"It must have corn tortillas torn up in it," Shelley said, taking a bite from Jane's overloaded plate. "They have that plum-blossom taste. Mmmm. That's wonderful!"
"Glad you think so. You can beat up the chef, then. It's much more your line."
Shelley grinned. "I've never laid violent hands on a chef. Yet. I save that for IRS agents."
It was a festive evening, in spite of the recent death of the resort owner. Jane even noticed Joanna looking in the doorway of the restaurant once, smiling as if genuinely pleased at how well she was managing to implement her husband's last wishes that his death be ignored.
What a strange, strange marriage they'd had, Jane thought. But then, she'd always thought that nearly every marriage, if examined closely enough, would look strange to anyone but the two main participants. Perhaps that was one of the elements that contributed to the increase in the divorce rate, she speculated. Too many people who expected their own marriage to be like what they assumed others were, rather than just accepting the inherent individual weirdnesses of the situation.
She almost mentioned this thought, then decided that discussing marriage in front of Mel might lead him to the erroneous conclusion that she was hinting at something she wasn't.
This led to deeper thoughts. She watched him as he chatted with Shelley and the boys, who had condescended to sit at the same table with the adults. Denise and Katie had, of course, insisted on sitting by themselves at the far end of the room. They were horrified that someone might discover that they had parents. Mel was telling a joke that made Shelley laugh, and Jane stared at his dimple. Would she have been so attracted to him from the first if it weren't for that dimple? she wondered. Of course she would, but maybe not so quickly or wholeheartedly.
The greatest surprise in their relationship had been sex. In her marriage with Steve, sex had been a duty. To be fair, it was a pleasant enough duty most of the time, but still a duty. She had always thought the failure to enjoy it thoroughly and every time was a failing of hers. But since her relationship with Mel had taken an intimate turn, she'd discovered how very wrong she'd been. Steve had simply had no imagination, nor any real awareness of her as an equally important participant. Whereas Mel, who was normally a serious, responsible individual, was as playful and silly as an otter in bed.
Sex with Mel was downright fun. It involved a whole lot of laughter. And he made her completely forget a lot of things she needed to forget: her stretch marks, her own limited experience, and the fact that she was slightly older than he. She might have been locked into domesticity and missed the sexual revolution, but she'd certainly had one of her own in the past few months.
So why didn't she want desperately to marry him? She had no idea. It wasn't that she was opposed to the idea of marrying again someday, just that it didn't seem important. No, she wasn't being quite honest with herself. She was opposed. Very slightly. She'd gone from being a daughter to a wife to a mother. She was still a daughter and a mother, but the duties and hazards of those roles were less onerous now than they had once been. But having shed wifeliness, she was becoming quite content.
She was in love with Mel, but she didn't look forward to getting intimately involved in doing his laundry. She wasn't eager to learn what he was like to live with when he had a bad cold. Or was doing his income taxes. Or was trying to fix a lawn mower. She didn't want to have to explain or defend or even talk about her household budget. And while she often consulted with him, as she did with Shelley, about decisions she had to make — things about the kids, or buying a new car, or whether the roof on her house would last another couple years — she didn't really want to have to make those decisions jointly. Decision making, which had scared the daylights out of her when Steve had died, had gone to her head now. She liked it. And intended to hang onto the power it gave her.
"What deep thoughts you must be having," Mel said to her, startling her from her reverie. "We're talking about dessert and you're not even listening. Is something wrong?"
"Nothing at all is wrong," she said, smiling.
The dance was held in the conference room where the genealogy debate had taken place. Jane had been unaware that this room connected to two others by way of big dividers that were open now, making a huge area. A very loud country band was well into its repertoire by the time they arrived. Katie and Denise were already there and had found plenty of companionship. Mike immediately wandered off. The little boys declared that dancing was stupid, and begged to be allowed to spend the evening in the game room. With warnings that they were not to go anywhere else without permission, and with a largish contribution of quarters, they were allowed to leave.
There were tables set up around the entire perimeter of the dance floor with cash bars halfway down each side. Jane, Shelley, and Mel found a vacant table at the far end of the room from the band and settled in. Jane watched the line dancing for a while and reluctantly came to the conclusion that the little boys were right in this case. Line dancing looked stupid and boring to her.
Shelley echoed her thoughts. "This doesn't look like a cultural trend I'll ever be able to embrace with much enthusiasm," she said thoughtfully. "I understand the appeal of a waltz or a nice, slow, close-together two-step. I can even grasp why people like to polka, and I once was able to do a really mean twist, but this is a sort of down-home version of a conga line. I don't get it."
"We're just frumps," Jane said contentedly.
"Now, now, you ladies are much too young to talk about yourselves that way," a voice said from behind Jane.
"Lucky!" Jane exclaimed. "How nice of you. Will you join us?"
"For a minute or two. My wife parked me here and told me not to get into any trouble," he said with a smile. "As if I'm likely to."
Jane introduced him to Mel, then said, "I keep forgetting to give you something, Lucky. I have a folder that belonged to Mrs. Schmidtheiser. She dropped it when she came out of the debate and ran off before I could give it back to her."
"How long are you staying?"
"We leave at the crack of dawn on Tuesday," Jane replied.
"Good. I'm here through Tuesday, so I'll pick it up from you before you go."
"Just out of curiosity, what will you do with it? The folder and all her other research, for that matter? Did she have any children who might be interested? Or a husband?"
"No, Doris was widowed as a young woman and only had one son, and he isn't remotely interested. I'll probably put it into the Society's library for the time being. That's what I'm doing with the rest of the materials she had with her. And her son has said he'll box up all her research at home and send it on to me as well."
"Poor thing," Shelley said. "To think of all her work just being packed away in boxes like that."
"Oh, it'll be put to use, I'm sure. There's a slightly younger woman in the Society who's worked with her and will probably carry on," Lucky said. "Which may be a mixed blessing."
"Carry on with the Tsar research, you mean?" Jane asked.
"Oh, no, that's not what I was referring to. No. Doris was a professional genealogist. Did a lot of work for other people. Earned a decent living at it. In fact, she moved to Salt Lake City to be able to use the Mormon library without having to wait for films to arrive in Cleveland, where she used to live."
"Why do you say that it's a mixed blessing for someone to carry on her work?" Jane asked.
"I shouldn't tell tales out of school," Lucky replied with mock primness.
"They're the best kind of tales," Shelley assured him. "Do lots of people hire genealogists instead of looking things up themselves?"
"Mobs. Sometimes a person has an assignment from Great-Aunt Maud, who wants the work done, but the person the job is assigned to isn't really interested and would rather pay than do it himself. It's very tedious sometimes, reading through reels and reels of film in the hope of spotting just one familiar name. And then, people who really like doing the work themselves often don't have all the time they need for it, and they'
ll farm out specific areas of their research to a professional. But Doris — well, Doris wasn't always as 'disinterested' as she might have been."
"You're saying she was a snoop?" Mel surmised. He'd been quietly watching the dancing and hadn't looked like he was even listening to the conversation until now.
Lucky nodded. "Doris was a celebrity hound, to put it bluntly. Years ago she was invited to do a little local talk show, and as a splashy way of showing off, she hunted down a bunch of information on the host of the show and surprised him by tracing his family back to George the Third or somebody. It was a huge hit, word got around, and she got invited to do other shows. It was like getting a taste of blood. She discovered the celebrities have lots of money and not much time, but are often obsessively interested in their own background. She'd actually solicited customers that way, which is frowned on in genealogical circles."
"You mean she'd look up stuff about them, show it to them, and ask if they wanted more, instead of waiting for them to come to her?" Shelley asked.
"Exactly. And it usually worked. The payoff, of course, was that she got to be on first-name terms with famous people, which she loved. The downside of it was, sometimes she'd find stuff they weren't happy to know — illegitimacy and such — or much more often she'd prove they sprang from very common stock. Of course, almost all of us do, but lots of famous people don't like hearing that. Only politicians bother to pretend they like being common. Everybody else secretly wants to be able to brag that they are a cousin of Queen Elizabeth or Albert Einstein."
Jane's mind was clicking along. "Lucky, I hate to ask this, but I must. If she had found out something horrible about someone—"
Mel put his hand on her knee warningly.
"Blackmail!" Shelley breathed.
"I was trying to come up with a more tactful term," Jane chided her.
Mel was shaking his head as if to say, I tried to head off this discussion.
Lucky was also shaking his head. "Absolutely not! Not in a million years. The few people who were insulted or angry about her information, and said so, devastated her. She had no judgment about what would offend people, but she positively bristled with moral fiber. She would have been shocked to the core at the very thought of blackmail."
"You're quite certain?" Jane asked.
"I'd literally stake my life on it. God knows Doris had a lot of flaws, but greed for money wasn't one of them. Greed for attention, or for professional recognition, yes. But not for money. In fact, the more rich and famous a client was, the less she'd charge for her work. It was the connection to celebrity that really intoxicated her."
"Speaking of intoxication, would anybody else like a drink?" Mel asked.
Chapter 18
When the band finally took a break, lowering the noise level, Jane turned to Shelley and asked, "Do you think we can believe him? Lucky, I mean."
Lucky's wife had collected him a few minutes before.
"I think we have to," Shelley said with regret.
"But blackmail would be a nice way of explaining Doris's death."
"I know, but he was so adamant and he knew her very well for years and years. And it's not as if he exactly minded finding fault with her. I think if blackmail was even the most remote possibility, he'd have said so."
"I'm afraid I agree," Jane said reluctantly. "Phooey."
"Besides, it wouldn't connect with Bill Smith's death, even if it were the case."
Jane nodded. "There's Tenny. She's looking for somebody."
Tenny glanced toward them and waved.
"Us, apparently," Shelley said. "I wish she didn't feel like she had to go out of her way to be friendly to us at such a hard time in her own life."
Tenny was weaving her way through the crowd toward them and sat down heavily in the chair Lucky had vacated when she finally reached them. "What a mob!" she said.
"It's a nice turnout," Shelley said. "How are you and your aunt getting along?"
"Fine. Really. Just fine. I'm starting to think Uncle Bill had the right idea. If you force yourself to pretend someone isn't really gone, pretty soon you start believing it. This is about the best crowd we've had for a dance all winter," she added, glancing toward the lines at the cash bars in a professional manner and no doubt doing a little mental calculation of profits. "We might have to try having a second dance night in the middle of the week, too. We used to have bingo games on Wednesday and they were very popular, but the law came down on us."
"Why?" Shelley asked.
"Oh, the gambling laws in Colorado are strict. Of course, we were pretty stupid about it and had no idea anybody really considered bingo as gambling, so we blithely went along for two years with the games until somebody complained."
"But there's a state lottery," Shelley said. "I saw the tickets for sale at the airport."
"Yes, a state lottery, and some nonprofit organizations can play bingo to raise funds. Churches and fraternal organizations and things like that. But we didn't qualify. It's a shame. There could be gigantic profits on real gambling if it was allowed. People who normally wouldn't even buy a lottery ticket at home will throw away all kinds of money when they're on vacation. Anyway, I just wanted to say hello and see how you're all getting along."
"Wonderfully well," Shelley said. "But you mustn't worry about us. Is there anything we can do for you?"
"No, not really. We're doing fine. At least Aunt Joanna and I are. Pete's in a terrible snit, though."
"Why is that?" Jane asked bluntly.
"Because, as it turns out, I'm cotrustee with Aunt Joanna of Bill's estate. I was surprised, but Pete was horrified. He's gone off in a huff someplace."
"I don't mean to be grim, but are you sure he went off willingly?" Shelley said, tactfully skimming the fact that Tenny had originally thought her uncle Bill had departed of his own volition.
"Yes, I saw him drive off. In fact, he was yelling out the window at me as he went that he was going to find his own lawyer and get me replaced. Don't worry. I shouldn't have mentioned it. He'll cool off and come back. And if he does follow through and succeed in getting rid of me, which he can't, I'd be relieved."
"I talked to my husband very briefly," Shelley said, "and shared your concern about selling with a provision that your aunt could stay here, and he said it would be a breeze. In fact—"
Jane excused herself, feeling that this was a business discussion that wasn't any of her business. She was also wondering what had become of Mel. The last she'd seen of him, he'd volunteered to look for Katie and Denise in the crowd, just to make sure they were still safe and sound. She found him with two very attractive young women who had him more or less pinned in a corner. To give him credit, he didn't look too happy with the arrangement.
"Mel, did you find the girls?" Jane asked.
"Oh, no!" the blond girl with the magnificently cantilevered bosom said. "I bet you're his wife and I bet we're not the girls you're talking about, huh?!"
Jane started to deny it, but Mel quickly said with dreadful heartiness, "She sure is, and I'm in trouble now. Come on, honey, let's look for the kids!"
"What an extraordinary thing to do," Jane said when he'd briskly steered her across the room and out the door into the hallway.
"My God! They were so aggressive it even scared me. You would have been shocked to hear what they suggested the three of us do. Them and me, that is."
"I'd really rather not know," Jane said.
"By the way, the girls are drinking ginger ale with a bunch of kids up next to the bandstand. I even contrived to 'accidentally' take a sip of Katie's to make real sure it was ginger ale."
"I'll bet you were very subtle about it," Jane said wryly.
"I don't think they noticed," Mel said, aggrieved.
Jane laughed. "Mel, teenage girls are super-finely attuned to any infringement on their imagined adulthood. They can find evidence and take offense at being checked up on even when it's not happening at all. But when it is, you might as well be wearing
a sandwich board. Still, it was a nice thought."
He shrugged. "Well, I tried."
Jane slipped her arm around his waist and leaned against him. "It's nice and cool and quiet out here. Let's check on the boys and find some place to sit down for a while. I left Shelley talking business with Tenny. By the way, Tenny said she's cotrustee with her aunt and Pete has gone berserk about it— apparently to the point that he's threatening to get a lawyer to harass her."
"Not good," Mel said.
"Tenny's not too worried. And from the sound of it, I think the sale of the resort will probably go through anyway and Tenny will be relieved of the responsibility for running things." She explained to him about Tenny's pottery and her desire to get on with her own life. She was tempted to speculate on Pete's reaction, whereabouts, and the significance of both on his role as a suspect. But she'd promised herself to enjoy the evening without thinking about the whole thing and firmly put it out of her mind.
"You know, I was so interested in the main courses at dinner that I completely forgot to think about dessert," she said. "I must be sliding right into senility!"
"Then I think we better remedy that," Mel said.
They found the little boys in the game room, which was unfortunate in a way because they'd almost run out of money and Jane had to give them some more; then she and Mel went to the formal dining room, which was nearly empty.
"Is it too late to just have coffee and dessert?" Jane asked the maître d'.
"Not at all," he assured them, leading the way to the Cigar Room, where the same young man who had been there the night before was manning the dessert cart. Linda Moose foot was the only other customer, and she'd been talking with him when they entered.
"Dance refugees?" she greeted them. She looked a bit tousled herself and Jane thought she remembered seeing Linda fleetingly at the dance. Apparently off-duty employees were welcome to attend, which made Jane like Tenny and Joanna even more.
"Will you join us?" Mel said.
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