“Your boss’s daughter?”
I explained about Kitty. “I gave her ‘til Thursday to come clean with her dad, though, or else I will.”
I asked Mike about the arsons he’d been investigating, trying to make connections, and we sat at my kitchen table for a couple of hours, going over all the details. We ordered a pizza, drank a couple of Longboard Lagers, and studied every angle, but we couldn’t find a connection.
Around ten o’clock, Mike yawned. “Been a long day, for a weekend,” he said. I knew he’d been up at an arson scene most of the day before showing up at my place. “Guess I ought to get to bed.”
“You want to stay here?” I asked.
“You’re ready for a rematch already?” he asked, and there was a smile in his eyes.
“We could just sleep,” I said.
He stood, and in one fluid motion he’d pulled off his t-shirt and shinnied out of the Ginch Gonch briefs. “In your nightmares, pal. But first, you need some more cream on your back.” When I laughed, he said, “Not that kind of cream. The medicated ointment.”
“Wanna hear a joke?” Mike asked, while he was rubbing my back.
“Sure.”
“Did you hear the one about the policeman and the fireman who went to heaven?”
“Sounds like us.”
“St. Peter gave them both their wings, but he said that if they had even one bad thought their wings would fall off. As soon as they left the wing department, they saw this beautiful girl, and the fireman’s wings fell off.”
“So this isn’t about you and me,” I said.
Mike slapped my back. “When the fireman bent over to pick up his wings, that’s when the policeman’s wings fell off.”
I wriggled around trying to grab hold of him, and it felt so damn good just to laugh and have fun with him. We finally did get to sleep later that night. Mike drifted off first, his breathing turning into a regular, almost purring sound. I nestled up against him, inhaling the smell of coconut shampoo, and when I looked up again it was already daylight.
We ran down our days for each other. “I’m hoping Harry dug up some dirt on the Whites and the Church of Adam and Eve,” I said. “He’s a night owl, so he was probably working while we were playing.”
“Gotta love a computer geek,” Mike said. He was planning to be around his office all day, going over evidence.
“My dad’s going home today,” I said. “If I can get away from work early enough I’ll go over there.”
“I’d like to meet your parents sometime, when your dad is better. And your brothers, too. You think they’d like me?”
I stood up and started to get dressed. “It’s hard to say. No, don’t give me that look, I’m trying to be serious here. If we weren’t gay, and I brought you over as a friend, they’d all love you. I mean, you’re a cool guy. You’re handsome and smart and funny. What’s not to like?”
“Aw, you’re making me blush.”
“If I could make you get dressed, that would probably speed things up around here.” He gave me a look, then started picking his clothes up from the floor. “But bringing you home like a boyfriend, that’s tougher. I mean, they know that Gunter is just a friend of mine, but at the party they were all looking at him like, ‘so, what do you guys do together?’ It was a little uncomfortable.”
“And you’re just friends?”
“Yes, Mr. Jealous. We’ve fooled in the past, just casually, and Gunter would love to get into my pants again, but so far I’ve resisted.”
He walked over and put his arms around me, kissing me. “Well, you just keep on resisting.”
We kissed for a while. Finally I pushed him away. “Come on, I’ve got to get going. Anyway, about meeting my parents and my brothers. If you ever do meet them, I want to be proud of introducing you. I want to be able to tell them how I feel about you. And that might take a while-for both of us.”
“Will you call me tonight?”
“You bet.” I kissed him, and then slapped his butt. “Now let’s get going.”
THE WHITE FAMILY
I spent the morning doing my own research on the Church of Adam and Eve. They didn’t have any kind of official registration, though they’d pulled permits for each of the big events they’d run, which had taken place at the Pupukea Plantation, the place I’d gone the month before. There wasn’t much else about them, though I read through a few articles in the Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin, and I did some background reading on fundamentalist churches and their opposition to gay marriage.
Around noon, the desk called and said Harry was there to see me. “Hey, brah, what’s up?” I asked as I brought him back to my desk.
“I got some material on those people you asked about. I figured I’d better bring it down to you.”
“What did you find?”
I sat at my desk, and he sat across from me. He passed a couple of printouts over to me. “Took me a while to dig around, but I finally found them,” he said. The printouts were driver’s licenses from Texas for Sheila Jane White and Jeffrey Steven White. “That’s them, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Yup. They came from Texas?”
“I looked for a marriage license, and I couldn’t find one. I thought maybe they’d changed their names, so I pulled up their birth certificates.” He passed two more pieces of paper my way.
They’d been born a year apart, in the same hospital. I was almost ready to move on to the next point when I realized what had gotten Harry excited. “Holy shit,” I said.
“You see it?”
“The same parents. So Sheila and Jeff White aren’t married. They’re brother and sister.”
“Kinky, isn’t it? They represent themselves as husband and wife. Don’t you think that means they’re sleeping together, too?”
I blew out a big breath. “I think I need to talk to Terri.”
“I would say that’s a good idea,” he said. “Call her up.”
I pulled out my cell phone, which had her cell number programmed in. “I need to talk to you. Harry’s here in my office. Can we all meet up?”
“I’m at the Foundation office. You guys want to have lunch?”
About a half hour later, we all met up at a little plate lunch place a few blocks from police headquarters. We were certainly a motley crew-Terri looked like she’d just stepped out of a corporate boardroom, in a navy suit and matching pumps, I was in my standard work clothes-aloha shirt and khakis-and Harry wore a faded, oversized T-shirt and board shorts.
“What’s the emergency?” Terri asked, after we’d been seated and ordered our lunches.
I showed her the drivers’ licenses and the birth certificates, and waited for her to make the connection. “Kimo, this is creepy,” she said.
“That’s what we thought,” Harry said.
“But what do you think it means?” I asked.
Terri sipped her pineapple soda while she thought. Finally she said, “There are laws against incest, aren’t there?”
“I’d have to check,” I said.
“But for sure, you can’t marry somebody you’re related to,” Terri said. “Cousins, siblings, that kind of thing.”
“I see where you’re going,” I said.
“Where?” Harry asked. “Don’t go all psychic on me.”
The waitress brought our lunches. A plate lunch is an island tradition, developed to serve to plantation workers who needed to keep up their strength through long days. A main course, usually fish or chicken, two scoops of rice, a scoop of macaroni salad, and some shredded lettuce. We’d all opted for the chicken, making it easy for the waitress to distribute the food.
“In many states, for years it was illegal for black people and white people to marry each other,” Terri said. “And eventually that changed. Now it’s possible that the laws against gay marriage will change. But I doubt that our society is ever going to change the way we feel about family members getting married.”
“So the Whites probably resent the fact that gay men might be able to get married, when they’re never going to be able to marry each other, never be able to tell anybody about their relationship,” I said.