From Here to Paternity

fair. He probably meant it as fiction to begin with and put that in as a sort of flourish. Like Waller did— claiming he learned the story of Francesca and what’s-his-name from the family.“
    Leon looked at her blankly. “Waller? Francesca?“
    “Never mind, Leon. I just mean lots of authors add things like that to give the fiction a greater semblance of realism. And from what Mrs. Jeffry says about his background, the book probably started out as a way of recording a fantasy that was terribly important to him. Imagine this lonely boy with no real family inventing a family for himself. Generations of family. But the fantasy became a book and the book took off and he was suddenly a figure of respect, almost idolatry. He got trapped in his own lie.“
    “Which he probably didn’t mind,“ Leon said grumpily.
    “Who would mind?“ Jane said. “We’d all like that kind of adoration. Not to mention the income that went with it.“
    “I still don’t understand how Mrs. Schmidtheiser came into it all,“ Tenny said.
    “She was a snoop,“ Jane said. “That’s all. She was rummaging around in some records and saw his name change. She made a note of it, and quite innocently mentioned it to him. In fact, I think I probably saw her do it right here in this room. She was with him at a table where he was sitting alone. I assumed she was haranguing him to come to the debate later that day. He looked taken aback and I thought it was just from the force of her personality, but it was probably shock that she’d found out his deepest, most dangerous secret. He had to silence her.“
    Lucky shook his head. “Poor Doris. She was obsessed with celebrities and never caught on that most of them didn’t like her delving into their pasts. I’ll bet most of the rest of the people on that list changed their names to something we’d recognize.“
    “I think she was showing him that list when I thought she was trying to get him interested in the debate. That’s how he knew what to look for in her cabin. But he had no way of knowing she’d dropped it and I’d picked it up.“
    “Like Mel said to us last night, being an Indian had become his lifework,“ Shelley said. “His income, the prestige he’d become dependent on even more than the money—his whole way of life was precariously balanced on a lie. And here was this strange, babbling woman who knew the lie and was shooting off her mouth about it and flinging around documents that proved it in a public dining room where anyone might hear.“
    “But wasn’t she poisoned with her own heart pills?“ the bookstore woman asked. “How did he do that?“
    “I don’t know for sure,“ Jane answered, “but I can imagine one scenario. Everybody had seen her popping those pills like they were breath mints. If he went to her condo to talk over what she’d found out, she’d have been fawning all over him. If she went to the kitchen to fix him coffee, he could have gotten the pills from her bag. And then, when the coffee was on the table, all he’d have had to do was ask for something else—cream or sugar, maybe—and she’d have run right back into the kitchen. It wouldn’t have taken a second to drop them in her cup while she was gone.“
    “And then just sit there and wait?“ Linda Moose foot asked with a shudder.
    Tenny said, “But how on earth did Uncle Bill get involved?“
    Jane looked at Mel, who had been allowed to go to the police station immediately following the reading and subsequent revelations.
    “She told Bill,“ he said. “That’s all. And Bill mentioned knowing it.“
    “When?“ Tenny asked.
    “When he went for a walk and HawkHunter caught up with him in the woods at the edge of the bunny slope. HawkHunter was probably making some new threat in regard to his lawsuit, and Bill used this shiny new weapon—the truth about HawkHunter’s real background. HawkHunter killed him then and there,“ Mel said. “It seems that HawkHunter was actually a guest here, which Jane and I didn’t know. And his condo was the closest to the spot where Mr. Smith was killed.“
    “I knew, of course,“ Tenny said, “but never had any reason to mention it. You never asked. How do you know what happened between them?“
    “From Little Feather,“ Mel said. “She’s talking as loud and fast as she can to try to save herself from going down with HawkHunter’s ship. She says the weapon was one of those indestructible plastic thermos bottles. He threw it into