undertones I can get.”
“Let me see.” He studied the notepad pages for
some time. “What’s missing is interaction between the
absentees—Dirk and Angela—and the others. Ellie
made a couple of cracks about both of them. Only
Chips was inclined to defend them, though he wasn’t
very enthusiastic.”
“Are Dirk and Angela lovers?” Renie asked.
“Probably,” Bill replied, “though what that means in
Hollywood these days, I couldn’t say. They may have
been sleeping together just for the fun of it while they
were here. You have to allow for a certain amount of
old-fashioned promiscuity.”
“What about the cocaine?” Judith inquired. “Was
that mentioned?”
“Only in passing,” Bill responded, “though there
was a cryptic remark made by Morris. When someone . . .” He addressed his notes. “It was Ben Carmody
who said maybe Angela had learned her lesson. Morris agreed, observing that as they all knew, three times
could be a charm.”
“Curious,” Judith murmured.
“Come on, Bill,” Renie urged, “you know darned
well you’ve got some other information tucked away.”
“I’m sifting it,” Bill said, putting the notepad back
in his pocket.
“As usual,” Renie remarked, accustomed to her husband’s cautious but thorough approach to the deductive
process.
Judith started for the kitchen’s swinging doors. “I’m
going to look for the news-release drafts before the
guests come down to leave for dinner.” She glanced
back at the old school clock. “It’s almost four. They
should be a while.”
Renie followed her cousin out to the living room,
which was uncharacteristically untidy. As Joe had reported, there had been much tearing of legal pads, ac-
companied, no doubt, by a certain amount of tearing of
hair. There were also empty springwater bottles and a
few glasses, the latter apparently used for beverages
foraged from the liquor supply in the washstand. The
buffet had been raided, too, with the last of Joe’s bakery goods reduced to crumbs. Someone had removed
several paperback books and left them scattered
around the window seat. Magazines from the coffee
table had been dumped on the carpet, and a stack of
tapes and CDs were lying by the stereo.
“Spoiled brats,” Judith muttered, picking up some
of the litter before perusing the discarded sheets of yellow paper.
“I’ll help,” Renie offered, already gathering up the
