Bet Your Bones Read Online Free Page B

off the camera and the mike and stood schmoozing with the policemen. Dinah opened the glass door a crack to hear.
    “…just rumor and gossip,” said the brown-skinned cop. “Nobody alleged foul play.”
    “He’s one powerful kahuna,” said the cameraman, who looked Filipino. “That old tita’s got a lot of guts to go up against him.”
    “Isn’t she related to…?” The blond reporter caught sight of Dinah in the doorway and pursed her lips, as if evaluating her as a potential news source. The cops looked, too, and Dinah let go of the door and retreated across the marbled lobby. At the far end, there was another glass door through which she could see a terrace with tables and umbrellas. She slammed outside, crossed the terrace, and emerged onto a beautiful crescent of beach.
    There was no one on the terrace. The only sound on this side of the hotel was the peaceful whoosh of the surf. She took off her sandals, strolled down the beach, and tried to make sense of the exchange she’d overheard. If Xander was the powerful kahuna, the big woman the reporter had called Eleanor must be the tita taking a stand against him. But foul play? A housing development might be unpopular. It might be controversial or a blight on the landscape. But it could hardly be described as foul play, not by a policeman anyway. Claude Ann had said that the protesters’ chief complaint had to do with human bones on the site, but Dinah hadn’t seen any signs about that. Did this group of Native Hawaiians really believe that Xander’s development would desecrate the body of their goddess?
    Oh, for Pete’s sake. Her imagination was running away with her. Hawaiians weren’t animists who believed that spirits exist in rocks and real estate or blamed their troubles on a disgruntled goddess. However isolated the Hawaiian archipelago, it was part of the U.S. of A. “Pele” was probably just island-speak for the green movement and the protesters invoked the goddess’ name to garner media attention for their anti-development cause and exaggerated the small earthquakes as “Pele’s Revenge.”
    In front of her, silhouetted against the reddening sky, Diamond Head rose out of the sea like the fin of some gigantic fish. An article in the Hawaiian Airlines magazine said that the original Hawaiian name for the crater meant “brow of a tuna,” but British sailors seeing it from a distance thought that the crystals glistening in the lava rock were diamonds. They turned out to be common calcite, but the misnomer stuck.
    After about fifty yards, a jetty of large rocks blocked her way and she turned around and ambled back toward the hotel. It appeared to be a small, boutique affair with Mediterranean style balconies overlooking the ocean. On one side of the hotel, a flock of dolphins cavorted in their private saltwater lagoon. She paused for a few minutes to watch them and pondered Claude Ann’s remark that she wouldn’t have married Hank if Dinah hadn’t made a fool of her. It didn’t jibe with her little speech about wanting to be friends again. And it didn’t jibe with the truth.
    You’re being paranoid, she told herself. Claude Ann had been arguing with her mother. Mothers fought dirty. A woman arguing with her mother might say anything. Daughters, too. And given Marywave’s opposition to her mother’s remarriage, she might have embellished Claude Ann’s words to add to the stress. It was a secondhand remark passed on by an impudent squirt with an ulterior motive. There was no cause to make it into an omen.
    One of the dolphins swooshed out of the water and chattered at her as if inviting her to jump in and play. She laughed. He and his pals would make a charming addition to a wedding. Why couldn’t Claude Ann and Xander have been content to say their I do’s here in Honolulu at the Olopana instead of dragging the party to the Big Island to pose beside a belching volcano? Oh, well. Maybe there weren’t as many of Pele’s rambunctious