Broken Ferns (Lei Crime ) by Toby Neal

time her father, Wayne Texeira, in California. They talked only every few weeks, so she put the Bluetooth resting in the brake well into her ear and answered it.
    “Hey, Dad.”
    “Hey, Lei-girl. How’s Honolulu treating you this week?”
    “Okay.” Lei thought of all she couldn’t say to her ex-con father about her cases, her broken heart, her chickenshit moment at the gym—it would fill a book. “How’s Aunty Rosario and the restaurant?”
    “Same old, same old. We’re planning a trip over, though, for Christmas.”
    “Sounds great!” It really did sound great—though she’d have to get some furniture for her apartment if they followed through and showed up in a couple of months. “Hey, Dad, it’s a good thing you called. Remember the Charlie Kwon shooting?”
    Her father was silent a moment, probably taken aback by the abrupt change of subject.
    “’Course.” His voice was clipped. He obviously still remembered her phone call to ask if he’d done it, too.
    “Well, it’s never been solved, and I’m starting to think I’d better work on it somehow. I visited him the day he was shot, you know, and I’m still worried it will come back on me.”
    “You told me then that you didn’t do it. You have to let the facts be enough. Let sleeping dogs lie.”
    “I know, and you’re right about that. But maybe there’s some way I can point the investigation to the right answer or something—get some more insurance for myself. So I was wondering if you knew of anyone who might have been involved. Had motive, you know. Some of the Hilo people, maybe?” It was a long shot, but worth taking—and she’d never asked him since their abruptly ended conversation a year ago.
    She waited the long moment he took to answer, driving through the stop-and-go traffic into the cool green of Kapiolani Park.
    “Any number of people wanted Kwon dead,” Wayne said. “But there’s one I think you might want to get to know anyway. Your grandfather.”
    “What?” Lei pulled into the park’s nearby lot. This surprise was going to take her full attention. She brought the truck up under a spreading monkeypod tree in the generous parking area. “You mean the Matsumotos?” Wayne and Rosario’s parents were gone, so it had to be her Matsumoto grandfather. She hadn’t seen them since she was a baby.
    “Yes. Your grandfather Soga Matsumoto contacted me last year. He’s been following your career from a distance and he lost track of you after you moved to Maui. He tracked me down, wanted your address, and said his wife died.” Wayne sighed, a long, shuddering loss of breath. “I was pretty angry. They hadn’t done anything to help you when your mom died and you almost went into foster care…I thought he didn’t deserve that chance, and I told him off. I told him about Kwon, too, to make him feel bad.”
    “Wow.” Lei felt the familiar tightness of anxiety and loss in her chest. Her family life had never been simple. She found her hand sliding into her pocket to retrieve the white-gold disc. She flipped it between her fingers. A ray of sunlight passed through the windshield, glancing off the embedded diamonds and casting sparkles onto the felted interior of the truck’s roof.
    “Yeah, I was angry. I wanted him to suffer, to feel bad for being such a bad grandfather. I have his address. I felt the Lord telling me my attitude was wrong later, so I called him back and apologized, but he wouldn’t answer my call.”
    “And did you give him my address?”
    “Yes. But I guess he never contacted you?”
    “No. No, he didn’t.” And now her grandmother was dead and she’d never know her. Lei leaned her forehead against the steering wheel, closing her eyes. Somehow the unexplored possibility had been a little something she’d cherished.
    “Well, maybe you could find him. If you felt like it.” Wayne’s voice had gone tentative. “I’m sorry, sweets. I should have contacted you when he got in touch with me, but I