by Mary Daheim
number. There was no answer except for Anne’s voice
on the machine.
“Anne Jones here. If you want to reach me immediately, call my cell phone or my pager. The numbers
are . . .” After reeling off the digits, she added, “If you
must speak to anybody else, leave your—” The message cut off abruptly, as if Anne didn’t give a damn
whether the rest of the Joneses ever got a phone call.
Which, Renie asserted, Anne didn’t.
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Judith took a plateful of pastries out to the toolshed,
where Gertrude picked over them with a persnickety
air. Finally she selected two custard sweet rolls and
three sugar doughnuts.
“Some breakfast,” the old lady sniffed. “Isn’t it time
for lunch?”
Judith told her mother that lunch would be a little
late. Gertrude sniffed some more.
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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
“Well . . .” Renie grimaced. “We were planning on
inviting our future in-laws over so we could make sure
who was marrying whom, but the kids aren’t positive
that will work with their various and elaborate schedules. They insist we’ve met them already. I’ll find out
what Bill thinks. If he gives me a green light, we’ll be
over as soon as we can.”
Driving to Hillside Manor, Judith breathed a little
easier. To her relief, the cul-de-sac was empty, except
for the patrol car that had crept close to the curb. She
couldn’t see who was inside, but assumed it was someone from the day shift. Darnell Hicks and Mercedes
Berger would have gone home hours ago.
As she often did, Judith left her Subaru in the driveway. She usually entered the house from the rear, but
on this anxious Sunday she retraced her route to the
front. Pausing on the walk, she drank in the entirety of
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Hillside Manor, acknowledging its age, soaking up its
memories. The house was almost a hundred years old,
built in the Edwardian era. The dark green paint and
the off-white trim on the Prairie-style Craftsman had
just begun to chip and fade. Next summer, Judith
would have to hire a painter. If there was a next summer at Hillside Manor.
So many memories, she thought, ignoring the slight
drizzle. Her Grover grandparents had bought the house
in the twenties. Her father and Renie’s father had
grown up there along with four siblings. Gertrude and
Donald Grover had raised Judith within its sheltering
walls. After Don died, Judith and Mike had returned,
converting the house into a bed-and-breakfast. To Judith, it wasn’t just a building, it was a sanctuary. She
couldn’t possibly give it up. Not ever.
With a dragging step, Judith entered through the
front door, where her melancholia was swept away by
angry voices coming from the living room. One voice
soared above the rest.
“You don’t live in our world, Mr. Flynn,” proclaimed Angela La Belle. “You can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be in the picture business. If we
aren’t free to talk to people, to make contacts, to keep
up on every nuance of the business, our careers are in
jeopardy. Indeed, after last night’s fiasco, all”—she
paused, and Judith thought she glanced at Ellie Linn—
“or almost all of us are already in deep doodoo.”
It seemed to Judith the reference was not to Bruno’s
death, but to The Gasman’ s flop. She couldn’t help but
flinch at the lack of humanity.
Joe remained unruffled. “Don’t blame us. Talk to
your studio suits. You all have cell phones, don’t you?”
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Mary Daheim
He cupped one ear with his hand. “I could swear
they’ve been ringing like a satellite symphony.”
“It’s not the same,” Ben Carmody argued. “I
planned to take a dinner meeting tonight with the number two producer in Hollywood. Number one now,
with Bruno out of the picture. So to speak.” The actor
looked faintly sheepish, but continued, “After last
night, there may not be any producers who want to talk
to me.”
“You’re not kidding,” Angela chimed in. “Now
when my name comes up, they’ll say, ‘La Belle? She
was in that disaster, The Gasman. I wouldn’t touch her
with a ten-foot pole.’ It’ll be like I have a contagious
disease. There’s no rationality in this business. Only
success and its afterglow count.”
The others enumerated their complaints, all of
which swelled into a dirge of doom. Judith studied the
gathering. Winifred was seated on one of the sofas by
the fireplace with Chips Madigan at her side. Opposite
them were Angela and Dirk. Ben Carmody leaned
against the mantelpiece and, while not wearing his
usual sinister screen expression, definitely looked morose. Dade Costello retained his lone-wolf status in his
favorite place by the French doors. Ellie Linn also
stood outside the circle, perched on the bay window
seat with her feet tucked under her. It seemed to Judith
that the young actress hadn’t been nearly as vocal
about the unfortunate movie premiere as her colleagues.
It was time, Judith believed, to cut someone from
the herd. She singled out Winifred Best.
“Excuse me,” she said in a deferential voice, “but
could I speak with you privately, Ms. Best?”
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Briefly, Winifred looked hostile. Or maybe just
wary. But her response was sufficiently courteous.
“Yes, if you like.”
Judith led her guest into the front parlor. “It’s really
none of my business, but since I’ll have to fill out some
forms, I should know what the plans are for Mr. Zepf’s
body.”
“Oh.” Winifred’s face fell. “I’ve contacted his children—they’re both in the L.A. area—and they’re making the arrangements. My understanding is that the
body will be shipped from here tomorrow. Under the
circumstances, I should think any kind of service will
be private. Very private.” She uttered the last words
through taut lips.
Judith wondered if the very private services were
because the family was very private or because the deceased had suffered a huge professional catastrophe
and the survivors were afraid that nobody would attend.
“Are his children grown?” Judith inquired.
Winifred nodded. “Practically. That is, they’re both
in college. Greta’s at Pepperdine and Greg just started
USC.”
“Um . . .” Judith cleared her throat. “Is their mother
also in L.A.?”
Winifred arched her thin eyebrows. “Their mother is
in Dubai. She divorced B
runo several years ago and
married an emir. She was an actress named Taryn
McGuire. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d never heard
of her. She did mostly TV and only appeared briefly in
two or three feature films.”
The name meant nothing to Judith. “I suppose being
married to Bruno wasn’t easy,” she said in a sympa- 160
Mary Daheim
thetic tone. “That is, he really was considered a movie
genius, wasn’t he?”
“Brilliant.” Winifred’s eyes lit up and her voice became almost caressing. “He always had his dreams.
Bruno attended every Saturday matinee, his attention
fixated on the screen, his imagination catching fire.
Early on, he understood what made a successful picture. It was born in him.”
Judith felt as if Winifred were reading from a press
release. Maybe she was; maybe she’d written it.
“It was only in the last six or seven years that he began
to recieve the kind of acclaim he’d always sought,”
Winifred went on. “Two years ago he made the short list.”
“Which is?” Judith asked, puzzled.
Winifred offered Judith a pitying smile. “It refers to
those few at the very top of their professions in the film
industry. Like Spielberg or Cameron. And Bruno.”
Quickly, she turned away. “Excuse me. It’s so hard to
think of Bruno going out . . . with a failure.”
“You seem genuinely fond of him,” Judith said, surprised at herself for being so bold, even more surprised
that she was using the word genuine with a Hollywood
person.
Winifred drew back sharply. “Why wouldn’t I be?
He gave me an excellent job.”
Maybe it was as simple as that. Maybe gratitude
was possible in the movie business. Maybe something other than ice water ran in the veins of Winifred
Best.
“You’d been with Mr. Zepf a long time?” Judith
said, keeping her voice low and casual.
“Yes,” Winifred replied, still wary.
“You must have had excellent credentials to get the
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job as Mr. Zepf’s assistant,” Judith remarked, hearing
a car pull up outside.
“Good enough,” Winifred said, her expression shutting down. “Is that Morris who just arrived?”
“Morris?” Judith echoed, puzzled.
“Morris Mayne, the studio publicist,” Winifred said,
joining Judith at the parlor’s tall window.
“No,” Judith said, recognizing Woody Price’s car.