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 rela-
tivity. 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 cherrywood 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.
