Chain of Fools Read online

  We were about to leave the study when the door suddenly opened and there stood Ruth Osborne smiling in at us. “I was wondering where you all had got to,” she said pleasantly. “It looks as if you must have gone looking for something to read.”

  “Mom, hi!”

  Dale said, “We weren’t reading, Ruth, just visiting the family mu­seum.”

  “Well, this is certainly it I’m Ruth Osborne,” she said to me, ex­tending her hand. She looked fully alert.

  “Don Strachey. I’m honored to meet you.”

  “My husband could never part with a book, and neither can I. It’s just acquisitiveness and a minor variety of greed What good’s a book if it’s not passed around and read? All these books being held captive here—for what? It’s one of my six or eight moral weaknesses.”

  I said, “You always think you’re going to reread them.”

  “Oh, not me. I have no illusions about that. I just like knowing they’re in here gathering dust. The only ones I look at anymore are my son’s books. Eric was a marvelous writer Have you read him’”

  “My lover and I sometimes read Eric aloud to each other when we’re in the mountains It’s like having a companion with us who has a sixth sense for understanding the wilderness and who can put it into En­glish “

  “Yes, he was extremely gifted. Eric was murdered in May, however.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Elsie eased out the door of the study and threw an astonished look back at us as she went.

  Mrs. Osborne said, “The police say it was some mysterious drifter who did it, but I wonder. The Osbornes have been a progressive force in these parts for a good, long time, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some­body decided to get even with me or my husband by murdering Eric. Tom’s dead, of course—that’s him on the mantel—but Janet and my son Daniel and I are carrying on the family’s progressive traditions, and some of the reactionary forces we’ve taken on over the years are ruthless people with long memories. And I’ve got another theory too that’s even uglier than that one.”

  “Mom,” Janet said, “Don is a private investigator, as a matter of fact. He’s going to be looking into Eric’s murder. He’s also investigating something else that’s come up. I don’t want you to worry, because I can take care of myself, but—well, the thing is, somebody may be try­ing to get at me too.”

  Mrs. Osborne’s brow furrowed and she said, “I’m not surprised to hear it.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No, not with the vote approaching on the sale of the Herald. With you or Dan or me out of the way, the vote would shift from a major­ity for Griscomb to a majority for InfoCom. Millions of dollars are at stake, and, of course, control over the soul of the paper. Bloody mur­der has been committed over a lot less. I’ve thought about warning you, Janet. But when you’re my age you hesitate to tell people—even fam­ily, or especially family—that you suspect plots. People are liable to think you’re losing your marbles.”

  Janet blushed. “Oh, Mom, you know you can always talk to me and Dale about anything.”

  I said, “Was there anything in particular, Mrs. Osborne, that set off your suspicions of a plot?”

  Janet gave me a quick glance that I took to mean it might not be wise to encourage her mother’s imaginings. But Mrs. Osborne said somberly, “Yes, it first hit me that something might be afoot about a month after Eric’s death when Janet’s older brother Chester came by and tried to persuade me to change my vote to support selling the Her­ald to InfoCom. Chester threw a fit—he’s always had a vicious temper, which I’m sorry to say comes to him by way of the Watsons, my fam­ily—and he whooped and hollered about the family losing so much money in a sale to Griscomb that in order to keep that from happen­ing, somebody else might have to get hurt.”

  We stared at Mrs. Osborne, who looked at us miserably. Dale said, “Somebody else?”

  “That’s what Chester said. ‘Somebody else might have to get hurt.’”

  “Mom, for chrissakes, why didn’t you tell me this?”

  “Janet—does this make any sense? I think I forgot. I know I meant

  to tell you right away. But … crazy as this sounds, I think I just for­got to.”

  The phone next to me rang, but no one in the room moved to pick it up and I heard Elsie answer it in the kitchen.

  I said, “Mrs. Osborne, did you ask Chester what he meant by his threat?”

  “No,” she said, “I was so mad at Chester, I just told him to pick up his bundle of papers and to get out of my sight. Which he did. Mad I was, and a little bit frightened of him too. It’s a terrible thing for a mother to think about, but I know from painful experience that Chester can hurt people “

  “Did you think he was threatening you?” Janet said.

  Mrs. Osborne shrugged and looked profoundly sad. Elsie had ap­peared beside her, and now she said to me, “Mr. Strachey?”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a man on the phone for you. I think it’s important.”

  “A man by the name of Callahan?”

  “Yes. Mr. Callahan. He sounded tetchy.”

  “That’s because he broke his foot, and the hospital has probably fin­ished with him and is about to shove him out to the curb in a wheel­chair and leave him there. Maybe one of you could wait here,” I said to Janet and Dale, “and one of you could drive me over to rescue Timmy.”

  “Sure, let’s go,” Dale said. “The ER staff won’t abandon him at the curb, but they’ll park him in a corridor somewhere and treat him like a misplaced cadaver on a gurney. He won’t like it.”

  “And then,” I said, “I’d like to track down Chester and ask him some questions. Is he in town?”

  “Yes, and probably out at the club by now,” Mrs. Osborne said, checking what looked like a huge Timex on her wrist. “But it wouldn’t be a good idea to go interrogating him there. You could probably catch him at home after seven. He and Pauline generally watch the CNN busi­ness report over drinks at seven and sit down to dinner at eight. Are you going to question June too, Mr. Strachey? That’s my other daugh­ter. She doesn’t have the history of violence that Chester does, but she’s a treacherous piece of work in her own right.”

  We all looked at her. “I’m sure I’ll be talking to June too,” I said.

  “Good. Be careful of them both.”

  “Okay.”

  “I haven’t seen June in weeks,” Mrs. Osborne said, “but I’m sure she’s out there somewhere conniving to destroy the wonderful institution that was built by her grandfather and her father. That’s my husband right there on the mantel,” she said, “in that urn that could stand a good pol­ishing. Tom was a remarkable man, and I miss him with such hurt. Maybe I’m nuts—it runs in the family—but I like to come in here and sit by that urn once in a while, especially in the evening. And believe it or not, it helps. Tom had requested that his ashes be scattered over the mountains, and Eric and Janet were shocked when I refused to let them do it. But I happen to draw comfort from Tom’s gravelly pres­ence up there. And he’s not in any position to mind, so what’s the beef?

  “Of course, I wanted to stash Eric up there too, beside his father. But Eldon was sure Eric would want to be left out in the woods where he was happiest, so I acquiesced. Oh, it’s all so hard and complicated. Mr. Strachey, don’t outlive the people you love—that’s my advice. It’s just way too hard. I want to live until September eighth, when I can vote to save the Herald, but after that—well, we’ll see.”

  “Mom, what do you mean!”

  Mrs. Osborne let out a mordant little laugh. “Oh, don’t get excited, Janet, I’m not about to pull a plastic bag over my head, and of course I’d never own a gun. I’m just talking.”

  In the awkward silence that followed, I could just barely make out the distant sound of a man’s raised voice coming out of the telephone receiver down the hall in the kitchen. I couldn’t pick up his words, just his plaintive tone.

  8

  I t
hink I might be revising my position on capital punish­ment,” Timmy said. He was in the front passenger seat of Janet’s car, which Dale was driving, heading back to the Osborne house. I was behind him massaging his neck. He smelled of lake water and sweat and the fiberglass cast on his broken foot.

  “What has your position been on capital punishment?” Dale asked.

  “Against it. It morally demeans the state that carries it out, it has no demonstrable deterrent effect, and since the justice system is imper­fect, it’s inevitable that innocent people will be executed. But that ass­hole on the Jet Ski could have killed me, and now I’m mad.”

  “If he was tied down,” Dale said, “and you were there with a Ton-galese pigsticker, would you slice his guts open?”

  Turning, Timmy couldn’t get around quite far enough to catch my eye. But I caught his meaning: What is with this woman? Instead, he said, “I was speaking rhetorically.”

  “Oh. Oh, I see,” Dale said blithely.

  I had told Timmy about the visit to Dan and Arlene’s, and Dan’s vomitous reaction to our speculation that an Osborne might be plotting to murder—or to have murdered—another Osborne over the Heralds sale to a good chain or a bad chain. I also filled him in on our unsettling encounter with June Puderbaugh and Parson Bates, and on Ruth Os­borne’s thirty-hour lapse into insensibility and subsequent recovery.

  “Of course,” Timmy said, “I’m doing my level best trying to keep some kind of rational perspective on this whole frightening business. I realize that my injury was inadvertent—a line-of-fire unlucky accident. And a broken foot is paltry next to murder. And it certainly does sound

  from what you’ve discovered just in the past couple of hours, Don, that any number of people in this whole rat’s nest that you’ve uncovered are capable of murder.”

  Dale said, “Are you saying, Timothy, that to you the Osbornes are a family of rodents? That seems rather sweeping.”

  I saw the blood rise in the back of his neck as he snapped, “Dale, you seem to have some kind of hair across your ass in regard to me. Why is that?”

  By shifting a little, I could see her face in the rearview mirror. Her eyes narrowed and she said, “I do believe you’re imagining that, Tim­othy.”

  “Hey, do you think I have some vital parts missing, or what? I am not imagining that no matter what I say to you, you are sneering and sarcastic, and you talk like I’m some kind of half-wit. Which I am not. Now, ‘what exactly is the problem?”

  For a long moment she just watched the road and drove, and said nothing. Then she said coolly: “You really don’t remember me, do you, Timothy?”

  “No, Dale, I am not aware that we were ever acquainted.”

  “Well, you should be aware.”

  “Oh,” he said, “let me think. What could it have been? Now, did we sleep together once in the seventies? Were you ever a man?”

  She made a face that said, “Oh, please.”

  “If you think,” Timmy said, “that I’m the one who gave you anal her­pes, be assured that you are mistaken. I’ve never had it.”

  “He’s right about that, Dale,” I said.

  She looked for a brief instant as if she might crack a smile, but her control was sure and none appeared. She said, “I want you to think about it, Timothy. It was not a friendly encounter. If you think hard, it will come back to you.”

  “Oh, we’re going to play games now. Swell.”

  She said, ” ‘Swell.’ There’s a word you rarely hear anymore. ‘Swell’ goes a long way back. That it’s currently most often used sarcastically, as you used it just now, only adds to the word’s quaint perdurability.”

  I had resumed massaging his neck and paused now to check the pulse behind his right ear. It was up.

  I said, “Maybe, Dale, since we’re all going to be spending a good bit of time together on a matter of current great importance, it would

  be best to clear the air on this other matter. Don’t you think?”

  She said nothing as she turned off Main and onto Maple Street.

  “After all, you and Janet and Timmy and I are financial partners in this investigation,” I said. “Based on long experience, I can tell you that when clients squabble, trouble ensues in an investigation. My profes­sional advice is to get this business out into the open and see if you can’t get it behind the both of you.”

  Dale pulled into the Osborne driveway and parked alongside a big patch of bright blue delphiniums that looked like the Emerald City. She turned to Timmy and enunciated the words, “April—1987.”

  He looked at her, mystified and clearly irked. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “Perhaps you’re confusing me with Ronald Reagan. Did you ever have a run-in with Ronald Reagan in 1987? I’d love to have been a fly on the wall at that encounter.”

  “You’re not too far off,” Dale said, and got out of the car and strode into the house.

  9

  Just after nine, I pulled into Chester Osborne’s cul-de-sac on Summit Hill Road, a woodsy residential drive on a high hill over­looking Edensburg. The light was nearly gone from the murky sky, but it hadn’t cooled off much and the August night air was only a little less dense than gumbo.

  I had my car back, and Janet and Timmy had driven down to Al­bany to visit Skeeter and pick up some of Timmy’s and my belongings so that we could all move into Ruth Osborne’s house together for a time. Our purpose was mutual protection. Dale would be there too, and she had agreed to quit sniping at Timmy for the duration of my investigation. She did insist that a “shoot-out” at some convenient later date was inevitable. Timmy told me he was almost convinced Dale was batty, but he conceded that something about her was starting to be­come very dimly familiar.

  Chester and Pauline Osborne lived in a two-story mock-Tudor house built on a shelf of fill on the downslope side of Summit Hill Road. The house looked freshly painted and stuccoed, and the height of the arbor vitae rising out of the bark-mulch beds that bordered all the walls of the place suggested it had been put up in the early eighties. The cul-de-sac had been newly tarmacked and was brilliantly floodlit. His-and-her Lexuses were parked in the driveway, one glistening black, one glistening teal.

  When I had phoned earlier, Chester said he was disturbed to hear that Janet had felt the need to hire a private detective—June had un­doubtedly been on the horn pronto following our late-afternoon en­counter. Chester told me he was interested in hearing about my

  “unnecessary” investigation, and why didn’t I drop by for drinks after dinner? My own dinner, a couple of burritos, had been consumed at a picnic table outside Taco Bell. And while I wasn’t sure which after-dinner drink was going to be appropriate, I had more pressing matters to take up with Chester Osborne, the stockbroker older brother with the history of violent outbursts.

  “You found your way up here,” Osborne said in a businesslike way. “Good for you. Well done.”

  “I followed your directions,” I said. “They were clear.”

  “There’s nothing worse than vague directions,” he said with such fi­nality that I decided not to bring up Chechnya. Leading me across the foyer, Osborne said, “We’ll go in the study.”

  He was tall and stiff-backed in a gray pinstriped suit and silk tie with tiny blue digital clocks on it. Pleasantly large-featured in the by-then-familiar Osborne way, he carried himself with an assurance that sug­gested Janet’s self-possession. Although something in Osborne’s cool, blue, mildly bloodshot eyes hinted at a turbulent interior more like Dan’s. Whether June’s wackiness would also show up in the mix, I couldn’t tell yet.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” Osborne said, indicating a striped-silk wing chair that looked as if it had been designed for anything but com­fort. “Brandy?”

  In some of the venues my line of work had taken me into, “Brandy,” was more likely to be the name of a transvestite I was questioning than a beverage being served, and in that respect Chester Osborne’s study rep
resented a notable change. I said, “Yes, please.”

  The study, like the foyer we’d come through and the living room I’d briefly glimpsed (the back of a woman’s blond head had been vis­ible above the back of a couch), had wall-to-wall gray carpeting and the kind of furnishings more commonly found in investment bankers’ offices: shiny formal chairs upholstered in silk or leather, heavily lac­quered wooden sideboards, and desks whose design was vaguely, but not exactly, French provincial—more French Provincial Decorating Product. The watercolor of a mountain lake with a canoe on it hang­ing over Osborne’s desk was identical to the watercolor of a mountain lake with a canoe on it hanging in the foyer.

  “Looks good,” I said, accepting a snifter half full of an amber fluid of considerable clarity. “No need to run this stuff through cheesecloth.”

  Ignoring that, Osborne stared at me for a long moment, and then said, “I spoke to my sister June earlier.”

  “I supposed you might have.”

  “June told me she ran into you today.”

  “Yes, this afternoon, at your mother’s house.” I sipped some of the brandy, which was not Fine Brandy Product, but the genuine article.

  “June is a bit of a dingbat,” Osborne said gravely, “but don’t get the idea that I am.”

  “Okay.”

  He gave me an appraising look that was not friendly. Then he said, “I didn’t like that talk about murder. June said you and Janet and Dale Kotlowicz were speculating about my brother’s murder and what might have been an attempt to kill Janet—some crap about a Jet Ski attack June doesn’t always get her facts straight, but she reported,to me that there was talk connecting these incidents to divisions within the Os­borne family over the sale of the Herald. I didn’t like that.”

  I said, “It was a theory that came up.”

  “Well, I don’t like it. It’s too close to slander.” Osborne gazed down at me with his bloodshot eyes. He was still standing beside the bar a few feet from me, holding a snifter that he had not drunk from.