A flush crept over Chips’s freckled face as he began inching his way toward the bathroom. “I admit, I hadn’t worked with him before, but until I signed on for The Gasman, he hadn’t missed a beat. Of course, he directed his first six films himself. It was only for the last two—including The Gasman—that he’d hired another director. I had reason to trust him. All his films had been successful.”

  Through the window over the landing, Judith could see the fog swirling around the house. It was going to be a gloomy, damp night for the trick-or-treaters.

  “What went wrong with this movie?” she asked, aware that Chips was trying to escape.

  “Well…” He looked pained. He also looked around the hallway. In the process, he noticed the fog through the window. “Wow,” he said softly. “Real fog. We didn’t have that in the Midwest, where I was raised. In L.A., we have only smog, which doesn’t create this kind of atmosphere. Would you mind moving to your left about six inches?”

  “What? Oh, sure.” Judith sidestepped a half foot.

  “‘Troubled innkeeper,’” Chips murmured, framing yet another shot with his fingers. “Fog in background symbolizes her ambiguous thoughts, as well as impending danger. I like this very much.”

  “About what went wrong,” Judith said as Chips scooted around in a crouching position, seeking different angles. “Have you any idea what happened?”

  “The length, for one thing,” he replied, one eye closed as he peered through his imaginary lens. “Ah! That’s perfect!” He stood up. “The ambitiousness of the project. The concept itself. The original material. The budget overrun.”

  “In other words,” Judith put in, “everything?”

  Chips gulped. “Sort of.”

  “I see,” she said. “But you couldn’t tell that from the start?”

  “You wouldn’t believe how Bruno could talk up an idea.” Chips grimaced. “That’s a talent in itself. After five minutes with him, you’d think he was going to make the next Gone With the Wind.” He bobbed his head as a door shut somewhere on the second floor. “Excuse me, I’ve got to take a quick shower before we go to dinner.”

  Dade Costello shambled down the narrow corridor that separated Room One from Rooms Two and Three. When he saw Judith, he merely nodded and kept going. He was halfway down the stairs before she called to him.

  “Mr. Costello,” she said, hurrying down the top flight and realizing that her hips were aching from all her recent exertions, “may I ask you a question about my mother?”

  Dade turned to look over his shoulder. “Your mother? Oh, Mrs. Grover. Sure.” He continued on down the stairs. “I was just going out for some fresh air before we took off to dinner.”

  “It’s pretty foggy out there,” Judith said when she reached the main floor. She pointed to Dade’s leather vest, which he wore over a plaid shirt. “You should wear a heavier jacket.”

  “Think so?” He sounded dubious. “I’m not used to all this damp. Now what’s this about your mother?”

  “Are you really encouraging her to write her life story?”

  “Sure,” Dade replied, leaning one arm on the balustrade and propping a booted foot up on the umbrella stand. “Why not? She seemed to like the idea.”

  “She would,” Judith murmured. “You aren’t seriously thinking of buying it from her, are you?”

  “I’m a writer,” Dade said. “I don’t buy scripts, I sell them.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Judith.

  Dade shrugged his wide shoulders. “I’m interested in ideas. Your mother sounds as if she’s had a colorful life.” His casual demeanor evaporated, replaced by weariness. “Besides, I could use some good ideas about now. I feel tapped out.”

  Judith was mystified. “You mean—you’d buy ideas from her?”

  “Not exactly,” he replied, eyeing the door as if he were anxious to make his getaway. “It gets real complicated.”

  Judith let the matter drop. She was more interested in The Gasman script than in her mother’s life story. “Was it so complicated with the book that The Gasman was based on? I mean, that was a very old book, wasn’t it? Copyright may have expired.”

  “It had,” Dade said without much interest. “I think. Anyway, whoever wrote it had been dead for years.”

  “How did Bruno come by the book? That is,” she went on, not wanting to admit she’d been snooping in the guest rooms, “I used to be a librarian, and I’ve never heard of it. I’m assuming it was fairly obscure.”

  “It was at that,” Dade drawled with a gleam in his eye. “I heard that one of Bruno’s ancestors had written it. In a nutshell, sophomoric and dull. Carp was the author’s name, as I recollect.”

  “C. Douglas Carp,” Judith said as the name on the title page sprang into her mind’s eye. “Was it his grandfather or an uncle?”

  Dade shrugged again. “I don’t really know. There was a family tie, though. It was more textbook than novel, almost impossible to use as the basis for a script. Too much fact and not enough fiction. And too damned much territory to cover. I struggled for almost a year to get just the outline done.”

  “I gather you had your differences with Chips Madigan over the script,” Judith said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

  “Chips!” Dade growled, making a slashing motion with one hand. “That punk. He and Bruno screwed up my script every which way. They—Bruno speaking for both of them—insisted I hadn’t kept to the spirit of the book. Bull. There was no spirit. It was just a bunch of events strung together by a weak narrative. For all I know, old Carp may have paid to get it published. It was garbage, all nine hundred pages of it.” He paused to pull out a pocket watch from inside his vest. “Hey, it’s after five. I’d better get going. I think the limo’s coming a little after six.” He ambled to the front door.

  “Psst!” It was Renie, lurking behind the archway that divided the entry hall and the living room. “Where’ve you been? I pieced the statement together.”

  “You did?” Judith hurried to join her cousin. “How is it?”

  “Stilted,” Renie said, flapping a half-dozen sheets of yellow paper at Judith. “It’s the kind of corporate copy that makes me want to shoot all writers and fill up space with graphic designs instead.”

  Judith held out her hand. “Let me see.”

  “No,” Renie retorted, “don’t read this hodgepodge. I’ve written it out in what’s probably close to the final draft.” She held up the last sheet and began to read what she’d patched together: “In the wake of producer Bruno Zepf’s tragic passing last night, Paradox Studios launched an investigation to determine the cause of death. It is generally felt by studio executives and Zepf’s close associates that The Gasman premiere’s apparent inadequacies—some choice of words,” she interposed before continuing, “may have caused the producer to die of a broken heart. According to Zepf’s agent, Eugenia Fleming, ‘Bruno set the bar extremely high, not only for himself, but for others in the industry. The Gasman was a project he had nurtured for years, with roots going back to his youth. Having the picture receive such harsh criticism at its premiere may have been too much for him. He wasn’t used to negative reactions, and he had worked himself into exhaustion. During the making of the film, he had to be hospitalized for a lengthy period. Obviously, his health was seriously affected. Bruno couldn’t tolerate a lack of excellence, especially in himself.’ End of quote,” said Renie.

  “That’s it?” Judith inquired, sitting on the arm of the sofa.

  “No,” Renie responded. “That’s the end of what Eugenia said. There’s more, but not much. In fact, there were about three concluding statements they might have used. The gist was that Bruno should be remembered for his many successes, rather than for The Gasman’s flop.”

  Judith didn’t respond immediately. When she did, her words didn’t pertain to failure or success. “Do you suppose Bruno really had health problems?”

  Renie hesitated before answering. She flipped through the discarded pages, then tapped her finger on several fragments of writing. “There are some notes about that, but they’re cryptic. Here.” She handed the page to Judith.

  B’s health, came first, written in an elegant if not very legible hand, presumably by Vito. “How do you read penmanship like this?”

  Renie shrugged. “It’s all those years I’ve spent reading CEOs’ scribbles. Of course most of those people never got past the block-printing stage. They thought cursive meant cussing.”

  “HPB,” Judith read aloud. “High blood pressure?”

  Renie nodded. “Probably.”

  “Ulcer…ulcer…ulcer. That’s clear enough. So’s colitis. What’s this? C? It’s underlined twice. Then it says treatment. Cancer?”

  “I couldn’t tell,” Renie said. “Maybe the C is for colitis.”

  “Do you remember a drug called thalidomide?”

  “Sure,” Renie replied. “Years ago, it was prescribed as a sleeping pill for pregnant women in Europe. Unfortunately, it caused horrendous birth defects.”

  “True,” Judith agreed, “but when we were in Good Cheer Hospital, I overheard a doctor and a nurse talking about thalidomide. It sounded as if it was being used for cancer patients.”

  Renie looked blank. “I don’t remember that. Maybe you heard it after I’d been released from the hospital. You had to stay a few days longer.”

  “How could I forget?” Judith said with a grimace, then grew silent again. “High blood pressure could have killed Bruno. But wouldn’t the ME be able to tell?”

  “You’d think so.”

  Setting the sheet of paper down on the coffee table, Judith heaved a big sigh. “If only we could be sure that Bruno was murdered.”

  Renie looked askance. “Aren’t you being kind of bloodthirsty, coz?”

  “No, I’m being realistic,” Judith retorted. “I can’t bear to think that Joe and I may be at fault for Bruno’s death. It’s not just the possibility of a lawsuit, it’s the moral implications. If we’re to blame, I’ll feel the most awful guilt for the rest of my life.”

  Renie’s face hardened. “What about that stupid spider over the sink? Who put it there? Why? Was it just a prank to scare Bruno? Did it scare him into passing out in the sink?”

  Judith stared at Renie. “How odd—I never thought about that. I mean, first there was the real spider on the back porch, then the spider in his bed—he didn’t pass out, by the way—and the one over the sink. Why would that one have more of an effect on Bruno than the others?”

  “Maybe,” Renie reasoned, “because Bruno was already distraught. Wasn’t a spider a sign of bad luck for him? And hadn’t he just had the worst luck of his career?”

  “True,” Judith allowed in a thoughtful voice. “Who put those spiders in the bed and in the kitchen? What,” she went on, her voice rising as she stood up from her perch on the sofa, “if there are more spiders somewhere?”

  “Good point,” Renie remarked. “Have you looked?”

  “No,” Judith said, “but Joe searched the guest rooms. Still, it’s odd that there weren’t more than two. If you wanted to scare somebody with a fake bug over the course of a weekend, wouldn’t you bring along, say, a half dozen?”

  “I would,” Renie said. “Better safe than sorry.” She 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 relativity. 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 cherry-wood 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.

  “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.”

  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 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.

  “Why don’t we watch the end of the football game?” Bill muttered. “We might as well. This is going to take a long time.”

  “The game’s over,” Joe said as the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it.”