Judith flinched. “I had to tell them something.”
Joe took a long sip of Scotch. “What really happened?”
Judith explained about the disgusting appearance of
the truffles and how Gertrude had—not without reason—flushed them down the toilet.
“Great.” Joe leaned against the counter. “How about
telling the truth for once?”
Judith sighed. “I know,” she said, taking the green
salad out of the refrigerator. “Maybe I should have. But
I didn’t want to be liable for the loss of the truffles and
I didn’t want to get Mother in trouble.”
“You could have explained that your mother is
gaga,” Joe said. “That would have been the truth.”
“Well . . .” Judith swallowed hard. “It’s hard for me
to admit that sometimes she
what she did made sense.” Taking silverware out of the
drawer, she gave Joe a bleak look. “What did you tell
Winifred?”
“That I’d check around,” Joe replied. “Without
charge. Tomorrow, I’ll them what really happened.”
“Oh.” Judith arranged the place settings, then
started out of the kitchen. “I want to check on something, too.”
Peeking around the corner of the archway into the
living room, she counted noses. Everyone was there.
But Chips Madigan and Dade Costello looked as if
their clothes were half soaked by rain.
Judith kept out of the visitors’ way as they lingered
over the social hour. Hillside Manor’s rule, though
never hard-and-fast, was that the hour was just that—
from six to seven. Most guests were anxious to leave by
then for dinner reservations or the theater or whatever
other activity they planned to enjoy during their stay.
The visitors from Hollywood were different. Apparently they dined later. Or maybe they never dined at
all. Perhaps they really were lotus-eaters, as depicted
by the scribes.
But they did leave eventually. Sometime between
eight-thirty and nine, the company trooped out to their
limos and disappeared into the October night. Joe
helped Judith tidy up the living room, which looked
not very much worse than it usually did after a more
conventional gathering of guests.
There was something different about the downstairs
bathroom, however. It wasn’t obvious at first. Judith,
who had started sneezing after dinner and fervently
hoped she wasn’t catching cold, sneezed again as she
rearranged the toiletry articles by the sink. A bit of
white powder floated up into the air and made her
