Chain of Fools

15

How did we ever get mixed up in this?" Timmy said morosely.

I said, "Let me think."

He was laid out on the four-poster in June's old room, and I was at the desk nearby updating my notes. Lunch was to be served in another ten minutes. June had departed an hour earlier, after watching her mother be served with an order to appear for a court proceeding the following Monday, four days away. June and Chester contended that Ruth Osborne was mentally incapable of carrying out her duties as a Herald Corporation board member, and Mrs. Osborne would be expected to demonstrate that she was of sound mind. When she accepted the papers, Mrs. Osborne had looked at her daughter and asked pleasantly, "Are you wearing your retainer, June?"

Timmy said, "My foot is hot and it itches."

"Sorry."

"I don't mean to whine. I realize there are people in this house with bigger problems than a broken foot."

"Go ahead and whine. I would."

"No, you wouldn't. Anyway, we've got enough whiners in this house. What a jerk Dan Osborne is. And Janet is perfectly rational except when she and Dan are in the same room together. Then both of them sound like a couple of twelve-year-olds."

"Dan can bring that out in anybody," I said. "But it's not his pomposity that's the most interest to me. It's his sensitive stomach. Every time the subject of an Osborne family conspiracy to commit murder comes up, Dan heaves."

"I couldn't help noticing that too. Bui; you don't suspect Dan of killing Eric, do you? Why would he?"

"Right. Why would he?"

"I can't think of any reason having to do with the sale of the Herald, " Timmy said. "Or any other reason, either."

"According to Janet, the Osborne household harbored more than the average amount of emotional deprivation when she and her brothers and sister were growing up. Emotional deprivation led to emotional warfare, and emotional warfare sometimes leads to physical violence. Still, fratricide is extreme and extremely rare, I know. So, no. I don't have any real reason at this point to suspect Dan. But I do plan on gleaning his whereabouts on the afternoon Eric was murdered. And I'd sure like to find out why Dan vomits at the mention of his brother's death. Is it the shock and terrible loss that hits him hard all over again? Is he squeamish? Or does he have some guilty knowledge of the event?"

"Why don't you just ask him?"

"I'm considering doing that, Timothy. I need to get him alone first. I also need to come up with a sufficiently delicate way of phrasing my interrogatory. It won't do to ask, 'Why does mention of your brother's bludgeoning make you puke your guts out, Dan?' "

"That sounds good enough to me, Don. Euphemisms for vomiting are for kindergarten teachers to use, and euphemisms for murder are for heads of state. Just ask him directly, is my advice. Dan's a grownup."

"He's a grown-up, but he's also a grown-up who acts like he's got some guilty secret that's eating away at his insides. When I confront Dan, I don't want him to clam up even tighter than he is now, and I don't want him to bolt."

"He's highly indignant over being stuck here, he says, but he's not making any move to leave either. I wonder if he wants you to find out something important he knows. Maybe he's trying to work up the courage to tell you something, and it's when he gets close to saying it that he throws up."

"Possibly."

"On the other hand, maybe Dan is simply scared to death he's going to be attacked and killed, and that makes him heave. Having somebody try to run your car over a cliff is bound to unsettle your break fast. I know I'm nervous about all this, and I'm not even on the Herald's board. Here we are, like Chinese Gordon at Khartoum, the Mahdi's turbaned hordes out there just beyond the perimeter tightening the noose, getting ready to come charging in for the coup de grace. It is frightening."

"That's a little overly vivid, Timothy. But I get your point."

"And then there's Dale," he said, throwing his arms back in a gesture of despair. The pom-poms on June's snowy white bedspread trembled.

"Aren't you glad she's on our side?" I said.

"I'll say. I'd hate to have her across the Nile in Omdurman sharpening her panga."

"I like her," I said, "and I thinkyou would too, Timothy, if she hadn't somehow confused you with Jesse Helms or Richard Speck or whoever it is, and treats you accordingly. She's prickly and blunt in ways you'd find refreshing if you weren't the one getting prickled and pum-meled. And Dale can obviously spot a phony a mile away."

He writhed. "Yeah, a phony like me."

"Oh, you're obviously much worse than a mere phony. You said yesterday she was starting to seem dimly familiar. Still no luck placing her?"

"Nah. There is something about that head of hair and the face under it-I've seen them both before somewhere, I'm more and more certain. But hard as I try, I cannot remember where."

"Peace Corps? Was she in your India group?"

"No, that I'd remember. Anyway, she's ten years too young."

"You didn't have a falling out in 1969 over competing poultry de-beaking techniques in Andhra Pradesh?"

"I have a feeling I've run into Dale more recently than that. I think it had something to do with work-something at the Assembly. It'll come to me soon, I think. Whatever it is, there must be some misunderstanding. I can't imagine that Dale and I would have been on opposite sides of anything very important. I mean, could we have?"

"It seems unlikely. Yet she referred today to a 'moral chasm' between the two of you And she said you had done something with 'grim consequences for American society.' Whatever it was, it was plainly a big deal to Dale."

Timmy twisted on the bed again, in obvious mental pain. I went over and climbed on June's bed beside him. I placed my mouth close to Timmy's ear and whispered, "Dale has apparently become convinced- and a woman as smart as she is has to have her reasons-that you are actually G. Gordon Liddy, Timothy. It must be your excellent posture, if not something awful you once did, that has led her to confuse the two of you. To her, this is a turn-off. But not to me. I'm excited. Come to me, Gordo. Hold yourself above my flame."

He smiled weakly, but that's as far as his ardor rose. Timmy had been irritated with Dale earlier, and then angry. But now he was haunted. I hadn't been crazy about it when his mind had been full of Skeeter, and now it was time for me to be patient and indulgent while his mind was full of Dale. Luckily, I had plenty to occupy my mind too-a distinguished New York State family whose members apparently were trying to kill one another off for reasons of ideology and/or cash.