dad . . . He’s
was staring at Judith.
“To what purpose?” Renie said into the phone as
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her good hand clawed at her hair. “Why? Where?
Don’t you dare let them near Clarence! . . . What?
How much smaller? What are they, rats or dogs? Oh,
good night!”
There was a long pause as her son apparently offered some sort of explanation. At last Renie spoke
again. “If you find out, let me know. Or call for the
men with the white coats and the butterfly net. Meanwhile, I don’t know why you need money—you can’t
go anywhere . . . Oh, good grief! If you can ski down
Heraldsgate Hill, you could get to work. Really, you’re
thirty-one years old and it’s about time you got a serious job instead of making tacos at Miguel’s
Muncheria. Good-bye, my son. I’m having a relapse.”
With a weary expression, Renie replaced the receiver.
“Bill found two Chihuahuas, lost in the snow up at the
park by our house. He’s taken them in and has dressed
one in a tuxedo and the other in University of Wisconsin sweats.”
It was Judith’s turn to stare. “What?”
“I don’t know why,” Renie responded, holding her
head. “My husband’s a psychologist. Therefore, he
can’t possibly be crazy. Can he?”
“Dare I ask where he got a tuxedo that would fit a
Chihuahua?”
Renie glanced at Archie the doll. “It’s Archie’s formal wear. The dogs are very small, not as big as
Clarence,” she added, referring to the Joneses’ lopeared rabbit. “In fact, the sweats belong to Clarence,
but he never wears them. The last time we dressed him
in them, he ate the Badger logo off the front.” She
paused, holding her head. “I should never leave Bill
alone for too long, especially now that he’s retired.”
Judith didn’t feel up to making sense out of her
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Mary Daheim
cousin’s report. Renie and Bill had a strange
menagerie of creatures, both living and stuffed. Sometimes it was best not to ask too many questions. “Could
we go back to Addison Kirby?” Judith pleaded. “You’d
begun to get something useful out of him.”
“I had?” Renie pulled the covers up to her neck.
“Brrr . . . it’s cold in here. I don’t think Clarabelle is
working full-time, either.” She glanced at the radiator,
which was emitting asthmatic hissing sounds. “Yes,
Addison definitely thinks that his wife, Somosa, and
Randall were murdered. However, he has absolutely no
idea who did it.”
Judith frowned. “Was he going to write up his suspicions for the paper?”
“He can’t,” Renie said. “He has to have facts, evidence, just like a cop. That’s what he was trying to
gather when he got hit by the car. He’d talked to the
