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
pointer. “Bruno is here in the middle,” he said, indicating the largest of the circles.
“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
something, Mr. Jones.”
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
SILVER SCREAM
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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Mary Daheim
“Why don’t we watch the end of the football