Aaron Elkins - Where there's a will

“As pie,” Lyle happily agreed. “No pumps, no compressors, no nothing. We’re gonna be home for dinner. Okay, we’ll take a look-see now,” he told Gideon. “Don’t go ’way.”

They hooked on weight belts, slipped their masks over their faces, got their flippers on, climbed clumsily out onto the Cessna’s wing, and slipped backwards into the water, not taking any of the tools with them. As they approached the Grumman, a school of tiny fish darted out of it, flashed silver as they wheeled, and disappeared. A crab or something like it flopped out of the broken window and scuttled its way into the sand under the fuselage. After a few seconds Harvey popped back up, water streaming from his shining hair.

“What did you-” Gideon began.

“Can’t talk now,” Harvey said cheerfully. He grabbed the torch, cleared his mask, said “Glub-glub,” and pushed himself back down. This time they stayed under for a few minutes, first using the torch to cut through the canopy, after which Lyle squeezed inside.

After a few seconds an orange and blue flickering showed through the algae on the front window.

“They’re working on something with the torch,” John said.

“Let’s hope it’s not the skeleton.”

A minute later, they were at the surface again, with Lyle hanging on to the raft with one hand while grasping in the other a white, angular object about the thickness of a human long bone, and shaped like a distorted, square-cornered “U.” Barnacle colonies clung to it here and there, tightly closed against this unexpected depredation.

“Well, here’s your skeleton,” he said, holding it up for inspection. “And there’s another one just like it, if you want it.”

“What is it?” Gideon asked, feeling let down. He had known from long experience that most of the “human” bones found and reported by laymen turned out to be from bears, or rabbits, or deer, or dogs, or sharks, or just about any animal other than humans, but still he’d been hoping. But whatever this was, it had never been part of the structural framework of any living thing.

“It’s the yoke-the steering wheel-from the co-pilot’s side. You want it?”

When Gideon shook his head, Lyle said, “Happy, happy barnacles, this is your lucky day. Go in peace, my friends.” He dropped the yoke and watched it drift slowly down, gently turning over, until it came to rest on the floor of the lagoon.

“Hey, prof, don’t look so blue,” Harvey said. “We could find something yet. We hardly looked in there. Things are all messed up. It’ll take us a while to go through the inside. You guys want to stretch your legs on the island while we work?”

That sounded like a good idea to both of them. At six-two, an inch taller than Gideon, John had been even more cramped during the flight. And inasmuch as the space behind the passenger seats had been crammed with salvage gear, neatly stowed and secured, but taking up every available inch (even the third row of seats had been removed to make room for it), they had been unable to move around the plane.

Ten minutes later they were seated, canvas tennis hats on their heads, sunglasses on their noses, and smeared all over with sunscreen, in a yellow, eight-foot inflatable dinghy that Harvey had pulled from a rack, inflated with an electric pump, and set in the water. Beside them on the seat-slats were a couple of liter-bottles of water and a bag with four thin ham-and-tomato sandwiches from the Cessna’s cooler. John, on the center-slat, had the oars.

Gideon gave the brothers a few brief instructions-they were to extract anything at all that they thought might be bone, they were to handle all such objects with great care, doing nothing more to them than rinsing them in fresh water, and they were to be on the lookout for any personal belongings-clothing, jewelry, credit cards, etc.-that might be useful in confirming the identity of the occupants. And if they found anything, he would appreciate the use of a ruler and a tape measure, and any kind of measuring calipers they might happen to have. Oh, and a magnifying glass “Yeahyeahyeah,” Harvey said, adjusting his mask and regulator preparatory to going back down. “Have a good time, don’t talk to any strangers. See you later.”

Walking on Maravovo was easier said than done. The seemingly inviting beach of smooth white sand was appallingly hot-even John wilted-and the thousands, the many thousands, of grayish land crabs stirring underfoot and scuttling for their holes made walking unpleasant.

The “interior” of the island-the outside of the “C”-was even worse; crammed with palm trees and pandanus, breezeless, stifling, and practically impenetrable. Creeping lantana and morning glory vines grabbed like snakes at their ankles, and gnarly, above-ground roots tripped them up at almost every step. Before they’d gone a hundred yards they were pouring with sweat, and clouds of gnats and biting black flies were hungrily gathering on them, retreating only a few feet when they batted at them, and then even more aggressively buzzing back.

“Talk about carnivores,” Gideon said, swatting away.

Retreating to the beach again-at least there was a sea breeze and no flies-they took off their shirts and shoes, left them in the dinghy, and waded up to their knees in the calm, crabless, blessedly cool water of the lagoon, occasionally sipping from the water bottles, toward where the cruise line had set up its compound about a quarter-of-a-mile ahead. At one point they set the bottles and sandwiches on the shoreline and took a swim, regretting that they hadn’t taken the brothers up on their offer of snorkeling masks and fins. Even without them, paddling around in the five-foot-deep water was like swimming in a giant tropical-fish aquarium, but after fifteen minutes the salt had begun to sting their eyes and they got out, rubbing their eyes but much refreshed.

The compound consisted of two structures other than the pier: a large, unlocked metal storage building (uninhabited islands made locks irrelevant, as John pointed out) with barbecue equipment, boxes of plastic eating utensils, beach chairs, and picnic tables stacked inside; and a small, canopied, thatch-roofed pavilion with a plastic-topped table in the center, a raised wooden floor, open sides, and a sign bolted to one of its four roof-support posts:

SHANDARA MASSAGE. TREAT YOURSELF TO A LOMI-LOMI ON-THE-BEACH SPECIAL. BODY EXFOLIATION, SEAWEED AND KUKUI NUT FACE THERAPY, TROPICAL AROMA SCALP TREATMENT, SEA SALT FOOT SCRUB, ALL FOR $75. LIKI-LIKI VERSION, $35. CHARGE TO YOUR CRUISE ACCOUNT.

They chose the massage hut in which to have their sandwiches, inasmuch as it was the only place that was both protected from the sun and open to the breeze. As they were finishing their first ones-the tomatoes had made the white bread soggy, but they weren’t complaining-they heard the Cessna’s engines start up and saw the plane begin to taxi slowly toward the dinghy they had left on the beach. By waving and calling, they managed to get the plane’s attention, and a minute later the Cessna was bumping gently up against the floating pier. The brothers were both looking down at them and grinning.

They had found something.

“Yes, it’s human,” Gideon said, looking at the bone that Lyle had just placed in his hand. “A mandible.”

“A jawbone,” John explained.

Lyle was delighted. “Oh, that’s why it has teeth!”

“Of course that’s why it has teeth, putzhead,” Harvey said. “Didn’t I tell you that?” If anything, their resemblance to Moe and Curly was becoming more pronounced, and Gideon half-expected Harvey to deliver a two-finger poke into Lyle’s eyes or kick him in the ankle, but all he did was shake his head.

“Where was it?” Gideon asked.

“Under the console, in front of the pilot’s seat. It was snagged around one of the hydraulic brake lines.”