Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 12 - Where There's A Will

by Where There's A Will

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Pay attention, now.”

  “Sorry, I’m doing my best. So, is there a family feud? Between Auntie Dagmar and Hedwig?”

  “Nah, nothing like that. It’s just that Auntie Dagmar doesn’t go anyplace where they won’t let her drink her schnapps and smoke her cheroots, and smoking and booze are verboten at the Hui Ho’olana. Just like meat. They mess up the karma.”

  Gideon sat up a little straighter and peered at John. “John, you wouldn’t be pulling my leg just a little, would you?”

  John laughed. “See for yourself, buddy.”

  AT forty or so, Inge Torkelsson, the proprietor of the Kohala Trails Adventure Ranch, was a rangy, wind-seared woman, as sinewy and tough as a stick of beef jerky, with a small, active head, short, graying blonde hair, lean hips, and little in the way of breasts. In her jeans and checked cowboy shirt, and with her swaggery, slightly straddle-legged walk, anyone seeing her from behind would have taken her for a man; a cowboy. Given a few yards’ distance, most would have thought so from the front as well.

  Taking Gideon by the arm with a grip like a barroom bouncer’s, she heartily dragged him around the handsomely rustic living room—deer-antler chandeliers, woven floor mats, heavy, polished, matching koa wood furniture, paintings of Hawaiian queens and Swedish kings (unlike those in Axel’s house, these were framed originals, neatly hung; the whole place was like a sanitized, coordinated, updated version of Axel’s house)—to introduce him to the others. There were six of them all together: the five blood-related Torkelssons—siblings Axel, Felix, Hedwig, and Inge, plus Auntie Dagmar—and Inge’s Hawaiian husband, Keoni, who had arrived only seconds before John and Gideon. Obviously, they had been told about Gideon, because several of them made some small witticisms about bones or skeletons, which he took in the amiable spirit in which they’d been intended.

  Inasmuch as Hedwig was the last person he was introduced to before Inge was called to the telephone, Gideon was left pretty much in her clutches. Hedwig, knowing he was an anthropologist, had expressed open-mouthed astonishment at learning that he was unfamiliar with the differences between Celtic and Druidic shamanism (“I’m not quite up to the minute on that,” he had admitted) and was doing her best to repair this sad hole in his scholarship, gesturing where necessary with a glass of frothy pink liquid that looked to Gideon like Pepto-Bismol over ice. A large, flowing woman with cropped blonde hair, and wearing a large, flowing, purple-flowered muu-muu, Hedwig had a tendency to overwhelm. Partly, this was because she had a disconcerting way of standing too close when conversing, in addition to which she favored an incredibly potent jasmine scent. As a result, they had done a sort of tango across the floor, with Gideon slowly backing up, and Hedwig relentlessly tracking, until he ran out of room, bumping his hip against a table holding appetizers and drinks.

  “Well, this has really been fascinating, Hedwig,” he said brightly, leaping in at one of the infrequent pauses. “I guess I’ll get myself a drink now—”

  “Gideon—oh, my God!” she exclaimed delightedly. “You have an aura!”

  “Pardon?”

  “An aura!” Hedwig repeated, leaning even closer to sniff at him, to peer at his ears, his shoulders, the top of his head, drowning him in jasmine. “And not your everyday, low-level bodily kind, either.” More sniffs. “It’s wonderful! A high-frequency UV thing, a real astral-plane consciousness-level entity. It’s very visible. I could help you learn to see it in no time. There’s a . . . let me see . . . a tall, white-bearded man with one blue eye and one gray eye who looks after you. Hasn’t anyone ever told you? Surely you’ve felt him?”

  Gideon was practically bent backward over the table. “Well, actually, Hedwig, I can’t say that—”

  “My friends call me Kuho-ono-enuka-ilimoku, Gideon. It’s my past-life vision name.”

  “Uh . . . past-life vision name?” he said and bit his tongue, but he was saved by the appearance of Auntie Dagmar, a diminutive, erect, elderly woman with a well-tended but slightly askew black wig and piercing, intelligent gray eyes in a lean, Swedish face. In one hand was an unlit black cigarillo; in the other a cordial glass of amber-colored liquor. Her clothes looked expensive: a plum-colored pant-suit, silk blouse, and turquoise earrings in the form of tortoises. Around her neck was a carelessly knotted blue Hermes silk scarf with small white stars. (Gideon knew it was a Hermes because she had put it on inside out and the label showed, which merely added to her queenly air, as if she were above the need to dress in front of a mirror.)

  “And what exactly is wrong with ‘Hedwig’?” she demanded. “It was good enough for your grandmother.” Gideon heard the gliding, lilting vowel-sounds of Swedish in her speech. “It was the name of royalty.”

  “So you’ve told me, Auntie Dagmar,” Hedwig said with her too-bright smile. “Three or four hundred times. But the fact is, I don’t like it because it sounds like ‘earwig.’”

  “That’s ridiculous, and you know you just say it to annoy me.”

  “Besides which, it’s too hard to pronounce. It’s very tiring when everyone asks if the “w” is pronounced wuh or vuh.”

  “Oh, I see. But ‘Kuku-ono-mono-eenyweeny,’ that’s easy to pronounce.”

  Hedwig threw Gideon a “see what I have to put up with?” look and changed the subject, grimacing at Dagmar’s glass and cigar. “You have to be more careful at your age, Auntie Dagmar,” she said lightly. “I keep telling you. You’re getting on now. You’re not the woman you were.”

  “No, and I never was.” She turned to Gideon. “Young man, can you light this damn thing for me? There are matches on the table over there.”

  “Of course,” Gideon said.

  Hedwig shook her head. “Darling Auntie, I hope you don’t expect me to stand here and watch you kill yourself right in front of me.”

  “You mean you’re going to pester someone else? Excellent!” said Dagmar. “Thank the Lord for small mercies. Goodbye and good luck to you.”

  As Gideon held the match to her cigarillo, she spoke around it. “In my opinion, a woman of forty-five—a sedentary, morbidly obese woman with some very peculiar ideas, if you’ll forgive my saying so—has no business telling an active, perfectly healthy person of eighty-one how to live her life, would you agree?”

  “Yes, I would, Miss Torkelsson,” Gideon said truthfully.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, call me Auntie Dagmar. Are we related?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “That’s all right, you call me Auntie Dagmar anyway.” Exhaling a lungful of blue smoke, she patted him absently on the shoulder. “Will you excuse me? I just thought of something else to irritate my niece about.”

  Across the room, Felix Torkelsson banged a spoon against a glass for attention. “Six-thirty, everybody!”

  Felix, the lawyer-brother who had flown in from Honolulu for the occasion, was a ruddy, outgoing teddy bear of a man with twinkling eyes, round cheeks, and a short, neatly clipped pepper-and-salt beard. Given a few more years, he would be everyone’s choice to play Santa Claus, if he wasn’t already. His normal speaking voice was a penetrating drawl with a wry, nasal touch of W. C. Fields in it, and when he raised it a few notches, no one inside of a hundred yards could escape hearing it. Nevertheless, he repeated himself with another honk. “Six-thirty, fellow Torkelssons and friends. Lift your glasses. Time for . . . The Toast!”

  “Malani’s not here yet,” Axel called.

  “Too bad,” said Felix, “but we must always remember what Magnus said.” He scowled ferociously, ran his tongue in and out between his teeth, and spoke with a deep, melodious Swedish accent. “In this house we enjoy our cocktails at six-thirty—one cocktail—and dine promptly at seven. This does not mean seven-oh-one.”

  There was obviously a funny story connected with this because they all laughed appreciatively, and it started them on a round of Magnus-quotations.

  “You are never going to get much of anything done unless you go ahead and do it bef
ore you are ready,” Inge contributed with the same slow Swedish lilt.

  “No farmer ever plowed a field by turning it over in his mind,” Hedwig said.

  More happy laughter. Felix raised his glass. “To Uncle Magnus and Uncle Torkel, may they forever be riding their faithful old Palominos over pastures rich and green!”

  “To Uncle Magnus! To Uncle Torkel!” they echoed, including Gideon, who was now on his second Scotch-and-soda.

  Everyone turned expectantly to Auntie Dagmar, who lifted her glass of aquavit and, pink-cheeked, delivered a long toast in Swedish.

  This pleased everybody, and they fell into fond stories about the two brothers. Even John had one: about how he was a few minutes late the very first day he reported to work at the ranch, and Magnus, who had ridden in on a sweating horse to meet him and then had to wait for him, had told him to go find another job, firing him on the spot and riding back off onto the range. It had been Torkel who had intervened and given him another chance.

  “He was always the soft-headed one, Torkel,” Dagmar agreed. “The romantic in the family.”

  “I think you mean soft-hearted,” Felix said, shouting with laughter.

  Dagmar’s icy gray eyes impaled him. “That is what I said.”

  Malani made her entrance in the amused silence that followed this. “So what’s the latest on Magnus?” she asked into the vacuum.

  “The good news is, he’s dead for sure!” said Keoni Nakoa, Inge’s husband. “That’s why everybody looks so cheerful. The inheritances are safe!”

  This prompted snorts of umbrage and disgust, which didn’t seem to bother him. Keoni was clearly nobody’s favorite. A big, handsome Hawaiian, but now running to fat, he looked something like John—the same thick black hair, big frame, and flat, Asiatic cheek bones—but he was smoother, slicker, without John’s rough edges, and with something of the lounge lizard about him; a kind of Hawaiian Dean Martin. Dressed totally in black—T-shirt, jeans, boots—he carried himself with a somewhat heavily-laid-on air of insouciance, as if he couldn’t help but be amused by the shenanigans of this droll gang of Haoles he’d so improbably gotten himself entangled with.

  His initial greeting to Gideon, delivered with a heavy, affected Hawaiian inflection, had been, “What’s happenin’, brudda? If you lookin’ for skeletons in da closet, you come to da right place.”

  According to John, Keoni had been an accountant for the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea when he married into the Torkelssons. Now, no longer needing to work for a living, he managed the books for the dude ranch and ran occasional errands around the place, and he had too much time on his hands. There were rumors of affairs with female clients. His marriage to Inge was believed to be on shaky ground.

  “I meant,” Malani said to the others, “are you going to have the remains brought back?”

  “Yes, child,” Dagmar said. “It would be a sin to leave him out there like that, so far away.” She spoke without visible emotion, almost harshly. “Besides, bringing him home would be . . . it would . . .” She searched for the words she wanted. “It would end the story. Fini,” she said, and made a little motion with her hands, the way an orchestra conductor might conclude a quiet chamber piece. “So.”

  Gideon nodded to himself. It was something he had seen often in families with a long-missing, presumed-dead member. The deep, deep need to heal over the wound for good, to finally put the past behind. The need for closure.

  “He should be laid to rest on the ranch,” Dagmar continued, “if you and Axel will let us use a site on the Little Hoaloha.”

  “Of course,” Axel and Malani said together.

  “Shouldn’t take up too much space,” Keoni observed.

  “Just a few old bones.” Talk about a tin ear, Gideon thought.

  Felix turned pointedly away from Keoni and spoke to Gideon: “This is your field. How much would be left after eight years?”

  “Oh, please, let’s not get all grisly,” Hedwig said.

  “No, I’m interested.”

  “I am, too,” Inge said.

  “If the plane has been in the lagoon for eight years,” Gideon said a little uncomfortably, “there won’t be anything like a skeleton left—an articulated skeleton. And with a window knocked out, the chances are there won’t be much in the way of bones at all. Only whatever the fish and crabs couldn’t haul away.” A skull was the most likely possibility, since few sea creatures could get their jaws or claws around a skull. But even that was doubtful after eight years. Marine environments were not kind to organic remains.

  Dagmar looked at him with prim distaste. “Thank you for explaining that, young man.”

  “What salvage company are you using?” Malani asked Felix.

  “I don’t know yet, honey. I’ll ask around when I get back home. There are several of them in Honolulu.”

  “That’s hardly necessary. There’s a marine salvage company right here on the island, in Kona—Ocean Quest,” Malani told him. “They’re clients of mine.” For the last few years, John had told Gideon earlier, she had been running a website-design consulting business from home.

  “Thanks, Malani, but I think we want something just a little more professional than one of your Kona-coast outfits with two kids and a dinghy,” Felix said with a tolerant smile. “Now, then—”

  “Oh, now, Felix, they’re hardly two kids and a dinghy,” Malani warbled at him in full grade-school-teacher mode. “Ocean Quest has eight divers, they have their very own Cessna 310, and they have two salvage tugs under contract. Their specialty is rapid-response deployment. In the last fiscal year alone they did contract work for the State of Hawaii, for Blue Star Shipping, for the government of the Tuamotos, and for the Army Corps of Engineers. They handle all regional small towing and salvage work for two different marine insurance companies—”

  “What is the woman doing, reading or something?” Felix said, laughing. He threw up his hands. “Okay, okay, you win. I don’t know what I was thinking of to doubt you. Madame, we leave it in your ever-capable hands.”

  “I’ll call them now,” Malani said, rising.

  “At seven o’clock at night?” Hedwig asked.

  “These are not the most formal people in the world. They won’t mind.”

  “The salad’s on the table,” Inge said as Malani left. “We might as well start before the flies find it.”

  Over a simple but wonderfully fresh lettuce-and-tomato salad, the conversation turned to everyday topics.

  “Axel,” Inge said, “one of your calves got onto my property again this morning. You’re going to have to do something about that fencing.”

  “Sorry about that, Inge. Did it scare any of your Indonesians?”

  “Worse than that,” Inge told him. This was a young bull that had somehow found its way to the dude ranch petting farm, had managed to get in, and had tried to mount one of the female calves, traumatizing not only the calf but a school group from Hilo who witnessed the whole thing.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Hedwig said, “it’s as good a way as any for them to learn about sex.”

  “This wasn’t sex, it was rape.”

  “Inge,” Axel said in the midst of general laughter, “he isn’t capable of rape. He’s been castrated.”

  “Well, he sure didn’t seem to know it. Maybe you should tell them when you castrate them.”

  “Do you suppose we might change the subject?” Dagmar interjected with a shake of her head. “I’m trying to eat my dinner. Felix, when exactly can we expect to see your land turned into Happy Harbor Estates?”

  “Now, Auntie, you know they haven’t decided on what the name’s going to be,” Felix said patiently. “And I promise you, it’ll be very nice when it’s finished. They’re preserving the landscape as much as possible. They have a great deal of respect for the land.”

  “Tell us another one,” Dagmar said.

  “It’s not a joke, you’ll see. And as to when, they’re hoping to start in the fall, but the Environmental
Quality Control Board is still haggling over the impact statement.”

  “Hey,” Keoni said. “How many Haoles does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

  “I have no idea,” Felix said with an air of stolid resignation. “How many Haoles does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

  “Six. One to call the electrician, and five to write the environmental impact report.”

  John laughed, Gideon smiled, and the Torkelssons glowered.

  “You like that?” Keoni said. “Okay, how does a Haole show his racial tolerance?”

  Before anyone could reply, Malani came in, taking the seat that had been kept for her next to Axel, across from Gideon and John. “All right, it’s tentatively arranged. They gave me a price, and if I get back to them within the hour, they can do it tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!” Felix exclaimed. “I see what you mean about rapid response.”

  “Yes, well, you see, since the plane is only in a few feet of water, and since all we want are the remains, and not the plane itself, they say it won’t take a great deal of work or much in the way of equipment. And if they leave first thing in the morning, they ought to finish up and be back by the end of the day.”

  “Wait a minute, now,” said Axel. “How in the heck are they going to land a Cessna 310 on Maravovo, let alone take off again? Is there a nice, big, two-thousand-foot landing strip on this deserted atoll? That’s what it would take. Fifteen hundred feet at the absolute minimum.” As the only person with flying experience in the room, Axel’s word carried weight. He had learned to fly fifteen years or so ago, briefly serving as the ranch pilot before discovering that, as much as he enjoyed the navigational calculations, he didn’t much like flying itself. “I think maybe Felix is right, sweetheart; we’d better find an outfit in Honolulu.”

  But this Cessna, Malani triumphantly explained, didn’t require any landing strip at all. It had been converted to a float plane. It could land in the lagoon.

  “Really? I didn’t know there was anybody on the Big Island who could do that kind of work.”