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? Having 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,” Ar
lene 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 standing 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.
“Craig’s motivation would be getting even with his father by bolstering the position of the liberal Osbornes who controlled the paper. Stu said I shouldn’t mention his involvement to Craig because Craig knew Stu and Chester were friends, and that would make Craig suspicious.”
I said, “Torkildson actually proposed a jewel robbery?”
Dan laughed sourly and said, “Hell, no. Do you think Stu Torkildson of the Glens Falls Torkildsons is a common criminal? What Stu had in mind was a multimillion-dollar drug deal. He said I had friends in Cuba, and he knew from reading The Wall Street Journal that Cuban officials deal coke big-time. This was Stu’s idea of keeping the deal respectable.”
“So you and Craig would be risking your necks, and Stu wouldwhat?” I asked.
“Stu would do nothing and risk nothing. He told me straight out that if the deal were ever exposed, he would deny any knowledge of it. He only wanted to save the Hera Id for the Osbornes, and he had to save himself for that noble pursuit.”
“Right,” I said. “The way he saved the Herald with the Spruce Valley project.”
Arlene blurted out, “And you listened to that flaming asshole, Dan? I can’t believe this shit! I just can’t believe it!”
“Well, goddamn it, Arlene, how else was I supposed to save the Herald? You tell me!”
She shook her head and muttered something inaudible.
I said, “Whose idea was the jewel heist? Craig’s?”
“He had this buddy,” Dan said, “who’d worked for the hotel and who swore it would be easy to hold the place up in the middle of the night. Nobody would get hurt,” Dan said, his pale eyes suddenly full of anguish. “And one job, if they hit the right night, could net over a million in cash and jewels, which I would then fence with my Cuban contacts. Nobody ever guessed that the one robbery alone would produce a haul worth an amount more than equal to the Herald’s entire debt. And nobody guessed either that the hotel security man would turn up in the middle of the robbery. Accord
ing to Craig’s buddy, the guard was supposed to be in some other part of the hotel at that hour.”
“Did Stu know about the robbery in advance?” I asked.
Dan shrugged. “Only after the fact. He still thought it was going to be a big drug deal, with the laundered cash arriving at the Herald by way of a so-called ‘loan’ from a bank in the Caymans. When he heard that Craig had been arrested for robbery and murder, he wasn’t too wild about the news. It was obvious that Stu’s going out on a legal limb to save the Herald was really to recoup his own battered reputation after the Spruce Valley debacle. A ‘world-class’ drug deal-that’s what Stu said he had in mind-was one thing, but armed robbery was something else, and Stu was on the edge of freaking out when he heard about it.”
I said, “And Chester knew none of this?”
“Not in the beginning,” Dan said, looking away again.
“But he figured it out,” I said. “Craig described that part to me.”
Dan nodded grimly. “Fucking greedy, hothead Chester. We knew all along-I knew, Stu knew-not to get Chester involved.”
“And Chester never tumbled to the fact that his good pal Stu was the man who had initiated the entire scheme?”
“No,” Dan said, “Chester found out Craig and I had been spending time together before the robbery. And then when the stolen jewels failed to turn up, Chester was suspicious and went out and confronted Craig at Attica. Chester is such a total asshole. First of all, he threatened to blow open the whole deal if we didn’t give him the jewels so that he and June could gain control of the paper. Craig just blew him off.
“Then in May, Chester gets it in his insane head that Eric and I are about to use the diamond money to squeeze him and June out of the paper, and he goes out and confronts Craig a second time. But by then I’d lost the jewels and I was frantically trying to find them up here in the woods, and I was too embarrassed to tell Craig where the jewels went. So when Chester goes out to Attica and says, ‘Where are the jewels?’ Craig, who’s plenty pissed by now, he tells Chester, ‘Ask Dan where they are.’”
Chain of Fools (donald strachey mystery) Page 18
