Read O'ahu Lonesome Tonight? (Islands of Aloha Mystery Series #5) for Free Online Page B

won’t be back until after dark,” she said.
    “Oh. So are you
going with him to Ko Olina ?”
    “Yeah, Ono
calls me his ‘cabin girl.’ Isn’t that cute—cabin girl? I’m gonna help him with the drinks and stuff.”
    “You know Ono
doesn’t drink, right.”
    “I know. He
told me. We pretty much haven’t stopped talking since we left Maui.”
    “Are you guys
like—”
    “Oops. Sorry
but I gotta go. Ono’s calling me. He wants me to
taste the mai tai he made and see if it’s good. He’s
so sweet. Let me call you when we get back, okay?”
    I hung up and
felt a tickle in my ear. Green monkey? Maybe. But just a little one.
    I made coffee
and Jeff stumbled into the kitchen a half-hour later. “Wow, you’d think with
the time change I’d have been awake at five,” he said. “But I was wiped out.”
    “I know. I
think ginjo sake trumps jet lag any
day.”
    “Especially lots of ginjo saké ,”
he said. “Do you remember if I paid the bill?”
    I laughed. “Of
course you did. I thought I was the only sloppy drunk last night.”
    “Any appearance
of sobriety on my part was purely for show. I didn’t want you to think I
couldn’t hold my liquor. It’s one of a half-dozen prized skills I learned from
my Japanese counterparts. Never let ‘ em see you slobber.”
    “Well, bravo.
You certainly fooled me. So, what do you want to do today?” I said.
    “I’m up for
anything that doesn’t involve damaging my liver.”
    “Do you want to
go out to Pearl Harbor? I can order the tickets online.”
    “Tickets? I thought it was a National Monument.”
    “It is, but
it’s a very busy monument. If you don’t want to wait in line for hours it’s
best to get a reservation before you go out there.”
    “Leave it to a
wedding planner to sweat the details,” he said.
    I fired up my
laptop and found that the next available admission time was two o’clock. I
ordered two tickets and wrote down my reservation number.
    “It’s going to
be hard to find a parking spot out there,” I said. “You
willing to take the bus?”
    “Sure. I’m up
for anything.”
    I looked up the
Honolulu bus schedule and found the Number 42 bus would take us in a pretty
direct route from Waikiki to the Pearl Harbor Memorial site. It would take more
than an hour to get there, but we didn’t have anything else to do anyway.
    We caught the
bus on Saratoga Road and found seats near the front. But when we pulled away
from the stop at the Ala Moana Shopping Center the bus had filled up. We gave up our seats to two older
‘aunties’ who were wrestling large shopping bags along with their
suitcase-sized purses.
    “I can’t
believe the bus is so crowded on a Sunday,” Jeff said.
    “It’s crowded
every day. When I was in school here I used to take the bus down from Manoa to the beach. Sometimes the buses were so crowded
going back up I’d get out and walk. And it’s a long, hot climb after lying in
the sun.”
    We arrived at
the memorial with less than an hour to go until our tour reservation. Jeff and
I ran through the exhibits showing the events that led to the war. Fifteen
minutes before the time on our tickets we got in line for the boat that takes
visitors to the USS Arizona’s final resting place. Everyone in line was somber.
Even after seventy years, the pain of that horrific day still stung. The park
ranger reminded everyone this was hallowed ground; a cemetery no less than the
Punchbowl Cemetery of the Pacific located inside the Puowaina Crater up the hill from Honolulu.
    The ride out to
the over-water memorial only took a few minutes but it served to remind us of
how vulnerable the men on the ships that day were. They were not docked at a
pier so there was no way to escape to land, even if they’d had time. But of
course they didn’t have time. Nor would they have tried to flee. That’s why
their memory endures. And that’s why their sacrifice is still honored.
    When we got out
to the memorial it was eerie to watch the