Without any sense of optimism, Judith stood next to Renie as Aunt Deb picked up the phone on the first ring.

  “Hi, Mom,” Renie began. “I’ve got a question for you…Well, yes, of course I want to know how you are, but I talked to you this morning for at least twenty minutes and…No kidding? How did your big toe get stuck in the drain?…Thank goodness for Mrs. Parker stopping by…I didn’t realize Auntie Vance and Uncle Vince were coming down from the island…No, I won’t tell Aunt Gertrude…Yes, I know how she and Auntie Vance like to argue…No, I realize you aren’t one to quarrel…Yes, Aunt Gertrude can be a trial sometimes. You’re very patient with her…I’m aware that she thinks she’s the one who’s being patient with you…Certainly Auntie Vance can have a rough tongue…She told you to put your big toe where?…Well, that is kind of coarse, but you know what Auntie Vance is like…”

  Judith was distracted by the return of Joe with three deliverymen carrying several cartons and portable heating units. “Oh, dear,” she sighed. “I forgot about the caterers.”

  “I’ll handle it,” Joe said grimly.

  As the deliverymen began to unload the order onto the buffet, Renie eyed the food with longing. “I know it’s foggy,” she said into the phone. “Yes, I’ll cover all my orifices when I go outside so that the damp won’t harm me…Of course I’m wearing sturdy shoes.” She glanced down at her flimsy brown flats. “No, this pair doesn’t lace up to my ankles. I haven’t worn those oxfords since I was twelve…”

  Judith’s attention drifted to the buffet, where Joe was ripping open boxes and dumping out heated bags. The deliverymen had already skittered out of the house after presenting an embarrassingly large bill.

  Joe emptied a box of Wienie Wizards, dropping almost all of them on the floor. They bounced, but not very high.

  “Wait!” Judith cried. “Let me do that. You’re angry, and you’re making a mess.”

  Joe’s jaw jutted. “Do you know what all this crap cost?”

  “No, and I don’t want to know,” Judith shot back. “Not now. Let me call Arlene on my cell phone and see if she wants any of this food before you destroy it.”

  She started to get her purse from the kitchen when she heard the sound of hurrying feet on the stairs. “I smell Wienie Wizards!” cried Ellie Linn. “Yum, yum!”

  In a flurry, Judith scooped the hot dogs off the floor and dumped them into a crystal bowl. “They’re nice and warm. Be our guest.”

  “I already am.” Ellie giggled, her dark eyes shining with delight. “Mmm…my faves!” She immediately pitched in, grabbing four wieners and four buns at once.

  Finally reaching the kitchen, Judith dialed Arlene’s number.

  “What food?” Arlene asked in a puzzled voice.

  Judith reminded her neighbor about the large order from the caterer. “I thought you wanted some of it for your family dinner tonight.”

  “What family?” Arlene asked. “They canceled. They all decided to stay home because of Halloween.”

  “Rats!” Judith muttered. “Okay, sorry to bother you.”

  “Why don’t you freeze it?” Arlene suggested.

  “Frankly,” Judith said, “we’re running out of room in the freezer. But you’re right, I’ll try to squeeze in some of the items that won’t keep.”

  By the time she returned to the living room, Renie was finally hanging up the phone. Ellie Linn had disappeared, apparently going upstairs to savor her Wienie Wizards.

  “Guess what?” Renie said, looking dazed.

  Bill and Joe barely looked up from their places on the matching sofas. The TV screen showed Nazi planes swooping over England. Bill had one eye on the set and the other on his chart, which was spread out over the coffee table. Sweetums was weaving in and out between his ankles, the cat’s great plume of a tail swishing back and forth.

  “Go away,” Bill snarled under his breath, “or I’ll turn you into cat chowder.”

  “What is it?” Judith asked of Renie.

  Bill spoke up before his wife could answer. “Get this damned cat out of here. And I could use a purple pen.”

  Renie swooped down, grabbed Sweetums, and made a face at Bill. “The marker pens are under your chart, Galileo.” She moved away, unceremoniously dumping Sweetums near the entry hall.

  “My mother actually read The Gasman,” Renie declared. “So, of course, did my father. He made her read it because he insisted it was a quick way to learn the history of the world.”

  “You’re kidding!” Judith cried.

  Joe hit the mute button on the TV’s remote control; Bill didn’t take his eyes off the screen.

  “Does Aunt Deb remember anything about the book?” Judith asked, aware that her aunt’s memory was much keener than her mother’s.

  “Well…” Renie made a face. “She admits she skimmed it. My dad enjoyed it because there were some obscure facts he learned and some misconceptions he had that the book cleared up. I gather C. Douglas Carp meticulously researched his material. Anyway, that sort of thing appealed to Dad. Mom didn’t give a hoot, and thought the story itself was silly, and she didn’t like all the wars.” Her gaze shot to the TV, where London was being bombed into what looked like charcoal clumps.

  “Oh.” Judith was disappointed. “At least we know that somebody besides Bruno read the book.”

  “There was one other thing,” Renie said. “You know my mother—she’s like you, coz. Her main interest in life is people.”

  Judith smiled faintly. It was a great irony that in many ways, Judith’s personality was more like Aunt Deb’s. Conversely, Renie had some of the same traits as Gertrude. Reacting to Renie’s comment, Bill groaned, but Joe gave a thumbs-up signal. Both men felt they had a cross to bear when it came to their mothers-in-law.

  “So?” Judith prodded.

  “So,” Renie began, “Mom had an old friend, Hattie McDonough, who married a man named Carp. In fact, I guess she married him back in the late twenties, about the time that my folks read The Gasman. Naturally, since Carp isn’t a common name, Mom wanted to know if Hattie’s husband and C. Douglas were related. Hattie—who, by the way, died a few years ago—said they were cousins. Bernie Carp—the one Hattie married—was from the Midwest. Iowa or Nebraska, Mom thought. Alas, Mr. Bernie Carp turned out to be a drinker, and Hattie divorced him before World War Two, a war we all know who won by now.” Renie raked 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.”

  “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.

  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.”

  “Gosh, no,” Chips said. “Why don’t you put them around the door for the kids who come trick-or-treating?”

  “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 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.”

  “Check those,” Judith urged. “There’s got to be a Carp somewhere.”

  “I’ll try,” Renie said, “but sometimes it’s tricky to get into the unofficial sites. At least it is for me. Meanwhile, I’ll print out the stuff we’ve already seen. There’s quite a bit of information about Bruno’s films, of course.”

  In the living room, World War II had ended in Europe. The program had moved on to the Pacific, where General Douglas MacArthur was wearing his game face. Bill was adding another section to his chart.

  “Joe,” Judith said with a sigh, “I thought you were detecting.”

  “I am,” Joe replied. “I’m like Hercule Poirot, letting my little gray cells cogitate.”

  Bill gave Judith an accusing look. “You didn’t let me finish explaining my chart.”

  “You’re right,” Judith said, sitting down on the sofa arm. “Really, I am interested. Show me.”

  While Bill wrestled with his unwieldy chart, Joe reluctantly turned off the TV as a mushroom cloud exploded over Hiroshima. Bill picked up his bamboo skewer just as Renie burst into the living room.

  “Hey!” she cried. “I found something. There’s a whole Web site devoted to The Gasman and its origins.”

  Judith turned to look at her cousin. “What does it say?”

  “I don’t know,” Renie replied. “It’s kind of long, so I’m printing it out.” She saw her husband with his chart and pointer. “Oops. Sorry, Bill. Am I interrupting?”

  “You usually are,” Bill said with a long-suffering air.

  “Go ahead,” Joe urged, nodding at Bill. “I’d like to hear this, too. It might help me…cogitate.”

  “What’s that new section?” Judith asked, noting that two more circles had been added.

  “Morris Mayne and Eugenia Fleming,” Bill replied with a tap for each of the turquoise circles.

  “You’re right,” Judith said. “We can’t ignore them. They were here last night, too. What else can you tell us?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this,” Bill began, tapping the corner of the chart. “We’re talking about Hollywood, and we should keep a few things in mind. One is power. Who has it here? Bruno, of course. He was one of the most powerful men in the movie industry. That’s a very exclusive club. Who else, then?”

  Judith felt she was in the classroom with Bill, and automatically raised her hand. “Winifred? She was so close to Bruno.”

  Bill nodded solemnly. “That’s right. If nothing else, Winifred would have had the power to say yes to a proposal or a script. Anyone in Hollywood can say no. But saying yes is a risk. Winifred was probably able to do that because of her close association with Bruno.”

  “Then Eugenia would have power, too,” Judith conjectured, “because she’s Bruno’s agent?”

  “Only to the extent of allowing access to the people in her stable,” Bill replied. “Eugenia also represents Dirk, doesn’t she? The amount of her power depends more on her clients’ clout.”

  “What about Morris?” Joe asked.

  “Morris Mayne is a studio flack,” Bill said, tapping the smaller of the circles in his addendum. “Morris can be replaced on a whim. The only way publicists have any power is if they’re keeping a secret. Let’s say, covering up for Angela’s overdose today.”

  “Blackmail,” Joe said. “Morris is more likely a victim than a perp because he knows too much. Blackmailers are always vulnerable.”

  The room went silent for a few moments as the foursome reflected. Finally, Renie spoke. “Angela and Dirk are bankable. Doesn’t that give them some power?”

  “Dirk, yes,” Bill said. “But not Angela. She’s a big star, though I doubt that a producer or a studio could get a large investment on her name alone. Bruno could and did with Dirk.”

  “What about Chips Madigan?” Joe asked. “He’s a successful director.”

  Bill shook his head. “Chips is under contract to Paradox. His power is limited. In fact,” he continued, tapping at several of the smaller circles, “no one here really has power except Bruno, Winifred, and Dirk. Writers in particular are way down on the food chain.”

  “Ellie had power,” Judith pointed out. “She was the reason Bruno got a big chunk of money for The Gasman.”

  Again, Bill shook his head. “That was a fluke. Ellie had connections, which isn’t the same. Until now, her father wasn’t a player.”

  “But,” Renie said, “do people murder for power in Hollywood? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a thing.”

  Bill pointed the pointer at Renie. “That’s right,” he said approvingly. “They don’t. If Bruno was murdered, I doubt that power was a motive.”

  “You really think he was murdered?” Judith said eagerly.

  Bill shrugged. “How do I know? But you and Joe seem to be operating on that premise. Judging from the studio’s involvement, they are, too.”

  “So,” Renie inquired, “what’s the other factor besides power?”

  “Factors, really,” Bill responded, then studied his chart for a moment. “Image, for one. I realize it’s not like it used to be in Hollywood, where studios manufactured images and personalities. Stars were shielded from bad publicity; they had to live up to certain standards. Of course they misbehaved, but either they were protected from the press or the reporters themselves turned a blind eye. Nowadays actors don’t have that kind of buffer. And journalism is different—no turn goes unstoned, as they say. The tabloids not only exploit the stars’ misdeeds, but they invent some of them.” Bill took a deep breath. “All that being said, it’s only human nature for actors to want to keep certain unsavory things from the public. Such as Angela’s apparent cocaine habit.”