From Here to Paternity Read Online Free

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