"You mean the first one?" the elderly bookstore lady said.
"I guess so. I didn't know he wrote another."
"Oh, yes. The publisher tried to cash in on the success of I, HawkHunter and got him to write another. It was a dismal flop. Written too fast, with not much more to say. Just a careless rehash of the best-seller, really. Publishers never learn. It was remaindered about as fast as it was printed."
"My, but you know a lot about it."
"I had a chain of small independent bookstores in Denver back then. I retired up here and run this one just to keep my hand in. This is the last copy until I get another order," she added, taking a paperback copy from the rack to the left of the counter.
"I'm surprised you carry his book here."
"'Why is that?"
"Well, he's not exactly a friend of the resort."
"Oh, the Smiths wouldn't think of interfering in my stock. That's our agreement. And he is a celebrity. I don't think they care anyway. Half the people who have bought copies since yesterday thought the demonstration was some kind of free entertainment."
Jane was back in her spot in front of the resort when the next shuttle arrived. She was relieved to see Katie and Denise on board, not least of all because she was no longer in the fading sunshine and it was getting uncomfortably cold. They got off the shuttle urging her to look at their purchases — a lot of hair paraphernalia, primarily. "Come on, girls, I want to go back to the cabin," Jane told them.
"Were you waiting for us?" Katie asked suspiciously.
"I'm afraid so. Let's go. I'll explain why on the way."
Jane gave them an even more abbreviated version of what she'd told Mike. "Now, I don't want to frighten you. There's no need to be worried. As long as you're in our cabin with the doors locked or in the lodge, there's no question that you're entirely safe. And we're all probably safe anyplace else, too. But just to be real sure, I don't want you going back and forth without an adult."
"Oh, Mom! We're not babies!" Katie said. But Jane recognized this as an obligatory whine. Much the teenage equivalent of the perfect housekeeper who automatically laments what a mess the house is when visitors come.
"I guess you've been eating all afternoon?" she asked, to change the subject as they started up the road. "There's a dance here tonight, but it isn't until eight o'clock. I thought we might rest for a while, maybe nibble some of the stuff we've got at the cabin, then come down here for dinner."
"What kind of dance?" Denise asked.
"A line dance, the poster said. Whatever that is."
The girls groaned in unison.
"That bad?" Jane asked. "We'll give it a try anyhow. Nobody from home is around to know. And it might be fun. And there might be some interesting boys there."
The girls considered this in silence for the rest of the way.
Shelley was sound asleep when they got back. The girls disappeared into their own room and closed the door. Jane started a pot of coffee and tidied up the living room. While doing so, she discovered to her annoyance that she still had Doris Schmidtheiser's file folder. She'd have to remember to give it to Lucky, who could return it to Doris's family or offer it to a member of the Holnagrad Society who might want to continue her research. Jane sat down and took the papers out, mildly curious. They were still in a jumble, just as they had been when she'd picked them up and stuffed them in the folder. She sorted them into stacks of similar-looking documents.
Most of it didn't make any sense at all to her. There were copies of old census reports which were interesting in a purely historical sense. She liked the look of the old-fashioned handwriting and found the sizes of the families on the sheets interesting, if appalling. Most of the families seemed to have a child every two years like clockwork. Here and there was a three-year gap, which Jane took to indicate a miscarriage or a stillborn baby. Many of the women were in their forties and still had an infant around, as well as children as old as the early twenties. Jane tried for a moment to imagine herself with a tiny baby and a couple more still to come, and shuddered at the thought.
There were also a great many middle-aged spinsters and bachelors living with elderly parents, sometimes several in a family. It was hard to realize that marriage hadn't always been the norm. A man who couldn't support a family simply didn't marry. And a woman who never got a proposal had no alternative but to stay at home forever. Jane found herself studying these long-dead families and imagining their lives. It was surprising how much you could tell about a different way of life just from names, ages, and the other seemingly impersonal data on the forms. On one sheet, depicting a New York neighborhood at the turn of the century, not a single adult listed his or her place of birth as anywhere in the United States. On a single street there were Rileys, O'Callahans, Kolenskis, Kleinschmids, McSheas, Pfeiffers, and Joneses. What a rich jumble of languages one must have heard spoken along the sidewalks there!
After a bit, Jane folded up the census reports and put them in a pile, then began looking over the rest of the contents of the file. There were a lot of newspaper clippings, some originals protected in plastic sleeves, some photocopies. Most had to do with the Romanovs. One very old one was a small official portrait of Tsar Nicholas and a cousin Sergei not long before the Tsar had abdicated, according to the text of the article, which was from a London newspaper. Perhaps this man was the father of the Gregor Roman that Doris had followed. There was a much larger duplicate of this picture in the folder as well. It was also much clearer — apparently a copy of the actual photograph. On the back was a handwritten notation of where and when the photo had been taken, and the name of a person in Holnagrad. Presumably this was who had supplied it to Doris.
Jane set the clippings on the pile as well. All the rest of the material was handwritten and typed notes. Many of these had to do with Gregory Smith of Colorado. One sheet, a handwritten one, was a sort of chart. It was labeled "Sheepshead Bay Court Records", with a long film number and three columns. Two names were starred with a red pen:
*Roman G.
Book B
Page 16
Dolman, T.
Book B
Page 601
*Smith, N. D.
Book D
Page 493
Smith, A. C.
Book G
Page 83
Rutheven
,?
Book M
Page 500
Wiley, J.
Book O
Page 4
Aulkunder
, J.
Book Y
Page 342
Sellinger
, Q
Book Y
Page 770
Schellberger
,?
Book Z
Page 113
Harmon, D.
Book AA
Page 612
What on earth was this all about? Jane wondered. Were all these people somehow connected with Gregory Smith? At least in Doris's mind they must have been. The references must have to do with documents, but what kind of documents? The list would surely mean something to somebody who knew how to translate it.
Satisfied that she'd tidied up the file, Jane slipped everything back into the folder and put it on the counter between the kitchen and the dining area. She must remember to give it to Lucky so that it could go to someone to whom it would mean something. She poured herself a cup of coffee, took it back to the living room, and stretched out on one of the sofas to skim through her new copy of I, HawkHunter.
That was where Shelley found her an hour later, sound asleep with the book over her face like a tent.