“Here,” Mortimer said. “She lives. She breathes. With a friend like you, I don’t know why she bothers.”
“Fletch?” Crystal asked. “Where are you?”
“Vindemia.”
“How could you be? That’s in Georgia. You left here just this morning.”
“I was propelled by Mister Mortimer’s bad breath.”
“Have you seen Jack?”
“Just left him. He’s fine. How are you?”
“Having a wonderful time! Whatever convinced you Mister Mortimer is the solution to my problems?”
“At frequent great risk to myself, I am determined to see the best in people.”
“I’m even exercising!”
“How’s that?”
“He strapped wrist weights and ankle weights on me. I’ve been doing arm lifts and leg lifts in bed.”
“Lifting weights in bed? I’ve done that.”
“Earlier I did five sit-ups. Later three sit-ups. I’m scheduled to do one more. I feel the blood coursing through my veins vigorously.”
“You must be exhausted.”
“He gives me frequent high-energy snacks. The food makes me want to do these exercises. ‘Shrinking the belly,’ he calls it.”
In Vindemia’s dark gardens, Fletch envisioned Crystal’s mammoth white belly shrinking. Then he envisioned the polar ice cap melting. “That’s good.”
“Watching the boys here in the gym inspires me. My God, the energy they spend. They jump rope, lift weights for hours, it seems, beat up punching bags, beat up each other, then do one-armed chin-ups just for fun. I didn’t know even boys could have so much energy!”
Fletch said, “It’s why war was invented.”
“I think I inspire them, too. Every once in a while they look over at me, the great burial mound—and throw themselves back into their training, speed up. Well, seeing what all they do makes me lift my arms and legs a few more times. We drive each other on.”
“Mister Mortimer is being nice enough?”
“He’s a dear. Such a gentleman!”
“Poo,” Fletch said. “If he’s a gentleman, I’m a trout.”
“You’re a trout. He couldn’t be more considerate, charming, encouraging. He says I’ll be doing standing exercises within five days, beginning to hike within seven.”
“Just don’t wreck the punching bags, Crystal. I mean, it actually is possible to hit them too hard.”
“I’m not to think about losing weight. It will just happen.”
“That sounds right.”
“My goal is not to lose weight; it’s to change my way of life, my way of thinking.”
“Your perceptions of yourself.”
“How’s Carrie? Did you see her?”
“I stopped by the farm this afternoon to get a change of clothes. She’s well. She’s waiting for a mare to drop her filly.”
“Why would a Mayor drop cream cheese?”
“Crystal, you’re still thinking food.”
“Fletch, did you happen to notice the younger boy here?”
“Ricky? Yes.”
“There’s something about him.”
“Something … What?”
“I don’t know. Standing still, being quiet, still he oozes some kind of power.”
“Sex?”
“More than that.” Crystal separated her words with pauses. “One cannot help listening to him, watching him.”
“Is he handsome, attractive, what?”
“It’s something else …”
“Charisma?”
“I read to him this afternoon, from a book that just happened to be here, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.”
“Mister Mortimer reads Steinbeck?”
“He has lots of books.”
“He does?”
“At first, I was just reading to Ricky. He was sitting by my bed. Then I began to feel things from him.”
“From Steinbeck? Of course.”
“No. From Ricky. Then I started watching him as I read. He was hardly moving. His legs were twisted around each other. I couldn’t actually see the muscles of his shoulders, chest, arms, hands, even his face moving, but they were moving. I could feel them moving. I couldn’t hear or see him breathing, but I could tell his breathing was under some kind of intense control. His eyes were pulsing. Is that the right word?”
“I don’t know.”
“What I mean is that he was so into it… he was feeling it, every word … he was reacting physically to it … but I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, or how he was doing it.”
“In other words, even while you were reading Steinbeck, somehow Ricky was making you watch him.”
“Yeah. Something like that. Can you explain it?”
“No. Yes.”
“Mister Mortimer here is making faces at me.” Fletch heard a grumble from the background. “He says, ‘Damned kid looked so much at himself in a mirror he fell into it and now he wants everybody else to join him there.’” Crystal laughed.
“Mister Mortimer said that?”
“What’s your explanation?”
“No explanation. Just a question.”
“What’s the question?”
“With which are you in love, Crystal? Mister Mortimer? Or Ricky? Or both?”
“You think I’m in love? Maybe. I love Wyoming. Oops, that did it! Mister Mortimer says I have to hang up now. It’s time for my sit-up.”
•
Fletch had waited on a high spot at the edge of the gardens until he had finished his conversation with Crystal.
At almost eye level was the large terrace of Vindemia’s main house. Men in white jackets and bow ties, women in their pretty summer dresses milled around.
At the side of the terrace opposite the bar and serving tables a string quartet played Haydn.
With his straight back, light glinting from his hornrimmed glasses, Doctor Chester Radliegh was urging his guests in to dinner.
Fletch noticed that variously colored lights, party lights, were built into the walls of the house facing the terrace, as well as the low walls surrounding it. Simply by switching them on, these lights would give the terrace a party glow even if no one were there partying.
For a moment Fletch watched the rich, brilliant man, gracious and graceful host, smiling, inviting his many friends into his home for dinner.
The rich, brilliant, gracious and graceful man whom more than one person was trying to murder.
Slipping the little telephone into his jacket’s pocket, Fletch rejoined the party.
20
“Close the door.”
Doctor Chester Radliegh was standing at an angle between a highly polished mahogany desk and mahogany floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in his study at Vindemia. Directly in front of him in its own mahogany stand was a world globe.
It was ten o’clock.
Fletch closed the door.
“Would you like a cognac?” Radliegh asked.
Approaching, Fletch said, “You drink cognac?”
“On occasion.”
“Sure.”
On a shelf at the base of the window separating the bookshelves behind his desk, Radliegh poured cognac into two snifters on a silver tray.
Nowhere on the desk, nowhere visible in the room was a copy of Fletch’s book, Pinto.
Fletch took the snifter. “Thank you.”
“Mister Fletcher,” Radliegh said as he inhaled from his snifter, “I want to thank you and your son for showing your concern for me—well, for another human being—by coming here to help solve what you see as my problems.”
“My son?”
“Yes. The pool boy. Jack Faoni. The young man who was serving hors d’oeuvres on the terrace before dinner.”
“You know he’s my son?”
“You two circling each other on the terrace whispering questions and answers, making jokes, I believe, behind each other’s backs only each other could hear, and, I daresay, appreciate, was a piece of theater I would have re
gretted missing.”
Jack had said something to Fletch about being next to Chester Radliegh was like being next to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier: overwhelming.
Fletch said, “You can’t possibly know Jack Faoni is my son. Even your lover, Shana Staufel, doesn’t know it.”
Radliegh smiled. “People here at Vindemia believe all the phones are tapped, and that the one outside the General Store is not.”
Fletch said, “And that’s the one that is.”
Radliegh said, “It’s much cheaper, more efficient to tap one phone than dozens. Surely you can see that.”
“Yes,” Fletch said. “I can see that.” Radliegh knew every word Jack had said to him while Fletch was driving into Wyoming. “Did you invite me here so I can sing ‘Git Along Little Dogies’ to you?”
“I invited you here to thank you. And to assure you that everything is fine.”
“Everything is not fine,” Fletch said.
“And, by now, I assume you and your son have had a long chat and he has filled you in on everything he has learned about me and my household.”
“Right again.”
“Shana called Jack in without my knowledge or permission. I was very surprised to read the notes of her conversation with him from the phone outside—”
“—the General Store.”
“Reading those notes, something about Shana was confirmed, and, I learned something else about her. What was confirmed was her very real love, passion, and concern for me. What I learned is that snow turns her on in a way I hadn’t realized.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Apparently, a few years ago, she grabbed your sweating son in the snow in Stowe, Vermont, one night, tore his shirt off him, and hustled him to her bed for a few hours of passionate love crawl.”
“Oh.”
“You didn’t know that?”
“He hasn’t told me that part, yet.”
“It was in Berlin on a night snow was falling a year ago Shana and I discovered ourselves having a snowball fight in the street, shoving fresh snow down each other’s collars, etc.” Radliegh’s smile was shy. “Also confirmed was that there was nothing contrived about Shana and me ending up in bed together that night. Not that I thought there was. As a result of this discovery, I am making arrangements for business conferences in St. Moritz this next winter.”
“Shana really loves you,” Fletch posited. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Passionately. Isn’t that nice?”
“Wonderful.”
“So she called Jack. Jack came here. And he called you. And you came here. By the way, I did read Pinto, and enjoyed it.”
“No notes?”
“Of course notes. No questions, though. None that I remember.”
“That’s good. I felt I was facing an oral examination tonight.”
“No examination at all,” Radliegh said. “Just a simple thank you, and a statement that there is no problem.”
“There is a problem.”
“Are you genuinely interested in the Bierstadt?”
“I’d like to see it.”
“Fine. I’ll show it to you in the morning, as planned, before you leave.”
“Doctor Radliegh, someone, more than one is, I mean, are trying to kill you.”
“So what?” Radliegh’s fingers rubbed his chest.
“So what?”
“How many attempts on my life do you and Jack, and Shana, count? Four?”
“The coffeepot, the exploded cabin, the broken axle on the Jeep, the possibly poisoned horse—”
“Try eighteen. That’s a good number. Try twenty four.”
“These attempts have been going on that long?”
“I don’t know much about your education, Mister Fletcher, but somewhere along the way you must have picked up some scientific method.” Radliegh raised his left arm over his head and flexed it. “When you see four or five attempts on my life, you are right to be alarmed. When you’ve seen two dozen or so the proof, if you will, is that none has succeeded.”
“One did succeed. And I don’t think Doctor Jim Wilson was thinking primarily of scientific method while he was dying of lethal gas poisoning meant for you in your laboratory.”
“I trust he was. And whom do you accuse? My wife? You know Shana Staufel and I are lovers.”
“I sat beside your wife at dinner,” Fletch said. There had been sixty at dinner, and Fletch had been put at the foot of the table. “She kept talking about what she called ‘upsetting passions,’ even asking me to name mine. She seems to feel everyone around her is driven by one passion or another except her.”
“Yes,” Radliegh said. “Amalie is not without her insights.”
“I am not accusing your wife, in particular.”
“Do you accuse my children? As you no doubt have surmised, I am familiar with my children’s passions, to whatever extent you are familiar with them.”
“Doctor Radliegh, you have created a most unusual environment here at Vindemia.”
“Unusual?” Through his horn-rimmed glasses, Radliegh blinked at the ceiling. “Isn’t it the ideal environment, for my employees, friends, family that anyone would create if he could? Aren’t you enjoying your stay at Vindemia, Mister Fletcher?”
“You’ve created a dictatorship.”
“Weren’t you taught in school that the best form of governance is a benign dictatorship?”
“I was taught dictatorships do not remain benign long.”
“Mine has. I do not have to collect taxes. Quite the reverse. I do not have to conscript for wars.”
“But you do make demands. You are shoving one son into politics, another into business administration, a daughter into movie stardom—”
“I have every right to make demands. Look at all I have provided them. Having received so much, they must give, not to me, but to the world. The formula is simple.” Radliegh shook his left hand as if to get water off it. “I hate second generations which squander their resources.”
“Do I have to recite to you the results of your forcing this ‘formula,’ as you call it—”
“I know, I know. My daughter, Alixis, forced herself into your son’s bed last night.”
“She did?”
“There must be something magnetic about your son.”
“He plays the guitar.”
“I’ve heard him. He plays well. I suppose a young man who concentrates on the use of his fingers has a certain superficial sexual appeal.”
Fletch sighed. Having had only a sip of cognac, he was feeling uncommonly tired.
It had been a long day.
Too long to end it intellectually wrestling with a certified genius.
“And my football hero, Phi Beta Kappa son, Chet, is screwing the boy next door. Next door to your son, that is. And I’ve arranged rehabilitation for Duncan, which will begin Monday, in a cottage here at Vindemia.”
“And your thrice married daughter is blackmailing you.”
“It’s the maturing process, Mister Fletcher. These days.”
“Is that the way you see it?”
“Certainly. Childish rebellion. They do everything they know is abhorrent to me. Unfortunately, I gave them nothing to rebel against… except me. I am prayerfully waiting for them to grow up, mature, develop the appreciation, respect, and usefulness I expect from them.”
“Will you live to see it?”
“They have the best chance of surviving here at Vindemia.” The light on Radliegh’s glasses prevented Fletch from seeing his eyes. “They shall grow up. They have to.”
“Doctor Radliegh, someone murdered, by mistake, we think, Doctor Jim Wilson.”
“I will not hear one word against my family, not my wife, my mother-in-law, my sons or daughters. What you and your son have learned here you are to carry away in silence, or I guarantee you …”
“What?”
“Or your son will go back to federal prison again for a crime he did not commit, only this ti
me he will spend his life there. I can arrange it.”
“I’m sure you can.”
“Nevertheless, in the morning, we shall enjoy the Bierstadt together. I do appreciate your book. And your well-meant efforts on my behalf.”
“Eric Beauville—”
Radliegh raised the palm of his right hand to the vertical. “Enough! I feel about my employees as I feel about my family.”
“It’s how they feel about you, idiot, that matters.”
Radliegh laughed. “I’ve never been called an idiot before. How refreshing.”
“Sorry. You are exasperating. You are not God, Doctor Radliegh.”
“I’ve been told that before. I have never made such a claim. I do not think of myself as such. It’s just that…”
“What?”
“If one has certain large capacities …”
“Why not use them to control people of lesser capacities? Is that it?”
“Why not use them to help others fulfill themselves? That’s all I’m doing, Mister Fletcher. For example, you were about to mention Eric Beauville. No one else would have him as Chief Executive Officer. He’s a second-rate brain with second-rate energies: a number two man. He thinks he’d be happier somewhere else. He wouldn’t be.”
“So you block his every effort to get away from you.”
“For his own good, and the good of his family. He and they are much happier here than they would be anywhere else. And far more prosperous. And,” Radliegh said with a smile, “keeping him here keeps him down to only two cigars a day.”
Fletch shook his head. “Well, Jack asked me to talk with you. I’ve talked with you.”
Radliegh nodded. “Thanks for coming.”
Fletch put his brandy snifter on the desk. He hesitated. “Whoever killed Doctor Jim Wilson is going to be discovered. I guarantee you that.”
“I have arranged for an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. A Lieutenant Corso is due here tonight.”
“You spent this much time picking a man you can control. Right?”
Radliegh said, “One way or another, Mister Fletcher, in this matter I shall see that justice is done. See you in the morning. At seven in the gymnasium?”
“Okay.” Fletch headed toward the door.
“Mister Fletcher?”
Fletch Reflected Page 14