Clipped Wings

  Clipped Wings

  Paradise Crime Mysteries Novella 4.5

  Toby Neal

  Copyright Notice

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  © Toby Neal 2019

  http://tobyneal.net

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  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

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  Book Cover Design by: ebooklaunch.com

  Formatting by: Jamie Davis

  Recipes collected and tested: Erin Finigan

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Sneak Peek

  Recipes from Aunty’s Hawaiian Food Place

  Savories

  Hawaiian Beef Stew

  Taro/Poi Rolls

  Hawaiian Style Ribs

  Tofu Stir Fry

  Shoyu Chicken

  Saimin Recipe

  Ahi Poke

  Mango or Pineapple Salsa

  Fried Chicken Hawaiian Style

  Hawaiian Pasta Salad

  Spam Musubi

  Kalua Pork

  Fresh Hawaiian Fish

  Sweet Things

  Pineapple Banana Bread

  Mango Bread

  Hula Pie

  Hawaiian Pineapple Cake

  Acknowledgments

  Free Books

  Toby’s Bookshelf

  About the Author

  “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

  1 Corinthians 13:13

  Chapter One

  Consuelo

  Morning glowed through steel wire embedded in the glass of the youth correctional facility’s high window. Consuelo Aguilar lay on her back, gazing up at a Jack Canfield quote she’d written out and taped to the bottom of the bunk above her. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”

  Only today, everything she wanted was on the other side of barbed wire.

  There was no point in getting up. Lying here was probably the most comfortable she’d be all day, and if she got up, she might wake Fai.

  She could hear Fai’s deep, rhythmic snores. The Tongan girl was never in a good mood when she woke up.

  Consuelo could just see the waving top of a palm tree through the tiny window, its fronds backlit and black against the dawn sky. “That’s how I feel. Backlit and black,” she whispered. She rolled over and reached under the bunk for her notebook and pen, and jotted the phrase into the notebook.

  Doing so felt as vain as writing the words in sand on the beach—as if they’d blow away the minute she lifted the pen from the paper—but writing was part of her therapy. Part of her future. If she ever had one . . .

  Consuelo set the notebook back down and gazed at the picture of Angel, her teacup Chihuahua, right beneath the Canfield quote.

  She was going to see Angel soon, when Special Agent Lei Texeira, her mentor, brought the little dog to visit. It was important to remember all the things she had to live for, even if some of the most important were already gone.

  “That’s the depression talking,” Consuelo muttered. Dr. Wilson, her therapist, was always reminding her that the depression had its own voice, and fighting it began with identifying its insidious lies.

  Fai snorted and turned over, making the bed’s old metal springs squeak. “What’chu talking down deah?” she growled.

  “Notting,” Consuelo said.

  Their voices held the lilt of pidgin, a dialect of Hawaii. Fai wasn’t a friend, but at least she hadn’t been an enemy. The Tongan girl could deadlift two hundred pounds, her homemade tattoos writhing up her arms and thighs. Sometimes she liked to show off by cracking kukui nuts in the exercise yard with her bare feet.

  No one messed with Fai. Having her as a roommate had kept Consuelo out of many of the girl fights.

  So. What was on the other side of fear?

  Flying. Being free.

  Folding her hands under her head, Consuelo let her mind drift back to when she’d been flying in her stolen plane, free as a dove.

  For a while, she’d gone anywhere she’d wanted to. Taken anything she wanted. She hadn’t used what she’d taken for herself. She’d stolen from the rich and given it to those who needed it. She’d made a difference. For a little while, she’d been a hero.

  It sucked to lie here and remember how that had felt.

  Depression talking again.

  She was going to have a life when she got out of here. Her mentors, Lei Texeira, the FBI agent who captured her, and Wendy Watanabe, the reporter who’d covered her case, had made sure of it. In fact, she owed them, big-time. Wendy had raised money to hire Bennie Fernandez, the state’s top-notch defense lawyer, and Lei had helped her get mental health help. Between the two of them, Consuelo was only in the correctional facility for two years.

  “You like get out of here?” Fai’s husky voice seemed to read her thoughts.

  “What you mean, Fai?”

  “What’chu think I mean?”

  “I don’t know.” Consuelo cautiously threw back the thin blue synthetic blanket and sheet, all that was necessary for warmth in the tropical climate. She swung her legs out of the low bunk and peered up at the other girl.

  Fai’s round brown face, her thick black hair a tangled halo, looked down. “We going get out of here. Early.” Fai’s dark brown eyes were hard as pebbles. “You can come.”

  Consuelo’s heart pounded in heavy thuds that filled her ears. “I’m just doing my time. I only have two years.”

  “I’ve already been here two years, and I sick of the bullshit.” Fai scowled. “I want to leave before they send me to the federal facility on the Mainland. My uncle, he goin’ set us up with IDs. My cousin, he get one boat. Taking me and Jadene to another island.”

  “Why’re you telling me this?” Consuelo stood up, took a few steps away from the bunk to get a better look at her roommate.

  “Because. If you come, and we get caught, we all get off easy. I not stupid.” Fai sat up, her legs dangling off the bunk. She pulled the correctional-issue plain black tee down over her loose breasts and combed back thick, bushy hair with a tattooed hand. “You get the good lawyer. I getting some insurance for Jadene and me.” Jadene, a white trash haole girl from Kaneohe, was Fai’s current girlfriend.

  “It doesn’t work that way.” Consuelo felt her mouth go dry. “Ask my boyfriend. He got twice my time.” Her boyfriend was captured at the same time and was serving a much longer sentence at a facility in Utah.

  “Dat boy was over eighteen, as’ why. You do this, you going give all those rich assholes the finger. Just like you was doing before you got caught. You got one whole movement going on the outside, I been hearing.” Fai’s eyes gleamed with excitement.

  It had been two months since Consuelo had been released from Tripler Hospital’s mental health ward and begun her sentence at Oahu Youth Correctional Fac
ility, and this was the first time Fai had indicated she knew or cared about Consuelo’s public past.

  “I need to think about it. What’s the plan?” Consuelo pulled the plain black sleep tee off over her head, clipped on her bra, and zipped up her orange coverall.

  Fai jumped down from the top bunk, landing with a thump beside her. “Not telling you unless you’re in.”

  “I can’t agree until I hear the plan.” Consuelo had her back to the other girl as she stowed her sleep tee in the cheap cardboard bureau where their clothes were stored.

  Fai threw a meaty arm around Consuelo’s neck, hauling her up against her heavy, muscular body in a chokehold, with Consuelo’s head caught in the crook of her elbow. She pushed Consuelo’s head forward with her other hand as she lifted the much smaller Filipina girl off her feet, cutting off her air supply. “You no tell me notting, chica.”

  Consuelo heaved and thrashed, clawing at Fai’s arm. She kicked back at Fai’s legs with her unshod feet, but the bigger girl merely grunted, twisting so that Consuelo dangled off her hip. Consuelo’s flailing had no effect at all.

  “You think you’re all that,” the older girl hissed in her ear. “You nothing but a flea. I could kill you right now. And I will, if you say one word about this. You’re coming with us.”

  She flung Consuelo like a doll. The petite girl flew forward and hit the wall, sliding down to the floor in a gasping heap.

  Black spots gradually receded from Consuelo’s vision as she caught her breath. She pulled herself together and sat up, drawing her knees close against her chest, touching her bruised throat.

  There was nothing to be done at the moment but play along. Fai was right. She’d be dead anytime the girl wanted to kill her.

  Fai turned away as if nothing had happened. She dressed in her prison orange, humming a little as she dragged a comb through her thick hair.

  Consuelo’s voice was hoarse as she said, “I guess I’m coming.”

  Chapter Two

  Rosario

  Rosario Texeira smoothed her plumeria-print apron down over the sensible sweats she wore with chef’s clogs. She washed her hands at the industrial-sized sink, her gaze flicking around the kitchen with its adjoining dishwasher station, unconsciously cataloguing and making a mental note of spices that needed refilling, cracks and corners that needed scrubbing. Not for the first time, she counted herself blessed not to have to keep the restaurant open for a dinner shift, as well.

  But now wasn’t the time for kitchen cleaning—she had a teenaged busboy coming in to help her with that after he finished school for the day. Before he did, she had an important weekly chore to complete—one that always filled her with satisfaction. Time to do the food inventory so she could order for the week.

  Rosario dried her hands on a clean white towel and took the order sheet on its clipboard off of the metal rack that held her favorite pots and pans, and headed for the walk-in refrigerator.

  She pulled open the heavy steel door of the walk-in, and parted the dangling plastic panels that helped keep the cold inside. As she stepped through, she inhaled deeply, taking in the rich smells of ginger, onions, garlic, and fresh vegetables, with overtones of the tropical fruits that were a unique part of Hawaiian cooking. She stepped forward on the raised rubber flooring with its round holes for traction and drainage, and examined the rack of metal shelves that lined the chilly room.

  She had established an order of storage for the items, so it was a fairly rapid process to check how many eggs and how much butter, cheese, salad dressing, sauces, fruits and greens she had.

  Rosario and her brother Wayne had grown up poor on the Big Island. They were the surviving offspring of a Portuguese paniolo ‘Hawaiian cowboy’ on a big Waimea estate, and his Hawaiian wife, their beloved Mama, who’d cleaned and cooked for the family that owned the ranch. Wayne had taken to the paniolo lifestyle in his father’s footsteps, while Rosario had learned her mother’s skills in cooking and estate management.

  Their parents had died in a car wreck when she and her brother were in their late teens, and Rosario had moved to California, hoping to build a better life for herself—which she had done in working her way up to into establishing Aunty’s Hawaiian Food Place with her partner, Momi.

  Rosario ticked down her order sheet on autopilot, her mind drifting back to the ways that life had taken dark turns: her brother Wayne and his wife Maylene falling into drugs. Maylene’s death by overdose while Wayne was incarcerated, which had brought their feisty daughter Lei to live with Rosario at age nine.

  Her niece Lei had had a traumatic and abuse-filled childhood that had left her with lasting scars, but Lei had come so far in overcoming her past that she was now an FBI agent on Oahu.

  And with any luck at all, she’d be coming to her aunt’s for Christmas this year.

  Rosario inhaled the smell of baby new potatoes, parsley, mint, and ginger in their boxes, instinctively sniffing for anything spoiled.

  There was—a small red potato with a spot of black rot. Rosario extracted the offending tuber from the box and opened the square, sealed bin where she stored spoiling food and leftovers from the restaurant to feed to pigs at a friend’s farm, in trade for a supply of fresh pork.

  Her eyebrows rose as she dropped the spoiled potato into the bin.

  It should be nearly full after three days. She had the waitstaff scrape plates into a special garbage bag, and then deposit it in the bin along with any expired, unsold food from the stand of convenience foods Rosario kept stocked at the counter. Several bags of leftover food and a half dozen expired hard-boiled eggs, along with some papayas and avocados she’d bought for garnishes that had been overripe, should be in the bin.

  But there were only two eggs, no papayas or avocados, and a couple of white plastic bags of leftovers.

  Rosario was the one to take the bin to the pig farm twice a week; who would take food meant for the animals?

  Maybe the scraps had been mislaid somehow.

  Her attention sharpening, Rosario did another inventory, quickly checking through the entire contents of the walk-in.

  The refrigerator’s chill began to set in, working its way through her layers of clothing, and Rosario shivered as the walk-in door opened, gently blowing the plastic panels apart to reveal her busboy, sixteen-year-old Josef.

  “Josef, some food’s missing from the bin. Do you know what might have happened to it?”

  The boy’s eyebrows rose. “No, Aunty. Who would take your pig slops?”

  “I know, that’s what’s so weird.” Rosario chewed the end of her pen, staring down into the bin. “I think this has been going on for a while, but this is the first time I’m absolutely certain there’s something missing. I really noticed the papayas and avocadoes because I hated to throw them out; they only had a few spots, but they wouldn’t do for the garnishes I had in mind.”

  Josef shook his head, his messy hair flopping to and fro. “I don’t know, Aunty. We should ask the staff. Maybe someone has a dog or something.”

  Rosario shrugged. “Well, no big deal. It was going to the pigs anyway. But I will check and see if anyone knows anything. Can you get started on scrubbing down the big grill while I put in the food order on the computer?”

  “Of course, Aunty.” Josef spoke English very well for a second language; he’d told Rosario he’d come to the U.S. from Mexico with his family when he was five. He disappeared back through the transparent panels.

  Rosario followed Josef’s straight, slender height out of the walk-in, and shut the door with a substantial thump. “Help yourself to some chocolate macadamia nut cookies and a Coke,” Rosario told him, as she often did. “You’re too skinny and you’re a growing boy.”

  “Gracias. Soon as I’m done with the grill.” Josef put on heavy gloves and picked up a steel wool pad as he approached the big iron grill. The light shone on his hair, and her fingers itched to scissor it into shape. “You’re too good to me, Aunty.”

  Rosario slung an arm
around Josef’s shoulders to give the teen an awkward side hug. “You work so hard. You deserve a few perks.”

  Then she went into Momi’s office to place the weekly food order. Her business partner was behind the computer, as usual, but got up to surrender her seat so that Rosario could key in the order from their suppliers.

  Momi was a tall, statuesque Hawaiian woman who dressed in classic muumuus and wore a fresh gardenia behind her ear every day that she could get one. She sat in their spare chair and pulled out the crochet project she was working on, baby booties for a grandbaby soon to arrive.

  Rosario told her partner about the missing food. “So weird. Who would take plate scrapings and old food?”

  “Maybe Jenny took it; she has one of those silly Vietnamese potbellied pigs at home,” Momi said.

  Rosario nodded, relieved. “I bet that’s it.”

  She began entering her food order, but a few minutes later Momi said, “You know, I think someone is getting into my office, too.”

  Rosario’s fingers paused on the keyboard. “What do you mean?”

  Momi pointed her crochet hook at the bags of flour, coffee beans, taro roots and rice piled up against the wall next to a stack of folded empty fabric sacks. “Sometimes when I come in, the bags look like they’ve been moved. And there were crumbs on the floor.”