by Aaron Elkins
“You mean, to get away? To cover up the . . . the switch?”
Gideon thought he was going to deny it, to argue, but after a moment he nodded jerkily. “Okay. Okay, I see where you’re going with this. Maybe he did. Maybe that’s possible, I don’t know. I mean, how would I know? But I still don’t understand why the police would want to get involved after all this time. What difference does it make now?”
“Oh, I can tell you why it makes a difference,” John said impassively. “It makes a difference because a scam was perpetrated ten years ago, and the result of that scam was that you, your brother Felix, your sister Hedwig, and your sister Inge”—he was speaking very slowly now, emphasizing each word—“all inherited big, valuable chunks of land that shouldn’t have gone to you. If the truth’d been known about who really died first, it wouldn’t have happened that way. Torkel’s will would be the surviving one, and you’d each have come out with a few thousand bucks apiece, period. And the seamen’s home would be the one that was rolling in dough.”
“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.”
FOURTEEN
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 a
bout?” 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—”
“How did they find out there was a ring?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they—”
“What did you say when they asked why nobody mentioned it?”
“I said . . . I don’t remember what I said. But I know I didn’t tell them anything.”
“But you don’t remember what you said,” Inge said wryly.
She’d dismounted now and was wandering about with the reins in her hand, letting Betsy nibble at the coarse grass. She could hear him clearly now. The whooping Indonesians and the disgusted cattle had moved off a hundred yards.
“No, but I know I didn’t tell them anything that . . . Inge, I was so flustered, I hardly knew what I was saying. They kept talking about how the will might be invalidated if we knew all along it was Torkel in the plane—”
“Okay, Axel, shh, it’s all right, you did fine. It couldn’t be helped.”
What rotten dumb luck that they had picked him to come to with their questions. If it had been her, she might have . . . well, what?
“Inge, they asked me if Torkel killed Magnus!”
That stopped her. “They asked you what?”
“They asked me—”
“I heard you, I heard you! Where would they get that idea?”
“I don’t know! It was Gideon—”
“And what did you say to that? Or don’t you remember that either?”
“What do you mean, what did I say? I told them it was ridiculous. But the fact that they would even come up with a question like that . . . what does it mean?”
“It means they were fishing. They know something’s wrong, but they don’t know what. This isn’t good, Axel.”
“You don’t . . . you don’t think . . . I mean, nothing could happen, not after all this time, could it?”
“Nothing serious, only that we might all go to jail and lose our inheritances,” she snapped.
She heard his gasp. “But what should we do now?” he whispered.
“Let me make sure I have this straight. This Sergeant Fukida wants to look into it, but he’s given John and Gideon a couple of days leeway before he gets started, and John is going to see Dagmar Tuesday? The day after tomorrow?”
“In the morning, yes. I think he wanted to head right over from here, but I told him she was in the hospital till tomorrow afternoon and it’d be better—”
“All right, that was good. Now be quiet, let me think.”
He continued making agitated little sounds, as if he were walking around in a circle talking to himself, which he probably was. “Christ,” she muttered, sticking the telephone in a saddle bag. She placed her hands on Betsy’s rump, leaned her forehead on her hands, and thought. When she got the telephone out of the saddlebag again, Axel was still chattering away.
“But there have to be some kind of statutes of limitation. Felix would know—”
“All right, here’s what we do,” she said, and Axel fell instantly silent. “This is not something that we want Dagmar to have to deal with on her own. You saw how shaky she was the other day. She’ll need some propping up.”
“I know, I know. That’s exactly what I was thinking—that we all better be there when John arrives—”
“No, how would that look? Axel, for a smart guy, you can be the most . . .” She sighed. “What we need to do is talk to Dagmar first, but, yes, everybody should be in on it. This concerns everyone, and everyone has a right to have their say. Here’s the way it’ll work: I’ll run down to the hospital tomorrow morning to drive her home.”
“She doesn’t get out till the afternoon.”
“Axel, for Christ’s sake, they’re not holding her prisoner! We don’t have a lot of time; we’ll cut the tests short. I’ll tell them to have her ready early, and I’ll explain everything to her on the way back. She’ll be tired, and this is going to upset her—”
“It’s sure upsetting me,” Axel mumbled.
“—so we’ll give her a few hours to rest and get herself together. We’ll all meet at, oh, one o’clock. Can you have everybody at her place by then?”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to meet up here, maybe at your place?”
“Axel, will you please try and use your head for once? We don’t want John and Gideon to see us all getting together with her first, do we?”
“Oh. Well, I guess—”
“Don’t guess. Just get hold of the rest and have them there by one.”
“Everybody? But Felix is in Honolulu.”
She clenched her teeth. “I know that, little brother, but he is fully capable of catching a plane and being on the Big Island an hour after walking out his front door. We’re going to need him. He’s our lawyer.”
“All right, I’ll get right on it. ’Bye, Inge.”
“Axel?”
“Inge?”
“When I said ‘everybody,’ that didn’t include Malani. Don’t bring Malani.”
She could tell he was holding the phone away from his ear and staring at it. “Well, holy cow, Inge, I’m not stupid.”
“’Bye, Axel.”
WHEN Gideon and John got back to the house, they found Julie sprawled on one of two porch chairs, watching them and looking tired but contented. On a table next to her was a pitcher of iced orange-guava juice and two glasses.
“Pull up a couple of chairs. Malani’s in the house, putting together something to nibble. The glasses are in the dining room, in the cabinet over the—”
“I know where they are,” John said, going in to get some.
“You look happy,” Gideon said as he dragged over two more chairs. “Have a good day?”
“Very,” Julie said. “Malani showed me over the ranch. It’s huge. We rode for three solid hours. It was wonderful.” She rubbed her thigh and winced. “But I doubt if I’ll be able to walk tomorrow. I used muscles I forgot I even had.”
Gideon nodded. “Oho, the good old medial rotators. You don’t put much stress on them day-to-day, but you need them for hanging onto the horse with your knees. The adductors would have gotten a workout too: the brevis, the pectineus . . .”
“See? Didn’t I say he gives lectures?” John said, coming back with the glasses.
“I assumed she’d want to know,” Gideon said. “I know it will come as a shock to you, but some people are intellectually curious.”
“I most certainly did want to know,” Julie said loyally. “I’d been just about to ask.” She smiled affectionately at the two men, picked up the pitcher, and poured for them. “So how did it go at the police station? Did you come up with some good answers?”
“No, but we sure got some great questions,” John said. “I’m hoping Dagmar can help with the answers. I’m gonna go see her Tuesday morning.”
“Why Dagmar?”
By the time John, with Gideon’s help, had finished explaining, they were on their second glasses, and the three of them were covering the same ground and arriving at the same dead ends that they’d reached with Axel and with Fukida.
“John, aren’t you putting yourself in an uncomfortable position, talking to Axel, and now to Dagmar?” Julie asked. “These are your friends, not just some
anonymous suspects.”
“Tell me about it. I am uncomfortable, Julie, but I already said I’d do it.”
“To Axel, right? Dagmar isn’t expecting you, is she? Are you sure you don’t just want to leave it to Sergeant Fukida? In the long run, it might be better.”
John hesitated, debating within himself. “Maybe I do, at that,” he said softly. “It’s not as if I really think there’s anything I can do for them. I can call Fukida and let him know the ball’s in his court, I’m out of it. Somehow, I don’t think he’ll complain.”
“I’m uncomfortable, too,” Gideon said. “It’s been bothering me all day.”
“What do you have to be uncomfortable about?” John asked.
“I’m uncomfortable about accepting these nice people’s hospitality at the same time I seem to be doing everything I can to sic the police on them, and totally upsetting their lives, and maybe losing them their inheritances. I can’t keep riding around in their pickup, eating their food, acting as if . . . well, as if everything is all right, when it’s clearly not. And most of it is my fault.”
“And the rest is mine,” John said.
“Obviously, this is not turning into much of a vacation—for any of us.” Julie said. She set down her glass with a thump. “I have a suggestion. I think we should all check out of Chez Torkelsson, go on down to one of those gorgeous resorts on the coast for a few days, forget about all this, and have ourselves a real vacation. Swim, sightsee, take in a luau, eat ourselves silly, and just relax in the sun. How does that sound?”
“Terrific,” said Gideon, brightening.
John shrugged. “Nah, I think I’d probably just go on home if you guys do that.”
“Have you seen the Seattle weather?” Julie asked him. “Let’s see, I think I remember: tomorrow, low clouds and scattered showers; Tuesday, showers in the A.M., increasing to steady rain, sometimes heavy, in the afternoon; Wednesday, cloudy with likelihood of heavy—”
John threw up his hands. “Okay, okay. Sounds awful.”
“And what about Meathead? You can’t forget Meathead,” Gideon said.
