"No, Doris was widowed as a young woman and only had one son, and he isn't remotely interested. I'll probably put it into the Society's library for the time being. That's what I'm doing with the rest of the materials she had with her. And her son has said he'll box up all her research at home and send it on to me as well."
"Poor thing," Shelley said. "To think of all her work just being packed away in boxes like that."
"Oh, it'll be put to use, I'm sure. There's a slightly younger woman in the Society who's worked with her and will probably carry on," Lucky said. "Which may be a mixed blessing."
"Carry on with the Tsar research, you mean?" Jane asked.
"Oh, no, that's not what I was referring to. No. Doris was a professional genealogist. Did a lot of work for other people. Earned a decent living at it. In fact, she moved to Salt Lake City to be able to use the Mormon library without having to wait for films to arrive in Cleveland, where she used to live."
"Why do you say that it's a mixed blessing for someone to carry on her work?" Jane asked.
"I shouldn't tell tales out of school," Lucky replied with mock primness.
"They're the best kind of tales," Shelley assured him. "Do lots of people hire genealogists instead of looking things up themselves?"
"Mobs. Sometimes a person has an assignment from Great-Aunt Maud, who wants the work done, but the person the job is assigned to isn't really interested and would rather pay than do it himself. It's very tedious sometimes, reading through reels and reels of film in the hope of spotting just one familiar name. And then, people who really like doing the work themselves often don't have all the time they need for it, and they'll farm out specific areas of their research to a professional. But Doris — well, Doris wasn't always as 'disinterested' as she might have been."
"You're saying she was a snoop?" Mel surmised. He'd been quietly watching the dancing and hadn't looked like he was even listening to the conversation until now.
Lucky nodded. "Doris was a celebrity hound, to put it bluntly. Years ago she was invited to do a little local talk show, and as a splashy way of showing off, she hunted down a bunch of information on the host of the show and surprised him by tracing his family back to George the Third or somebody. It was a huge hit, word got around, and she got invited to do other shows. It was like getting a taste of blood. She discovered the celebrities have lots of money and not much time, but are often obsessively interested in their own background. She'd actually solicited customers that way, which is frowned on in genealogical circles."
"You mean she'd look up stuff about them, show it to them, and ask if they wanted more, instead of waiting for them to come to her?" Shelley asked.
"Exactly. And it usually worked. The payoff, of course, was that she got to be on first-name terms with famous people, which she loved. The downside of it was, sometimes she'd find stuff they weren't happy to know — illegitimacy and such — or much more often she'd prove they sprang from very common stock. Of course, almost all of us do, but lots of famous people don't like hearing that. Only politicians bother to pretend they like being common. Everybody else secretly wants to be able to brag that they are a cousin of Queen Elizabeth or Albert Einstein."
Jane's mind was clicking along. "Lucky, I hate to ask this, but I must. If she had found out something horrible about someone—"
Mel put his hand on her knee warningly.
"Blackmail!" Shelley breathed.
"I was trying to come up with a more tactful term," Jane chided her.
Mel was shaking his head as if to say, I tried to head off this discussion.
Lucky was also shaking his head. "Absolutely not! Not in a million years. The few people who were insulted or angry about her information, and said so, devastated her. She had no judgment about what would offend people, but she positively bristled with moral fiber. She would have been shocked to the core at the very thought of blackmail."
"You're quite certain?" Jane asked.
"I'd literally stake my life on it. God knows Doris had a lot of flaws, but greed for money wasn't one of them. Greed for attention, or for professional recognition, yes. But not for money. In fact, the more rich and famous a client was, the less she'd charge for her work. It was the connection to celebrity that really intoxicated her."
"Speaking of intoxication, would anybody else like a drink?" Mel asked.
Chapter 18
When the band finally took a break, lowering the noise level, Jane turned to Shelley and asked, "Do you think we can believe him? Lucky, I mean."
Lucky's wife had collected him a few minutes before.
"I think we have to," Shelley said with regret.
"But blackmail would be a nice way of explaining Doris's death."
"I know, but he was so adamant and he knew her very well for years and years. And it's not as if he exactly minded finding fault with her. I think if blackmail was even the most remote possibility, he'd have said so."
"I'm afraid I agree," Jane said reluctantly. "Phooey."
"Besides, it wouldn't connect with Bill Smith's death, even if it were the case."
Jane nodded. "There's Tenny. She's looking for somebody."
Tenny glanced toward them and waved.
"Us, apparently," Shelley said. "I wish she didn't feel like she had to go out of her way to be friendly to us at such a hard time in her own life."
Tenny was weaving her way through the crowd toward them and sat down heavily in the chair Lucky had vacated when she finally reached them. "What a mob!" she said.
"It's a nice turnout," Shelley said. "How are you and your aunt getting along?"
"Fine. Really. Just fine. I'm starting to think Uncle Bill had the right idea. If you force yourself to pretend someone isn't really gone, pretty soon you start believing it. This is about the best crowd we've had for a dance all winter," she added, glancing toward the lines at the cash bars in a professional manner and no doubt doing a little mental calculation of profits. "We might have to try having a second dance night in the middle of the week, too. We used to have bingo games on Wednesday and they were very popular, but the law came down on us."
"Why?" Shelley asked.
"Oh, the gambling laws in Colorado are strict. Of course, we were pretty stupid about it and had no idea anybody really considered bingo as gambling, so we blithely went along for two years with the games until somebody complained."
"But there's a state lottery," Shelley said. "I saw the tickets for sale at the airport."
"Yes, a state lottery, and some nonprofit organizations can play bingo to raise funds. Churches and fraternal organizations and things like that. But we didn't qualify. It's a shame. There could be gigantic profits on real gambling if it was allowed. People who normally wouldn't even buy a lottery ticket at home will throw away all kinds of money when they're on vacation. Anyway, I just wanted to say hello and see how you're all getting along."
"Wonderfully well," Shelley said. "But you mustn't worry about us. Is there anything we can do for you?"
"No, not really. We're doing fine. At least Aunt Joanna and I are. Pete's in a terrible snit, though."
"Why is that?" Jane asked bluntly.
"Because, as it turns out, I'm cotrustee with Aunt Joanna of Bill's estate. I was surprised, but Pete was horrified. He's gone off in a huff someplace."
"I don't mean to be grim, but are you sure he went off willingly?" Shelley said, tactfully skimming the fact that Tenny had originally thought her uncle Bill had departed of his own volition.
"Yes, I saw him drive off. In fact, he was yelling out the window at me as he went that he was going to find his own lawyer and get me replaced. Don't worry. I shouldn't have mentioned it. He'll cool off and come back. And if he does follow through and succeed in getting rid of me, which he can't, I'd be relieved."
"I talked to my husband very briefly," Shelley said, "and shared your concern about selling with a provision that your aunt could stay here, and he said it would be a breeze. In fact—"
Jane excused herself, feeling that this was a business discussion that wasn't any of her business. She was also wondering what had become of Mel. The last she'd seen of him, he'd volunteered to look for Katie and Denise in the crowd, just to make sure they were still safe and sound. She found him with two very attractive young women who had him more or less pinned in a corner. To give him credit, he didn't look too happy with the arrangement.