I finally made the connection. Treasure had been Tommy Pang’s girlfriend, and she had worked with Norma at the lingerie shop.
“The girl the pharmacist spoke about,” Ray said.
I grimaced. If I’d only made the connection to the name the pharmacist had given us, we could have moved a lot faster.
“He did more than speak,” Norma said. “Though he was always worried that his wife would find out.”
“Where can we find Treasure Chen?” I asked.
“I do not know. But when you find her, I have a message for her.”
“Yes?”
Norma spit, more sound than saliva, and wiped her hands briskly. “That is my message for Treasure Chen.”
ANGRY LOBSTERS
We left Norma a few minutes later, after she told us that Treasure’s phone number was unlisted and she didn’t know where the girl lived. “We can check payroll tax records,” Ray suggested. “There might be an address for Treasure Chen there. You know anything about this Mr. Hu besides his address and last name?”
I shook my head. “That was part of the deal. Control. He contacted me; I never knew how to reach him. But I might have another way to get to Treasure.” It was almost lunchtime, and I told Ray to drive over to Ward Warehouse, a complex of shops between downtown and Waikiki. “After she left the lingerie shop, her boyfriend got Treasure a job as the hostess at a restaurant called the Lobster Garden. Maybe somebody there has kept in touch with her, or has an old address we can start with.”
The Ward Warehouse was a mini-mall, two long lines of stores facing each other on two levels with parking in the middle. To me, it’s one of the least attractive shopping centers on the island, because it looks like a child’s play set-girders bolted together, corrugated metal sheets painted clashing colors.
The Lobster Garden was a festive place on the upper level, decorated with framed Chinese calligraphy and red paper lanterns, and it was usually full of tourist families resting after a day’s trek to Pearl Harbor, Diamond Head, or Hilo Hattie’s aloha shirt factory store. The centerpiece of the restaurant was a huge fish tank filled with live lobsters, their claws banded together. I empathized with them; I felt like this case had my hands tied in the same way.
The woman behind the podium was in her mid-forties, and the frown on her face contrasted sharply with the smiley-face name tag which read Hi, I’m Mae.
I showed Mae my badge and asked if she remembered a girl who’d worked at the restaurant a few years before. “Her name is Treasure Chen.”
If possible, Mae’s frown deepened. “Bad girl. Hard to get good staff today. Pretty girls, they only want flirt with customers. Ugly girls, they work for while, then get better jobs.”
I resisted suggesting that the Lobster Garden improve their pay, and waited for Mae to continue. “I work here many years. Nine years soon. Year ago, my husband buy, when owner go jail.”
A sunburned haole family came in, the youngest boy dragged along by his arm like a recalcitrant puppy, and Mae seated them. When she returned, she said, “Treasure work here long time ago. She mixed up with bad man, friend of owner, and he get her job.” She pursed her lips together as if she was smelling something bad. “But this job not good enough for Treasure. She stay maybe six months, then quit. One day. No notice. Just no come back to work.”
“You have any address information on her?” I asked.
Mae shrugged. “Maybe in office.” She called a waitress over and asked her to watch the front, and then led us past the big tank full of lobsters waving their antennae and crawling over one another.
The office was a tiny room, barely enough space for a desk, a file cabinet, and a time clock on the wall with extra rolls of toilet paper stacked under it. Mae looked through a couple of drawers of the cabinet before she pulled out Treasure’s employment application.
I wrote down the address, noticing that her only previous work experience had been at the lingerie shop that Norma Ching managed. I wondered if Treasure had left the Lobster Garden to return to work for Norma-and in what capacity.
The address Treasure had put on her application was a cheap rental near downtown, and as we drove over there I called Karen Gold, a woman I knew over at Social Security, and asked her to see what she had on Treasure.
The apartment manager told us that no one of Treasure’s name or description lived there. He was new, and didn’t remember her or have any forwarding information. “Another dead end,” Ray said, as we drove away.
“I say we pass by the pharmacy one more time,” I said. “See if Louis Cruz is willing to tell us anything more about Treasure. Norma says he was a customer.”
“You think he’s kept in touch?”
“I think if Treasure’s set up shop somewhere new, she might be contacting her old friends to let them know.”
“Good idea as any,” he said, and turned on the engine.
Luck was with us: Lorna Cruz was running an errand, leaving Louis alone in the pharmacy. As soon as he finished dealing with his client, a heavyset Hawaiian woman buying diabetes testing strips, I asked if he’d been in touch with Treasure since the fire.
He looked alarmed. “No, no touch.”
“Come on, Louis, we know you were a client at the acupuncture clinic,” Ray said. “And not for shots, either. We’re not looking to jam you up, tell your wife or anything. We’re just trying to find Treasure Chen.”
“I swear, detective,” Cruz said, putting his hand on the ornate gold cross around his neck. “I haven’t spoken to her.”
I handed him my card. “If you do, will you find out where she is?” I asked. “And then let us know?”
He nodded, pocketing the card quickly. When we got back to the station, I called the garage to see what was wrong with my truck. When the mechanic told me, and then quoted me the price to repair, my mind went blank.
“I gotta tell you, detective, I wouldn’t fix this if I was you,” the mechanic said. “You can get a grand, maybe, if you junk it. I’d just buy something else.”
I thought about the money my parents had promised as the advance on my inheritance. “You may be right.”
I hung up and called my parents. My father answered and I told him the situation with the truck. “So I was wondering…you said you’d be giving us each some money. When were you thinking of doing that?”
“I can write you a check today,” my father said. “The law says we can give you each eleven thousand dollars tax free. What kind of car you want to buy?”
“I’m thinking maybe a Jeep,” I said, surprising myself. I’d always had a thing for the Wrangler, with those flaps you could roll up when the weather was good-which was pretty often in Hawai’i. I could throw a surfboard in the back, or any other kind of athletic gear. I liked the picture of myself, tooling around Honolulu like that.
“You want me to go with you?”
I’d never bought a car before. Everything I’d driven had been owned by my father first, then handed down. I was nearly thirty-five, and I ought to be able to handle buying a car-but it would be fun to hang out with my dad.
“Sure. Can you pick me up after work?”
He agreed he would, and I turned back to Ray, who asked, “You got any other ideas on how to track your Mr. Hu?”
I shrugged. “We have a last name, which Norma thinks wasn’t his real name anyway. The only address we have, for the mansion in Black Point, leads us back to Wah Shing.”
“Hold on. I’ve got an idea.” He turned to his computer and started typing. A moment later, though, he said, “I thought I could see if we have anything in the system on a guy named Hu. Turns out there’s a lot more than I expected.”
“It’s a common name,” I said. “Without a first name you’re screwed.”
“Though not by him,” Ray said, and laughed.
“Ouch,” I said, but I laughed along with him. “I wish we knew more about the boy. I mean, we don’t even know if Jingtao was his real name.”