From Here to Paternity

Maybe he felt that if he only had another six months or whatever, he could prove the graves were up there. Or prove there was something illegal about the original land grant.“
    Shelley nodded, but without enthusiasm. “I guess that’s possible.“
    The phone rang. “Hi, Mel,“ Jane said after she’d answered it.
    “Are we going to dinner and the big dance? Or is it canceled because of Bill’s death?“
    “Oh, I’m sure Joanna has insisted that it not be canceled. Have you managed to learn anything more?“
    “A few useless bits and pieces. We’ll talk about it at dinner, okay? Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?“
    “Sure,“ she said, glancing in a nearby mirror at her nap-crumpled hair and thinking, No way !
    “Say, Janey, I hate to mention this, but I’m starting to wonder if this thin air is doing something to Mike’s brain. When he came in this afternoon, he suddenly burst into laughter for no reason at all, then wouldn’t explain it.“
    “What were you doing when he came in?“ Jane asked, suspicious.
    “Just looking around on the floor of the closet for a missing sock. Why?“
    “You weren’t humming anything, were you?“ She giggled. “Never mind. I’ll explain later.“
    She hung up. “Shelley, talk fast. Mel’s on his way over. Girls!“ she yelled down the hallway. “We’re leaving in a few minutes. Get ready.“
    “Okay,“ Shelley said, garnering up cups and saucers and setting them in the sink. “The third possibility, which I mention only for form’s sake, is that the death or deaths have nothing to do with anything we know about.“
    “A ripe field of inquiry,“ Jane said. “Are we finally through getting ready to think?“
    “I believe so.“
    “So when do we do the real thinking?“
    “Oh,“ Shelley said airily, “we’ll let our collective subconscious work on that while we eat dinner. First dibs on the bathroom.“

Chapter 17

    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