From Here to Paternity jj-6

by Jill Churchill

  Jane bathed hurriedly and dressed in the warm clothes she'd brought along — thermal underwear, heavy socks, corduroy slacks, and a flannel shirt with a turtleneck underneath. "I'm a mountain woman, Willard," she said, giving him a gentle prod with her toe. "An overstuffed, but stylish, yuppie mountain woman."

  Williard heaved himself to his feet and ambled along with her as she explored the rest of the house. First she actually entered the dreaded kitchen, found some gourmet coffee Shelley had left, and started the coffeemaker. Then she donned coat, gloves, and boots and took the big dog outside. While he visited a patch of ground under a trio of pines where the snow was only halfway up his legs instead of clear to his belly, she stood sucking in lungfuls of thin, cold, snow-and-woods-scented air. It smelled so good she wished she could drink it. Or warm it up and bathe in it.

  She took Willard back in, fed him from the bag of his dry food she'd brought along, and gave him a big bowl of water. By that time her coffee was done and she poured a huge mug before dialing Shelley's number. Shelley's first words were, "Did the view knock your socks off when you woke up?"

  "I'll say!"

  "I was afraid you might close the curtains before you went to sleep and ruin the surprise. I'll be right over."

  She was there in a matter of moments, dressed in an aqua ski outfit that made her eyes look the same color, even though Jane knew perfectly well it was an illusion. Shelley was great at fashion illusions.

  "I've been exploring," Jane said. "And I'm amazed. This is really some place you could just move into and live in. There are jigsaw puzzles in the cabinets over there. And extra blankets and pillows and even a vacuum and cleaning supplies, besides the extra boots and mittens, in the closet by the front door." She paused warily. "This doesn't mean anybody expects me to clean, does it?"

  "No. But normally there isn't any daily maid service. The units are only cleaned thoroughly between guests. Of course, we're an exception because they're trying to sell us on the place and we're getting the VIP treatment."

  "I'd guess, though, that the real cream in the fridge is your doing."

  Just then the girls stumbled into the living room, sleep-stupid but eager. "Mom! Isn't this place great?" Katie asked, running a set of mauve-taloned fingers through her tangled hair.

  Shelley's daughter, Denise, forgot for a moment that she was a teenager and not only sat down next to her mother, but leaned into a hug.

  "It's wonderful, Katie. What are you girls doing today? Trying out for parts in a horror movie?"

  "Huh?"

  "Your fingernails," Jane explained.

  Katie held her hands out and stared at them as if they didn't belong to her. "Euuw, gross! Fungus city!"

  "We met this ski instructor yesterday—" Denise said.

  They both squealed in ecstasy.

  "He said he'd give us a lesson if we'd come over there," Katie continued.

  "Where is over there?" Jane asked.

  "Down the road. We take the shuttle. Nobody even has to drive us. We just need lift tickets and money for ski rental and boots and poles and lunch—"

  "About ten dollars, then?" Jane asked.

  "Ten dollars! Mom!"

  Shelley intervened. "Girls, everything you want to do here is free and there's lots to do. Starting with breakfast. Go get dressed and you can come down to the lodge with us." When they'd gone, she said, "I saw the ski instructor in question yesterday. He's a thirty-five-year-old lech."

  "His age and 'lechiness' weren't even an issue. If Katie's going to break any limbs, she's going to have to find a cheaper way to do it. I was glancing at some ads in the airport while Mel was looking around for what the airline had done with Willard. The prices for lift tickets and equipment rental were astonishing. Oh, Shelley, do we really ever have to go home?" She strolled over to the living room windows and gazed out. "This place is beautiful."

  "It is, isn't it?"

  Jane drew back, startled. "Oh, it's a cat! I thought it was a big snowball come to life!" A large white cat was sitting on the woodpile at the end of the deck outside. It turned and stared, green-eyed and smug, at Jane for moment, then hopped over the rail and out of sight.

  There was a skier sweeping gracefully down the slight incline exposed between the trees. The blue sky, the green-black pines, the shimmering brilliance of the snow, and the skier's crimson pants and jacket created a breathtaking palette of color. As Jane watched, the skier came to a stop, put his (or was it a woman's?) hands on hips for a minute, then held up a pair of binoculars and took a look around.

  "It reminds me of Switzerland," Jane said. "My sister, Marty, and I went to a boarding school there once for a semester. Of course, we were just dumb kids and didn't care about the scenery — only about the ski instructors, come to think of it. But even we came out of our haze of hormones once in a while and noticed that it was spectacular."

  "What were you two doing in a boarding school? I thought your parents always took you with them on their postings."

  "They did, but my dad was on a stint in some particularly unstable little Balkan country — Holnagrad. Hole in the Ground, we used to call it."

  "Holnagrad!" Shelley exclaimed.

  "What? You've heard of it?"

  "Just yesterday. That's where the historical-society people here are from. Well, not exactly directly from, but their ancestors were."

  "The historical — oh, Abe Lincoln and crowd. Are the girls making any progress? I'm starving."

  After trying unsuccessfully to hurry their daughters, Shelley and Jane gave up waiting and went ahead. Although it was some distance to the lodge by road, there was a shoveled path running behind the cabins and alongside a crystal-clear stream. The path cut directly through the woods and came out behind the main building. Jane had only seen the front entrance the evening before and was astonished that daylight revealed a very large, sprawling building. The exterior was rough, of large logs and cedar shingles, but banks of spotless windows glittered in the sunlight. Rustic-chic, Jane would have called it if forced to sum up the style.

  "There are all sorts of meeting rooms in that wing. There's even computer hookups, modems, and a mini-travel-agency service," Shelley said, acting the tour guide. "At the end is a really elegant restaurant that overlooks the lake this little stream runs into. In the central section there's an indoor pool, an outdoor pool for summer use, saunas, exercise rooms — no, don't panic, nobody's going to make you exercise — a casual restaurant, where we're headed, and a beauty shop. The wing that goes down the hill in stair-step fashion — you can't see much of it from here — has shops, game rooms, a library and a bookstore and I don't know what all else."

  They entered through a door by the outside pool, passed alongside the indoor pool, where a few alarmingly healthy individuals were doing morning laps, and emerged into the central lobby just as Mel and the boys entered from the front.

  "Jane! You're up," Mel said, surprised. "I thought you'd want to sleep in."

  Her sons, Mike the senior in high school and Todd the middle schooler, greeted her and asked for money for the video games. John Nowack, a year younger than Todd, nagged his mother for the same.

  "You're not eating breakfast?" Jane asked in amazement. To her, a real breakfast was one of the primary reasons for going on vacation. Naturally, human beings who preferred cold, sugared cereals that pretended to be fun and had never cooked bacon in the morning for themselves wouldn't value the experience quite as much.

  "Aw, Mom, we ate hours ago!"

  Mel explained that this meant Twinkies and a gallon of milk fifteen minutes earlier. "Jane, do you mind if I take Mike skiing today?"

  "I'd be glad for you to." He and her son had always had a cordial, if slightly uneasy, relationship. "It's everybody's vacation to do whatever they like. Well, except for Katie and Denise, who would like to spend a thousand dollars a day and have no restrictions at all."

  "As long as you put it that way, I'll pass on breakfast so we can get going right away."<
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  Mel went off to find Mike as Shelley and Jane went into the restaurant. There was a breakfast buffet with every imaginable food, including quite a few Jane couldn't identify but suspected were fruits more prized for their exotic origins than for their taste. A handsome, dark-haired young man who looked like an American Indian stood at the end of the buffet table, making omelets to each diner's specifications. Jane indulged herself in an omelet that involved cheese, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, and crumbled bacon. "I'm trying for a cholesterol prize," she told Shelley as she dug in. "There's a bowl of butter over there that I'm going to slather on myself when I'm through eating."

  Shelley, who had chosen sausages and corn fritters with a thick coating of powdered sugar, smiled and said, "Just think, only a few hours until lunch. At least we're uphill from Chicago. We can tuck in our arms and legs and somebody can just roll us home."

  They were sitting back, having a second cup of coffee each, when a man approached their table. He was tall, thin, in his sixties, and had the apricot-colored hair that real redheads get when they start going gray. "Excuse me, is either of you ladies Mrs. Nowack?"

  "I am," Shelley answered.

  "I have a message for you," he said, handing her a slip of paper on hotel stationery.

  Shelley glanced at it. "Just my husband saying where he'll be for the morning. Thanks very much. Are you a hotel employee?"

  The man laughed, showing a lot of unusually good teeth. "An old geezer like me? No, I'm retired, I'm glad to say. I'm a guest. I was just coming by the front desk and poor Tenny looked so harassed at trying to get all the accountants checked out that I asked if there was anything I could do to help her. Those people check over their bills very carefully, let me tell you. She was looking for you, so I volunteered to find you."

  "How nice of you, Mr…?"

  "Lucky Lucke. Dr. Ronald Lucke, in my previous downtrodden life. But everybody calls me Lucky."

  "Will you join us for a bit, Lucky? I'm Shelley, and this is my friend Jane Jeffry. How are you enjoying your stay here?" she asked, answering Jane's silent question as to why Shelley was "taking up" with strangers. She was being the wife of a potential investor.

  "It's a wonderful place. Lots of space for our meetings. Terrific food."

  "Don't you mind having to go elsewhere to ski?"

  "Not me. They've got that little bunny slope out back and that's all the skiing I'd ever want. I've never broken a bone in my life and I don't intend to start now."

  "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."

  Chapter 3

  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."