Where There's a Will

“Yes, but...” Gideon grimaced. “I hate exhumations. They open up old wounds, bring a lot of pain to the family. Besides, nobody’s asked me.”

“Oh, they’ll ask you,” John said brightly, and to Julie: “It’s his aura.”

NINE

“ITseems to me,” Malani said, “that we could settle the question for good by having Gideon look at the autopsy report. He was able to tell that the body in the plane was Torkel’s; he might well be able to confirm that the body found at the fire was Magnus’s.” She smiled sweetly at him. “Isn’t that right, Gideon?”

“I don’t think Gideon came to Hawaii to spend his time looking at bodies,” Hedwig said before he could answer. “He’s gone more than enough out of his way to help us already. Let the man relax.” She turned to him with the self-complacent expression of a potentate about to bestow a precious gift. “Gideon, I have some space tomorrow afternoon. How would you like an oiled lotus-leaf body wrap?” She threw a similarly magnanimous look at Julie. “You and your beautiful bride both?”

“Both of us in the same lotus leaf? Wouldn’t that be a little uncomfortable?” he said in a weak attempt at a joke.

Hedwig laughed, but it was obvious that it had gone right by her. She pressed on. “And if you wanted to stay overnight, we could do Lapa’au colon cleanses for the two of you. They’re sensational, you’ve never felt anything like it. What do you say?”

He managed not to flinch, but only barely. From the corner of his eye he could see Julie, with a terror-stricken expression on her face, silently signaling him NO!

“Thank you very much, but—”

“No, don’t thank me. It’s just my way of thanking you for what you’ve done for us.”

“Without charge, no doubt,” Inge said dryly.

Hedwig speared her with a look. “Funny.”

Inasmuch as Inge’s facilities were overflowing with a group of happy would-be cowboys from an Indonesian businessmen’s association, they were meeting on the wide, covered back porch of Axel’s and Malani’s house. From where they sat, they overlooked peeling, red-painted stables and a split-rail-enclosed corral in which three or four wiry paniolos, in from the range for the day, were leisurely unsaddling and grooming their horses.

Beyond them, moist, green hills rolled one after another to the horizon, with occasional small clumps of cattle —roaming black dots—visible here and there on the slopes. Other than Felix, who was still on the mainland, they were all there to hear Gideon’s report from Maravovo, mostly sitting in a semi-circle in old wicker armchairs, some white and some green, none of which had seen a fresh coat of paint in a decade: Dagmar, Hedwig, Keoni and Inge—sitting on the porch railing, swinging one booted foot—and Axel and Malani. Julie, who had been invited by both Malani and Axel to come, and who was curious, but who was a little reluctant about being one outsider too many, had moved her chair a few feet back from the others, so as to be out of the general flow of conversation.

As he’d said he would, Felix had telephoned Inge the night before with the bizarre news about Torkel; Inge had informed the others, and for the last twenty minutes they had been tossing around the same questions that Gideon and John had already been through, and they had arrived at the same answers and non-answers. There was little new information to emerge, beyond confirmation that Dagmar had indeed received a telephone call, purportedly from Magnus, in which he’d said that “Torkel” had been killed, and that he had to leave for a while and was flying out in the Grumman, but would be back in touch soon. Which was pretty much what Felix had told them the previous evening.

As to what exactly had been said during the telephone call, Dagmar was the only one who would have had direct knowledge, but the information about Torkel and/or the reopening of these old wounds had very obviously taken a toll on her. Gideon had assumed that if anyone was going to contest the notion that it had actually been Torkel, not Magnus, on the telephone that night, it would have been Dagmar herself, but she accepted it with no more than a seemingly unconcerned shrug. Yes, it was possible. It was all so long ago that she barely remembered. And what exactly had he said? Another weary shrug—it was too long ago. It was all in the police report somewhere. What difference did it make now?

Gideon had never seen anyone age more in two days. She was like a ghost of herself, passive, uncertain, and deeply, deeply depressed. Her cigarillo had gone out after a couple of minutes and had never been relit. The feistiness, the agile wit, even the barbed petulance, were completely gone.

The foot bones from the plane were now in a covered shoe box beside Gideon’s chair. Only Keoni and Inge had shown any interest in seeing them. The others had shaken their heads and turned away.

“That’s really a nice offer, Hedwig,” Gideon said now, “but actually I’d be happy to see what I could do about confirming Magnus’s identity. Only...” He hesitated.

“Only what?” Malani asked.

“I don’t know how much I could come up with from the autopsy report. A pathologist looks for different things than I do. It’d be better—if you really want to go ahead with this—if we had the remains exhumed.”

“But he was all burned up,” Inge said. She had come straight from a Paniolo Chuck Wagon Cookout with her Indonesians and was still in full Old West regalia: big red bandana around her neck, scarred, creaking leather chaps, and snakeskin boots with clinking spurs.

“I realize that,” said Gideon, “but there’s bound to be some skeletal material left. There might be something helpful.”

“No, you’re not following. There is no skeletal material. There’s nothing.”

“But...I thought he was buried.”

“So did I,” John said, equally surprised.

“Well, he is buried,” Inge said, “but there’s nothing but a little box of ashes. He was cremated.”

“Cremated, after he was burned?” John exclaimed.