“No, I guess not.” Renie shifted around on the bed,
trying to make herself more comfortable while not disturbing Judith’s leg and hip. “Addison’s in pretty good
shape this morning. Or, as he put it, he’s still alive,
which I gather sort of surprised him.”
“I can imagine,” Judith said. “He may have thought
he’d end up like his wife, Joan.”
“Right. Anyway, he was reluctant to talk at first, not
that I blame him. He doesn’t know me, I could be a
maniacal killer.” Renie stopped as her phone rang.
“Drat. Let’s hope it’s not my mother.” She managed to
grab the receiver on the fourth ring. “Hi!” she said with
a big smile, propping the phone between her chin and
shoulder. “Yes, I’m feeling better . . . Don’t feel bad
about not being able to come see me, Tom . . . No, I realize you can’t go to work. Oh? . . . Then ask your
dad . . . He’s what? ” Renie’s jaw had dropped and she
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
Randall kids, but they weren’t much help. He’d interviewed Somosa’s widow in the Dominican Republic
via long distance a couple of days ago, before Bob
Randall died. Addison said she wasn’t much help. Her
English is almost nonexistent and she seemed inclined
to blame her husband’s death on God’s will. Addison
doesn’t agree, and neither do I. It’d be more likely that
the teams in the rest of our division did Somosa in. But
that’s not realistic, either.”
“What about Tubby Turnbull?” Judith asked. “Did
Addison find him helpful?”
Renie gave Judith a sardonic look. “Has Tubby ever
been helpful to anyone? After hemming and hawing
and trying to figure out if he’d put his pants on backwards, Tubby insisted he couldn’t think of anyone connected to the team who’d want Joaquin out of the way.
He was popular with the other players, the press liked
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him, management considered him a huge part of the
franchise, and even his agent is a good guy—as sports
agents go. Anyway, the agent works out of New York.
He hasn’t been out this way since the end of last season.”
Judith gave a faint nod. “Nothing there, as far as we
can tell.” She pondered the matter of Joaquin Somosa
for a few moments. “The bear,” she said suddenly.
“What did he mean by saying ‘a bear’ and pointing to
the TV?”
Renie frowned at Judith. “I told you, he must have
been hallucinating. Why else would he keep saying ‘a
bear, a bear, a bear’?” Renie’s scowl faded as she
clapped her hand to her head. “A bear—in Spanish,
that would be aver, to see. Maybe he couldn’t see—the
TV or anything else. The drugs might have been taking
effect. Doesn’t Ecstasy blind you?”
“I’m not sure,” Judith said, “but it would fit. All I
really know is that it does terrible things, including
making you crazy. Joaquin must have ingested it just
before the repairman, Curly, got to his room. I wonder
who’d been there ahead of him?”
“We don’t know,” Renie responded with a helpless
look.
“That’s the trouble,” Judith said. “We weren’t
around when these other deaths occurred and it’s almost impossible to get any concrete information out of
the staff. I sure wish Maya was still here.” She sighed
and rearranged herself on the pillows. “What about
Joan Fremont? Did she and Addison sound like a
happy couple?”
“Yes,” Renie responded, delving into her goodies
stash and hauling out some cheese and crackers. “Want
some?”
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Mary Daheim
“No, thanks.”
“Addison didn’t make a big deal of it,” Renie continued, “which indicated to me that the marriage must
have been solid. You know, if he’d gone on and on
about how devoted they were and all that junk, I’d have
figured him for a phony.”
“What about their kids?” inquired Judith.
Renie shrugged and chewed on her crackers. “They
haven’t been in town since Thanksgiving, which, alas,
was the last time they saw their mother alive. I mean,
they came for the funeral. But I got the impression they
were a close family, emotionally, if not geographically.”
“What about Joan’s colleagues at Le Repertoire?”
Renie shrugged again. “By and large, she got along
with most of them. Addison indicated that she wasn’t
happy with the direction the theater was going—too
much emphasis on social issues, rather than good
drama. But he didn’t know of any big rift. As for socalled rivals, he said that there were always some of