From Here to Paternity (17 page)

Mel and the boys arrived shortly, and while they all waited with varying degrees of impatience for Katie and Denise to get ready, the boys took Willard outside for a run in the snow. "Poor old Willard," Jane said. "He knows how to pee downwind in a Chicago gale, but he can't figure out how to manage with snow up to his shoulders."

"That's one of the many things I've always admired about Willard," Mel said. "That peeing-downwind trick."

"What did you learn from the sheriff?" Jane asked, ignoring the sarcasm.

"Nothing of any real use," Mel admitted. "There's no question, of course, of finding footprints. For one thing, it had snowed lightly after the snowman was built, and that pretty well obliterated any marks. And by the time you, half the skiers, and all the police had stumbled around, there was no hope left."

"I wouldn't think snow would hold footprints anyway. Up here in the mountains, it's so powdery that the least wind must make it move around like sand," Shelley said. "What else?"

"Plinkbarrel, or whatever his damned name is, says there were wool fibers in the snow that had been packed around the body. From mittens, he speculated. They didn't match anything the victim was wearing."

"Ah! That sounds helpful," Jane said.

Mel shook his head. " 'Fraid not. The sheriff, or more likely one of his minions, checked out the stuff in that lost-and-found room and discovered the mittens there. Still damp. And the insides of fuzzy wool mittens won't hold fingerprints, I'm sorry to say."

Jane thought for a minute. "Doesn't that imply premeditation? I mean, a deliberate plan to murder him, not just a momentary rage? Before murdering Bill, somebody took the mittens that couldn't be traced to himself or herself and then returned them later."

"Possibly. But not for certain. The perp may have borrowed the mittens for no purpose at all except warmth, then recovered his or her wits enough to put them back. For that matter, they might not have even come from the lost-and-found originally. They might have belonged to the murderer, who just figured that was a good way of disposing of them without being caught with them in his possession. I wouldn't think anybody keeps track of every mitten in that room. It's just a hodgepodge that probably gets culled only once each spring."

"But that does limit it to people with knowledge of the hotel," Jane said.

"I guess it does," Mel admitted. "But I don't think that was ever in doubt."

"Where did the other stuff come from?" Shelley asked. "That bowl thing that was the crown, and the whatever-it-was that looked like a robe?"

"The bowl is one that's in a lot of the cabins. A local firm delivers fruit gift packs in them," Mel said. "They're usually left in the cabins. And the robe was just a standard-issue blanket—one of the extras that are in the closet of each cabin. Unfortunately, they get shifted around, too. Family groups like this one move around, people get cold and use a blanket like a shawl to run back to their own cabins, and so forth. They only get sorted out if the maids happen to notice that mere's an excess in one cabin and a shortage in another."

"None of which is any help at all," Jane said.

"Unless the sheriff knows a lot he's not telling me. Which is possible," Mel replied.

"And what did he say about me?" Jane asked, then added, "Never mind," as the boys and Willard came back in. She certainly didn't want the kids to know she was under suspicion, however absurd the idea was.

Katie and Denise were eventually dragged away from their bathroom, where they were still feverishly consulting on makeup, and the whole mob moved off toward the lodge. Mel went ahead with the kids, who were engaged in a traveling snowball fight. The snow was so cold and dry that it was hard to form into a ball at all, and most of them exploded into powder before ever reaching a target.

"It must have been hard to build a snowman," Shelley speculated.

Jane nodded. "I think that was the reason for the blanket/robe thing. So the back didn't have to be covered. Maybe you have to pour water on snow to make it hold its shape here. To form a crust. That's probably why you don't see many snowmen."

"I don't suppose the sheriff is likely to confide in us whether that was done," Shelley said. "But it could be significant. You'd have to have some kind of thermos along."

"I don't think that would be much help in narrowing down suspects, though," Jane said. "Lots of people carry around thermoses. They even sell them in the equipment hut with a sort of belt-loop thing so you can hang it onto yourself somewhere. I noticed because it looked like a good way to carry coffee."

"You're right. I'd thought of that, too, but had forgotten."

"But there's something we've kind of overlooked about this," Jane remarked. "The fact that the snowman was gotten up to look—well,
regal
. Doesn't that mean Bill's death had something to do with the Tsar thing?"

"Not necessarily. You said yourself the robe thing was probably a device to save somebody from having to cover the body all the way around."

"True, but there was the crown, too. There was no practical purpose for that. Nor for the old bent ski pole the snowman was holding in its stick arms that looked like a scepter. Doesn't all of that look like deliberate mockery of the whole concept of Bill Smith as Tsar?"

"Unless the motive was completely unrelated and the murderer just did that to make it look like the genealogists were guilty in some way."

"Jeez, Shelley! If a murderer were really that clever, he'd have thought of a better way to solve his problem than to kill Mr. Smith—and maybe Mrs. Schmidtheiser, too."

"You'd think so, but that's because we haven't got what a murderer has—a conscience, or lack of con-science, that even allows the
thought
of murder as a solution to a problem."

"Yes, but it still seems most likely that the whole 'royal trimmings' business does point to the Holnagrad/Tsar situation."

"I agree it's very likely," Shelley allowed. "But where does that get us?"

"I dunno," Jane said wearily. She suddenly realized she was sick and tired of the whole business. She'd come here for a long-awaited and well-deserved vacation and—dammit!—she was going to have fun—if it killed her.

The Saturday night dinner and dance
were
fun.

The casual dining room had been set up with a stupendous Tex-Mex buffet. Jane planned to sample a tiny bit of everything, but couldn't get through half of her testing. Not only was there a huge variety, but she found a casserole dish called King Ranch Chicken that she fell so much in love with that she had three helpings.

"I'm going to get this recipe if I have to beat up the chef to make him reveal it," she exclaimed. "Try it, Shelley. It tastes sort of plum-blossomish."

"It must have corn tortillas torn up in it," Shelley said, taking a bite from Jane's overloaded plate. "They have that plum-blossom taste. Mmmm. That's wonderful!"

"Glad you think so. You can beat up the chef, then. It's much more your line."

Shelley grinned. "I've never laid violent hands on a chef. Yet. I save that for IRS agents."

It was a festive evening, in spite of the recent death of the resort owner. Jane even noticed Joanna looking in the doorway of the restaurant once, smiling as if genuinely pleased at how well she was managing to implement her husband's last wishes that his death be ignored.

What a strange, strange marriage they'd had, Jane thought. But then, she'd always thought that nearly every marriage, if examined closely enough, would look strange to anyone but the two main participants. Perhaps that was one of the elements that contributed to the increase in the divorce rate, she speculated. Too many people who expected their own marriage to be like what they assumed others were, rather than just accepting the inherent individual weirdnesses of the situation.

She almost mentioned this thought, then decided that discussing marriage in front of Mel might lead him to the erroneous conclusion that she was hinting at something she wasn't.

This led to deeper thoughts. She watched him as he chatted with Shelley and the boys, who had condescended to sit at the same table with the adults. Denise and Katie had, of course, insisted on sitting by themselves at the far end of the room. They were horrified that someone might discover that they had parents. Mel was telling a joke that made Shelley laugh, and Jane stared at his dimple. Would she have been so attracted to him from the first if it weren't for that dimple? she wondered. Of course she would, but maybe not so quickly or wholeheartedly.

The greatest surprise in their relationship had been sex. In her marriage with Steve, sex had been a duty. To be fair, it was a pleasant enough duty most of the time, but still a duty. She had always thought the failure to enjoy it thoroughly and every time was a failing of hers. But since her relationship with Mel had taken an intimate turn, she'd discovered how very wrong she'd been. Steve had simply had no imagination, nor any real awareness of her as an equally important participant. Whereas Mel, who was normally a serious, responsible individual, was as playful and silly as an otter in bed.

Sex with Mel was downright fun. It involved a whole lot of laughter. And he made her completely forget a lot of things she needed to forget: her stretch marks, her own limited experience, and the fact that she was slightly older than he. She might have been locked into domesticity and missed
the
sexual revolution, but she'd certainly had one of her own in the past few months.

So why didn't she want desperately to marry him? She had no idea. It wasn't that she was opposed to the idea of marrying again someday, just that it didn't seem important. No, she wasn't being quite honest with herself. She was opposed. Very slightly. She'd gone from being a daughter to a wife to a mother. She was still a daughter and a mother, but the duties and hazards of those roles were less onerous now than they had once been. But having shed wifeliness, she was becoming quite content.

She was in love with Mel, but she didn't look forward to getting intimately involved in doing his laundry. She wasn't eager to learn what he was like to live with when he had a bad cold. Or was doing his income taxes. Or was trying to fix a lawn mower. She didn't want to have to explain or defend or even talk about her household budget. And while she often consulted with him, as she did with Shelley, about decisions she had to make—things about the kids, or buying a new car, or whether the roof on her house would last another couple years—she didn't really want to have to make those decisions jointly. Decision making, which had scared the daylights out of her when Steve had died, had gone to her head now. She liked it. And intended to hang onto the power it gave her.

"What deep thoughts you must be having," Mel said to her, startling her from her reverie. "We're talking about dessert and you're not even listening. Is something wrong?"

"Nothing at all is wrong," she said, smiling.

The dance was held in the conference room where the genealogy debate had taken place. Jane had been unaware that this room connected to two others by way of big dividers that were open now, making a huge area. A very loud country band was well into its repertoire by the time they arrived. Katie and Denise were already there and had found plenty of companionship. Mike immediately wandered off. The little boys declared that dancing was stupid, and begged to be allowed to spend the evening in the game room. With warnings that they were not to go anywhere else without permission, and with a largish contribution of quarters, they were allowed to leave.