their car to finish bringing in their luggage as apparently this was not a task Thelma was willing to assist with. Alice furnished them with directions to the nearest urgent care center, emergency room, and the name and number of a local doctor she wasn’t too fond of. After leaving them in their suite, Alice sighed, and knowing they were scheduled there for ten days, she imagined it would be a frustrating week and a half. She mentally noted to put them on her never allowed to return list if Thelma’s behavior continued as it was. It was no wonder that Golda was nowhere to be found.

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¹ Porch or veranda.

² Turtle.

³ Hawaiian goose.

Chapter

2

Alice went into the inn’s kitchen, where she began to prep p â te fermentée for her baguette dough. While humming along to Debussy,