32

“G O O D   M O R N I N G,   M O X I E. Did I wake you up?”

“Of course you woke me up. Who is this?”

“Your landlord. Your banker.”

“Jeez, Fletcher, it’s Saturday. I don’t have to be at rehearsal until two o’clock.”

“California time or New York time?”

“Are you still in New York?”

“Yeah, but I’m leaving for Texas in a few minutes.”

“Why are you going to Texas?”

“I’m looking for a body, old dear. I keep not finding one.”

“Thomas Bradley is not alive and hiding out in New York?”

“Apparently not. Despite my best efforts to shake up his sister, she does not produce him.”

“What does she say?”

“She seems genuinely upset by everything I tell her. She’s a smart, cool, efficient lady. She has to know that sooner or later I’m going to blow a whistle, bring what evidence I have to the authorities. I really believe she would produce her brother by now—if it were possible.”

“Gee, whiz, Fletch, I have an idea—maybe Thomas Bradley died, despite that article in the News-Tribune. Did you ever think of that?”

“I’m beginning to believe in my own theories.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.”

“So far, Fletch, darling, your theories have been worth about as much as a grin in a wrestling match.”

“Trial and error, trial and error.”

“What’s in Texas?”

“Everything, if you ask a Texan. It’s the original home of the Bradley family.”

“So what, she said, eager to roll over and go back to sleep.”

“So when you’re looking for someone, dead or alive, don’t you look in his home?”

“Not nowadays. We don’t have homes anymore. Just places where we live. The truth is, Fletch, you have no idea what you’re doing.”

“You are correct.”

“You are spinning your wheels and going nowhere.”

“Correct again.”

“You’re dashing from Mexico to New York to Texas to God-knows-where because way down in your conceited little heart you just can’t believe you did the utterly stupid thing of publicly quoting a dead man as if he were still among the quick.”

“Your exactitude, Moxie, is doing nothing to encourage me.”

“I hope. It’s also correct you wouldn’t be zipping around the landscape like a bitch in heat if you hadn’t received a legacy from one unknowing James St. E. Crandall, and, I might add, my permission to use it.”

“Too true.”

“Foolish me.”

“I hope you’re contrite.”

“I’m not contrite. I’m cold in bed alone. A different emotion altogether.”

“You should be with me, in an overheated New York hotel room. Steam heat and mirrors everywhere.”

“Well, I hope you’re having a nice vacation with yourself. If you care, you’ve lost another job.”

“Didn’t have another job.”

“You did, too. I told you so. The male lead in In Love.”

“I’ve lost that job? Oh, woe is me! Woe! I say, woe!”

“Sam is gone. Replaced by Rick Caswell. He’s absolutely marvelous.”

“I’m so glad.”

“He’s physically beautiful, with big lashes, you know?”

“No.”

“His timing is perfect.”

“No trouble with thick thighs, eh?”

“What? Oh, no. Ran cross-country for Nebraska. He’s beautiful.”

“I think you said that.”

“Did I? Sorry. He’s beautiful.”

“Oh.”

“Really.”

“I’ve got the point. Say, Moxie—?”

“May I go back to sleep now? I mean, I only answered the phone hoping it was your ex-wife again, so I could tell her more lies.”

“How’d you like to do some spade work for me?”

“On this Bradley thing?”

“I know you don’t believe in it; you’re willing to chalk the whole thing up to my own incompetence and stupidity …”

“I really don’t have much time, Fletch. The play is opening—”

“Just a little spade work, Moxie.”

“Anything, darling. Oh, landlord and banker.”

“Would you get a gang together—maybe your pals from the theater—and go dig up Enid Bradley’s backyard? She’s gone pretty regularly from nine-to-five.”

“What?”

“You can tell them it’s a treasure hunt, or something.”

“Is that what you mean by spade work?”

“You’ll want to bring more than one spade, to get the whole yard dug up in eight hours.”

“Now you want to help Enid Bradley do her gardening?”

“No, no. You don’t get the point. I’m looking for something.”

“What?”

“What I’m always looking for: Thomas Bradley.”

“What? Fletch, you’re not serious!”

“I think Enid planted her husband in the back yard.”

“Fletch.”

“Yes.”

“Fletch, you’re not thinking.”

“I’m not?”

“If you find Thomas Bradley under his wife’s rhododendrons, you’d be proving that he is dead.”

“It would strongly so indicate.”

“And if Thomas Bradley is dead, you’re ruined.”

“That certainly has occurred to me.”

“So why do you, of all people, want to find his body?”

“Two reasons. It would satisfy my curiosity.”

“You have an expensive curiosity. What’s your second brilliant reason?”

“It would be a helluva story, of course.”

“Fletcher—”

“Will you do it?”

“No.”

“You all need the exercise by now. Especially that Rick fellow. Think of spending a nice day digging in the garden.”

“Rick does not need the exercise. He’s—”

“I know.”

“—beautiful.”

“Moxie, you make up the damndest, most unacceptable reasons for not doing as you’re asked.”

“You just don’t know how to take being fired gracefully! Roll over, Fletch! Play dead!”

“I’m on to something here, Moxie. I really am. Go dig up the garden. Please!”

“Bye, Fletcher. I just fell back to sleep.”

“Moxie? … Moxie? … Moxie?”