From Here to Paternity jj-6

by Jill Churchill

  "But you heard what Linda Moose foot said. Bill could have died at any minute anyway. Why not just wait?"

  "You've got me."

  Jane thought for a moment. "There might be some reason. I don't know — wait. Remember Lucky telling us that the last Tsar abdicated on his own behalf and that of his son — the little boy with the disease—"

  "Hemophilia."

  "Right. Well, suppose Bill was getting fed up with all the foolishness and had decided to sort of symbolically do the same thing. Abdicate on his own behalf and that of his heirs. He might do something like that just to get Doris and her people out of his hair. A man knowing he hadn't long to live and wanting to finish out his life in peace and quiet—? I don't mean it happened that way, only that it's possible there was some 'time pressure', if you will. Some reason Pete couldn't just wait in line patiently."

  Shelley shrugged. "I guess it's possible. Or maybe Bill knew his father wasn't the guy Doris thought he was and had finally decided it was time to tell her so. It all came down to what he knew, after all. His father might have told him about his childhood in Minneapolis or some place and Bill never saw any reason to mention it, thinking it was none of their business. From what Linda says, he'd have been like that. Not confirming or denying the story, because to do either would involve telling personal things he didn't want to share."

  Jane nodded. "It would be in character for him, that's for sure. But if he knew that he wasn't what they thought, and knew he was going to die soon, he might have wanted to get Pete out of the whole business before he made a spectacle of himself and made Bill himself look silly after he was dead and gone and couldn't do anything about it."

  Shelley frowned. "But how does either of those scenarios fit in with Doris?"

  "Hmmm. Good point. If Pete wanted the 'title', Doris would be his strongest supporter, you'd think. She's the one who had done all the research, gotten her followers convinced. He'd need her."

  "Unless she didn't recognize him as Bill's heir to the title."

  "Why wouldn't she? Unless Bill had a son nobody else knows about."

  "Pretty thin, that," Shelley said.

  "Well, suppose, then, that Bill had decided to abdicate for both of them, like we were speculating. Wouldn't Doris have to recognize such a gesture as valid?"

  "Sure. Because it's the last Tsar's abdication that made Bill's right to the title valid in her eyes."

  "And if Bill had already told her before he told Pete, Pete would have to get rid of her before she could lead her crowd off to find the next one in line."

  "If it happened. I mean, if Bill had abdicated. And we have absolutely no reason on earth to think he had, except that it's a possibility."

  "True, but the same applies to the other scenario. If Bill knew his father wasn't who they thought and had told Doris so, it would still put Pete out of the running and he'd have to shut her up before she could talk about it to anybody else."

  "Okay, supposing either of those is true, when would Bill have told her? She stormed out of that debate and you found her dead a couple of hours later. He'd have had to tell her during that time. Why right then, after all these years?"

  "Because of the debate," Jane said. "Was he there?"

  "I have no idea. I was near the front of the room and wasn't exactly taking the roll. It was a pretty big crowd."

  "Don't you see? He might have been a cold, remote man, but if he'd seen poor Doris being made a complete fool of on his behalf — even though he didn't want her to take up his cause — mightn't he have felt so sorry for her that he finally decided to put an end to it? Not let her go out and have that humiliation again?"

  Shelley nodded. "That does make sense. And then he disappeared right after Tenny told him about Doris being found dead."

  "Oh! Yes, he might have thought it was suicide, like the sheriff seemed determined to believe, and blame himself for taking away the thing she seemed to live for. Or he might have suspected Pete of having a hand in it and gone to have it out with him. Harsh words between them. Pete sees his whole future as a would-be Tsar and all the fame and fortune slipping away and he kills his uncle."

  "Unfortunately, it's all in our imaginations. We haven't any reason whatsoever to believe that any of this happened. And even if it did, we could still be terribly wrong. I mean, what if Bill told Doris he wasn't Tsar or refused to be and she really did commit suicide? And then Bill himself was killed for some entirely different reason. His death and hers might not have anything to do with each other."

  "I'd find it hard to believe. Too coincidental."

  "But, Jane, coincidences do happen. All the time."

  "That's true. I'll get that," Jane added as the phone rang. "Hello? Yes, she's right here. Front desk for you, Shelley."

  Shelley took the phone. "Yes? He did? I'll come get them. Thanks."

  She hung up and looked around for her boots. "Paul left his prescription sunglasses at the desk when he was checking out. I need to go get them before they get shuffled off to the lost-and-found. Want to come with me?"

  "Sure. I'm out of cigarettes anyway and need to buy a pack."

  "When are you going to really and truly quit?" Shelley asked with the superior tone of a woman who had quit smoking several years earlier.

  "Someday. Maybe. Possibly very soon, when I find out what a pack costs from a machine at a resort."

  As they went down the road — the solitude of the path through the woods wasn't at all appealing with a murderer around — Jane said, "I don't want the kids out of our sight again until we leave. Mel's with the little boys, but I want to know where Katie and Denise are."

  "We'll hang out at the lodge watching for the shuttle. It drops people right at the door. We'll grab them as they get off. And Mike has to come back that way as well."

  "It's really too expensive to go home now?"

  "Jane, a last-minute ticket would probably cost six or seven hundred dollars. Each."

  "No! Aren't there exceptions?"

  "Sure, but running away from a murder scene, especially when you've found two of the bodies, isn't one of them."

  "So nice of you to remind me," Jane said wryly. "Damn! That sheriff, Bumblefoot or whoever he is, would dearly love to pin this on me, I'll bet. I'm a nice, handy outsider."

  "Don't worry. Nobody could seriously imagine that you had anything to do with either one. And Mel may know a whole lot more next time we talk to him."

  "We need to know a whole lot more. Especially about Bill's death."

  "In what way?"

  "Where he died, for one thing," Jane said. "If he was killed someplace else, it obviously means it had to have been a strong man, or maybe even two people, who moved him to the side of the bunny slope. But if he was killed right there, it could have been anyone. All the killer had to do was prop him up where he fell and put the snow around him."

  "True. And we're assuming it was Pete because he's the first one who occurred to us. Yet it could have been almost anyone."

  "Yes, but the obvious person is usually the guilty one."

  "But we don't know these people very well," Shelley pointed out. "And from what little we saw of Bill Smith, he wasn't exactly a bundle of charm. In fact, he was a downright unpleasant person. Who knows who else he might have offended?"

  "But people don't kill somebody because they're offended. It takes a lot more than that. A real threat to their well-being, or a long hatred that finally comes to a head, or even raging greed."

  "How do we know Bill wasn't surrounded by people with all of those motives, and maybe others as well? And it's entirely possible that his death had nothing to do with this whole silly Tsar thing. Maybe it had to do with selling the resort for that matter. There might be somebody local who's really upset about that. Somebody in the tribe. They're the ones who were demonstrating against him, after all."

  A couple was approaching them from the other direction. They smiled and nodded as they passed, and were quiet until they were out of hearing rang
e.

  "But that demonstration was all so peaceful," Jane objected. "Almost downright friendly. And the protest was aimed as much at the potential investors as it was at Bill Smith. If they were murderous, would they have staged something so orderly and then done something so violent?"

  "I don't mean the whole tribe, Jane. But one individual might really dislike him. He had a long history with them. And maybe somebody in the tribe or another neighbor thought he was about to sell the resort and move away for good, and it was their last chance to get at him."

  Jane pondered this. "Murder is such an unthinkable way to solve problems that it's hard to imagine what could be in the mind of a person who would resort to it."

  As they came to the front door of the lodge, a shuttle was arriving. They waited to see if any of their children got off it, and when they didn't, the women went inside. The lobby was strangely quiet. Tenny, of all people, was just coming out from behind the front desk.

  "Tenny!" Jane exclaimed. "You're not working today. Surely—"

  "Just came in to sort out a brawl," Tenny said angrily.

  "A brawl?"

  "Yes. Pete just had a fight with HawkHunter. Bloodied his nose and knocked some of his teeth out."

  Chapter 14

  "Tenny, for heaven's sake, come sit down," Shelley said firmly as she took her elbow.

  Tenny seemed to almost collapse against Shelley for a second, then got a grip on herself and straightened up. "Maybe I'd better. Thanks."

  "Have you eaten anything this afternoon?" Jane asked as they led her toward the more casual of the two dining rooms.

  "No, but I'm not—"

  "You must eat something. Really. You'll feel much better," Jane insisted. She'd been waiting most of her life for somebody to say that to her. So far, nobody ever had.

  The room was nearly empty. Even the latest lunchers had gone and the earliest dinner customers hadn't started arriving. The hostess seated them well away from the few other eaters after expressing condolences to Tenny, who received the remarks with preoccupied courtesy.

  "Just ask a waiter to bring us coffee and something Tenny likes for her to nibble on," Jane said quietly.

  "Tenny, we're so sorry about your uncle," Shelley said when they were seated.

  "Thanks. He was dying, I guess you should know."

  "Oh?" Shelley said.

  Tenny repeated pretty much what Linda Moose foot had told them about Bill Smith's poor health, but they didn't let on that they had heard it before. "But nothing could have prepared us for the idea that someone might kill him. My God! It's unbelievable!" she said.

  "Who do you think did it?" Jane asked bluntly.

  "I have no idea. None! I can still hardly take in the fact that it happened."

  "How's your aunt Joanna taking it?" Shelley asked.

  "Oh, extraordinarily well. She's quite an amazing woman. She's really observing Uncle Bill's wishes."

  "Which were?" Jane asked.

  "That his death be ignored as much as possible," Tenny said with a wry smile.

  "Ignored?"

  "He insisted that there be absolutely no fuss when he went. No funeral service or anything. He and Joanna had talked it all out. He'll be cremated, his ashes scattered by Joanna alone wherever and whenever she chooses. He said, rather contemptuously, I must say — that if we felt we just had to have some kind of memorial service, it could be with the tribe, and not any sooner than a month after his death. This is all written out and in a notebook with his will and trust documents."

  "Oh, good. He did have that all set up," Shelley said.

  "Of course," Tenny said. "It was his way. Very businesslike."

  "I hate to be tactless," Jane said, "but could his arrangements have anything to do with his death? I mean, perhaps he was leaving some bequest to someone who felt they couldn't wait."

  "I have no idea what the terms are," Tenny said. "I'm certain, though, that virtually everything must go directly to Joanna. And there's probably some bank or lawyer or someone designated to oversee the financial aspects of it all. Joanna's not stupid by any means, but she just hasn't the interest in the business details that he had. I'm positive he'll have made sure she doesn't have to be bothered with keeping track of every penny. I've tried not to pry. In fact, Aunt Joanna's meeting with the lawyer right now, which is why I'm sort of at loose ends instead of sitting with her. Not that she'd probably let me anyway. Claims she's going to her bridge club meeting Monday just as if nothing's happened."

  "He wouldn't leave those details to Pete? Make him cotrustee or something?" Shelley asked.

  "Oh, God! Never!" Tenny thought for a minute. "I hadn't thought about that yet. Pete considers himself to be a financial whiz — he's a failed stockbroker— and is probably going to be pissed as hell to realize he's out of the loop. At least I assume he's out of the loop. I really can't imagine Uncle Bill trusting him with any decision-making powers. He wouldn't even give him the authority to order the chemicals for the swimming pools unless he countersigned the order form."

  "What do you suppose happens to the estate after your aunt is gone?" Jane asked.

  Even Shelley looked mildly shocked that Jane would ask something that was so clearly none of their business, but Jane had guessed correctly that Tenny was just thinking about all this herself for the first time and was too preoccupied to take offense.

  "I don't know," she said. "I suppose it'll mostly go to some charity or other since they don't have any children. Maybe a little something for Pete and me."

  A waiter appeared with coffee and a plate of little crustless sandwiches, then tactfully disappeared.

  "Would he leave anything to the Holnagrad Society?" Shelley asked. "Or the tribe?"

  "The tribe, maybe. The Society, no, I don't think so. He considered them pretty much of a harmless nuisance."

  "Speaking of Pete and the tribe," Jane said, sensing that Tenny was bound to realize soon that she was talking to strangers about personal matters, "you said he and HawkHunter got into a fight?"

  Tenny's eyes flashed. "Yes, the asses! Right out in front of the hotel!"

  Jane heard the whine of the shuttle-bus engine as the vehicle came up the last bit of hill. "Shelley, I'll be right back. I want to see if the kids are on this bus." She gave her friend a look that said, Find out all you can, and left.

  There wasn't anybody familiar on the bus, and when Jane returned, they either had moved on from the subject of the fight or hadn't covered it at all. Jane couldn't help but notice that more than half of the little sandwiches were gone, and there weren't any crumbs anywhere near Shelley. This didn't necessarily prove anything, however, as Shelley was an almost crumb-less eater — a trait Jane didn't really hold against her most of the time.

  "Jane, Tenny was telling me about her pottery business," Shelley said.

  "Well, not so much a business as a paying hobby," Tenny demurred. "I was looking forward to doing it full-time if Uncle Bill sold the resort."

  "You sell your work, then?"

  "Here in the gift shop and at several shops in Vail, Frisco, Georgetown, places like that. I've had several upscale catalog suppliers approach me, but my work with the hotel takes up too much of my time to assume that responsibility."

  "The gift shop?" Jane exclaimed. "The big serving bowl with the blue-and-green pattern? Is that your work? I've drifted by and admired it several times already. It's absolutely beautiful. That lobelia blue is my favorite color."

  "I have a set of six serving bowls to match being fired."

  "Oh, stop. I'm going to start drooling in a minute."

  Shelley had been listening quietly. "Tenny, I probably shouldn't even be talking about this, but since you've brought up the pottery business — no, never mind."

  "What?"

  "Well, you realize it's my husband involved with the investors, and I don't mean to jeopardize anybody's position, so don't answer if you don't feel like it — but why are you talking like you can't do your pottery? Doesn't Joanna wan
t to sell the resort? I don't mean right away, understand—"

  Tenny took a long sip of her coffee and gestured at the remaining sandwiches. "Please finish these. I'm full." Then she said to Shelley, "I don't mind answering that. It's just my own guess, but I don't think Aunt Joanna will want to sell now. She loathed Florida. Said it was too hot and buggy and full of old people. She's lived all her married life right here, and the whole of her life within a couple miles. Frankly, I think she'll find running the resort, even with advisors, a terrible burden, but it is her home. She only went along with the retirement idea because it was what Uncle Bill wanted. I don't mean she was being spineless or martyred, but she really enjoyed making him happy, and getting away from here would have made him very happy."

  Shelley thought for a moment, hesitated, then plunged forward. "Tenny, I can't speak for the investors, you understand, only as a concerned friend. But it would seem quite possible that Joanna could at least try to sell the resort on condition that she could stay right where she is for as long as she wanted. Some sort of nominal rent could be computed into the deal, couldn't it? I thought things like that were done all the time. And if it's part of the contract, it would be a legal obligation that got passed right along even if the place were later sold to someone else."

  For the first time since they had started talking, Tenny looked almost cheerful.

  "You could be right. That's really worth looking into. Oh, I feel so guilty about this, but in the back of my mind I've been so upset — so selfishly upset— because Uncle Bill died before he could sell the place and relieve me of my responsibility to it. But if Aunt Joanna could stay and be happy, and if I could stay nearby and keep an eye on her, but live my own life — oh, that would really be wonderful! Do you think it would be appropriate for you to ask your husband if it's a possibility?"