The Bone Field by Debra Bokur (top e book reader txt) 📕

faded and the audience applauded. Before she had time to leave the stage, Walter climbed the steps to stand beside her, already strumming his ukulele. He waved to the crowd, and launched into a brisk, upbeat tune. He pointed at Kali and the crowd applauded again.

“Who wants to keep our detective dancing?” Walter called out, grinning. The crowd clapped enthusiastically. Several of her colleagues called out in encouragement. Walter played faster, a familiar tune, and Kali fell into step, beginning a new dance. Other dancers who had already performed joined her, their smiles all filled with delight. There was no more melancholy—just simple joy in the movement and the music. She looked toward Elvar. He was smiling, too. He waved to her as their eyes met, and she laughed.

She left the stage as Walter was joined by several other musicians, and the festival continued. Standing against the trees in an area where tables laden with food and gifts had been set out, she watched as the red and gold flames of the tiki torches erected around the audience area flickered in their own kind of ballet.

The musicians played for a while, taking turns to mingle with festivalgoers and to enjoy the abundant food and drink. She could see people surrounding Walter as he came down from the stage, congratulating him on his trophy, and heard the deep, familiar tones of his voice as he made everyone around him feel as though they had won as well.

A couple, arm in arm, passed her on their way into the clearing in front of the stage, eager to join in the festivities. She watched them for a moment and was about to walk away when Walter looked up and around, his eyes searching the crowd for her. He waved when he spotted her. She smiled and blew him a kiss, then made the shaka no worries sign with her right hand.

No worries. At least not for tonight, while the moonlight spread a glow across the island-scape, and a fleeting sense of camaraderie and well-being emanated from the crowd. She gathered up the cloth bag with the dress that had gone unworn, hoping that Makena was somewhere safe. Then she stepped back beneath the trees, turning toward the parking area. She slipped away into the night before anyone else might realize she’d ever really been there in the first place—before Elvar found her and she had to think too hard about how true it was that nothing good ever seemed to last quite long enough.

If you enjoyed THE BONE FIELD, be sure not to miss

Kali’s first investigation:

THE FIRE THIEF

The scenery may be beautiful, but dangerous secrets are

buried beneath paradise in this first thriller featuring

Maui detective Kali Mhoe.

Under a promising morning sky, police captain Walter Alaka’i makes a tragic discovery: the body of a teenage surfer bobbing among the lava rocks of Maui’s southeastern shore. It appears to be an ill-fated accident, but closer inspection reveals something far more sinister than the results of a savage wave gone wrong. Now that Alaka’i is looking at a homicide, he solicits the help of his niece, Detective Kali Mhoe.

The granddaughter of one of Hawaii’s most respected spiritual leaders, and on the transcendent path to becoming a kahu herself, Kali sees evidence of a strange ritual murder. The suspicion is reinforced by a rash of sightings of a noppera-b—a faceless and malicious spirit many believe to be more than superstition. When a grisly sacrifice is left on the doorstep of a local, and another body washes ashore, Kali fears that the deadly secret ceremonies on Maui are just beginning.

To uncover a motive and find the killer, Kali leans on her skills at logic and detection. But she must also draw on her own personal history with the uncanny legends of the islands. Now, as the skies above Maui grow darker, and as she balances reason and superstition, Kali can only wonder: Who’ll be the next to die? And who—or what—is she even on the trail of?

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CHAPTER 1

Police captain Walter Alaka’i struggled for footing in the warm, waist-deep water. In front of him, revealed by the morning light, the body of seventeen-year-old Kekipi Smith bobbed back and forth with the current, no longer encumbered by the constraints of will or desire. The deep gash in his skull had long since ceased to bleed, washed clean by lonely hours spent drifting along the ragged beach beneath the last shard of February moon. The boy’s eyes were half open, as though he were struggling, out of politeness, to stay awake.

Walter braced himself as a wave crashed in, then drew away, tugged by the invisible force of the tide. The naupaka blossoms in the dense coastal bushes caught his eye—fresh, gentle, wrenchingly out of place this morning. He backed carefully toward the dense mangrove roots behind him in the shallow cove of water that had pooled between the scis-sory lava rocks along Maui’s southeastern shore. With his right hand, he grasped one of Kekipi’s ankles, and did his best to keep the body from jolting against the rocks and gnarled labyrinth of twisted tree roots as each incoming wave lifted it and pushed it forward.

There was a thud, thud, thud of running footsteps beating against the heavy sand along the shore, followed by a soft splash as Officer David Hara slid into the water behind him. Hara averted his eyes from the face staring up from the sea to the cloudless sky, and Walter noted how he kept just out of reach of the floating arm that stirred with the moving current.

“Reinforcements here?”

Hara nodded. “Coming down the hill now, sir, with the stretcher. Photographer’s with them, but the coroner says she’s about a half hour out if she gets on the road before the tourists. She said to go ahead and pull him out when we’re