Chain of Fools

18

Back in Edensburg just after four, I drove directly to Ruth Osborne's house. Now that I had the goods-or what I confidently believed closely resembled the goods-on Dan, I was eager to confront him.

"He's gone," Timmy said. "Arlene too."

"They left a note," Dale said. "It just said 'Don't worry about us.' But they didn't say where they went or when they'd be back."

Timmy and Dale were seated across from each other at the dinner table on the back porch. I could hear Elsie moving about in the kitchen nearby, and Ruth Osborne was outside, fifty feet away, snipping something with a scissors into a basket in the herb garden. Timmy and Dale were in the midst of a game of Scrabble and acted distracted and vaguely annoyed by my interruption.

"When did they leave?" I asked.

"It must have been not long after you did," Timmy said "We were all still asleep. What time did you leave for Attica?"

"Six-thirty."

"I was up at seven," Dale said, "and they were out of here by then. They left the note here on the table "

"Would you like some iced tea?" Timmy asked, indicating a perspiring crystal pitcher and a tray of glasses.

Helping myself, I said, "Where's the note?"

It appeared to be Dale's turn in the Scrabble game, so it was Timmy who glanced around the room in search of Dan's note. "Here it is." He turned over the sheet of typing paper their Scrabble scores were written on-Dale was leading, 180 to 167-and on the other side was the scrawled note: "Don't worry about us-Dan."

I said, "Is that Dan's handwriting?"

"I think so," Dale said, not looking up from her letter holder. "Janet saw it, and she didn't say it wasn't Dan's handwriting."

"Did the phone ring, that anybody knows of, before they left? Could they have received a call from someone?"

"I didn't hear it," Timmy said. "And there's a phone in our room."

"Ours too," Dale said. "But it's only rung once all day. That was around noon, when Pauline called for Janet."

"Was Janet here?"

"Yes, she came home for lunch," Timmy said. Now both Dale and Timmy were furiously rearranging the letter squares on their holders.

"Did Janet say why Pauline called her?"

Dale ignored this, and Timmy shook his head and said, "Nnn-nnn."

"Janet didn't say anything about Pauline still being upset after the way she held a gun on me yesterday?"

"Nnn-nnn."

Leaning against a nearby wicker settee were Timmy's wooden crutches, and my impulse was to pick one of them up and sweep all the letter squares off the Scrabble board and onto the players' laps. Instead, I said, "Aren't you two curious to hear about my meeting with Craig out at Attica? It was eventful."

Not looking up, Timmy said, "Absolutely."

"Yes, Donald," Dale said, "but if you don't mind keeping your dick in your pants until we're through with this game, that'll be just too, too groovy."

I picked up one of the crutches, played with it, put it back.

"It might look as if we've got our priorities screwed up," Timmy said, "but this game is more important than it may seem. Each word that Dale places on the board is meant to offer a clue about what it is I once did that makes me a moral slug in her eyes."

"And each word that Timothy plays shows his reaction to the word I last played," Dale said.

I studied the board. Among the words snaking this way and that way, up and down the board, were these: fib, ill, liar, retch, cuffed, ducky,