“Well, no, but he called Dagmar. He called her from the airport before he took off.”
“Ha,” said John, with a self-satisfied glance at Gideon. Then he frowned. “Wait a minute, who called Dagmar?”
“Magnus…” Felix blinked. “That is, Torkel. It must have been Torkel. But he said he was Magnus.”
“And Dagmar couldn’t tell the difference between their voices?” Gideon asked.
John heard the overlay of skepticism. “You don’t buy that, Doc?”
“Well, I’m not sure. If I got on the phone to you and tried to sound like Felix, could I fool you?”
“Of course not, but that’s because nobody sounds like Felix.”
“Nobody sounds like anybody else, to the people close to them. The distinctive characteristics of a particular voice might be indefinable, but they’re immediately recognizable.”
“What about mimics?” Felix asked. “They can be amazing.”
Gideon shrugged. “Was Torkel a mimic?”
“Well… who knows? But you have to remember, the two of them sounded a whole lot alike to start with.”
“That’s true,” John agreed. “They did.”
“Okay,” said Gideon. “Forget it. I was just thinking out loud. Go ahead, Felix. What’d he tell her?”
Felix frowned. “If I remember right, Magnus just said-I mean Torkel, dammit-Torkel just told her that… that Torkel had been killed and he had to leave for a while because he was in danger himself.”
“ ‘He’ supposedly being Magnus,” Gideon said.
Felix nodded. “And ‘his brother’ supposedly being Torkel. Hoo.”
“What else did he say?” John asked.
“I don’t really remember, John, it was ten years ago. I was just trying to give you the general idea. He probably said… hell, I don’t know what he probably said. Whatever it was, Dagmar took him at his word. Why wouldn’t she? She was excited, confused, she suddenly gets this panicked phone call in the middle of the night…”
While the sentence drifted away unfinished, the three of them sat quietly, listening to the rhythmic murmur of the surf and hearing occasional bits of conversation-people talking about normal, everyday things: whether there was weekend laundry service at their hotel, tomorrow’s shopping schedule, the pros and cons of going to the Don Ho show at the Beachcomber. “So how’s the wire rope business these days?” floated by them as distinctly as if the speaker were at their table, along with the stifled yawn that followed it. The musicians had either taken their break or else wisely quit until they were no longer competing with Felix.
“Okay,” Gideon said, having pushed his glass around in circles for a minute or so. “That explains why Dagmar thought it was Magnus on the line. But it doesn’t explain why the police bought the idea that the burned body was Torkel’s.”
“Sure it does, Doc,” John said. “You got two brothers. One of them gets burned to a crisp-oh, sorry, Felix. The other one takes off so the same thing doesn’t happen to him. The cops know-they think they know-which one took off. So whatever pile of ashes is left after the fire-damn, sorry about that, Felix-has to be the other one.”
Gideon was unconvinced. “Look, when a body is burned up in a fire, it doesn’t completely turn to ashes or cinders. There’s always something left. Even when it’s professionally cremated at high temperature, they have to pulverize what’s left to turn it into ash, and even then a forensic specialist-”
“Gideon, you’re assuming they brought in experts, consultants,” Felix said. “They didn’t. This is not Seattle we’re talking about.” He smiled. “As far as I know, there aren’t any skeleton detectives anywhere near Waimea.”
Gideon blew out his cheeks. “Body burned beyond recognition, supposed perps never even identified, let alone convicted, brother disappeared… boy, I tell you, I’m starting to see a few holes in this thing.”
“Come on, Doc,” John said, “there’s no such thing as a homicide case without some holes in it, you know that. It’s never cut-and-dried. The cops can never put every single piece together. You go with the preponderance of the evidence. Isn’t that what you were telling me on the atoll?”
“This is different,” Gideon said. “In this case they didn’t even know who got killed. What else did they get wrong?”
“Now hold your horses just one minute,” Felix said heatedly. “You’re not suggesting Torkel killed Magnus, are you? Because that would be-”
“No, of course not,” Gideon said, surprised by the question.
“Damn it, Gideon, Torkel wouldn’t have known how to fire a gun. They didn’t even own a gun. Not a handgun, anyway.”
“Well, no, that’s not completely true,” John said. “There was a gun in the house. At least there used to be.”
“There was?” Felix seemed honestly surprised.
“It was Andreas’s, from the Second World War. Torkel got it out for me once when he was showing me around the place. A classic; one of the early Walther PPKs, made back in the forties. Probably worth a fair amount of money.”
“But that was an antique. You couldn’t shoot that thing.”
“Didn’t say you could,” John said.
“Look, I just get the impression that you two are trying to make it sound like my uncle was some kind of monster, like he killed his own brother-”
As people at nearby tables looked around, John raised his palms in a shushing gesture. “Take it easy, Felix.”
“Felix, nobody’s implying that,” Gideon said. But now he was wondering just what kind of nerve he’d hit.
“Okay, okay,” Felix said tightly. “Sorry.”
“After all,” Gideon said, “at this point we don’t even know for sure that Magnus is dead, do we?”
Felix’s tension held for another moment, then slackened. Another belly laugh, but a quiet one, rumbled out of him. “Well, if he’s not, who’d we bury in that grave?”
At which point they realized they had come full circle, back to the question they’d started with. “Damn, I better go,” Felix said, jumping up. “I can’t miss my plane. Sorry I got a little excited there. Look, you two. The others know more about this than I do. You’ll be talking to them tomorrow, when you get back to the ranch. See what they have to say.”
“You won’t be there?” John asked.
“No way. I won’t be back until Sunday night.” He glanced at his watch. “But I think I’ll give Inge a call from the airport, if that’s okay with you; let her know what you’ve found, kind of break it to her gently. She can tell the others. I mean, this is going to be kind of a shock. I think it might be better if it came from one of the family. Is that all right with you, Gideon, or did you want to be the one.. .?”
“No, go ahead. I’d just as soon they got it from you. I can fill them in on whatever details they want.”
“Good. And thanks for the good work, both of you. Go ahead and splurge on dinner. Get the crab-crusted mahi-mahi; can’t be beat. I’ve already taken care of the check.”
When Felix had gone, Gideon sat there, slowly shaking his head. “Unbelievable. What have you gotten me into here?”
John grinned at him. “Hey, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you the guy who wanted a few loose ends?”
GIDEON had stayed at the Royal Hawaiian before, with Julie on their third anniversary. Their favorite part of the day had been sunrise, when they would go down and pick up a cup of wonderfully fragrant Kona coffee-not a blend, but the pure, pungent stuff-at the hotel’s coffee bar the moment it opened at six A.M. and carry it a few steps to the pristine beach. There were no crowds yet, no smells of lotions and oil and mustard, no grizzled, wizened, once-and-always beach boys hawking rides in outrigger-canoes. Their only company was a few strollers, usually of “a certain age,” carrying their shoes and quietly meandering hand in hand along the surf line, and one or two treasure-hunters, heads down, utterly absorbed, prowling the beach with their metal-detectors in hopes of buried gold. And of course the ragged, ever-present line of surfers (did they ever come in, even at night?) bobbing hopefully a few hundred yards out, endlessly waiting for the big one.