From Here to Paternity

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.'

'True. And we're assuming it was Pete because he's the first one who occurred to us. Yet it could have been almost anyone.'

'Yes, but the obvious person is usually the guilty one.'

'But we don't know these people very well,' Shelley pointed out. 'And from what little we saw of Bill Smith, he wasn't exactly a bundle of charm. In fact, he was a downright unpleasant person. Who knows who else he might have offended?'

'But people don't kill somebody because they're offended. It takes a lot more than that. A real threat to their well-being, or a long hatred that finally comes to a head, or even raging greed.'

'How do we know Bill wasn't surrounded by people with all of those motives, and maybe others as well? And it's entirely possible that his death had nothing to do with this whole silly Tsar thing. Maybe it had to do with selling the resort for that matter. There might be somebody local who's really upset about that. Somebody in the tribe. They're the ones who were demonstrating against him, after all.'

A couple was approaching them from the other direction. They smiled and nodded as they passed, and were quiet until they were out of hearing range.

'But that demonstration was all so peaceful,' Jane objected. 'Almost downright friendly. And the protest was aimed as much at the potential investors as it was at Bill Smith. If they were murderous, would they have staged something so orderly and then done something so violent?'

'I don't mean the whole tribe, Jane. But one individual might really dislike him. He had a long history with them. And maybe somebody in the tribe or another neighbor thought he was about to sell the resort and move away for good, and it was their last chance to get at him.'

Jane pondered this. 'Murder is such an unthinkable way to solve problems that it's hard to imagine what could be in the mind of a person who would resort to it.'

As they came to the front door of the lodge, a shuttle was arriving. They waited to see if any of their children got off it, and when they didn't, the women went inside. The lobby was strangely quiet. Tenny, of all people, was just coming out from behind the front desk.

'Tenny!' Jane exclaimed. 'You're not working today. Surely—'

'Just came in to sort out a brawl,' Tenny said angrily.

'A brawl?'

'Yes. Pete just had a fight with HawkHunter. Bloodied his nose and knocked some of his teeth out.'

Chapter 14

'Tenny, for heaven's sake, come sit down,' Shelley said firmly as she took her elbow.

Tenny seemed to almost collapse against Shelley for a second, then got a grip on herself and straightened up. 'Maybe I'd better. Thanks.'