Текст книги "Chain of Fools "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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"What were those words?"

"He told me on the phone a week after Eric was offed that Eric deserved what he got for trying to screw Chester and June by hogging all the credit for saving the Herald with the jewel heist. Chester was still convinced Dan was about to spring something, even though by then Dan had lost control of the jewels. My father also said Eric deserved what he got because Eric was trying to keep the Herald under the control of hippies and socialists, and Chester said their day was past."

I said, "That's a powerful expression of sentiment on your father's part, but it's not an admission of guilt."

"It's as much of an admission as I need," Osborne said laconically. "I know my father. That's the other fucking reason I'm telling you this, as a matter of fact. I can't tell all this to the prosecutors or they'll go after Dan. I don't want that—at least not yet. It depends on what my radical cousin did with the jewels. If he gave the jewels to some fucking coffee-pickers' liberation front somewhere—which he has been known to do with Osborne family money—I am going to be extremely pissed off. But I'll wait to hear about that. While you're on Janet's tit, you can go ahead and clear it up for me as to just what became of the goddamn jewels. And the other thing you can do for me, Strachey, is you can fucking nail Chester Osborne for Eric's murder. That's what you can do for me and for the entire human race."

I sat looking at him and wondering how much of what Osborne had told me was true, how much of it lies, how much of it fantasy fed by his boiling need for revenge.

I said, "Have you told anyone else, Craig, the story you've told me here this morning?"

He said, "Just my mother. I called her up on Wednesday and told her there were some things about her husband I thought she needed to know."

18

Back in Edensburg just after four, I drove directly to Ruth Osborne's house. Now that I had the goods—or what I confidently believed closely resembled the goods—on Dan, I was eager to confront him.

"He's gone," Timmy said. "Arlene too."

"They left a note," Dale said. "It just said 'Don't worry about us.' But they didn't say where they went or when they'd be back."

Timmy and Dale were seated across from each other at the dinner table on the back porch. I could hear Elsie moving about in the kitchen nearby, and Ruth Osborne was outside, fifty feet away, snipping something with a scissors into a basket in the herb garden. Timmy and Dale were in the midst of a game of Scrabble and acted distracted and vaguely annoyed by my interruption.

"When did they leave?" I asked.

"It must have been not long after you did," Timmy said "We were all still asleep. What time did you leave for Attica?"

"Six-thirty."

"I was up at seven," Dale said, "and they were out of here by then. They left the note here on the table "

"Would you like some iced tea?" Timmy asked, indicating a perspiring crystal pitcher and a tray of glasses.

Helping myself, I said, "Where's the note?"

It appeared to be Dale's turn in the Scrabble game, so it was Timmy who glanced around the room in search of Dan's note. "Here it is." He turned over the sheet of typing paper their Scrabble scores were

written on—Dale was leading, 180 to 167—and on the other side was the scrawled note: "Don't worry about us—Dan."

I said, "Is that Dan's handwriting?"

"I think so," Dale said, not looking up from her letter holder. "Janet saw it, and she didn't say it wasn't Dan's handwriting."

"Did the phone ring, that anybody knows of, before they left? Could they have received a call from someone?"

"I didn't hear it," Timmy said. "And there's a phone in our room."

"Ours too," Dale said. "But it's only rung once all day. That was around noon, when Pauline called for Janet."

"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.

They looked at me.

Dale said, "Donald, are you shitting us?"

"No."

"A jewel thief!" Timmy said. "Holy mother! Do you believe it, Don?"

Janet had gone white, and now she said, "I can almost believe it."

"Almost?" Dale said.

"I mean, I believe it. I mean, on the one hand I believe it, and yet on the other hand—Craig is probably the biggest pathological liar the family ever produced. So you have to take that into consideration."

I said, "Why might Craig make up a story like that about Dan?"

Janet thought this over. "I don't know," she said finally. "There was never any bad feeling between them that I'm aware of. They never had a whole lot to do with each other, but I don't think Craig ever particularly disliked Dan, either. They just lived very different, separate lives—Dan the political and social rebel, Craig the antisocial mischief maker and eventual criminal. It's possible, I suppose, that Craig har-

bored some terrible resentment against Dan for being the type of rebel that American society reserves a small, grudging place for that isn't jail. But that's just a guess. Anyway, Craig's story that Dan was in on the robbery—even that the idea for the robbery was Dan's—that part of it rings all too true. Dan always believed that a moral end justified immoral means It's a point we always disagreed on. Back in the movement days, Dan did some things he admitted to me that would have landed him in federal prison if he'd ever gotten caught. That's all I'm going to say on that subject, but I think you get my point."

We all said we got it

"But then, where are the stolen jewels'" Janet asked "Dan told Craig they 'got away' from him? What does that mean'"

"That's what I planned on asking Dan, but it seems I can't, because he's gone. My guess is, Dan was afraid Craig might be going to tell me about Dan's involvement in the robbery, and that's one reason he bolted minutes after I left for Attica."

"And maybe the other reason he left," Dale said, "was to try again to locate and retrieve the jewels."

I said I guessed that was the case too.

"Jesus," Janet said, and took a long swig of beer.

"This is just too friggin' much," Dale said.

I said, "And there's more."

They gawked at each other as I repeated Craig's theory—his gut conviction—that after Chester Osborne had learned of the plot to save the Herald with the jewel-robbery proceeds, he wrongly accused Eric of participating in the scam and then killed Eric when Eric refused to substitute Chester's fence for Dan's and allow Chester to use the sixteen million to gain control of the Herald for Chester, June, and Stu Tor-kildson.

Both Timmy and Dale were gape-jawed, but Janet said flatly, "There's something wrong with that."

"I think so too," I said.

"I can't believe Chester would ever think Eric was involved in a robbery where two people were killed. Chester knew how straight Eric was. He'd believe it of Dan, but not of Eric "

"On the other hand," Timmy said, "Chester is the brother with the history of violence, not Dan."

"On the third hand," Dale said, "it's Dan who pukes his guts out

whenever the subject of Eric's murder comes up. Chester doesn't do that—or does he?"

"Not in my experience," Janet said.

I said, "Nor mine. It's possible, though, that Dan retches at the mention of Eric's murder not because he committed the murder, but because he knows who did. He can't announce to anyone that he knows who did it because the murder was somehow connected to the save-the-Herald-with-a-jewel-heist conspiracy, and Dan can't talk about that without risking exposure of his complicity in a crime where an innocent security guard died. Dan is surely grown-up enough now to understand that no cause justifies the murder of an innocent. I suppose he's also sickened by the thought that both the guard and Craig's accomplice in the stickup died uselessly, as far as Dan is concerned. The jewels got away from him somehow—he lost them or they were stolen from him in some kind of double cross or whatever—and the jewels haven't been used by anybody to save the Herald from either the good chain or the bad chain."

Timmy said, "That makes sense, but if Dan does know who killed Eric, why couldn't it have been Chester? It might not have been rational for Chester to accuse Eric of being involved in the robbery, but Chester sounds to me like a man with an irrational streak a mile wide."

I asked Janet: "Where were the various members of the Osborne family on the day of Eric's murder? Has this ever been determined? Where were Dan, Chester, June? Where was Tidy? Tacker, we assume, was on an island in the South Pacific, but I'm checking on that. How about Stu Torkildson? He's not family, but he's got a direct interest in the disposition of the Herald. Where was Arlene? Or Pauline? Where was your mother? Where was Dale? Where were you?"

Janet said, "The police never questioned all of us. There seemed to be no point in doing so at the time. Some of those people can certainly be ruled out on the grounds that they'd never walk more than ten feet into the wilderness. Pauline, for example. Incidentally, she called me today, and she was looking for Dan too. She said she had to talk to him about something, but she wouldn't say what. She sounded as if she'd had a few drinks, but she wasn't hysterical and didn't sound as if she might be waving a gun around."

"Craig told me today he'd phoned his mother on Wednesday," I said, "and informed her that Chester had killed Eric for not turning over the

stolen diamonds. My guess is, that's why Pauline was unhinged when I stopped by her house yesterday. What are the chances she would have believed Craig's malicious story?"

Janet looked deeply skeptical. "Pauline knows better than anyone what a liar Craig is, and how much he despises Chester. Although, even if she didn't believe it, the story is so ugly it could have set Pauline off."

Dale said, "Maybe Pauline is trying to reach Dan to check out the jewel-heist story with him."

"Right," Timmy said. "Maybe she asked Chester about it, and she knows him well enough to have been unconvinced by his denial."

I said I would talk to Pauline Osborne at the first opportunity. Without bringing up Craig's inflammatory phone call, I said, I could approach Pauline under the guise of interviewing all the Osbornes regarding their whereabouts on the morning of Eric's murder. Each Osborne 'would take umbrage, but none could claim to have been singled out. I said, "In the next forty-eight hours I'll try to get a fix on where each Osborne was at the moment Eric was killed. I'll check on each family member, and Stu Torkildson, and—who else is there? Have I left anybody out?"

"Skeeter," Dale said. "He's actually family too, if your list is going to be inclusive."

Timmy said, "Skeeter? That's absurd."

"The State Police checked his alibi," I said. "Skeeter was in Water-town all day on May fifteenth."

"Yes, they would do that," Dale sneered. "Homophobic twits."

Timmy started to speak, hesitated, looked wary, then opened his mouth anyway. "The idea of Skeeter as a murderer is ridiculous, but generally it is not necessarily homophobic when a gay man is murdered to check his lover's alibi. When a straight woman in this country is murdered, nearly half the time it's her husband, ex-husband, or boyfriend who did it."

Dale looked surprised and said, "You're quite right in your statistical observation, Timothy. It's also true that in most jurisdictions I'm familiar with, when a homosexual man is murdered, the police immediately assume the crime was committed by another homosexual because they can't imagine a straight man wanting any physical contact whatsoever with a gay man, even for purposes of homicide."

She looked at Timmy drolly—I wasn't always certain when Dale was putting him on and when she was hectoring him sincerely—and Timmy said, "That's the biggest load of psychobabble horseshit you've dumped over me since we first met, Dale. I'm speechless "

A faint smile flickered on Dale's lips, then disappeared. "Speechless again, Timothy? Where have I heard that before?"

Timmy screwed up his face and stared at Dale, who stared back, tight-lipped

Janet said, "I'm not at all that surprised that the police checked Skeeter's alibi for the day Eric was killed—that is routine stuff. But they didn't check out any other Osborne that I'm aware of. I'm trying to remember where everybody was. It happened on a Monday, and I was in the office all day. The murder took place in the morning, the police said. But Eric's body had been dragged off the trail and wasn't discovered by another hiker until late afternoon. And by the time the police notified me it was after five, maybe even closer to six. I know I was just getting ready to leave the Herald I went right to Mom's house and told her—the very, very worst thing I have ever had to do.

"The cops asked me to notify June, Dan, and Chester too, which I did. I phoned them all—June at home, Chester at home too I know I tried Chester at his office, and then at the club, but he'd gone home early that day. Dan I didn't track down until later. He and Arlene weren't home when I called and I left a message on their machine to phone me at Mom's as soon as he got in. He finally called around eight, I think, and he'd been—I can't recall where. Out of town is all I can remember."

Dale said, "Isn't it time to bring the cops back into this? This is what they're paid to do. Why should Don do their job? Let Bill Stankie round up all the Osbornes and drag them into his back room and grill them one by one, and then go out and check out their stories. That should narrow down the list of family suspects fast enough."

I explained that it was of limited use to repeat to the police either Craig's story of the jewel robbery to save the Herald or his accusations of homicide against his father because Craig had vowed to deny to the police and the prosecutors that he had told me anything at all. I said, "I could fill Bill Stankie in confidentially, but at this point there isn't much he can do with the information He certainly can't put the interrogatory thumbscrews to Chester—or June, or Tidy—on the word of a

convicted murderer and jewel thief and notorious liar."

Janet, Dale, and Timmy were listening solemnly as I laid out this frustrating addendum to my revelations of the past hour—when we heard a sudden shriek from inside the house

A cop car was supposedly parked across the street, but my fear was that somehow an attacker had entered the house and gotten to Ruth Osborne. I led the way as we hurtled through the kitchen—Timmy not so fast on crutches—and down the dim hall and into Tom Osborne's study.

But no intruder was present. Ruth Osborne stood alone at her husband's library table The urn with the label that read "William T. "Tom" Osborne—1911-1989" was resting on the table. The lid had been removed and lay next to the urn. Mrs. Osborne stood staring with a look of horror into the urn. Her eyes came up to us, and she cried out, "Where is my husband! This urn contains cornmeal! Where is my husband!"

20

At first I thought Mrs. Osborne's mind was faltering again. But when I looked down at the brass container on the table, its contents were indeed fine-grained and pale yellow.

Looking both disgusted and fearful, Janet said, "Mom, how do you know that's cornmeal? It doesn't look like bone fragments, but. . . how can you tell what it is?"

"I tasted it." Mrs. Osborne's big hands were trembling and her face twisted with grief. "It looked like cornmeal, so I tasted it, and please take my word for it, that's what it is. But where are Tom's ashes? Someone has taken Tom's ashes and substituted cornmeal. Why in God's name would anyone do something so cruel? Is this—is it some pathetic joke one of you has pulled on me?"

"Of course not, Mom! We'd never do anything as ridiculous as that. What were you doing getting into Dad's ashes anyway? I know you like having them around, and I can more or less understand that. But why do you want to look at them? I really can't see how that gravelly stuff can ever remind you of Dad."

Looking flustered and annoyed, Mrs. Osborne said, "I decided to scatter the ashes out-of-doors, as your father said he wanted done, and as you and Eric and Dan always said I should do. Well, I was finally going to let you all have your way. I called Slim Finn a while ago and asked him if there was any legal reason I couldn't spread Tom around in my herb garden. Slim said not if it would make me feel better, and not if word didn't get around Edensburg, and not if nobody ever found out he expressed an opinion on the subject So forget I ever mentioned Slim."

Janet said, "In your herb garden, Mom? Mom, Dad wanted his ashes dropped over the mountains from the air. Isn't spreading him in the backyard a little—shall we say—more domestic than what Dad had in mind?"