I'm Kona Love You Forever (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series Book 6) Read Online Free Page B

wonderful to finally have my own ‘ohana .”
    “Farrah feels the same,” I said. I wasn’t a hundred-percent certain about that one, but I sure as heck wasn’t going to tell him Farrah was “working on it.” As the French say, “When two lovers meet there’s one who kisses and one who gets kissed.” Farrah was clearly the one getting kissed in their relationship.
    “Where’s Hatch?” Ono said.
    “He’s on shift today. I left him a message but I haven’t heard back. Some days are like that. A few weeks ago he told me their call-out rate had doubled over the past couple of years. I guess either people’s houses are burning down more than they used to or there are more car wrecks out there.”
    “I bet it’s both,” he said. “It’s on account of drugs and alcohol. The meth cookers burn down the place if the cops start closing in, or if they forget and leave the Bunsen burners on. And there are more wrecks because people are getting drunk or high and then getting behind the wheel.”
    “You’re probably right,” I said. For Ono, nearly all forms of everyday evil could be attributed to substance abuse. I thought it was a rather simplistic way of looking at things, but if it helped him stay clean and sober who was I to argue?
    “You busy with weddings?” he said.
    I made a rocking gesture with my hand, to indicate “sort of.” “I had a dry spell there for a while after you left but I’m working on one now,” I said. “It’s kind of a weird situation, though.”
    “Oh?”
    “Yeah, it’s two teenagers. They’re both not quite eighteen. When I called about getting a certified copy of the girl’s birth certificate for the wedding license I found the name and date of birth she gave me was for a kid who’d died.”
    “What?”
    “The birth certificate the bride brought to me is from a dead baby.”
    “And she’s been using it all these years?”
    “Yeah, that’s what’s strange. She goes to high school at Seabury Hall. I’d have thought they’d require a certified birth certificate to enroll there.”
    “You never know,” he said. “Fancy place like that, maybe they let things slide if her daddy flashed enough cash.”
    Seabury Hall is a stately private school in Makawao, a bit further up the road from my place in Hali’imaile. The price tag’s steep; more than tuition at the University of Hawaii. I went to Maui Public Schools so I can’t comment on whether it’s worth it or not, but from what I’ve heard, wealthy families will do whatever it takes to get their kids into Seabury Hall.
    Of course , for Hawaiian kids there’s another option: the Kamehameha Schools. You need to prove you have native Hawaiian ancestry to apply to Kamehameha Schools, but if you get in, it’s gold. Not only are you guaranteed a first-rate education, but you will forever be able to brag about being a Kamehameha alum. In the islands it’s right up there with being a Rhodes Scholar.
    David Onakea, the teen-aged groom I was working with, was a student at the Kamehameha School in Hilo. Lili looked like she would qualify as having Hawaiian blood, but she still might not have gotten in. The Kamehameha Schools give preference to Hawaiian kids who are orphans or come from “indigent” families. Lili’s Sprecklesville address and enrollment at Seabury Hall led me to believe her hanai family was a far cry from indigent.
    That gave me an idea. Perhaps before I headed off to the Big Island to search for Lili’s past it’d be wise to learn a bit more about her present. There had to be a good reason why people who spent twenty-thousand dollars a year to send their daughter to a fancy prep school had failed to show even the slightest interest—pro or con—in her impending marriage. Then I recalled the loopy signatures on the parental consent form and it hit me. Maybe they didn’t know.

     
    CHAPTER 5
     
    After about an hour at the party, Farrah and Ono came over to me. They said they were sorry but they