Free Chain of Fools by Richard Stevenson Page B

us. "I was wondering where you all had got to," she said pleasantly. "It looks as if you must have gone looking for something to read."
    "Mom, hi!"
    Dale said, "We weren't reading, Ruth, just visiting the family museum."
    "Well, this is certainly it I'm Ruth Osborne," she said to me, extending her hand. She looked fully alert.
    "Don Strachey. I'm honored to meet you."
    "My husband could never part with a book, and neither can I. It's just acquisitiveness and a minor variety of greed What good's a book if it's not passed around and read? All these books being held captive here—for what? It's one of my six or eight moral weaknesses."
    I said, "You always think you're going to reread them."
    "Oh, not me. I have no illusions about that. I just like knowing they're in here gathering dust. The only ones I look at anymore are my son's books. Eric was a marvelous writer Have you read him'"
    "My lover and I sometimes read Eric aloud to each other when we're in the mountains It's like having a companion with us who has a sixth sense for understanding the wilderness and who can put it into English "
    "Yes, he was extremely gifted. Eric was murdered in May, however."
    "I know. I'm sorry."
    Elsie eased out the door of the study and threw an astonished look back at us as she went.
    Mrs. Osborne said, "The police say it was some mysterious drifter who did it, but I wonder. The Osbornes have been a progressive force in these parts for a good, long time, and it wouldn't surprise me if somebody decided to get even with me or my husband by murdering Eric. Tom's dead, of course—that's him on the mantel—but Janet and my son Daniel and I are carrying on the family's progressive traditions, and some of the reactionary forces we've taken on over the years are ruth-
    less people with long memories. And I've got another theory too that's even uglier than that one."
    "Mom," Janet said, "Don is a private investigator, as a matter of fact. He's going to be looking into Eric's murder. He's also investigating something else that's come up. I don't want you to worry, because I can take care of myself, but—well, the thing is, somebody may be trying to get at me too."
    Mrs. Osborne's brow furrowed and she said, "I'm not surprised to hear it."
    "You're not?"
    "No, not with the vote approaching on the sale of the Herald. With you or Dan or me out of the way, the vote would shift from a majority for Griscomb to a majority for InfoCom. Millions of dollars are at stake, and, of course, control over the soul of the paper. Bloody murder has been committed over a lot less. I've thought about warning you, Janet. But when you're my age you hesitate to tell people—even family, or especially family—that you suspect plots. People are liable to think you're losing your marbles."
    Janet blushed. "Oh, Mom, you know you can always talk to me and Dale about anything."
    I said, "Was there anything in particular, Mrs. Osborne, that set off your suspicions of a plot?"
    Janet gave me a quick glance that I took to mean it might not be wise to encourage her mother's imaginings. But Mrs. Osborne said somberly, "Yes, it first hit me that something might be afoot about a month after Eric's death when Janet's older brother Chester came by and tried to persuade me to change my vote to support selling the Herald to InfoCom. Chester threw a fit—he's always had a vicious temper, which I'm sorry to say comes to him by way of the Watsons, my family—and he whooped and hollered about the family losing so much money in a sale to Griscomb that in order to keep that from happening, somebody else might have to get hurt."
    We stared at Mrs. Osborne, who looked at us miserably. Dale said, "Somebody else?"
    "That's what Chester said. 'Somebody else might have to get hurt.'"
    "Mom, for chrissakes, why didn't you tell me this?"
    "Janet—does this make any sense? I think I forgot. I know I meant
    to tell you right away. But . . . crazy as this sounds, I think I just forgot to."
    The phone