From Here to Paternity (3 page)

"I hope you don't get called out of retirement and are asked to set somebody else's bones while you're here," Jane said.

"Wouldn't do much good to ask me to. I was a dentist," he said, grinning. "Are you ladies here for the skiing?"

They both laughed. "No, we aren't into exercise," Shelley said. "We're just along for a break. My husband is here looking into some investments."

"Ah, one of the people thinking of buying Bill out, huh?"

Shelley looked stricken. "Oh, dear. I didn't mean to be indiscreet. Mr. Smith is the owner of this resort," she explained to Jane.

"No, no. You didn't let any cats out of any bags," Lucky assured her. "It's just that I know Bill Smith and know he's real anxious to sell out so he can retire to Florida. He and Joanna have a bungalow and a nice boat down there already."

"So you're here because you're a friend of the owner?" Jane asked. "How nice."

"Well, in a manner of speaking, I guess you could say that."

At their questioning looks, he elaborated. "You see, I'm the current president of the Holnagrad Society. Uh-oh. I can see from the way you drew back at the word that you've met our Doris. I'm right, aren't I?"

"Your Doris being the very tall, severe-looking woman?" Shelley asked uneasily.

"Looks like Lincoln? Yup. That's Doris Schmidtheiser."

"Yes, we met yesterday."

"Well, we're here and we all know Bill because Doris has a bee in her bonnet about him."

"Oh?" Jane said politely.

"Yup. The way Doris figures it, Bill Smith is the rightful Tsar of Russia."

Jane nearly spewed coffee all over the table.

When she'd recovered herself, she gasped, "I'm sorry. It just struck me as funny. Bill Smith, Tsar of all the Russias. Somehow it doesn't sound quite right."

Lucky laughed. "It doesn't sound much better to Bill, I can tell you."

"Mr. Smith doesn't want to be Tsar?" Shelley asked, smiling. "I guess I can see why. Look at what happened to the last one. I'm sorry. That was a grim thing to say. How did Mrs. Sm—"

"Schmidtheiser," Lucky said.

"How did Mrs. Schmidtheiser come up with this theory?"

"Well, you've kinda got to understand about the Holnagrad Society to start with. Holnagrad's a little speck of a place in the Balkans. Russia had already gobbled it up before World War One. Most of our ancestors fled the country then. And another mob came over during and just after the Second World War. There weren't a lot of people there to begin with and most of them fetched up in the U.S. So the Society was formed in the 1920s to keep traditions alive from the Old Country. You know—dances, songs, language, history. Anyhow, an important function of the Society is the concern with genealogy, and all these years we've been trying to get church records and cemetery records and the like out to help trace our roots. Every now and then somebody'd get a visa to go back—for a long time the country was behind the Iron Curtain—and would smuggle out some more copies of original documents. All very cloak-and-dagger, with hidden cameras and sneaking into churches in the dark. Sorry, I'm telling you a lot more than you wanted to know. Anyhow, when the Soviet Union fell apart, lots of records were suddenly available and Doris got her teeth into some."

"Did she go there?" Shelley asked.

"No, but another member of our group did, and Doris was helping her translate and catalog documents. Doris is a whiz at reading old handwriting. Don't know how much you ladies know about history, but Tsar Nicholas abdicated and his younger brother Michael refused the crown. On their own behalf and that of their children. The next in line…" He paused. "Well, the next in line—according to one theory, let's say—was a cousin of Nicholas and Michael's who was married to a woman from Holnagrad—a princess. This Romanov cousin saw which way the wind was blowing even before Nicholas abdicated, and he—the cousin, that is—dropped out of sight. A lot of people figured he went to Holnagrad to hide out with his wife's people. But nobody's ever proved it."

"But Doris found something that did prove it?" Jane asked.

Lucky moved his hand in a "so-so" motion. "Maybe. She found some church records that seemed to be of the same family, but they were calling them-selves Romanofsky. This Romanofsky, the Tsar's cousin—if he
was
the Tsar's cousin at all—died in Holnagrad in 1916 or so—Spanish flu, I think. Doris pieced this together with a ship manifest dated six months later. The ship left Paris, or maybe Lisbon, I don't recall which. On it was a woman calling herself Elsa Roman and her son, Gregor. The Holnagrad princess was named Elsa and their son was named Gregor, so Doris could be right. But there's no proof at all."

"How does all this tie up with Mr. Smith?" Shelley asked, waving at a passing waiter to get some more coffee.

"The ship docked in New York. And just a few months later, in the archives of a Brooklyn, New York, court jurisdiction, a record appeared of a Gregory Ruman or Roman—the handwriting's terrible on the original document—applying for American citizenship and changing his name to Gregory Smith."

"Ah! A Smith at last," Jane said. "But there are a lot of Smiths."

Lucky nodded. "Exactly so. It wouldn't take a genius to come to this country and figure out that the best way to get 'lost' would be to call yourself Smith. And a lot of people have come here wanting or needing desperately to get lost. Anyhow, now workin' back the other way, Bill Smith's father was named Gregory. He was an old mountain man out here, turned up in the early 1920s, and was supposed to speak Russian."

He raised his forefingers and tilted them toward each other. "So Doris worked up one line and down another and figures they match up and are the same person."

"But Mr. Smith doesn't buy it?" Shelley asked.

Lucky shrugged. "Bill doesn't really say much except that he's not interested. He's not much of a talker about anything. All he wants to do is sell this place and retire to Florida."

"And you don't think it's true, either?" Jane asked.

"Oh, it might be true. I don't know. But Doris hasn't got proof, just suppositions. I used to do some forensic stuff. You know, identifying teeth of bodies the police found and such. And I know from that experience that just because something
could
be doesn't mean it
is
. And genealogy's a lot the same. Not quite as exact—it's not a science, after all—but you need more proof than coincidence. And this is a pretty long string of feeble coincidences."

"But how
could
you prove something like that?" Jane asked. "I mean, if you really wanted to—or needed to for some reason."

"Mainly by piling up evidence. And lots of times you can't ever absolutely prove family relationships. But if you have somebody named—oh, let's say Weirather, or something very distinct—and you know the first child of the couple was born in 1859 in Iowa, and you find a Weirather with a one-year-old child in the 1860 Iowa census with the same name as the person you know is your ancestor, and there's nobody else in the whole state with that name—well, it's not precisely proof, but it's a good indication that it's ninety-nine percent certain they're the same person. It is circumstantial, but it's a starting point. Then you can look up your Weirathers in church documents in that town and start really building your case with other evidence."

"But with a weird name like that, it makes sense," Jane said.

"You know, it's only in the last fifty years or so that we've gone crazy with forms and documents. Even at the beginning of this century, a whole lot of people were barely literate. They could write their name and do enough ciphering to pay their bills. But even names were changed pretty often. My own ancestors spelled their name L-U-C-K-E, like I do. But they also spelled it L-O-O-K-E and L-O-U-K and L-O-O-C and about a half-dozen other ways. Then the census takers came around and heard what they wanted to hear, and they spelled it L-U-T-E and L-O-O-D. Sorry, I'm on one of my hobbyhorses again. I've forgotten what you even asked."

"So have I," Jane said, "but it's interesting anyway."

"Anyhow, that's why we have our meetings here. Bill isn't interested in being Doris's Tsar, but his nephew Pete encourages Doris and got us to meet here about four years ago for our annual meeting. The place, completely apart from the connection with Bill, suited our needs down to the ground, so we keep coming back."

"You don't think it's sort of hard to get to?" Jane asked, remembering the long, dark drive up the mountains the night before.

"Well, we plan for that. Of course, a lot of people at the conference are local—we sponsor all sorts of general genealogy classes at our conference and a lot of people from Colorado come year after year. As far as the members of the Society go, we book all our flights to come in around the same time and hire a bus to bring us all up here at once. That
is
sort of a nuisance, but one we're used to. Anybody who has to come in later or earlier can fly to Vail."

"Vail? There's an airport at Vail? That's close, isn't it?"

He did the "so-so" motion again. "As the crow flies, yes. But there's a mountain between here and there that you can't drive over except in the summer with a four-wheel drive. In the winter, you have to backtrack a long way to get from there to here, so we just stick with the Denver airport and the hired bus."

Shelley had been listening with interest. "You have classes open to other people? Any for rank beginners?"

"Sure. You interested?"

"I am. May I sign up this late and sit in on some of your classes?"

"We'd be glad to have you. It's only twenty-five dollars to attend anything and everything you want. A real bargain, if I do say so myself."

While they'd been talking, Jane had gradually become aware of a faint repetitive noise in the background. In the silence following Lucky's last remark, they all became aware of it.

"What's that sound?" Jane asked.

"Probably a radio turned up too loud someplace," Shelley said.

But people on the other side of the restaurant, where the windows faced the front drive, were craning their necks and looking out at something.

Lucky glanced at his watch. "Ladies, I've enjoyed talking to you. You're very polite to let me run off at the mouth this way, but I've got to get going."

"It's been a pleasure," Shelley said. "Thanks again for bringing me my message. I'll probably see you at some of the classes."

As he departed, Shelley and Jane exchanged questioning looks and wordlessly agreed that they had to see what was going on in front. Shelley signed the breakfast tab, left a hefty tip, and they went across the room to an empty table to peer outside.

At first Jane assumed that what she saw was a display of local color that the resort sponsored. A group of people in colorful garb were doing what appeared to be an Indian dance. There were tom-toms, feathers, beads, and lots of glossy black braids flying. But a moment later, she noticed the placards that others were carrying:

Save our graves.

Let our ancestors rest in peace.

Don't desecrate sacred ground.

And the cryptic, No lift.

The diners were mumbling to one another, speculating on the meaning of all this. But no one had any answers. An attractive woman wearing a long skirt, high boots, and a heavy, fringed shawl had been speaking to one of the demonstrators; as she turned away from him, she caught a glimpse of Shelley at the window and raised a hand in greeting. Then she added a "Stay there" sign. At least that was what Jane assumed it meant.

"That's Tenny Garner," Shelley explained to Jane. "The owner's niece. Or rather, his wife's niece, I think."

They returned to their table on the far side of the room, now cleared. The waiter immediately returned and offered more coffee, which they turned down.

While he was trying to talk them into just another half cup, Tenny joined them. She was probably forty years old, with long, streaky, dark blond hair pulled into a loose bun at the back of her neck. She shed her shawl and said to the waiter, "Bring me about a quart, Al, would you please? Shelley, I'm sorry about this. I'm sure it's all because your husband and his group are here, but how he knew about—"

At that moment a young man Jane immediately categorized as a misplaced surfer stormed into the room. His artfully streaked blond hair, California tan, and muscular physique would have been very attractive if it hadn't been for the furious scowl that distorted his features.

"Tenny!" he exclaimed, striding toward their table. "What are they doing? What are you doing about them?"

"They're demonstrating and I'm having some restorative coffee."

"But you can't let them just march around out there!"

"I can't stop them. They have a permit. HawkHunter showed it to me."