From Here to Paternity jj-6

by Jill Churchill

  "What are you scowling about?" Mel asked glancing at her in the rearview mirror.

  "Cars," she answered. "Cars and money. Are we almost there? I'm hungry again."

  Mel had been driving and Shelley had taken over the other front seat as dictator/guide. Every time they'd piled out and back into the van, Jane had ended up farther back. Now she was in the rearmost seat by herself. As they once again headed across the high plains outside Golden, there was surprisingly little traffic, and Jane's imagination kicked into gear.

  Looking out to the right, she could see nothing but mile after gently undulating mile of snow, ringed by rugged mountains. The setting sun caused the mountains to cast long blue shadows, and here and there were simple wooden structures, hunkering down against the wind and the drifting snow. A half-remembered scene from a movie, probably Doctor Zhivago, superimposed itself on the landscape, and Jane found herself thinking it might not be so strange after all to find an exiled Russian here.

  Had old Gregory actually been who Doris thought he was? And if so, why had he come here? How could he have known about this desolately beautiful place? And why would it have appealed to him? She smiled at the recollection of a conversation she'd overheard between two of the genealogists at a nearby table the day before. One had been talking about one of his ancestors coming from Sweden and settling in northern Minnesota. "Most of our ancestors came to this country," he'd said, "and wandered around until they found some place just as shitty as the place they'd left."

  Had Gregory craved the hostile solitude of the Russian steppes? Had he somehow needed the bitter cold and blowing snow? Or had Gregory Smith just been a man named Gregory Smith and nothing else, who had meant to go to California and only got this far before giving up the trek? Maybe he'd been making his way through the mountains, stopped on a pleasant day to do a little gold panning or to explore an interesting crevasse, and found riches. That was certainly possible.

  But if that were the case, where and how had he come by the jewels he later gave his wife? Had he found enough gold to buy them? Who could say? His life before his marriage was a mystery. He might have had his eye on the pretty local girl and taken the train to Chicago or New York to buy the jewelry as a wedding gift. Jane wondered if there were actually any Holnagrad crown jewels that history had recorded. It would take a team of experts to make the connection, if so. And Doris had been just that kind of expert. Was it even remotely possible mat Doris had known about the jewels, or suspected their existence? And if she had, would she have kept quiet about it? Probably not, but Jane had to admit that she wasn't in a good position to speculate about Doris. She had hardly known the woman. They'd had one brief conversation and then a collision in a hallway.

  All she knew about Doris was either surface impressions or from what other people said. Mainly what Lucky Lucke had said about her. Was there any reason to doubt his interpretation of her character? Jane simply couldn't guess. She didn't know anything more about him than she'd known about Doris.

  At the exit where they turned off I-70 for the final leg of the drive, Mel stopped for gas. They all got out to stretch their legs. Shelley approached Jane. "Are you feeling like I am? The thought of returning to the resort and having to keep an eagle eye on the kids is oppressive."

  Jane nodded. "I didn't quite realize what it was until you put it in words, but I'm not anxious to get back, either. Except that I have to let Willard out for a run. It's a lovely place, but given the circumstances…"

  "Then let's just stay long enough to tend to Willard and change our clothes, and then go out somewhere away from the resort for dinner. It'll be my treat. Someplace elegant?"

  "I like the part about your treat, but I've had my quota of elegance," Jane said. "How about someplace really inelegant? Barbecue, maybe? Burger King would be even better."

  Everybody else agreed, but Jane was outvoted on Willard. "Either he's destroyed the place by now or he hasn't. Another half hour isn't going to matter," was Mel's opinion, and the others agreed.

  "Besides," Shelley put in, "Linda Moose foot has been around to clean, most likely, and she probably let him out, seeing as we were all gone."

  There was a Burger King diagonally across the interchange. They considerately let the kids go in first so they wouldn't have to be seen traveling with adults; then Jane, Shelley, and Mel wandered in a moment later and took places at the opposite side of the room.

  "You're very quiet today," Mel said while he and Jane waited for Shelley to bring their food.

  "I was thinking about Russia and old Gregory Smith and a lot of things. And, I have to admit, I'm a little bit homesick — and I'm enjoying it."

  "You're liking being homesick?" Mel asked.

  "Yes. See, the whole time I was growing up, we had no home. With my father being in the diplomatic corps, we were always moving. I never went to the same school for two years. Sometimes I didn't even manage two semesters in the same place. And we didn't really even have a home base. We lived in some pretty fancy surroundings every now and then, but they were never ours to keep and come back to. So when we bought the house I live in, back when Mike was a baby, I was determined I wouldn't leave until I was taken out on a gurney. And it's neat to discover that I really have become so attached to one place that I miss it."

  Mel took her hand and just smiled at her.

  "On the other hand," she went on, "homesick or not, I'm not real sure the sheriff is going to be willing for me to leave, and even when I do, it'll drive me wild not ever knowing what happened here. Sure you feel that, too, Mel."

  He opened his mouth to deny the charge, but stopped and reluctantly shook his head. "I'm on vacation, I keep telling myself. But I still hate to see an investigation of a murder — very possibly two murders — going nowhere. But I don't have access to any inside information. For all I know, they're working round the clock on fiber analysis, DNA testing, fingerprinting, and who knows what. But without knowing any of the results, I can't see how I can form any opinions."

  Shelley had arrived and was distributing their food and drinks while he said this. "But, Mel, all that has to do with after the crime," she said.

  He looked at her blankly. "Of course it does. Why would anybody bother with it before a crime is committed?"

  "No, what Shelley means is that the crime itself has something to do with relationships. Not with science. The relationships and the emotions they provoke are the cause, and if you can figure out the cause, then the science part can fill in the rest."

  Mel nodded. "So what do you see as the cause?"

  "That's the problem," Jane said. "I don't know. There are so many possibilities. The potential sale of the resort is certainly one element that might have provoked the crime, or crimes. There's nothing like money to get people's emotions to a fever pitch. And the genealogy thing, the claim that Bill Smith was the rightful Tsar, has endless possibilities of emotional involvement. Money again. Glory. Power. Jealousy. For that matter, the motivation could, in some complex way, be related to both the sale and the claim to the tsardom — if that's a word."

  Mel had been unwrapping his burger and removing anything that resembled a vegetable. "So if you don't have a suggestion, aren't we right back to science and not having access?"

  Shelley, salting her fries, joined in. "We should be, but I have a feeling we know the solution and just don't know we know."

  Mel rolled his eyes, but Jane agreed. "I think so, too, Shelley. I keep having the sense that if we'd just put the right facts and impressions into the correct order, the answer would be obvious. I still haven't given Lucky the file folder that Doris dropped. Maybe when I do, he'll let me look at some of her other documents. Maybe there's something there that will make things fall together."

  "But, Jane, we don't know enough about genealogy to make any sense of her notes anyway. What we need could be in them, but it's like reading a foreign language. One of those courses they were giving was about how to construct a tiny tafel."

  "Wha
t's that?" Mel asked.

  Shelley shrugged. "I have no idea, except that it's a list of some kind. I just remembered it because it was such a weird phrase. That's the point. If the motive does have to do with genealogy, you and I don't know where or how to look, and we wouldn't recognize it if it walked up to us with a tag around its neck."

  Mel was shaking his head while he chewed. The women waited patiently for him to swallow.

  "In my experience," he finally said, "murder usually has to do with money or passion. High passion. Not things like power or prestige. Those are pretty pale emotions compared to passion. Now, most of these people, including the two victims, were, to put it politely, 'mature' individuals. Most people of that age have their passions well under control. If they didn't, they'd be in jail or a mental institution. Can you really imagine Mrs. Schmidtheiser and Bill Smith having a wild sexual affair? If so, you can cast Mrs. Smith in the role of suspect."

  "Mel!" Jane said, scandalized.

  "The other kind of passion is all sorts of things that fall under the heading of self-defense," he went on, ignoring her. "Defense in physical terms, of course, but often defense of a lifework. Let's say you — wait, let me think of a good one. Okay, suppose you'd won an Olympic gold medal in something like speed skating, and in forty years your record still hadn't been broken. You've spent those forty years teaching, pontificating, being a celebrity on the strength of it. Every four years when the Olympics roll around, the newspeople come and do nice, flattering film pieces on you. Then one day someone comes up to you and says he has proof that you had tiny little rockets attached to your skates when you won."

  Jane smiled at the image.

  "It's silly, but don't you see? You've made that record your lifework. Your entire reputation rests on a cheat and here's somebody threatening your life, in a sense."

  Jane nodded. "Like Bill's resort, which was his lifework, and Doris's research, which was hers."

  "But, Jane, the difference is, I'm talking about perpetrators — and they were the victims," Mel said.

  There was a moment's thick silence before Jane said, "Hell! So what's the point?"

  "Don't get defensive," he said. "I'm just pointing out the reasons I think it has to come back to money. It's the only thing that makes sense and provides a strong enough motive."

  "And the only large amounts of money at stake here involve the resort," Shelley said.

  "If that's true, how does Doris figure in?" Jane asked. "It's not as if she'd stand to profit if the resort was sold or wasn't."

  "Unless she knew something that would prevent the sale," Shelley said. "If either Pete or Tenny really thought they would profit from the sale and Doris knew — oh, maybe that Bill wasn't really Gregory's son and thus didn't really own the land — wouldn't that make it worthwhile to stop her from telling anyone?"

  "Jeez! That's a bizarre thought," Jane said. "Everybody's been concentrating on who Gregory really was, but nobody's questioned who Bill really was. And Doris had spent years snooping around the family relationships."

  "I'm afraid I was just giving an example, Jane," Shelley said. "And a bad one at that. You're forgetting about that old photograph."

  "Not entirely. That little boy looked a lot like the mother in the picture, but he was just a cute little boy who could have grown up to look like anybody. He might not have been the older man we knew as Bill Smith. Remember, Tenny told us that the mother died when Bill was very little, and Gregory pretty much left it to some of the tribal women to take care of him. Suppose, for some weird reason, one of them had substituted another child—"

  And even as Jane was speaking, she heard how stupid it sounded.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "My brain's run amok."

  "I'm so glad you were the one to say that," Mel muttered. "Everybody done? Let's get back to see what that fleabag dog of yours has done."

  After they'd gotten back on the road and were nearing the resort, Shelley said, "Jane, I think I've got a blister on my heel. I want to run in the gift shop and get a bandage for it. Will you come along and walk back with me?"

  "I'll come with you, too," Mike said. "There's something I need."

  Mel took the rest of the kids back to the cabins and Jane sat in the lobby, waiting for Shelley and Mike to return. As she waited, Lucky passed through with an armload of notebooks and file folders. When he saw her sitting alone, he came and sat down. "Are you teaching a class?" she asked.

  "No, just finished one. The last of the evening."

  "Oh! I'm glad I ran into you," Jane said. She'd reached into her jacket pocket for a tissue and had felt something else. She pulled out the tooth. "I've been meaning to give you this. It's HawkHunter's tooth. I found it out by the front door. The snow had melted back there and it appeared. If you think it might help in making a mold or something for a bridge, you can give it to him."

  Lucky took the tooth, glanced at it, and handed it back. "Sony, but that's not HawkHunter's tooth."

  Jane laughed. "How many people have lost teeth by the front door?"

  "I don't know, but this is someone else's," Lucky said.

  "How do you know?"

  "It's easy," he said. And he showed her.

  Chapter 22

  When they got back to the condo, they found Linda chatting with the girls. "Hi, Mrs. Jeffry, Mrs. Nowack," she said, heading for her jacket. "I stopped in to check that everything was all right here. The sheriff called Tenny and said he couldn't find any of you."

  "What did he want us for?" Jane asked.

  "Nothing in particular," Linda said. "At least I don't think so. Just wondered where everybody had gone. Don't worry, I'll call him back for you. Unless you want to talk to him?"

  "God forbid!" Jane exclaimed. "Has Willard wrecked anything?"

  "Willard?" Linda got a mushy expression. "He wouldn't do a thing like that. Oh, the Sunday papers were all over the living room and there was an awful lot of dog spit on the sliding glass doors—"

  "That cat's been back, I'd guess," Jane said.

  "I took him out for a while and he chased some squirrels," Linda said. "That made him happy. I'm going home. It's been a long day. Is there anything else you need before I leave?"

  "Nothing. Thanks. Oh — there is one thing," Jane said.

  "What's that?"

  "I know you're going to think I've lost the last of my marbles, but — well — as dumb as it sounds, could I look at the back of your teeth?"

  Linda burst out laughing. "Do you think you can fit your head in my mouth to do that?"

  Jane was blushing with embarrassment, which made her feel all the sillier. "No, I just want to stick my compact mirror behind your front teeth."

  Linda nodded. "Oh, I get it."

  "I don't!" Shelley exclaimed. "Have you both gone nuts?"

  Jane fished her compact out of her purse and slipped the edge of the mirror behind Linda's upper teeth. Linda was grinning around the mirror. "Shelley, look at the back of Linda's front teeth—"

  "Okay," Shelley said suspiciously.

  "Now, get another mirror and look at the back of mine."

  Shelley did as she was told. Her eyes widened and she looked at each of them again. "Wow!"

  Linda removed the mirror. "Shovel incisors, it's called. Indians' front teeth cup on the back side. I think Orientals' teeth do, too, but Occidentals are much flatter."

  "That's so strange!" Shelley said.

  "There are skull differences, too, but I don't know what they are," Linda said, pulling on her outdoor boots.

  "Jane, how did you know about this?" Shelley asked.

  "I ran into Lucky and told him I'd found HawkHunter's tooth in the snow. He just glanced at it and said it couldn't be HawkHunter's because of this shovel-incisor thing."

  "How weird," Shelley said. "How many people do you think have lost a tooth by the front door lately?"

  Jane shrugged. "I don't know. I guess it might even be an animal's tooth. I didn't ask him that."

  "Well, if you
think I'm letting you stick my compact in Willard's mouth—!" Shelley said, horrified.

  "I'm sure Willard wouldn't mind," Linda said. There was a knock on the door. "That's Thomas come to walk me home. See you ladies later."

  They thanked her effusively for her attentions and Jane stood at the door, waving her off. Thomas Whitewing had an arm around her as they slogged off through the darkness. When Jane came back in, Shelley had poured each of them a glass of white wine.

  "You were very quiet on the way back here," Shelley said. "Were you thinking about that weird tooth thing?"

  "No, actually I was thinking about immigrants. Or, I guess they're emigrants when they move within their own country. You and I were struggling and gasping as we came up the hill through the snow, but think of the thousands of women who literally walked over this mountain without the benefit of fancy waterproof snow boots and down-filled nylon parkas."

  "Funny, I'd thought about that, too, as we were driving back here this afternoon," Shelley said. "But I was thinking that many of them either set out pregnant or became pregnant along the way. Some even had babies just before or during the trek."

  Jane got up and prodded at the fire Mel had started before taking the boys back to his place. "I was talking to Mel about being homesick. I guess that's what started me thinking about it. We can go anywhere in the world now and not be too far from contact with those we left behind. Even if you're a missionary in the Andes, you can still walk down the mountain to a town and send a fax or make a long-distance call. But when all those immigrants came here, they were really leaving behind everything and everybody they knew. If you left some little village along the Rhine to move to St. Louis or some place, you could pretty well count on never seeing the people at home again. Your parents, maybe. Brothers and sisters. You could write — if you knew how — but letters could take months to get back and forth, if they made it at all. You'd leave knowing you wouldn't be able to go to your mother's funeral or ever see your sister's next baby—"