Aaron Elkins - Where there's a will

They settled back to watch the hula dancer, an elegant, fawnlike creature in a long flowered dress, perform a few more graceful numbers, but a part of Gideon’s mind kept turning back to Magnus Torkelsson.

“John, I’ve been thinking-”

“Uh-oh.”

“There are some things about this whole case that are starting to bother me.”

John’s arms flew out to either side. “What, now it’s not Magnus? Why do you always do this, Doc? You know what my boss says? Every time we call you in on something, no matter how simple it looks to be, by the time you get finished-”

“No, no, it’s Magnus, I’m not changing my mind on that.”

“What, then?”

“Well, something doesn’t quite compute. Something’s missing.”

“What’s missing?”

“How do they know for sure what happened to him?”

“They don’t, for sure. Isn’t that why we went out there?”

“No, I mean how do they know that he flew off in the first place? How do they know that’s what happened to him? Is it just that the plane was missing, and Magnus was missing, and the pilot was missing, so they assumed…”

“Oh, I see what you mean. I don’t know the answer to that, Doc. In fact I don’t know a whole lot about any of it; they don’t like to talk about it, for which you can’t exactly blame them. But I guess Magnus must have told someone before he left-I don’t know-Dagmar, probably. He probably called his sister.”

“No, if he’d done that they’d have known where he was going. But they didn’t. Remember? At dinner last night? They were trying to figure out where he was headed.”

“So? Maybe he felt safer if no one knew where he was going to be. Maybe he thought it was safer for them. ”

Gideon shook his head. “Could be, but something still seems off to me. Maybe it’s just that the whole thing-I mean the murder, the disappearance, the will, the finding of the plane-it all seems too tidy, too wrapped up. No loose ends. Don’t you get that feeling?”

John thought it over, had another long swallow, and shrugged. “Nope. No loose ends is good, Doc. What do you want loose ends for?”

“Well, you’re the expert,” Gideon said, leaning back, almost but not quite convinced. “Julie thinks I’m developing a suspicious turn of mind. Maybe she’s right.”

“She is right. You gotta stop hanging around dead people. I could use another Mai Tai. You want another beer?”

By the time Felix strode onto the terrace, the sun had dropped below the horizon, Diamond Head was a gray-black silhouette, and the lights were blinking on in the hillside houses. Jets coming into the airport a few miles away gleamed white, still lit by the vanished sun.

“Sorry I’m so late, boys! Sorry I have so little time!” His voice, marginally muted so as not to interfere with the music, was as hearty and honking as ever, but there was a hassled look around his eyes as he dropped his flight bag on the terrace, heaved a great sigh, and flopped into a chair. His linen sport coat was rumpled and limp, his trousers wrinkled. Closing his eyes, he took a moment to collect himself. “What a life,” he said under his breath-or as close to under his breath as he ever got-and then to John and Gideon: “Your rooms okay? No problems?”

They assured him, with thanks, that their rooms couldn’t have been nicer, and Gideon asked him what he wanted to drink. Also, they were thinking of getting something to eat. Did he want to order anything?

“I wish!” he said wearily. “But nothing for me, thanks, I don’t really have time to eat.” Wistfully, he eyed John’s Mai Tai. “And, unfortunately, I have a truckload of work to do on the flight, so I better keep a clear head. So,” he said, turning to Gideon. “How did it go? What’s the story?”

“Well-” Gideon began.

“Ah, what the hell, it’s been a long day.” Felix twisted in his chair and waved their waiter over. “Good evening, Sanford. May I trouble you for a martini, straight up? Gin, two olives. And while you’re at it, why don’t you bring us some pupus? One order of your coconut shrimp, an order of chips and guacamole, and, oh, um, an order of vegetable spring rolls, just to keep us healthy. Better make it snappy, I don’t have much time.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Torkelsson,” said Sanford. “I’ll be right back.”

“On second thought,” Felix shouted after him, “make the martini a double! Thank you, my friend!”

Watching him is like watching a character in a play, Gideon thought. Everything he does is larger than life, a performance played to the last row in the balcony. He’d be a knockout in a courtroom.

“I thought you wanted a clear head,” John said.

Felix shrugged. “Oh, it’ll be clear enough. It’s only legal work,” he said with one of his belly laughs, loud enough so that a woman at the next table scolded him. “Will you kindly keep it down there? We’re trying to listen to the music.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Felix responded, immediately lowering his voice. “It won’t happen again. So,” he prompted once more-and even his attempt at a whisper brought an irritated look from the next table. “What’s the verdict? Have we caught up with dear old Uncle Magnus at last?”

“It looks like it,” Gideon said and told him what they’d found: the mandible of a strongly built young woman in her mid twenties whose dentition showed that she’d apparently suffered from bulimia “Ha. Claudia,” whisper-shouted Felix.

– and a boot in which there were the foot bones of a man in his fifties or older, which had suffered stress fractures of a kind that suggested its owner had been a horseman.

“And Magnus,” Felix said with a nod. His martini had come and he downed a little of it, gratefully closing his eyes. “A boot with a foot in it,” he said and gave a little shiver. “That’s kind of… did you bring it back? Do you have it with you?”

“The salvage team took it back. They thought there’d be less hassle if they did it, because Security and Customs are used to them bringing in all kinds of weird things. They also have a few other things they found-a pair of glasses, a comb, I forget what else.”

“A heel-probably from the same boot-a kitschy souvenir shaped like the Big Island, and a mug with a hula dancer on it,” John said promptly. “We figured somebody might recognize them.”

“Good idea,” Felix said.

“Does any of it sound familiar to you?”

Felix rolled the martini around his mouth while he considered. “Not really. The cup with the dancer on it, maybe. I’m not sure. There must be ten million of those around.”

“Well, some or all of it may have been the pilot’s. But the boys are dropping everything off at Axel’s when they get back,” Gideon said. “All part of the service. Maybe somebody else will see something they remember.”

When the appetizers arrived they helped themselves, with Gideon and Felix digging into the spring rolls and coconut-crusted shrimp, and John happily confining himself to the guacamole and thick, Maui-style potato chips.

“Gideon,” Felix said, “it sounds like you’ve already identified him from the bones. Why do you need the other things-the cup and all?”

“I wouldn’t say we need them. Partly, we had them sent back because they could be his last effects, and there might be some sentimental value to someone in them.”

“In a boot heel?”

“You’d be surprised. But the main thing is that on something like this, people are likely to have lingering doubts. Sometimes they don’t surface till years later. So the more confirmation we have, the better. Which brings me to the question I want to ask you: Did your uncle have anything the matter with his right foot?”