“I did not send him after you,” she said.
Quincannon reserved judgment as to whether or not she was telling the truth. “If not, then your brother did.”
“My brother.” She spoke the two words with anger and a measure of disgust. “Yes, Sam would have gone on his orders. He was fiercely loyal to both of us.”
“Loyal enough to commit mayhem, evidently.”
“I don’t believe he was trying to kill you.”
“No? Why?”
“Native Hawaiians consider a heiau, even the ruins of one, a forbidden place. Sam would never have violated the kapu by taking a life in the burial chamber. To enter it and fire his rifle must have cost him a great deal.”
“If that’s so, then he wasn’t the one who shot Vereen.”
Grace Millay shook her head, a gesture of agreement. A vein throbbed in her forehead; the cords in her neck stood out in sharp relief. “It couldn’t have been Sam.”
“Did you know about the murder before now?”
“No. What I told you yesterday is the truth — I never saw the man, never knew he existed until you came.”
“But you did know about the chamber.”
“Yes. It’s the burial place of the high priest who ordered the heiau built, and of his family. Stanton and I found it when we were children. I am not proud of this, but after my father died, we brought some of the artifacts up here to the house. You must have noticed them in the parlor.”
“Objects of value?”
“Not particularly,” she said. “The Polynesians who inhabited this coast were not of the ruling class.”
Quincannon believed her now. He said, “All right. Where can I find your brother?”
“He’s not here. He and one of the hands rode out shortly after you left to check on the herd.”
“When will he be back?”
“I don’t know, but it shouldn’t be long.”
The prospect of a wait, however short, was an added scrape on Quincannon’s nerves. Even if Grace Millay were willing to act as a guide, he was not about to demand the use of a horse and go chasing after her brother in unknown territory. His only option was to go with her to the ranch house, where they occupied chairs under the monkeypod tree on the lanai. Neither of them had anything more to say to the other; they sat in brooding silence.
Time seemed to have slowed to a crawl, but it could not have been more than half an hour before hoofbeats in the ranch yard announced the return of Stanton Millay. By the time he and the paniolo named Keole dismounted their lios at the corral, Quincannon was on his feet and hurrying across the yard, Grace Millay at his heels.
A scowl warped Millay’s handsome features when he spied Quincannon. He came striding toward him, stopped a few feet away. His bloodshot eyes and sweating face bore witness to the hangover he was suffering, and to an attempt to cure it by taking more okolehao along on his ride.
“What the hell are you doing back here?” he demanded. “I told you yesterday I don’t want you on my property. Get off and stay off.”
“Not until I’m good and ready.”
“Now, goddamn it.” Millay laid his hand on the butt of the sidearm holstered at his belt.
Quincannon immediately swept the tail of his jacket back, gripped the Navy’s handle. “Draw your weapon, Millay,” he said, cold and hard, “and I swear you’ll regret it.”
Short, tense standoff. The paniolo, Keole, wanted no part of it; he moved several paces to one side, out of the line of fire. Grace Millay did the opposite. She stepped forward, not quite between Quincannon and her brother, and in one quick movement she jerked the pistol out of his holster and backed off with it.
Millay made no attempt to regain control of the weapon. All he did was yank off the sweat-stained cowboy hat he wore, slap it hard enough against his thigh to raise a thin puff of dust. His eyes avoided Quincannon’s now. There would be no further trouble from him.
“We’ll go into the house, the three of us,” his sister said to him.
“What for? Listen—”
“No, you listen.” She made a shooing gesture to Keole. Then, when the paniolo was out of earshot, “Sam is dead.”
“... What?”
“You heard me. Sam... is... dead!”
“Oh, Christ. How—?”
“Not out here. In the house.”
Millay followed her there without protest; Quincannon followed him. They went into the large front room containing the array of pagan objects. Grace Millay crossed to the mantelpiece, laid the pistol down next to one of the feathered fetishes displayed there. While she was doing that, Millay turned abruptly and faced Quincannon, his bloodshot eyes flashing.
“You! You killed Sam Opaka—”
His sister said, “No, he didn’t,” and then stepped in close and fetched him an open-handed, roundhouse slap. The blow had the force of a whip crack, staggering him. “They fought and the tide dragged Sam into the blowhole. A terrible way to die.”
Quincannon said, “I believed he was trying to kill me. On your orders, Millay.”
“No! I didn’t tell him to kill you. Only to follow you and scare you off if you...”
“If I went into the ruins and found the burial chamber — and what you left there.”
That brought a faint moaning sound out of Millay. He sank heavily into the chair he’d occupied the day before, reached for the decanter on the adjacent table. Grace Millay made a move to take it away from him, but he swung away from her and clutched it tight to his chest the way a child clutches a favorite toy. She watched disgustedly as with both hands he poured okolehao into a glass, then took a long, shuddery swallow.
Quincannon said to him, “I found Vereen’s body in the heiau. Why did you kill him?”
“I—”
“Don’t waste my time denying it. Why?”
Millay lowered the glass, wiped his free hand across his mouth. His voice, when it came, was low and thick with self-pity. “Self-defense. The bastard gave me no choice. He was angry enough to use his pistol on me when he saw there was no cloak among the artifacts...”
“Cloak?”
“Damn nonexistent ‘ahu ‘ula.”
“You stupid fool!” his sister snapped at him. “What possessed you to claim there was an ‘ahu ‘ula in the ruins?”
Millay couldn’t look at her. He said nothing.
“A mahiole, too, I suppose?”
His chin dipped in a jerky affirmative.
Quincannon asked, “‘Ahu ‘ula? Mahiole?”
“Feathered cloaks and helmets,” she said, “made of hundreds of thousands of colored feathers from the mamo and other birds tied into woven nettings. Symbols of the highest rank of the noho ali‘i, the ruling Polynesian chiefs believed to be descended from the gods.”
“Valuable?”
“Very. And extremely rare. No such garments were ever in the heiau here. They were not made for high priests, only chiefs like Kamehameha for spiritual protection.”
Millay took another swallow of okolehao, his hand so unsteady that his front teeth clicked against the glass and some of the liquid spilled down over his chin. “I was trying to impress a... a woman in San Francisco... I didn’t see any harm in making the claim so far from home.”
“A whore, you mean,” Grace Millay said in harsh tones, “and you were drunk at the time.”