Aaron Elkins - Where there's a will

“Oh,” Axel said wretchedly, “I see.”

“And listen to me now-if any of you knew about this-”

“We didn’t! I swear! The first I heard it was Torkel was after you two-”

“-and failed to tell the police, then you’ve committed the crime of fraud, or at least you’d be accessories after the fact.”

“John, you have to believe me!”

“Axel, did Torkel kill Magnus?” Gideon asked. It wasn’t something he could honestly say he believed, but he figured it was his turn to do a little nudging and see what came of it.

On the other hand, it was interesting, the way his mind kept coming back to the question.

Axel stared bug-eyed at him. “Where did that come from?” Apparently unable to sit still, he jumped out of his chair again, jammed on his hat, and wandered distractedly outside, squinting in the bright sunlight. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” he said to the empty air. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Axel, take it easy,” John called. “We’re floundering here. We’re just trying to make sense of what happened.”

Axel’s stooped shoulders rose and fell. He came back, flopped down in his chair again, and spread his hands. “I don’t know what to tell you. I just don’t know what to tell you.”

John shook his head. “Well, between us, I’m not sure where the hell we go from here.” He glanced at Gideon for help, but all Gideon could do was shrug. He wasn’t sure either.

“Can’t we just leave it alone?” Axel pleaded. “It was ten years ago.”

“Well, I know, but this whole thing is too bizarre-”

“John, I am not going to lose my ranch! I swear to God, I didn’t do anything wrong. Not knowingly. None of us did.”

John hesitated. “Axel… I’m your friend, you know that, but I’m also a sworn officer of the law. I have an obligation to, to”-he flushed, something he did when he thought he was being pompous-“Well, not technically, but… I mean… I guess… oh, hell, I don’t know. I guess we just leave it to Fukida. I don’t know what else to suggest.”

For a few seconds the three men sat without speaking. The smells of dust and worn-out leather seemed to be coming from their skin by now. At the rear of the shed a couple of flies buzzed listlessly and intermittently against a window pane. John continued to shake his head silently.

What a rare thing it was, Gideon thought, to see John Lau look irresolute. “Look, this whole thing really is none of my business,” he said, “but I have an idea.”

John and Axel looked up hopefully.

“Before Fukida comes in, maybe somebody should have a talk with Dagmar.”

Axel frowned. “Why Dagmar?”

“Because if anybody knows what really happened that night, it’s Dagmar.”

“Oh, that’s really ridiculous,” Axel said hotly. “I’m sorry, but this is really over the top. I can’t believe you’re accusing that fantastic old lady who’s been through so much-”

“I didn’t hear anybody make any accusations,” John said stiffly. “Go ahead, Doc.”

“Frankly, I’m not sure if I’m making any accusations or not, but if you think about it, everything we know, or think we know, about that night came through Dagmar: the story about Torkel’s telephoning her, pretending to be Magnus; the whole business about how ‘they’ killed his brother and were threatening him-every bit of that came out of Dagmar’s deposition. There was no other source for it, no independent verification.”

“That’s so, but-” Axel began.

“All I’m saying is that it would be good to hear what she has to say about all this.”

“Well-”

“Doc’s right,” John said. “We ought to talk to her. Better us than the police, to start with. If we can’t head this whole thing off, then maybe at least we can soften it.”

Axel gave in. “I guess I can see that. Look, don’t think I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do.”

“When would be a good time to see her?”

“Well, she has cinnamon buns and coffee on her terrace every morning and sits there for an hour or so. She’s always in the best mood of the day then. That’d be a good time.”

“What time in the morning?” John asked doubtfully.

“Nine, nine-thirty.”

John brightened. “Oh, that’s fine. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow, she’ll still be in the hospital for her tests. She doesn’t get out till three in the afternoon.”

“Okay, the day after tomorrow, then-what is that, Tuesday? We can hold Fukida off that long. Doc and I could just sort of stop by in the morning, say we were in the neighborhood-”

“No, count me out of this one,” Gideon said.

John was surprised. “It was your idea.”

“Yes, but I only met the woman a couple of times. She hardly knows me. How can I come barging in uninvited with a bunch of questions?”

John understood. “Well, that’s okay, I’ll do it myself. No problem.”

“I could go with you if it’d make things more comfortable,” Axel offered. “I drop by for a cup of coffee every now and then anyway, if I’m on my way to Kona.”

“No, that’s all right. Auntie Dagmar and I are old pals.”

Axel hesitated. “You’re not going to grill her, are you?”

John laughed. “No, Axel, I’m not going to grill her. I’ll leave my rubber hose back at the house.”

“We worked your friend over a little hard,” Gideon said when Willie Akau had dropped them off in the equipment yard near the ranch house. “I feel kind of bad about it.”

John nodded. “Had to be done. We’ll make it up to him. How do you think it went? Do you buy what he said? About none of them knowing?”

“I don’t know, John. It’s pretty hard to believe that the reason nobody spoke up about the ring is that every single one of them just conveniently forgot about it.”

John nodded. “You’re right about that, but as far as Axel himself is concerned, whatever else he is, he’s no con artist. With Axel, what you see is what you get.”

Even with the cell phone jammed against her ear, Inge could hardly hear him, what with all the yee-ha-ing and kiyi-yi-ying, let alone the mooing and stamping of the cows. She was riding postern on the afternoon’s Cattle Drive Adventure (“An honest-to-goodness cattle drive in which you will ride trained cow horses as you help the wranglers drive our mini-herd of Angus crossbreeds over the open range”), and she had been lucky simply to hear the phone beep.

She pulled her horse to the side and cantered away from the tumult.

“Axel, calm down. Say again?”

“I said I think they know everything! Or they’re about two inches away from it. John and Gideon, they were just here. You should have heard their questions. And… and…”

“Axel, take a deep breath. Now, what the hell are you talking about?” She took a breath herself and closed her eyes. Don’t let this be what I think.

But it was. Through his babbling she managed to make out the gist of what he was saying. No, she thought, they hadn’t figured out everything, but they were close. At the least they knew that the accepted version of events had some holes, big holes, in it. She’d feared this might happen from the moment they’d came back from Maravovo with the news about Torkel, but by that time there had simply been no way to head them off. Think, she told herself. Think.

Axel was just repeating himself now, in stuttery, fragmented phrases, like an old-fashioned record with a needle stuck in a groove, and she interrupted. “What did you tell them?”

“I didn’t tell them anything. Inge, they kept talking about the wills, and how the wrong one went into effect, and how we could be accomplices-I mean accessories-”