Where there's a will

THIRTEEN

The old man didn’t look up as John and Gideon climbed the steps of the front porch. He was moving slowly along on his knees, his mouth full of nails, hammering down the warped ends of the porch floorboards.

“Hey, Willie,” John said. “I see they got you doing handyman jobs now, huh?”

“Got me doing everything,” the old man muttered through the nails, still not looking up. “What else is new? You name it, I do it.”

Then something about John’s voice got his attention. He looked up, tipped back his curling, sweat-stained, flower-garlanded hat, spat the nails into his hand, and grinned. His good-natured face was as weathered, and almost as dark as the unpainted wood of the porch.

“What do you know, it’s Johnny Lau, the kid that could never get enough to eat. You done growing yet?”

“I sure hope so,” John said. “It’s not easy finding shoes this big. How’s it going, boss?”

“Not bad. Fine.” He got to his feet, wincing a little as his knees straightened. A short, stubby man in old jeans and ancient, scuffed work boots. “You know, I saw you out here on the porch yesterday. Thought it was you. So how come you didn’t say hello?”

“Well, you know,” John said.

“Yeah, right. I’m Willie Akau,” he said to Gideon. “Foreman here. I’m the guy that taught Johnny everything he knows. All the important stuff, anyway.”

“Truer than you think,” John said. “Willie, we’re looking for Axel. Is he inside?”

“Naw, he’s out at Paddock Number Four with the rest of ’em.”

“They branding?”

“Branding, castrating, inoculating, the whole bit. Springtime, you know? Tell you what, I’m about done here and I want to see how they’re doing anyway. Lemme get one of them Japanese quarter horses, and we’ll go out and have a look.”

“Japanese quarter horses?” a puzzled John echoed. “What’re they?”

Willie grinned at him. “Things have changed since you worked here, brudda. A Japanese quarter horse-that’s what we call a Honda ATV.”

“ATV? What, you paniolos don’t ride horses anymore?”

“Sure we do, most of the time. I was thinking about your friend. He don’t look like no horseman to me.”

Gideon laughed. “You’re right about that.” A few years earlier, in Oregon, he’d been thrown from a horse, fallen down a hillside, suffered a concussion, and almost gotten squashed flat when the terrified horse came within inches of rolling over him. Since then he’d been leery of getting on one again.

“Looks like some kind of professor or something.”

“Right again.” Good God, he thought, has it come to that? Have I started looking like a professor? “How can you tell?”

“It’s your aura,” John said. “Okay, Willie, let’s get going.”

“I’ll get the ATV. You better sit in back, Professor. Easier to hold onto the roll bar back there.”

The ATV that Willie came back with wasn’t a Honda, but a yellow, six-wheel-drive Argo equipped with caterpillar tracks; a cross between a beach buggy and a topless mini-tank, with room for six.

“Thought you’d be more comfortable in this monster, Professor. Safer, you know? Make sure you hold on tight to that bar now.”

Muttering, Gideon got into the back as instructed but determinedly refused to grasp the roll bar, twice coming perilously close to tumbling out as a result. But once they got off the dirt trails and onto the grass-cushioned, rolling hills the ride smoothed out, and they made it to the paddock without incident. Willie went into the pipe-fenced corral to join his paniolos. Gideon and John stayed outside, leaning on the fence with Axel.

From his reading, and from what John had told him, Gideon expected-and hoped for-a colorful scene, with whooping paniolos roping the calves and throwing them, rodeo style, for the branding. But ranching, as he kept hearing, had changed. All it took was a little quiet clucking and nudging for the horsemen to urge the five or six dozen calves, one at a time, up a ramp and into the “squeeze box,” a narrow, ten-foot-long wooden enclosure in which, Axel explained, they were inoculated against blackleg, branded with the Little Hoaloha “LH,” had their ears notched for tags, and, if they were bulls, painlessly castrated-the method involved a rubber band that would cut off blood supply to the testes over the next few weeks; not a knife or a set of pincers, as in the old days. And everything was under the supervision of a veterinarian who was in there with them; another change from the old days.

There was no terrified baying or bellowing from the squeeze box. After a minute or two, the calf would simply emerge from the other end, snorting and shaking its head, but looking more offended than hurt or frightened. And in would come the next one.

“We don’t castrate them all,” Axel said. “A few of them are just vasectomized and kept around as teasers.”

“Teasers?” Gideon said.

“We use them to determine when a cow is ready to be inseminated. See, the stud fees for good bulls are pretty scary, so we don’t send for the big guys until we know the cows are willing to go along with it. Well, no cow will let a bull mount her except when she’s in heat, so the way we know one of them is ready is when we see one of our vasectomized bulls mount her and go to work. That’s why we call them teasers.”

“Nice work if you can get it,” John said. “Uh, Axel, we need to talk to you.”

“Sure,” Axel said, his eyes on the paniolos. “Go ahead, shoot. Willie!” he called. “The one that just came out. Take a look at that foreleg, would you? There’s something the matter with it.”

“No, let’s go somewhere where you can pay attention,” John said. “This is important.”

The sudden change in tone made Axel blink. “All right. The tack shed.”

They went to a tin-roofed, rough-hewn lean-to with ropes and rawhide straps hanging from the ceiling and the walls, and tools, sacks, and old saddle gear draped over racks, lying on work benches, or strewn about the dirt floor. The leather items were cracked and dusty, as if the shed hadn’t been used as a workplace for years. Axel pulled three banged-up folding metal chairs from a stack that had been stored against one wall.

“Never mind the chairs, Axel,” John said.

But Axel set them out anyway. There was something dogged in the way he did it, as if he sensed that nothing good was coming and he was trying to head it off as long as he could.

“What’s the problem, John?” he asked when they’d sat down, the three of them facing each other somewhat awkwardly, three pairs of denimed knees almost touching. “Did you see the autopsy report?” He looked at Gideon. “Was it Magnus?”

“That I can’t say for sure,” Gideon answered. “It’s impossible to tell from-”

“What we can say for sure,” John cut in, eager to get started nudging, “is that, whoever it was, somebody chopped off two of his toes.”

Axel was satisfactorily nudged. His face twisted in a grimace. “Somebody chopped off his toes -you mean on purpose?”

“I don’t figure it was by accident.”

“No, well, of course not. I mean… Jesus, that’s horrible, that’s disgusting! Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” Gideon said. “That’s what made the autopsy doctor so positive he was Torkel.”

“But who would… who would-”

“We’re assuming it was Torkel,” John said.

“Ah, no, that’s crazy, that’s-”

“We’re also assuming it was Torkel who left his own ring on the body.”

“What are you-” Axel began with a vehement shake of his head, but stopped in mid-sentence, his mouth open. “The ring!”

“So you did know about the ring?”

“Yes, sure, everybody knew about it.” He took off his black-rimmed glasses and gnawed on the temple piece, thinking hard. Without them, his face was oddly blank and defenseless. He didn’t have eyelashes, Gideon noticed. “You’re right, you’re absolutely right. Torkel must have left it there to fool everybody. Oh, this is too weird!”

“How come nobody mentioned it when we came back from Maravovo and said the body in the plane was Torkel?”

“Mentioned what?”

John sighed. “The ring, Axel.”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I guess we forgot about it. It was ten years ago.”

“Did you?” John asked, sounding more like a policeman with every word. “You’re telling me that every single one of you forgot there’d been a ring?”

Axel thrust out his unforgivable chin. “Well, I sure did.”

“You, I can believe,” John said, relaxing enough to let a smile come through. “You were probably thinking about all those macro-nutrients in manure at the time. But the others…” What was left of the smile slowly vanished. “Something’s wrong, Axel. It didn’t happen the way everybody said. People haven’t leveled with us, and I don’t think they leveled with the police either. I’m hoping you’ll-”

Axel abruptly shoved his chair back and jumped up, raising a cloud of flour-like dust from the floor. “John, you’re… you’re pushing me.” He stamped around in tight little circles, whapping his hat-a blue tennis hat with the names of the Hawaiian islands on the band; the kind every ABC store carried-against his jeans. Dust flew with every whap. “I mean, I appreciate that you’re concerned, and I certainly appreciate what you’ve done, Gideon, but… look, no offense, but I really can’t see how any of this is your business, either of you. I don’t see why you’re so damn interested in this, and I don’t like it that you’re trying to get me to say something against my own family. I don’t know what Torkel did or didn’t do, but I can tell you that nobody here, nobody in this family, did anything wrong!”

He had let most of it out in one breath, his voice rising to a squeak, and now he gulped air, staring down at them, pop-eyed and agitated. There were tears in his eyes.

“Sit down, Axel,” John said calmly.

“I mean… it’s just that… you come here, you act like-”

“Sit down, Axel.”

“Well, I’m just-” Axel sat.

“Put your glasses back on.”

He knuckled at the corners of his eyes, sniffled, and put on his glasses.

John put a hand on his knee, an extraordinary gesture for him. “Axel, listen to me. You’re my friend, you have been for a lot of years. But more than that, your family has meant a lot to me. Torkel and Magnus especially, those guys really straightened me out, they taught me to… well, to grow up. The second best thing that ever happened to me was when Magnus fired me my first day on the job because I didn’t show up on time. The best thing was when Torkel hired me back. And Dagmar-she bailed me out of trouble a hundred times. She was the first one that told me I ought to go into police work, did you know that?”

“Of course I know all that,” Axel said uncomfortably, “and it’s not that I don’t-”

“So sure I’m interested. There’s trouble on the way, Axel, and if there’s some way I can help, I want to do it. We’ve just come from a long talk with a sergeant at CIS. He says-”

Axel’s jaw dropped. “The police? You told them all this?”

“Yes, we did. Fukida wants to reopen the case-”

Axel’s hand flew to his forehead. “Oh, mercy.”

“-but he’s not going to get on it for a couple of days. We said we wanted to talk to you first, and he said okay. So if you know something you haven’t told us-or didn’t tell the police back then-now’s the time to do it, trust me. You’re a lot better off-you’re all a lot better off-if you come forward with it now than if you make Fukida dig it out on his own. I know this guy, Axel. You don’t want to tangle with him. This is one hard-nosed sonofabitch, and he’s already ticked off.”

Axel had listened intently, growing mulish and frightened-looking. “But I don’t know anything! There isn’t anything to know!”

“We think there is,” John said. “For example, we think that Torkel was the one who set the fire, too.”

“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.”