Where There's a Will

“That’s Willie,” Axel said. “He’s our ranch foreman now, sixty-nine years old and still going strong. And the kid rubbing down the big gray? That’s his grandson. I’m trying to keep it in the family, just like Torkel and Magnus did. Only we’re not big enough. There aren’t enough jobs for all of them. We only have five of them here.”

“I have two of our old-time paniolos at the dude ranch, too,” Inge said. “But we had to let the rest go. Sad.”

“I hired one to help out at Hui Ho’olana,” Hedwig put in. “Hogan Lekelesa, but it didn’t work out. For some reason, he just couldn’t fit in.”

“Listen, folks,” John said, as the conversation continued to stray. “There’s one other thing you probably want to be thinking about, because it might raise some trouble for you.”

“The wills,” said Keoni. “Hoo boy.”

“That’s right. I’m no expert, and neither is Doc here, but we were thinking this might mean that since Torkel died after Magnus—we think—that Magnus’s will isn’t valid, never was valid—”

“And Torkel’s will goes into effect instead?” Hedwig exclaimed. “After all this time? Would they really do that?”

“Sheesh,” Axel said, slumping in his chair. “What a mess.”

“We don’t know,” John said. “But if you want my advice, you better talk to a lawyer.”

“Felix is a lawyer,” said Inge. “What did he say?”

“It never came up. We didn’t think of it until we were on the way here.”

Gideon, more out of curiosity than anything else, was trying to figure out a way of asking what was in Torkel’s will without seeming to pry, when John, with his customary directness, saved him the trouble.

“So what did Torkel’s will say? Does anybody know?”

At which there was a lot of throat-clearing and foot-shuffling until Inge reluctantly spoke up. “Well, sure, because his will had to go through probate before Magnus’s could become effective. But we knew long before that,” she said with a shake of her head.

At a somber party on his seventieth birthday, it seemed, a melancholy Torkel, suffering from intimations of mortality, had announced that he had recently changed his will, and he felt it his duty to inform them of the new provisions, so that they wouldn’t be caught by surprise when the sad time came. Formerly, his will had been almost a carbon copy of Magnus’s, but after much earnest thought he had arrived at the conclusion that it was best for people to earn their own way in life; that large inheritances were morally corrupting. Thus, he no longer had it in mind to leave the ranch to his descendants, either in pieces, as Magnus had done, or as a whole. According to his new will, the nieces and nephews would each have gotten token, lump-sum bequests of approximately $10,000. But the great mass of the estate—the Hoaloha Ranch and its remaining assets— would have been placed in the hands of a charitable trust, the profits going to a home for indigent Swedish merchant seamen in Stockholm, with the exception that his sister Dagmar be generously provided for (even more generously than under Magnus’s will) for the rest of her life.

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