mad.'
'What's happened?' Shelley prodded.
'Pete had dinner with HawkHunter last night,' Tenny said. 'My spies tell me that he was giving HawkHunter a load of nonsense about how if he, Pete, were in charge of the sale of the resort, he'd make sure the tribe's rights to the top of the mountain would be respected.'
Jane remembered seeing Pete and HawkHunter together in the Cigar Room. And she also remembered the waiter who had found so many little chores to do near their table.
'He also hinted to HawkHunter that Uncle Bill was so anxious to retire and get away that he might give Pete power of attorney to negotiate the sale of the resort on his behalf.'
'Is that likely?' Shelley asked, alarmed.
'About as likely as our little mountain suddenly growing a peak!' Tenny said furiously. 'God, no. Uncle Bill wouldn't trust Pete to buy a quart of milk and come back with the right change. I told you, it was just annoying and of no significance.'
'There's more to this,' Jane said.
'What are you, a mind reader?' Tenny asked with a strained laugh. 'Yes, there's more. That idiot Pete had the nerve to suggest to HawkHunter that Uncle Bill was going a little batty and this mythical power of attorney might not be given entirely freely. The nice person in me keeps saying not to tattle to Uncle Bill about it, but the nasty little kid inside would like to pull up a lawn chair to the sidelines and watch the fireworks.'
'Is that why you're looking for him?' Mel asked.
'No. I'm doing Aunt Joanna's bidding. She wants him reminded that he has a doctor's appointment this afternoon for the ingrown toenail he's been complaining about. She thinks he's gone missing on purpose so he can pretend he forgot about it. It takes an act of Congress to get him to a doctor.'
'Forgive me for saying so, but he can't have been an easy husband for her to be married to all these years,' Jane said. She'd finished her cereal and was wishing she'd gotten some bacon and toast with it. She was hungrier now than when she had started eating.
Tenny cheered up. 'He'd be hell on wheels for most of us, but she adores him. They've never had children except for me in a way, and she's been mother and wife to him. Bossing him around, talking his ears off, surrounding him with ghastly little domestic stuff. They're perfect for each other.'
'She told us you said she had no taste,' Jane said with a smile.
Tenny laughed. 'I never
'Don't worry. I saw the thing she's crocheting. And she seemed to take real pride in your taste.'
'Excuse me, but we got sidetracked,' Mel said. The waiter was back with his breakfast, a substantial order that Jane looked over longingly. 'You want the muffin?' Mel asked.
She nearly snatched it. 'Yes, thanks.'
'You said you asked your uncle what he thought of Mrs. Schmidtheiser's claims,' Mel said to Tenny. 'What was his response?'
'Pretty much that she might be right and he didn't care. He said Gregory sometimes mentioned the Old Country in a vague way. He'd say the winters here weren't any worse than in the Old Country, that sort of remark.'
'Could that mean Russia?' Jane asked.
'Sure. Or it could mean a mountainous area of Germany or Switzerland, or any part of Finland, for that matter,' Tenny said.
'So he didn't care about the truth of it?'
'I don't think it was so much that he didn't care as it was that he understood and respected his father's privacy. If the old man didn't want anybody to know his background, then nobody — not even Bill himself — had any business snooping into it. He wasn't so fanatic about it that he really minded Doris and her pals, but he wasn't about to help them. It's a shame Doris couldn't have lived a few more years—'
She glanced around at their confused expressions. 'I forget that you haven't been subjected to as much genealogy as we have. I meant the census. The government grants you privacy when you answer the census questions. For your lifetime. And it considers the average lifetime to be seventy years. So right now the most recent census that's available to the public is the one of 1920. Gregory could have been anywhere then. Maybe already up in the mountains someplace where no census taker could find him. Or maybe in transit from wherever he came from. But by 1930, he was right here, so in the year 2000 the genealogists can go to the National Archives and see his answers to the questions.'
'What sort of questions?' Jane asked.
'I don't know what they asked in 1930, but in the previous ones they asked things like where and when you were born, where each of your parents was born, when you came to this country if you weren't born here, whether and when you took your citizenship. Things like that.'
'So in 2000 they can find out more about him.'
Jane mused. 'But would he have answered the questions the census people asked him? Or told the truth if he did?'
'Good point,' Tenny said.
'The class I took yesterday talked about the census a little bit,' Shelley put in. 'The teacher said it wasn't always very reliable. Apparently they hired somebody — practically anybody who was available — to go around and ask the questions. If the census taker got sick of it, or drunk, or was a little hard of hearing, the answers might be pretty erroneous, even if they were given truthfully. And a lot of people always got missed. If they weren't home to answer that day, the census taker would often just ask the next-door neighbor.'
'Oh, my God,' Tenny said, glancing at her watch. 'I've got a ton of things to do. Sorry for horning in on your breakfast. If you see Uncle Bill before I do, would you tell him I'm looking for him?'
Mel watched her leave. 'I don't like it,' he said softly.
'What don't you like?' Jane asked.
'Anybody who goes missing right after hearing about a mysterious death.'
Chapter 11
'So you've never skied before, either,' Jane said.
They were bundled up and on their way to the bunny slope to take a ski lesson.
Shelley shook her head. 'No, and I don't know why I let you talk me into it this time. A couple of grown women getting ready to tie sticks to their feet and slide down a hill! We've gone mad.'
'Come on, Shelley. We're nineties-type women. We can do anything.'
'That's what you said about that step-aerobics class, and you didn't last through one session.'
'Well, it was stupid and boring.'
'And hard! And remember the 'Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain' class you talked me into going to with you?'
'That teacher should have been fired. Imagine telling us we didn't
'I think this is going to be worse,' Shelley predicted. 'I can see this going right off the top of the humiliation scale.'
'But, Shelley, everybody skis. Celebrities ski. We might run into Cher or some Kennedys or Bob Denver —'
'I think you mean John Denver. And I don't imagine you'll be brushing elbows with any of them on the bunny slope of this resort. Why isn't Mel coming along to help us?'
'He's still crippled from yesterday. Besides, he's asking around about Bill. It's really galling him being an outsider with no authority, especially since the sheriff is such a casual good ol' boy. I keep telling him to look at it as a valuable learning experience, and he just growls.'
'You ladies here for a little practice?' a handsome young man asked.
'No, lessons. We've never skied before,' Jane replied.
'Then you've come to exactly the right place,' he said. 'I'm an instructor and I'm just putting a little class together. Sit down right here while I fit some other folks with their boots and skis, and I'll be back to you in a minute.'
