Chapter 49 Room Full of Angels
A couple of miles deep into the lush Manoa Valley, Aly pulled her Toyota into a driveway. I parked the Bronco on the street, Meka slid in behind me in her Volvo. We piled out of the cars.
"This is nice," Hawk said looking at the house with it's tastefully lit sculpted Japanese garden.
"Yes it is," Aly said, "but my place is outback. The front house belongs to—"
"Oshi and Brian two retired university professors," Meka finished for her.
"You know them?" Aly asked.
"Yeah, Brian and Oshi are art patrons and I bump into them every now and then," Meka said.
We followed a path of flat, evenly spaced rock slabs embedded in the ground that led us along the left side of the big house. Motion sensors activated path lights as we advanced. Aly's little house around back was a quaint yellow vinyl sided structure surrounded by a jungle of banana palms, ti plants and ferns. The house was on stilts and seemed sunk into the hillside behind it. Aly led the way up the two flights of wooden stairs to get to the front door. She opened the door and clicked on the lights revealing a surprisingly spacious living room. An impressive collection of small carvings were scattered everywhere in the room. Hand sized bronze, silver, brass and wooden statues took up every available flat space, there must have been close to a hundred of them.
"This is my collection," Aly said, "I can't help buying them. It's kind of a sickness really."
She picked up a delicate little bronze angel with crystal wings. "It cost me a fortune to ship them here."
"They're all angels," Meka observed.
"And female," Hawk added.
Aly picked up an angel made of white stone. "Pick them up if you like. They're fun to touch."
I picked up a tallish snow globe that rested on a shelf and automatically shook it. Artificial snow settled on a tiny angel statue at the center flanked by palm trees surrounded by, of all things, a graveyard.
"This is a little creepy," I said with a frown. A feeling not unlike the one that had descended on me at Hawk's archaeological dig on Maui, enveloped me.
"Yeah I know, freaky thing isn't it," Aly said, "The landlords, Oshi and Brian, gave it to me as a house warming present after they saw my collection. She's kind of sad stuck behind all that glass."
Meka took the globe from me and I was happy to be rid of it. She shook it then gave it a good critical look.
"I know this place," Meka said in wonder. "It's the entrance to a grave yard in Makiki Heights across the street from my house. I've photographed that very angel many times."
Meka handed the globe back to me but I refused to take it so she put it back on the shelf I got it from.
Aly pulled open the curtain in the living room. The large picture window overlooked the front house. Below, lights illuminated a swimming pool and screen enclosed pool deck.
"This place is awesome," Matt said,
Aly nodded. "I scooped it up the moment I saw it. Come see the rest," She led us down a hallway passed a tiny galley kitchen. Photos and framed reproductions of famous angel painting crowded the walls of the hall. Among the angel stuff was an unframed eighteen by twenty four inch painting that looked out of place for there clearly was on angel in it. It was done in an impressionistic style that made me thing of Camille Pissaro. I stopped to get a good look. The painting was dark and shadowy with two figures at the center in odd crossing orange beams of light. Both figures were female, one nude with dark brown skin, the other pale with dark hair dressed in black clothing.
"This is an odd one," I said to Aly.
Aly nodded in agreement. "I got it at a craft fair in Waipahu three months ago. I stopped at a booth to look at it and the woman there just gave it to me.
"Really?' I asked. "She just gave it to you for free? This is skillfully done."
"Yep," Aly said. "I tried to turn it down but she insisted, saying it was my destiny to own it. She was a little crazy I thought. I only took just to get away from her."
"I wish crazy people would give me art," Matt said.
"Gwen gives you art all the time," Hawk said to him.
"I'm not lolo," I said and punch Hawk in the arm.
Aly waved us along to continued the tour of the house. "Bathroom, guestroom, study, master bedroom," she said as we passed doors all on our left. At the end of the long hall (the place didn't look that big from the outside) was a glass door and the only one on the right side. The glass door was delicately inlaid with geometric patterns of frosted green and white glass. Aly pushed the glass door open, hit the light switch and led us in the room.
Hawk summed it up in one word.
"Righteous."
We stood in a room dominated by a raised wooden hot top. The floor was solid cement and felt coarse under foot. The the tub looked seasoned and well used. One wall was made entirely of glass. The space had a distinct Japanese feel to it.
"Watch this," Aly said. She walked to a control panel off in the corner and hit some switches. Lights came on outside the glass wall revealing a lush growth of banana trees just a few feet out. "This place is built right into the hillside. You should see it in the morning,"
As we paraded back into the living room, Aly said, "I got Merlot, Cabernet, Mums champagne and Coronas." She went to the fridge and got out a bottle of champagne.
"Lecturing must pay well," Matt said.
Aly laughed. "Normally, you guys would be drinking just beer but the landlords gave me a case of everything on the drink menu as a moving in present. Would you believe it?"
"I would," Meka said. "Your landlords are loaded."
"This sure beats faculty housing," Hawk said as he settled onto the suede leather sofa.
"And the dorms," Matt added.
"And my cramped little Waikiki apartment," I said.
"I have a nice house in Makiki Heights," Meka said. "but I don't have a cool hot tub and mountains for a backyard."
"I like it too," Aly said with a smile as she popped a chilled bottle of Mums.
Aly poured flukes of champagne for everyone and we all found places to sit in her comfy living room. Matt, Hawk and I sat on the suede sofa with me in the center. Meka and Aly sat in the matching lounge chairs.
"Did you hear about the little incident involving my photo?" Meka asked. She quickly gave a short history of her photo of Wahine Lani and the alleged break in a few days back.
As she spoke, I slowly gripped Hawk's hand.
"I know the statue!" Hawk said with excitement, "Gwen discovered her on a—"
I squeezed his hand as hard as I could.
He gave me a quizzical look than squinted at me suspiciously. "Did you see what the offering was?" Hawk asked still eying me up. "Hair perhaps? Some blood? Teeth? A finger? A human heart?"
Meka laughed. "Nothing that exciting. When I arrived at the gallery security was already there along with a hand full of Hawaiian activist students. The activists wanted to take the offering away but the head of security said noway. He wanted to see inside the leaf wrapped bundle calming it was evidence in a crime." Meka laughed, "I guess he was thinking along the same lines as you, Hawk."
"Yeah I know, those offerings can get real extreme with some people," Hawk said as he gave my knee a mildly painful squeeze.
"May I have some white wine?" I asked.
"Help yourself," Aly said.
I slipped off to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of white wine from the fridge as Meka continued describing the event.
"Anyway, the Hawaiian activists insisted that the offering was sacred and opening it would be sacrilege. A fight almost broke out. Sandy Agato, the art office secretary calmed everyone down and even got the activist to open the bundle to let security see what was inside."
Meka took a sip of her champagne. Matt and Aly leaned forward. Hawk's eyes were on me in the kitchen. I swallowed half of my glass of freshly poured wine before Meka spoke again.
"In the leaves was a small wooden box with a sliding top. I recognized the box as the kind that holds compressed charcoal sticks, high grade expensive stuff."
Yeah, I know, I thought.
"One of the activist slid back the lid and inside were short bristly hairs from some kind of animal, a broken stick that turned out to be a paint brush, two scraps of painted cloth, one of a red hand outlined in black and the other a pair of striking eyes of an Asian woman."
"No real human eye?" Matt asked with a laugh.
