he said. “I have some work to do.”
Winifred, however, wasn’t pleased to hear that she
would have to share her room with Ellie. “Why
couldn’t Ellie and Eugenia share Room Six?”
“Because,” Judith said, clearing her throat, “you and
Ellie are quite slim. Eugenia is not. Both your room
and Room Six, where Ellie’s been staying, have double beds.”
Flattery didn’t have any effect on Winifred, who remained glum but didn’t argue further. Maybe, Judith
thought, that was because Eugenia had admitted that
she and Winifred weren’t on good terms. Whatever the
reason, Winifred immediately went upstairs while Vito
peered into the darkened living room.
“What’s going on?” Seeing the movie on TV, he
didn’t wait for an answer. “Ah—
role that made Ben famous. It was Chips’s first attempt
at directing. He was superb.” Without waiting for a response from Judith, Vito slipped gracefully into the living room just as a willowy blonde met her fate at the
hands of Mr. Ax.
Judith was still shuddering when she returned to the
kitchen. “Let’s go upstairs so we can talk privately,”
she said to Renie, who had fixed herself some cheese
and crackers. “I can still hear the screams from the
TV.”
“You want to watch the NBA’s preseason?” Renie
inquired, getting up from the table with her snacks.
“Not really,” Judith said. “We can go in Joe’s office.”
The cousins ascended the back stairs, then entered
the door that led up to the family quarters. Judith sat
down in Joe’s swivel chair and placed her unfinished
Scotch on the desk.
“Okay, so fill me in,” Renie said, seating herself in
the rocking chair that Joe used to relax his back.
Judith complied, and it took almost fifteen minutes.
Renie made only the briefest of comments until her
cousin had finished.
“You’ve got a lot of fragmentary information there,”
Renie pointed out. “Let’s start with
a coke addict who got started by Bruno. He went to
rehab and it apparently worked. She’s still hooked. Is
that a motive for murder?”
“I doubt it,” Judith said, hearing the wind pick up
outside. “But her most recent movie with Bruno turned
out to be a bomb, and Ellie was to have starred in the
next one. That might be more of a motive than mere
drug addiction.”
“Revenge,” Renie murmured. “What does Bill’s
