Fletch Reflected (18 page)

“I’m sure you can.”

“Nevertheless, in the morning, we shall enjoy the Bierstadt together. I do appreciate your book. And your well-meant efforts on my behalf.”

“Eric Beauville—”

Radliegh raised the palm of his right hand to the vertical. “Enough! I feel about my employees as I feel about my family.”

“It’s how they feel about you, idiot, that matters.”

Radliegh laughed. “I’ve never been called an idiot before. How refreshing.”

“Sorry. You are exasperating. You are not God, Doctor Radliegh.”

“I’ve been told that before. I have never made such a claim. I do not think of myself as such. It’s just that…”

“What?”

“If one has certain large capacities …”

“Why not use them to control people of lesser capacities? Is that it?”

“Why not use them to help others fulfill themselves? That’s all I’m doing, Mister Fletcher. For example, you were about to mention Eric Beauville. No one else would have him as Chief Executive Officer. He’s a second-rate brain with second-rate energies: a number two man. He thinks he’d be happier somewhere else. He wouldn’t be.”

“So you block his every effort to get away from you.”

“For his own good, and the good of his family. He and they are much happier here than they would be anywhere else. And far more prosperous. And,” Radliegh said with a smile, “keeping him here keeps him down to only two cigars a day.”

Fletch shook his head. “Well, Jack asked me to talk with you. I’ve talked with you.”

Radliegh nodded. “Thanks for coming.”

Fletch put his brandy snifter on the desk. He hesitated. “Whoever killed Doctor Jim Wilson is going to be discovered. I guarantee you that.”

“I have arranged for an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. A Lieutenant Corso is due here tonight.”

“You spent this much time picking a man you can control. Right?”

Radliegh said, “One way or another, Mister Fletcher, in this matter I shall see that justice is done. See you in the morning. At seven in the gymnasium?”

“Okay.” Fletch headed toward the door.

“Mister Fletcher?”

Fletch turned.

Standing where he was when Fletch first entered the room, Radliegh said, “One moment please.” He paused. “Mister Fletcher, I am about to have a massive coronary occlusion.”

“What?”

Radliegh fell forward. His chest, head hit the edge of the side of the desk. He continued falling sideways. As he fell to the floor, the globe of the world fell over.

He lay on his back between the desk and the toppled globe.

Fletch said, “My God!”

He rushed forward.

Lifting the globe aside, he knelt on one knee beside Radliegh.

Radliegh’s eyelids fluttered. Then were still.

Fletch felt for pulse in Radliegh’s neck, then his left wrist.

Aloud, Fletch said, “You were right again, Radliegh.”

“J
ack?”

Leaving the door open, Fletch had entered Jack’s half of the cottage in the dark and turned on the bedside lamp.

Jack sat up straight on the bed and squinted at Fletch.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Quarter to one.”

Jack shook his head. “I was asleep.”

Fletch said, “That’s a good way to spend time in bed, too.”

“What’s the matter?” Jack asked. “You’re still in black tie.”

“Radliegh’s dead.”

“Doctor Chester Radliegh?”

“The one and only.”

“Who killed him?”

“I did.”

“What?”

Fletch said, “I killed Chester Radliegh.”

“Tell me the one about why the turtle crossed the road.”

“To get to the Shell station.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not kidding.”

“You killed him with what? How?”

“Talk. You asked me to talk with him. I talked with him. I think you were right: no one has ever really talked with, at Chester Radliegh before. It was a stressful conversation. In retrospect, I realize I questioned his entire modus vivendi. I called him a dictator. I even called him an idiot.”

“You called Doctor Chester Radliegh an idiot?”

“It just slipped out. An obdurate man, no matter how brilliant, is an idiot.”

“Calling him an idiot killed him?”

“He had a massive coronary occlusion. He said no one had ever called him an idiot before.”

“A heart attack.”

“Yes.”

“He was poisoned.”

“No. I was alone in the room with him. We drank from the same bottle of cognac. He had a heart attack. Even he knew it was a heart attack. His own doctor was at the party. He has said Radliegh died of a heart attack.”

“He died of a heart attack.”

“You’re getting it.”

“You didn’t kill him.”

“I hate obduracy.”

Jack said, “I hate French fries that look like pubic hair.”

Fletch said, “That’s real interesting. A detective named Corso has arrived from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.”

“Already?”

“He’s not here to investigate Radliegh’s death. I gather he was handpicked by Radliegh to investigate the murder of Doctor Jim Wilson.”

“What good is it to handpick a detective?”

“Well, suppose the detective discovers the murderer is a member of the family, or whoever. Given enough power and influence, a deal can be made whereby that person is spirited away into a sanatorium, for example, and never brought to trial…”

“That’s possible?”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“Why would Radliegh want to protect anyone who tried to kill him?”

“I’ve just conversed with the late Doctor Radliegh.”

“I know. I’ve already sworn to myself to be less obdurate with you.”

“That’s good.”

“I learn fast.”

“He was highly protective of his family, no matter what they did. They could do no wrong, at least as far as the public was concerned. He insisted all their crimes and misdemeanors, including many alleged efforts to do him in, were just growing pains, signs of youthful rebelliousness.”

“They weren’t.”

“He seemed to deny their true natures. Or believe they would overcome their true natures, given time.”

“Didn’t saints believe that?”

“His pride went so far as to believe they, no one, would succeed in hurting him. And his evidence, derived by what he called scientific method, was that none had succeeded, yet.”

“He felt that because they hadn’t succeeded in killing him they didn’t really, deeply intend to kill him? All these attempts were just Freudian slips??”

“Something like that.”

“And then you came along.”

“To succeed where others fail….” Fletch cleared his throat. “At his last moment, if he was using anything like the scientific method I learned, he may have seen the light.”

Jack said, “Pride cometh before a fall.”

“Amen.”

“He fell.”

“Onto the globe of his world.”

Through the soft lamplight surrounding the bed, Jack was squinting toward the open door of his quarters.

Barefoot, wearing only boxer shorts with horses’ heads stamped on them in red, Peppy stood there. “What’s happened?” he asked. “Who’s this?”

Jack said, “My father.”

Peppy looked at the older man in black tie and white
summer formal jacket beside the bed and then at the naked young man in the bed. “Oh.”

Baldly, Jack said, “Doctor Radliegh died of a heart attack.”

“A heart attack?”

“Natural causes,” Fletch said.

“Are you sure?” Peppy asked.

“I’m sure.”

“Oh, shit,” Peppy said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Amen,” Fletch said.

“Now the shit hits the fan,” Peppy said.

•

“Who—?”

Lying in bed on his side in the pitch black room, Jack awoke startled. Fingers were laced behind his neck. In his sleep his right knee had moved forward and discovered a smooth thigh.

He worked his hips and legs backward in the bed. “Alixis?”

“Alixis?” Shana asked.

“Shana.”

“Chester’s dead.”

“I know.” The tips of his fingers touched her cheeks wet with tears. “I’m sorry.”

“Just hold me, Jack. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Hold me tight.”

“Okay.”

•

“Hello?”

“Fletch?”

“Yes, Crystal.”

“I’m sorry to call you at such an ungodly hour.”

“I’m awake.” Sitting on the edge of his bed, Fletch looked around at the walls of the bedroom of the Monkey Grass Suite on the third floor of the main house at Vindemia. The walls were papered with the ground cover.

“Jack all right?”

“He’s fine. He’ll call you in the morning.”

“Fletch?”

“Yes, Crystal?”

“I think I’m hungry.”

“Oh.”

“I’m lying in the corner of this huge gym in the dark. For some reason, the reading lamp doesn’t work. I think Mister Mortimer rigged it. Do you suppose he might have rigged it?”

“He’s a mean man.”

“I can’t even read.”

“So try sleeping, for once.”

“All he left me to get through the night was a tall glass of skim milk.”

“So take a sip and go to sleep.”

“I drank it.”

“All of it?”

“Hours ago.”

“I see.”

“Fletch, instead of sheep, I was counting plates of pasta. You know, tomato sauce. Tomato, meat sauce. Cheese. Garlic bread. When I began substituting broiled lobsters with drawn butter, I thought I had better call you.”

“Right. They’re more expensive.”

“Baked lobsters stuffed with crab.”

“Enough. You’re making me hungry.”

“Sorry. Misery proliferates.”

“Believe it or not, you’ll get through the night.”

“Tell me again what I’m really feeling.”

“It’s not hunger.”

“It feels like hunger.”

“It’s what you’ve always recognized as hunger, responded to as hunger.”

“So what is it?”

“Digestive pangs.”

“I’m feeling digestive pangs, not hunger pangs?”

“Believe it.”

“Is it true?”

“How do I know? It’s just an idea of mine. For now, I suspect you’re better off believing it.”

“Okay. I believe. Why are you awake so late?”

“Doctor Radliegh died after dinner.”

“How? Did someone kill him?”

“Yeah. I did.”

“How did you do that?”

“Just by talking to him.”

“Mister Mortimer said no one should ever listen to you.”

“He’s right, I guess.”

“Digestive pangs, not hunger pangs,” she scoffed. “Who ever heard of such a thing? That’s okay, Fletch. You can still talk to me.”

Fletch couldn’t help yawning. “Try to sleep, Crystal.”

“Digestive pangs means I’ve eaten. That right?”

“That’s right.”

“Well,” she sighed. “I guess I have. Good night, Fletch.”

“Sleep tight. Don’t let the lobsters bite.”

“Thanks, Fletch.”

Fletch yawned again. “Thanks died at Hialeah, or something.”

•

“Jack?”

The full lengths of their bodies were on their sides facing each other tight together. He had held Shana through the night.

As still as something inanimate, she had wept silently.

At some point, not moving, Jack had fallen back asleep.

Now dawn light was in the windows.

“Jack? Make love to me gently? Softly? Slowly?”

“Are you sure you want me to?”

“Yes. Please.”

•

It was full light when Jack was shaving in his little bathroom.

Shana’s face appeared beside his left shoulder in the bathroom mirror.

Her eyes narrowed and turned hard.

She was looking at the scar on his back.

She said: “Alixis.”

She disappeared from the mirror.

To his surprise, he heard his cottage door close before he had the soap off his face.

“T
his place will go to ruin in no time,” Mrs. Houston said to Jack.

He could not disagree with her.

Vindemia was already ruined.

Confused, concerned, curious, Jack had bicycled around the estate after he had cooked and eaten a large breakfast alone in his cottage.

Although it was early Sunday morning there were cars coming and going on Vindemia’s roads. And they were not maintaining the sedate speed limit. Nor were they all vehicles that belonged to the people who worked and lived on the estate. A few honked at him impatiently to get himself and his bike out of their way, off the road. An approaching car passing another sent him and his bike into a ditch.

The gates of Vindemia were open.

The guardhouse, which had stone walls a foot thick and sat in the middle of the double road, was empty. The telephone had been pulled from the wall and taken. When Jack had entered Vindemia he thought he had seen a small television in the guardhouse. There was none there now.

The gatehouse itself appeared empty. A first floor window had been smashed. Curtains flapped through an open second story window. The screen on the back door had been broken.

From there, Jack looked back at the main house, a mile away.

The ten huge blue and white flags were not waving from the roof of the house. No one had raised the flags, even to half mast.

Jack realized he had missed the sound of the flags snapping in the wind.

He rode to the village.

In the streets around the village cars were parked in front of nearly every house. A few cars were parked on the lawns immediately in front of houses. There were more children’s toys scattered in the yards than there were children playing with them.

There were many cars and pickup trucks parked in front of the General Store. The woman who had been clerking the store stood on the porch in a housedress and slippers. She glanced at Jack when he pulled up on his bike. She had a coughing fit. Two men came out of the store carrying cases of groceries, passed her on the porch, went down the steps and packed the cases in the trunk of a small car.

On the sidewalk in front of the Recreation Center had been spray painted: GIMME SOME SUGAR, SANDY.

At the end of the street the digital clock in the tower whirred silently. The flag on the tower had not been raised.

Deducing easily, Jack rode to the vehicle compound.