by Mary Daheim
heard the two men quarreling, even from the basement.”
Renie didn’t say anything for a few moments.
“You’re convinced this wasn’t an accident?”
Judith grimaced. “I’m not going down without a
fight to prove otherwise.”
“I don’t blame you,” Renie said. “The problem is,
we don’t seem to be getting anywhere. We don’t even
know who all the guests were last night.”
Judith gave Renie a puzzled look. “Yes, we do. Except for Vito, the ones who came back here after the
premiere are the same people who attended the midnight supper.”
“So where’s Mrs. Mayne?” Renie queried.
“The one dressed as a pioneer woman?” Judith
shrugged. “I assume she’s still at the Cascadia. Morris
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told me she wasn’t much of a traveler. She probably
didn’t want to make another move.”
“Let’s find out.” Renie reached across Judith to pick
up the phone on Joe’s desk. “If she’d dug in at the
hotel, you’d think Morris would have stayed with her.”
A moment later she was asking for Mrs. Mayne.
“That’s Mrs. Morris Mayne,” she said. “She and her
husband checked in either Friday or Saturday.” There
was a long silence from Renie. “Oh. Really? Well,
thanks all the same.” She replaced the phone and stared
at Judith. “Mrs. Mayne checked out at noon.”
EIGHTEEN
“I DON’T GET it,” Judith said, stopping herself from
gnawing on another nail. “Why would Mrs. Mayne
be allowed to leave town when the rest of them
weren’t?”
“Maybe because she’s not in the movie business,”
Renie suggested. “Maybe there was a family emergency in California.”
Judith nodded absently. “Maybe she was never
here.”
Renie looked startled. “What?”
“I mean,” Judith explained, “here in this house.
We only assumed that the pioneer woman was Mrs.
Mayne. Do you remember what she looked like?”
Renie hunched her shoulders. “No. She was
wearing a big floppy bonnet. I don’t think I ever saw
her face.”
Judith got up from the swivel chair. “Let’s find
out. We’ll ask Winifred. She’s still in Room One,
sharing it with Ellie.”
But Winifred wasn’t in Room One. As the
cousins reached the second floor, they could hear
her raised voice coming from Room Six. They could
also hear Eugenia’s bellow.
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285
“Now what?” Renie said as they edged closer to the
angry voices.
Signaling for Renie to be quiet, Judith pricked up
her ears. The cousins stood at the door to Room Six
like a pair of sentries.
“. . . more harm than good,” Eugenia shouted.
“That’s not true!” Winifred rejoined. “It was Morris
more than you!”
“Oh,” Eugenia responded, her voice dropping a
notch, “it was Bruno. It was always Bruno. But why
was he killed?”
“Who says he was?” Winifred retorted. “I thought it
was an accident.”
“Nonsense,” Eugenia snapped as Judith gave Renie
a thumbs-up sign. “Think about it. How could anyone
hit a cupboard door or get hit by it hard enough to
knock themselves out? And even if they did, wouldn’t
falling in a sink filled with water snap them back into
consciousness? Why do you think the studio has insisted we stay in this stupid town? Because they’re
doing their own investigating, that’s why.”
“I don’t agree with you,” Winifred huffed. “If
they’re investigating, why haven’t we seen any detectives around here?”
“We haven’t been here all the time,” Eugenia said in
a reasonable voice, which still carried as if she were
speaking into a bullhorn. “The investigators may be
working with the local police. Or maybe they’re arriving tomorrow.”
“Vito said we could leave tomorrow,” Winifred said,
sounding sullen.
“Vito said maybe,” Eugenia responded. “Let’s stop
wrangling. I’d like to retire for the night in peace.”
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“Until you got here,” Winifred complained, “I could
retire in peace. Now I have to share my room with that
little twit Ellie.”
“Ellie’s simply immature. And spoiled, but she has
talent,” Eugenia pointed out. “She’s limited, of
course.”
“You mean because of her race?” There was steel in
Winifred’s voice.
“No,” Eugenia replied, “I’m referring to her acting
range. And her looks, which have nothing to do with
the fact that she’s half Chinese.”
“You meant race,” Winifred accused. “It always
comes down to race, doesn’t it?”
“For you, apparently,” Eugenia snapped. “I often
find that different-colored skin is also very thin.”
Judith and Renie exchanged pained expressions.
“That’s not true!” Winifred cried. “But can you argue
that Hollywood has always been fair to minorities?”
“Certainly not,” Eugenia said in a self-righteous
tone. “But look at you. You’ve managed to claw your
way up to the top. Of course some would say you used
more than your brains to get there. I wouldn’t use
Winifred Best and ethics in the same sentence.”
“Ethics? What have ethics got to do with this business?” Winifred demanded.
“You know perfectly well what I mean,” Eugenia
asserted. “A certain lack of ethics is one thing, but
criminal means are—”
“Ladies!” a masculine voice cut in. “Please! I can’t
stand any more of this quarreling. I’m trying to rest.”
Renie mouthed “Morris?” at Judith, who nodded.
“He’s in Room Five,” she whispered. “He’s sharing
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287
with Chips. The bathroom connects between Five and
Six, remember?”
“This whole situation is intolerable,” Winifred declared. “Do you both realize that all three of us are out
of a job?”
“No, we’re not,” Morris replied. “I work for the studio as well as for Bruno. Eugenia has other clients. As
for you, Win, someone will have to stay at the helm of
Bruno’s production company at least for a while. Who
knows? His children may want to keep the company
going.”
“No, they won’t,” Winifred asserted. “I know them.
They’re utterly irresponsible. They couldn’t run a convenience store.”
“Win’s right,” Eugenia conceded. “Besides, there’s
the problem of bailing out The Gasman. It may prove
very complicated, not to mention the harm done to
Bruno’s reputation.”
A door opened in the corridor. Judith and Renie
both jumped as they turned around to see who had
caught them eavesdropping.
It was Joe, coming from the family quarters. “Jeez,”
he said in a low but
vexed voice, “could you be more
obvious?”
Judith gave her husband a sheepish look. “Okay,
we’re done here anyway. But this is how we sleuth.”
“Unprofessional,” Joe murmured, heading for the
back stairs. “I’m going to lock up for the night. It’s ten
o’clock straight up.”
Judith glanced at her watch as the cousins followed
Joe downstairs. “You’re right. I suppose they’re still
watching the movie in the living room.”
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Mary Daheim
“I suppose,” Joe said. “It was scheduled to run until
eleven.”
“I should go home,” Renie declared as they reached
the main floor.
“Don’t,” Judith urged as she saw the computer printouts on the kitchen counter. “We never had a chance to
go over the material you found on The Gasman and its
origins.”
“Oh. Well . . . sure.” Renie began sorting the pages
as Joe headed for the front door to lock up.
A terrified scream erupted from that vicinity, causing Renie to drop several sheets on the floor. But the
exclamation of “Wow!” followed by “Way cool, Ben!”
from Ellie and a couple of masculine chuckles indicated that the scream had come from another hapless
movie victim.
Judith heard Joe say something to the guests that
she couldn’t quite make out. A moment later he was
back in the kitchen. “Everybody’s here except Dade,”
he said. “He has a key, right?”
“He should,” Judith said. “That’s odd. Has he been
back since they all left Capri’s?”
“Chips said he hasn’t,” Joe replied, removing a can
of beer from the fridge. “Dade arrived here with some
of the others, but never came in the house.”
“Typical,” Judith remarked, “though why he’d want
to walk around on such a foggy, windy night is beyond
me.”
“The wind’s blowing the fog away,” Joe said, then
yawned. “I’m going to watch Sports Center and head
for bed. It’s been a long day. In fact, it’s been a long
weekend.” He kissed Judith, gave Renie a hug, and
headed back upstairs.
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289
“I’m organized,” Renie announced. “I’ve skimmed
some of this stuff, especially Bruno’s filmmaker’s approach to the narrative. Naturally, he sounds like a genius.”
The cousins sat down at the kitchen table. More
screams could be heard from the living room.
“Wouldn’t you think they must have killed off most of
the cast by now?” Judith murmured.
“We wish,” Renie remarked, underlining points of
interest with a red pen. “Dade should be writing a
movie about what happened after this crew arrived at
the B&B. Who needs spooky London streets or the
human race’s time line?” She paused, shuffling some
papers. “Okay, here’s some information on C. Douglas
Carp.”
“Crappy Pappy Carp,” Judith said suddenly. “That’s
what Dirk Farrar called him.”
“You can call him Pappy, you can call him Crappy,
you can even call him Sappy,” Renie said, handing two
pages of underlined information to Judith, “but don’t
call him Slaphappy. Carp was a diligent scholar of
some repute. He wrote The Gasman when he was
twenty-two.”
“Goodness,” Judith responded. “That’s impressive.”
“It may account for why my father read the damned
thing,” Renie noted. “Dad was probably swayed by
Carp’s credentials.” She flipped through a few more
pages. “This is what I found on Carp himself. I haven’t
read it yet. Shall I read to you?”
“You can also carry me up to bed and tuck me in.”
Judith sighed. “I’m not sure I can get up those two
flights of stairs again.”
Renie offered her cousin a sympathetic smile. “You
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Mary Daheim
should put an elevator in this place. And not for the
guests.” She cleared her throat and adjusted her muchabused glasses. “Carson Douglas Carp was born in
Cedar Falls, Iowa, in 1907, the son of Louis Franklin
Carp and Annabelle Ernestine Carp (née Morgan). An
outstanding student, Carp began his epic novel of civ-
ilization, The Gasman, while still attending Northern
Iowa State Teachers College. While Carp’s fictional
style has been criticized by some as tedious, pedantic,
and maladroit, his meticulous attention to historical
detail and his accuracy have merited praise from oth-
ers. Although the novel never sold well except to li-
braries, his next work, a nonfiction treatise on the
Dahlak Archipelago, was eagerly awaited by scholars.
Unfortunately, Carp suffered from severe alcoholism,
and died at the age of thirty-eight, leaving the two-
hundred-thousand-word tome unfinished. His son,
William Euclid Carp, and his daughter, Marguerite
Louisa Carp, attempted to find a publisher for the
work in the mid-1960s, but without success.”
“No kidding,” Judith said. “Where’s the Dahlak
Archipelago?”
Renie shrugged. “Wherever it is, I doubt that it’s a
major book market.”
“Pappy,” Judith said thoughtfully. “Whose Pappy?”
“You mean in reference to the guests?”
“Yes. Nobody would call someone Pappy—especially a man who died quite young—unless he was
their father or the father of someone they knew.”
Renie rested her chin on her fist. “I’m not sure why
it matters. Aren’t you grasping at straws?”
“Of course I am,” Judith said testily. “I’m desperate.”
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291
“Okay.” Renie’s tone was unusually agreeable.
“Pappy Carp is dead. He died in 1945 or thereabouts,
right? Which means that if any of these people are his
offspring, it has to be someone over fifty. Bruno’s
out—his father was a German war groom. Dade,
Chips, Ben, Dirk, and Angela are too young. Did you
say Angela’s real last name is Flynn?”
“I did. It is.” Judith was still a bit testy.
“Rule Ellie out because her father is alive and hustling hot dogs,” Renie said. “That leaves Eugenia,
Morris, and . . . Vito?”
“Vito wasn’t here for the postpremiere supper,” Judith pointed out.
“Are you sure?”
Judith gave Renie a peculiar look. “What do you
mean?”
“How do you know that someone didn’t change costumes? Or that there weren’t two Arabian sheikhs or a
pair of matching Gutenbergs?” Renie demanded.
Judith considered the idea. “But never in the same
room at the same time,” she murmured. “It’s a thought.
There’s another thing we might have overlooked—
Chips is from the Midwest.”
“Even if he appears younger than he really is,”
Renie noted, “he couldn’t be over fifty.”
“Grandson, maybe?” Judith suggested.
“Oh.” Renie got up from the chair at the counter and
/>
went to the refrigerator to claim another Pepsi. “That
could be. On the other hand, Chips often talks about
his mother, but not his father. I wonder why?” She
paused, then shook her head. “It can’t be Chips.
What’s the motive?”
Judith gave Renie a helpless look. “I’ve no idea. Un- 292
Mary Daheim
less the novel was written by Chips’s father—big
stretch, I know—or grandfather, and Bruno stole it.
Remember, I told you that the book had keepsakes in
it. Obviously, it had been treasured by someone for
many years.” She suddenly jumped up. “Keepsakes!
What’s wrong with me? Where did I put that book?”
Frantically, she looked around the kitchen as the wind
rattled the windows.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, snapping her fingers. “I didn’t
put it anywhere. Joe brought it down from Room
Three.” Cautiously bending down to favor her artificial
hip, Judith opened the bottom cabinet drawer next to
the wall. “Here it is. Let’s see if we can learn anything
from these keepsakes.”
Renie wore a resigned expression but said nothing.
The cousins had just sat down at the counter again
when Sweetums sidled up to Judith. He had a partially
eaten chicken breast in his mouth, which he began to
wrestle around the kitchen floor.
Judith scowled at the cat. “Where did you get that?
Here, let me have it.”
Sweetums wasn’t in the mood to oblige. He backed
away, with the chicken still in his teeth. Judith chased
him into the pantry, where he got under the lowest
shelf, just out of reach. In recent months, Sweetums
had figured out that his human was limited in her capacity for capturing him.
“Damn!” she cried as she heard the cat chewing
lustily on the chicken. “He must have gotten that out of
the garbage. I’d better make sure the can didn’t blow
over.” Grabbing her jacket from its customary peg, she
headed outside.
Driven by the wind, the fog swirled around the
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293
backyard like smoke from a beach fire. The light in the
toolshed appeared and disappeared as if it were coming from a lighthouse. Gertrude kept late hours, requiring less sleep as she got older. Of course, Judith
thought as she hurried to the garbage cans and recycling bins by the side of the house, her mother dozed
off frequently during the day.
The big green bins were intact, but one of the
garbage cans had blown over, spilling half its contents.