Mary Daheim
truth has a way of getting out.” Once again, Torchy
winked.
“That’s so,” Judith said, smirking a bit and ignoring
Renie, who was making threatening gestures at Torchy
with her cheese knife. “It’s hard to imagine why Bob
Randall would kill himself. It’s even harder to imagine
how he did it.” She gave a little shudder, which wasn’t
entirely feigned.
Torchy frowned. “I’m not sure I know yet. That is, I
couldn’t say if I did, of course. That’d be telling tales
out of school.” Torchy gave the bedstead a quick slap.
“Gotta go. No rest for the wicked.”
The security man left. The cousins stared at each
other.
“What do you think?” Renie inquired.
“I think,” Judith said slowly as her eyelids began to
droop, “that no matter how Bob Randall died, it wasn’t
suicide. I’m willing to bet that it was . . .”
She fell asleep before she could finish the sentence.
SIX
JOE AND BILL arrived shortly after three o’clock.
Both had already heard about Bob Randall’s sudden
death. Joe was wild; Bill was thoughtful.
“I don’t get it,” Joe raged, pacing up and down the
small room. “There’s nowhere you can go in this entire world and not run into a dead body. If I shot myself right now with my trusty thirty-eight, and you
entered a cloistered nunnery tomorrow, the first
thing you’d find is the Mother Superior’s corpse,
carved up like a damned chicken!”
“Joe,” Judith pleaded, “you know I was apprehensive even before . . .”
“Post-op anxiety, depression, fear—it could play
out that way,” Bill was saying quietly to Renie, “but
I doubt it. On the other hand . . .”
“I’ll have you moved,” Joe said, suddenly stopping between the cousins’ beds. “To some rehab
place; I think there’s one connected to our
HMO . . .”
“. . . Bob Randall may have been overcome with
family difficulties,” Bill continued. “Maybe, when
he signed that release before surgery, he envisioned
his own mortality and . . .”
“No, what am I thinking of?” Joe said, catching
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Mary Daheim
himself. “There’d still be a damned body somewhere.
It’s hopeless, it’s beyond comprehension, it’s . . .”
“. . . given his other problems, Randall felt his life
was unbearable.” Bill turned his palms up in a helpless
gesture.
Judith turned toward Bill. “What did you say? About
