My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center Wake-up kiss
Lily was grateful to find her cousin Quinn alone when she peeked inside his room. Well, not totally alone. ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" was on the TV. Quinn must have been really interested in Barry Bonds hitting another home run into the bay because he didn't respond when she called "Hi there."
Oops, he was sleeping. Lily didn't want to wake him. He needed rest for his leg to heal. But she might not have another chance to speak to him for days. And there were things to say. She leaned down, kissed his forehead.
"Hey there, sleepyhead," she whispered.
Startled, Quinn jumped awake.
She kissed his forehead again, stood up. "Sorry to wake you, but I didn't want to leave without saying good-bye."
"What?!" She'd changed her mind again? Found another reason to dump him when he was knocked out?
Lily understood, patted his hand. "No no no." She explained that she was due at Pearl Harbor military police headquarters for questioning because her maid Rosalita and her daughter Elizabeth had been aboard the Arizona Memorial shuttle boat that had been knocked out of the water by the terrorist bomb. The terrorist being Muhammed Resurreccion, the cousin of Rosalita's late husband. And Lily had met Muhammed. A Navy intelligence officer was expecting her at Pearl's main gate in 40 minutes.
Quinn felt a bond with Rosalita. He'd stopped an intruder from raping her last night, and took a bullet to the thigh for his trouble. "They OK?"
"Physically, yes." Emotionally, time would tell.
"I may be gone for a few days, Quinn. If my travel agent can get me out tomorrow, I'll fly up to San Francisco for Laird's graduation a day early."
"How come?"
"There's a great opportunity for Ola." As in Ola Essences, her phyto-cosmetic company. "The owner of an international chain of spas wants me to create a special line for him and insists we meet immediately, or sooner.
"Good for you." But thinking dang, I'm going to miss her.
"That means the research into Bobo Ah Sun in the newspaper archives will have to wait. But I did learn a few things about him since I saw you."
Lily described her phone conversation with columnist Dave Donnelly and how he couldn't recall any communication with or about Bobo since he did an item about Bobo not being dead after all back in 1981.
"There's something else, Quinn. You met Ho'ola?" "The goddess? Hard to miss her, eh?"
"For some people. Anyway, I was in the elevator, praying for her to help our family, and she appeared and said she couldn't help Bobo anymore. 'Bobo went bye-bye.' Could that have anything to do with why our fathers don't want to discuss him?"
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com