Chain of Fools (19 page)

"Was Janet here?"

"Yes, she came home for lunch," Timmy said. Now both Dale and Timmy were furiously rearranging the letter squares on their holders.

"Did Janet say why Pauline called her?"

Dale ignored this, and Timmy shook his head and said, "Nnn-nnn."

"Janet didn't say anything about Pauline still being upset after the way she held a gun on me yesterday?"

"Nnn-nnn."

Leaning against a nearby wicker settee were Timmy's wooden crutches, and my impulse was to pick one of them up and sweep all the letter squares off the Scrabble board and onto the players' laps. Instead, I said, "Aren't you two curious to hear about my meeting with Craig out at Attica? It was eventful."

Not looking up, Timmy said, "Absolutely."

"Yes, Donald," Dale said, "but if you don't mind keeping your dick in your pants until we're through with this game, that'll be just too, too groovy."

I picked up one of the crutches, played with it, put it back.

"It might look as if we've got our priorities screwed up," Timmy said, "but this game is more important than it may seem. Each word that Dale places on the board is meant to offer a clue about what it is I once did that makes me a moral slug in her eyes."

"And each word that Timothy plays shows his reaction to the word I last played," Dale said.

I studied the board. Among the words snaking this way and that way, up and down the board, were these:
fib, ill, liar, retch, cuffed, ducky,

CURT, UMBRAGE, KNEED, EEL, DORKY, RIPRAP.

I said, "Is 'riprap' a clue or a response?"

"Neither, exactly," Timmy said. "But it got me a triple-letter score. That was the response I felt like expressing at the time."

"Which was not following the agreed-upon rules of the game," Dale said. "When he played that word, Timothy was not keeping his word— as usual."

Timmy frowned deeply as Dale spelled out "pimp."

I left them and walked outside across the broad back lawn, aromatic and abuzz with bees, to the herb garden. Ruth Osborne had placed a low flat basket on the ground beside the spot where she was bending over. The basket contained eight perfect sun-ripened tomatoes that must have come from the vegetable garden in the southeast corner of the yard. Mrs. Osborne had snipped off a small bunch of basil sprigs, and their perfume in the heat of the late afternoon was strong and transporting. Scientists who know the geography of the human brain say the olfactory and memory centers are located next to each other, and that's why smells can trigger such powerful memories. Basil set off a welter of memories for me, all of them good. Among them were my grandmother's vegetable garden in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, and beside her herb patch a hidden pathway through the brush down to the banks of the Delaware River. Then it was on to lunches with Timmy at our
pensione
in Fiesoli, and on and on in a fraction of a second.

"Smells wonderful," I said.

Mrs. Osborne straightened up slowly and said, "This is the season I'll miss when I'm dead. It isn't even a season—just a week or two in August when the tomatoes are at their peak and the basil hasn't begun to wilt and the local corn is sweetest. What luck it is for a person to be up and around and conscious in Edensburg in August!"

I said, "It's one of the times of the year when we remember why we live in this part of the country."

"Oh, I live in Edensburg because I came back here and married Tom Osborne," she said, "instead of marrying one of the boys from Yale who came up to Mount Holyoke on weekends. If I'd married Ogden Winsted of Philadelphia, I'd have gone off with him to darkest Chestnut Hill and never been heard of again. Or if I'd accepted Lew McAl-ister's proposal of marriage, I'd probably still be in the Cameroons shining Christ's light on the heathen. Either locale would have left me a long way from Edensburg.

"There were other offers, too, some of them worth considering. But

I loved Tom Osborne from the time he was a sixth-grade . . . 'patrol boy' was what the school crossing guards were called back then, and I was a frightened first grader, and Tom held my hand every day when I crossed Third Street on the way to Stuyvesant Grammar.

"I adored Tom and felt safe and secure with him, and although much later, of course, I had to set him straight on a few matters—he could be dumb as a post when it came to what he used to call 'the female of the species'—still, I never in all our fifty-nine years together stopped leaning on Tom or looking up to him. You know, Mr. Donaldson, I was just thinking: Tom had asked that his ashes be scattered in the mountains, and I was too selfish to let the kids do that. Even though Tom is now just bits and pieces of bone and whatnot, I drew comfort from having what's left of him around. But now I've come up with another idea. Why not spread Tom's remains around in the herb garden? That way he'd be out in the weather, which is what he wanted. At the same time, I could visit him—and I do use that term loosely—and I could continue to be reassured by Tom's nearby presence, however irrational that may seem to others. What do you think?"

I said, "I don't know. Is that legal?"

"Oh, do you suppose it might not be?"

"Just to be on the safe side, maybe you should consult an attorney, Mrs. Osborne. And an agronomist."

"I suppose I ought to."

"As a precaution."

"You don't hear of people," she said, "being hauled into court for— what would the charge be? If it's on your own property it wouldn't be littering. And I don't believe there's any hazard to public health—the cremation fire surely would eliminate any risk of bacteriological contamination. What would any legal objection possibly be based on?"

She had me there. I said, "It won't hurt to ask. You might learn something neither of us knew."

She looked doubtful and unconvinced. "It's nothing I need to worry about today," she said. "Today we've all got more immediate concerns. How is your investigation progressing, Mr. Donaldson? Have you accumulated enough evidence yet to have Chester charged with fratricide?"

"I am making progress, Mrs. Osborne, but I'm still short on any evidence a prosecutor could use in making a case that would stand up

in court. As for Chester's being a murderer, I don't know about that."

"Well, I sure as the devil know about it Just you keep digging, and it's Chester you'll get the goods on. I know my son." This was said not with irony, so far as I could tell, but with some weird combination of clinical detachment and maternal conviction.

I said, "Chester has a reputation for violent explosions of temper, Mrs. Osborne, but has he ever been calculating in his violent acts? As far as I've been able to determine, premeditation doesn't seem to be his style."

"He was always sly," she said thoughtfully "And I hate to say it, but frequently untruthful too."

"Scheming in business, or even family matters, is one thing," I said. "But my question to you is, on those occasions in his life when Chester actually hurt people, did it ever seem planned?"

"No, it always seemed to erupt out of nowhere And I'm sure, Mr. Samuelson, that when you get to the bottom of it, you'll find that that's what happened with Chester and Eric. Eric refused to change his vote on selling the
Herald
to Harry Griscomb, and then Chester blew up at Eric, and this time he murdered him " She looked pained but not horrified, as if fratricide were a difficult matter that the Osbornes had to contend with, the way another family might have to face a child born out of wedlock or a scandal involving the personal use of PTA funds.

"But why," I asked, "would Chester and Eric be discussing
Herald
business affairs on a hiking trail miles from town? Is Chester a hiker?"

"Sometimes he used to be," she said "All the Osbornes are naturalists. Even June was as a child."

"Did Eric and Chester go hiking together—in recent years, as adults?"

"I wouldn't think so. I'd be awfully surprised."

I said, "You're not the only member of your family, Mrs. Osborne, who believes that Chester murdered Eric. But the more I think about it, the more trouble I have imagining the two of them meeting in the woods by chance and an argument ensuing during which Chester loses control and bludgeons Eric, who dies. Nor can I imagine Chester the hothead plotting to follow Eric nearly a mile into the woods, where he sneaks up on Eric and pounds him with a weapon he's carried along from home. Both are out of character. Either is possible, but I think unlikely."

Mrs. Osborne was due in court in three days to answer a charge of

having gone soft in the head, but on that Friday afternoon in her herb garden she looked alert and her reactions to what I told her suggested full comprehension—even though she couldn't seem to get my name right. She said, "But why else would Chester say what he said to me about somebody else having to get hurt in order to keep the
Herald
out of Harry Griscomb's hands?"

"It's possible," I said, "that this was just Chester blowing off steam— losing his temper with you and blurting out something he knew would hurt you and frighten you. Doing that would be in character for Chester."

Looking bewildered, she said, "Then you don't think it's Chester who's plotting to change the makeup of the
Herald
board and prevent the sale to Harry Griscomb?"

I told her I was not prepared to absolve Chester of anything— maybe not even Eric's murder—but that I thought a broader, more complex conspiracy was under way. I said I believed some members of the conspiracy were unaware of the activities of other members of the conspiracy, and that it was probable only one or possibly two conspirators were behind Eric's murder and the more recent attempts on Janet's and Dan's lives. Without mentioning Craig Osborne and the diamond robbery and Dan's alleged criminal activities on behalf of saving the
Herald,
I told Mrs. Osborne that she should be prepared in the coming days for a number of revelations about Osborne family members that might shock and disappoint her.

She listened with interest to all of this, and said, "You've got quite a lurid imagination, Mr. Donaldson. My curiosity is certainly piqued. But I've found that the truest answers to hard questions tend to be the simplest ones. I hope you aren't being led astray by the fact that most of us Osbornes are, to one extent or another, nuts. It would be a pity if you were thrown off by Osborne looniness."

I asked her which Osbornes were the loony ones I should be careful not to be misled by, and she had a good laugh over that.

19

Ruth
Osborne
said
she
had
no
idea
where
Dan
and
Arlene might have gone off to, and when Janet arrived at the house an hour later, she said she too was baffled. There was no indication Dan and Arlene had been lured into a trap, yet they had been gone for more than ten hours without letting anyone know of their whereabouts. Janet phoned all of Dan and Arlene's friends in the immediate area that she could think of, but none said they had heard from Dan and Arlene. One—or all—of them could have been lying, but we had no way of checking.

"What about Liver Livingston?" Dale said. The four of us were having a beer on the back porch. Elsie had left for the day, and Mrs. Osborne had gone into her late husband's study to commune with his cremated remains.

"It seems odd," Timmy said, "that Dan would go visit his dope dealer with the police so interested in his whereabouts. Why would he chance drawing attention to Liver and his illicit enterprise?"

" 'Illicit,' " Dale said. "There's a funny old word."

Janet said, "It won't hurt to check with Liver. I'll see if he's in the phone book. And then, Don, I want to hear about your visit with Craig today. I take it there's no earth-shattering news out of Attica, or we would have been let in on it by now."

Timmy and Dale had finished up their Scrabble game just minutes before—Timmy had scored highest but he still had not puzzled out how he had incurred Dale's wrath some years earlier—and now Timmy said, "Yes, Dale and I are eager to hear about your trip too, Don."

"Cough it up, Donald," Dale said.

Janet had located the Livingstons in the phone book and said, "No Liver Livingston—or Samuel, his real name. There's a Malcolm, and a Robert. Maybe it's one of those two. I'll check." She dialed one number and said, "Have I reached the Liver Livingston residence? No, sorry, wrong number." Then the second number: "Liver Livingston? No, sorry, wrong number."

"Try information," Dale said. "Maybe Liver is unlisted."

Timmy said, "NYNEX doesn't call them 'unlisted' numbers anymore. Now they're called 'nonpublished.'"

"That's quite an advance for Western civilization," Dale said.

Janet asked, "directory assistance"—formerly called "information," and now another phone company innovative piling-on of useless syllables—for Liver or Samuel Livingston's number, but the operator had no data on either, published or otherwise.

"I'm wondering if we should notify the police," Janet said, "if Dan and Arlene aren't back by a certain hour. What do you think?"

I said I thought not yet. I reminded them that Dan had said in his note not to worry about him and Arlene. I said I believed Dan's disappearance might conceivably have devolved from certain complexities in the current situation that up until that moment Janet, Dale, and Timmy had not been privy to. Then I told them about the jewel heist and Dan's criminal complicity.