Fletch Reflected (21 page)

Alixis kept whirring around in a small circle, first this way, then that, whimpering, like a puppy chasing its tail. As she twisted, first she would reach her back with the fingers of one hand, then the other.

Each time she took her hand from her back she stared incredulously at the blood on her fingers.

There was blood on the floor where she was rotating on bare feet.

Amy was pacing around her sister, trying to examine her back. “Stay still! You haven’t been stabbed! You’ve been cut by a barbecue fork!”

There were two wobbling parallel lines across Alixis’ back dripping blood.

“Who did this to you?”

Amy said to Fletch, “I was asleep by the pool. Someone whacked me on the head—”

Fletch was dashing through the room. “Someone’s hanging from a balcony.”

“What?” Amy started to follow Fletch.

Alixis shrieked after them: “I’m bleeding!”

“Oh, shut up!” Amy yelled. “It’s time somebody barbecued you, you fuckin’ worthless piece of meat!”

Followed by Amy, Fletch ran up two wide staircases.

On the third floor, he opened the door of a room and looked through it. There was no bedsheet tied to the railing.

“Are you crazy?” Amy asked.

Pushing by her in the doorway, Fletch said, “I think it’s your mother.”

Amy followed him down the corridor. “I know she’s crazy.”

The next door to the left was open.

Fletch sprinted through the room onto the balcony.

A bedsheet was tied to the railing.

He looked over the balcony.

Less than four feet below the railing hung Amalie Radliegh. Her black hat and veil were on the ground way below her, but she still wore her long black dress and gloves.

Her face was purple.

Fletch supposed her neck was broken.

Her body hung limp.

Amy peered over the high railing like a child looking off a bridge. “Mother … ?”

“Sorry.” Fletch turned Amy away from the sight.

There was the sound of a loud engine roaring somewhere on the estate.

At first Fletch thought it was the sound of another airplane lifting off.

“Is she dead?” An old woman came onto the balcony from the bedroom.

“Oh, Gran.” Amy tried to put her arms around the old woman but was shrugged off.

“Are you Mrs. Houston?” Fletch asked. “Her mother?”

“Yes. Is she dead?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Houston did not look over the railing. “Once death starts happening, you see…. She did not hang herself.”

“No,” Fletch answered. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, I know so. Amalie was miserable because she did not love and did not hate and did not hope and did not despair. She was murdered. Are you going to haul her up?”

The engine noise seemed at a distance but was still deafening.

Looking out over the estate, Amy said, “Duncan …”

“Yes,” Mrs. Houston said. “Duncan is using his racing car to chase the locals off Vindemia. At least, that’s what he thinks he’s doing. His eyes are glazed with some fantasy. The local boys seem to be making sport of him. Which is why I came in.”

Fletch asked, “Did you see your daughter hanging?”

Mrs. Houston began to choke, but stopped. “Yes. She was thrown off the railing, wasn’t she?” The little woman made a pushing gesture with her hands. “Rolled off.”

“I believe so.”

“Amalie never had much fight in her. She never fought for anything she had, or was given her, to keep it, treasure it; not even her life.”

“She’d probably taken some pills,” Amy said. “Sedatives.”

“I’m sure,” Mrs. Houston said, “you are right.”

“I’d better get Lieutenant Corso.” Fletch started for the door to the bedroom.

For the first time he noticed the barbecue fork on the floor of the balcony. There was blood on the tips of the tines.

“No.” Fletch stopped. He stared at the barbecue fork. “Amy, I think we had better go find your children. You both should come with me.”

Then came the great explosion.

The sound of the roaring engine stopped instantly.

Fletch whipped around.

Even in the brilliant midday sunlight the white flames rising from the exploded racing car were visible a mile away.

The accident was in the middle of the road near the gatehouse.

The racing car had smashed into the guardhouse.

Below the flames Fletch saw what looked like pieces of a smashed mirror piled up against the stone wall.

Then great black smoke rose from the mirror fragments, and began to settle over the mess.

Amy said, “Oh, Duncan …”

Mrs. Houston sighed. She said, “And things could have been so nice, for everybody.”

“W
hat’s that noise?” Peppy asked.

“Duncan,” Jack answered.

When Jack had returned to his half of the cottage he found his door open.

Peppy was sitting on the sofa bed with a beer can in hand and four empties on the floor.

“I never heard that car make so much noise before, except on the track,” Peppy said. Duncan’s racing track was far from Vindemia’s main buildings. “He’s ridin’ it around the estate roads at full throttle?”

“He’s chasing people in pickup trucks.”

“Chasing them!” Peppy’s expression was wry. “What’s he gonna do if he catches anybody? Cry in his face?”

“I’m making sandwiches for my father and me. How many do you want?”

“He’ll whine at them. Complain about how life isn’t fair. It’s all his father’s fault.”

“How many sandwiches do you want?” Jack repeated. “Seeing you’ve made yourself at home, anyway.”

“What kind of sandwiches?”

“Cheese. It’s all I’ve got. How many?”

“Several.”

“Running out of bread,” Jack said. “This healthy bread comes in small packages.”

“Jack, is your dad anything?”

“Anything like what?”

“Anything important. I mean, he was at that party last night.”

“Journalist,” Jack said.

“You mean, he’s on television?”

“No,” Jack said. “He’s never been on television.”

“Newspaper writer.”

“Something like that.”

“‘Cause I need help.”

“You know Chet has left Vindemia?”

“Yes.” Peppy shifted his booted feet on the floor. “And I’m not goin’ to prison for that son of a bitch.”

Jack was dealing sliced cheese on pieces of bread on the kitchenette counter. “What do you mean?”

“Will your dad be able to help me?”

“He may be able to.”

“Chet got me to do somethin’ I didn’t want to do,” Peppy said. “Somethin’ I didn’t know I was doin’.”

“Sure,” Jack said.

Peppy shrugged. “You don’t know what I’m talkin’ about.”

“No,” Jack said. “I don’t.”

“You find yourself doin’ some ridiculous things around here.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“Have you found I tell you no lie?”

“I guess.”

Peppy leaned forward. Elbows on his knees, he rubbed his eyes with the balls of his hands. “Chet told me he’d get up and go riding with his father on this particular morning. He’d be at the stables before
a
awn, have the horses saddled, surprise his old man, you know?”

“Yeah …” Doctor Radliegh sitting cross-legged in the woods, Arky the boxer dog in his lap, talking to Jack, saying he was “surprised” his children never went riding with him; he was “surprised” one morning Chet did go riding with him….

“Want a beer?” Peppy asked.

Then there was the explosion.

“Jeez!” Jack jumped back from the counter. “What’s that?”

Instantly the roaring sound of the engine stopped.

“Haw!” Peppy stood up. “Ol’ Duncan just bought it.” He hitched up his jeans. “Yes, sir. I do believe ol’ Duncan just blew himself to hell and beyond.” He smiled at Jack. “Probably blinded himself in that mirror car, again, wouldn’t you guess?”

“U
ndisciplined people are running amok,” Jack said to Fletch.

“Or a disciplined person is running amok,” Fletch said to Jack.

“Are we both right?” Jack asked.

Fletch said, “Empires crumble; then people, of all sorts, run amok.”

A servant had told Jack and Peppy when they entered the main house that she had seen Mister Fletcher in the nursery when she happened to pass the open door. She gave them directions to the third floor, back of the building.

In the nursery’s anteroom, Fletch sat in an easy chair.

The chair looked as if nurses and nannies, infants and small children, had lived in it: eaten in it, cuddled in it, played in it, slept in it.

Fletch looked unusually comfortable in the chair.

Through double doors a uniformed nanny and Amy MacDowell were tending to the children.

Mrs. Houston sat in a rocking chair. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her face was turned toward the light from the windows.

“Jack,” Fletch asked in a low, slow voice. “Can you tell me why someone would put two large cuts crosswise on Alixis Radliegh’s back?”

“Did someone do that?” Jack asked.

“Yes. With a barbecue fork.”

“Alixis doesn’t know who?”

“She was on her stomach sunning on a pool lounge. She may have been asleep. She says someone hit her on the side
of her head. When she became sensible, she found her back stinging and bleeding. At that point, she was alone in the pool area.”

“You’re asking me who would do that to Alixis?” Jack glanced at Peppy, who stood with half lidded eyes beside him. He looked like a horse going to sleep on his feet.

“And why.”

Jack turned his back to his father. He pulled up his t-shirt. “I see. Alixis did that to you?”

Turning around again, Jack said, “It isn’t that important to me. It’s just a cut.”

“Did you see Duncan’s accident?”

“Heard it,” Jack said. “I don’t need to see accidents.”

Jack had the impression Fletch was still looking behind Jack.

And Fletch’s voice continued low and slow.

“And I expect you saw Mrs. Radliegh hanging from the balcony.”

“Yes.” When Peppy saw the dangling corpse he puked into the driveway’s gutter. “Why hasn’t someone taken her down?”

“Lieutenant Corso is awaiting police reinforcements.”

“Where is Lieutenant Corso now?”

“Went down to supervise the accident, I guess. Await reinforcements at the main gate.”

“Do these events have anything to do with each other?”

“The barbecue fork was on the floor of the balcony from which Mrs. Radliegh was hung.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.”

“And you’re sitting here alone in the nursery …”

“To protect Mrs. Houston, Amy Radliegh MacDowell, and seven little Radliegh heirs.”

“From.” Jack said the word as if, by itself, it made a statement. He sucked in a big breath and let it go. Doing so did not cool his face. Fletch waited. Jack said, “Shana Staufel.”

“I thought you’d think so, too.” Fletch smiled. “I noticed the blood on your sheets. Chester Radliegh mentioned to me Alixis had shared your bed the night before. One of you had bled. I was willing to believe Alixis not a virgin. And, somehow, because a girl scratched your back in lovemaking, I couldn’t see you attacking her with a barbecue fork; such smacks more of frustration, jealousy, than revenge.” Very softly, slowly, Fletch said, “One might even speculate insanity. Nor could I see you threatening a drugged older woman with a barbecue fork, for any reason. Of course …” Fletch smiled again. He was giving his son time to think. “One can never be sure. Waiting for lab reports confirming Alixis’ blood and Shana’s fingerprints on the barbecue fork necessarily would have made me just a tad nervous. So I thought I’d ask.”

Having thought, Jack said, “Shana’s gone crazy.”

Fletch shrugged. “Shana loved. She was so convinced people here were trying to kill the man she loved, she asked you to insinuate yourself into this household, and investigate. She convinced you that people here were trying to kill Chester Radliegh. You asked me to come here.”

“They
were
trying to kill him.”

“Be that as it may, they didn’t. At least they didn’t succeed. They may have driven him to his death, contributed to it. Shana may have been literally correct. Driving him to his death, his self-destruction, somehow, may have been their true intention.”

Jack’s eyes were big. “Shana killed Mrs. Radliegh.”

“Mrs. Radliegh’s suggestion of burying her accomplished husband in the laundry yard—such an expression of ignorance of and contempt for the man Shana loved deeply and passionately—rather tipped Shana over the edge, wouldn’t you say?”

“So she hung Mrs. Radliegh with a bedsheet.”

“After inscribing Alixis’ back with a barbecue fork. She may have meant to do more harm to Alixis. Shana hit Alixis
on the head hard enough to knock her momentarily senseless. Being inexpert in such matters, she may have thought she had killed Alixis.”

“And you think Shana means harm to Amy?”

“Who knows what charges, real or imagined, Shana has against Amy, Mrs. Houston? Perhaps her mental state is such that she intends to deprive all natural heirs of Chester Radliegh from benefiting from his life, his work, his death. I decided I’d rather sit here than be sorry.”

“She had nothing to do with Duncan’s death, did she?”

“I think it will be found Duncan self-destructed. You see,” Fletch said, “where Shana is wrong is in failing to understand the usual self-destructive nature of those eager to destroy others.”

Again, Jack got the impression Fletch was talking to the side of his head, to the ceiling, walls behind him.

Jack’s own eyes were attracted by the light in the nursery; his attention distracted by the noises and movements of the children.

“So,” Fletch said, “that leaves the murder of Doctor Jim Wilson to be solved. You’re not looking well this afternoon, Peppy. A little peaky.”

Peppy had remained standing quietly beside Jack during this conversation.

Spoken to, he focused slowly.

“Peppy has something to say,” Jack said. “He wants your help, Dad.”

Fletch looked at Peppy and waited.

Peppy swallowed but said nothing.

Jack said, “One morning, Chet went to the stables at dawn, saddled two horses and went for a ride with his father. Only one morning.”