21
“Jack?”
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’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.