JoAnn Bassett - Islands of Aloha 07 - Moloka'i Lullaby by JoAnn Bassett Read Free Book Online Page B

I only saw about ten of them on the street back there. Where is everybody?”
    We turned around and went back through town. At the intersection of the King Kamahameha V highway and Kaunakakai Street was a mile post marked, “Mile 0.” A tidy white building with “Molokai Burger” in big red letters on the rooftop occupied the corner lot.
    “Is it too early for lunch?” I said.
    The clock on the Geo’s dash read 4:30, but it was clearly wrong. I guessed the time was probably more like eleven. The clock in my old green car had stopped working the first time the car battery died, and after that it was prone to flights of fancy. It would start up again—sometimes ticking away for weeks on end—but it gave up entirely near the end of its life.
    I’d never worn a watch, except during my short stint with the feds, but I was pretty good at guessing time based on the position of the sun, my stomach rumblings, and, when I was in my shop, the sounds coming through the walls from Farrah’s grocery store next door.
    Hatch always wore a watch. “It’s ten-fifty,” he said. “Perfect time for a burger.”
    We parked and went inside. The menu board featured a “ramen burger,” a hamburger wrapped in a ramen noodle “bun.” The picture looked like a greasy mess to me, but the ingredients were right up Hatch’s alley. I opted for the more pedestrian mushroom burger.
    The smiling girl who took our order told us they had free wi-fi. I thought it was odd she’d mentioned that, until I realized that although this was a burger place, it wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination, “fast food.” We sat at our table checking emails and just generally fiddling around with our phones. In due time, the burgers were up.
    “Where are we staying?” said Hatch.
    “In a condo at Moloka’i Shores. It’s just down the road.”
    We ate our burgers in record time, and then drove down the King Kam Highway to the condo. We checked in, and then realized we’d forgotten to pick up any supplies in town. The woman at the check-in desk recommended Friendly’s Market, so we drove back into town.
    Friendly’s turned out to be only about half the size of the Gadda da Vida, but it had an amazing collection of merchandise. Not too much of anything, but a little of everything. We bumped and “excuse me’d” down the narrow aisles until we had a hundred dollars-worth of provisions. It sounds like a lot, but at Moloka’i prices, it all fit quite comfortably into our two re-usable grocery bags. Plastic bags had gone the way of the dinosaur throughout Maui County years ago, so everyone was used to bringing cloth bags to the store.
    We returned to the condo and put the food and drink away in the tiny kitchen. The condo was on the second floor. It had one bedroom and a bath, with a lana’i sporting a peek-a-boo view of the ocean. Even though the water view was limited, the place was so quiet we could hear the waves crashing ashore.
    “I forgot how wonderful it is to be at the beach,” I said.
    “Yeah. Sometimes I can hear the ocean from my place, but I can’t see it at all,” said Hatch. “This is great.”
    I wanted to just plop down on an outside lounge chair and let the ocean lull me to sleep, but I had work to do.
    “I need to drive to the west side and find the address Amanda gave me,” I said. “But if you’d rather stay here and nap, that’s okay.” Hatch often needed a nap after getting off work since he’d usually been up all night going out on calls.
    He screwed up his face. “Hmm, drive a trasher car across the island to eyeball a wedding place, or hit the bed with my girl? Hard to choose.”
    “Okay, funny man, I wasn’t offering you company. I was just wondering if you wanted to drive over there with me. I want to check out the venue before I try to arrange anything else.”
    “If it’s okay with you, I think I’ll let you go it alone this time. I’d like to stick around here and see if there’s any place to do a