executive floor.”
“Margo’s already said she’s going to quit,” Judith pointed
out. “She won’t keep quiet.”
“Maybe not, but it might depend on the package they
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offer her when she leaves. It could be very lucrative—and
very tempting. Besides,” Renie went on, “you’ll notice she
didn’t mention quitting in front of the others. As far as we
know, she only talked about it to us.”
Judith mulled over Renie’s words of corporate wisdom. It
was peaceful in the library, especially to Judith, who had always sought solace among books. Someone had built a fire
in the small grate. For the briefest of moments, Judith tried
to imagine that she and Renie were having a cozy chat on a
wintry weekend in the mountains.
The pager went off again, shattering the illusory respite.
“Damn!” Judith exclaimed. “I forgot about that thing! How
do I make it stop?”
Renie sighed. “First off, you look in the little window to
see who’s calling you. Then you press a button that’ll keep
it from reringing. Those things are set up so that they keep
going off until you acknowledge that you’ve taken the call.”
“Oh.” Judith fished the pager out of her purse. “This is
hard to read.” She held the little device under the table lamp
next to her chair. “Drat. It’s my home number. It could be
Mother. I wonder what’s wrong? How do I answer this?”
“You can’t, without a phone,” Renie said, then brightened.
“This might be a good thing, coz. If it really is an emergency,
then maybe somebody will figure out that you can’t call
back.”
Judith looked askance. “Meanwhile, Mother is lying on the
floor of the toolshed with her dentures wedged in her gullet?”
“Something like that,” Renie murmured. “Now if it were
my mother, she would already have tried to page me about
fifty times. It’s a wonder she hasn’t given me a pager for my
birthday or Christmas. I keep hoping she won’t figure out
how they work. Her half-dozen phone calls a day are already
enough to make me nuts.”
Judith was well aware that Aunt Deb’s obsession with
134 / Mary Daheim
the telephone—and with Renie—went to extremes. But
Gertrude abhorred the phone and disdained the pager. She
wouldn’t try to contact Judith unless something serious had
happened.
“Now I’m worried,” Judith said, getting up and starting to
pace around the library.
“That makes a lot of sense,” said Renie. “You’re worried
about something that may or may not have happened and
about which you can do absolutely nothing. In the meantime,
we’re sitting here like…sitting ducks.”
Judith stopped pacing. “Meaning what?”
Renie laid her head back against the soft brown leather.
“Meaning that you and I are not OTIOSE employees. We
have nothing to gain by keeping our mouths shut. That, in
turn, means that the killer has nothing to lose by getting rid
of us. Now do you get it?”
Judith got it.
Lunch was a moribund meal. Judith and Renie served
sliced ham and turkey, three kinds of bread, four varieties of
cheese, what was left of the fresh fruit, and a pasta salad
prepared beforehand at Hillside Manor. For the most part,
the conferees picked at their food and kept conversation to
a minimum. Whatever had gone on during the damage
control meeting had markedly dampened their spirits.
“Poison,” Judith heard Nadia whisper. “What if we’re all
being poisoned?”
“We’d have keeled over by now,” Ward said, but he closely
inspected his ham.
“I don’t feel so good,” Russell said, and spit out a strawberry.
“Don’t be silly,” Margo remonstrated. “You’re imagining
things.”
“We have to eat to keep up our strength,” Killegrew declared. “Look at me, I’m not afraid.” He took a big bite out
of his sandwich to prove the point.
Judith returned to the kitchen. A few minutes later, after
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the cousins had eaten their own turkey sandwiches, she
suggested that they check out Andrea’s room.
Renie grimaced. “Must we?”
“It’ll be okay. Gene covered Andrea with a sheet. We might
as well do it now. When I went into the dining room the
last time, it didn’t look as if anybody intended to stir for a
while.”
The cousins used the back stairs. As they’d guessed, Andrea’s door was unlocked. Upon entering, Judith and Renie
both paused, lost in morbid thought.
“Gruesome,” Renie whispered, gazing at the figure in the
bed.
Judith was examining the extra pillow, which had been
turned over to show the cosmetics smudges. “Andrea had
put on fresh makeup for Leon and some of it had gotten
smeared when she found out he was dead. But I knew there’d
be enough left to make a mark on the pillowcase. This is a
vital piece of evidence. I hate to see it left lying out in the
open with an unlocked door.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Renie said faintly.
Judith folded her arms across her bosom. “I would, if I
thought it would help convict a killer.”
“Aren’t we in enough trouble already?”
“Not quite.” Gingerly, Judith slipped the case off the pillow.
“Oh, great!” Renie reeled around the room, accidentally
knocking Andrea’s briefcase off a shelf by the bathroom door.
Hastily, she bent down to pick it up.
“Keep that briefcase,” Judith ordered.
Renie stared. “You are deranged.”
“Endangered, not deranged. You said so yourself.” Judith
began to pull out drawers, then go through the small closet.
“We’re buying life insurance,” she said, opening Andrea’s
suitcase. “We’re taking whatever evidence we can find and
we’re going to stash it and then we’re going to threaten the
OTIOSE crew.”
“Good grief.” Renie had sat down on the spare twin
136 / Mary Daheim
bed. “What with? Margo’s gun, which we’ll wrestle away
from her in a dazzling display of martial arts?”
“No, of course not.” Finding nothing of interest in the
suitcase, Judith put it back in the closet. “We threaten them
with the evidence.”
“Which consists of one smudged pillowcase.” Renie shook
her head in a forlorn manner.
“So far.” Judith pointed to the briefcase. “We might find
something in there. Come on, help me collect the water
glasses and the sleeping pill bottle.”
“Fingerprints,” Renie said doggedly. “You’ll ruin any fingerprints.”
“No, I won’t,” Judith replied from the bathroom. “I’m very
carefully putting the glasses back in the paper wrappers they
were set out in by the staff. I’m also going through the
wastebasket.”
“I’m going through the window,” Renie said. “I wish I’d
never mentioned that we were about to be killed.”
The wastebasket yielded nothing except the paper covers
for the glassware and an empty plastic garbage bag. “Let’s
go,” Judith said, grabbing Andrea’s purse. “I’ve checked out
everything I can think of.”
Renie was still on the bed. “I think it’s safer to stay here
with Andrea. At least she’s not babbling like a self-destructive
idiot.”
“That’s because she already self-destructed.” Seeing Renie’s