“Mrs. Habeck?”
The lady with blued hair, flower-patterned dress, and green sneakers sat in a straight chair alone by the swimming pool. There was a red purse near her feet.
“Yes, I’m Mrs. Habeck.”
Looking up at Fletch in the sunlight, her nose twitched like a rabbit’s.
“I. M. Fletcher. News-Tribune. I was to meet your husband at ten o’clock.”
“He’s not here.”
Fletch had spent a moment ringing the front doorbell of 12339 Palmiera Drive. It was a nice property, a brick house floating on rhododendrons, but not, to Fletch’s mind, the home of someone who could or would give away five million dollars without taking deep breaths.
And there was no one in the house to open the door to him on a Monday morning.
Fletch had explored through the rhododendrons until he found the blued-haired lady contemplating the clear, unruffled swimming pool.
“One never knows where he is,” Mrs. Habeck said. “Donald wanders away. That’s the only thing, for certain, that can be said for Donald. He wanders away.” She reached out her hand and closed her fingers as if grabbing something that wasn’t there. She said, “He wanders.”
“Maybe I can talk to you.”
Again her nose twitched. “Young man, are you very, very drunk?”
“No, ma’am. Do I seem drunk?”
“You smell drunk.”
Fletch held a section of his T-shirt up to his nose and sniffed it. “That’s my new deodorant. Do you like it?”
“It’s an odorant.”
“It’s called Bamn-o.”
“It’s called bourbon.” Mrs. Habeck averted her nose. “You reek of bourbon.”
Fletch sniffed his T-shirt again. “It is pretty bad, isn’t it.”
“I know bourbon when I smell it,” said Mrs. Habeck. “You’re not wearing a very good brand.”
“It was on special sale, I think.”
“Friday that bourbon did not exist.” Mrs. Habeck spoke slowly, and there was sadness in her small, gray eyes. “I’ve heard of you newspapermen. Donald once told me about a journalist he knew who filled his waterbed with bourbon. He told his friends he had refined the art of being sloshed. Lying there, he could nip from the waterbed’s valve. He said he could get the motion of his bourbonbed to match exactly the swing and sway of the world as he got drunk. Well, he sank lower and lower. Within three months he was back sleeping flat on the floor.” Mrs. Habeck resettled her hands in her lap. “It was a double bed, too.”
Fletch took a deep breath and held it. He sensed that Mrs. Habeck would be offended by laughter.
Tightening his stomach muscles to restrain himself, he looked away across the pool. Down a grassy slope, a gardener wearing a sombrero was weeding a flower bed.
“Oh, my,” he finally said, sighing. “Truth is, I had an accident.”
“You people always have an excuse for drinking. Good news. Bad news. No news.”
“No,” Fletch said. “A real accident. I stopped at the liquor store at the intersection of Washington and Twenty-third, and while I was there, a rack of bourbon got tipped over. It splashed all over an employee and me.”
Her pale, sad eyes studied Fletch.
“I haven’t been drinking. Honest. May I sit down?”
Reluctantly, she said, “All right.”
He sat in another wrought-iron straight chair. She was in the shade of the table’s umbrella, but he was not.
“About this five million dollars, Mrs. Habeck…”
“Five million dollars,” she repeated.
“… you and your husband decided to give to the art museum?”
Slowly, she said, “Yussss,” in the hiss of a deflating tire. “Tell me about it.”
“What?”
“What about it?” she asked.
Fletch hesitated. “I was hoping you’d tell me about it.”
Mrs. Habeck drew herself up slightly in the chair. “Yes, well, my husband and I decided to give five million dollars to the art museum.”
“I know that much. Your husband is a lawyer?”
“My husband,” said Mrs. Habeck, “wanders off. Away, away. He always has, you know. That’s something that can be said about him.”
“I see,” Fletch said politely. He was beginning to wonder how much vodka Mrs. Habeck had slipped into her morning coffee. “He’s senior partner in the firm of Habeck, Harrison and Haller?”
“I told him he shouldn’t do that,” Mrs. Habeck said, frowning. “Three different H sounds. In fact, three different Ha sounds.” Still frowning, she looked at Fletch. “Don’t you agree?”
“Of course,” said Fletch. “Disconcerting.”
“Gives the impression of inconsistency,” she said. “As if, you know, the partners couldn’t be counted on to get together on anything. To agree.”
“Yes,” said Fletch.
“To say nothing of the fact that when people say ‘Habeck, Harrison and Haller,’ what they actually hear themselves saying, underneath everything, you know? is Ha Ha Ha.”
“Ah,” said Fletch.
“Except the actual sound is Hay Ha Haw. Which is worse.”
“Much worse,” agreed Fletch. His fingers wiped the perspiration off his forehead.
“I wanted him to take on a fourth partner,” said Mrs. Habeck. “Named Burke.”
“Umm. Didn’t Mr. Burke wish to join the firm?”
Mrs. Habeck looked at Fletch resentfully. “Donald said he didn’t know anyone named Burke.”
“Oh. I see.”
“At least not any lawyer named Burke. Not any lawyer named Burke who was free to join the firm.”
“Did you know a lawyer named Burke free to join the firm?”
“No.”
Sweating in bourbon-soaked clothes in the sunlight, Fletch’s head was beginning to reel. He felt like he was on a bourbonbed. “Does your husband do any corporate-law work?”
“No,” she said. “He was never a bit cooperative. He was always arguing in court.”
There was still no humor in her sad eyes.
“I know his reputation is as a criminal lawyer.” Then Fletch cringed, awaiting what Mrs. Habeck would make of criminal lawyer.
She said, “Yussss.”
Fletch blew air. “Mrs. Habeck, did you or your husband have any income other than that derived from his practice of criminal law, and from his partnership in Habeck, Harrison and Haller?”
“Hay, Ha, Haw,” she said.
“I mean, were either of you personally wealthy, had you inherited… ?”
Mrs. Habeck said, “My husband is most apt to wear black shoes. You don’t see black shoes too often in The Heights. He doesn’t like to dress flamboyantly, as many criminal lawyers do.”
Fletch waited a moment.
She asked, “You wouldn’t think a man who wears black shoes would be so apt to wander away, would you?”
He waited another moment. “It isn’t that I’m trying to invade your privacy, Mrs. Habeck.”
“I don’t have any privacy.” She looked at her green sneakers.
“It’s just that I’m trying to assess what donating five million dollars to the museum means to you and your husband. I mean, is he almost giving away the proceeds of his life’s work?”
“Mister, you’re making me sick.”
“Beg pardon?”
“The smell of you. You seem sober enough, for a newspaperman, for a young man, but you reek of bourbon. It’s beginning to affect my stomach, and my head.”
“I’m sorry,” Fletch said. “Truth be known, me, too.”
“Well? What are we going to do about it?”
Fletch looked at the back of the house. “Maybe I could go take a shower.”
“If you said bourbon got splashed all over your clothes, your taking a shower and putting the same clothes back on won’t do any good.”
“Right,” said Fletch. “That’s very sensible.” He nodded. “Very sensible.”
“Why don’t you jump in the pool? It’s right there.”
“I could do that.” Fletch began taking things out of his pockets. “With my clothes on.”
“Why would you jump into the pool with your clothes on?”
“To get the smell of bourbon off them?”
“But then your clothes would be wet. You want to go around the rest of the day in wet clothes?”
“It’s a hot day.”
“Hotness has nothing to do with wetness.”
“Hotness?”
“My daughter used to say that. When she was a little girl. Hotness. No wonder she ended up married to a poet.
What’s his name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tom Farliegh.”
“Okay. I was going to ask you about your children.”
“They’re fine, thank you. Obviously, you take your clothes off before you jump in the pool.”
“Then I won’t have any clothes on.”
“I mind? I’m a mother and a grandmother. I don’t mind. This is a private pool.” She looked down the slope at the gardener. “That’s Pedro. He doesn’t mind. If he minds seeing a naked man, he shouldn’t be a gardener.”
Mrs. Habeck stood up. “Take off your clothes. I’ll avert my eyes so you can tell your girl friend no woman has seen you naked since your mother last changed your diapers. Last week, was it?”
Fletch was taking off his sneakers. “Really, I don’t mind.”
“Leave your clothes on the chair. After you get in the pool, say Hallooo, and I’ll pick up your clothes, take them inside, and put them in the washer and then the dryer.”
“This is very nice of you.” Standing, Fletch peeled off his stinking T-shirt.
“Hallooo!” Mrs. Habeck called loudly. She was waving at the gardener.
He raised his head and looked at her from under his sombrero. He did not speak or wave back.
Fletch averted his eyes. He took off his jeans and underpants and dived into the pool.
Enjoying the cool water and getting away from the stink of his clothes, he drifted underwater across the pool, turned, and swam back to the nearer edge.
He stuck his nose above the edge of the pool.
“Hallooo,” he said.
Mrs. Habeck was already headed for the house with his clothes and sneakers.
She was also carrying her red pocketbook.