Chain of Fools (donald strachey mystery) Page 3

  I learned all of this Wednesday morning while sitting in Janet Osborne’s office, a glass-enclosed rectangle overlooking the Herald newsroom. The desk and decor in Janet’s editorial headquarters-which had been her father’s and grandfather’s-were late Victorian, but the old Underwood typewriter up on a shelf and the pneumatic tubes for shooting copy to the linotypists in the rear of the building had been replaced for practical purposes by a video terminal and computer keyboard. And alongside the old framed wall photos of earlier Osbornes posing with Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin and Eleanor (separately), Chester Bowles, and Al Gore Sr., among others, Janet was pictured smiling happily in the company of Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich.

  Janet gave Timmy and me her twenty-minute Osbome-and-Hemldfamily-and-newspaper history, explaining in the course of her narrative how it all led up to the current crisis. The paper had always been profitable, she said, but in 1988 Stuart Torkildson, the Herald Company’s vice president and chief operating officer, came up with a plan to ensure the paper’s future economic health in the face of rising costs and growing competition for ad revenues. The company would cash in on the Reagan go-go economic boom with an $18 million mountain resort twenty-six miles from Edensburg in the village of Blue Valley. Profits from the resort, to be called Spruce Haven, were meant to guarantee the paper’s survival-and editorial independence, Stu Torkildson emphasized-for at least the next century.

  Most of the Osbornes loathed the Republican president that one of the Herald’s 1986 editorials referred to as “an amiable blowfish,” as they did “the country-club piranhas who swarmed in his wake.” But the Spruce Haven design won prizes for both its esthetics and its uncompromising environmental sensitivity. And if cashing in on the Reagan boom could protect the paper’s traditions against the general ongoing dumbing down of American journalism-now often combined with advertising and public relations in a watery porridge called “communications”-then it made sense to borrow the $16 million the family would need to see the project through and plunge boldly into the new millennium.

  Tom Osborne, exhausted and near death from liver cancer, reluctantly endorsed Spruce Haven, as did Ruth, June, Chester, and even Dan. Janet and Eric voted no-they argued that the idea might be sound, but the size of the loan was too risky. And when the Reagan boom went bust, it turned out that Eric and Janet had been right. The customers didn’t come-there was no theme park, no casino, no Frank, no Liza-and the resort consistently ran at a third of its capacity and lost money. The Boston bank that had loaned the Osbornes the $16 million got fed up with late or nonexistent mortgage payments and finally declared that if the family company refused to sell its assets-including the still-profitable Herald — then the bank would seize those assets and sell them to the highest bidder.

  That’s what had led to the family’s decision to sell Spruce Haven for whatever amount they might squeeze out of it-a few million had been the broker’s prediction, and it was accurate-and to sell the Herald to either (a) the highest bidder, no matter how sleazy the buyer or (b) the bidder most likely to keep the Osbornes running the paper or, failing that, likely to retain the large, excellent staff and maintain the paper’s ever-fussy journalistic high standards and unreconstructedly liberal editorial page.

  In early March, Crewes-InfoCom, whose reputation was for stripping newspapers and reducing them to little more than shoppers’ guides, made an offer that would have left the Osbornes, after taxes, with roughly $8 million to divide. A week later, Harry Griscomb Newspapers, a Portland, Oregon, chain, offered several million less; in selling to Griscomb, the Osbornes — would escape with only a few hundred thousand dollars after paying off the bank and the Internal Revenue Service. Harry Griscomb, however, saw the Herald as a treasure of American journalism whose traditions he vowed to uphold, and for several of the surviving Osbornes that promise was worth more than money. Several other offers fell in between InfoCom’s and Griscomb’s, all of them from chains whose journalistic standards ranged from the elastic to the unlocatable.

  Janet, Dan, Ruth, and Eric planned to vote for selling the Herald to Harry Griscomb. June and Chester were for Crewes-Infocom. The deadline for bids had been August 1, with a sale deadline of September 10 imposed by the Spruce Haven mortgager, which was itself in trouble and itching for its money.

  Then on May 15, Eric was killed, by a deranged drifter, police believed. In his will, Eric left his personal belongings and cash assets to his lover, Eldon McCaslin, with his share in the paper-which could be transferred only to another family member-going to his mother. But the company by-laws said no member of the board of directors got more than one vote, so after Eric’s death the pro-good-chain margin dropped from 4 to 2 down to 3 to 2. If somehow Janet, Dan, or Ruth died or became too incapacitated to participate, the board would be split, and-with the by-laws requiring that the size of the board never fall below five members-a fifth member would be added to break the tie. The antiquated board rules stipulated that the new member must be the eldest offspring of the eldest third-generation Osborne. Eric and Janet had had no children; Janet and Dale were planning either to adopt a child or for Dale to bear one, but that hadn’t happened yet. So if a new member were to come on to the Herald’s board of directors, it would be June’s attorney son, Titus-or “Tidy,” as he was known around Edensburg. And, as his mother had made plain, he would vote to sell the paper to Crewes-InfoCom, the bad chain.

  Therefore, Janet told us, it was critical to the Edensburg Herald’s future that she and Dan and Ruth Osborne survive at least until September 8-when the board of directors’ vote was scheduled-with their hearts beating and their faculties intact.

  4

  He came tear-assing out of a cove about a mile up that way,” Dale Kotlowicz said, gesturing dramatically, “and zoomed straight at Janet, as if he was some heat-seeking missile and Janet was an F-l6’s jet exhaust.”

  “When he was closing in, I heard him coming and took a quick look,” Janet said, “and then dived deep, and when I surfaced he’d made a sharp U and was headed straight at me a second time. I waved like crazy-at first I figured the numbskull just wasn’t paying attentionand when he just kept coming, I dived again, straight down and kicking hard, and I was saying to myself, ‘Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic’”

  Janet was tall and rawboned, like all the Osbornes I’d seen in Herald photos, so it was hard to imagine a Jet Skier not noticing her big head and long arms, even at dusk, especially a second time. We were standing at the end of the wooden dock behind the Osborne lodge on Stilton Lake where Janet and Dale lived. Dale was smaller and probably ten years younger than Janet and was topped by what looked like ten or fifteen pounds of black-and-gray tight curls. And inasmuch as both Janet and Dale radiated alertness, strength, and blunt intelligence, it made sense that anyone daring to attack either of them could only hope to get away with it with the help of high-horsepower machinery.

  “And then,” Dale said, “the asshole turned around and came barrel-assing back a third time, and that’s when I ran out from the porch and started screaming, ‘You dumb son of a bitch! You dumb son of a bitch!’”

  “But by then I’d gotten the picture,” Janet said, “that either the guy was blind and couldn’t see me or-what it actually looked like-his eyesight was perfect and he meant to run me over. So the third time I dived I took a deep breath first and just headed back for the dock underwater. I didn’t come up until I saw these pilings on my right. And by then, Dale was down here yelling her head off and the guy had doubled back again and was gone, back around the bend.”

  Timmy said, “How far did you have to swim underwater?”

  “She was sixty or eighty feet out, for chrissakes!” Dale said. “If that maniac had hit her, I don’t know if I could have gotten out there in time to drag her back-assuming she hadn’t been killed by the impact and gone straight to the bottom “

  “I know the water here,” Janet said, “and my lung capacity is probably better than the average for
ty-six-year-old’s. But I’ll tell you, I was damn shaky when I climbed out of the water that night. The thing is, the one time I caught a quick glimpse of the guy’s face, he seemed to be looking right at me. And he didn’t look confused; he looked mean and purposeful.”

  I said, “Had the sun set yet? Is it possible the setting sun was shining directly in his eyes and the look on his face that you saw was actually some combination of disorientation and fear?”

  Dale gave me a “duh” look. “Donald, do you think the sun might have been jumping back and forth from one side of the lake to the other? The guy went after Janet three times “

  Janet said, “Anyway, the sun had already set. It was dusk with some red in it, and just a couple of low, dark clouds in the southwest. It’s a perfect still time for an after-dinner swim, or a slow canoe ride. Once you get out a ways, you’re only aware of the water around you and the sound of your own motion through it, and then as the light fades and the stars come out, the sky. It’s always been my favorite time of day or night on the lake “

  “The other nice thing about that time,” Dale said, “is that you see fewer power boats after sunset, and hardly ever Jet Skis It’s the time of day when the owners of such devices tend to be enjoying their cocktails-which more often than not come in packs of six and are bound with thin strips of plastic.”

  Timmy said, “It’s tempting to place a Freudian interpretation on men achieving a sense of power by v-room-v-rooming around a body of water with internal-combustion engines wedged between their legs “

  “That’s right,” Dale said, “when the only thing most men need to do to achieve the same effect is to eat more beans, sit in their bathtubs, and blow it out their butts.”

  I said, “Janet told us you were a doctor, Dale. What are you, a gas-troenterologist?”

  “No, I’m a heart surgeon “

  “Ah.”

  Timmy said, “Where do you practice, Dale? At Albany Med?”

  “Yes, I’m on vacation for the month of August. The rest of the year I work seventy to ninety hours a week, but I do make it a point to stay up here all of August every year and rediscover nature and literature and my lover. So, what’s the deal? Are you guys going to find out who’s after Janet and protect her’ Eldon said you were some kind of hot-shit private eye in Albany, Don.”

  Timmy said, “Yes, he is.”

  “Let’s slow down for a minute,” Janet said. “It does look as if someone tried to run me over with a Jet Ski. But that was over a week ago, and nobody has come after me since then. I’ve been wary and alert, but there haven’t been any suspicious or threatening incidents at all. So the Jet Ski thing could have been a weird, isolated event with no explanation we’ll ever have. Or is that wishful thinking?”

  “What it is, is bullshit,” Dale said.

  Janet gave Dale an affectionate look, as if Dale had just uttered a familiar endearment, and said, “I admit that the Jet Ski scare coming on top of Eric’s being killed makes me nervous. I’m just not sure, Don, what you or anybody else can do about it. The sheriff sent a deputy over, and he checked out the cove the skier came out of. There was no sign of the guy an hour later, and a couple of the people who live up that way said they did notice a skier that evening, but they didn’t register where he’d come from, or where he went, or anything unusual about him. So going after the rampaging Jet Skier looks to me like a probable dead end.”

  I said, “What did the man on the Jet Ski look like? You said you saw his face.”

  “White, male, big, stocky, sandy hair pulled back, probably in a ponytail, broad face,” Janet said. “I couldn’t have gotten a close look at his face, but somehow I have it in my head that he looked cool and ferocious, as if he knew exactly what he was doing.”

  “That may sound like your typical outdoors internal-combustion overenthusiast,” Dale said. “But this one was even worse than most. Homicide is a little much even for the crotch-rocket crowd.”

  We all peered out at the area of the lake where Janet apparently had been attacked. It was midafternoon-Janet had left the office early and we’d followed her the twelve miles out to the lodge-and the sun was still strong in a cloudless blue sky. On the far side of the lake, a mile or two away, I could make out several old wooden docks like the one we were on as well as newer, lower floating docks moored in front of the cabins and lodges that were back in the shadows of the pines. A cigarette boat buzzed up and down the far shore pulling a figure on water skis. Closer to our side, a lone man wearing a baseball cap paddled a canoe.

  I said, “I’d like to talk to the deputy who came out last week, and to whoever investigated Eric’s murder. Are they out of the same office?”

  “You mean out of the same Cub Scout pack,” Dale said.

  “The deputy was Fulton Poorman,” Janet said. “He’s not terribly swift as a criminologist, but they sent him because he lives out this way. He’s entirely approachable and actually a pretty nice guy. As for Eric’s case, the sheriff, Ken Stone, doesn’t have the resources, outer or inner, to handle a murder investigation. So he brought in the staties and they pretty much took over. See Captain Bill Stankie at the Edensburg barracks. He strikes me as competent, if unimaginative, but I’ll be interested in getting your take on him. Dale thinks he’s lazy, but I’m not sure about that. I think maybe he has his own tempo that he thinks is right for any particular investigation. And for Eric’s case, apparently, it’s a slow one.”

  Dale said, “Stankie’s theory is it was a homicidal drifter-some twitchie dork by the name of Gordon Grubb who was in the area at the time and is now in jail down in Pennsylvania, where supposedly he shoved three campers off a cliff. Stankie’s not trying to extradite him because there’s no real evidence tying Grubb to Eric’s death. Anyway, if he’s convicted down there, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will no doubt want to send him spinning off to kingdom come expeditiously. My parents had a friend who went to Penn State in the forties, and she said whenever they threw the switch on ‘Ol’ Ben’s Kite,’ as they called it, at Rockview State Penitentiary, the lights dimmed up and down the Nittany Valley. Just your average inadvertent public execution.”

  Timmy said, “These days executions are so tasteful, and medically approved-lethal injections and all that.”

  “I don’t believe there have been any ‘medically approved’ state executions in this country,” Dale said. “Oh, in Texas maybe.”

  We were all sitting along the edge of the dock now. Janet and Dale had their sandals off, their feet dangling in the cool water.

  Timmy said, “Why do you think Skeeter is so sure there’s some connection between Eric’s death and the Jet Ski incident and the situation at the Herald? He was acting pretty crazy at the hospital last night, but he seemed so certain about that-as if the drug that made him psychotic also heightened his powers of intuition.”

  Janet slumped a bit and looked rueful at this turn in the conversation. It was Dale who said, “Skeeter?”

  “Eldon was called Skeeter when Timmy knew him in high school,” Janet said, perking up at the chance to change the subject. “Where did his nickname come from anyway?” she asked Timmy.

  “I don’t know. He had it from when he was a little kid.”

  “The Eldon I know is hardly mosquitolike,” Dale said. “He’s more ursine. But I guess it would make some people nervous having a tot around nicknamed Grizzly.”

  “Eldon was big and already had hair on his chest even when I first met him in seventh grade,” Timmy said. “He was in my gym class, and I think it might have been my first locker-room erotic response.”

  “Mine was similar,” Dale said. “Renee Boulanger was a French exchange student. She didn’t have hair on her chest, to the best of my recollection, but she had it under her arms down to her hipbones, and I still get weak in the knees at the thought of her. I wonder what old Renee is up to now.”

  Janet suddenly hopped up and said, “How about a swim? Aren’t you two ready to cool off?”

 
; We’d brought our bathing suits along, although Timmy had said earlier in the car: “I know at some point they’re going to whip off all their clothes, dash through the trees, and plunge into the lake-I guess you can’t call it ‘buck naked.’ And they’re going to expect us to do the same. Believe me, this is going to happen. I have a feeling about Janet Osborne and about any woman she might choose to live beside a lake with.”

  I told him that if he was going to be involved in the investigation of a crime-which he still insisted he was-he’d have to quit being so prim. So he buttoned his lip on the subject of our skinny-dipping with lesbians, obviously a complex circumstance for him.

  Now, as Janet began to speak eagerly of watery recreation, Timmy said, “I’m really enjoying just sitting here, even with so many people living around the lake.”

  “Stilton is big enough,” Janet said, “to accommodate quite a crowd. Although if tranquility is what you’re after, stay away from here on holiday weekends. It’s Orlando-in-the-Adirondacks.”

  “She’s referring to the Florida city specializing in industrial tourism,” Dale said to Timmy and me, “not the Virginia Woolf novel.”

  Timmy said, “Oh, I see. Thank you.”

  “Have you read it?” Dale said.

  “Orlando the city,” Timmy asked, “or Orlando the novel?”

  “The great novel.”

  “No, but I read To the Lighthouse. By the time. I’d finished it, I was experiencing the actual physical sensation of having multiple personalities. Only the greatest literature can do that.”

  At this, Dale cracked an enigmatic little smile.

  Not daring to look at Timmy, I gazed out across the lake. The cigarette boat across the way was still zooming around with a skier in tow-a young man in multicolored boxers, it looked like-and a man in a baseball cap still paddled his canoe along the shore a quarter of a mile away.