slit in Herself’s dress. She could see Joe chatting with
his longtime partner, Woody Price, on the deck—if the
Flynns had had a deck—and being introduced to a
young woman named Sondra, who would later become
Mrs. Price. Joe would tend the barbecue, rustling up
steaks and burgers for many of the cops whom Judith
met later in life, and for some she’d never known at all.
Despite a decade with Joe, Judith still resented the
wasted years during which Vivian had held him
hostage.
“. . . too long now,” Joe was saying.
Judith realized she hadn’t been listening. So caught
up in her thoughts, so weary was her body, so en-
wrapped in what had been and what might have been,
she hadn’t heard her husband.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, “I faded out there for a
minute. What were you saying?”
Joe gave her a sardonic look. “That they can’t do
much tonight. They need the ME’s report to proceed if,
in fact, foul play is suspected.”
“Oh. Good,” Judith said. “You mean they’ll have to
go away?”
“Right.” Joe, who had sat down in the other armchair, turned as Stone Cold Sam Cairo entered the
parlor.
“So you’ve got two wives in the same cul-de-sac,”
he said with another one of his leers. “Two wives, two
slaves, and some sexy movie actresses upstairs. I guess
you’ve got it made, eh, Flynn? Maybe I should retire
right now. Then you could tell me your secret for the
good life. Har, har.”
“Don’t count on it, Sam,” Joe responded with a sour
expression. “What’s up?”
“Do you really want to know? Har, har.” Cairo
laughed again, then sobered. “I just heard from downtown. They won’t know anything until midmorning.
Bruno Zepf may be a big shot in Hollywood, but he’s
just another stiff on a busy Halloween weekend.”
“His companions won’t like that,” Joe said.
“They’re used to first-class treatment.”
“So what are they doing here?” Cairo slapped his
thigh and laughed even louder than usual.
“It’s a fluke,” Judith said, and wished she’d kept her
mouth shut.
“A fluke?” Cairo looked mildly interested.
“A superstition,” Judith replied as Herself and Dilys
entered the parlor. “Bruno Zepf considered B&Bs
lucky for his movies.”
