Текст книги "Chain of Fools "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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not nearly so simple as you are making it out to be, Mr. Strachey. It is complex and demands attention to the opinions of others."

Dale said, "What do you mean the 'business' of other family members, Parson?"

"I don't catch your drift."

"You said an investigation into the affairs of any one Osborne necessarily will impinge upon the 'business' of other family members. By business, do you mean the Herald?"

"Not the Herald in particular," Bates sniffed. "Have you drawn that inference? Be assured, no such implication was intended."

Janet said, "The thing of it is, Parson, that with Eric dead and if I were dead, it's almost certain that the Herald would be sold to Crewes-InfoCom and not Griscomb. So anybody investigating Eric's murder and attempts on my life would naturally want to look into the family business and its current turmoil. Catch my drift?"

Now June bridled. "Janet, what do you mean by that?"

"I mean that the people with a motive to see me and Eric dead are the people who want to sell the Herald to InfoCom and the people at InfoCom who want to buy the paper. If you were the investigator and you were considering motives to murder Eric and me, isn't that what you would look at first?"

"But, my lord, Janet! Can you seriously consider that someone in the family would ever do such a thing?" June looked aghast as she said this, and then something seemed to hit her, and she looked aghast a second time.

"For chrissakes, June, the family tree is ripe with violent nut cases," Janet said. "Would you like me to recite them for you?"

"That won't be necessary. But the people you're talking about now, Janet—the family members you evidently regard as under suspicion of murder—these people are not troubled individuals like Cousin Graham or Uncle Edmund or even Craig. You can only be referring to ... to me and to Dick and to Chester and . . . and to Tidy! Janet, how could you even think such a thing!"

Dale said, "June, chill out. Janet is just explaining why Don might have to do some sniffing around in the Osborne dirty laundry. Don't forget that under our system of criminal justice, you and Dick are innocent until proven guilty. Of course, if you decide to retain a cracker-jack criminal lawyer, that's up to you."

June bit her lip, but Bates could no longer contain his indignation, "Dale, your infernal flippancy is . . . out of place!"

"I thought it was perfectly placed myself. It's the Osbornes trying to save the soul of the Herald who are getting knocked off, not the Osbornes who are willing to sell out a hundred years of great journalism in order to turn a quick profit. My flippancy pales next to their greed."

June's eyes flashed with anger. "Dale, you certainly are trying everyone's patience today," she said, edging toward her Buick "And I think Parson and I had better be on our way before one of us says something he or she later regrets. And Janet, I do believe you would be wise to take your family murder plot ideas and run them by Stu Torkildson before you go to the police and start a lot of talk that can only do untold damage to the entire family. Try to be a little farsighted, will you? Or," June said, with a look of fresh alarm, "have you already gone blabbing outside the family?"

"Not yet," Janet said.

"Good. Mr. Strachey, I guess we'll all have to depend on your discretion, like Parson says. Why don't you arrange to have a talk with Stu Torkildson too? He's the Osbornes' business adviser of many years, and when it comes to sensitive situations, Stu is a rock."

"He could look up, for example," Dale said to me, "if anybody in the family has signed a recent contract with Murder, Inc."

I said, "Isn't Torkildson the man who came up with the investment idea that forced the Herald into such deep debt that you're now forced to sell the paper? You mean he's still around?"

Dale gave me a look that said, "Now you're catching on," and Janet watched us all benignly.

It was Parson Bates who blurted out, "Your gall, Mr. Strachey, is exceeded only by the depth of your misinformation. The Herald's financial difficulties were caused not by poor judgment, but by changing circumstances no one could have foreseen. Not even Stu Torkildson, a man of keen mind and Christian probity, could have predicted a recession and a one-hundred-twenty-five percent increase in newsprint costs. I take strong exception to your maligning this man of character."

I said, "I thought the company's sixteen-million-dollar debt was the result of a risky, grandiose resort project that didn't pan out and had to be sold at a huge loss. I wasn't suggesting that Torkildson was wicked, just vainglorious and dumb."

"Yes, that's the conventional wisdom on the Herald's troubles," Bates said. "But the truth of the matter is a good deal more complex, I can assure you."

"Clue me in on the complexities. I'm all ears."

Bates was about to speak when June cut him off. "Perhaps we could rehash the Herald's troubles another time, Mr. Strachey, but not just now. Parson and I really must be on our way. It was a pleasure to meet you, and it was nice to see you too, Dale. Janet, keep me posted on this awful Jet Ski business. I do hope it's not what you seem to think it is. Losing Eric was horrible enough, and none of us in the family wants you to be run over and drowned, Janet, no matter what you might think of us. And, of course, another murder would just kill Mom." At this, June let loose with a hysterical giggle, and yelped, "Oh, what in heaven's name am I saying!"

"Well, what are you saying?" Dale asked, but June had turned in confusion and was climbing into her car.

"Good luck!" June sang out wackily, and Bates lowered himself into June's Buick beside her, sniffing and throwing eye darts at us, like in the funnies. The car eased around us and cruised out into Maple Street and away.

After we watched the car go, Janet said dryly, "Don, you probably think June's looniness is atypical among the Osbornes."

I said, "No, don't forget that I've met your brother too."

"Right."

"Who's the reverend?"

"He's not a reverend. Parson Bates is his name. He's a local pear farmer, antique spats dealer, and the neo-con columnist for the Herald. Dad always believed that in a one-newspaper town like Edens-burg the paper had a responsibility to give opposing voices a forum, provided that their bigotry is at least thinly veiled, which Parson's generally is."

Dale added, "Both Parson's politics and his moral beliefs are barely distinguishable from Cotton Mather's, although he sees himself as marginally more modern than that. He does, however, draw a line at the twentieth century—which he disapproves of more or less in toto—and he styles himself as a kind of genial nineteenth-century, belovedly dotty country squire. Parson does have a devoted following—not including, of course, those Herald readers who suspect that he may be clinically

insane. In his columns, Parson likes to draw lessons to live by from nature. And when he's out in his orchard and the raptures are upon him, and he starts hearing his pears offering moral instruction, look out. His 'unnatural' personal and social evils range from Wal-Mart to welfare to gangsta rap—which in one column he insisted on referring to repeatedly as 'gangster' rap. And, hey, don't get Parson started on cun-nilingus."

I said, "He actually deals in old spats? Not petty-argument spats, but those cloth-and-leather things people used to wear over their insteps and ankles?"

"Parson is world renowned among spats collectors," Janet said.

Dale added, "People come from all over, every year, by the ones and twos."

"Not all his betes noires sound unreasonable to me," I said. "As a social evil, Wal-Mart would be high up on my list too."

"Parson is actually an interesting mixture," Janet said, "of small-is-beautiful and small-minded-is-beautiful."

"And he and June are chums?"

"Since seventh grade. June and Dick and Parson and his wife, Evangeline, play whist out at the Bateses' every Friday night, and they're all on the board of the museum together."

I said, "Has Bates ever been known to turn violent?"

"Not physically," Janet said. "Anyway, I know he's ambivalent about the Herald's being sold to InfoCom He's loyal to June and he'd love to see the paper's liberal traditions interred, but he also hates ruthless, amoral big business. So it's hard to imagine Parson involved in a plot to do away with me or Dan or Mom. On the other hand, it's also true that Parson and Eric couldn't stand each other "

"They fought?"

"Avoided each other, mainly. Eric had no patience with the way Parson used nature in his writing to support his prejudices, including a raging homophobia that's just barely under wraps. And Parson was jealous, I think, of Eric's talent and success as a nature writer. Also, Eric's and Eldon's being casually out as a couple drove Parson gaga. He was always fuming to people about them—an affront to nature, and all that. Dale and me he tolerates more easily. First of all, we're women, and not to be taken so seriously as men. Also, I think, he sees us as a 'Boston marriage,' one of those nineteenth-century eccentric institutions even

the religious Emersonians made room for in their expansive universe. But two men together? The horror, the horror."

Dale was about to add something to this when the side door of the Osborne house opened again, and a stout, middle-aged woman in powder-blue slacks and a peach-colored blouse came out and, looking distressed, called Janet's name.

"Elsie, hi, we'll be right in. How's Mom?"

"Not good. You'll see as soon as you get in here. She's not good."

"What's the matter?" Janet said, looking alarmed.

"It's her mind," Elsie said, tapping the side of her head with her finger. We followed Janet quickly into the big house.

7

The woman seated in a bay-window breakfast nook just off the kitchen looked up at us and smiled uncertainly but did not get up. In her early eighties, Ruth Osborne was still tall and sturdy looking—"statuesque" in the parlance of her young adulthood—with sun-bronzed rough hands and a long face with large curious eyes, as in a painting of a Bloomsbury figure. She had a big head of Gravel Gertie hair and "wore a shapeless green shift. Lying alongside, but not on, her bare feet were a pair of worn leather sandals.

"Hi, Mom," Janet said, and kissed her mother on the cheek. "How are you doing? Dale and I brought a friend along."

Mrs. Osborne looked at Dale without apparent recognition and then at me. As Mrs. Osborne studied me, Dale leaned down, kissed her on the cheek, and said, "Hi, Ruth," but the old woman stiffened and looked embarrassed.

"I'm Don Strachey," I said, and Mrs. Osborne extended her hand, which I grasped. Her skin was dry, her grip firm.

Without enthusiasm, she said, "I always enjoy meeting my daughter's friends."

"Don's up from Albany," Janet said. "He's a private investigator down there."

She took this in, smiling tentatively, and said, "Oh, that's nice." Then she turned and looked out the window. We followed her gaze and all of us peered out at the backyard, where the sun shone down on the freshly mowed lawn and beyond the trees there were shadows.

"Mrs. Osborne, that's Dale there," Elsie said. Janet had introduced Elsie  Fletcher to  me  on  the  way  in  as  her  mother's  longtime

housekeeper She said, "You know Dale, don't you? That's Dale there." But Mrs. Osborne did not respond and continued gazing into the backyard.

"I'm the mouthy one," Dale said. Then Dale looked at me. "Ruth and I always hit it off," she said, "on account of we're both—as people around Edensburg like to call it—'outspoken.' If we hadn't seen eye to eye on so many things, we'd probably have strangled each other."

I said lamely, "I'll bet."

Ruth Osborne was now somewhere else, and when Janet said, "Mom?" she got no response.

"We'll be back in a few minutes, Mom," Janet said, and indicated for us to follow her.

Dale, Elsie, and I went with Janet down a dim, wide hallway and into a book-lined study, where Janet shut the door. The oak library table in the center of the room was heaped with books, as was the old leather swivel chair behind it. It looked as if some sorting out of Tom Osborne's library had commenced some years earlier but had not gotten far. The oil portrait over the fireplace of a man in a turn-of-the-century man-of-parts getup appeared to be the Herald's founder, Daniel Lincoln Osborne. Below the painting, faded family photographs were propped on the mantel, with Tom, Ruth, and the five children at different ages and in various poses, most of them in wilderness settings. Also on the mantel was a bronze urn with a lid on it. An inscription had been typed on a sliver of paper and taped to the urn. It read: William T. "Tom" Osborne– 1911-1989.

Janet said to Elsie, "How long has she been like this?"

"Since yesterday morning," Elsie said, looking frightened. "I was going to call you today if she didn't snap out of it. June called this morning and said she'd be stopping in, but I was going to call you anyway." Elsie and Janet exchanged significant looks.

"And she was like this just now when June was here?" Janet asked. When Elsie nodded, Janet said, "Oh, God." To me, Janet said, "For a couple of years now there's been short-term memory loss, and she's gone blank on occasion—just sort of zombied out for five– and ten-minute periods. But nothing this long lasting."

"Mrs. Osborne was always a talker," Elsie said. "She had a mind like a whip, and boy oh boy did she ever let you know exactly what she

was thinking. That's not Ruth Osborne out there, what you're seeing now. Not by a long shot."

Dale said to me," 'Be prepared,' we were told as children. But what can anybody do to prepare for this?"

"What did June want, anyway?" Janet asked."

"We go weeks without seeing June," Elsie said to me, clearly hopeful that I might become an ally in her disapproval of a daughter who didn't visit her mother often enough. To Janet, she said, "June and Parson both wanted to talk about selling the Herald to that big company that sounds like somebody sneezing."

"InfoCom?"

"Yes, they wanted Mrs. Osborne to vote for that one."

"Parson too?"

"Both of them did, yes. They tried to get Mrs. Osborne to come in here with them and shut the door, I suppose. But she wouldn't budge from the breakfast nook, so I heard a lot of what was discussed. I had baked corn to get in the oven, you know."

Janet picked up the cue and said, "Mom sure loves your baked corn, Elsie."

"Oh yes, she enjoys it when I cook."

"So what did Mom say about InfoCom and her vote?"

"Why, she didn't say anything at all. She said hello and how do you do and not a word more, as far as I'm aware. Several times while they were here, June said, 'Mom, what's the matter?' Or, 'Mom, are you listening to me?' She knew your mother wasn't right, Janet. She saw that it was more than just forgetfulness this time."

"Did June say anything about it to you?"

"No, but she gave me a look on the way out—like I knew all the time your mother's mind was going, and now June knew it too. Parson Bates was all smiles, but he was right there the whole time, so he got the picture too, you can bet your boots on that."

"I ran into them on their way out," Janet said, "but neither one of them mentioned anything about Mom's being different."

"Those two are up to something," Elsie said ominously, and no one in the room contradicted her.

Janet told Elsie she would contact Mrs. Osborne's physician, who had diagnosed early stages of Alzheimer's disease a year earlier, and

find out if anything should or could be done at this point. Dale said that was wise, but in her medical opinion little could be done with Mrs. Osborne beyond help, patience, and kindliness. Experiments were underway with drugs, but so far the benefits were far from certain.

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 ruth-

less 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 think 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 vom-itous 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.