By five to twelve, none of the guests had returned.
Their absence made Judith nervous, but accepting it
as a sign from heaven, she headed off to St. Fabiola’s. The church was near the civic center, and was
a half century newer than Our Lady, Star of the Sea.
The amber brick edifice was only a few minutes’
drive from Hillside Manor. At the bottom of Heraldsgate Hill on a quiet Sunday morning, traffic was
light. Most of the businesses were closed, and the
few that were open had just unlocked their doors to
customers.
Judith arrived just after Mass had started, so she sat
in a pew near the back. The lector was reading the first
epistle when there was a commotion behind her.
Discreetly, she turned to look. At the side entrance,
an elderly usher was struggling to keep a disheveled
bundle of unsteadiness upright. It was a woman, Judith
thought, and wondered if she was drunk or ill. At last
the man steadied the unfortunate soul, propping her up
against a confessional door.
“. . . word of the Lord,” intoned the lector from the
pulpit.
“Oh, my Lord!” Judith gasped from the pew.
The disheveled woman was Renie. She was panting
and limping, her clothes in disarray and her hair going
152
Mary Daheim
every which way, including over her eyes. Judith hurried into the aisle and approached her cousin.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered in a frantic voice.
“Are you sick?”
Renie shook her head, brushing unruly chestnut
strands of hair out of her eyes.
“Have you been attacked?” Judith asked.
Renie shook her head again. “Not exactly.”
Judith gestured toward the pew where she’d been
sitting. “Can you sit down?”
Renie nodded. The usher, whose wrinkled face was
etched with concern, made a move to help both
women.
“It’s okay,” Judith said softly. “She’s not heavy,
she’s my cousin.”
TEN
RENIE ALL BUT fell into the pew. By now, several of
the nearby worshipers were staring. But as she regained her breath and straightened her clothes, the
curious returned their attention to the altar. Judith,
however, still stared at her cousin with anxious eyes.
“Later,” Renie mouthed.
It seemed like the longest Mass that Judith had
ever attended. She had great difficulty concentrating
on the liturgy, though she found no problem in praying for Renie and for herself. It seemed that they
both were in a great deal of trouble. At last the priest
gave the final blessing. Judith offered to help Renie
out of the pew, but was shaken off.
“I’m okay now,” she declared. “I won.”
“You won what?” Judith asked as they started
down the aisle.
“The fight,” Renie said as they reached the
vestibule. “I got into a fight at the XYZ Market up
the street.”
“Oh, good grief!” Judith exclaimed, drawing
more stares from the exiting churchgoers. “How did
that happen?”
“Some middle-aged Amazon thought she was
154
Mary Daheim
Wonder Woman and tried to edge me out at the checkout counter,” Renie explained as they headed down the
stairs to the door that led to the parking lot. “I’d already stood in line for ten minutes and I was afraid I’d
be late for Mass. Bill had gone to ten o’clock at Our
Lady, Star of the Sea. I was so pooped from everything
that happened yesterday that I slept in. Anyway, this
brazen broad ran her cart over my foot and said something like, ‘Move it, shorty.’ So I rammed her with my
cart. Then we got into it, and the next thing I knew we
were slugging it out over the counter and finally I put
a plastic produce bag over her head. She surrendered.”
Renie wore a grim expression of victory. “So what’s
new with you this morning?”
Judith started to speak, and discovered that she had
no voice. “I . . .” The single word was a squawk.
“Joe . . .” Her husband’s name was a guttural sound, as
if she were gagging.
Renie looked alarmed. “What’s wrong, coz? Is
something caught in your throat?”
Judith shook her head. The other churchgoers were
now swarming the parking lot, revving engines, and
readying for departure. The cousins were blocking
traffic. With a desperate effort, Judith mouthed the
words, “Buster’s Café.”
“Buster’s?” Renie looked bewildered.
Judith made chewing motions. Renie got it.
“You want me to meet you at Buster’s? Okay, see
you in a couple of minutes.”
Buster’s Café was old, a lower Heraldsgate Hill
landmark. Buster himself still ran the place after inheriting it from his parents forty years earlier. Nothing
much had changed in that time, or even before, but the
SILVER SCREAM
155
food was decent and the rubber-soled waitresses could
have won a restaurant Olympics for speed and efficiency.
It took each of the cousins less than three minutes to
drive to the café, but almost ten to find parking spaces,
even on a Sunday morning. Judith was out of breath
when she arrived; Renie seemed to have regained her
usual bounce.
“I can’t have more than coffee,” Judith said, “because I have to get home. If you think you’ve had a bad
weekend, listen to this . . .”
Renie did, her brown eyes growing wider and wider.
When Judith had finished about the same time that
Renie’s coffee had gone cold, an incredulous expression remained on her cousin’s face.
“You can’t lose the B&B!” Renie cried. “It’d be like
removing your liver!”
“I know.” Judith sighed. “It’s not just a job or making money, it’s who I am. The horrible part is that we
may be at fault. We were negligent in not getting that
cupboard door fixed. Why, you almost slammed into it
the other day.”
“True,” Renie allowed, her expression full of concern. “But you don’t really know what happened to
Bruno.”
“Also true,” Judith agreed.
A brief silence fell between the cousins. “I’m not
going to say it,” Renie said at last.
“Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it,” Judith responded, finally taking a sip from her water glass. “No
matter what, I’ve already said it about twenty times
since last night.”
Renie said it anyway. “It can’t be another homicide.
156
Mary Daheim
That’d be three at Hillside Manor. On the other hand,
if it is, you wouldn’t be at fault.” She paused after stirring extra sugar into her coffee. “When is a murder not
a murder? How on earth do you and Joe expect to find
out?”
“I’m not sure,” Judith replied, looking worried. “I
talk, I listen, while Joe sleuths in a professional way.”
“Can Bill and I help?” Renie offered, her deep sense
of family loyalty leaping to the surface.
While not nearly as compassionate, Renie ran a decent second to her cousin when it came to striking up
a revealing conversation. As for Bill, whatever he disliked about idle socializing was more than made up for
by his extraordinary perceptiveness. Being a trained
psychologist didn’t hurt any, either.
“Why not?” Judith said, brightening a bit.