Fletch and the Widow Bradley (9 page)

“It makes me angry.”

“Good. I thought it would cheer you up. Of course you know Clara’s been going to bed with the press secretary.”

“I thought she was going to bed with Frank Jaffe.”

“Him, too, Clara goes to bed with anyone who can help her career. You can’t say Clara doesn’t give her all. Which is why she’s
being allowed to get away with this little slip of her’s.”

“Are you telling me Frank still isn’t going to run the story?”

“Jack says Frank called the Governor and told him to put an end to this corruption within a month, or the
News-Tribune
would blow the whistle. How do you like those sweet peas?”

“Jeez. I hope the competition gets wise to it.”

“You could always make sure they do, Fletch.”

“No. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Just trying to get you a job, man.”

“Not that way.”

“How do you feel, Fletch?”

“Lousey. How do you feel?”

“Lousey. See ya.”

“See ya.”

Fletch called the
News-Tribune
. There was no chance of the bathtub overflowing. Water ran into it at about the speed of decisions reached by committee.

“Classifieds,” the girl said. “May I help you?”

“Yes, please,” Fletch said. “I’d like to run an item in your Lost and Found column.”

“Yes, sir. What’s the message?”

“Wallet found name James St. E. Crandall write Box number—whatever box number you give me.”

“236.”

“236.”

“James St. E. like in James Saint Edward or something?”

“Yes.”

“C-r-a-n-d-a-1-1?”

“Yes.”

“And what name and number shall I bill this to?”

“I. M. Fletcher.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Don’t think so.”

“That you, Fletch?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, real sorry you got booted. What did you do, set fire to Frank Jaffe’s pants?”

“I thought everyone knew.”

“Yeah, I know. You quoted a stiff.”

“Who is this?”

“Mary Patouch.”

“Well, Mary. Want my address?”

“Fletch, I’ve always wanted your address. You know that.” Fletch gave her his address and then called the
San Francisco Chronicle
long-distance and placed the same ad.

“How did I meet Fletcher?” Moxie said like a child talking to herself. She had dropped her apron on the bathroom floor and gotten into the tub of warm water with Fletch. “I was buying a hot dog and this nice man standing next to me at the counter paid for it and then said nothing to me. So I said, ‘Thank you very much, sir,’ and you said, ‘Seeing we’re having such a terrible lunch, why don’t we have dinner together?’”

“Your story is true so far. And you said, ‘Yes, all right’. Why did you say, ‘Yes, all right’?”

“Because you’re beautiful and smooth and have funny eyes and I wanted to touch you.”

“Oh. Perfectly good reason.”

“Your eyes look like they’re laughing all the time. Almost all the time.”

“I see.”

“You can’t see your eyes. And at dinner I told you I had to come down here this weekend to start rehearsals Monday and you said you were driving this way next day, you had to be back at the office, ho ho ho, and why shouldn’t I save bus fare by coming with you. So, seeing we were friends already, we went back to my place and …”

“… and what?”

“And touched each other.”

She kissed his throat and he kissed her forehead.

“So tell me about this day,” she said. “I’ve known you three days, but only been with you two.”

“A very ordinary day,” Fletch said. “Just like all the others. Met a grouchy guy who tried to throw me off his place while I was trying to do him a favor, I thought, called the cops and tried to have me arrested.”

“And did the cops give you a shower and shave today?”

“Not today. A ticket for driving barefoot. Then I met a marvelous happy woman named Happy who invited me in and cooked me up three hamburgers.”

“Nice of her. She wanted your bod?”

“For three hamburgers?”

“I got you for less. Jar of peanut butter.”

“Charles Blaine’s mother-in-law. Charles Blaine, by the way, the
source of my suicidal story, has gone to Mexico.”

“So you can’t beat him up.”

“I think I’d like to. Then I met a solid-looking man working on his boat in Southworth who looked less like a neighborhood gossip than Calvin Coolidge but who told me all the gossip about the Bradley family he could think of, and maybe then some.”

“Did he know who he was talking to?”

“Of course not. Then I met the widow Bradley.”

“Jeez, you’re brave. Are these brass?”

“Can’t take that. The gossipy neighbor said Mrs. Bradley is a midnight screamer who probably drove her husband to attempt suicide. Speaking of her, she is dignified, quiet, reasonable. She says this whole thing happened because Charles Blaine is suffering a nervous breakdown or something, which is why she sent him on vacation.”

“So is Tom Bradley dead?”

“Then I went to the Southworth Country Club for a beer.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“I can see it. Right there in your stomach.” She pressed her finger against his appendix.

“Cannot.”

She kissed his mouth. “I smelled it when you came in.”

“Met Alex Corcoran, president of Wagnall-Phipps. Everyone says Tom Bradley’s dead. The widow Bradley showed me his ashes.”

“But, of course, you don’t want to believe it.”

“Of course I believe it. I believe everything. That’s how I got into trouble in the first place.”

She pushed his head below water.

“Glub.”

“Face it, Fletch. You’re sunk.”

“Glub. Where you going?”

She was stepping out of the tub.

“Forgot the steak. Can’t you smell it burning?”

“Steak! How’d you get steak?”

She had called to him,
Don’t bother getting dressed—everything’s ready
. She had the plates of steak and salad set out on the livingroom rug. She smiled at him when he came in.

“Opened a charge account,” she said.

“Your name?”

“Of course.” She poured wine into the glasses. “Can’t starve forever.”

“It’s good. Great!”

“It’s cheap and burnt,” she said. “At least you’ll never have to divorce me.”

“Why’s that? Not that I was thinking of it, already.”

“ ‘Cause you’ll never marry me.”

“Oh. I was thinking of asking.”

“I’ll never marry anybody.”

“Never ever?”

“Never ever. I’m an actor and actors should never get married.”

“A lot do.”

“You know about my father.”

“Frederick Mooney.”

“ ‘Nough said.”

“You told me he’s playing Falstaff in Toronto.”

“When he’s sober. Then he’s playing
salesman
in Chicago. When he’s sober. Last Christmas he did a baggy-pants comic routine at a dinner theater in Florida. When he was sober.”

“So he’s an actor who likes to drink. Not the first. Not the last. Your dad was known as a damned fine actor. Still is, as far as I know.”

“I haven’t told you about my mother.”

“No.”

“She’s in a very expensive home in Kansas for the mentally absent.”

“Oh. You think that’s your father’s fault?”

“Packing, unpacking, packing. Putting him to bed. Getting him up. Sobering him up. Looking for him in the bars. Reminding him which God-damn play he’s performing. Years of it. Taking care of me, on the road. Putting up with his women. His disappearances. His tensions. His paranoias. She couldn’t take the day anymore, let alone the night. Something just snapped.”

“Okay,” he said. “How much of that had to do with his acting?”

“All of it.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Then why do you want to be an actor?”

“I don’t want to be an actor.” Instinctively she moved her head so that the light fell on her nose beautifully. “I am an actor.”

He drank his wine. “Come on. Eat up.”

“Also I’d like to be able to pay my mother’s bills when that day
comes that Freddy no longer can do.”

“Thanks for the steak,” Fletch said. “Eat yours up, or I’ll attack you instantly.”

Moxie picked up her knife and fork. “So what are you going to do tomorrow?”

Fletch shrugged. “Guess spend another day going around apologizing to people.”

“Who’s left?”

“The Bradley kids.”

Moxie nodded. “Your piece must have been a real shock to them.”

“I wouldn’t feel right not touching base with them.”

“You’ll come to the cocktail party tomorrow night at the Colloquial Theater?”

“Sure. I’ll go with you.”

“Do me a favor, though, uh?”

“Anything.”

“Don’t mention Freddy.”

“Frederick Mooney. A famous name.”

“Infamous,” she said. “Infamous.”

A 
S
.   F 
L E T C H   W A L K E D
by he noticed the boat still in the driveway, gleaming white under its fresh coat of paint under the three o’clock in the morning moonlight. Except for the street lights, there was only one light visible in the neighborhood, a coach lantern several houses down.

In bare feet he went up the Bradley’s driveway and into the opened garage. The door to the house was locked. He went around the house to the kitchen door, which was also locked.

The glass door between the livingroom and the pool area slid open with a rumble. Houses away, a dog barked.

The moonlight did not do much to lighten the livingroom. Fletch stood inside the door a moment, listening, letting his eyes become used to the deeper darkness.

Putting each foot forward slowly, he walked to the fireplace. The box of ashes was not on the mantel.

He went to the coffee table and stooped over it. With loose fingers he combed, slowly, the surface of the table. His hand identified Enid Bradley’s wine glass; he did not knock it over. Then
the box of ashes.

Taking an envelope out of his back pocket, he opened it and held it in one hand. With his other hand he opened the lid of the filigreed box.

He took a pinch of ashes out of the box and put it in the envelope. He closed the lid, sealed the envelope.

Turning, he walked into the chair in which Enid Bradley had sat that afternoon, talking to him. It moved only a few centimeters on the carpet.

When he slid the sliding door shut, the dog did not bark.

A 
G A G G L E O F
teen-aged girls joggled across Southworth Prep’s green quadrangle in the bright Sunday morning sun. Fletch was waiting on the sidewalk outside an empty dormitory house.

As he came closer he saw the resemblance between the oldest girl, the only one not a teenager, and Enid Bradley—except that she was not at all overweight and her slit shorts and running shoes were not a bit out-of-date.

“Roberta?” he asked.

The girls were huffing along the sidewalk, pounding up the steps to the porch and into the house.

“Showers, everyone!” Roberta said. “Be ready for chapel in half an hour!”

She looked at Fletch.

“Roberta Bradley,” Fletch said.

“Have we met?” she asked. She wasn’t at all out of breath.

“We’re just meeting now,” Fletch said. “For probably the first and last time, no foolin’. I’m Fletcher.”

“So?”

“I.M. Fletcher.”

“You already said that.”

“The jerk who wrote the piece in the newspaper Wednesday about Wagnall-Phipps.”

“Oh, I see.” Her look was not at all unfriendly. “You want to talk. It isn’t necessary.”

“I wanted to come by …”

She glanced at the clock in the church tower across the quadrangle. “I like to run another couple miles while the little darlings use up all the hot shower water. Mind running with me?”

“No. That’s okay.”

Her pace was faster than it had looked. She had long, skinny legs and a long stride. They got off the sidewalk and went behind the school buildings and along a dirt road.

“I run just to get a few minutes alone,” she said.

“Sorry. Pretend I’m part of the landscape, if you want. Rock, tree, tumbleweed.”

“The little darlings at Southworth Prep never give me time to go exercise Melanie. Dad’s horse.”

“You still keep your father’s’horse?”

Roberta ran silently for a minute or two. “Guess nobody’s made a decision about it yet,” she said. “Look, what do you want from me?”

“ ‘Pologize, I guess. I screwed up. Must have been a shock to you.”

Her face looked more annoyed than poised. “Why is everybody making such a big deal of this? Weirder things have happened in the world. You wrote an article about Wagnall-Phipps and referred to my father as chairman. So what? You were just out of date, that’s all.”

“Still …”

“That three-piece suiter from the newspaper came over the other night, sat Tom and me down and gave us solemn apologies from the
News-Tribune
. Said mistakes happen. Don’t you suppose we know mistakes happen? Jeepers!”

“It shouldn’t have happened.” Fletch’s feet were raising bigger puffs of dirt than her’s. “I hear Carradine had some nice things to say about me!”

Roberta smiled at him and waggled her head. “Boy, if you’re half as bad as he says you are, you’re awful! Incompetent, fool, compulsive liar, wow.” She stretched her leg just slightly to avoid a rock embedded in the road. “Nice of you to come by, though, I suppose.”

“I can’t explain how it happened.”

“No need to. You screwed up. So what? Last week I handed out a French test to a roomful of kids who were supposed to be taking a Spanish test. Would you believe two or three of the kids actually started to do the French test? No one should ever believe teachers or newspapers entirely.”

“Your dad’s dying in Switzerland and all … Your mother taking over the company in his absence … then he died … your mother keeping the chair warm for your Aunt Francine …”

Roberta appeared to be listening carefully.

“There was some confusion,” she said.

“Yeah. I guess you could say that.”

“You can’t understand everything that happens,” Roberta said. “I tell that to my students. You can try to understand, of course. You can even act like you understand, when you don’t yet. But some things …”