From Here to Paternity

seen twice yesterday. He or she must be somebody who regularly did some kind of cross-country skiing. Maybe a local person. He — there was, Jane decided, something essentially masculine in the stride — stopped as she watched. Put binoculars — no, a camera — to his face. And then fumbled around in his jacket. It looked as if he'd taken out a small pad or book and might be writing something in it. How strange. Some kind of nature study or bird watching, no doubt.

As she glanced one last time at the girls, now trying to help each other up in a Keystone Kops manner, she noticed something new at the bunny slope. Over at the edge, near the woods that bordered the area, there was a snowman. Looking at it, she realized it was the first snowman she'd seen since being in the mountains. Apparently when people were surrounded by this much snow, they didn't think to use it for the usual games. This, however, was an elaborate one— short and squat, but quite big, with a tablecloth or something around its shoulders as a cape and something gold and sparkly on its head like a crown. It had sticks for arms and big mittens on the ends of the sticks.

Her timing was perfect. Shelley was just arriving at her cabin when she returned. 'Let's go get breakfast. I'll tell you along the way.'

'Mel must be going crazy,' Shelley said when Jane had explained about Mel's problems with the sheriff after they'd found Doris.

'Uh-huh. He keeps claiming that he's on vacation and not interested, but he was pretty wild about the haphazard way the sheriff was treating the crime scene. If it was a crime scene. Mel's so meticulous, and this guy seems to be a lazy good ol' boy. A real conflict of styles of law enforcement, to say the least.'

'What do you think?'

They were approaching the entrance to the hotel and slowed down. 'I don't know,' Jane said. 'It seems real odd to me that the papers looked like they were thrown around after she died. Naturally, it could just happen that there weren't any where she fell, but it seems unlikely. You should have seen the place, Shelley. It looked like a tornado had gone through.'

'Still…'

'I know. She had heart trouble and had a nasty afternoon. Before we go in where somebody might overhear us, let me tell you about my conversation last night with Lucky—'

When they went in to the restaurant, they made a point of getting an isolated table so they could continue to talk, albeit in near whispers.

'I'm with you on this, I think,' Shelley said as they got settled. 'She might well have died of natural causes, but when you factor in the mess in her place and that at least one person has a good reason to want her out of the way, you can't overlook the possibility of foul play.'

'Tell me your impression of Stu Gortner,' Jane said. 'I didn't hear any of the debate and only met him for a minute. He winked at me.'

'Ugh!'

The waiter appeared and invited them to either order from the menu or have the buffet breakfast. 'I didn't think I'd ever hear myself say this, but I'm not very hungry,' Jane said. 'Could I just have some fruit and coffee?'

'We've got some nice papaya and kiwi,' he began.

'No, just ordinary fruit. An apple, maybe?'

'No apples. But there are some peaches. How about one of those sliced over some cold cereal?' he suggested.

'Perfect. But plain cereal. Nothing with oats or nuts.'

'Rice Krispies?'

'You're a good man.'

'Make it two,' Shelley put in.

When he'd brought their coffee, Shelley said, 'Stu Gortner is a slick number. Utterly charming. Good-looking in an almost elder-statesman way, as you know. And he never really did one single thing to Mrs. Schmidtheiser that you could point to or repeat and say, 'That was rude.' It was much more subtle. It was the cumulative effect. He didn't quite interrupt her; he didn't quite make faces when she was talking; he didn't quite laugh when he repeated her points. But he danced real, real close.'

'I guess from the way Mrs. Schmidtheiser tore out of the room that she was well aware that he was doing better than she was.'

'I don't think she did realize that until near the end of the thing. At first she just kept bombing along, so absorbed in her own notes and documents and slides that she really didn't pay much attention to him. She'd talk; then, when he talked, she'd frantically rustle things around, getting ready for the next part of her presentation. But, toward the end, she seemed to catch on.'

'In what way?'

'She started listening to him. He'd say something suave and amusing that cut her off at the knees and she'd gape and go all red in the face. I'd sure like to know what somebody like Lucky thought of it. After all, I don't know a thing about the 'content' of what they were saying.'

'When he talked to me last night, he indicated that Gortner really didn't have anything to say on his own behalf — that he was only making Mrs. Schmidtheiser's evidence look silly.'

'Well, it did look that way to me, too, but there was a lot of talk about baptismal documents, FHC film numbers, something called tafels—God knows what that means I think it's some kind of list of all your relatives— Oh, here's Mel.'

Jane waved and he joined them, looking grim.

'I got curious,' he said abruptly as he sat down. 'Called the sheriff. Seems they found an empty pill bottle in her purse. The residue in the bottle matched the residue in the coffee cup. Except the dosage in the cup was about twenty times what a person can take.'

'You were right. It was murder,' Jane said.

'I'm not the one who thought that, Jane,' he reminded her. 'And the sheriff told me that proved his theory. Suicide.'

'Suicide?' Shelley exclaimed.

'Right,' Mel said wryly. 'She'd been humiliated in public over her research, so she came home, poured all her remaining heart-medicine pills into a cup of coffee, knocked it back, threw the offending research all over the room, and dropped dead in the one place where none of the papers had landed.'

'What a dolt!' Jane said.

'Aren't you going to ask me what he said about fingerprints on the medicine bottle?' Mel flipped open the menu angrily.

'Okay. I'll bite,' Jane said. 'What was his response?'

'Silence! He obviously hadn't even thought about it. Probably every lab tech in the county handled the damned thing. Now, of course, he has to stick with this suicide thing or his job will go up in flames.'

Jane considered this for a minute or two while Mel tried to calm down enough to read the menu. When he looked up, she said, 'I think we ought to make damned sure that's exactly what happens.'

'But I'm on vacation!' Mel said brokenly.

'And I hope you're enjoying it.'

They all looked up guiltily. Tenny Garner had approached the table without any of them noticing.

'I — ah, yes. It's a great place you've got here,' Mel said. 'Will you join us?'

Tenny glanced around the room and said, 'Maybe for a minute. I'm looking for Uncle Bill. You haven't seen him around, have you? He's disappeared.'

Chapter 10

Tenny took the chair next to Shelley's.

'When did somebody see him last?' Mel asked.

'Last night. After that poor woman died. I went to tell him and found him cleaning up the lost-and-found room.'