Aaron Elkins: Where there's a will

“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.

“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.”