Chain of Fools Read online

  June looked apprehensive over Bates’s confrontational style, if not, I guessed, his sentiments. Janet and Dale both peered at me poker-faced and waited.

  I said, “You’ve missed the point, Parson. Number one, I’m not Diane Sawyer or Larry King. I’m a private—let me emphasize private—in­vestigator. The results of my inquiries are seen only by my clients, two of whom in this case are members of the Osborne family.” June looked as if she didn’t like the sound of that, and Bates, picking up on my ref­erence to Dale as an Osborne, glowered theatrically.

  “Secondly,” I went on, “I’m interested in peering into Osborne fam­ily bedrooms and toilets—your linkage, not mine, Mr. Bates—only in­sofar as either might shed light on Eric’s murder and the recent attacks on Janet. A more general rattling of family skeletons is not what I’m aiming at. Doing that would be—yes, I wholeheartedly agree—rude and indiscreet.” June’s look softened a bit, but Bates, apparently an­ticipating a trap, still gave me the fish eye.

  I said, “But the question I want to ask you, June, is this: Why do you believe my investigating your brother Eric’s murder and these ap­parent attempts on Janet’s life would necessarily lead me into Osborne family affairs?”

  “Oh,” she said, and then had to think about this. “I didn’t mean to say that you’d be probing into the entire family’s affairs. Just Eric’s and Janet’s.”

  “But Eric is dead and Janet is my client, so what’s the problem?”

  June just stared at me, but Bates came to her rescue again in what seemed to be the only way he knew: He perspired energetically in his seersucker jacket—the temperature had to be in the mid-eighties—and he puffed himself up and fumed. “Osborne family matters are inter­twined,” Bates declared. “An investigation into the affairs of any one Osborne necessarily will impinge upon the business of other family members for whom discretion may be valued highly. The situation is

  not nearly so simple as you are making it out to be, Mr. Strachey. It is complex and demands attention to the opinions of others.”

  Dale said, “What do you mean the ‘business’ of other family mem­bers, Parson?”

  “I don’t catch your drift.”

  “You said an investigation into the affairs of any one Osborne nec­essarily will impinge upon the ‘business’ of other family members. By business, do you mean the Herald?”

  “Not the Herald in particular,” Bates sniffed. “Have you drawn that inference? Be assured, no such implication was intended.”

  Janet said, “The thing of it is, Parson, that with Eric dead and if I were dead, it’s almost certain that the Herald would be sold to Crewes-InfoCom and not Griscomb. So anybody investigating Eric’s murder and attempts on my life would naturally want to look into the family busi­ness and its current turmoil. Catch my drift?”

  Now June bridled. “Janet, what do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that the people with a motive to see me and Eric dead are the people who want to sell the Herald to InfoCom and the people at InfoCom who want to buy the paper. If you were the investigator and you were considering motives to murder Eric and me, isn’t that what you would look at first?”

  “But, my lord, Janet! Can you seriously consider that someone in the family would ever do such a thing?” June looked aghast as she said this, and then something seemed to hit her, and she looked aghast a second time.

  “For chrissakes, June, the family tree is ripe with violent nut cases,” Janet said. “Would you like me to recite them for you?”

  “That won’t be necessary. But the people you’re talking about now, Janet—the family members you evidently regard as under suspicion of murder—these people are not troubled individuals like Cousin Graham or Uncle Edmund or even Craig. You can only be referring to … to me and to Dick and to Chester and … and to Tidy! Janet, how could you even think such a thing!”

  Dale said, “June, chill out. Janet is just explaining why Don might have to do some sniffing around in the Osborne dirty laundry. Don’t forget that under our system of criminal justice, you and Dick are in­nocent until proven guilty. Of course, if you decide to retain a cracker-jack criminal lawyer, that’s up to you.”

  June bit her lip, but Bates could no longer contain his indignation, “Dale, your infernal flippancy is … out of place!”

  “I thought it was perfectly placed myself. It’s the Osbornes trying to save the soul of the Herald who are getting knocked off, not the Os­bornes who are willing to sell out a hundred years of great journalism in order to turn a quick profit. My flippancy pales next to their greed.”

  June’s eyes flashed with anger. “Dale, you certainly are trying every­one’s patience today,” she said, edging toward her Buick “And I think Parson and I had better be on our way before one of us says some­thing he or she later regrets. And Janet, I do believe you would be wise to take your family murder plot ideas and run them by Stu Torkildson before you go to the police and start a lot of talk that can only do un­told damage to the entire family. Try to be a little farsighted, will you? Or,” June said, with a look of fresh alarm, “have you already gone blab­bing outside the family?”

  “Not yet,” Janet said.

  “Good. Mr. Strachey, I guess we’ll all have to depend on your dis­cretion, like Parson says. Why don’t you arrange to have a talk with Stu Torkildson too? He’s the Osbornes’ business adviser of many years, and when it comes to sensitive situations, Stu is a rock.”

  “He could look up, for example,” Dale said to me, “if anybody in the family has signed a recent contract with Murder, Inc.”

  I said, “Isn’t Torkildson the man who came up with the investment idea that forced the Herald into such deep debt that you’re now forced to sell the paper? You mean he’s still around?”

  Dale gave me a look that said, “Now you’re catching on,” and Janet watched us all benignly.

  It was Parson Bates who blurted out, “Your gall, Mr. Strachey, is ex­ceeded only by the depth of your misinformation. The Herald’s finan­cial difficulties were caused not by poor judgment, but by changing circumstances no one could have foreseen. Not even Stu Torkildson, a man of keen mind and Christian probity, could have predicted a re­cession and a one-hundred-twenty-five percent increase in newsprint costs. I take strong exception to your maligning this man of character.”

  I said, “I thought the company’s sixteen-million-dollar debt was the result of a risky, grandiose resort project that didn’t pan out and had to be sold at a huge loss. I wasn’t suggesting that Torkildson was wicked, just vainglorious and dumb.”

  “Yes, that’s the conventional wisdom on the Herald’s troubles,” Bates said. “But the truth of the matter is a good deal more complex, I can assure you.”

  “Clue me in on the complexities. I’m all ears.”

  Bates was about to speak when June cut him off. “Perhaps we could rehash the Herald’s troubles another time, Mr. Strachey, but not just now. Parson and I really must be on our way. It was a pleasure to meet you, and it was nice to see you too, Dale. Janet, keep me posted on this awful Jet Ski business. I do hope it’s not what you seem to think it is. Losing Eric was horrible enough, and none of us in the family wants you to be run over and drowned, Janet, no matter what you might think of us. And, of course, another murder would just kill Mom.” At this, June let loose with a hysterical giggle, and yelped, “Oh, what in heaven’s name am I saying!”

  “Well, what are you saying?” Dale asked, but June had turned in con­fusion and was climbing into her car.

  “Good luck!” June sang out wackily, and Bates lowered himself into June’s Buick beside her, sniffing and throwing eye darts at us, like in the funnies. The car eased around us and cruised out into Maple Street and away.

  After we watched the car go, Janet said dryly, “Don, you probably think June’s looniness is atypical among the Osbornes.”

  I said, “No, don’t forget that I’ve met your brother too.”

  “Right.”
/>   “Who’s the reverend?”

  “He’s not a reverend. Parson Bates is his name. He’s a local pear farmer, antique spats dealer, and the neo-con columnist for the Her­ald. Dad always believed that in a one-newspaper town like Edensburg the paper had a responsibility to give opposing voices a forum, provided that their bigotry is at least thinly veiled, which Parson’s gen­erally is.”

  Dale added, “Both Parson’s politics and his moral beliefs are barely distinguishable from Cotton Mather’s, although he sees himself as mar­ginally more modern than that. He does, however, draw a line at the twentieth century—which he disapproves of more or less in toto—and he styles himself as a kind of genial nineteenth-century, belovedly dotty country squire. Parson does have a devoted following—not including, of course, those Herald readers who suspect that he may be clinically

  insane. In his columns, Parson likes to draw lessons to live by from nature. And when he’s out in his orchard and the raptures are upon him, and he starts hearing his pears offering moral instruction, look out. His ‘unnatural’ personal and social evils range from Wal-Mart to wel­fare to gangsta rap—which in one column he insisted on referring to repeatedly as ‘gangster’ rap. And, hey, don’t get Parson started on cun-nilingus.”

  I said, “He actually deals in old spats? Not petty-argument spats, but those cloth-and-leather things people used to wear over their insteps and ankles?”

  “Parson is world renowned among spats collectors,” Janet said.

  Dale added, “People come from all over, every year, by the ones and twos.”

  “Not all his betes noires sound unreasonable to me,” I said. “As a social evil, Wal-Mart would be high up on my list too.”

  “Parson is actually an interesting mixture,” Janet said, “of small-is-beautiful and small-minded-is-beautiful.”

  “And he and June are chums?”

  “Since seventh grade. June and Dick and Parson and his wife, Evan­geline, play whist out at the Bateses’ every Friday night, and they’re all on the board of the museum together.”

  I said, “Has Bates ever been known to turn violent?”

  “Not physically,” Janet said. “Anyway, I know he’s ambivalent about the Herald’s being sold to InfoCom He’s loyal to June and he’d love to see the paper’s liberal traditions interred, but he also hates ruthless, amoral big business. So it’s hard to imagine Parson involved in a plot to do away with me or Dan or Mom. On the other hand, it’s also true that Parson and Eric couldn’t stand each other “

  “They fought?”

  “Avoided each other, mainly. Eric had no patience with the way Par­son used nature in his writing to support his prejudices, including a raging homophobia that’s just barely under wraps. And Parson was jeal­ous, I think, of Eric’s talent and success as a nature writer. Also, Eric’s and Eldon’s being casually out as a couple drove Parson gaga. He was always fuming to people about them—an affront to nature, and all that. Dale and me he tolerates more easily. First of all, we’re women, and not to be taken so seriously as men. Also, I think, he sees us as a ‘Boston marriage,’ one of those nineteenth-century eccentric institutions even

  the religious Emersonians made room for in their expansive universe. But two men together? The horror, the horror.”

  Dale was about to add something to this when the side door of the Osborne house opened again, and a stout, middle-aged woman in powder-blue slacks and a peach-colored blouse came out and, look­ing distressed, called Janet’s name.

  “Elsie, hi, we’ll be right in. How’s Mom?”

  “Not good. You’ll see as soon as you get in here. She’s not good.”

  “What’s the matter?” Janet said, looking alarmed.

  “It’s her mind,” Elsie said, tapping the side of her head with her fin­ger. We followed Janet quickly into the big house.

  7

  The woman seated in a bay-window breakfast nook just off the kitchen looked up at us and smiled uncertainly but did not get up. In her early eighties, Ruth Osborne was still tall and sturdy look­ing—“statuesque” in the parlance of her young adulthood—with sun-bronzed rough hands and a long face with large curious eyes, as in a painting of a Bloomsbury figure. She had a big head of Gravel Gertie hair and “wore a shapeless green shift. Lying alongside, but not on, her bare feet were a pair of worn leather sandals.

  “Hi, Mom,” Janet said, and kissed her mother on the cheek. “How are you doing? Dale and I brought a friend along.”

  Mrs. Osborne looked at Dale without apparent recognition and then at me. As Mrs. Osborne studied me, Dale leaned down, kissed her on the cheek, and said, “Hi, Ruth,” but the old woman stiffened and looked embarrassed.

  “I’m Don Strachey,” I said, and Mrs. Osborne extended her hand, which I grasped. Her skin was dry, her grip firm.

  Without enthusiasm, she said, “I always enjoy meeting my daugh­ter’s friends.”

  “Don’s up from Albany,” Janet said. “He’s a private investigator down there.”

  She took this in, smiling tentatively, and said, “Oh, that’s nice.” Then she turned and looked out the window. We followed her gaze and all of us peered out at the backyard, where the sun shone down on the freshly mowed lawn and beyond the trees there were shadows.

  “Mrs. Osborne, that’s Dale there,” Elsie said. Janet had introduced Elsie Fletcher to me on the way in as her mother’s longtime

  housekeeper She said, “You know Dale, don’t you? That’s Dale there.” But Mrs. Osborne did not respond and continued gazing into the back­yard.

  “I’m the mouthy one,” Dale said. Then Dale looked at me. “Ruth and I always hit it off,” she said, “on account of we’re both—as people around Edensburg like to call it—‘outspoken.’ If we hadn’t seen eye to eye on so many things, we’d probably have strangled each other.”

  I said lamely, “I’ll bet.”

  Ruth Osborne was now somewhere else, and when Janet said, “Mom?” she got no response.

  “We’ll be back in a few minutes, Mom,” Janet said, and indicated for us to follow her.

  Dale, Elsie, and I went with Janet down a dim, wide hallway and into a book-lined study, where Janet shut the door. The oak library table in the center of the room was heaped with books, as was the old leather swivel chair behind it. It looked as if some sorting out of Tom Osborne’s library had commenced some years earlier but had not gotten far. The oil portrait over the fireplace of a man in a turn-of-the-century man-of-parts getup appeared to be the Herald’s founder, Daniel Lincoln Os­borne. Below the painting, faded family photographs were propped on the mantel, with Tom, Ruth, and the five children at different ages and in various poses, most of them in wilderness settings. Also on the mantel was a bronze urn with a lid on it. An inscription had been typed on a sliver of paper and taped to the urn. It read: William T. “Tom” Os­borne— 1911-1989.

  Janet said to Elsie, “How long has she been like this?”

  “Since yesterday morning,” Elsie said, looking frightened. “I was going to call you today if she didn’t snap out of it. June called this morn­ing and said she’d be stopping in, but I was going to call you anyway.” Elsie and Janet exchanged significant looks.

  “And she was like this just now when June was here?” Janet asked. When Elsie nodded, Janet said, “Oh, God.” To me, Janet said, “For a couple of years now there’s been short-term memory loss, and she’s gone blank on occasion—just sort of zombied out for five-and ten-minute periods. But nothing this long lasting.”

  “Mrs. Osborne was always a talker,” Elsie said. “She had a mind like a whip, and boy oh boy did she ever let you know exactly what she

  was thinking. That’s not Ruth Osborne out there, what you’re seeing now. Not by a long shot.”

  Dale said to me,” ‘Be prepared,’ we were told as children. But what can anybody do to prepare for this?”

  “What did June want, anyway?” Janet asked.”

  “We go weeks without seeing June,” Elsie s
aid to me, clearly hope­ful that I might become an ally in her disapproval of a daughter who didn’t visit her mother often enough. To Janet, she said, “June and Par­son both wanted to talk about selling the Herald to that big company that sounds like somebody sneezing.”

  “InfoCom?”

  “Yes, they wanted Mrs. Osborne to vote for that one.”

  “Parson too?”

  “Both of them did, yes. They tried to get Mrs. Osborne to come in here with them and shut the door, I suppose. But she wouldn’t budge from the breakfast nook, so I heard a lot of what was discussed. I had baked corn to get in the oven, you know.”

  Janet picked up the cue and said, “Mom sure loves your baked corn, Elsie.”

  “Oh yes, she enjoys it when I cook.”

  “So what did Mom say about InfoCom and her vote?”

  “Why, she didn’t say anything at all. She said hello and how do you do and not a word more, as far as I’m aware. Several times while they were here, June said, ‘Mom, what’s the matter?’ Or, ‘Mom, are you lis­tening to me?’ She knew your mother wasn’t right, Janet. She saw that it was more than just forgetfulness this time.”

  “Did June say anything about it to you?”

  “No, but she gave me a look on the way out—like I knew all the time your mother’s mind was going, and now June knew it too. Par­son Bates was all smiles, but he was right there the whole time, so he got the picture too, you can bet your boots on that.”

  “I ran into them on their way out,” Janet said, “but neither one of them mentioned anything about Mom’s being different.”

  “Those two are up to something,” Elsie said ominously, and no one in the room contradicted her.

  Janet told Elsie she would contact Mrs. Osborne’s physician, who had diagnosed early stages of Alzheimer’s disease a year earlier, and

  find out if anything should or could be done at this point. Dale said that was wise, but in her medical opinion little could be done with Mrs. Osborne beyond help, patience, and kindliness. Experiments were un­derway with drugs, but so far the benefits were far from certain.