Silent End Read Free

with black spots in it. “Is that plastic ?”
    “Yes.”
    “But—how can it be? Plastic would have vaporized.”
    “Exactly. But it’s only melted. It appears to be one of a pair of dice. Do you have any idea how it got in there?”
    “No!”
    “Would you agree that it must have been put in afterward?”
    “Um, yes. Monday night, probably. Once the kiln gets down to 130 degrees, you can open it—”
    “Is that what you did, Judy? Opened it and put this in? Part of your game, maybe?”
    “It’s Judith,” she said icily, “and I will not answer any further questions without a lawyer.”
    *
    “But he must be absolutely obsessed,” she bleated to Phyllis the next Tuesday at Scrabble Club. Judith herself felt obsessed; all week she had been missing sleep, missing meals, unable to think of anything except: Why? Why me, why my kiln? And who? Who was the victim? Who was the murderer, if not It?
    Phyllis prompted, “Obsessed?”
    “Yes, or insane.” Judith herself felt half-insane, what with the articles in the newspaper, the cops suspecting her, everybody talking about her; she felt the plastic Jesus on top of the piano watching her. The Scrabble timer flashed its red warning light like a police cruiser’s beacon. She covered it with her hand, telling Phyllis earnestly, “He must have come back later to throw a die in the kiln. But why?”
    “Something to do with the victim? Have they identified her?”
    “No. How can they? All that’s left is bits of bone and a jewel stone and that stupid die. Why would he throw a die in my kiln? Kill, I mean.”
    Die. Kill.
    The words hung in the air. Staring at Phyllis, Judith breathed, “Oh, my God.”
    “What?”
    Judith whispered, “Nothing.” She darted a panicked glance around her. Dick and Doug sat two tables away in utter silence, heads bowed, intent on an epic Scrabble contest. Other players, less serious, chatted over their games. But Judith did not see the member she was looking for. The one who gloated. The one who showed off. The one who always wore lots of jewelry, including, Judith seemed to remember, a large oval aquamarine. She hissed at Phyllis, “Where’s Eloise?”
    “Huh.” Phyllis glanced around, mildly curious. “I don’t see her. You’d think she would have been here last week, too, bragging about her trophy.”
    Without even excusing herself, Judith staggered up and ran to look for a phone. The church office was locked, but way down a dark hallway by the boiler room she found a pay phone on the wall.
    “Yeah?” a barking voice answered her at the township police station.
    Yes, the big-nosed detective was there, as she expected. The paper had said the police were working around the clock on this one, and even though the guy was a potato-faced misogynist, Judith could not wait to talk with him, help him out, get herself off the hook.
    Standing in the darkest corner of the church basement, she told him eagerly, “I think I know who the victim was. A woman named Eloise Hamilton.”
    But instead of asking her why she thought this, the detective said in a chilly drawl, “Well, isn’t that interesting. That’s what we think too.”
    “But—but how did you find out?” Too late, Judith realized how bad that sounded.
    “Traced the stone. Jewelers keep records, you know.” The detective’s voice turned frostier yet. “How did you know Eloise Hamilton?”
    His tone made Judith grab at the wall-mounted phone for support, yet she found herself babbling, “I’m—I was—in Scrabble Club with her.”
    “Is that right? I understand she was quite an obnoxious person.”
    “Yes, she was.” Shut up , Judith told herself, almost crying, yet she kept going. She had to make this stupid cop get a clue. Had to. “Look, whoever killed her was a word freak. ‘Kill,’ that’s why he put her in my kiln, because of the pun, don’t you see? And ‘die,’ that thing he put in with her was a die. He couldn’t stand it that she—”
    A heavy