several fragments of writing. “There are some notes
about that, but they’re cryptic. Here.” She handed the
page to Judith.
B’s health, came first, written in an elegant if not
very legible hand, presumably by Vito. “How do you
read penmanship like this?”
Renie shrugged. “It’s all those years I’ve spent reading CEOs’ scribbles. Of course most of those people
never got past the block-printing stage. They thought
cursive meant cussing.”
“HPB,” Judith read aloud. “High blood pressure?”
Renie nodded. “Probably.”
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“Ulcer . . . ulcer . . . ulcer. That’s clear enough.
So’s colitis. What’s this? C? It’s underlined twice.
Then it says treatment. Cancer?”
“I couldn’t tell,” Renie said. “Maybe the C is for colitis.”
“Do you remember a drug called thalidomide?”
“Sure,” Renie replied. “Years ago, it was prescribed
as a sleeping pill for pregnant women in Europe. Unfortunately, it caused horrendous birth defects.”
“True,” Judith agreed, “but when we were in Good
Cheer Hospital, I overheard a doctor and a nurse talking about thalidomide. It sounded as if it was being
used for cancer patients.”
Renie looked blank. “I don’t remember that. Maybe
you heard it after I’d been released from the hospital.
You had to stay a few days longer.”
“How could I forget?” Judith said with a grimace,
then grew silent again. “High blood pressure could
have killed Bruno. But wouldn’t the ME be able to
tell?”
“You’d think so.”
Setting the sheet of paper down on the coffee table,
Judith heaved a big sigh. “If only we could be sure that
Bruno was murdered.”
Renie looked askance. “Aren’t you being kind of
bloodthirsty, coz?”
“No, I’m being realistic,” Judith retorted. “I can’t
bear to think that Joe and I may be at fault for Bruno’s
death. It’s not just the possibility of a lawsuit, it’s the
moral implications. If we’re to blame, I’ll feel the most
awful guilt for the rest of my life.”
Renie’s face hardened. “What about that stupid spider over the sink? Who put it there? Why? Was it just
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a prank to scare Bruno? Did it scare him into passing
out in the sink?”
Judith stared at Renie. “How odd—I never thought
about that. I mean, first there was the real spider on the
back porch, then the spider in his bed—he didn’t pass
out, by the way— and the one over the sink. Why
would that one have more of an effect on Bruno than
the others?”
“Maybe,” Renie reasoned, “because Bruno was already distraught. Wasn’t a spider a sign of bad luck for
him? And hadn’t he just had the worst luck of his career?”
“True,” Judith allowed in a thoughtful voice. “Who
put those spiders in the bed and in the kitchen? What,”
she went on, her voice rising as she stood up from her
perch on the sofa, “if there are more spiders somewhere?”
“Good point,” Renie remarked. “Have you looked?”
“No,” Judith said, “but Joe searched the guest
rooms. Still, it’s odd that there weren’t more than two.
If you wanted to scare somebody with a fake bug over
the course of a weekend, wouldn’t you bring along,
say, a half dozen?”
“I would,” Renie said. “Better safe than sorry.” She
turned as Joe and Bill entered the living room.
“Bill made a chart,” Joe said. “It shows all the relationships between the guests and their possible motives.”
Sure enough, Bill held up a sheet of butcher’s paper.
He had used different colored pens, made a legend in
one corner, and set down at least a dozen footnotes in
the other. It was so elaborate that it resembled a diagram of the solar system. Or Einstein’s theory of rela- 214
Mary Daheim
tivity. As far as Judith could see, it was equally hard to
decipher.
“Goodness,” she said for lack of anything more positive. “Does it . . . make sense?”
“It does to Bill,” Joe replied.
“Of course,” Renie murmured.
Bill revealed a long bamboo skewer to use as a
“Like the sun,” Judith said softly.
Apparently, Bill didn’t hear her. “This smaller circle
closest to Bruno is Winifred Best. Note the lines coming from her. Can you read my handwriting?”
“Can I ever?” Renie remarked. “By the way,” she
said in an aside to Judith and Joe, “he can’t spell.”
Bill ignored his wife. “One line is for loyalty, another is for dependence, a third is for—”
“What’s that thing that looks like a bug?” Renie interrupted.
“It’s a bug,” Bill responded, smacking the creature
with his hand. He paused to use a handkerchief, wiping the victim off his palm.
“Not a spider,” Judith noted.
“The spider’s over here.” Bill pointed to what
looked like an asterisk. “Source unknown. To get back
to Winifred—”
The phone rang. Judith went to the small cherrywood table and picked up the receiver. “It’s for you,”
she said to Joe.
The others remained silent while Joe took the call.
His expression changed from mild interest to surprise.
“No kidding? That’s . . . a shame. Sure, let me know.”
He hung up.
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215
“Who was that?” Judith inquired.
“Dilys,” Joe replied, looking preoccupied. “Stone
Cold Sam Cairo is in Norway General Hospital with a
heart attack.”
“Oh, no!” Judith exclaimed. “How serious is it?”
“Serious enough, I guess,” Joe said, trying to look
sympathetic but not succeeding very well. “Dilys is
waiting to hear who’ll take over the case with her until
he recovers.”
“I was wondering why we haven’t heard from
downtown,” Judith said. “I thought that Cairo and
Dilys had taken the day off. At least the police haven’t
given up. I mean, they must still believe that Bruno
could have been murdered.”
“It’s high profile,” Joe said. “They have to stay on it,
or they could get sued, too.”
“Don’t mention it.” Judith nodded at Bill. “Go ahead,
what else have you attached to Winifred’s circle?”
“The possibility of a love affair,” Bill replied, “or
her wish to have one with Bruno. Men and women
who work so closely together—especially in the Hollywood atmosphere where sex is so prevalent in every
phase of life. Often, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just
casual sex. But sometimes it can be more, at least for
one of the parties involved.”
“Say,” Judith put in, “what’s Bruno’s marital track
record? Was he married to anyone besides the starlet
who’s now an emir’s wife in Dubai?”
The others looked blank. Finally, Renie spoke.
“Didn’t Winifred say Bruno’s kids were of college
age? He must have married—what was her name?”
Judith thought hard. “Tamara . . . no, Taryn. Taryn
McGuire.”
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Renie gave a brief nod. “Bruno must have married
Taryn at least twenty years ago. It’s hard to imagine
that he never married anyone else. I saw on one of
those discarded statements that he turned fifty-three
this year. Surely he couldn’t be the only man in Hollywood who had just one wife.”
“True,” Judith remarked. “But Winifred didn’t mention any other family except the two children. Let’s
face it, we don’t know much about his background.
Except,” she continued with a wag of her finger, “he
was related to the C. Douglas Carp who wrote The
Gasman novel.”
“Ah.” Bill glanced at Renie. “I need an orange pen.”
Dutifully, Renie reached into the box of markers on
the coffee table and handed her husband the object of
his desire.
Bill drew a rectangle on the chart. It could have
been a book—or a box of cereal. “That’s interesting,”
he noted. “Despite the fact that the novel wasn’t very
good, Bruno was deeply attached to it. Which suggests
he was deeply attached to the author, maybe more so
than to the book.”
Joe gave Bill an approving nod. “You may be onto
Judith was peering at what looked like a stick figure
wearing a big hat. Or maybe it was a halo. “What’s
that?” she asked.
Bill examined the clumsy sketch. “That’s the alien
suspect. See, it’s from outer space.”
“So’s Bill,” Renie murmured. “He can’t draw, either.”
“I don’t understand,” Judith admitted.
Bill tapped the figure twice. “We can’t exclude an
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217
outsider. If you and Joe were in the basement when
Bruno died, he could have let someone in, someone
you never saw and don’t even know exists. Thus, the
alien suspect.”
“That’s not a bad theory,” Joe remarked. “I tell you,
Billy Boy, you may be going somewhere with this chart.”
“Speaking of going,” Renie said with a bored expression, “could we go on to something else?”
“No,” Judith responded. “I think Bill has a very important point.” She ignored her cousin, who was using
her hands to make a conical steeple over Bill’s head.
“Why don’t I call one of my buddies with the library
system and ask about The Gasman?”
“Why?” Joe countered. “You said yourself you
didn’t remember anything about it.”
“But I’m not eighty-five years old,” Judith said, seeing Sweetums wander into the living room. “Delia
Cosgrove is. She might recall something. Delia’s been
retired for years, but she’s still very sharp. I ran into
her last spring at the annual library tea.”
“Forget Delia,” Renie said with a curious expression. “Call my mother.”
Bill looked askance. “Your mother?”
“Yes,” Renie replied with a touch of defiance. “My
father read all sorts of books, including some oddities
nobody else probably ever heard of. Mom might remember.”
Bill sucked in his breath. “I’ve gone to a lot of work
here.”
Judith started to speak, but Renie interrupted. “I’m
going to call my mother right now.” She picked up the
phone and dialed as Sweetums sashayed over to Bill
and sniffed the corner of his chart.
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“Why don’t we watch the end of the football
game?” Bill muttered. “We might as well. This is
going to take a long time.”
“The game’s over,” Joe said as the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it.”
Without any sense of optimism, Judith stood next to
Renie as Aunt Deb picked up the phone on the first
ring.
“Hi, Mom,” Renie began. “I’ve got a question for
you . . . Well, yes, of course I want to know how you
are, but I talked to you this morning for at least twenty
minutes and . . . No kidding? How did your big toe get
stuck in the drain? . . . Thank goodness for Mrs. Parker
stopping by . . . I didn’t realize Auntie Vance and
Uncle Vince were coming down from the island . . .
No, I won’t tell Aunt Gertrude . . . Yes, I know how she
and Auntie Vance like to argue . . . No, I realize you
aren’t one to quarrel . . . Yes, Aunt Gertrude can be a
trial sometimes. You’re very patient with her . . . I’m
aware that she thinks she’s the one who’s being patient
with you . . . Certainly Auntie Vance can have a rough
tongue . . . She told you to put your big toe where? . . .
Well, that is kind of coarse, but you know what Auntie
Vance is like . . .”
Judith was distracted by the return of Joe with three
deliverymen carrying several cartons and portable
heating units. “Oh, dear,” she sighed. “I forgot about
the caterers.”
“I’ll handle it,” Joe said grimly.
As the deliverymen began to unload the order onto
the buffet, Renie eyed the food with longing. “I know
it’s foggy,” she said into the phone. “Yes, I’ll cover all
my orifices when I go outside so that the damp won’t
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harm me . . . Of course I’m wearing sturdy shoes.” She
glanced down at her flimsy brown flats. “No, this pair
doesn’t lace up to my ankles. I haven’t worn those oxfords since I was twelve . . .”
Judith’s attention drifted to the buffet, where Joe
was ripping open boxes and dumping out heated bags.
The deliverymen had already skittered out of the house
after presenting an embarrassingly large bill.
Joe emptied a box of Wienie Wizards, dropping almost all of them on the floor. They bounced, but not
very high.
“Wait!” Judith cried. “Let me do that. You’re angry,
and you’re making a mess.”
Joe’s jaw jutted. “Do you know what all this crap
cost?”
“No, and I don’t want to know,” Judith shot back.
“Not now. Let me call Arlene on my cell phone and see
if she wants any of this food before you destroy it.”
She started to get her purse from the kitchen
when she heard the sound of hurrying feet on the
stairs. “I smell Wienie Wizards!” cried Ellie Linn.
“Yum, yum!”
In a flurry, Judith scooped the hot dogs off the floor
and dumped them into a crystal bowl. “They’re nice
and warm. Be our guest.”
“I already am.” Ellie giggled, her dark eyes shining
with delight. “Mmm . . . my faves!” She immediately
pitched in, grabbing four wieners and four buns at
once.
Finally reaching the kitchen, Judith dialed Arlene’s
number.
“What food?” Arlene asked in a puzzled voice.
Judith reminded her neighbor about the large order
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from the caterer. “I thought you wanted some of it for
your family dinner tonight.”
“What family?” Arlene asked. “They canceled.
They all decided to stay home because of Halloween.”
“Rats!” Judith muttered. “Okay, sorry to bother
you.”
“Why don’t you freeze it?” Arlene suggested.
“Frankly,” Judith said, “we’re running out of room
in the freezer. But you’re right, I’ll try to squeeze in
some of the items that won’t keep.”
By the time she returned to the living room, Renie
was finally hanging up the phone. Ellie Linn had disappeared, apparently going upstairs to savor her Wienie Wizards.
“Guess what?” Renie said, looking dazed.
Bill and Joe barely looked up from their places on
the matching sofas. The TV screen showed Nazi planes
swooping over England. Bill had one eye on the set
and the other on his chart, which was spread out over
the coffee table. Sweetums was weaving in and out between his ankles, the cat’s great plume of a tail swishing back and forth.
“Go away,” Bill snarled under his breath, “or I’ll
turn you into cat chowder.”
“What is it?” Judith asked of Renie.
Bill spoke up before his wife could answer. “Get
this damned cat out of here. And I could use a purple
pen.”
Renie swooped down, grabbed Sweetums, and
made a face at Bill. “The marker pens are under your
chart, Galileo.” She moved away, unceremoniously
dumping Sweetums near the entry hall.
“My mother actually read The Gasman, ” Renie de- SILVER SCREAM
221
clared. “So, of course, did my father. He made her read
it because he insisted it was a quick way to learn the
history of the world.”
“You’re kidding!” Judith cried.
Joe hit the mute button on the TV’s remote control;
Bill didn’t take his eyes off the screen.
“Does Aunt Deb remember anything about the
book?” Judith asked, aware that her aunt’s memory
was much keener than her mother’s.
“Well . . .” Renie made a face. “She admits she
skimmed it. My dad enjoyed it because there were
some obscure facts he learned and some misconceptions he had that the book cleared up. I gather C. Douglas Carp meticulously researched his material.
Anyway, that sort of thing appealed to Dad. Mom
didn’t give a hoot, and thought the story itself was