LIVIN' LAHAINA LOCA.

"Islands of Aloha Mystery" Series.

JoAnn Bassett.

CHAPTER 1.

A fat rubbery hand glommed onto my left breast. I whirled around and came nose-to-nose with a plastic mask sporting an impish grin and saucer-sized black ears. Halloween night in Lahaina, Maui. The happiest place on earth for a cartoon mouse looking to cop a feel.

"You don't wanna go there," I said, grabbing the groper's forearm just above the white four-fingered glove. The reveler didn't release his grip so I clamped down even harder, squeezing the radius bone against the ulna. Then I jerked the arm down-fast. For a split second I considered giving it a quick twist to pop it out of the elbow joint, but didn't. After all, this masked goon could be an inebriated friend or colleague. Nothing's sacred after seven or eight beers.

I let go and the lecherous mouse skittered away as fast as the swirling crowd would allow. I resumed my upstream trek to the Lahaina Yacht Club.

Before I go into why I'd come to Lahaina Town on the craziest, most crowded night of the year, I think I should introduce myself. My chosen name is Pali Moon. The name on my birth certificate is something else, but only a few people would put that name to this face so I just stick with Pali. On the mainland my name would be spelled Polly-but most of us born and raised in the islands usually prefer the Hawaiian spelling. Makes us feel special-even ethnic-but I'm far from meeting most folks' image of a native Hawaiian. I've got light eyes and light hair. And I'm no ali'i princess-you know, the gals with the girth. I'm a standard five six and about one-twenty-five, give or take.

That Halloween night I'd come to town on business. A bad night for conducting any kind of business-except maybe monkey-but I had no choice. A bridesmaid had gone missing the night before at a bachelorette party and no one had seen or heard from her for an entire day. Since I was the wedding planner in charge, I felt it was my responsibility to track her down and bring her back to the fold. She was young, gorgeous, and well-endowed. I only hoped she hadn't gone and trumped the bride by having her own quickie nuptials with some squinty-eyed yachtsman who'd come to Maui for Halloween-the Mardi Gras of the Pacific.

I pushed through the saloon-type doors of the yacht club and was immediately greeted with a sign warning this was a PRIVATE club. It was restricted, but not upscale. The ancient wood floors creaked underfoot, and the funky decor was right out of the mid-eighties. The ceiling was festooned with hundreds of burgees-those colorful little flags that the well-heeled fly from the back of their boat to let you know which snooty yacht club they belong to.

"You a member?" The bouncer guarding the door ran it all together, so it sounded like remember? It took me a second to consider what it was I might have forgotten.

"No, I'm here on a mission."

He eyed me as if I was about to hit him up for the United Way.

"I'm a local wedding planner," I said. "I'm looking for one of the girls in the wedding party."

Local is a magic word around here. Local gets you substantial discounts, warnings instead of speeding tickets, and assistance instead of a shrug. We even have a word for it: kama'aina. It's kind of like a secret handshake.

"You think she's here?" He eyed the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd on the groaning wooden deck jutting out over the water. Personally, I wouldn't take my chances on a jammed lanai held up by timber pilings that have been marinating in salt water for forty years, no matter how great the sunset view. But that's just me.

"I don't know. I was hoping maybe you'd recall seeing her when she came in. She doesn't exactly 'blend.' You know, born a few decades too late to be a Playboy Bunny, but-"

"Ah, like one of those Victoria's Secret girls?" He grinned, then switched to a more somber face. "Yeah, I check out that catalog when it comes to the house. You know, to see if there's anything my wife might like for Christmas."

"Right."

"Anyhow, I'd say we got at least a dozen girls in here tonight could fit that description. Excuse me a second." A group of four had entered behind me. He checked their ID, signaled the hostess to seat them, then turned back to me. "So anyway, I'm not sure who's still here and who isn't. Hopefully we're talking about someone over twenty-one."

"Just barely."

"Blond?"

"Redhead."

"Ah, that narrows it down a bit. No curvy redheads that I recall, but you're free to take a look around."

I thanked him and scanned the interior before making my way to the open-air lanai. I'd only met the young woman in question twice-and each time she'd been in the company of five other giggling bridesmaids-so although I remembered her hair color and her stunning figure, I didn't recall much else.

No one in the outdoor crowd even approximated my missing bridesmaid. Most of the people were not in costume, which helped, but not a single woman had the copper-colored hair I sought. She wore it long-I figured it'd cover her back when brushed out. The two times I'd seen her she'd pulled it back into a long ponytail secured by a scrunchie. Of course, on Halloween night she could have been wearing it up, or even under a hat or wig, but besides not seeing the hair, all the gals on the yacht club lanai fell short in the va-va-voom department.

I thanked the bouncer on my way out and joined the swarming crowd on the street. It was slow going, even though the cops had blocked off the full length of Front Street so pedestrians could spill into the roadway. In my tee-shirt and capris I felt pretty lackluster among the scantily-clad naughty witches, greasy-faced clowns and giant talking beer cans.

I stopped in at Cheeseburger in Paradise, as well as half a dozen other bars that were packed so tightly I'm sure the fire marshal was probably home hiding under his bed. It'd be impossible to impose occupancy limits on this night of nights, but it didn't lessen the danger.

After I'd scoured the major Front Street haunts, I decided I'd wait until morning to start seriously asking around. The wedding was still more than a week away-plenty of time for our MIA to show up or contact the bride with apologies for ditching. I turned and retraced the route to my car.

As I passed the second ABC Store in three blocks, I heard my cell phone chiming. I didn't bother to dig it out of my beach bag purse. I wouldn't have been able to hear the caller over the din of the crowd. But even if I could've heard, I didn't want to stop and root through my bag while the heaving throng pushed me in a direction I didn't want to go. I needed to get back to my car. I'd check for phone messages later.

The crowd thinned out at Prison Street with the horde whirling in a giant U-turn back toward the action. I hoofed it up Prison, making my way back to my trashed green Geo Metro. I'd parked it in a spot marked No Parking-This means you, Brudda! in front of a yellow shack a few blocks off Front Street. The house looked like it was one smoldering cigarette butt short of an insurance claim; but on the tax rolls the property was probably valued at a million bucks.

I approached the Geo, pleased to see it hadn't been towed or sideswiped by an intoxicated party-goer attempting a three-point turn on the narrow street. But then I noticed something wasn't right. The rear driver's side door was partly open, and in the gritty yellow glow of the sodium street lights I saw a long scratch etched the entire length of the car. Like most locals, I hate Halloween in Lahaina. People use masks and copious amounts of alcohol as excuses to do all kinds of nefarious deeds they'd never consider in day-to-day life. But getting my car keyed wasn't the worst thing that could happen. The gimpy-looking vehicle was an ongoing joke among my friends. I'd already decided that once I pulled together a few more high-caliber weddings like the one I was working on, I'd get myself more respectable wheels.

I opened the rear door, prepared to find a calling card from the joker who'd keyed my car. Maybe an empty liquor bottle or a used condom. Drunken vandals were rarely creative pranksters.

At first I was puzzled by the thing stretched across my back seat, but after a few beats, I figured it out. Then I slammed the door-hard.

A dog began barking a block away.

CHAPTER 2.

Once my adrenaline leveled off, I pulled the door open again. The feeble interior light of the Geo scarcely illuminated the coppery gleam of the long tail of hair. It'd been hacked off just above a black velvet scrunchie. I turned and scanned the shadowy street. Not a soul in sight.

As if it were a dead body, I reached in and lightly touched the hair. It felt warm. It was a balmy night, though, so the fact that it was still warm didn't tell me much. Above the scrunchie, the hair was uneven. It wasn't a smooth cut, like sharp scissors or a barber's razor would have made. It was tangled and messy, as if it had been a hurried effort using a box cutter or a hunting knife.

Although I'm a wedding planner, I'm no stranger to the seamy side of life. I studied criminology in college, using higher education as an opportunity to delve into my fascination with the psychology of evil. After graduating, I trained with Homeland Security and became a TSA Air Marshal at the age of twenty-four. I only lasted ten months in the job, but that was mostly due to my inability to shake off jet lag. On each trip-Honolulu to Taipei and then back again-I'd fall asleep when we were about five hours out. Dozing on the job doesn't make for a stellar performance review, and when I conked out with an undercover supervisor onboard it turned out to be my last free flight courtesy of Uncle Sam. But that was okay with me. I'm a big fan of earth, sea, and sky-in that order. And, I never quite embraced the notion of packing a gun. Since childhood, I've been a serious student of the martial arts. I'm much more confident in my ability to out-punch, outwit, and out-psych my opponent than to place a one-inch slug into the right body part-of the correct individual-while moving five hundred miles an hour six miles up.

I took a hard look at the ponytail before closing the door again. The thick hank lazed languidly across the gray vinyl seat like a skinny fox taking a snooze. All of a sudden I was anxious to get out of there and get home. It hadn't escaped my attention that the hair on my back seat matched that of the missing woman I'd been asking around about. Whoever had chopped off her hair not only had access to a lethal blade, but they'd apparently linked me to her and were keen for me to know it.

The drive back to my house in Hali'imaile took more than an hour-thirty minutes just getting beyond the bumper-to-bumper traffic leaving Lahaina, and then another half hour crossing to the opposite side of the island. Hali'imaile's a few miles up the road from Pa'ia, a funky plantation town on the windward slope of Mt. Haleakala, Maui's highest peak. I like it up there, mostly because it's nowhere near a public beach, and it's miles away from the nearest tourist resort or golf course.

My wedding planning shop-'Let's Get Maui'd'-is officially based in Pa'ia, on the main drag next to a hippie-style grocery store. But earlier that year we'd had a serious fire in the building and the do-gooder historical group that was rehabbing the structure was adamant about allowing only "historically significant" tenants back in once they'd finished. So the hundred-year-old grocery store was welcomed back with open arms, but my wedding shop and the upstairs apartment previously occupied by the store's owner had both been denied occupancy permits. To keep my business afloat, I'd taken up a friend's offer to sublet a dingy space above a four-star restaurant in Lahaina. The shop space was only accessible from the alley. The smell of raw fish every morning was enough to turn anyone vegan, but the rent was dirt cheap. Since moving in, I'd acquired an impressive collection of scented candles, air fresheners, and potpourri in an effort to make it smell less like a fish market and more like an orchid garden. But after eight months I was still pleading my case to the historicals to allow me to come back to my old shop in Pa'ia. In Hawaii, patience and personal connections are highly prized. I had both, and the olfactory challenge I faced every day in Lahaina made me even more determined.

On the long drive home I felt like I was whistling in a graveyard with that hacked-off ponytail following me three feet behind. Once or twice I tried to catch a glimpse of it in my rearview mirror, but I couldn't see it; it was below the reflection. At the stoplight at Ma'alaea Harbor I turned and looked into the backseat, hoping I'd made an error. Maybe because I'd been so fixated on the missing bridesmaid's hair color, I'd mistaken a rust-colored sweater or a brown feather boa for a coil of hair. I checked. No such luck. It was definitely human hair, and it was still there.

The porch light was on when I pulled into my driveway in Hali'imaile. My roommate, Steve, had gone out partying and there was no way he'd be back this early. Steve's much more than just a roommate, but not in the way you might think. He's a topnotch photographer as well as a superb cook, and he's got a great eye for style. Since his skills dovetail nicely with my profession, I figured it was kismet when he answered my ad offering a room for rent. But we aren't, by any stretch of the imagination, an item. To put it delicately, we both like men. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Only occasionally have we been attracted to the same man, and in those rare cases we settled it in a democratic fashion, allowing the object of our desire to cast the deciding vote. Thankfully, so far we haven't run into any undecided voters or hanging chads.

I got out, leaving the hair right where it was, and went in and called my best friend.

"I'm so glad you're home," I said.

"Hey," said Farrah. "What's up? You sound like you've seen a ghost. Dig it? Seen a ghost, on Halloween."

"Very clever. Actually, I'm calling because I've got something I need to show you. Can I come down?"

"No problemo. I turned off the outside lights, but only a few kids bothered to hike it up the stairs anyway. We can pig out on all the leftover Snickers I've got."

Farrah Milton lives secretly above the Gadda da Vida Grocery, the plantation-era grocery store she runs in Pa'ia. Her apartment sustained minor smoke damage in the fire but was left intact, so when the historical society refused her an occupancy permit she stayed with me until after the blessing party for the refurbished store and then she quietly moved back into her former digs. She left the Do Not Enter signs and the yellow Caution tape right where they were and bartered with one of her customers to sneak over at night and replace the blackened and warped treads on the back stairs. Since her store is vital to life in Pa'ia Town no local would dream of ratting her out to the Maui Mo'olelo Society, the politically-connected historical people who now own the land and the building.

I took the stairs two at a time even though it was pitch black in the alley. I'd raised my hand to knock when Farrah pulled the door open. Soft pink light from the living room beckoned me inside.

"Whatcha got?" She looked down at my empty hands.

"It's in the car."

"Too heavy to haul up here?"

"It's heavy in the way you'd use the word."

"Whaddaya mean?"

"You'll see."

We clomped down the stairs and I opened the rear door of the Geo and pointed to the dimly lit back seat.

She squinted her eyes. "What is that?"

"It's hair."

"Whoa, you're right-that is heavy. Looks like the dreads off Rasta Ronald McDonald."

"I think it's the hair of that bridesmaid I told you about. The one nobody's seen or heard from since the bachelorette party last night."

"Bummer. We'd better contact the authorities."

I'd known her long enough to know she wasn't suggesting we dial 9-1-1.

When we got back upstairs, Farrah pulled out a worn deck of tarot cards and laid them on her madras-cloth covered table. She used that same table to eat her meals, to groom her hyperactive Jack Russell, and to do covert psychic readings for tourists she solicited in the store below. As she laid out the array, she didn't slap the cards down like a poker dealer; nor did she speak. The cards slipped fluidly from her hands like water flowing over a rock in a stream. With every card she'd nod or widen her eyes but I knew better than to ask questions. She'd speak when she was ready and then it'd come out in a pithy statement that often took me hours to decipher. When she first claimed she had clairvoyant talents I'd scoffed, but time and time again she'd proven her 'third eye' had twenty/twenty vision.

"Da kine," she said finally. "Here's what's I see." She passed a hand, palm down, over the line of upturned cards. "What's happening here is strangely cool. I don't think I've ever had this grouping before. You see the Tower card? It signals greed and destruction making way for better things. The High Priestess here symbolizes inner strength and knowing. When these two come forth side-by-side, we're looking at helter-skelter-you know, a clash. Although the Priestess is powerful, the lightning bolt from the Tower seeks to destroy her and she must yield or be doomed."

"In English?"

"There's a ton of weird vibes around that hair. In Hawaiian, we're talking heavy pilikia-trouble. I'd say if this hair is from your missing girl, she's in deep doo-doo."

"That's what I was afraid of."

"You know I'm no fan of the establishment, but I think you need to call in The Man on this one."

"Should I mention the tarot turned up the Tower and the High Priestess?" I was only half-joking.

"Hey, don't knock it 'til you rock it. Remember, the cops came to me to find that dude who tried to swim to Moloka'i."

"They only called you because his auntie was a mucky-muck assistant to a county councilman and she insisted they try every angle. But I gotta admit, everybody was pretty stunned when you nailed his exact location. The Maui News even managed to spelled 'Ouija' right."

"No biggie. Basic CSI."

I squinted.

"Channeling Spirit Images."

I drove back to my house chewing on how I'd file a police report about a severed ponytail showing up on the back seat of my car on Halloween night. I mentally rehearsed the call.

I'd like to report some minor vandalism. My car got keyed last night in Lahaina. Oh, and while I've got you on the line, somebody left a creepy hank of red hair on the back seat. My psychic friend says it's full of bad juju.

By the time I got home, I'd decided the police probably had their hands full clearing the streets of the hardcore party animals. It was already past midnight; time to get to bed. I had a nine o'clock meeting with the bridal couple in the morning. Maybe they'd come bearing good news about their friend. Nothing would have made me happier than dumping the severed tresses from my back seat into the garbage and chalking the whole thing up to an ill-advised haircut after too much Halloween hooch.

CHAPTER 3.

Nicole Johnson and Keith Lewis clomped up the stairs to my temporary shop just as I was lighting a third gardenia-scented candle. The garbage truck had been a half-hour late and my shop still reeked of yesterday's catch-of-the-day.

As I welcomed them in, my greeting sounded less than heartfelt, but it was probably just envy. They were both buffed beachy-looking blonds from Southern California, with sprayed-on tans and laser-whitened smiles. They were such a matched set it was kind of creepy-like fraternal twins separated at birth. Besides their good genes, it was hard not to resent their seemingly unlimited money supply. As usual, they showed up wearing yet another pricy gal-guy outfit-a Ralph Lauren mix and match that included front-pleated twill shorts and deeply-hued polo shirts. His was a vivid jungle green and hers an energetic hibiscus yellow.

"Hey, did you check out Halloween last night?" Keith lifted a fist but I avoided the bump-back by turning toward Nicole at just the right moment.

"Yeah, it was so amazing." Nicole stretched the word out to about five syllables.

"They call it the Mardi Gras of the Pacific," I said. "It's rumored to be the largest outdoor Halloween celebration in the world."

"Well, it was f-uh, freaking fantastic." Keith grinned at Nicole. She patted him on the arm and I gathered he'd been making an effort to substitute his favorite f-word for something she found more acceptable.

Although they'd been to my shop once before when we signed the original contract, I noticed Keith's eyes narrowing as he took in the tiny space. The sublet was roughly a fifteen by twelve room with a battered Balinese desk with a chair behind it and two chairs on the opposite side. In the far corner I had a curtained-off area I used for dress fittings. My shop space in Pa'ia was more than twice as big but not, unfortunately, much more elegant. The first time they'd come in I'd explained my current funky digs by briefly describing the fire and the hassle over getting the occupancy permit. But even with my sparse quarters in Pa'ia I prefer a simple workplace. I tell my clients that by spending less on overhead I'm able to offer them more free services than the costly foo-foo wedding planners who have shops resembling Marie Antoinette's boudoir.

"You ready to look at some cakes?"

Nicole gripped Keith's brawny upper arm and leaned into him. "I can't believe we're actually doing this, baby. We've been talking about getting married for so long-and now we're looking at wedding cakes!"

"Yeah, great. Say, do you two girls really need me to hang around? I mean, I like cake as much as the next guy, but the World Poker Challenge Final is on TV right now."

Nicole let go of his arm. Her eyes narrowed; her lips disappeared into a tight line.