Where There's a Will (7 page)

“For God’s sake, Inge,” Auntie Dagmar snapped, “we don’t need a lecture on United States maritime law. You’re getting as bad as Axel. Get to the point.”

“What did I do now?” Axel bleated.

“Dammit, Auntie,” Inge said, “all I’m trying to do… all right, okay, yes, sorry.” When Dagmar was in one of her cranky moods there wasn’t much point in trying to reason with her. Besides, it was natural enough for everybody to be a little edgy.

A week ago, she explained, a group of snorkelers from the cruise ship had paddled in an inflatable boat to a relatively distant part of the atoll’s lagoon, where they had seen the old Grumman sunk in five or six feet of water, its tail protruding. They had dived down to it, looked through a missing window, and seen some bones inside. The doors had been jammed or rusted shut, and since they didn’t have underwater flashlights or breathing equipment, and everything was a jumble inside, they hadn’t been able to see much else.

“Jesus,” Hedwig breathed. “As if we needed this.”

The snorkelers, Inge went on, had gotten the plane’s registration number from the fuselage and reported it to the ship’s captain, and eventually the number was traced back to the plane’s Hoaloha Ranch ownership. The Waimea police department was notified, and they were the ones who had called Inge with the news.

“N7943U,” Axel said from memory.

Inge checked her notes. “That’s it.”

“What do they want us to do?” Dagmar asked.

“The police?” said Inge. “They don’t want us to do anything. They just called to tell us. But the Kiribati-pardon me, Axel, Kiribass-officials want to know if we want the remains back. Personally, I think the best thing to do would be to just leave them where they are. The less attention we stir up, the better. And it’s not as if it’s him out there, it’s just a few bones that don’t really mean anything any more.”

“I agree,” Axel promptly put in.

“Amen,” said Hedwig. “Don’t meddle with Fortune’s wheel. The plane went down there for a reason, whether we understand it or not. Let it be.”

“Fortune’s wheel!” Dagmar was shocked. “And what do you mean, ‘a few bones that don’t mean anything any more’? Sometimes I don’t know what’s the matter with you people. To leave him out there like that, on that little… no, no, I want him back here on his own land.” She stared imperiously around her, challenging them to disagree, and muttering: “‘A few bones that don’t mean anything.’”

Inge hesitated. “What do you think?” she asked Felix, who was silently swirling the ice in his glass.

Felix took a moment before answering. “In my opinion, we should have him brought home,” he bellowed-his normal speaking voice ranged anywhere from bellow to roar. “Not only because of what Dagmar says, but because it would look strange-suspicious, even-if we don’t.”

“But who’s going to know either way?” Axel asked.

“The police, bird-brain,” Inge said fondly. “I’m supposed to call them back, remember? Felix is right.”

“Oh, yeah,” Axel said, then nodded. “Okay, I’m with Felix, then. We better bring him back and bury him here, what’s left of him. A quiet, private, family burial.”

Dagmar nodded regally to signify approval, although she’d glowered at the “what’s left of him.”

“So how do we go about getting the remains back?” Hedwig asked. “Does anybody know?”

“I wouldn’t think there’s much to it,” Felix said. “We’ll probably have to get some kind of formal approval from the Kiribati government, wherever it is-”

“The capital is Tarawa,” said Axel.

“-but any reputable ocean salvage firm will know the ropes. When I get back to Honolulu I’ll check around for one. We can split the cost between us.”

“ I’ll pay,” Dagmar said. When the others opened their mouths to protest, they were silenced with a fierce tilt of her chin.

“She who must be obeyed,” said Felix, salaaming in her direction.

“Idiot.”

“Okay, that’s the way it’ll be, then,” Inge said. She glanced at the antique Swedish clock over the mantel. “Now. John and Gideon will be here at six. That gives us almost an hour to make sure we’re all reading from the same script, in case the papers get hold of this, or if the police have more questions.”

“Speaking of John and his friend,” Hedwig said, “I don’t see any reason for them to know anything about this.”

“Too late,” Axel said. “I already told John and he told Gideon.”

Hedwig looked disbelievingly at him. “That was dumb.”

“Well, I figured it was bound to come out anyway, and if I didn’t mention it, it would look as if we were hiding something.”

“We are hiding something.”

“Yes, but we don’t want to look as if we are,” Axel pointed out.

“Point taken,” Hedwig said, submitting gracefully to this superior logic. “Okay, let it all hang out.”

“Not all,” amended Felix.

The wood-branch lettering above the entrance in the split-rail fence said “Kohala Trails Adventure Ranch,” and just inside, where a couple of dirt roads intersected, there was a post with two handpainted signs: a “Stop” sign-or rather, a “Whoa” sign-and one below it that said “Howdy, Podnuh. Horseback Riding Adventure, Thisaway. Ranch House, Thataway.”

They turned Thataway, toward a white frame house that looked like a bigger, better-kept version of Axel’s and Malani’s. “John,” Gideon said, “when we were driving up from the airport, you said that ‘naturally’ nobody wanted to have the dinners at Hedwig’s. Why is that? Why ‘naturally’?”

“Well, for one thing, the Wellness Center menu is strictly vegetarian, and just a little weird besides. But mainly because it wouldn’t be the same if Auntie Dagmar wasn’t there, and Auntie Dagmar won’t go to Hedwig’s.”

“Uh… Auntie Dagmar?” He had been drifting a little during the short drive from Axel’s place, lulled by the gentle rises and falls of the road, the fragrant air, and the long, long views down to the slowly darkening sea.

“Dagmar,” John said. “Torkel’s and Magnus’s sister. Remember? She’s eighty-something now.”

“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 before you are ready,” Inge contributed with the same slow Swedish lilt.