Tyler Colins [Colins - Can You Hula like Hilo Hattie

Four p.m. and the sky was the color of black Sambuca. Winds were collecting momentum, sounding like wailing pirate ghosts flitting amid Louisiana bayous, while rain had started to descend like July Fourth fireworks over San Diego Bay. The sidewalks several floors below the high-rise condo building were empty save for two lanky kids, a scooter-bound lady, and a big burly man hurrying and scurrying to drier, safer places.

Exterior lighting, obscured by the downpour, was providing minimal illumination; as a result, it was barely possible to see across the boulevard into the park and marina. Boats would be bobbing like little yellow plastic duckies in a child's bath and waves surging like crowds of pubescent girls at a Justin Bieber autograph signing.

I'd only been living in the tenth-floor two-bedroom condo for six weeks and in Hawaii ten. I'd taken a chance and came to Oahu without a pre-visit. I hadn't regretted it, not yet anyway and, somehow, I didn't think I would, but the torrential downpour outside was making me nervous. What did I know about Oceania weather, besides the fact that I had provided worldwide climate details to faithful viewers during my North Carolina days as a weather forecaster, also known as meteorologist? Tsunamis swung by this way, that was a given, but I'd never experienced one. A large tidal wave didn't scare me nearly as much as the thought of an earthquake, though. Oh well. I'd endured some crazy weather in my three-plus decades (okay, I was thirty-two for the curious). Besides, what could possibly faze me after spending a wacky week in a haunted antebellum Connecticut mansion, where five murders had occurred?

The lights in the cozy Ala Moana Boulevard condo flickered several times, suggesting a power outage was imminent. In anticipation, I grabbed matches and two big fat aromatherapy candles from a storage closet at the far left of a galley kitchen recently painted seashell pink and sea blue, my favorite colors. There was nothing like the pleasing and calming scent of lavender to help soothe the soul. A shot of rye wouldn't hurt either, if you were into rye. I wasn't. But my melodramatic crazy cousin Reynalda Fonne-Werde was. I was more of a red wine drinker.

Grrrrccchhhhhhh-kaboooooom-grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrch. Button, frightened by the lightning that flayed the sky like a vaquero's whip, had just displayed her anxietywhompand pain. Upon scurrying into my bedroom, she'd hit the wall under a double-size bed when she'd hurled that furry tan-mocha-and-cream body beneath it in a desperate search for refuge. It would probably take an hour to coax her out from under there, and only once the storm dispersed.

Lovely little Button was an eight-month old rescue mutt I'd adopted the day after I took possession of the condo. The purchase of the cozy living quarters had been negotiated while I was still living in Brentwood for a total of seven quick months. I was allergic to cats, but when I'd gotten the idea to adopt a dogstill not sure where that came fromI'd spent a couple (heartbreaking) hours at a local facility, picking a soulmate pet. Button and I had bonded instantly. An itchy nose was as bad as it got, and the young woman helping me make the decision explained that Button was a mix of Havanese, Schnoodle and Chacy Ranoir, all breeds considered hypoallergenic. How lucky could you get? Home came hypoallergenic, funny-looking Button.

The original move from Wilmington North Carolina to Brentwood California had been done partly under duress. My cousin Reynalda, better known as Rey, was an overdramatic woman of thirty-four and a cheesy B-movie actress who'd started her career as a dancing drupe in a fruit-juice commercial. Rey wanted her best friend, Linda Royale, and her cousin, Jill Jocasta Fonne, me, to open a private investigation firm in California, seeing as we'd done so well solving murders back in Connecticut.