Julie was Gideon’s second wife. His first, Nora, had been killed in an automobile accident nine years before, plunging him into a year of stonelike apathy. He had loved Nora with all his heart-although it was starting to seem like a long time ago now-and had thought himself incapable of ever feeling anything like it again. It was something he hadn’t even wanted. And then, when his guard was down, or rather non-existent, out of nowhere had come this pretty, black-haired park ranger, Julie Tendler, brimming with wit and sparkle and intelligence. She had brought him back to life; he had actually fallen in love again, deeply and totally. They had been married now for seven years (astonishing thought!), and when it occurred to him occasionally how accidental their coming together had been, how very easily they might have missed each other and never met, how improbable that they should both have been unattached at that moment, he would have knocked on the nearest wood, were he not a professor of anthropology and above such things.
“But what are you doing in Honolulu?” she asked when she’d gotten over her surprise and they’d finished embracing. “I thought you two were going to meet me in Kona.”
“That’s a long story,” said John.
They started their explanation on the bus to the inter-island terminal, but it wasn’t until they were ten minutes into the flight to Kona that they finished, with John having done most of the talking. When he was done, she sat there nodding her head and smiling in a manner that suggested some long-held theory had just been confirmed yet again.
“Amazing. This must be a record, Gideon. Not even two full days into a Hawaiian vacation and you’re already knee-deep in bone fragments and mistaken identities. Usually, you wait a little longer. I have no idea how you do it.”
“You want to know what I think?” John said from across the aisle. “I think he brings it on himself.”
“Hey, they asked me, remember?” Gideon said. “What was I supposed to say?”
“My guess is,” John went on, “that it’s his aura. Julie, did you know he had an aura? On the astral plane?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Julie said.
When the flight attendant brought the drink cart around, John and Gideon got coffee, Julie a bottle of water.
“John, do you happen to know what was in Torkel’s will?” she said, breaking the seal and unscrewing the cap. “That is, how he divided the ranch, or if he divided it at all?”
“Torkel? No idea,” said John. “These guys were kind of like two peas in a pod, so it was probably the same as Magnus’s…” He paused, frowning. “But I’m just guessing, I don’t really know. Why?”
“Well, if the person in the plane was really Torkel and not Magnus-am I getting the names straight?-and the one who was shot and buried back on Hawaii was really Magnus… whew… then that means that Magnus must have died first and Torkel must have died last.”
“That’d be true,” said Gideon, who saw where she was heading.
“All right, then. With these reciprocal wills that John was talking about, wouldn’t that mean that Torkel’s will was the one that really should have gone into effect? Since he was the last one alive?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” John said slowly. “Technically, Magnus would have left everything to Torkel-for what it looks like turned out to be only a few hours, till Torkel went down in the plane. And when that happened-”
“Torkel’s will would have become the operational one,” Julie said. “So does that mean that Magnus’s will is going to be invalidated now?”
“Beats me,” said John. “Good question.”
“Beats me, too,” said Gideon. “But the thing is, there’s no proof that the one in the grave is Magnus.”
“Who else could it be?” asked Julie.
“I have no idea. It probably is Magnus, but I doubt if ‘probably’ is going to be enough to get the question of wills reopened. Not after all this time.”
“What if you looked at the body? Couldn’t you tell?”
“You mean examine it? Get it exhumed?”
She nodded.
“Well, maybe, but who knows what condition it’s in? It was burned, remember, and it’s been eight years. That’s a long time.”
“It’s been eight years since Torkel died, too, and you identified him. From one foot.”
“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
“It seems 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?