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 anythingmaybe 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
