Chain of Fools (donald strachey mystery)

by Richard Stevenson

  “A general store manager up where the hiking trail crosses Route 418 used to live in Saranac, and he recognized Grubb when he’d come into the store a day or two earlier. Later, other people who’d been on the trail that week picked Grubb’s mug shot out of a series, and they said they’d seen him and he’d made people nervous on account of his looks. A week later, Grubb turned up in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, where he allegedly savagely assaulted and robbed three campers while they slept, shoving their bodies in a ravine. Two of the three died in the attack-they were all stabbed repeatedly with a hunting knife. But one survived, and he ID’d Grubb, who’d already been arrested in the next county for breaking into a vacation cabin. I drove down there and interviewed Grubb, but by then a lawyer had been at him. He refused to talk about anything at all, other than that he’d been up this way camping-he said he couldn’t remember when. But is he our man on the Eric Osborne homicide? I’d say yes.”

  He watched me interestedly as I said, “Did I or did I not hear you say that Grubb had actually been spotted in the area of the murder scene a day or two before the killing, and he might have been there on the day Eric was killed?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “I don’t know about that, Captain.”

  “I’d rather have him on the trail on the day of the crime, yes. But we don’t know that he wasn’t there on the day of the murder, either. Grubb is certainly unable or unwilling to show that he was anywhere else at the time.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “wasn’t Eric bludgeoned to death? Grubb apparently likes to stick knives in people. What about the Saranac Lake assaults? Did he use a knife or a club?”

  “He threatened people with knives, and hit one with a rock.”

  “Oh.”

  “Eric Osborne was hit from behind, on the head, thirty or thirty-one times, with a heavy blunt instrument that left no residue. That rules out a log or branch or other barky natural object of the forest. The handle end of a golf club is a possibility. The object was roughly of that thickness. It appears that the perpetrator was hiding behind some rock ledge, jumped out just as Eric passed by, and pounded away. Eric probably never knew what hit him.”

  “Whoever did it,” I said, “obviously wanted to make sure that Eric was dead.”

  “That’s so. It was a vicious attack by someone in a great fury.”

  “And by someone who, it sounds like, carried the murder weapon with him or her on the trail. How far off the road did the crime occur?”

  “Less than a mile,” Stankie said. “The weapon was never found, but Grubb could have stashed it in his camping gear and trekked out to 418 and thumbed a ride. That’s generally how he got around. So far, we’ve been unable to locate the motorist who gave him a lift out of the area.”

  “Was Osborne robbed?” I asked.

  “Apparently not. At any rate, nothing obvious was lifted from his wallet. But then we don’t know what all Eric had in his possession at the time.”

  “Then that’s another reason to discount Grubb, who seems to like to hurt and rob strangers. Captain, you’ve got sixteen people who were on that trail around the time of the killing. But how do you know there weren’t others? Especially since the murder took place so close to Route 418.”

  He shrugged. “We don’t.”

  “Who knew Eric was going hiking that day, and where he planned on walking? Anybody?”

  Stankie fidgeted with his folder and said, “As a matter of fact, quite a few people knew.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Every Monday morning, Eric hiked up to Hobbs Pond, where he’d spend several hours watching a beaver clan he’d been writing about in his Thursday column in the Herald. It was a series he’d started in late March. Twenty-two thousand copies of the Herald are sold every day, so-you can take it from there, Mr. Strachey. That opens up other possibilities-I realize that. But possibilities are possibilities, and evidence is evidence, and the best evidence still points to Gordon Grubb-a known violent killer, probably a psychopath-as Osborne’s assailant. Of course, the case is officially open. And so’s my mind.”

  Stankie sat watching me with a look that seemed to suggest he was waiting for me to say something, but I had no idea what it was he wanted me to say. When I asked, “What have you heard from the sheriffs department on the two Jet Ski attacks?” Stankie looked almost disappointed.

  He said, “The Jet Skier got away yesterday, but Sheriff Stone has a sketchy description of a pickup truck that somebody saw near the north end of the lake not long after the attack. This guy had a Jet Ski in the back of his truck and was speeding east. They haven’t got a plate number, only a general description of the truck, so I don’t know whether anything much is going to come of that. The sheriff tells me he’s going to be keeping an eye on Janet’s place for a while, but he’s advised her to stay off the lake for the time being and she’s agreed to play it safe.”

  “She and Dale Kotlowicz are staying in town at the Osborne family house for now, and I’m there with them.”

  “Good,” Stankie said, and again he looked as if he were waiting for me to ask some critical question I’d neglected to ask so far, or to open up a topic he felt unable to introduce on his own.

  I said, “The Osbornes are quite a family. I’d never met any of them before.”

  “They are, aren’t they?” Now he was alert.

  “Three generations of American overachievers.”

  “I’d put it at about two-and-a-half,” Stankie said. “And the fourth generation you can pretty much forget about.”

  “I haven’t met any of the fourth generation yet.”

  “And chances are, you won’t.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He eyed me grimly. “Dick and June Puderbaugh have two boys, Titus-he’s called Tidy-and Frederick, who’s better known as Tacker. Tacker left town four years ago, no loss to Edensburg. He was an aimless, slow-witted boy who always seemed to be in the vicinity of trouble-one of his best buddies is doing time at Ossining for dealing coke in a school zone. The last I heard of Tacker, he was a beach bum in Fiji or someplace out in the South Seas.

  “Tidy, the older boy, is here in town, and theoretically he practices law, but if he’s ever had a client, I couldn’t tell you who it would be. Tidy and three other nicely manicured, underemployed youths with fat trust funds spend seven afternoons a week in an alcove off the grillroom at the Edensburg Country Club, where they have their own table for an ongoing bridge game. The only way you’ll get to meet Tidy is by crashing his game or by ambushing him when he’s on his way in or out of his condo at Pleasant Meadow Estates.

  “Tidy lives out there in an apartment that adjoins the condo of Ann Marie Consolati, who runs a body-waxing and electrolysis hair-removal parlor in town. I’ve been reliably informed by a friend in the construction business that there’s a hidden door that opens between Tidy’s clothes closet and Ann Marie’s-even though Tidy has been engaged to Debbie Stockton, the boat-cushion heiress, for six years. And I can also tell you-although I cannot divulge my source of information on this point-that Tidy Puderbaugh does not have a single hair on his body from the neck down.”

  Stankie colored a little as he mentioned this eccentrically lubricious detail and cracked a droll little smile. Then, looking instantly somber again, he said, “Tacker’s a sad loser, and Tidy is ineffectual and a little bit comical, but Chester and Pauline Osborne’s son, Craig, should not be taken lightly at all. Craig Osborne is highly intelligent, shrewd as they come, and altogether ruthless. He’s in Attica doing twenty-five to life for killing a guard in a diamond heist last year. Before that, Craig had a record as long as your arm for robberies and assaults and god-knows-what-all, going back to when he was just twelve years old. Craig Osborne, I can tell you, is a thirty-year-old man with no moral conscience whatsoever, and I’d say he is capable of just about anything.”

  Stankie stopped talking and looked at me again-as if I were somehow supposed to supply the point of his discourse on Ta
cker, Tidy, and Craig. I said, “Craig couldn’t possibly have been Eric’s killer, could he?”

  Stankie shook his head and kept watching me. “Nunh-unh,” he said.

  “When was Craig sent up?”

  “December tenth, and he’d been in custody since June of last year, when he was wounded in a shoot-out at the jewel heist in Tarrytown.” He looked at me some more.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I finally said.

  Stankie leaned forward and said quietly, “Eric Osborne was a fine young man.”

  “That’s what I keep hearing.”

  “If Grubb didn’t kill him, I want the man who did kill him apprehended.”

  “Good.”

  He said, “A snitch at Attica reported that Craig Osborne talked about Eric’s death and said there was more to it than the investigators knew.” Stankie was motionless, but now he seemed to be watching two things: me and the door behind me, which opened into an outer office and was ajar.

  Stankie said, “This got back to me through channels, and I asked that the snitch press for details. He claimed to the warden out there that he wasn’t able to pry anything else out of Osborne.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “Maybe it was just talk, a sociopath’s braggadocio.”

  “That could be. But Craig said one other thing to the snitch that might give you pause. It did me. On one occasion, Craig was talking about Eric’s murder and how there was more to it than the investigation had turned up, and he made a crack to the snitch about his own murder conviction and how, ‘Anyway, offing people runs in the Osborne family.’ Those were the words he used: ‘Offing people runs in the Osborne family.’ “

  “I’ve heard about a tendency toward violence in some Watsons and Osbornes. But the jewel guard’s was the only actual homicide by an Osborne, according to Janet.”

  “It’s the only one I know of,” Stankie said. “Of course, Chester, Craig’s father, has a couple of assaults in his record-or did, before they were erased.”

  “I heard about that too. And I’ve met Chester. He’s creepy enough.”

  “There’s an Osborne intrafamily fight going on,” Stankie said in a matter-of-fact way. “It’s over the ownership of the Herald. Eight million dollars is at stake, plus, of course, the paper’s reputation. You’re up-to-date on that, I take it.”

  “I am.”

  “And the ins and outs of the upcoming board of directors’ vote, and how Eric’s death means one less vote for selling the Herald to a quality newspaper chain at a loss to the family of eight million dollars.”

  “Funny you should mention that, Captain. It’s exactly the angle on this whole thing-Eric’s murder and the two Jet Ski attacks-that a number of people close to the situation are currently considering.” I said, “Are Craig and his father close?”

  “They seem not to be,” Stankie said. “In fact, Chester disowned Craig a long time ago. But I can tell you confidentially, Mr. Strachey, that Chester Osborne has visited Craig in Attica twice in the past five months, once just before Eric’s death in mid-May, and again on June fourteenth.”

  “I see. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me confidentially, Captain?”

  “No. Just that I can’t carry the Osborne-family angle of the investigation any further than I have. I can’t question Craig without betraying the Attica snitch, who is considered too valuable an asset for the warden out there to transfer. I can’t question Chester because I have no evidence whatsoever connecting anybody but Gordon Grubb to Eric’s murder, and Chester is liable to accuse me of spreading false rumors about himself and the Puderbaughs. He’ll have some State Street lawyer down in Albany visiting the commissioner and threatening to sue me for slander.” Again, he waited.

  “So what do you expect me to do?” I said. “The investigative work of the New York State Police?”

  “Yeah, I’m kind of hoping you will,” he said. “Of course, I can’t be of any assistance to you, or be associated with your work in any way. Until, of course, you nail that arrogant asshole Chester Osborne. Then I’ll see he’s strung up real good.”

  “Oh, so you know Chester pretty well then?”

  “We went to school together,” Stankie said. “We played on the same varsity hockey team for three seasons, in fact-until the day at prac tice when I checked Chester for the third time that afternoon and he turned around and pounded me in the face with his stick so hard that he knocked all my teeth out.”

  Stankie opened his mouth and popped out a double set of dentures, uppers and lowers.

  12

  Stu Torkildson and Chester Osborne kept me waiting in Torkildson’s outer office ten minutes past our 9:30 appointment time, giving me a chance to peruse that day’s Herald. I looked over the thoughtful mix for which the Herald was esteemed-national and international news from The New York Times and Washington Post-L.A. Times news services, clearly written and carefully edited local stories on matters that affected people’s lives, editorial and op-ed pages with commentaries that were both serious and lively. Parson Bates’s column, “Our Eden,” ran that day too. In it, Bates attacked the “multicultural-ist” Tex-Mex items cropping up in recent months on the menus of so many local restaurants. He wrote that he couldn’t understand why people wanted to eat food that made their necks sweat. Public neck sweating was put forth as yet another symptom of the nation’s moral rot.

  Chester Osborne was there in his stockbroker’s outfit when I was ushered into Stu Torkildson’s office. Osborne gazed at me morosely and didn’t get up from his chair, but Torkildson came over and twinkled with approval at the sight of me.

  “It’s the investigatory man of the year,” he said, and squeezed my hand and grinned as if I were a long-lost Dartmouth fraternity brother.

  “That’s a view not unanimously held in Edensburg,” I said, tossing Chester a quick look. “But thanks for the vote of confidence, Mr. Torkildson.”

  “I’m Stu,” he said.

  “I’m Don.”

  And that was Chester over there sulking.

  “Coffee?” Torkildson said.

  “Black,” I said.

  He didn’t buzz for his secretary, as many men of his station might have, but personally maneuvered a carafe and a mug with the Herald’s logo on it. Torkildson was sixty or so, starting to settle around the middle, but still solid looking in a well-cut dark suit, blue shirt, and polka-dot bow tie. His black loafers gleamed, as did his pate, which was as bald as a rapper’s and as carefully waxed and tended. He was a phrenologist’s dream-not that I was tempted to ask him to bend down so that I could study his bumps. He had a wide, pleasant face that was as hairless as his head, and a warm, steady gaze that could have meant he was without guile, or it could have been the practiced affectation of the craftiest man in Edensburg. I wondered, but not for long, which it might be.

  “I was sorry to hear about your friend Timothy hurting himself yesterday,” Torkildson said. He took the one empty chair by the coffee table-Chester occupied the other one-and I got the low couch. “I was happy to hear that the injury wasn’t serious, but the incident must have been frightening for both of you.”

  “It was. It looked as if the Jet Skier was trying hard to run somebody down-almost certainly Janet, since the same thing happened last week when she was on the lake herself.”

  “Janet always did have an overly active imagination,” Chester said sourly.

  Torkildson gave me a genial don’t-mind-him look and said, “Chester is the skeptic in the Osborne family.”

  A tendency he’d been known to express with a hockey stick. I said, “The police are taking the incident seriously, as they ought to. It was either gross negligence or attempted murder-serious stuff, either way.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Torkildson said, and Osborne sniffed and shook his head. “I saw Janet when she came in this morning,” Torkildson ^, went on, “and while she’s one tough cookie, she’s been badly shaken by yesterday’s events. I’ve known Janet for more than t
hirty years, and I think I know when that girl is hurting. I talked to her, and I hope I was able to pep her up some.”

  “Did Janet discuss her suspicions with you?” I said. “That Eric’s murder and the Jet Ski attacks might be related to each other and to the fight over control of the Herald!”

  Osborne slumped low in his seat looking glum, but Torkildson said conversationally, “No, Janet and I spoke only briefly, but Chester has filled me in on that aspect of the story. It’s pretty lurid stuff for Edensburg, I have to tell you.” He grinned and made mock shivering noises. “Sounds more like a thriller you’d pick up at the airport than real life, to be perfectly candid.”

  I said, “No, it sounds to me more like real life-a valuable family asset being fought over by too many heirs, all of whom have different values, and varying motives for either holding on to an asset or disposing of it in one way or another, and some of whom are desperate in their need for one outcome or another. And once in a while, in situations like this one, that desperation turns murderous. It happens. History is full of it, and newspapers are too. Even the Herald, I’ll bet, sometimes reports on family members obliterating other family members over money.”

  Osborne glared at me and said, “This is actionable. Strachey, if you talk garbage like that outside this room, I’ll see you in courtl”

  Torkildson must have been used to Chester’s eruptions and appeared unfazed. He said, “Chettie, I can see why you’re ticked off-I’m sure I would be too if I were in your shoes. But try to understand that Don here is an outsider coming into a situation where he’s unfamiliar with the lay of the land, and he’s feeling his way. The first people he talks to are people who’ve suffered a tragic loss, and on top of that they’ve had the daylights scared out of them by some nitwit on the lake who ought to be barred for life from going anywhere near a device with an internal combustion engine attached to it. Naturally this one-sided combination is going to suggest that the Herald’s current situation will represent a legitimate line of inquiry into these other difficult matters.