Edith here, writing from north of Boston where spring bulbs are bursting out and birds are busy building nests.

Spring is also a great to welcome back Leslie Karst, whom I was delighted to spend time with at Left Coast Crime in Denver a couple of weeks ago. She has a fun bit in her new Waters of Destruction that she took from real life!

But first the cover copy: After a vacation of a lifetime in Hilo, Hawai‘i, retired caterer Valerie Corbin and her wife Kristen have decided to move permanently to the beautiful – if storm-prone – Big Island. The couple are having fun furnishing their new house, exploring their new neighborhood and playing with their new little dog, Pua. But while they’ve made good friends with local restaurant manager Sachiko and her partner Isaac, they can’t help but feel a little lonely. So when Sachiko begs Val to fill in for a member of her bar team who’s gone AWOL, Val dusts off her cocktail shaker and happily agrees. It’s a great chance to meet more people – and learn the local gossip.

Such as about Hank, the missing bartender, who vanished after a team-building retreat at a local beauty spot a week ago, and hasn’t been seen since. Until, that is, his body turns up at the bottom of the waterfall, and the police seem very interested in where Sachiko was at the time of his death. Sachiko couldn’t have killed him . . . could she? Val dives into the murky waters of the case, determined to find out.

Book two in my Orchid Isle mystery series, Waters of Destruction—which released Tuesday—opens with my protagonists, Valerie Corbin and her wife Kristen, at a garage sale in Hilo, Hawai‘i. The two have just moved to the Big Island from Los Angeles and are looking to furnish their new 1930s-era plantation style home.

The problem is, there’s a guy who’s been beating them to every house they’ve visited so far that morning, and he’s buying up all the items they would’ve snagged had they gotten there first: colorful Pyrex bowls, a cast iron skillet, vintage Japanese plates, even a copy of The Joy of Cooking.

Some of Robin’s and Leslie’s early garage sale finds in Hilo

This was a fun scene for me to write, since it’s based on what actually happened to my wife Robin and I when we moved to Hilo and bought a house here some eighteen years ago. We arrived on-island with suitcases full of clothes and other essentials, but the house was almost completely bare. The previous tenants had left a few things at our request: a set of plain white plates and dishes, some towels, an old leather couch, and a couple of plastic waste baskets (which we turned upside-down and used for tiny tables).

Dinner in our their home

So we needed furnishings and kitchenware pronto.

Luckily, the garage sale culture in Hilo is strong. We’d buy the Friday newspaper, peruse the classifieds to check out the addresses of the garage sales the next morning, and then map out the most efficient route to hit them all without not too much back-tracking.

And then we’d get up early on Saturday morning. And I mean early. Folks in Hilo do not sleep in. Most garage sales started at six am—though sometimes even at five—and the classified ads would invariably say “no early birders,” as otherwise they’d have people waiting at their doors at four am.

Scoring a real bed and mattress quickly

Because of the early hour, many homes would offer coffee and food for sale as well as typical garage sale items. So we’d treat ourselves to butter mochi, hot malasadas (a sort of Portuguese donut), and Spam musubi while picking through boxes of kitchen utensils and checking out dressers and end tables.

But there was a problem. This one guy seemed always to get to the houses before us, and he had the exact same taste as did we: mid-century kitchenware, Japanese carved wood furniture, silk aloha shirts, and framed artwork depicting scenes from old Hawai‘i.

We bought out almost all the furnishings of a guy who was moving to the Mainland, and he even helped us move!

So we decided to skip the next house on our route and next go to the one after that. Which worked. For that week. But then, there he was again the following Saturday, already at the first house we’d arrived at. (We later realized he had a stall at a local farmers market/flea market down in Puna and eventually befriended the guy.)

Garage sale-ing—or more accurately, lānai sale-ing—was a terrific introduction to Hilo for us. For not only did we end up with a collection of lovely furnishings for our new home, but by mapping our those routes and then driving through so many different neighborhoods, we quickly acquired a familiarity with the town.

A special find: our monkey bar and Martini glasses!

But most of all, it gave us a glimpse into the local culture that was invaluable to malihinis (newcomers) such as us, as it allowed us to visit the homes of families from all different walks of life: Hawaiian, Filipino, Portuguese, Japanese-Hawaiian, Chinese, haole (foreigners of European descent), and those simply referred to as “locals”—a mishmash of all the above.

I still remember those garage sale-ing days fondly. Though not the getting up at five am….

Readers: Do you like to go to garage sales? What are some of the best finds you’ve made at them? Comment below (with your email address) for a chance to win a copy of the first Orchid Isle mystery, Molten Death! (US residents only)

Leslie Karst is the Lefty Award-nominated author of the Orchid Isle Mysteries Waters of Destruction and Molten Death, of the Sally Solari culinary mysteries, and of the IBPA Ben Franklin and IPPY award silver medal-winning memoir Justice is Served: A Tale of Scallops, the Law, and Cooking for RBG. When not writing, you’ll find her cooking, cycling, gardening, and observing cocktail hour promptly at five o’clock. Leslie and her wife and their Jack Russell mix split their time between Hilo, Hawai‘i and Santa Cruz, California.

Leslie blogs with Chicks on the Case and Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, and you can also find her at LeslieKarstAuthor.com.