From Here to Paternity

'Have you eaten anything this afternoon?' Jane asked as they led her toward the more casual of the two dining rooms.

'No, but I'm not—'

'You must eat something. Really. You'll feel much better,' Jane insisted. She'd been waiting most of her life for somebody to say that to her. So far, nobody ever had.

The room was nearly empty. Even the latest lunchers had gone and the earliest dinner customers hadn't started arriving. The hostess seated them well away from the few other eaters after expressing condolences to Tenny, who received the remarks with preoccupied courtesy.

'Just ask a waiter to bring us coffee and something Tenny likes for her to nibble on,' Jane said quietly.

'Tenny, we're so sorry about your uncle,' Shelley said when they were seated.

'Thanks. He was dying, I guess you should know.'

'Oh?' Shelley said.

Tenny repeated pretty much what Linda Moose foot had told them about Bill Smith's poor health, but they didn't let on that they had heard it before. 'But nothing could have prepared us for the idea that someone might kill him. My God! It's unbelievable!' she said.

'Who do you think did it?' Jane asked bluntly.

'I have no idea. None! I can still hardly take in the fact that it happened.'

'How's your aunt Joanna taking it?' Shelley asked.

'Oh, extraordinarily well. She's quite an amazing woman. She's really observing Uncle Bill's wishes.'

'Which were?' Jane asked.

'That his death be ignored as much as possible,' Tenny said with a wry smile.

'Ignored?'

'He insisted that there be absolutely no fuss when he went. No funeral service or anything. He and Joanna had talked it all out. He'll be cremated, his ashes scattered by Joanna alone wherever and whenever she chooses. He said, rather contemptuously, I must say — that if we felt we just had to have some kind of memorial service, it could be with the tribe, and not any sooner than a month after his death. This is all written out and in a notebook with his will and trust documents.'

'Oh, good. He did have that all set up,' Shelley said.

'Of course,' Tenny said. 'It was his way. Very businesslike.'

'I hate to be tactless,' Jane said, 'but could his arrangements have anything to do with his death? I mean, perhaps he was leaving some bequest to someone who felt they couldn't wait.'

'I have no idea what the terms are,' Tenny said. 'I'm certain, though, that virtually everything must go directly to Joanna. And there's probably some bank or lawyer or someone designated to oversee the financial aspects of it all. Joanna's not stupid by any means, but she just hasn't the interest in the business details that he had. I'm positive he'll have made sure she doesn't have to be bothered with keeping track of every penny. I've tried not to pry. In fact, Aunt Joanna's meeting with the lawyer right now, which is why I'm sort of at loose ends instead of sitting with her. Not that she'd probably let me anyway. Claims she's going to her bridge club meeting Monday just as if nothing's happened.'

'He wouldn't leave those details to Pete? Make him cotrustee or something?' Shelley asked.

'Oh, God! Never!' Tenny thought for a minute. 'I hadn't thought about that yet. Pete considers himself to be a financial whiz — he's a failed stockbroker— and is probably going to be pissed as hell to realize he's out of the loop. At least I assume he's out of the loop. I really can't imagine Uncle Bill trusting him with any decision-making powers. He wouldn't even give him the authority to order the chemicals for the swimming pools unless he countersigned the order form.'

'What do you suppose happens to the estate after your aunt is gone?' Jane asked.

Even Shelley looked mildly shocked that Jane would ask something that was so clearly none of their business, but Jane had guessed correctly that Tenny was just thinking about all this herself for the first time and was too preoccupied to take offense.

'I don't know,' she said. 'I suppose it'll mostly go to some charity or other since they don't have any children. Maybe a little something for Pete and me.'

A waiter appeared with coffee and a plate of little crustless sandwiches, then tactfully disappeared.

'Would he leave anything to the Holnagrad Society?' Shelley asked. 'Or the tribe?'

'The tribe, maybe. The Society, no, I don't think so. He considered them pretty much of a harmless nuisance.'

'Speaking of Pete and the tribe,' Jane said, sensing that Tenny was bound to realize soon that she was talking to strangers about personal matters, 'you said he and HawkHunter got into a fight?'

Tenny's eyes flashed. 'Yes, the asses! Right out in front of the hotel!'

Jane heard the whine of the shuttle-bus engine as the vehicle came up the last bit of hill. 'Shelley, I'll be right back. I want to see if the kids are on this bus.' She gave her friend a look that said, Find out all you can, and left.

There wasn't anybody familiar on the bus, and when Jane returned, they either had moved on from the subject of the fight or hadn't covered it at all. Jane couldn't help but notice that more than half of the little sandwiches were gone, and there weren't any crumbs anywhere near Shelley. This didn't necessarily prove anything, however, as Shelley was an almost crumb-less eater — a trait Jane didn't really hold against her most of the time.

'Jane, Tenny was telling me about her pottery business,' Shelley said.

'Well, not so much a business as a paying hobby,' Tenny demurred. 'I was looking forward to doing it full- time if Uncle Bill sold the resort.'

'You sell your work, then?'

'Here in the gift shop and at several shops in Vail, Frisco, Georgetown, places like that. I've had several upscale catalog suppliers approach me, but my work with the hotel takes up too much of my time to assume that responsibility.'

'The gift shop?' Jane exclaimed. 'The big serving bowl with the blue-and-green pattern? Is that your work? I've drifted by and admired it several times already. It's absolutely beautiful. That lobelia blue is my favorite color.'

'I have a set of six serving bowls to match being fired.'

'Oh, stop. I'm going to start drooling in a minute.'

Shelley had been listening quietly. 'Tenny, I probably shouldn't even be talking about this, but since you've brought up the pottery business — no, never mind.'

'What?'

'Well, you realize it's my husband involved with the investors, and I don't mean to jeopardize anybody's position, so don't answer if you don't feel like it — but why are you talking like you can't do your pottery? Doesn't Joanna want to sell the resort? I don't mean right away, understand—'

Tenny took a long sip of her coffee and gestured at the remaining sandwiches. 'Please finish these. I'm full.' Then she said to Shelley, 'I don't mind answering that. It's just my own guess, but I don't think Aunt Joanna will want to sell now. She loathed Florida. Said it was too hot and buggy and full of old people. She's lived all her married life right here, and the whole of her life within a couple miles. Frankly, I think she'll find running the resort, even with advisors, a terrible burden, but it is her home. She only went along with the retirement idea because it was what Uncle Bill wanted. I don't mean she was being spineless or martyred, but she really enjoyed making him happy, and getting away from here would have made him very happy.'

Shelley thought for a moment, hesitated, then plunged forward. 'Tenny, I can't speak for the investors, you understand, only as a concerned friend. But it would seem quite possible that Joanna could at least try to sell the resort on condition that she could stay right where she is for as long as she wanted. Some sort of nominal rent could be computed into the deal, couldn't it? I thought things like that were done all the time. And if it's part of the contract, it would be a legal obligation that got passed right along even if the place were later sold to someone else.'

For the first time since they had started talking, Tenny looked almost cheerful.

'You could be right. That's really worth looking into. Oh, I feel so guilty about this, but in the back of my mind I've been so upset — so selfishly upset— because Uncle Bill died before he could sell the