Aaron Elkins - Where there's a will

In other words, Gideon thought, if Magnus’s will were to be invalidated now, and Torkel’s will executed in its place, Hedwig, Inge, Axel, and Felix would lose everything. No wonder they were looking a little hangdog.

“Well, now, wait a minute,” Inge said, “it may not be an issue at all. Gideon, let’s say you look at the autopsy photographs or whatever, and you’re not able to say for sure whether it is or isn’t Magnus.”

“Which is highly probable,” Gideon said.

“So in that case, it wouldn’t be proven that Magnus died before Torkel-or after him, or anything. Wouldn’t that mean that Magnus’s will would stand as it is? There’d be no concrete basis for going over to Torkel’s will.”

“Beats me,” Gideon said. “That’s way out of my line.”

“Well, I tell you,” Keoni said knowledgeably, “I’ve had a little experience with wills, and the way I think it’s going to play out is that it’ll all depend on whether the Seamen’s Home wants to take us to court over it. They might not.”

“They’d have to hear about it first,” Inge said grimly, then laughed to show she was joking. “But the thing is, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Felix gets back home tomorrow, doesn’t he? We’ll see what he says. In the meantime, let’s see what Gideon turns up or doesn’t turn up when he looks at the report.”

Everyone appeared to agree with this.

Gideon looked at his watch. “It’s four-fifteen. A little late to start with the police today. Let’s wait till tomorrow.”

That seemed to end the discussion. People were getting to their feet when Gideon exclaimed: “Oh, I almost forgot. The Ocean Quest people were going to drop off another box here. Did they ever do that? I mean, besides the foot bones.”

“Yes, they did,” Axel said. “We were out when they came, but they left them with Kilia-our housekeeper. It’s on the kitchen counter. What is all that junk, anyway?”

When Gideon explained that it contained what might well be Torkel’s last effects and the family showed interest, Malani went to get it. A minute later she was back. “No, it’s not there,” she said to Axel. “I wonder if she put it away somewhere when she cleaned up this morning.”

“Probably-you know Kilia and her clean countertops. We can ask her when she comes in tomorrow.”

As they broke up, John approached Keoni. “So Keoni… how does a Haole show his racial tolerance?”

Keoni grinned at him. “Hee, hee. By dating a Canadian.”

Gideon, Julie, and John had a quiet dinner-steak again-at the ranch house with Axel and Malani, during which, by mutual but unvoiced consent, no one talked about Torkel, Magnus, or the wills. They did, however, briefly discuss Dagmar.

“Is she all right?” John asked. “She looked like absolute hell.”

“She sure did,” Axel agreed. “Well, we’ve been raking up some pretty painful memories, but she’ll be all right. You know what a tough old bird she is.”

“She also went in for her annual lube and oil change this afternoon,” Malani said, then laughed at the puzzled expressions on her guest’s faces. “That’s what she calls her annual physical at Kona Hospital. She stays overnight, and she’s always worried before she goes in… you wouldn’t think she was a hypochondriac, would you, but she is. But she always comes out with flying colors. She’ll make it to a hundred, you’ll see.”

“Knock on wood,” Axel said and demonstrated on the table top.

The rest of the dinner conversation was devoted to Axel’s ranting about a letter to West Hawaii Today in which a local environmental group had complained about pollution of the land due to cattle manure.

“You should never, never confuse human waste with animal waste,” he fumed. “Cattle manure is not your everyday, ordinary crap, and cow droppings are not cat droppings. Cattle manure is nothing more nor less than a dilute multi-nutrient fertilizer filled with micro- and macro-nutrients that improve the soil-nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium. Not only that, it has physical advantages. It improves carbon exchange capacity, it increases water filtration, it does all kinds of beneficial things. Now, of course, I admit that the smell can sometimes be a little-”

“What charming subjects we talk about at dinner,” Malani mused.

Julie laughed. “At my house it’s skeletons and exit wounds.”

“It is?” She thought about it. “Well, all things considered, I think I’d rather eat at your house.”

That was the high point of the meal, and breakfast the next morning was much the same, with no talk of what was really on everyone’s minds. But afterward, when Malani and Axel left to attend to ranch affairs, John, Gideon, and Julie went out onto the porch. Breakfast had been a heavy affair of sourdough pancakes, thick-sliced bacon, potatoes, fresh pineapple and mangos, and pot after pot of thick coffee, and it felt good to stand out in the fresh morning air, looking out over the morning-mist-cloaked hills, feeling the dew on their faces and listening to the hollow, distant lowing of cattle they couldn’t see.

“You know,” Julie said, “I was just thinking that now there does seem to be another one of those loose ends you two were talking about.”

“What’s that?” Gideon asked.

“No body.”

“Nobody?”

“No… body,” Julie said. “No Magnus. Presuming it is Magnus, he’s just a pile of ashes in a little box.”

“You know, that’s true,” John said reflectively. “No body, no trial, no perps, a misidentified victim… I have to admit, that’s a lot of loose ends.” He looked at his watch. “Well, time to see if we can tie a few of them up. Doc, ready to go talk to the Waimea PD?”

Gideon hesitated. “I guess.”

John frowned. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is, I’m going to barge in on some detective’s turf, totally unasked, a complete stranger, a self-proclaimed ‘expert’ he’s never heard of, and tell him he botched a case he handled eight years ago, not even getting right who got killed. I’ve been there before, John, and I can imagine his reaction. I know how I’d feel.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. In the FBI, we come up against that kind of situation all the time. There are techniques for defusing it. See, the trick is you have to make them see you as helping them, not horning in. Besides, I used to work for Honolulu PD, remember? I know these people, I know how they think. Trust me. Just follow my lead, we’ll get along great.”

“John, you have my implicit trust,” Gideon said, “but if it was the Kona CIS that handled it, why are we going to the Waimea PD?”

“Because they would have been the first on the scene, and the ones who opened the case. And they’re the local police force. It’s a matter of professional courtesy. See what I mean? There’s a right way to do this.”

The Waimea Police Department was closed.

“Closed!” John yelled through the glass front doors at the stern and preoccupied-looking woman on the other side. In response to their thumping on the glass she had grudgingly emerged into the unlit vestibule from somewhere in back to bark at them: she couldn’t let them in; the office was closed. In one corner of her mouth a cigarette jiggled up and down as she spoke.

“How the hell can you be closed?” John shouted. “What, there’s no crime in Waimea on Sunday?”

Her eyes narrowed. She took the cigarette out of her mouth. Her lips, thin to begin with, disappeared altogether. “Do you have an emergency, sir?”

“No, we don’t h-”

“Are you in immediate need of the assistance of a police officer?”

“No, dammit, but we need to talk to-”

“Office hours are Monday through Friday, eight to five.”