The kitchen was clearing out. Judith put both hands
to her head and gave Joe a frantic look.
“What do we do now?”
“We wait,” Joe said, sitting down at the kitchen
table. “It may look like some kind of freak accident,
but in fact they’re going to have to send the homicide
’tecs in.”
Judith was aghast. “Tonight?”
“Of course. You know the drill.” He shot her a wry
glance.
“But it’s two in the morning, and we’ve got all these
people upstairs, and—” She stopped, looked out over
the swinging doors, then lowered her voice.
“Winifred’s still at the dining-room table. She either
passed out or she’s asleep.”
But Winifred Best was wide-awake. Her head jerked
up, then she slowly rose to her feet. “Where’s Morris?”
she demanded.
“Morris?” Judith echoed in a dull voice. “Morris . . .
Mayne?”
Winifred thrust open the sliding doors and entered
the kitchen. “Of course I mean Morris Mayne. The
publicist. He must be at the hotel.” She pulled her cell
phone out of her bathrobe pocket and began to dial in
a staccato manner.
Judith felt not only exhausted but helpless. “I’ll
make coffee,” she said, and started for the sink.
“Hold it,” Joe said. “You can’t use the sink, remember?”
“Yes, I can,” Judith shot back. “We’ll plunge it. I
can’t imagine that it’s seriously plugged up. Anyway,
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we’ve got a snake. If the plunger doesn’t work, the
snake should clear the line.”
“You’re missing the point,” Joe said, his patience
sounding thin. “The sink may be a crime scene.”
“Oh.” Judith stared into the murky water. “Oh,
damn. You’re right, I should have realized that.” For
the first time she saw something bobbing listlessly
around in the sink. Judith reached out to touch it, then
quickly withdrew her hand. “Evidence,” she murmured. “It looks like my aspirin bottle. I found a pill
on the floor.”
“When I talked to Bruno the last time,” Winifred
said, clicking off the cell phone, “and he complained
of a headache, I told him I’d seen some aspirin in the
kitchen.” For a brief moment she looked as if she were
going to cry, then rallied. “Morris will be issuing a
statement. He’ll hold a press conference later for the
early newscasts.” She looked up at the schoolhouse
clock. “That will be four A.M. our time for the seven
o’clock news on the East Coast. Perhaps I should join
him at the Cascadia. I doubt I can do anything here.
Those cretins upstairs don’t need to be consoled.” With
a swish of her bathrobe, Winifred started to leave the
kitchen, but stopped abruptly. “Where is he?” she
asked in a hollow voice.
Judith was puzzled. “You mean . . . Morris? I
thought you just—”
“No!” Winifred exploded, waving a frantic hand.
“Bruno! Where did you put him?”
In the dishwasher? Judith almost said as the giddiness she’d felt earlier tried to reclaim her emotions.
But Joe intervened. “His body was removed just
minutes ago.”
SILVER SCREAM
117
“Oh.” Winifred’s shoulders slumped. “Of course.”
Without another word, she left the kitchen.
The doorbell sounded. Joe got up to answer it while
Judith gazed at the mess that still hadn’t been—
couldn’t be—cleaned up. She, too, felt like crying.
But there was no time for tears. Joe, whose face had
become so red that he looked as if he might explode,
came storming back into the kitchen.
“It’s Stone Cold Sam,” he said under his breath, and
then swore such a rapid blue streak that Judith—mercifully—could hardly understand him.
“Who,” she finally dared to inquire, “is Stone Cold
Sam?”
Joe stared at her. “You don’t remember? Stone Cold
Sam Cairo, my nemesis in the department? The
world’s biggest pain in the butt?”
“Oh!” Judith did remember. There had been several
occasions when Joe had come home from work fuming because Stone Cold Sam had interfered with an investigation, offered unwanted criticism, and generally
tried to make Joe’s life miserable.
The stocky man with the goatee and mustache
swaggered into the kitchen. Following him was a small
young woman with short blond hair sticking up in
peaks and an intimidated expression on her pretty face.
“You know, Flynn,” the man said in a rough, deep
voice, “it looks like you’ve got everything here, including the kitchen sink. Har, har.”
Joe cradled his drink and leaned against the refrigerator. The gold flecks glinted in his green eyes, but
with malice rather than mischief. “We don’t know if
we have a homicide or not,” he said without inflection.
Stone Cold Sam Cairo chuckled, an unpleasant,
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Mary Daheim
grating sound. “Yeah, I guess it always took you a
while to figure out the facts.”
Judith didn’t know whether to introduce herself or
not. Not, she decided. Any gesture of hospitality would
annoy Joe.
Cairo, however, took matters into his own hairy
hands. “Meet my new partner,” he said, dragging the
small blonde forward by the hand. “Dilys Oaks. Dilys,
this is Joe Flynn, a former colleague, now retired.
Don’t be misled by the choirboy outfit. Joe can’t sing
a lick.” Cairo glanced at Judith. “Let me guess. You’re
either a Roman empress, Joe’s wife, or Joe’s slave.
Maybe the last two combined. Har, har.”
“I’m Judith Flynn,” Judith said, as noncommittal as
Joe.
Cairo gave a faint nod. “Okay by me.” He looked at
the sink, and noted the phony spider, which swayed
grotesquely from the overhead light. “Halloween stuff,
huh? Nice touch. What was this movie guy doing, bobbing for apples?”
Joe didn’t respond, which forced Judith to speak. “I
think he was taking some aspirin. He had a headache.”
“Hunh.” Cairo steered Dilys to the sink. “What does
this tell you?”
Dilys’s smoky-gray eyes widened. “That the drain is
plugged?”
Cairo put an avuncular arm around Dilys’s narrow
shoulders. “Think a little harder. Take in the whole picture. Remember, you’re a rookie. This isn’t like your
first two cases with the drunks popping each other and
the spousal murder-suicide.”
“But,” Dilys protested in her little-girl voice, “is it a
homicide?”
SILVER SCREAM
119
Cairo removed his arm and wagged a finger at his
partner. “There you go, young lady. Is it? How can we
tell?”
“We don’t have the body,” Dilys noted. “Shouldn’t
they have waited until we got here before they removed it?”
Cairo nodded approval. “That’s right. Haste makes
waste,” he added with a disapproving glance at Joe,
who remained expressionless.
“I guess,” Dilys said slowly, “you should have told
them we were on our way. Now we’ll have to wait for
the autopsy.”
Cairo shot Dilys a sharp, wary glance. “They should
have known we were coming. But you’re right, only