“Where is the lockbox located?” I asked. “The box with the confession, the second set of books and the large stash of currency?”
“The lockbox was always buried under some potpourri. It’s at the bottom of a big crate called Elvira’s Herbal Kisses.”
I glanced at Hunny, who caught my look, and then I excused myself and walked out into the corridor, past the waiting Lake George officer, and out to my car. I phoned Card Sanders, and before he started in on me, I explained a few things to him and urged him to get hold of the state fire marshal’s office immediately. He listened with care, heard what I said, and agreed to make some fast calls and then get himself over to Cobleskill to help search for the lockbox.
Sanders said, “I’m relieved to see that Mr. Van Horn is likely to come out of all this with both his fortune and his reputation intact. Unless, that is, it was Huntington himself or somebody he hired who set the fire at Crafts-a-Palooza. That would put a much darker slant on the situation.”
“Yeah, well, we can talk about that. I have some information about the fire that you’ll be greatly interested to hear, Lieutenant.”
204 Richard Stevenson
I gave him a quick rundown on Stu Hood, and how Hood had both a history of arson and a powerful personal interest in not letting the Brienings take away all of Hunny’s lottery winnings. I told Sanders where he could probably find Hood after the place opened in the early afternoon, and then I rang off and walked back inside the police station.
Tex Clermont and Herero Flores were in the conference room now with Hunny, Art and Rita, and everyone was chatting away and guffawing, and wrists were flapping, and I came in just as Hunny yelled at Herero, “You go, girl!”
Herero, short and pleasantly round-faced with a fuzzy little goatee, shrieked and said, “And you wouldn’t believe the tat on this lifeguard I met at the beach down from the motel!”
“Not Sean Shea!”
“Yes, he said he knows you and he said maybe you gonna give him a million dollars, just like you gonna give me!”
“Sure, why not!” Hunny sang out.
“Oh, I just knew this would all work out,” Tex Clermont said grinning. “I knew y’all would just hit it off like y’all was old bosom buddies, just like Rita and yours truly.” Draped over a folding chair, her walker parked next to her, Tex was a good six feet tall, with shining blue eyes, eight pounds of rouge, and a heap of hair like the fake Sarah Palin’s at the Cobleskill book party.
Hunny said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but I have to tell you this. Today is the happiest day of my life. To have my beloved mom back with me and to see her wonderful old friend and to meet her fabulous new friend is just the banana split with the cherry on top. I am blessed, and we are all blessed.
And now why don’t we all go somewhere where we can count our blessings and…have a few celebrationary cocktails!”
Everyone in the room shrieked except me, although I had to smile too. The cop outside in the hall turned and looked through the glass at us, and he also looked pleased with the way things were turning out.
The Lake George police were too smart to swallow any of the “reality show hoax” guff that the tea-baggers were spreading.
The cops bought Mrs. Van Horn’s unlikely but true story that she and her pals were just off having a break from nursing home life. They said they would notify both Golden Gardens and Tex Clermont’s assisted living facility in Houston that the ladies would be back in a matter of days and “the gals” would get in touch themselves when their plans were clearer.
Nelson and Lawn soon arrived in Lake George, and they joined us for lunch at Joey and Bernie’s Take-a-Peek Inn, the place with the good stuffed haddock.
“Grandma Rita,” Nelson said, after we had ordered our fish platters, “we can certainly understand why you would want a break from nursing home life, even from such a comfy-cozy place as Golden Gardens. But next time, why don’t you just phone Mother or me? It would be our pleasure to take you out for a steak dinner at Jack’s. And maybe even a cocktail or two.”
He winked.
“Yes,” Lawn added. “You are very dear to us, Grandma Van Horn. It would be our great pleasure to be seen in public with you.”
“Oh, that is so sweet. You boys make such a nice couple. You know, I’m so glad there are so many gay boys in our family. Boys who really know how to have fun. Not a bunch of stick-in-the-muds like most Van Horns have been.”
Nelson blushed and Lawn quickly scanned the room to see if anyone was listening.
Tex said, “Yes, you gay boys are
baaaad
. And I think we can see plenty of evidence of that right at this table. Herero, honey, you can barely keep your eyes open. I know you were out tomcatting around all night because I heard you come in next door at four fifteen a.m. You know, I left my Zolpidem in Houston, so I sleep
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very poorly.”
“Oh, Tex,” Hunny said, “I can get you some pills. The twins have a regular pharmacy in their bike bags. They’re two young friends of Artie’s and mine who plan on practicing medicine. I’m putting them through podiatry school.”
Nelson and Lawn exchanged glances, and Lawn reached for the bread basket.
Herero did look droopy-eyed, but now he perked up and said,
“I haven’t yet completed my education. But Hunny is gonna help me out, too.”
“What are you studying, Herero?” Art asked.
“Nursing. I’m pretty good with the tLC already, but I need more skills and the piece of paper.”
“You can tLC me anytime, Herero,” Hunny said gaily, and everybody guffawed except Nelson and Lawn.
“Uncle Hunny, we’re out in public now,” Nelson said.
“You’re right, Nelson,” Mrs. Van Horn said. “We’re not locked up in the old folks’ dungeon today, so I guess I can’t tell any rude jokes, either.”
Tex said, “Well y’all can play goodie-goodie if that’s what y’all want to do. Me, I’m too old and too bowlegged to care. Now, Nelson. Did you hear the one about the lady and the supermarket bag boy?”
“Oh, Tex, you old devil, you,” Hunny said. “That joke is not for tender ears like Nelson’s.”
Art said, “You could change it to scratchy Toyota.”
Tex, Rita, Herero and Hunny howled over that one. Nelson and Lawn looked perplexed, but neither asked for a clarification.
The stuffed haddock lunch went on in this jolly vein until, as coffee was being served, my cell phone rang, and I walked out to the parking lot to take the call.
“I’ve got good news and semi-bad news,” Card Sanders said.
“The good news is, I was there when the fire marshal located CoCkeyed
207
the lockbox, so-called. It was at the bottom of the remains of a burned wooden crate that may well have contained the dead-leaf smelly stuff you described to me. The contents of the lockbox, however, were charred. The box was not airtight and the material inside combusted. There appeared to be the remains of paper documents and what the inspector said were crumbled bits of U.S. currency. Quite a bit of it, in fact.”
“That’s the semi-bad news, I take it. So, what’s the good news, Lieutenant?”
“Clyde and Arletta Briening were on the site when we recovered the lockbox and its contents. Asked about it, they claimed they had no idea what it was or how it had gotten there.
They said maybe the arsonist left it to confuse the police. They said there had been a break-in earlier in the day, and their back door had been pried open.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s bullshit, of course. But with nothing to go on but Mrs. Van Horn’s unsubstantiated allegations, the DA isn’t likely to want to send the charred papers to the state lab for a time-consuming and very expensive forensic analysis. The upshot is the Brienings are out their million-plus dollars in unreported income, and the Van Horns are free of any charges or accusations the Brienings were intending to make against them, whatever those charges and accusations might have been. I’ll bet you know what those charges and accusation were. Am I right?”
“Sure.”
“Both Clyde and Arletta told me they don’t like the Van Horns
— they called Hunny a degenerate fruitcake — but as far as that family is concerned they’re willing to let bygones be bygones.
They said they were glad to hear that Mrs. Van Horn had been located and that she wasn’t dead at the bottom of a quarry, as they put it. And now they just want to concentrate on collecting the insurance money and rebuilding their store, they said.”
“Sounds good.”
“They do, of course, want the arsonist caught and the crime
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prosecuted.”
“Yeah. He should be restrained. That I can’t argue with. The guy could really hurt somebody the next time.”
I only wished that the priest who had raped Stu Hood when he was a child and probably wrecked his conscience and filled him with loathing could also be locked up, maybe in the same state prison. But that wasn’t anything I or Sanders could do anything about for the moment.
I went back inside the restaurant and announced to Hunny and the others that the Brienings had been neutralized and both Mrs. Van Horn’s good name and Hunny’s billion dollars had been saved and were now secure.
Hunny said, “Well, I am so relieved that those wicked cretins in Cobleskill are now off Mom’s back. Now, Mom, no more bezzy-wezzy for you. Promise?”
“Bezzy-wezzy?”
“Hand in the till. You know?”
“Oh, my word, I forgot all about that tomfoolery. It was so long ago. I can’t remember what I did last week, for heaven’s sakes.”
Art said, “So, Hunny, you get to keep the billion dollars. We could have made do without it, but you have to admit that it’s sure to come in handy.”
Hunny looked pensive. “The billion dollars is actually more of a burden than I really want to shoulder. It has brought me mainly grief, and I almost wish I had never bought my Instant Warren tickets and then won that gosh-darn prize.”
All eyes at the table watched Hunny anxiously, including mine.
Lawn’s mouth was actually hanging open.
“But,” Hunny said, “if some tired old fart like Warren Buffet can put up with being a billionaire, I guess I can, too.”
“Yes, Hunny, be brave,” his mother said. “You can do a lot of good in the world with that amount of money. Help the less fortunate, spruce up Moth Street at Christmas with loads of CoCkeyed
209
pretty lights.”
“Support education,” Herero said. “You already said that.”
“And of course if you invest wisely,” Nelson said, “you can increase your considerable assets substantially.”
“Nelson, you are on the money with that sound investment comment,” Hunny said. “And I have only one word for you —
all of you gathered here who may end up with a piece of my big yummy money pie.”
“What’s that?” Tex said. “I hope it’s not playing the ponies like your mother.” Tex and Mrs. Van Horn looked at each other and snickered.
“Is the word
plastics
?” Art asked.
We all leaned in to listen to Hunny’s one-word investment strategy. “Oh, Artie, who do you think you’re talking to? Am I Hunny Van Horn, or am I Hunny Van Horn? The investment word has got to be
Applebee’s
!”
Hunny did buy over eight hundred million dollars’ worth of Applebee’s stock, enabling the restaurant chain to expand into such locales as Lock Haven, Pennsylvania; Bethel, Maine; and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. At the company’s annual meeting, Hunny was elected to the board of directors. He and Art toured many of the franchises. They were popular visitors, although they were asked to leave Utah following an incident with a bus boy whose fake ID misstated his actual age.
Hunny gave away many millions of dollars to his former coworkers at BJ’s Warehouse. Most of the recipients used the cash to further their educations or fix up their homes, although several also became addicts and drunks and got into gunfights with other family members.
While the twins’ grades at hvCC were not good enough to get them into a pre-med program, Hunny helped them open a foot massage parlor at the Crossgates mall in the space the Brienings had been planning on expanding into.
Hunny never heard from Clyde and Arletta Briening again.
They rebuilt their Cobleskill Crafts-a-Palooza store with the insurance money from the fire. They remained active with the Family Preservation Association of Albany County and other tea party groups, but they did not make any major donations to any of them. Bill O’Malley did not return to Albany and didn’t mention Hunny again, although he did include in his show a brief approving mention when the Brienings got their own reality show on Bravo,
Arletta, Get Your Glue Gun!
Marylou and Antoine, who each received five million dollars from Hunny, quit their jobs at Golden Gardens and the tax department and often traveled with Hunny and Art, where they handled corporate communications and media.
I never received a bonus of thirty million dollars from Hunny.
That apparently slipped his mind. He did, however, give me a
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nice tip of four percent on my regular fee. He told me the tip would have been much larger if I had played my cards right, and we both had a good laugh over that.
For several months, Rita Van Horn had her own elegant Albany apartment overlooking Washington Park, complete with live-in staff. But she was bored, she told Hunny, so she moved back out to Golden Gardens. The Willett Street folks didn’t laugh at her jokes, she said. Hunny paid for Tex Clermont to leave Houston and move in with Rita at Golden Gardens. Nola Conklin moved down the hall.
Nelson and Lawn were given a million dollars each of Hunny’s money to invest as they saw fit. Lawn put all of it in “bundled habitable-shelving securities” in Tokyo, and it vanished as soon as Japan’s economy began to recover.
Mason Doebler received one thousand dollars to get his Pontiac fixed, but no more, and he dropped his frivolous lawsuit after Bob Chicarelli, Hunny’s lawyer, pointed out to Doebler’s lawyer that the combination of Doebler’s assault convictions and his scary appearance would work against him with a jury.