Crystal was dark, with black hair which could have been straight, or could have been curly, but wasn’t either; blessedly, basically heavy, with monumental bones, each demanding its kilogram of flesh; the appetite of a bear just after the first snowfall.
She also had huge, wide-set brown eyes, the world’s most gorgeous skin, and a mind so sprightly and entertaining apparently it had never felt the need to cause her body to do anything but the sedentary.
She and Fletch had worked together on a newspaper in Chicago.
“Are you well?” he asked.
“I thought we could meet in the bar before the Welcoming Cocktail Party, and have too much to drink.”
“I plan to go sit in the sauna and have a rub.” Skimming the hotel’s brochure on the bedside table, Fletch had noticed there were an exercise room, a sauna, and a massage room open from ten to seven.
“Oh, Fletch,” she said. “Why do you always have to be doing such healthy things?”
“I’ve been on airplanes and in airports the last twenty-four hours. I’m stiff.”
“You’ve already had too much to drink? You don’t sound it.”
“Not that way. Are you still working in Chicago?”
“Why,” she asked rhetorically, “do people go to conventions?”
“To wear funny hats and blow raspberry noise-makers?”
“No.”
“I don’t know, Crystal. I’ve never been to a convention before.”
“Why are you here, I. M. Fletcher?”
Lord love a duck, he said to himself. Everyone who knew him would know that convention-going was not his thing.
Neither was dues-paying.
He said, “Ah.…”
“Let me guess. You’re unemployed, right?”
“Between jobs.”
“Right. Let’s return to our original question: Why do people go to conventions?”
“To get jobs?”
“About half. Either to get jobs, if they are unemployed, or to get better jobs, if they are employed.”
“Yes.”
“About a third of the people at conventions are looking for people to hire. A convention, dear Mister Fletcher, as you well know, is one great meat market. And, as I don’t need to remind you, I am one great piece of meat.”
“If memory serves, you do help fill up a room.”
“It is not possible to overlook me.”
“What about the other sixteen-point-seven percent?”
“What?”
“You said half the people are here to get jobs and a third are here to give jobs. That leaves sixteen-point-seven percent. Almost. What are they doing here?”
“Oh. Those are the people who will drop anything they are doing, including nothing, at any time, and go anywhere, for any reason, at someone else’s expense, preferably, their company’s.”
“Gotcha.”
“Except for poor little Crystal Faoni, who is here—as I expect you are—by the grace of a rapidly dwindling savings account.”
“Crystal, how did you know I’m unemployed?”
“Because if you were employed you would be working on a story somewhere, and no one could divert you to attend a convention even under threat of execution. About right?”
“Now, Crystal, you know I always do what I’m told.”
“Remember that time they found you asleep under the serving counter in the paper’s cafeteria?”
“I had worked late.”
“But, Fletch, you weren’t alone. One of the all-night telephone operators was with you.”
“So what?”
“At least you had your jeans on, all zipped up nicely. That was all you were wearing.”
“We had fallen asleep.”
“I guess. Jack Saunders was absolutely purple. The cafeteria staff refused to work that day.…”
“People get upset over the most trivial things.”
“My missing lunch, Fletcher, is not a trivial thing. If you had been working for old man March at that point, you would have been fired before you reached for your shirt.”
“You worked on a March newspaper, didn’t you?”
“In Denver. And I was fired from it. On moral grounds.”
“Moral grounds? You?”
“Me.”
“What did you do, overdose on banana splits?”
“You know all about it.”
“I do not.”
“Everyone knows all about it”
“I don’t.”
“No, I suppose you don’t. I don’t suppose anyone would bother to pass on such a juicy piece of moral scandal to you. You’re the source of so many such scandals yourself. You’d just say ‘Ho hum’ and gun your motorcycle.”
“Ho hum,” Fletch said.
“You know, instead of being on the telephone all this time, we could be curled in a dark corner of the bar, tossing down mint juleps or whatever the poison of the house is.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“I was pregnant.”
“How could anyone tell?”
“Pardon me while I chuckle.”
“Were you married?”
“Of course not.”
“So why was that Walter March’s business?”
“I didn’t act contrite enough. I had told people I intended to have the baby, and keep it. That was back it those days. Remember? We all thought things had changed?”
“Yeah.”
“I had gotten pregnant on purpose, of course. An absolutely great guy. Phil Shapiro. Remember him?”
“No.”
“An absolutely great guy. Good-looking. Brainy. Happily married.”
“So what happened to the kid? The baby?”
“I thought I could handle having a baby without being married. But I sure couldn’t handle having a baby without being either married or employed.”
“Abortion?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit.”
“That’s what happened to my savings account the last time it got over two thousand dollars.”
“Great old Walter March.”
“He fired a great many people on moral grounds.”
“Oddly enough, he never fired me.”
“He never caught you. Or probably he heard so much about you, he never believed any of it. Even I can’t believe everything I’ve heard about you.”
“None of it is true.”
“I was there that morning they found you under the cafeteria counter. And I hadn’t had breakfast.”
“Sorry.”
“So whoever stuck the scissors into noble old Walter March was inspired.”
“Did you?”
“I’d be pleased to be accused.”
“You probably will be. You fit into the category of people who had a motive. He took a child away from you. Were you here this morning?”
“Yes.”
“You had the opportunity to kill him?”
“I suppose so. Lydia said the door to the suite was open when she found him. Anyone could have walked in and scissored him.”
“What else do you know about the murder, Crystal?”
“That it’s going to be the best reported crime in history. There are more star reporters at Hendricks Plantation at this moment than have ever been gathered under one roof before. In fact, I suspect more are showing up unexpectedly, simply because of the murder. Do you realize what it would be worth to a person’s career to scoop the murder of Walter March—with all this competition around?”
“Yeah.”
“It would be worth more than a handful of Pulitzer Prizes.”
“Whose scissors was it? Do you know?”
“Someone took it from the hotel desk. The reception desk.”
“Oh.”
“You thought you had the murder solved already, eh, Fletcher?”
“Well, I was thinking. Not many people carry scissors with them when they travel—at least ones big enough to stab someone—and anyone who would carry scissors tha
t big most likely would be a woman.…”
“Fletcher, you must get rid of this chauvinism of yours. I’ve talked to you before about this.”
“It’s a moot point now anyway, if the scissors came from the hotel desk, where anybody could palm them.”
“Anyway,” Crystal said. “It’s hilarious. All the reporters are running around, pumping everybody. The switchboard is all jammed up with outgoing calls. I doubt there’s a keyhole in the whole hotel without an ear to it.”
“Yeah,” Fletch said. “Funny.”
“You go have your rub, sybarite. Will I see you at the Welcoming Cocktail Party?”
“You bet,” Fletch said. “I wouldn’t miss it for all the juleps in Virginia.”
“You’ll be able to recognize me,” Crystal said. “I’ll be wearing my fat.”
Seven
“Another one,” the masseuse said.
Fletch was lying on his back on the massage table.
She was working on the muscles in his right leg.
He had been told he would have to wait more than an hour for the masseur to be free.
The masseuse was a big blond in her fifties. She looked Scandinavian, but her name was Mrs. Leary.
He had waited until she was finished with his right arm before mentioning Walter March.
His question was: “Did Walter March come in for a massage last night?”
The masseuse said, “I’m beginning to understand just how you reporters operate. How you get what you write. What do you call ’em? Sources. Sources for what you write. You’re always quoting some big expert or other. ‘Sources.’ Huh! Now I see you all just rush to some little old lady rubbin’ bones in the basement and ask her about everything. I’m no expert, Mister, on anything. And I’m no source.”
Fletch looked down the length of himself at the muscles in her arms.
“Experts,” he said, “are the sources of opinions. People are the sources of facts.”
“Uh.” She dug her fingers into his thigh. “Well, I’m no source of either facts or opinions. I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve never been so busy. You’re the ninth reporter I’ve massaged today, every one of ’em wanting me to talk about Mister March. I suppose I should make somethin’ up. Satisfy everybody. It’s good for business. But I’m near wore out.”
Having worked for him, Fletch knew Walter March had massages frequently. Apparently at least eight other reporters knew that too.
“If you want a massage, I’ll give you a massage.” She took her hands off him, and looked up and down his body. “If you want me to talk, I’ll talk. I’ll just charge you for the massage. Either way.”
Fletch looked into a corner of the ceiling.
He said, “I tip.”
“Okay.”
Her fingers went into his leg again.
“Your body don’t look like the other reporters’.”
Fletch said, “Walter March.”
“He had a good body. Very good body for an old gentleman. Slim. Good skin tone, you know what I mean?”
“You mean you massaged him?”
“Sure.”
“Not the masseur?”
“What’s surprising about that? I’m rubbing you.”
“Walter March was sort of puritanical.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
She was working her way up his left leg.
Fletch said, “Oh, boy.”
“That feel good?”
Fletch said, “Life is hard.”
“Walter March was a pretty important man?”
“Yes.”
“He ran a newspaper or something?”
“He owned a lot of them.”
“He was very courteous,” she said. “Courtly. Tipped good.”
“I’ve got it about the tip,” Fletch said.
She finished his left arm.
Suspending her breasts over his face, she rubbed his stomach and chest muscles vigorously.
“Oh, God,” he said.
“What?”
“These are not ideal working conditions.”
“I’m the one who’s doing the work. Turn over.”
Face down, nose in the massage table’s nose hole, Fletch said, “Walter March.” He couldn’t get himself up to asking specific questions in a sequence. He blew the bunched-up sheet away from his mouth. “Tell me what you told the eight other reporters.”
“I didn’t tell them much. Not much to tell.”
She lifted his lower left leg and, with a tight grip, was running her hand up his calf muscle.
“Oh,” he said.
“Are you Jewish?”
“Everyone who’s being tortured is Jewish.”
“Mister March said nice day, he said he loved being in Virginia, he said they’d had nice weather the last few days in Washington, too, he said he wanted a firm rub, like you, with oil.…”
“Not so firm,” Fletch said. She was doing the same thing to his right calf muscles. “Not so firm.”
“He asked if I was Swedish, I said I came from Pittsburgh, he asked how come I had become a masseuse, I said my mother taught me, she came from Newfoundland, he asked me what my husband does for a living, I said he works for the town water department, how many kids I have, how many people I massage a day on the average, weekdays and weekends, he asked me the population of the town of Hendricks and if I knew anything about the original Hendricks family. You know. We just talked.”
Fletch was always surprised when publishers performed automatically and instinctively as reporters.
Old Walter March had gotten a hell of a lot of basic information—background material—out of the “little old lady rubbing bones in the basement.”
And, Fletch knew, March had done it for no particular reason, other than to orient himself.
Fletch would be doing the same thing, if he could keep his brain muscles taut while someone was loosening his leg muscles.
She put her fists into his ass cheeks, and rotated them vigorously. Then she kneaded them with her thumbs.
“Oof, oof,” Fletch said.
“You’ve even got muscle there,” she said.
“So I’m discovering.”
She began to work on his back.
“You should be rubbed more often,” she said. “Keep you loose. Relaxed.”
“I’ve got better ways of keeping loose.”
He found himself breathing more deeply, evenly.
Her thumbs were working up his spinal column.
He gave in to the back rub. He had little choice.
Finally, when she was done, he sat on the edge of the table. His head swayed.
She was washing the oil off her hands.
“Was Walter March nervous?” he asked. “Did he seem upset, in any way, afraid of anything? Anxious?”
“No.” She was drying her hands on a towel. “But he should have been.”
“Obviously.”
“That’s not what I mean. I had a reporter in here earlier today. I think he could have killed Walter March.”
“What do you mean?”
“He kept swearing at him. Calling him dirty names. Instead of asking about Mister March, the way the rest of you did, he kept calling him that so-and-so. Only he didn’t say so-and-so.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I could look up the charge slip. He was a big man, fortyish, heavy, sideburns and mustache. A Northerner. A real angry person. You know, one of those people who are always angry. Big sense of injustice.”
“Oh.”
“And then there was the man in the parking lot yesterday.”
She put her towel neatly on the rack over the wash basin.
“When I drove in yesterday morning, he was walking across the parking lot. He came over to me. He asked if I worked here. I thought he was someone looking for a job, you know? He was dressed that way, blue jeans jacket. Tight, curly gray hair although he wasn’t old, skinny body—like the guys who work down at the
stables, you know? A horse person. He asked if Walter March had arrived yet. First I’d ever heard of Walter March. His eyes were bloodshot. His jaw muscles were the tightest muscles I’d ever seen.”
“What did you do?”
“I got away from him.”
Fletch looked at the big, muscular blond woman.
“You mean he frightened you?”
She said, “Yes.”
“Did you tell the other reporters about him?”
“No.” She said, “I guess it takes nine times being asked the same questions, for me to have remembered him.”
Eight
AMERICAN JOURNALISM ALLIANCE
Walter March, President
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Hendricks Plantation
Hendricks, Virginia
Monday
6:30 P.M. Welcoming Cocktail Party
Amanda Hendricks Room
“Hi,” Fletch said cheerfully. He had stuck his head around the corner of the hotel’s switchboard.
Behind him, across the lobby, people were gathering in the Amanda Hendricks Room.
The telephone operator nearer him said, “You’re not supposed to be in here, sir.”
Both operators looked as startled as rabbits caught in a flashlight beam.
“I’m just here to pick up the sheet,” he said.
“What sheet?”
He popped his eyes.
“The survey sheet. You’re supposed to have it for me.”
The further operator had gone back to working the switchboard.
“The sheet for us to take the surveys.”
“Helen, do you know anything about a survey sheet?”
The other operator said, “Hendricks Plantation. Good evening.”
“You know,” Fletch said. “From Information. The sheet that says who’s in which room. Names and room numbers. For us to take the surveys.”
“Oh,” the girl said.
She looked worriedly at the sheet clipped onto the board in front of her.
“Yeah,” Fletch squinted at it. “That’s the one.”
“But that’s mine,” she said.
“But you’re supposed to have one for me,” he said.
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