From Here to Paternity (13 page)

"Who knew about this?" Mel asked.

"Not too many people," Linda said. "A lot of the tribe, of course, knew he'd been in the hospital a couple times, but I don't think many of them realized how seriously ill he was. I knew only because Tenny's car broke down and I had to drive her down to Denver one time when he'd had one of his attacks. He'd collapsed in a store there and Tenny was really upset. His doctor knew, naturally. Pete Andrews must know, I assume. I don't know who else. Why does it matter?"

"I don't imagine it does," Mel said. "But I was thinking that anybody who wanted him dead really only had to wait a while. Is that true?"

"I guess so."

"So maybe the people who
did
know about his condition would have less reason to take matters into their own hands. But it really wasn't common knowledge, it sounds like."

"No, I don't think so. The time I had to drive Tenny to Denver, everybody else was told he was in Florida, looking for property to buy to retire to. He was very secretive about his personal life. People up here in the mountains tend to be that way. Especially if it has to do with bad health or bad luck. They have a great horror of being pitied."

"Then it's doubly sad that he had to die—
and
be found as he was," Jane said quietly.

Jane and Shelley refused to let Linda clean for them when she'd finished her lunch. This was partly consideration, but partly a desire to talk over the implications of Bill Smith's murder with complete freedom from eavesdroppers. Linda left to do Mel's cabin and took the boys' lunches with her. Mel accompanied her, saying he needed to make some phone calls.

But before leaving, he took Jane aside for a moment. "What did you mean about the sheriff mentioning that you found the bodies? Both of them. He wasn't actually suspicious of you, was he?"

"I don't know. I think maybe so," she said, shivering.

"I'll sort this out," he said coldly.

"I think he's going to try to wring information out of the sheriff at the same time he tells him off and will come back mad as hell," Jane said to Shelley as she closed the door behind them.

"Maybe not. The sheriff might not mind his help now that he has a clear-cut murder on his hands. Tell him off about what?"

"Me. What's this?" Jane asked, picking up a book on the floor next to the sofa.

Shelley looked. "It must be Linda's. That backpack thing of hers was open. It probably fell out. Oh, it's a copy of
I
,
HawkHunter
. In paperback. I wonder if they have it at the little bookstore here. It would be interesting to read it again now that we've seen him in person."

Shelley took the book and glanced at it, then turned it over. "You'd think they'd have put a new publicity picture on the back. This must have been the original. What a nerdy-looking kid he was when this was published. Imagine having a best-seller when you're what—twenty-two or -three?"

Jane gazed at the picture. "Isn't it a shame that men get so much better-looking as they get older and we just fall apart?"

"Speak for yourself, girlie-girl," Shelley said in an old-crone voice.

Jane took the book back and continued to stare at the photo. "Shelley, this isn't just a matter of graceful aging." She giggled. "Look at the nose. The man doesn't have that nose this week."

"Good Lord! You're right. That's a little, ordinary nose. And his hair has a bit of curl in the picture. You could use it for a ruler now." She laughed. "The vanity of the man! I guess he thought he didn't look Indian enough."

"I'll catch Linda and give this back," Jane said, jamming her feet into her boots, cozy now from having been in front of the fire. She took Willard along for a romp.

When she returned, she said, "Well, Watson? What do you think?"

"What do you mean 'Watson'? Don't I ever get to be Holmes?"

Jane took off her boots and put them back in the closet by the door. "I don't think you can get away from the fact that this must have something to do with the Tsar business—what with both Doris Schmidtheiser and Bill Smith dying."

"The Tsar is dead. Long live the Tsar," Shelley said.

"Pete? You think so?"

"It's certainly the obvious guess. Bill didn't want to have anything to do with it, but Tenny said Pete encouraged poor old Doris. Didn't she say he was the one who first hooked up with the Holnagrad Society and got them to have their annual meetings here? And if Bill was, by their estimation, the rightful Tsar and had no children of his own, Pete is the heir to the throne."

"But, Shelley—it's all so absurd! How could anybody take it seriously? The last Tsar died nearly eighty years ago. Why would anybody in their right mind think Russia wants another one?"

"Oh, I don't know. I actually heard a program on CNN a couple months ago and some political science professor was saying the only thing that could prevent a dozen civil wars in the former Russian entity was the restoration of a monarchy. For unification. More symbolic than real, I think he meant."

"I'll bet it's only him, three history buffs, and some psychic in Ohio who believe that," Jane scoffed.

"Well, there are different kinds of 'serious', you know. Like that other guy—what's his name? Stu somebody? The guy Lucky was so upset with. He's got his own candidate for the position and he doesn't seem to make any pretense that he wants to put the guy on the nonexistent throne. He just wants to make a bunch of money off of him. There can be an awful lot of money in simply
being
a celebrity. Maybe Pete saw himself that way. The rightful heir. Movies. Maybe a book. Who knows?"

"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."