the TV screen with a scathing look.
Judith clapped her hands together. “Damn! Why
didn’t I think of this before? I’m going on-line to find
out about Bruno’s background. If,” she added on a note
of doubt, “I can figure out how to do it.”
“I’ll do it,” Renie volunteered. “I’m semigood at
finding stuff like that. But only after I eat most of this
food. Then you can start putting it away while I surf.
Meanwhile,” she added, pointing to Joe and Bill, “we’ll
leave General Eisenhower and General Patton in here to
beat the stuffing out of the Führer all over again.”
Five minutes later Renie was at the computer in the
kitchen while Judith staggered past, carrying a load for
the freezer. Directly behind Renie’s chair, two of the
boxes fell over and hit Renie on the back.
“Yikes!” she cried. “Watch the shoulder! I’ve had
surgery, remember?”
“How can I forget?” Judith muttered. Favoring her
artificial hip, she bent over to retrieve the boxes and
dropped two more.
Renie jumped out of the chair. “Let me help. You
can’t carry all that at once.”
SILVER SCREAM
223
“I guess not,” Judith admitted. “How are you doing
on the Internet?”
“I just got into one of the main sites,” Renie said as
she scooped up the fallen boxes. “I had to eat a little
something first. Like the steaks.”
“Those I could have frozen,” Judith said, leading the
way down the basement steps.
“I didn’t really eat them,” Renie admitted. “I had
some of that field-green salad, a few tempura prawns,
a piece of fried chicken, and some excellent lox on an
outstanding bagel.”
Arriving at the freezer, Judith shook her head. “All
that in five minutes. How could you?” She always marveled at how much—and how fast—Renie could eat.
She also wondered why she couldn’t have inherited
Renie’s metabolism instead of Aunt Deb’s compassion.
“You’re right,” Renie said as Judith opened the
freezer. “You don’t have much room. Maybe we
should take this stuff out of the boxes and put it in
freezer wrap.”
“There’s some right up here,” Judith said, reaching
for a roll on the shelf above the freezer. “So did you
learn anything about Bruno’s background yet?”
“No, I just got started,” Renie replied, removing
four prime New York steaks from one of the boxes. “I
only learned his age, which indeed is fifty-three as of
March ninth. The next thing I knew, I was being
crushed by your cartons.”
“Here,” Judith said, moving some of the items in the
freezer, “I’ve made some room. We can put those
steaks in this corner by the—” She stopped and sucked
in her breath.
224
Mary Daheim
Renie looked at her cousin with some alarm.
“What’s wrong? Did you cut yourself on something?”
“No,” Judith said slowly as she brought her hand out
of the freezer. “But I did find these.”
She opened her palm to reveal four black rubber spiders, stiff as boards and covered with frost.
FOURTEEN
“GIVE ME A clean piece of freezer wrap,” Judith said
to Renie. “I’ll put the spiders in it just in case there
might be fingerprints or fibers or something on them.”
After securing the evidence, the cousins worked
quickly to store the rest of the food. It was almost
six by the time they returned upstairs to find the
guests in the entry hall, awaiting their limousine.
On a whim, Judith approached them. “Hey, anybody lose some fake spiders?” She held them out in
their shroud of plastic wrap.
Ellie, Winifred, and Dade all gave a start. The
others looked mildly curious. Judith’s eyes darted
around the gathering, trying to assess the individual
reactions.
“Where’d those spiders come from?” Ben Carmody asked. “They look like the ones in Bruno’s
bed and over the sink.”
“I’m glad they’re fake,” Ellie said. “Those things
creep me out even if they are phony.”
“They devastated Bruno,” Winifred noted. “Why
do they look like they’ve been frozen?”
“Because they were,” Judith responded. “Nobody
wants to claim them, I see.”
226
Mary Daheim
“Gosh, no,” Chips said. “Why don’t you put them
around the door for the kids who come trick-ortreating?”
“I don’t think so,” Judith said, trying not to show
disappointment at the lack of a revealing reaction.
“We shouldn’t be late,” Winifred said as a knock
sounded at the front door. “By the way,” she informed
Judith, “we heard from the hospital. Angela is going to
pull through, but it was a near thing. Dirk will be joining us at Capri’s for dinner.” Along with the others, she
moved toward the door, where their chauffeur awaited
them.
Joe ambled over to the entry hall after the guests had
left. “What was that all about?”
“This,” Judith said, showing him the frozen spiders.
“You should have Woody check them out.”
“Hidden in the freezer?” Joe cocked his head to one
side. “Not a bad place, I suppose. Nobody twigged
when you showed them off?”
“No,” Judith admitted. “Oh, Ellie and Winnie and
Dade gave a start, but that doesn’t prove anything. I
was hoping that either all of them except one, or none
of them except one, would react. Or not.”
“I think I understand you,” Joe said, taking the spiders from Judith. “Dilys can handle this. She saw the
spider over the sink.”
Judith went back into the living room. Bill, with the
sound on again, was now watching the Allies get revenge for London by blasting the bejeesus out of
Berlin.
“You two sofa soldiers can graze at the buffet,” she
announced. “I’m not making a formal dinner.”
In the kitchen, Renie was staring at the computer
SILVER SCREAM
227
screen. “Interesting,” she remarked. “Bruno was born
in Iowa of an army mother and a German war groom.
They moved to California when Bruno was very
young. His dad got a job in Hollywood as a translator
for German films. Young Bruno grew up obsessed by
the movies. Hence his destiny, but only after two years
of extensive travels in search of his roots. He was married briefly at the age of twenty, divorced before he
was twenty-one, then took Taryn McGuire as his second wife when he was twenty-seven, divorced six
years later, married a third time to a film cutter for five
years, again divorced. The two children by Taryn are
listed, ages eighteen and twenty.”
“Does it give his mother’s maiden name?” Judith
asked.
“Yes,” Renie replied, scrolling up the screen. “Father, Josef Zepf; mother, Helena Walls. No Carp.
Sorry.”
“What about wives number one and number three?
Any names?”
Renie shook her head. “The first marriage was so
brief they don’t mention her. And the film cutter’s
name isn’t listed, either. Since this is an official site,
they may have been omitted because they weren’t
names in the industry. There are other sites, I’m sure.”