Chain of Fools - Stevenson Richard - Страница 40

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"That the news is the news," Janet said, "and the Herald reports the news. Stu didn't see it that way, but it's not my impression that when Lee Ann's story is set, Stu will hurl himself bodily into the presses to sabotage the run. That's not the way he operates."

"How does he operate?" I said.

"Legally. He's greedy and he's cunning, but Stu comes from a Glens

Falls family that's produced judges and brain surgeons and even some honest politicians, and his name and reputation mean as much to him as money does. So I don't think he'll interfere. But Stu will bear watching, of course," Janet said, and we all agreed solemnly with that.

I asked Lee Ann which Osbornes she had interviewed and what she had learned.

"I just got started around five this afternoon," she said, "so I've only seen three so far. June and Dick Puderbaugh had plenty of opinions— about the Herald's editorial page, about the paper's future ownership, and about you, Don—but nothing that sounded to me especially useful in the murder investigation. They both had alibis that could easily be checked out. Dick spent the morning, he said, in his office with his secretary and bookkeeper, as he does every weekday morning. And June was at the art museum with Parson and Evangeline Bates helping hang the canoes-at-sunrise show.

"I had trouble getting Chester to talk to me at all. I called his home, and he answered, and I described to him as best I could the story I was working on. But he kept interrupting and telling me how irresponsible it would be for me to be quoting slanderous statements from family members and from people he called 'outsiders.' My conversation with Chester was also confusing and hard to sort out because all the time Chester was talking, I could hear Pauline yelling at him and carrying on something awful in the background."

"What "was she yelling?" I asked. "Could you make it out?"

"Not much of it," Lee Ann said. "Sometimes she just seemed to be screaming uncontrollably. But I could decipher a word or sentence now and then. I caught, 'She's your fucking mother!' and something about 'fucking muddy feet!' And once I'm sure she yelled, 'I ought to get another gun and blow your fucking brains out!' My impression was, Pauline had had a few drinks."

I said, "Chester must have taken the gun she waved at me away from her. Which was a good idea. So you were only able to interview Chester on the phone?"

Lee Ann chugged from her beer bottle and said, "No, he actually agreed to meet me. He said his nephew was visiting and the television was on loud at his place—as if he lived in a studio apartment—so he said he'd meet me at nine at the Herald, which he did. He sounded real rattled, and I kept remembering all those stories about Chester's

violent temper, which I've never seen. But he showed up on time, and we talked in the conference room after he shut the door with a do not disturb sign he wrote and taped on the outside."

"Who would the nephew be?" I asked Janet. She looked back at me blankly.

"My impression was that was just a line," Lee Ann said. "The 'noisy television' was Pauline hollering, and Chester wanted to get the hell out of there. And I think also that he wanted to get me alone, in the flesh, so he could make a lot of veiled and unveiled threats that would make me back off the story."

"Physical threats?" Timmy asked.

"No, just legal. But Chester can get himself worked up into a state. Everybody in town knows that. I was glad there were people right outside the door in the newsroom. Anyway, he gave me his whole Info-Com pitch—which we all know by heart by now—and next to nothing on the attacks on Janet and Dan, which he claims are either imagined or contrived. And as for Eric's murder, the very idea of family involvement is slanderous if spoken, Chester warned me, and libelous if the Herald prints it.

"The one possibly useful piece of information I got from Chester is this: He may not have an alibi for the time of the murder. He went into a three-alarm swivet when I asked him where he was on the morning of May fifteenth, and when I seemed to be calmly noting his hotheaded unresponsiveness, he made an effort to settle down, and he said, well, he was in his office. I asked him if I—or the police—could verify that with witnesses and appointment records, and then he totally lost it. He jumped up, and he was shaking and towering over me and yelling that I could just goddamn well accept his word for where he was if I valued my job. When I eased out of my chair and opened the door to the newsroom, Chester shoved his way past me and stormed out of the place. I really thought the next thing would be the sound of his Lexus doing a couple of donuts in the parking lot before he peeled out. But I guess that's not Chester's style. He just drove away normally."

I said, "All this is extremely helpful, Lee Ann. Who do you plan on interviewing next?"

"Tidy in the morning, if he'll talk to me, and—for the record—Dale and Skeeter McCaslin. I don't plan to be bound by conventional notions of family."

"Thank you, Lee Ann," Dale said. "I'll cooperate fully with your investigation."

"After that," Lee Ann said, "I'll talk to nonfamily peripheral people like Stu Torkildson and Parson Bates. I might also drive out to Attica and visit Craig Osborne. Janet filled me in on the jewel-robbery angle. It all sounds like a pretty wacky way to try to save the Herald. But the fourth generation of Osbornes produced some extremely wacky people, so—hey, why not?"

Janet asked me if Skeeter had been able to verify that in April Eric had spirited away his father's remains from the urn on Ruth Osborne's mantel, and I said Skeeter had. I told Janet, Dale, and Lee Ann that Skeeter, Eric, and the charter pilot had all remarked at the time on how glittery the falling ashes were, and I explained how Dan had later sought out the pilot wanting to learn where the ashes had settled to earth.

"So that must be where Dan is now!" Janet said. "Do you have the directions?"

I said I did and held up my map. "My guess is, he's out there sifting one more time through several square miles of wilderness that I'll bet he's combed a hundred times since April. He'd like to find the diamonds and make a last-ditch attempt to save the Herald for the Osbornes. And, I'm sure, Dan wants desperately to be able to tell Craig he recovered the jewels. He knows Craig is mad as hell and is starting to talk to people, foremost among them me."

"God," Janet said, "Dan is such a nitwit!"

"The robbery was bad enough," Dale said. "But you'd think he'd have had enough sense to stash the loot in a safe-deposit box."

We all speculated for some minutes on the practical, Freudian, and other reasons Dan might have had for mixing the stolen gems with his father's ashes in an urn on his mother's mantel.

We were about to make a plan for heading out to find Dan in the morning when headlights suddenly arched across the backyard and a car screeched to a halt in the driveway. The cop car must have pulled in directly behind the visitor, for three car doors slammed and then there were raised voices, one female.

While Timmy was reaching for his crutches, the rest of us moved fast. Dale barricaded herself at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor, where Mrs. Osborne was sleeping, and Janet, Lee Ann, and

I trotted out into the muggy night and found the two Edensburg cops attempting to subdue Pauline Osborne. Chester's wife was unarmed, as far as we could see, but she was unsteady on her feet and flailing at the two cops physically and verbally.

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