Chain of Fools

by Chain of Fools (lit)

  covered with mud the day Eric got killed, and Tacker was in on it! Hey, I’m for bringin’ in the bucks But I draw the line at murdering nice peo­ple like Eric. Chester and Tacker Puderbaugh have to be arrested right now! I demand it! As a taxpayer, I demand that you arrest my husband, who’s that goddamn big murderer Chester Osborne!”

  It was at this point that the other Osborne shiny Lexus, the black one, cruised noiselessly into the driveway, and Chester got out and walked over to us. His posture wasn’t up to standard, the sweat on his big Osborne face glistened, and in shirtsleeves and no tie he looked vulnerable and a little desperate.

  Chester said to all of us, “I can just imagine what kind of b.s. my wife has been spreading down here, and I’m here to tell you, it’s god­damn not true. Pauline is inebriated, I’m goddamn sorry to say, and she’s confused in the head. My attorney, Morton Bond, is on his way over here now. I just got off the phone with him. And if you officers will get somebody over here from the DA’s office”—Chester glared at his wife bitterly now—“I’m prepared to make a statement”

  “A statement about what?” Janet said, her face darkening. “A state­ment about Eric’s murder’”

  “Hell, no,” Chester said, “not about Eric’s murder, goddamn it! Do you really think I’d kill my own brother, Janet, even if he was some fruitcake eco-Nazi! Jesus Christ, Janet! No, I’ll make a statement about Tacker Puderbaugh, my idiotic nephew, who was supposed to—to just do a couple of mischievous things to scare you and Dan into possibly changing your vote on the sale of the paper. But I’m goddamn sorry to say that Tacker Puderbaugh is out of control. He went way too far tonight, and he tried to involve me in what he did tonight, and I’m here to tell you I did not—did not—give Tacker an okay on that.”

  “What did Tacker do?” Janet said.

  Chester shook his head and said grimly, “He burned your house down, Janet. It was totally uncalled for.”

  That’s when the phone began to ring inside the house. The dis­traction was brief, but it was just long enough for us to miss grabbing Pauline before she walked over to Chester and got him by the neck and began to scream and squeeze.

  23

  In fact, two phone calls came at the Osborne house, one after the other. The first was from the Eden County Sheriff’s office no­tifying Janet that her house at Stilton Lake had been badly damaged by fire, but not destroyed, a few hours earlier. The deputy wanted to verify that no one had been inside the house at the time. Janet said no one had, and she and Dale soon left for the lake. I offered to accom­pany them, but they said no, they’d call some friends who lived nearby. They did, and their friends said they would call other friends—a circle of friends made up mainly of members of the Hot Flashes Softball League—and they would all meet Janet and Dale at the fire scene.

  Janet was shaky and angry but in control, and she urged that I re­main behind to help look after her mother and to stay on top of the investigation, which Janet said had taken a turn that was “sickening but not all that surprising.”

  Dale, thoughtful and much subdued, said there were still too many unanswered questions, and we all agreed with that. Timmy, balanced on his crutches, muttered about a good chain and a bad chain, a daisy chain and a chain of fools, and Lee Ann took notes.

  Just after Janet and Dale drove off, the phone rang again. This one was a call for me from the investigative agency in Los Angeles I had asked to track down Tacker Puderbaugh. I was informed that Tacker had departed Papeete for the United States on July 17, two weeks be­fore the first Jet Ski attack on Janet but more than two months after Eric’s murder. If Tacker had not left Tahiti, he might have had his visa revoked and been ordered to leave the French colony, my informant

  said. Tacker had been arrested twice on minor drug charges and once for shoplifting beer.

  Out in the driveway, Pauline had been handcuffed and locked in the back of the cruiser, from which her angry screams issued forth in­termittently. It was after two a.m., and lights had come on in some of the neighboring houses. Two teenage boys and a middle-aged woman stood watching the scene from the front porch of a house across Maple Street. Ruth Osborne apparently was sleeping soundly. We could hear the hum of her air conditioner above us.

  I phoned Bill Stankie at home and woke him up. He said he was glad I’d called with my five-minute update on the investigation, but, he said, it was not yet time for him to involve himself in the Osborne drama if the only evidence available so far concerned arson and at­tempted murder It was Eric’s homicide he wanted to pin on Chester, if he could, and Stankie asked if I thought Chester had done it. I said, no, I didn’t, but I wasn’t sure

  After a thoughtful pause, Stankie said, “You’re doing excellent work, Don. Keep at it, and stay in touch. I’m going back to sleep.” Then he hung up.

  Another town police department patrol car soon arrived, its flash­ers flashing as it cruised down otherwise deserted Maple Street. Per­haps the spectacular light show was to warn worms that were think­ing of crossing the road. A uniformed police sergeant got out and identified himself as a detective. A young woman carrying a tape recorder and a thermos accompanied the detective, and he introduced her as the assistant DA who was to depose Chester. Then Chester’s lawyer arrived, a jowly, bleary-eyed man with a briefcase. He was dressed for court, silk tie and all, and looked almost ashamed of the motley assemblage he found before him. I had on jeans, sandals, and a faded yellow T-shirt, and Timmy was wearing a tank top, running shorts, and several pounds of fiberglass.

  Chester sat in his car and conferred with his lawyer for five minutes. Then we all trooped into the house, where Chester, the lawyer, the police sergeant, and the assistant DA went into the study with the urn full of cornmeal resting on the mantel. They shut the door. I’d asked if I could sit in, but Chester’s lawyer said no. Timmy, Lee Ann, and I considered ways of eavesdropping, but then thought better of it.

  Just after 3:15, the four came out. Timmy was sound asleep on a

  chaise on the back porch, but Lee Ann and I were upright, if not fully alert. Lee Ann asked the prosecutor if charges would be brought against Chester. The young woman said she would have to discuss that with her boss and otherwise she could not comment

  Chester’s lawyer said, “Mr. Osborne made some remarks to his nephew that were misinterpreted, and the young man seems to have run amok. Mr. Osborne denies that he is in any way responsible for any illegal acts Tacker Puderbaugh may have committed. Mr. Osborne is cooperating fully with law enforcement, and the police are now look­ing for young Tacker. We expect that an arrest warrant will be issued in the morning—which is fast approaching.”

  I said, “Do you expect Tacker to corroborate your client’s descrip­tion of events’”

  The lawyer looked at me carefully and said, “That kid has always been an asshole, and I’m sure he’ll be looking for a way out of the deep pile of shit he’s in now. But nobody in his right mind is going to accept some dopehead beach bum’s word over Chester Osborne’s.”

  “Tacker’s mother might,” I said. The lawyer looked bleak. The thought of tangling with June could not have made him look forward to the dawn. Chester looked somber too, and his face didn’t brighten when I added, “Pauline Osborne has some additional pertinent infor­mation ” I asked the DA, “Are you going to be talking to her?”

  “Sure,” the young woman said. “Although I understand Mr. Osborne has initiated commitment proceedings against his wife on the grounds that she is a danger to herself and to others Mr. Osborne just informed me that a hearing is likely on Monday “

  “Yes,” Osborne’s lawyer said, “it’s unlikely that this tragically dis­turbed lady will have anything to say that could be used in anybody’s investigation You’ve visited with her, I understand. You can see that she’s well around the bend “

  Timmy, Lee Ann, and I stared at Chester, who stood looking at us with no expression at all.

  I said, “Chester, what are you planning on doing? Havin
g all the Os­borne women who won’t let you have your way locked up?”

  He said, “I would if I could.” But then his lawyer signaled for Chester to say no more, and they left

  24

  Dan and Arlene had leased a Range Rover to replace the one damaged when they’d been run off the road. I found the vehicle parked at the edge of an old logging trail on the mountainside where the ashes and diamonds had rained down in April. Their tent had been set up nearby, and their cooking fire appeared freshly doused when I discovered the campsite just after seven Saturday morning. I knew the tent was theirs because several items of clothing hanging on a branch looked like Arlene’s, and the tent smelled of pot.

  Neither Dan nor Arlene was present at the camp, and I tramped around in the nearby woods for the next hour without locating them— or finding millions of dollars’ worth of jewels in the underbrush—be­fore I wised up and hiked back to the campsite to await Dan and Ar­lene’s inevitable return.

  When I heard them approaching just after ten, I was inside the tent sitting on a campstool, trying to read Dan’s copy of The Autumn of the Patriarch. It was in the original Spanish, but I grasped a word here and there: si, no, nada, muerto, etc.

  “Yo, Dan. Hey there, Arlene,” I yelled, and Arlene shrieked. “Hey, it’s just me—Strachey.”

  The tent flap was flung aside, and Dan stood there glaring and breathing hard. As Arlene came up behind him and leaned down to get a glimpse of the intruder, Dan snorted at me, “What the fuck are you doing here!”

  “Reading your book. I hope you don’t mind. I saved your page. And I want you to know, I’m impressed. I couldn’t even get through this one in English, and I’m a big Garcia Marquez fan.”

  “Get out of my tent, goddamn it!”

  I carefully replaced the novel where I’d found it on the ground cloth next to the double sleeping bag. Dan backed away as I came out into the dappled sunlight. The forest aroma was enchanting after the musty tent smell, but Dan’s demeanor—I wondered if he might be going to heave again—meant this would be no time for enchantment.

  “Why, Don,” Arlene drawled, giving me a forced look of hippie in­souciance, “how did you know -where to look for us? We were just up here in the woods chilling out for a couple days, and you knew right where to look. That is so weird!”

  “I got the map from the charter pilot,” I said, and Arlene screamed again. Dan began to retch and staggered off behind some brush.

  “Be careful not to puke on the diamonds!” I yelled, and then he re­ally let loose.

  Arlene started to follow Dan, but then thought better of it.

  I said, “Did he throw up in Cuba too?”

  “Some from the turista,” she said. “But mostly we just got diarrhea.”

  “Ahh.”

  When Dan quieted down, Arlene went to him with a bottle of water. I waited while he attended to his oral hygiene. They both came back a minute later, Dan wan and shaky, bits of his breakfast in his beard.

  “I think we need to air some things out,” I said.

  “I’ll get you a clean T-shirt,” Arlene told Dan, but he looked at me and he knew what needed airing.

  After he changed his shirt, Dan lowered himself to the pine-needled forest floor and leaned against a tree. Arlene and I sat on the two camp stools.

  “I talked to Craig,” I said. “I talked to the charter pilot. I drew con­clusions. I knew to talk to the pilot because your mother discovered that your father’s ashes were missing from the urn. If Eric had replaced the ashes with something more human-remains-like than cornmeal, your mother might never have noticed the loss. And none of us would have figured out what happened to the jewels.”

  Exhaustedly, Dan said, “I put the cornmeal in the urn. Eric had just left it empty. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.”

  “God, I don’t know either,” Arlene said. “You put cornmeal in your father’s urn? That gives me the creeps.”

  “You didn’t know about the jewels?” I asked Arlene.

  His strength coming back now, Dan snapped, “Arlene didn’t know anything until yesterday! So don’t go goddamn dragging her into any­thing. I didn’t tell her about the robbery until we got out here, and by then you must have heard about it from Craig, so Arlene was really the last to know and she can’t be legally implicated in any way. So just goddamn leave Arlene out of it”

  “Sometimes it pisses me off that with Dan I’m always the last one to know anything,” Arlene said. “But this time I guess I lucked out. Al­though, when you come right down to it, Dan didn’t really do any­thing so terrible, and I sure hope the cops aren’t going to hassle him. I mean, he didn’t even know about the heist until the jewels came in the mail from Craig. By then, I mean, what difference did it make, since those oil sheiks have got diamonds up the wazoo anyway? Dan just thought, hey, he may as well put the jewels to good use and save the Herald, and also Craig could get even with his big asshole dad, Chester. So I certainly hope the cops aren’t going to make some big fucking deal out of what Dan did.”

  I looked at Dan, and he glanced at me, and he knew I knew he’d been in on it from the beginning. I said, “It’s over, Dan. It’s all coming out now. There’s no way it can’t”

  Dan looked away into the woods. Maybe he still thought he’d spot a diamond.

  Arlene said, “What’s he mean by that, Dan?” He wouldn’t look at her or me. She said, “What else is there to come out? What’s Don talk­ing about?”

  There was a silence, and then Dan said, “Arlene, I need to talk to Strachey privately I know you’re going to be pissed off—”

  “I sure as hell am gonna be pissed—”

  “But take my word for it, Arlene, you’ll be better off if you don’t know certain things. It’s for your own sake, goddamn it!”

  “What things don’t I know? What? What?” she yelled, eyes blazing.

  I said, “About Eric’s murder. Dan knows all about Eric’s murder, and he’s going to tell me about it, Arlene. Aren’t you, Dan?”

  Arlene looked aghast and said, “No.”

  Dan sat there and said nothing.

  Arlene screamed, then said it again. “No!”

  Dan looked at her and said, “I killed Eric.”

  “You did not!” Arlene shrieked.

  “I did, Arlene! I killed Eric!”

  “Dan, you’ve gone over the edge!” Arlene cried out. “You couldn’t have killed Eric, and you know it! You were with me the day Eric was killed, and we were in the city picking up a delivery for Liver!”

  “No, of course I didn’t actually kill him with my own hands!” Dan moaned. “But I might as well have, for chrissakes. I was—I was trying to control everything, and save the paper for Mom and Eric and Janet and me, and—I fucked up, goddamn it.”

  I said, “So now it’s all got to come out, Dan. It’s too late to save the paper for the family. The chances are slim that you’ll ever find those diamonds in these woods. And even if you did, word is out now, and the jewels would have to be returned to their owners. The best deal you’re going to get from now on is, the board votes next month and the paper goes to the decent Griscomb chain and not to god-awful InfoCom.”

  He said simply, “I know that.”

  Arlene was rocking on her seat and said, “I can’t believe this. I just fucking can’t believe this, Dan. You never told me those diamonds had anything to do with Eric. I thought they were just some oil profiteer’s wife’s jewelry, and the fucking diamonds were going for a good cause that would benefit the people!”

  “Arlene,” I said, “two people died in that robbery, one of them a working man, a member of the international proletariat. Letting that guard live the rest of his life would have been a good people’s cause.”

  “Sure, that sucked, that guard getting killed,” Arlene said, “and I’m not saying that two wrongs make a right. But the Herald stands up for people like that dead guard, and if the Osbornes lose control of the paper, then it’ll start stand
ing up for assholes like big corporations that want to poison the rivers and cut all the trees down. So I agree with what Dan was trying to do. Especially since he didn’t even know about the robbery until after it happened.”

  Another awkward silence. I looked at Dan, and then Arlene did too.

  Dan said, almost inaudibly, “I knew about it, Arlene.” Then, more loudly: “Of course I knew about it. Come on, Arlene, are you really that naive? I mean—Jesus!”

  Arlene slumped and said nothing.

  “Was the robbery your idea?” I asked.

  Now Dan’s face contorted with grief. He said, “No.”

  Arlene went white and said, “Was it Eric’s?”

  Dan guffawed once. “God, no. Eric? Don’t be absurd.”

  I said, “What happened, Dan?”

  Again another long silence in the woods. “This is the end,” Dan fi­nally said. “I’m relieved.”

  “A lot of people will be.”

  “I won’t,” Arlene said, but Dan ignored this.

  He took a deep breath and in a shaky voice he said: “Stu Torkildson first came to me last summer and told me the Herald would not survive as an Osborne family paper unless we could somehow pay off the Spruce Valley debt. He said the resort project was eating the paper alive. He had already refinanced twice, he said, but the company was only falling further and further behind, and Stu had exhausted all legal means for saving the paper.”

  When Dan said “legal,” he gave us a meaningful look. “Stu said to me,” Dan went on, “that I, better than all the other Osbornes, under­stood how ‘questionable means’—his term—are justified by good ends. He mentioned as an example something he knew about that I’d done back in the Movement days in sixty-eight. And then when I agreed to listen to what he had to say, he told me bluntly that he thought Craig would be willing to pull off some moneymaking caper that would res­cue the paper.