“Is Mister Mortimer pleased?” Fletch asked. “I mean, with the new mirrors?”
“He’ll never tell you. No, in fact he’s been expostulating all morning. First, at the boys’ training schedule being interrupted. The next explosion from his mouth was, ‘Why doesn’t that Fletcher mind his own damned business?’ Then, when he watched Ricky seeing himself for the first time in the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall perfect mirrors, he fumed. ‘Now that damned boy won’t want to fight anybody but himself, ever! For a boy fightin’ himself in a mirror I couldn’t sell a ticket to a nun,’ was what he said. I noticed he didn’t send the mirrors back, though.”
“I can always tell when he’s pleased.”
“Ricky is why I’m calling.”
“Ricky? The younger boy? Why would you be calling me about him?”
“I’ve discovered him.”
“Was he under a rock?”
“You know Leaves of Grass?” “Whitman. Of course.”
“No, ‘Leaves of grass, grains of sand/ Seasoned, soldier, hardened man/ Is what I’m told I am …’?”
“Guess I missed that one.”
“I found it in an anthology here. I just read it to him. To Ricky. Because they couldn’t work out in the gym this morning, with your workmen here. Listen to this. I’m putting him on.”
“Crystal—” At that moment, Fletch did not expect to be listening to a sixteen-year-old boxer in Montana recite poetry to him by long-distance telephone.
Then Fletch heard Ricky speaking. To him. To his core.
“‘Leaves of grass, grains of sand//Seasoned soldier, hardened man / Is what I’m told I am.’”
Through Fletch’s little telephone came Ricky’s magnificently timbred, modulated voice enhanced by his distinct diction, thrilling cadence: “‘Drinking mud, eating grass: / Think of me as Saddam’s ass. // We’re of different centuries / You and I. / I’m taught to think of lips for lips, / Eye for eye, / While you, my conqueror, are trained / To think of blips; / Coordinate hand, eye and brain …’”
Fletch stuck his index finger in his opposite ear and hunched over a little to hear better.
The voice was compelling. “‘Moslem, Christian and Jew / You do not know me as a man, / A true believer in Saddam, / See my bravery, see me bleed. / Even my final, dying scream: / Silent on your computer screen …’” In the voice of this sixteen-year-old boxer in Montana was a touch of the best, some of the surety, authority, timbre, rhythmic sense of Olivier, Burton …
To himself, Fletch mouthed: “Wow!”
Hunched over, finger in his ear, listening to Ricky over a cheap telephone speaking more than a thousand miles away, Fletch felt something electrical go up his spine and burst in the back of his head between his ears.
“‘The bazaar battled the arcade, / And, naturally, the arcade won. / You’ve had the benefits of our oil, / While my mother and I have had none. // The problem is, and think of this, / It is your every wish / To drag me into a new time, / The century of bliss. / While the world economy thins / Resources shall be averaged. / It matters not who wins. // Seasoned soldier, hardened man / Is what I’m told I am. / You, the pinball wizard mind, / The tommy deaf, dumb, and blind.’”
There was a pause. Then the boy’s voice, not speaking into the telephone, asked, “All right, Mrs. Faoni?”
Crystal took the phone. “Fletch? Did you hear?”
“Yes.”
“Are you hearing what I’m hearing?”
“That’s some fine instrument that boy has.”
“Fletch, Ricky isn’t a boxer. He’s an actor.”
“Oh, Crystal! Mister Mortimer will kill you for sure.” Looking up at the house, Fletch wasn’t sure what he was seeing.
“I read this poem to Ricky once, just once, this morning, and after a moment he began reciting it back to me, the whole thing, sounding as you just heard. Consider not only his sound. He’d memorized the whole thing only hearing it once! He still hasn’t read it! Isn’t he marvelous?”
“Outstanding.”
Someone was tying a sheet, a white bedsheet, to a railing of one of the upper balconies.
He could not see who that someone was.
Sheets. Something about sheets.
Bedsheets wouldn’t be aired from a balcony of the main house.
There was a laundry yard somewhere for that.
“Crystal, you can’t take one of Mister Mortimer’s two remaining boxers.”
“Such talent can’t be ignored. This boy should have his head beat in? No way! I won’t have it. I think it’s a very good thing you brought me here, Fletch. Who’d think of discovering a talented actor in boxing gloves and britches in Where-the-hell-am-I, Wyoming?”
“Why does that surprise you?” For a moment, nothing was happening on the balcony. The rest of the sheet did not appear. “What are you going to do about it, anyway, Crystal? I mean, do about him?”
“Work with him a little myself. I don’t know much, but I know more about this than Mister Mortimer does. I’ll read to him, make him read the texts, ask him what things mean, how he interprets them. I’ll get some tapes, play them for him. This boy has never seen or heard anything other than Terminator movies. I’ll get in touch with some people I know in regional theater—”
A black bulk appeared laid out along the top of the balcony railing. The bulk was as long as a person.
The black bulk rolled, was rolled off the railing.
As it fell, as the sheet unfurled, the body’s arms extended above its head.
The lower end of the sheet was knotted around the neck of the bulk, of the body, of the person.
Fletch yelled: “Crystal! I’m seeing someone being hung!”
“What?”
Hanging from the balcony railing by a bedsheet tied around her neck, the body was swinging. The legs and arms struggled, but not much.
The black hat fell off the head and floated to the ground.
No head appeared over the railing.
“Mrs. Radliegh!” Fletch yelled into the phone. “Amalie! She’s being hung! Good bye!”
Fletch was already running toward the house. As he ran, he folded his phone and tried without success to jam it into his pocket.
He jumped up steps and across a terrace into an enormous sunroom.
“I’ve been stabbed!”
Wearing only the bottom of a bikini, Alixis stood with Amy in the sunroom.
Alixis kept whirring around in a small circle, first this way, then that, whimpering, like a puppy chasing its tail. As she twisted, first she would reach her back with the fingers of one hand, then the other.
Each time she took her hand from her back she stared incredulously at the blood on her fingers.
There was blood on the floor where she was rotating on bare feet.
Amy was pacing around her sister, trying to examine her back. “Stay still! You haven’t been stabbed! You’ve been cut by a barbecue fork!”
There were two wobbling parallel lines across Alixis’ back dripping blood.
“Who did this to you?”
Amy said to Fletch, “I was asleep by the pool. Someone whacked me on the head—”
Fletch was dashing through the room. “Someone’s hanging from a balcony.”
“What?” Amy started to follow Fletch.
Alixis shrieked after them: “I’m bleeding!”
“Oh, shut up!” Amy yelled. “It’s time somebody barbecued you, you fuckin’ worthless piece of meat!”
Followed by Amy, Fletch ran up two wide staircases.
On the third floor, he opened the door of a room and looked through it. There was no bedsheet tied to the railing.
“Are you crazy?” Amy asked.
Pushing by her in the doorway, Fletch said, “I think it’s your mother.”
Amy followed him down the corridor. “I know she’s crazy.”
The next door to the left was open.
Fletch sprinted through the room onto the balcony.
A be
dsheet was tied to the railing.
He looked over the balcony.
Less than four feet below the railing hung Amalie Radliegh. Her black hat and veil were on the ground way below her, but she still wore her long black dress and gloves.
Her face was purple.
Fletch supposed her neck was broken.
Her body hung limp.
Amy peered over the high railing like a child looking off a bridge. “Mother … ?”
“Sorry.” Fletch turned Amy away from the sight.
There was the sound of a loud engine roaring somewhere on the estate.
At first Fletch thought it was the sound of another airplane lifting off.
“Is she dead?” An old woman came onto the balcony from the bedroom.
“Oh, Gran.” Amy tried to put her arms around the old woman but was shrugged off.
“Are you Mrs. Houston?” Fletch asked. “Her mother?”
“Yes. Is she dead?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Houston did not look over the railing. “Once death starts happening, you see…. She did not hang herself.”
“No,” Fletch answered. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh, I know so. Amalie was miserable because she did not love and did not hate and did not hope and did not despair. She was murdered. Are you going to haul her up?”
The engine noise seemed at a distance but was still deafening.
Looking out over the estate, Amy said, “Duncan …”
“Yes,” Mrs. Houston said. “Duncan is using his racing car to chase the locals off Vindemia. At least, that’s what he thinks he’s doing. His eyes are glazed with some fantasy. The local boys seem to be making sport of him. Which is why I came in.”
Fletch asked, “Did you see your daughter hanging?”
Mrs. Houston began to choke, but stopped. “Yes. She was thrown off the railing, wasn’t she?” The little woman made a pushing gesture with her hands. “Rolled off.”
“I believe so.”
“Amalie never had much fight in her. She never fought for anything she had, or was given her, to keep it, treasure it; not even her life.”
“She’d probably taken some pills,” Amy said. “Sedatives.”
“I’m sure,” Mrs. Houston said, “you are right.”
“I’d better get Lieutenant Corso.” Fletch started for the door to the bedroom.
For the first time he noticed the barbecue fork on the floor of the balcony. There was blood on the tips of the tines.
“No.” Fletch stopped. He stared at the barbecue fork. “Amy, I think we had better go find your children. You both should come with me.”
Then came the great explosion.
The sound of the roaring engine stopped instantly.
Fletch whipped around.
Even in the brilliant midday sunlight the white flames rising from the exploded racing car were visible a mile away.
The accident was in the middle of the road near the gatehouse.
The racing car had smashed into the guardhouse.
Below the flames Fletch saw what looked like pieces of a smashed mirror piled up against the stone wall.
Then great black smoke rose from the mirror fragments, and began to settle over the mess.
Amy said, “Oh, Duncan …”
Mrs. Houston sighed. She said, “And things could have been so nice, for everybody.”
25
“What’s that noise?” Peppy asked.
“Duncan,” Jack answered.
When Jack had returned to his half of the cottage he found his door open.
Peppy was sitting on the sofa bed with a beer can in hand and four empties on the floor.
“I never heard that car make so much noise before, except on the track,” Peppy said. Duncan’s racing track was far from Vindemia’s main buildings. “He’s ridin’ it around the estate roads at full throttle?”
“He’s chasing people in pickup trucks.”
“Chasing them!” Peppy’s expression was wry. “What’s he gonna do if he catches anybody? Cry in his face?”
“I’m making sandwiches for my father and me. How many do you want?”
“He’ll whine at them. Complain about how life isn’t fair. It’s all his father’s fault.”
“How many sandwiches do you want?” Jack repeated. “Seeing you’ve made yourself at home, anyway.”
“What kind of sandwiches?”
“Cheese. It’s all I’ve got. How many?”
“Several.”
“Running out of bread,” Jack said. “This healthy bread comes in small packages.”
“Jack, is your dad anything?”
“Anything like what?”
“Anything important. I mean, he was at that party last night.”
“Journalist,” Jack said.
“You mean, he’s on television?”
“No,” Jack said. “He’s never been on television.”
“Newspaper writer.”
“Something like that.”
“‘Cause I need help.”
“You know Chet has left Vindemia?”
“Yes.” Peppy shifted his booted feet on the floor. “And I’m not goin’ to prison for that son of a bitch.”
Jack was dealing sliced cheese on pieces of bread on the kitchenette counter. “What do you mean?”
“Will your dad be able to help me?”
“He may be able to.”
“Chet got me to do somethin’ I didn’t want to do,” Peppy said. “Somethin’ I didn’t know I was doin’.”
“Sure,” Jack said.
Peppy shrugged. “You don’t know what I’m talkin’ about.”
“No,” Jack said. “I don’t.”
“You find yourself doin’ some ridiculous things around here.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“Have you found I tell you no lie?”
“I guess.”
Peppy leaned forward. Elbows on his knees, he rubbed his eyes with the balls of his hands. “Chet told me he’d get up and go riding with his father on this particular morning. He’d be at the stables before aawn, have the horses saddled, surprise his old man, you know?”
“Yeah …” Doctor Radliegh sitting cross-legged in the woods, Arky the boxer dog in his lap, talking to Jack, saying he was “surprised” his children never went riding with him; he was “surprised” one morning Chet did go riding with him….
“Want a beer?” Peppy asked.
Then there was the explosion.
“Jeez!” Jack jumped back from the counter. “What’s that?”
Instantly the roaring sound of the engine stopped.
“Haw!” Peppy stood up. “Ol’ Duncan just bought it.” He hitched up his jeans. “Yes, sir. I do believe ol’ Duncan just blew himself to hell and beyond.” He smiled at Jack. “Probably blinded himself in that mirror car, again, wouldn’t you guess?”
26
“Undisciplined people are running amok,” Jack said to Fletch.
“Or a disciplined person is running amok,” Fletch said to Jack.
“Are we both right?” Jack asked.
Fletch said, “Empires crumble; then people, of all sorts, run amok.”
A servant had told Jack and Peppy when they entered the main house that she had seen Mister Fletcher in the nursery when she happened to pass the open door. She gave them directions to the third floor, back of the building.
In the nursery’s anteroom, Fletch sat in an easy chair.
The chair looked as if nurses and nannies, infants and small children, had lived in it: eaten in it, cuddled in it, played in it, slept in it.
Fletch looked unusually comfortable in the chair.
Through double doors a uniformed nanny and Amy MacDowell were tending to the children.
Mrs. Houston sat in a rocking chair. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her face was turned toward the light from the windows.
“Jack,” Fletch asked in a low, slow voice. “Can you tell me wh
y someone would put two large cuts crosswise on Alixis Radliegh’s back?”
“Did someone do that?” Jack asked.
“Yes. With a barbecue fork.”
“Alixis doesn’t know who?”
“She was on her stomach sunning on a pool lounge. She may have been asleep. She says someone hit her on the side of her head. When she became sensible, she found her back stinging and bleeding. At that point, she was alone in the pool area.”
“You’re asking me who would do that to Alixis?” Jack glanced at Peppy, who stood with half lidded eyes beside him. He looked like a horse going to sleep on his feet.
“And why.”
Jack turned his back to his father. He pulled up his t-shirt. “I see. Alixis did that to you?”
Turning around again, Jack said, “It isn’t that important to me. It’s just a cut.”
“Did you see Duncan’s accident?”
“Heard it,” Jack said. “I don’t need to see accidents.”
Jack had the impression Fletch was still looking behind Jack.
And Fletch’s voice continued low and slow.
“And I expect you saw Mrs. Radliegh hanging from the balcony.”
“Yes.” When Peppy saw the dangling corpse he puked into the driveway’s gutter. “Why hasn’t someone taken her down?”
“Lieutenant Corso is awaiting police reinforcements.”
“Where is Lieutenant Corso now?”
“Went down to supervise the accident, I guess. Await reinforcements at the main gate.”
“Do these events have anything to do with each other?”
“The barbecue fork was on the floor of the balcony from which Mrs. Radliegh was hung.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.”
“And you’re sitting here alone in the nursery …”
“To protect Mrs. Houston, Amy Radliegh MacDowell, and seven little Radliegh heirs.”
“From.” Jack said the word as if, by itself, it made a statement. He sucked in a big breath and let it go. Doing so did not cool his face. Fletch waited. Jack said, “Shana Staufel.”
“I thought you’d think so, too.” Fletch smiled. “I noticed the blood on your sheets. Chester Radliegh mentioned to me Alixis had shared your bed the night before. One of you had bled. I was willing to believe Alixis not a virgin. And, somehow, because a girl scratched your back in lovemaking, I couldn’t see you attacking her with a barbecue fork; such smacks more of frustration, jealousy, than revenge.” Very softly, slowly, Fletch said, “One might even speculate insanity. Nor could I see you threatening a drugged older woman with a barbecue fork, for any reason. Of course …” Fletch smiled again. He was giving his son time to think. “One can never be sure. Waiting for lab reports confirming Alixis’ blood and Shana’s fingerprints on the barbecue fork necessarily would have made me just a tad nervous. So I thought I’d ask.”
Fletch Reflected Page 17