“Well…Godfrey Daniels! Am I going to have to start sneaking down to the coal bin?”
The phone rang and Hunny picked it up. “Yeah? Who be you?” He listened and said, “Well, you’re not much of a role model either, bothering people at nine in the morning and calling them…crappy names and crap like that. Are you speaking for all the gay people in America? I very much doubt that, you evil queen!”
He hung up and said, “Verizon must be open by now. Artie, we really do need to get an unlisted number. Today.”
I said, “You should probably keep this number as long as people need to reach you about your mother. This is not the time to be going incommunicado, even if you have to put up with some cranks.”
Hunny shoved his plate aside and reached for his Marlboros.
In his desolation, he looked so unlike the euphoric Hunny that Timmy and I had seen on Channel 13 five days before that I wondered if he might ever recover from what had turned out to be a stroke of stupendously bad luck for him, winning a billion dollars.
The phone rang again, and this time it was not another gay person calling up to criticize Hunny for embarrassing the homosexuals of America. This call was from Nelson, who was now over at Golden Gardens. He said Mrs. Kerisiotis had asked him again who the Brienings were. They had phoned the nursing home and identified themselves as “business associates” of Rita Van Horn, and they said they might drop by late Wednesday with some information about her that the management of Golden Gardens would find interesting. They told Mrs. Kerisiotis to be sure to mention their call to Nelson and Hunny.
As I drove out to Cobleskill, low clouds moved in and soon I turned on the wipers to deal with a light drizzle. Swoosh, two, three — swoosh, two, three. Nissan, the waltz king. Did windshield washers Argentine tango? The temperature was up in the eighties, even with the rain. So if somehow Rita Van Horn was stuck out of doors she would not likely suffer too much from exposure to the elements, provided she was found soon.
Except, it seemed more and more likely that Hunny’s mom had not just wandered off but had been picked up by someone, perhaps whoever had phoned her fifteen minutes before she tottered out the front door at Golden Gardens. It didn’t make sense that whoever drove Mrs. Van Horn away had anything to do with the Brienings. Their investment was in keeping her in a spot where social pressure and the threat of humiliation would underpin their extortion scam. But their recent implicitly threatening phone call to Golden Gardens suggested that they might hold to their Wednesday deadline, whether or not Mrs. Van Horn was back at the home, and I needed to talk to them and buy time if at all possible.
Cobleskill looked fresh in the benign light rain, although Crafts-a-Palooza, lightly patronized on a Monday morning and smelling of what I took to be New York Thruway-restroom-scented candles, gave off a less welcoming vibe.
“You know what this is?” Clyde said, pointing a metal object at me. “It’s a glue gun, and believe me, I know how to use it.” He yelled at a curtained-off area in the back of the store, “Arletta!
Arletta, that goon working for Hunny Van Horn is back.”
She came through the curtains wielding her own weapon, a Mike Huckabee-brand crown of thorns. The wreath was still in its plastic wrapper, so if she came at me with it I would not likely be injured.
“So,” Arletta said, “did you bring Clyde and I a big fat check 126 Richard Stevenson from Rita’s drunken son?”
“Drunken?”
“Oh, don’t think we didn’t see him on Bill O’Malley last night making an ass of himself and of every one of his sorry ilk.”
“Then you must know that Rita Van Horn is still missing.
Hunny is so upset he can’t deal with anything else right now. I’m sure you understand that. Put yourself in his place.”
Clyde said, “Mr. O’Malley thinks this missing-Rita shenanigan is all a hoax. He has proof, he said.”
“Did he? I just heard a lot of wild speculation based on nothing at all.”
“It’s all about some reality TV show,” Arletta said. “I would no sooner believe anything any of the Van Horns told me than I would believe Barack Obama.”
I said, “Hunny turned down the offer of a show on All-Too-Real TV. His entire life has turned into a reality TV show, and he doesn’t like it.”
This caught Clyde up short. “Why would he say no to that?
Don’t those people on those shows get paid a lot?”
“Since we’re so important in Hunny’s life right now,” Arletta said, “and Rita’s, also, maybe Clyde and I could be on the show, too. Of course, then it would have to come out that Rita is an embezzler. No, I can see why they would try to exclude us.
Anyway, we’ll have plenty of money when Hunny splits his lottery winnings with us. Which will be just a couple of days from now, won’t it? What’s your name again?”
“Don Strachey.”
Clyde said, “But, Arletta, after we get the half a billion from Hunny, then we wouldn’t have to mention the embezzlement on the TV show. That stuff would be all squared away. We could just be there as Rita’s former employers. And as well-wishers.”
She screwed up her face. “That’s true.”
I said, “Let me run this by Hunny and get back to you later in the week. There is also the possibility of Oh Look! TV doing a biopic of Hunny. His winning the lottery, plus dramatic episodes from the first Gulf War and probably some stuff about vampires.”
Clyde and Arletta perked up even more. Maybe they thought they could play the vampires.
Arletta said, “Just make sure Hunny pays us the half a billion by Wednesday. We need to put a deposit on space at Crossgates by the end of the week, and we’ll need time for Hunny’s check to clear.”
“I’ll see what I can do. You understand, of course, that at this point Hunny’s first priority has to be getting his mother back in one piece. If you think about it, that will be in your best interests, also. If anything happened to Rita — if she were to suffer a fatal stroke or heart attack, say, or become a victim of foul play — I guess both of you would in that case have to accept the fact that you are royally fucked.”
“Watch your language in the presence of my wife.”
“Sorry.”
“Well, what are the police doing, anyways?” Arletta asked.
“Are they investigating the hoax theory? Bill O’Malley is a man who knows what he’s talking about.”
“I know that the police are following every lead they can. The East Greenbush sheriff is coordinating with the Albany Police Department. The State Police are on the case, and there’s talk of bringing in the FBI.”
“The Van Horns are getting the celebrity treatment,” Arletta said, and sneered.
Clyde looked puzzled. “Why shouldn’t they?”
“Just because he won the Instant Warren? He’s a pervert and she’s a thief. This is what we’ve come to!”
Now Clyde grasped what his wife was getting at. “More of the same,” he said. “Just more of the same.”
“Obama’s America.”
I said, “The threatening letter you sent to Mrs. Van Horn was found in her room. So we know she received it. Probably on Saturday, the day before she walked out of Golden Gardens and has not been seen since. It does seem possible that your ultimatum
— Hunny pays you half a billion or Rita faces exposure and humiliation — might have triggered some desperate act by Mrs. Van Horn. If so, are you prepared to accept moral responsibility for that?”
“Desperate act, like what?” Arletta asked.
“We can only guess. I suppose she might try to kill herself. Or has already done it.”
“Oh!” they both cried.
“I’m not saying this just to frighten you, but there is also the possibility that she might try to get rid of the two of you. She is known to be distraught, and it was probably your letter that pushed her over the edge. What is your security situation here and at your home?”
