Текст книги "Cockeyed "
Автор книги: Richard Stevenson
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 14 страниц)
ChAPteR twenty-seven
Marylou rode with me in my car, and we parked along the highway about a hundred yards from the crafts store. Hungry and worn out, we had picked up a couple of Big Macs and a bottle of water at McDonald’s and sat and ate while we waited for the show to begin.
“Oh, I’ve never eaten one of these before,” Marylou said.
“This time of day I am generally pecking at a ladylike nibble of fois gras.”
“Are you enjoying your burger?”
“It tastes predigested. As if it had been marinating in someone else’s stomach chemicals.”
“If you say that, you are arguing with success.”
“I wasn’t criticizing, just pointing out.”
We chatted for a while about Palm Beach life and about the Saratoga social scene during the summer racing season. Marylou reminded me that Rita Van Horn had also been an aficionado of the race track, and this gave me an idea as to where Hunny’s mom and her friend Tex might have been spending recent days, if in fact it was her old pal from Texas who had carried Mrs. Van Horn away to parts unknown.
At seven nineteen, the Radical Drama Queen convoy arrived.
The strip mall lot was nearly empty, except for three cars in front of Crafts-a-Palooza and four or five down at Subway. There were no cops around. The Brienings apparently had not reported the fake Sarah Palin book event, and they must not yet have discovered that the lock on the back door had been broken and their desk and files rifled.
Shoemaker’s little Fiat led the way, and it was followed by what looked like a twenty-year-old Ford Econoline van, and then Antoine’s Chevy Malibu with the twins and two of the Rdq boys in it.
186 Richard Stevenson
“Well, won’t this be fun!” Marylou said.
“Yes, and if you want to join the party, go ahead. I think it’s better if I stay out of it to minimize the chances that the Brienings will connect this with Hunny.”
“I hate to go dressed like this. But I don’t want to miss out either. So tood-lee-oo, Donald. I’m sure I can ride with the Rdq ladies if it becomes necessary to beat a hasty retreat. And if Clyde and Arletta recognize me as Sarah Palin’s publisher’s rep, I’ll just tell them I’ve gone all mavericky like my boss.”
Marylou had another swig of water and then strode across the tarmac to the Rdq crew, who were out of their vehicles now and were decorating themselves with objects they were lifting out of a number of what looked like burlap sacks. The August evening light was weakening now, but the parking lot lights were coming on automatically and I had a clear view of the proceedings.
The exorcists dressed themselves not in Christian priestly garments but in feathers and what appeared to be fresh vegetables.
Some wore pole bean vines with the beans dangling, and others cherry tomato vines. A couple of the Rdqers draped themselves with floral wreaths, daisies and day lilies and cosmos and zinnias.
One wore a vest that seemed to have thousands of M&M candies glued to it. Two wore the saffron robes of Buddhist monks, and it was they who brought out from the van several sets of drums and some smaller objects that were too small for me to identify from my vantage point.
Antoine and the twins were in attire that was normal for them.
Antoine wore jeans, a big Mexican blouse and his long rhinestone earring. Tyler and Schuyler were in shorts and T-shirts with big pictures of bare feet on the front, in anticipation perhaps of their careers as podiatrists.
Shoemaker himself, in his Brooks Brothers shirt and Jack Wrangler necktie, had a bullhorn in hand, and it was on his apparent signal that the group formed an arc around the entrance to Crafts-a-Palooza and immediately began drumming and chanting. I could hear ringing and tinkling too, and I soon saw that many of the exorcists were ringing Buddhist prayer bells and CoCkeyed 187
somebody had a triangle and another cymbals. Davenport the astrologer appeared with a conch shell and began to accompany the various percussionists with mournful lowing sounds from his sea horn.
The men swayed back and forth in front of the crafts store, and as they did so people began to trickle out of the store and out of Subway to see what was going on.
It was then that Shoemaker lifted his bullhorn and began to recite: “We freemen of all colors of the spectrum, in the name of God, Ra, Jehovah, Anubis, Osiris, Tlaloc, Quetzalcoatl, Thoth, Ptah, Allah, Krishna, Chango, Chimeke, Chukwa, Olisa-Bulu-Uwa, Imales, Orisasu, Odudua, Igzeahbeher, Kali, Shiva-Shakra, Great Spirit, Dionysus, Yahweh, Thor, Bacchus, Isis, Jesus Christ, Maitreya, Buddha, and Rama do exorcise and cast out the evil which has taken hold of Crafts-a-Palooza and of its human-form proprietors Clyde and Arletta Briening. Clyde and Arletta are inhabited with demons of greed and incredible rotten meanness, and in the name of all the gods of the universe and the municipality of Cobleskill and the state of New York, we cast those satanic entities OUT! OUT! OUT!“
Now the drums began to beat faster and the bells to clang and jingle, and as the exorcists swayed with the rhythm of the percussionists, they all shouted along with Shoemaker, “Out! Out!
Out! Out! Out, demons, out! Out, demons, out!” Davenport blew on his conch shell, and now many of the RDQ men began to repeatedly lift their arms heavenward, as if to hoist the strip mall into the air. Plainly they intended to levitate Crafts-a-Palooza, and make it shake its evil spirits out of the structure, the way the thousands of National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam protestors tried to shake the demons out of the Pentagon in the fall of 1967.
I spotted no evil spirits spurting through the roof of Crafts-a-Palooza into the evening sky, but I did see several customers exit and trot toward their cars, and they were followed outside by Clyde and Arletta Briening. The Brienings stood goggle-eyed outside their store’s front door. Clyde had his glue gun in 188 Richard Stevenson
hand, and Arletta brandished a cell phone that she seemed to be barking into.
Some people ambled down from Subway to watch the spectacle from a distance, and others pulled in off the highway.
Some of the exorcists kept up the chant of “Out, demons, out!” while others took up a new refrain now, “Hari, hari, hari, hari, rama, rama, rama, rama, Krishna, hari Krishna, hari, hari, rama, Krishna.”
Now a flashing cop car pulled in, a local Cobleskill cruiser with a lone officer at the wheel. He moved slowly toward Crafts-a-Palooza, apparently puzzling over this probably unprecedented scene outside a Cobleskill strip mall. He halted thirty or forty feet from the exorcists, left his flashers on, got out, paused, then walked toward the Brienings.
The Rdq boys kept up their drumming and clanging and chanting and their so-far unsuccessful attempts to cause the mall to rise shuddering into the air.
As the cop spoke with the Brienings, another vehicle pulled in, a van. A man with a videocam got out and immediately began recording the occasion. I guessed he was the local stringer for one of the Albany or Schenectady TV stations.
The television videographer’s timing was to prove significant, for it was soon after his arrival that Shoemaker included in his exhortations some specifics that turned out to have serious consequences. Hollering into his bull horn, Shoemaker let loose with, “End the greed! End the cruelty! End the persecution of Hunny Van Horn. The demons inhabiting Crafts-a-Palooza and inhabiting Clyde and Arletta Briening must be exorcised, must be sent flying away, must be stopped from stealing Hunny Van Horn’s billion dollars that he legitimately won in the New York State Lottery…”
Shoemaker went on in this vein for a couple of minutes, maybe trying to make the cop see that if he interfered with this sacred ritual he risked incurring the displeasure of a celebrity.
The Brienings were now yakking at the cop a mile a minute, CoCkeyed 189
Arletta waving her cell phone, Clyde aiming his glue gun. The cop then stepped aside and made a call of his own.
Five minutes later, with the strip mall still refusing to rise off the ground and the exorcists drumming and chanting and trying even harder to make the damn thing budge – at least an inch —
two more police vehicles drove in off the highway, one of them local, the other a State Police cruiser with four officers in it.
I figured it was a good time for me to melt away.
ChAPteR twenty-eight
“Donald, I do like the way we live our sedate lives,” Timmy said. “But I have to admit that when I look at these Radical Drama Queen guys and at Hunny Van Horn and his colorful entourage, I feel almost Mormon. Have I turned into Mitt Romney without even noticing it?”
“Yes.”
“After all these years, are you going to dump me for a man wearing farm produce?”
“No. Shh.”
We were in the bedroom on Crow Street watching the Channel 13 eleven o’clock news. The Cobleskill strip mall exorcism was the lead story. The theatrical ritual had pushed the holdups, house fires and state legislator scandals that generally dominate local news coverage back several minutes. This was because the Crafts-a-Palooza event was surprising and because some great visuals were available and because of the Hunny Van Horn connection.
Quentin Shoemaker’s blunderingly connecting Hunny to the exorcism made it all extra newsworthy. Shoemaker had told me by phone afterward that he was sure his mentioning Hunny would engender both public and spiritual support for Hunny. But the predictable downside was about to become evident.
After a couple of minutes of footage of chanting, drumming and unsuccessful attempts to levitate the strip mall, Shoemaker was interviewed briefly. He again accused the Brienings of trying to steal Hunny’s billion dollars, though without mentioning how they were hoping to pull off this dastardly feat.
Clyde and Arletta were interviewed next, and after some tea-bagger-style rhetoric about socialism and Obama’s satanic minions, Arletta said that yes, it was true, that Hunny Van Horn owed them half a billion dollars, but after today’s disruptions and insults they felt that the entire billion ought to be turned over to them to compensate for their pain and suffering.
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Arletta concluded, “And if we don’t have the money by noon tomorrow, we will be calling a press conference and making an announcement that Hunny Van Horn will not be pleased to hear the contents of.”
Timmy said, “Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. This is bad.”
A Cobleskill police official was interviewed, but only briefly.
He said that when the exorcists were threatened with arrest for disturbing the peace, they agreed to pack up and leave only if they were first allowed to stick daisies in the cops’ rifle barrels.
The police sergeant had explained to Shoemaker that they didn’t have any rifles with them, and anyway it wasn’t the ‘60s anymore and if the Rdqers knew what was good for them they would move along. Which they soon did.
Next came an even briefer live report from a reporter standing somewhat forlornly outside Hunny’s house on Moth Street. She said that Hunny was inside the house and had sent word out that he would have no comment on the Brienings or anything else that night.
Then the Channel 13 anchors moved on to a water main break in the town of North Bethlehem.
“Hunny is screwed,” I said. “I let him down.”
“Maybe his mother won’t even care all that much about the embezzlement revelation. If she’s even alive. Didn’t you say her mind was slipping?”
“Oh, she’s alive, I think. I’m confident her pal from Texas and a guy named Herero have her somewhere. They may be on their way back to Texas, for all I know. If they were around here, by now they’d likely have heard that Mrs. Van Horn is officially a missing person, and cops and volunteers are searching for her in fields and culverts up and down the Hudson Valley.
The chances are good the three of them are in a Motel 6 in Chattanooga on the way back to Houston, or maybe holed up in a casino in Connecticut. Would she care about the embezzlement revelation? That’s hard for me to say. Hunny says yes, the Van CoCkeyed 193
Horns are respectable Christian people who would be crushed by the charge. But I’m convinced that that’s the case only with Hunny’s sister and her husband and Nelson and Yawn.”
“Isn’t it Lawn?”
“Lawn, yes.”
“Surely the DA isn’t going to make a big deal of a charge coming so late in the game. How long has it been? Ten years?”
“Thirteen.”
“There might be statute of limitation problems for the prosecutors. It’s not murder we’re talking about here.”
“Murder might be better. It’s racy. It’s tragic. It’s deeply human.
Embezzlement is merely embarrassing. And except for Hunny
– who has made a career of being the exception that proves the rule – the Van Horns apparently loathe social embarrassment more profoundly than anything else on earth.”
“It’s almost refreshing to discover social shame in a family,”
Timmy said. “You don’t have to be a Muslim jihadi to regret that the near disappearance of shame in American life is a serious social loss. Puritanism is one thing, The Bachelor something else.”
My cell phone rang, and it was, as I thought it might be, Hunny.
“Did you see the news?” His voice was barely audible.
“I did. I’m sorry, Hunny.”
“Can you come over?”
“Sure.”
§ § § § §
On Moth Street, the security guys were still on the front porch and two TV crews were on the sidewalk dozing on collapsible chaises. Inside, Marylou and the twins were in the living room watching a true-crime channel. Hunny and Art were at the kitchen table.
“Where are the Green Mountain Boys?” I asked. “Have they returned to Mother Earth’s bosom up north?”
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“Those hippies sure did turn out to be royal pains in the neck,” Art said. “They went ahead and ticked off the Brienings, and now those ass wipes say they want the whole billion dollars.
And Hunny is seriously considering giving it to them.”
Hunny was chain smoking by the evidence of the overflowing ashtray as well as the deadly haze in the room, and he had a bottle of Jack Daniels and a half-empty glass on the table in front of him. “Quentin and the boys are good-hearted lads,” Hunny said,
“and they mean only to be helpful.”
“The road to hell,” Art said, “is paved with good intentions.
Those guys are jerks. All those drums and crap.”
“Be that as it may, their hippie habits didn’t stop you from helping yourself to a little of that boy Ethan. You had no complaints about drums along the Mohawk when you were chewing on that comely lad’s cute member last night.”
“I’m not saying they weren’t friendly. Just stupid.”
“Well, what’s done is done. Yes, Donald, Quentin and his drama queens have departed for Vermont. They had to go back and milk the chipmunks or something. And in a sense what they did tonight it is just as well. Perhaps it is all part of the Lord’s plan.”
“How so?”
Hunny sipped his whiskey and savored its return to his life.
“I am just sick to death of the whole Instant Warren so-called bonanza. Everything was just fine for Artie and myself until that so-called good luck fell on me like a ton of bricks. Yes, I needed to pay off the Brienings their sixty-one thousand dollars. But I still have to pay them, and now they want the whole kit and caboodle billion dollars. And all I’m left with is a lot of people mad at me and Mom missing and nothing to show for my so-called good fortune except a lot of sorrow and tears. Plus, of course, the billion dollars, for the moment, which is nothing to sneeze at. Anyway, Nelson called right after the news was over and they think I should offer the Brienings nine hundred million and see if they will take it. Miriam is adamant about it not getting CoCkeyed 195
out that Mom is a crook.”
I said, “Well, you would still have a hundred million, a fortune.
But you’re sure you don’t want to tell the Brienings to just shove it and let the chips fall where they may? The DA is unlikely to go after an old lady in a nursing home with a failing memory.”
“No, but it’s people’s opinions. All the other Van Horns besides myself have always been respectable. Respectability sucks as far as I am concerned. I’d rather not be – what did Quentin call it? – some boring old assimilationist. But people should get to choose for themselves. I got to choose who I got to be, and Miriam and Nelson and Lewis and even Yawn should also get to choose who they want to be. It’s only fair.”
“Hunny, you are a kind man,” Art said. “Even to your relatives.”
“So,” Hunny said, “here’s what I would like to do, Donald.
Please accompany me tomorrow morning out to Cobleskill. Let’s see if the evil Brienings will take nine hundred million. That would leave me with enough to give a million each to thirty or forty of the nice folks out at the warehouse – not including Dave DeCarlo – and also pay off Stu Hood his thousand and even Mason Doebler his thousand. Plus put the twins through medical school, and replace the tires on the Explorer, and a few other odds and ends. And if the Brienings won’t accept that deal, then fuck ‘em – they can have the whole billion. Just so they give back Mom’s confession and promise in writing never to bother her or me again. And I would go back to work at BJ’s, and I would see if I can get my pretty darn good life back the way it was before the skies opened up and started raining shit.”
Art said, “Instead of men.”
There was a long, sad silence.
“I’m so sorry, Hunny,” I said, “that I was so little help to you.”
“Oh, you’ve been a godsend, Donald, in so many ways.
Except for one little thing you don’t seem to be willing to go along with, even in return for your fat fee.”
“Well, I’m glad I haven’t been a total disappointment.”
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“I think you need a drink.”
“I don’t care for the hard stuff. I just never developed a taste for it. But I wouldn’t mind a beer and sitting out on the front porch with the security guys for a while and relaxing. It’s such a nice night out.”
Art brought some cold beer up from the old fridge they kept in the cellar, and we went out with Marylou and the twins and sat on the porch steps and watched the bugs throw themselves maniacally against the streetlights.
ChAPteR twenty-nine
I thought I heard drumming but soon realized it was someone banging on the door of Hunny and Art’s guest room. I had locked the door and gone to sleep instantly after two bottles of Sam Adams, but now it was six twenty Wednesday morning and Hunny was pounding on the door yelling, “Donald! Donald, girl, wake up!”
“Huh? Coming.”
“It’s Mom! They found Mom, and we’re going to drive up and get her.”
“Oh, good. Where is she?” I yanked some pants on and opened the door.
“She’s at the Super 8 in Lake George. With Tex Clermont, just like you said. And that Mexican.”
“Great.”
Hunny was in his boxers and sleeveless undershirt and was red-eyed but animated. He said, “One of Tom In Paine’s people nailed her and called the cops, so I guess we can’t hate Bill O’Malley and those terrible tea-baggers too much.”
“I guess not. Is coffee made? I’ll be down in a minute.”
“There’s one other thing though, Donald.” Hunny lowered his eyes and his head got a little wobbly.
“Is your mother all right?”
“Yes, it’s not Mom. That Albany police detective called. He wants to talk to me. To you, too. He’s coming over, so we have to get out of here before he gets here. I just want to hug Mom before I have to deal with anything else.”
“What’s the problem now? Is it the Brienings?”
Hunny looked at me queasily. “Yes and no.”
“So, what happened?”
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“Crafts-a-Palooza burned down overnight.”
“Oh. Oh my.”
“The TV news says the police think it was arson.”
“Oh.”
“The whole mall went up in smoke and is totally destroyed.
Subway too. Though they think it started at Crafts-a-Palooza.
Both in the front and back.”
“Right. Was anybody hurt?”
“No. A fireman got scratched or something.”
“At least there were no injuries or deaths. The Brienings weren’t in there, were they?”
“No, they were at home.”
“Well, at least there’s that.”
“Are you thinking what I am thinking, Donald?”
“Sure.”
“Will we have to tell the police?”
“I think so.”
“I hate to. Stu is just a fucked-up kid.”
“I know, but he could kill people again.”
“I almost wish the Brienings were in there. I thought of what their little charred corpses would look like. But then I felt ashamed.”
“I guess now they’ll really be on the rampage. But we’ll deal with them. The important thing is that your mom is okay. Let me get dressed and then we’ll head up to Lake George. Is your mother in police custody?”
“Yes, her and Tex and Herero. Can I just have a hug before you put your shirt on?”
I hugged Hunny and kissed him lightly on the nape of the neck. Then he turned and clomped down the stairs and I headed into the bathroom.
§ § § § §
CoCkeyed 199
During the hour-plus ride up to Lake George, my cell phone rang four times. One call was from Timmy, who asked if I had heard the news. I said I sure had. The three other calls were form Lieutenant Card Sanders, and I didn’t answer those. The messages he left, each one in a more urgent tone than the last, demanded that I contact him immediately. Poor guy. Dealing with celebrities could be such a hassle.
Hunny had spoken with Nelson, who was also en route to Lake George, and with his sister Miriam, who was terrified that the Brienings might not wait to be paid off but might just call the DA and announce to the world that Mrs. Van Horn was a
“lowlife.”
Art said, “Maybe you could get Stu Hood to burn your sister’s house down, Hunny. With her in it.”
“Artie, luv, don’t say that. Miriam is a bitch, but she is family.”
“I’m so glad I am an only child. Mom and Dad had me, and I guess then they said maybe we could do better, but let’s not press our luck.”
Hunny had learned from Nelson that the renegade oldsters and their pal Herero were at the Lake George police station, and my GPS led us there directly. An old Dodge Dart with Texas tags was parked out front next to two police cruisers, and Hunny said,
“That clunker must belong to the Mexican.”
We were led into a small conference room that smelled of stale coffee, and no more than a minute after we were seated there was a commotion in the corridor and two uniformed officers led an older, wrinklier, female version of Hunny into the room.
The cops politely went out and closed the door behind them as Hunny leaped to his feet and yelled, “Mom! Mom!” and grabbed the old lady and kissed her on one cheek and then the other cheek and then the first one again.
“Oh, Huntington, what a surprise this is! I’m having such a fabulous time, Hunny, and it’s so nice that you and Arthur could pop in and share it with us. We’ve been having soooo much fun! I never thought I would have this much fun again – stuck in that 200 Richard Stevenson
stinky old home – but Tex and Herero rescued my bored-to-tears old bones for this little vacation from old age, bless their hearts.”
Mrs. Van Horn was gotten up in a chic box-seat-at-Saratoga outfit, beige silk slacks and top, pearl earrings and a Texas-style big-hair do that in no way resembled the old-lady perm in her photos. The hair-do may have been the reason no one recognized her before Tom In Paine’s snitch zeroed in on the Golden Gardens runaway.
“But Mother Van Horn,” Art said, “Hunny was so worried about you, and so was everyone else.”
“Mom, folks have been looking high and low for you. You didn’t tell Mrs. Kerisiotis you were leaving, and everybody has been scouring the countryside looking for your corpse. Mom, you have given us all a terrible scare, you little dickens, you!”
“Oh, Lord, did I forget to call Golden Gardens and say I’d be away for a few days? It must have slipped my mind. You know how forgetful I’ve gotten. Oh, for heaven’s sakes, I do apologize if I caused any bother.”
“But didn’t you see yourself on TV? It’s been all over the news that you were a missing person.”
“Oh, I guess we weren’t watching that channel. Tex and I watch qvC. I don’t know why Herero didn’t see that. He watches the news, plus Mtv and boxing. Hunny, you know I never liked looking at the news. It is so depressing. I like The Golden Girls and shopping. I don’t buy, just look, for the most part. But Tex got some nice jewelry, some fling for Herero and a couple of nice things for me, what I’ve got on. I forgot to bring clothes, you know. Tex had things sent overnight right to the Super 8 were we were staying in our very nice room.”
“I think you mean bling,” Hunny said. “Now, Antoine and the twins and this psychic from Vermont looked for you at the Super 8, but they didn’t see you anywhere.”
“I guess we were out sightseeing, maybe riding around on the paddle boat. Or over at that nice restaurant with the stuffed CoCkeyed 201
haddock.”
“Where are Tex and her friend now?”
“Tex is in the lady’s. She’ll be crawling down here in a minute or so. Herero must be waiting for her. He is so good to Eileen.
It’s not easy for her with her walker at the track, but Herero got her a wheelchair to get us from the parking lot to our seats, and he went and placed our bets.”
“What track? Saratoga?”
“You know, Hunny, Nola Conklin had her TV on last week and there was this announcer saying the races were going on, and I got to missing the track. I did used to love the ponies. So when Tex called, I just said, why don’t you ride up here with that nice young aide who wants to marry you, and we’ll have a few cocktails and a nice time for a week or so, and then we’ll go back to rotting away in our old folks homes. Well, Tex just leaped at the opportunity. Tex has her daughter down there, but she never comes to see her, not like Hunny. Nola told me you had won a lot of money in the lottery, Hunny, so I figured I could hit you up for a tenner if need be. But I never wanted to be a burden, and I don’t intend to be. Anyhow, Eileen is well fixed. She is an extremely generous friend.”
“Oh, Mom, that whole lottery thing has turned out to be a total pain in the butt.” Hunny introduced me and said, “Donald is a private detective who has been helping me deal with all kinds of shkeevy types that have crawled out of the woodwork since I won a billion dollars. Blackmailers, swindlers, what have you.
Even the you-know-whos in Cobleskill are bedeviling me and trying to get hold of my money. Mom, I was better off middle-class, believe you me. Anyway, if I have any money left after all the headaches have been cleared up, I’ll give you a million dollars.
Or ten million, whatever you need.”
“Thanks, Hunny. You have always been such a good son. I have enough for my needs, but you could help Herero if you feel like it. He saw on the news in Texas about your prize. He’s afraid his muffler is going – it does make quite a racket – plus he has some lawyer bills for something. His papers, I think.”
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“Is he nice? He sounds nice.”
“Herero is very sweet. And I think he might be…you know.”
Mrs. Van Horn flapped her wrist once.
“Well, I am putting Herero down for a mil. Not to worry.
But…well, there is a problem, maybe, with the money. The you-know-whos in Cobleskill are demanding a billion to pay them to continue to keep their mouths shut about you-know-what.”
Mrs. Van Horn glanced over her shoulder at the closed door.
Through the glass we could see one of the cops standing in the corridor. She said, “You know, they sent me another threatening letter. At Golden Gardens.”
“I do know that. And guess what? Now they’re probably even madder than ever at you and me. Last night their store burned down.”
“Oh, good heavens!”
“It’s a smoking ruin, television said.”
“Maybe my you-know-what letter burned up. But probably not. I think they kept it in the lockbox with the other books and the other money.”
I asked, “What other books and what other money, Mrs. Van Horn?”
She gave me a wary look, but Hunny said, “Mom, Donald knows all about everything. He is an understanding man with a Christian soul who is one hundred percent on our side. I’m thinking of giving him thirty million dollars as a bonus if everything turns out okay. So you can tell him anything.”
“Well,” she said, “it’s the second set of books Clyde and Arletta keep for Crafts-a-Palooza that the tax people aren’t meant to get a gander at. And the cash they skim off at the end of the day. That’s how I was able to help myself when I went through that crazy spell after Carl passed. They had about a million and a half in there, and if I had a bad day at the track I would just help myself once in a while. Except, Arletta got suspicious, I think, when I told her I was betting the house on a horse called CoCkeyed 203
Epworth Lady and that nag didn’t even show, and the next day I was right back at the track. She counted the money, and she nailed me. It was my terrible downfall that we’ve all been paying for ever since, and I admit that I did wrong and my comeuppance was earned.”
Art said, “The Brienings are also crooks, it sounds like. Holy crap.”
“But Mom,” Hunny said, “if they were blackmailing you, why didn’t you blackmail them right back? Good grief, it sounds like they are even bigger miscreants than you are.”
“I thought about that. And I did finally get up my nerve to say something. But Arletta said that what they were doing is what everybody does, and what I did was stealing.”
“Oh, Mom, you got taken for a ride. We all did. Those Brienings are nothing but scum.”
“Where is the lockbox located?” I asked. “The box with the confession, the second set of books and the large stash of currency?”
“The lockbox was always buried under some potpourri. It’s at the bottom of a big crate called Elvira’s Herbal Kisses.”
I glanced at Hunny, who caught my look, and then I excused myself and walked out into the corridor, past the waiting Lake George officer, and out to my car. I phoned Card Sanders, and before he started in on me, I explained a few things to him and urged him to get hold of the state fire marshal’s office immediately. He listened with care, heard what I said, and agreed to make some fast calls and then get himself over to Cobleskill to help search for the lockbox.
