From Here to Paternity

and took a quick gulp of her coffee.

Jane turned her attention to the man in the picture. The first thing one noticed about him was the difference in the colors of his face. He was obviously a man who was normally bearded and hatted and out in the sun, but he shaved the beard and put aside the hat for the photograph. His upper cheeks, nose, and the lower half of his forehead were a good three shades darker than the rest of his clean-shaven face. His hair, long and shaggy, had been slicked back, leaving his face looking vulnerable and oddly naked.

Yet it was a rather startling face. Handsome in a tierce way, with thick brows, an imposing jaw, and the kind of large, somewhat close, almost transparently blue eyes often seen in Civil War-era photographs. It was obvious from that lean, strong, almost angry face that having a picture taken wasn't his free choice. He wore a black suit that must have been old-fashioned even during those days, and a suspiciously stiff white collar that bit into his strong, thick neck. It must have been purchased specifically for the photo and was probably never worn again. In fact, Jane could imagine him ripping it off and flinging it away as soon as the photographer snapped the shot.

And yet, for all his fierceness, he rested one hand gently on his wife's arm. It was a tender gesture— protective, supportive — and obviously spontaneous rather than posed. Perhaps he suspected that she would not grow old with him. Maybe that was why a man who wouldn't permit a photograph of himself had shaved and put on his good suit — probably his only suit — and posed for this. Not to have a picture of himself, but to have one of her before it was too late.

The studio name printed on the cardboard surround was located in Denver. So this thin, frail, doomed wife must have persuaded him to have the picture taken (perhaps not so very much against his will), not locally, but in the city where no one would know them. In those days, before I-70 and the Eisenhower Tunnel, the trip must have been a long, arduous one. Jane tried to imagine driving up over the Continental Divide in a 1920s vintage automobile and shuddered. Maybe there'd been a train instead.

'Jane?' Shelley elbowed her.

'I'm sorry. My imagination was running away.'

Jane answered. 'Tenny, are you sure this is Bill and his family?'

'Yes. There is another picture, a wedding picture, of this woman that is labeled. It's clearly the same person. And there are several other pictures of Uncle Bill as a child, and they are the same child as this little boy.'

'But this isn't labeled?' Jane asked, turning it over.

'No. We slid it out of the folder to look, and there's no writing on the back.'

'Your uncle certainly took more after his mother than his father,' Shelley said.

'And he doesn't look Rasputin-ish in this picture,' Jane said. 'In fact, he's quite good-looking.'

They chatted for a while about the details of the pictures; then Tenny carefully put the photograph back into the envelope. 'I'm glad we found this and I appreciate having someone to show it to, but I'd be very grateful if you didn't tell anyone from the Holnagrad Society about it,' she said. 'I understand their enthusiasm and interest, but I don't want them harassing Aunt Joanna just now.'

'Tenny, we wouldn't mention it to anyone, even if you hadn't asked,' Jane assured her.

'Thanks, Jane. Now I've got to get going.'

'Tenny, just one question before you run off,' Shelley said. 'I noticed the announcement in the lobby about HawkHunter doing a reading Monday.'

'Yes,' Tenny said grimly. 'Another clever arrangement of Pete's. Before he and HawkHunter fell out. I'd love to find a way to cancel that, but HawkHunter is so damned litigious, I don't dare.'

'Has Pete turned up?' Shelley asked.

'Oh, yes. About eight this morning. Hung over. Apologetic. Inclined to weep,' she said contemptuously.

Shelley watched Tenny as she threaded her way through the tables and out of the dining room. 'What are you thinking?' Jane asked her.

'Bad thoughts,' Shelley said. 'Very bad thoughts.' She glanced around, making sure nobody else was close enough to overhear them. 'You know, we've been trying to figure out how Pete, for example, could be the murderer. Mainly because we don't much like him and because he's pretty much of a moral weakling. But we don't know that, really. We know only what Tenny has told us about him. And we believe it because Tenny says so and we like her. She's us, if you know what I mean. She's a fortyish woman, speaks our language, and appears to be quite forthright.'

'Agreed,' Jane said, suspecting she knew what was coming next.

'But murderers can, in theory, be quite pleasant, normal-seeming people. You're always hearing people say, when someone's arrested for murder, 'We never suspected! He seemed so normal!' So—'

'So maybe we've been taken in by Tenny? I'd hate to think that.'

'So would I, but it's possible, Jane. And she's certainly involved in everything here and might be a good deal more involved than we suspect.'

Jane nodded reluctantly. 'I bet the same thing triggered this in you as it did in me. The mention of that jewelry.'

'Exactly. It's hard to tell in a black-and-white photo, but it looked to me like the jewelry Bill's mother was wearing was worth a king's ransom. It really could have been some of Russia's — or Holnagrad's — crown jewels.'

'It probably was real. The way the woman was dressed, it was clear that she didn't care about what my grandmother would have called 'fripperies'. She obviously had very simple taste. And yet she was wearing jewelry that was completely inappropriate to her clothing, not to mention to the frontierish way she must have lived. So the jewelry was out of keeping and very probably worn because her husband believed that if you had those jewels, you wore them in pictures. I loved that picture, by the way. It made me feel I knew those people. I found myself imagining that I knew them very, very well, in fact.'

'I could tell you were taken with it,' Shelley said affectionately. 'The way you got that goofy, faraway look. Anyhow, my thinking was this: if I were a murderer—'

Jane snorted.

'No, listen. If I were a murderer, or somebody with anything important to hide, I would try to be as open and honest as possible. People are naturally suspicious of anyone who's secretive and guilty-acting or unpleasant. If you ask someone a seemingly innocent question and they answer by saying it's none of your damned business, or by being excessively sly about not answering, your first thought is that they're hiding something, right?'

'Or that it really is none of my business and I was damned rude for asking,' Jane said. 'Sorry. No jokes. Yes, I agree. If I were trying to hide something, I'd give as much of the truth as I could, and hope that the parts I left out weren't very noticeable.'

'Exactly. So what might her seeming openness be hiding? To be blunt, she came out of Bill Smith's death with what might well be a fortune in jewelry.'

'— and cotrusteeship of a huge estate—'

'— And possible proof of a valuable genealogical connection to the Tsars of Russia.'

'Not proof of her connection,' Jane pointed out.

'But proof mat might be valuable to someone else. Proof that might be either provided or withheld. For a price. She asked us not to mention that picture to anyone, remember? That could be innocent. Just a natural desire for privacy. Or it could be because she wants to spring the picture on someone else at the optimum moment.'

Jane stirred the dregs of her coffee. 'She's benefited enormously from his death, hasn't she?'

Shelley nodded. 'I'm afraid so. More so than anybody else except her aunt. Certainly more than Pete, who'd make a much better villain. But what would the connection to Doris be?'

'The Tsar thing in some way. Suppose Doris was so humiliated by the debate that she decided to give it up and throw in the towel?'

'Can you really imagine her doing that?'

'No,' Jane said, 'but I can imagine her saying so in the first moments of stress and embarrassment. A sort of flounce. Meant to make somebody pet her and fuss over her and talk her out of it. But if she said it too forcefully to the wrong person, she might have been accidentally taken seriously.'

'The great problem with all of this,' Shelley said, 'is that Tenny knew better than anyone how little time Bill had to live. She knew all she had to do was wait a while.'

'We only have her word about that,' Jane said.

'No, we have Linda Moosefoot's, too. Remember, Linda told you she knew because Tenny had had Linda