Fletch and the Widow Bradley (11 page)

“I never knew Moxie played Ophelia in Australia,” Audrey said.

“She didn’t. She got there and the role had been filled. Freddy didn’t even remember telephoning her. He said,
How nice of my little girl to come all this way to see her old daddy!
Something like that. Old bastard didn’t even pay her way out, or back. She worked six months on a sheep ranch. Loved every minute of it. Said it was the best time of her life.”

“So now she’s pretending … what?” Audrey asked. “That you two never met before?”

“Yeah. She pretends we just met and then refers to a knowledge of me going back years. Sort of eerie.”

“You two,” Alston said. “Birds of a feather cluck together.”

“You’re both nuts,” Audrey amplified. “Why don’t you get married? I mean, neither of you should marry anyone else.”

“Moxie will never marry,” Fletch said. “She has this strange, necessary thing with being in love with whoever she’s playing at the moment. Anyhow, she blames ol’ Freddy for putting her mother in the hospital.”

“Is she afraid she’ll put you in the hospital?” Alston asked. “Fat chance.”

“Making love to her has always been interesting,” Fletch said. “You’re never sure with whom you’re making love.”

Alston cleared his throat. “I think the two of you alone in a bedroom would make for quite a crowded room.”

Fletch took the envelope out of his back pocket. “I came because I need a couple of favors.”

“You name it,” Alston said.

“There are some ashes in this envelope. I need them analysed chop-chop.”

“Sure.” Alston stepped over and took the envelope and put it in his own pocket.

“Second,” Fletch said, “are you of sufficiently august rank in the District Attorney’s office, Alston, to make a call to the United States Embassy in Geneva?”

“Never have done such a thing before,” Alston answered. “Guess that’s one of those things you do first and ask permission for second—Marine style.”

“Good. I need the particulars on the death of an American citizen named Thomas Bradley. About a year ago. He may have died in hospital, or some kind of a special sanitorium. He may have committed suicide.”

“From California?”

“Yes.”

“You say about a year ago?”

“His widow says a year ago this month. His death was not announced here, though—or so it seems—until about six months later. The operation of a family business, Wagnall-Phipps; Bradley’s wife running the company while she’s waiting for someone else to take over—it’s all mixed up somehow.”

“How?”

Fletch said, “I don’t know. I guess you could say: confusion has been caused, I suspect, deliberately.”

“Suicide,” Alston said. “You said the possibility of suicide. Isn’t

that enough of an explanation?”

“Not really.”

“You’d be amazed,” Alston said, “to know what my office still puts up with to permit people to conceal the fact of suicide. I don’t disagree,” he said. “I’m sympathetic. I go along with it.”

Audrey said, “Alston, I think Fletch is considering the possibility of murder.”

Alston looked at Fletch and Fletch continued looking at Audrey.

Alston said, “Are you, Fletch?”

“Suspicious death,” Fletch said. “The guy may have died a year ago. But I suspect his kids weren’t told until six months later. His neighbors and the president of the company he owned weren’t told until eight months later. And, I have good reason to believe, his own Vice-president and treasurer wasn’t told—really told—until last Thursday.”

“It would be nice to have a look at the probate record,” Alston said.

“Would there have to be one?”

“Sure. Property within the state …”

“Then I’d appreciate that, too.”

“My fast answer is,” Alston said, “really off the top of the head, is that somebody is trying to postpone, or evade altogether, death taxes, inheritance taxes. Was this a young guy?”

“Less than fifty.”

“Death caught him with his pants down. In what kind of financial shape is this company of his, what’s it called?”

“Wagnall-Phipps. I don’t know.”

“I suspect that’s the answer,” Alston said. “People don’t expect to die so young. He died in Switzerland. Sounds to me like the estate’s trying to take advantage of that fact to get the estate in shape, fiddle the taxes.”

“I never thought of all that,” Fletch said.

“You never went to Law School.”

“Gee,” Fletch said. “Is that why I haven’t got either a mortgage or a credit card?”

“That’s why,” Alston said.

“I do have all those people called Moxie waiting for me.” Fletch stood up. “Will tomorrow be too soon to call you, Alston?”

“Nope. I’ll put highest priority on the chemical analyses, D.A. Demands, and I’ll put in the call to Switzerland before I leave the house. Might even have the answers before noon. I’ll call probate when I get to the office.”

Audrey looked at him. “Don’t you have anything else to do? I mean, any work of your own?”

“I seem to remember once or twice in the past Fletch dropping everything to help me,” Alston said. “In case I haven’t mentioned this before, Audrey, I wasn’t a very with-it Marine.”

“Bye, Fletch.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for saving my husband’s ass.”

“Hell with his ass,” Fletch said. “It’s his sense of humor I saved.”

On the sidewalk in front of the house, Alston Chambers said, “Fletch, I’ve got a bank balance of over five hundred dollars. All or part of it are yours, any time you want it.”

“Poo!” Fletch said. “What’s money? Tissue paper! Who needs it?”

Sitting in the car, Fletch said through the window, “Thanks, Alston. Call you tomorrow.”

“S 
H I T   O N   A
windy corner!” Moxie muttered as she got into the passenger seat of the car in the dark. “You even beat Freddy Mooney!”

“Don’t bother giving me directions. I know where the Colloquial Theater is.”

“I never in my life came across such a weird man as you are!”

“Across the bridge, right?”

She didn’t even glance in the direction they were going.

“I mean, my God! In the three days I’ve known you all you’ve done is cry poor. Poor me! I’ve lost my job, wail, wail, wail! You haven’t bought me any food in three days!”

“Orange juice. I bought the orange juice.”

“I put my name on the dotted line for a steak, pal. And a bottle of wine. Had to pretend I was a bride new to the neighborhood with a husband working in a bank.”

“You’re good that way.”

“
You’ve got fifty dollars—I’ve got about the same, for the rest of my life
.” Even to Fletch her imitation of him sounded accurate. “You leave the house to run around the countryside in your sports car.” She slapped the dashboard of the M.G. with her hand. “I spot a wallet hanging out of your dirty jeans, say,
What’s this?
, pull it out, open it up, and there—right there before my eyes as surprising as Mount Everest in the Sahara Desert—is twenty-five thousand dollars cash in one thousand dollar bills!”

“It’s not my money, Moxie. I told you that, at the apartment.”

“You wouldn’t even buy us lunch with a credit card!”

“I told you. The money belongs to James St. E. Crandall.”

“Losers weepers!”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars worth of weepers?”

“Mister Fletcher, may I point out to you that anyone who can drop twenty-five thousand dollars cash on the sidewalk and not even look around is also someone who knows where his next poached egg is coming from?”

“I don’t know that. Neither do you.”

“I do know, on the other hand, that you do not know where your next poached egg is coming from.”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“That’s why you drove about one-hundred-and-fifty miles out of your way to stop at that dead-water town, Worrybeads, or whatever it was, right?”

“Wramrud.”

“Whatever. Here’s a guy trying to give away twenty-five thousand dollars in cash while he’s starving. I ask you, is that sensible?”

“I’m not starving.”

“You never even mentioned you were carrying so much money. And there we were, sleeping on a beach!”

“That was nice. And I did, too, mention it.”

“Yeah.
So I took the twenty-five thousand dollars
. That’s what you said. Is everything you say a joke? Are you a joke, Irwin Fletcher?”

Going onto the bridge Fletch’s eye caught something fluttering in the breeze, a piece of cloth, to his right, half-way across.

“You sound like a wife,” he said.

She grinned across at him, her face picking up the light from the dashboard. “Hoped you’d say that. I rehearsed.”

He was slowing the car.

It was a skirt that was fluttering in the breeze. Fletch could see one leg below it, very white, and above it, hanging onto a bridge cable, an arm.

He pulled the car’s hazard lights switch, and pulled over to the right as far as he could.

“Get out of the car, Moxie, and stand as much out of the way as you can. Don’t stand in front of the car.”

“You’re stopping in the middle of the bridge?”

“That’s why you’re getting out and standing as much out of the way as you can. The car might get hit.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Be right back.”

Fletch got out of the car and ran back along the bridge. He saw one of the cars approaching him was a taxi. He stood in front of the taxi, making it stop.

“Bastard! You crazy?” the taxi driver shouted through his window. “Son-of-a-bitch! You some kind of a nut?”

Fletch leaned through the window. “You got a radio-phone? C.B.?”

“Yeah. What are you?”

“Call the cops,” Fletch said. “Jumper.”

“Yeah. Oh, yeah.” The taxi driver reached for the microphone hanging from his dashboard. “Where?”

“There.” Fletch waved his arm toward the edge of the bridge and then pointed to his own car. “Pull your car behind mine, will you? You got bigger lights. A roof light.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

The car rolled forward. “You goin’ out there?”

“Near enough to talk, I guess.”

“Jeez. Crazy bastard.”

Fletch watched the taxi, its roof light on, its hazard lights flashing, stop behind his car. Moxie’s face looked white in the headlights of the taxi.

Then Fletch stepped onto the knee-high guard rail. Looking down he saw the lower ledge of the I-beam and stepped down onto it. From there he saw the river far, far below him, some lights, moonlight, city lights, bridge lights, reflecting off, wavering on the oily, sluggish water. He tried to decide the water was too far away for him to care about it.

There was an L-shaped strut extending away from the bridge to a cable running parallel with the bridge road. The cable was as thick as a sewer pipe. He put one foot on the strut. There was not much wind, but there was some. He looked at the woman who was standing further along the cable, over the water to his right. There was enough wind to make her skirt flutter and stand out.

“Fletch?” Moxie’s voice came from behind him. Her voice sounded sincerely inquiring, as if she were about to ask him a question.

Both of Fletch’s feet were on the strut. He stood up straight, his hands free in the air. Then purposely fell forward, grabbing the cable with both arms, hugging it.

He held on a moment, his cheek against the cable’s fabric.

“Fletch?” Moxie said. “I think I’ll shut my face, now.”

Fletch pulled himself more onto the cable, pulled his hips onto it. His empty stomach sent an inquiry to his brain regarding the dark water swirling far below him. He pulled his feet closer to the cable and putting weight on them, on the strut, flipped himself over. For a second, neither foot, neither hand was on anything.

Then he was sitting up, his feet on the strut, his hands on the cable each side of him, the breeze in his face. On the bridge, car horns were complaining about the two parked cars. Moxie and the taxi driver, facing him, were in silhouette.

To Fletch the woman standing to his left on the cable still appeared mostly as a fluttering skirt. She was wearing one green, plastic, ballet-style slipper. The other slipper was gone. Her legs were white and heavy and broken with varicose veins.

Easily, Fletch said, “Hi.”

The woman’s head turned. Two large, dark eyes stared down at him from deep, hollow sockets. Thick black hair waved around her face.

“What do you like?” Fletch asked.

She stared down at him.

“Do you like chocolate?”

She turned her head back into the wind, the dark, back into space, and said something.

“What?” Fletch asked. “I didn’t hear you.”

She turned her head back to him, annoyed.

“What do you like?” she asked. “Tell me that.”

“I like chocolate,” Fletch said. “I like to see birds hopping on the grass. Do you like to see little birds hopping on the green grass?”

She said something that was lost in the wind.

“What else do you like?” Fletch asked. “Who do you like on television?”

There was no answer.

“Mike Wallace? Merv Griffin? How about
As The World Turns?
Do you ever watch that?”

No answer.

Fletch’s throat was dry.

“Hey,” he said, “do you remember the smell of a brand new car? Really new?”

No answer.

“How about the smell of brownies baking? Isn’t that the greatest?”

From above she was staring down at him.

“What kind of sounds do you like?” he asked. “Harmonica?

Violin? Guitar?”

No answer.

“You know what I like?” he asked. “I love seeing a newspaper page blowing along a city street. I love to hear rain—really hard rain—when I’m in bed. The yap of a puppy. Do you like to hear the yap of a puppy sometimes?”

“Hey,” the woman said. “Kid.”

“Yeah?”

“Take my hand, willya? I’m scared shitless.”

“So am I,” Fletch said.

She began reaching for him, immediately tottering.

“Wait a minute,” Fletch said. “There has to be a right way to do this.”

To sidle toward her, Fletch would have to take his feet off the strut.

“Just sit down,” Fletch said. “Right where you are. Slowly, carefully.”