“Does he have a brain?”
Fletch considered. “I think he knows what parthenogenesis means.”
“Tell me what it means.”
“It means a world without lawyers.”
“Fletch, is this kid making some claims upon you?”
“I don’t know his intentions.”
“Because, besides checking such things as dates, if you can remember, if you have any records, there are such things as DNA tests—”
“I don’t think there’s much doubt about it. Crystal wasn’t exactly the town pump.”
“I suppose not.”
“I remember realizing, belatedly, that Crystal probably had done this on purpose.”
“Used you as stud.”
“Ah … We only came together in this way once, Alston.”
“Some guys have all the luck. Now that I think about it, I wonder just how many kids you do have. Probably half the younger generation are your brats. God, they all act like you. As soon as I figure out where they are, and what they’re thinking’ and doin’, damn-all if they’re not thinkin’ and doin’ somethin’ else.”
“Be nice.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m about to ask you for two favors. The situation here is a little difficult.”
“Reheated roast duck is never as good,” Alston said.
“The house phones are dead. I’m making this call on the cellular phone on the sly, you see.”
“In the smokehouse. In the pouring rain. You mean the kid hasn’t really locked you out of your house yet?”
“I can’t make many calls. Any other calls, for right now. I’m depending upon you, Alston.”
“For what?”
“To find out where Crystal is. Her last name is spelled F-A-O-N-I.”
“You want to send flowers? A little late.”
“Address. Phone number.”
“Can’t you get that from the kid?”
“Will you do it for me, please?”
“After I don’t let this duck go to waste. You know she never married?”
“I infer she hasn’t.”
“Where was she the last time you knew where she was?”
“Boston.”
“When was that?”
“Twenty years ago. Twenty years plus.”
“Great. By now she could be a man named McGillicuddy.”
“Also, there was ajailbreak, earlier today, last night, yesterday. From the federal prison in Tomaston, Kentucky.”
“That’s not too far from you.”
“Not too far. Four escapees.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“Know anything at all about them?”
“Their crimes. Murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, and drug violations of some sort.”
“Sweethearts.”
“I know their names.”
“But you’re not going to tell me. What is this, some kind of a pass/fail test?”
“Leary, Moreno, and Kriegel.”
“That’s three.”
“John Fletcher Faoni.”
“What?”
“Spelled F-A-O-N-I.”
“Jesus Christ. You poor sod. To think a moment ago I was envying you. You discover you have a son … a big bundle of joy … an escapee from the federal pen … a convicted— what?”
“He says attempted murder is his particular indiscretion.”
“Attempted murderer.”
“‘The Truth is not for us to know, just now…’” Fletch quoted. “… ‘So are the mysteries well founded.’”
“Fletch, are these guys around your place now? Are they all there? Where’s Carrie?”
“Upstairs. In bed. Sleeping peacefully.”
“I know the Attorney General of—”
“Please, Alston, just make the calls I asked you to make. Cops are here, too. Sort of. This just happens to be a rather big band I’m trying to conduct at this moment. Too much bass, maybe.”
“Yeah. Rather heavy in the rhythm section, too. I can feel it in my ears from here. Shit, my blood pleasure. I mean, pressure. Look what you’re doin’ to me! You’re on that godforsaken farm, a million miles from who cares, in a raging storm, crawlin’ with escapees from a federal penitentiary, real hard-timers, Carrie snoring in her bed—”
“Carrie doesn’t snore. She wouldn’t. She’s the quietest damned sleeper—”
“Your phones are off. Did these guys cut the lines?”
“Yes.”
“Next time I ask you why you’re calling me from the smokehouse in the pouring rain, will you give me a straight answer?”
“I did. You just needed a little background.” Fletch did see Jack moving, head down, along this side of the home pasture fence toward the front of the house. “I believe one of these guys is my son, Alston. I believe he led these other guys out of their way to come here. I want to know why. Okay? So please just do as I ask. And don’t try to call me. You’ll just add timpani to the bass. I’ll call you back when I can. Enjoy your duck.”
“Yeah,” Alston said. “Duck you.”
“HEY, MISTER FLETCHER.” Deputy Sheriff Will Sanborne leaned his wet head and shoulders through the back doorway of the house. His feet were still in the mud outside.
“Hey, Will.” In the kitchen, Fletch was filling two mugs with coffee. “You look wetter’n the minute you were born.”
“Who’s that guy movin’ around in your library?”
“There’s no guy in my library.”
“A kid.”
“Oh, you mean Jack? You want cream or sugar?”
“Black, please.”
“That’s my son, Jack.”
Leaning from outside into the back hallway, Will wrinkled his face. “Your son, Jack?”
“You never met Jack?”
“Never knew you had a son.”
“You didn’t? Well, I’ll be a hoppy toad. I thought everybody knew my son, Jack. Who’s with you?”
“Michael.”
“Come on in, Michael.”
“Where’s Carrie?”
“Upstairs in bed.”
“Anyone else here?”
Fletch handed Will the hot coffee at the back door. “So you guys cased the place before entering. Pretty smart. I appreciate it. Come in.”
“We’ll mess up your floor.”
“It’s brick. Cleans easy.”
In the small, dark back hall the two deputies looked very large in their slickers and hats. Leaving their slickers on, they put their wet hats on the wall pegs. Removing their boots together in that small space, they looked like two bears having their first dancing lesson.
“Oops.” Will spilled some of his coffee on the floor.
In gray hunting socks they stepped into the kitchen.
Fletch handed Michael a mug of coffee.
“Thanks.”
“You’re here for the Jeep,” Fletch said.
“Yeah.” Will blew on his hot coffee before sipping it. “Sheriff said to run it over your place first.”
“These guys are here somewhere,” Michael said. “For sure.”
“The wet grass will be right slippery,” Fletch said. “Don’t try too tight a turn in that Jeep, especially in four-wheel drive, especially if you’ve got any speed up. Don’t get yourselves in too great an angle on the hillsides.”
Michael said. “You sound like my father.” At twenty-one, Michael had just been released from the Army. He had hoped for a twenty-year career, as his father had had.
“Is that bad?” Fletch asked.
Michael said, “No.” Then he laughed into his coffee cup. “Give me a break.”
“You might check the barns,” Fletch said.
Will said. “We’ll check the barns.”
Both had six-battery, head-cracking flashlights sticking out of their slickers’ pockets.
Will stared at the .38 in the waistband of Fletch’s jeans.
“There are four of
these guys?” Fletch asked.
“Three,” Michael said.
“Three? The sheriff said four.”
Michael shrugged. “Maybe.”
“When did they escape?”
“Sometime during the night,” Will answered. “Probably early last night.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How did they get out?”
“Don’t know,” Will answered. “It’s a maximum-security prison, isn’t it?” he asked Michael.
“I thought so. These guys are murderers.”
“Yeah.” Frowning, Will looked into his coffee cup. “We’ve been told to shoot on sight.”
“Sorry,” Fletch said. “Protect yourselves.”
Will said, “Sheriff told us to check every room in your house, Mister Fletcher. I guess even the room where Ms. Carrie’s asleep.” He looked at Fletch’s handgun again. “Idea is, they could have Ms. Carrie hostage in one room while you’re sweet-talkin’ us.”
“Me? Sweet-talk anybody?” Fletch grinned. “I understand.”
“One of us will stay downstairs while the other goes upstairs with you.” Will rinsed his empty coffee mug in the sink.
“Sure.”
“Last time I was here”—Will looked around—“we were all watchin’ Atlanta play San Francisco on your big screen.”
“I’ve never been here,” Michael said. “You got any of those Tharp paintings, Mister Fletcher?”
“No. I guess I ran the price of them up too high for me to afford ‘em.”
“Sheriff ate two full-sized pizzas while watchin’ the game,” Will said. “Supremes. Never thought anybody could do that.”
“He was nervous,” Fletch said. “He bet on San Francisco.”
Michael put mock horror on his face. “You guys were gamblin’?”
“It’s all right, Michael,” Fletch said. “It was rigged. Carrie was working the odds. You know how diplomatic she is. The sheriff was the only one who lost.”
“He made up for it in the pizza he ate,” Will said.
Turning on and off lights again, Fletch led them from room to room on the ground floor. The deputies checked closets, bathrooms.
Fletch heard the sounds of a guitar being tuned.
They came to the study.
Under the bright lights of the study’s chandelier, on the big, blue, leather divan, sat John Fletcher Faoni.
His hair was dry and combed. He was clean shaven.
He was as clean as a fresh bar of soap.
Barefoot, he wore shorts and a T-shirt.
He was suntanned.
He looked up from the acoustic guitar he was tuning.
To the deputies following Fletch into the study, looking up, smiling, Jack said, “Ha!”
“I’ll be damned,” Fletch said. “You clean up pretty good, for a frog. Just maybe pigs can fly.” Louder, he said, “This is my son, Jack Fletcher. Deputies Will Sanborne and Michael Jackson, Jack.
Putting aside the guitar, Jack stood and shook hands with the deputies. “How’re you guys doin’?” Jack asked.
“Oh, my God,” Fletch muttered. “A Southern prince yet.”
“How come I don’t know you?” Michael asked. “We’re the same age.”
“Didn’t go to school here,” Jack answered.
“I don’t know you either,” Will said. “I’ve never seen you around.”
Jack hitched up his shorts slightly. “That’s because my daddy’s just a little bit ashamed of me.” At the word daddy Fletch felt like an electric shock hit his lower spine. “He took exception to my being born plumb ignorant and kept me away from him all my growin’ up years in one school after another.”
“He was raised by his mother,” Fletch said.
“Still—” Michael said.
“Who’s your mama?” Will’s question wasn’t as suspicious as it was country curious. The next question, with any pretext, would be, She got kin around here?
“Her name’s Crystal,” Jack said. “She’s in the radio business up north.”
Jack had eliminated the pretext. His mother was a Yankee. Named Crystal.
“She’s a career woman,” Fletch said.
Will said to Fletch, “His mama got custody of him?”
Fletch said, “Yeah.”
Will shook his head sadly. Fletch remembered Will had lost custody of his two children in a divorce. His wife had claimed that because of his hours, because of the danger of his job, because he wore a gun, Will was not as appropriate a parent as she.
“How long are you goin’ to be here?” Michael asked. “You get a license, I’ll show you where some of the best fishin’ holes are.”
“I’m driving him down to the University of North Alabama in the morning,” Fletch said.
Jack threw a glance at him.
“Good,” Michael said. “You’ll be home some weekends. We’ll work something out. Call me when you know you’re comin’ home. Your daddy knows my daddy.” He looked at Jack’s narrow waist, flat stomach. “You drink beer?”
“Do fish like water?”
“What kind of beer you like?”
“The wet, cold kind.” Jack laughed.
Michael shook Jack’s hand again. “We’ll work somethin’ out.”
“I’ll stay downstairs,” Will said, “while you two check out the rooms upstairs.”
Michael said to Jack, “There are some escaped convicts around here.”
“I know.” Jack laughed. “At first I thought Daddy got the pistol out ‘cause my head was spendin’ too much time in the refrigerator.”
“He just arrived,” Fletch said. “Hungry.”
Leading Michael up the stairs, Fletch heard Will, in the study, say to Jack, “I never even noticed a picture of you in this house.”
Jack said, “Well, my mama and my daddy haven’t had anything to do with each other for a long time now. One of those things. She needed my loyalty, you know?”
Fletch waited in the front hall upstairs while Michael checked the attics, the snuggery, the other bedroom.
“Ms. Carrie in there?” Michael whispered.
“Yes.”
“I’ll just crack open the door.” He leaned into the master bedroom. After he closed the door, he grinned. “Is she dead?”
“She sleeps quietly.”
“Does she stop breathing?”
“She doesn’t work at it.”
When they went downstairs, Will asked, “Everything okay?”
“Right as a whiff of magnolia on a summer’s breeze,” Michael said.
Jack shook hands with both deputies again. “Happy hunting,” he said cheerily.
Fletch led the deputies back to the kitchen.
As they were putting on their boots, Will said, “Now, Mister Fletcher. If they’re on the farm and watching, they know we’ve been here. As we patrol the farm, we just might squeeze them into the house. You know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“You all are probably in more danger now than if we were never here.”
“I understand.”
Michael opened the back door. It was still raining hard.
“Don’t you hesitate to use that pistol.”
Fletch thought of the charming, healthy, beautiful young man in his study. His son? “I won’t.”
“Thanks for the coffee,” Michael said.
“You all come back,” Fletch said. “You hear?”
4
N ice place you have here.” Jack cleared the coffee table of albums when he saw Fletch enter with a tray. “I could have come to the kitchen. Or wherever.”
Fletch put the tray on the coffee table. On the tray were the warm tuna fish sandwiches, a glass, and a half gallon of milk.
“I frequently eat in here.”
“How old is it?”
“The tuna fish? Probably ten, twelve years old.”
“The house.”
“Antebellum.”
“Here that mea
ns before the Civil War, not the Revolutionary War, that right?”
“The Brothers’ War,” Fletch said. “The War Between the States.” He sat in a wing chair. “You should know. You just oozed Southern like someone running for the office of county dogcatcher.”
“Not really.” Jack nearly was inhaling his sandwiches and milk. “Just tryin’ to be nice to your friends.” Jack grinned. “His daddy knows my daddy.”
The electric shock to Fletch’s lower spine at Jack’s use of the word daddy was just as strong this time.
“So tell me,” Fletch asked, “whom did you attempt to murder?”
“A cop.”
“Oh, God!”
“No. A cop.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“That’s no way to speak of Crystal.”
“It’s a wonder you’re still walking around.”
“I didn’t actually kill her.”
“A lady cop?”
“I didn’t stop to ask.”
“You just tried to kill her.”
“I tried.”
“And what was your doubtlessly magnificent reason for this criminal behavior?”
“She was bothering a friend of mine.”
“Where was this?”
“Louisville, Kentucky.”
“What were you doing in Louisville, Kentucky?”
“Heading south.”
“Where south? Here?”
“Maybe. Nashville, anyway.”
Fletch looked at the guitar Jack had found in the guest bedroom. It had been a house present from a country music star who had needed to stay at the farm awhile. It had the star’s name on it. Since it had been left, no one had played it. The guitar had become an ornament, a prized, dusted ornament. “Are you musical?”
Jack shrugged. “We wanted to find that out.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“My friend and I. He plays keyboard.”
“Where is he now?”
“Kentucky state pen.”
“And how and why was this woman cop bothering your friend?”
“It had to do with the car he was driving.”
“What about it?”
“It was stolen.” Jack smiled. “A pink Cadillac convertible. Vintage.”
“Wonderful.” Fletch shook his head. “You wanted your pink Cadillac convertible before you even got to Nashville.”
“Something like that. Arriving in style.”
Son of Fletch f-10 Page 3