Fletch and the Widow Bradley (2 page)

“Jeez, Frank. This is terrible.”

“Sure is. Everyone around here is laughing at you. It’s going to be hard to live a story like this down.”

“Frank. I feel innocent. You know what I mean?”

“Joan of Arc you’re not.”

“At least give me a chance to check my sources.”

“Like who?” Frank Jaffe chuckled. “Saint Peter? You get him on the line, I want to know.”

“Okay, Frank. Am I suspended, or fired or what?”

“Let me try out suspension and see how it flies. The publisher’s in Santa Fe with his wife. The financial editor wants your head on a plate. You’re probably fired. Call me next week.”

“Thanks, Frank.”

“Hey, Fletch, want me to send you your pay-check? Janey can stick it in the mail to you.”

“No, thanks.”

“I just thought coming into the office would be sort of embarrassing for you.”

“No, thanks. I’ll come in.”

“No one ever said you’re short of guts, Fletch. Well, if you do come in to the office, wear your football helmet and your steel jockstrap.”

“
W 
A G N A L L
-
P 
H I P P S
.
G
OOD
morning.”

“Mister Charles Blaine, please.”

Fletch succeeded in keeping his voice steady. Still in the accounting office of the Park Worth Hotel he had dialed Long-distance Information and then called Wagnall-Phipps using his newspaper’s telephone credit card. With his fingers he picked his sweater away from his sweaty skin.

“Mister Blaine’s office.”

“Is he there?”

“I’m sorry, Mister Blaine has left for the day.”

Fletch glanced at his watch. “It’s only eleven thirty in the morning.”

“I know,” the secretary said. “Mister Blaine has the flu.”

“It’s terribly important I talk with him. This is jay Russell. I’m on a charity committee with Mister Blaine—the Committee to Preserve Antique Silver Clouds.”

There was a long pause. “Silver clouds?” the secretary asked. “How do you preserve them?”

“They’re a kind of car,” Fletch said. “A kind of Rolls Royce.”

“Oh,” said the secretary. “For a minute there I thought you were really on to something.”

“May I have Mister Blaine’s home phone number?”

“No, I’m sorry. That’s against company policy.”

“This is terribly important.”

“So’s company policy. At least to me. You wouldn’t want to get me fired.”

“I wouldn’t want to get anybody fired. Believe me. Mister Blaine will be very glad to hear from me. I can assure you there will be no recriminations if you give me his number.”

“I know there won’t be any recriminations—if I don’t give it to you at all.”

Fletch hung up.

His hand still on the receiver, Fletch said, “Damn, damn, damn!”

He checked his own billfold. He had two twenties, a ten, a five, and two one dollar bills, plus a blank check. He tried to remember whether he had a balance in his checking account of one hundred and twenty dollars, or if that had been the month before, or even the month before that. Sometime he had had a balance of one hundred and twenty dollars. At most he had less than two hundred dollars in cash, one paycheck due, and no job.

He picked up the phone and dialed a local number. He rang five times.

“Hello?” Moxie’s voice said sleepily.

“Are you just waking up?”

“I don’t know. What are you doing on the phone? Why aren’t you in bed beside me?”

“Always a good question.”

“Where are you?”

“Park Worth Hotel.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. I went out to the car to check the computer terminal for messages. I found a wallet. That led me to the Park Worth Hotel. It’s a long story.”

“It’s always a long story with you, Fletch.”

“Some days you shouldn’t get up in the morning.”

“Most days you shouldn’t get up in the morning. Is something wrong with you, Fletch?”

“Ha—ha,” he said cheerily, “what could be wrong?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just one or two minor things. I’ll explain later. Do you still want
to drive down the coast with me today?”

“Yeah. What time do you have to be back in the office?”

“In about three months.”

“What?”

“We’ve got plenty of time. Why don’t you get up, pack, make us a picnic lunch, a picnic supper, a picnic breakfast—”

“Can’t we stop along the way?”

“Not to eat.”

“All I’ve got is a jar of peanut butter. I’ve been letting the supplies run down.”

“Bring the whole jar. I’ll pick up the bread and orange juice.”

“Traveling with you sounds like a real treat.”

“Fifth class all the way. I’ll be by in about an hour.”

“An hour and a half.”

“It doesn’t take that long to pack a jar of peanut butter.”

“It does when I lost the top of the jar six weeks ago.”

“How can you lose the top of a peanut butter jar?”

“I
think
I mistook it for an elephant, and you know those elephants—”

“Yeah,” said Fletch. “Always getting lost. Don’t be too long. Thought we’d stop on the way down, beach I know, for a swim.”

“You have that much free time?”

“I have time,” said Fletch. “And it’s all free.”

“
I 
’
M   S O R R Y
,”   
F 
L E T  C H
said. “I didn’t expect my phone call to take that much time.”

Jacques Cavalier was sitting behind his olive wood desk, but in the chair where Fletch had been sitting was a short, middle-aged man with an angelic face. He was looking at Fletch with curiosity, and Cavalier was looking at Fletch with concern.

“Are you all right, Mister Armistad?” Cavalier asked.

“Sure, sure,” Fletch said. “Just hot in that other room.”

“Mister Armistad,” Cavalier insisted. “You’re pale. Have you had a shock?”

“Oh, that,” Fletch said easily. “My boss just told me that a friend … of mine has been fired.”

“How very distressing,” said Cavalier. “Tell me, Mister Armistad: what do you do for a living?”

“I park cars.”

“A humble enough job.” Cavalier smiled. “Why was your friend fired?”

“He tried to park two cars in the same space. Almost succeeded. Chuck never did have a very good memory.”

“This is Mister Smith, our house detective.” Cavalier consulted his note pad. “Mister Geoffrey with a G, Armistad—our honest friend who parks cars for a living.”

“Hiya,” said the middle-aged man with the angelic face.

Fletch sat in the free chair.

“I’ve repeated to Mister Smith your remarkable story, Mister Armistad. He is, you might say, incredulous.”

“Lemme see the wallet,” Smith said.

Fletch handed it to him. The detective counted the twenty five bills individually.

“Okay.” Smith placed the wallet on the desk. “I’ve checked. A man giving his name as James St. E. Crandall checked into the hotel at four P.M. three days ago. He checked out this morning just before Jacques called me. Paid cash.” Smith read from the itemized bill in his hands. “He had room service for breakfast for one, for both mornings he was here. Yesterday he had a pair of trousers pressed. The night he arrived he had one beer brought to his room about ten-thirty, so we can guess he retired early. He had no other bar-bill or restaurant charges in the hotel. He made six local calls, all in all, and no long-distance calls. He gave as his address 47907 Courier Drive, Wramrud. He put down nothing on the line for Company Name, Business Affiliation.”

Fletch had signaled Cavalier for a piece of paper and pen and was writing down the address.

“I’ve checked his room,” Smith continued. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Usual wrinkled sheets and towels.”

“He was known to your people at the Reception Desk?”

Smith said, “I asked the cashier, who checked Crandall out, for a description. He said the guy was either fifty and balding or seventy and stooped. I guess two people were checking out at the same time.”

“But someone on your Reception Desk knew him.”

“Why do you say that?” Smith asked.

“You said Crandall paid cash when he left. Reception desks like to run a credit card when a person checks in—don’t they?”

Smith glanced at Cavalier.

“This is a first class hotel, Mister Armistad.”

“You don’t have first class crooks?”

“We try to bother our guests as little as possible. Of course, sometimes we get stuck …” Cavalier raised his hands and shrugged. “… but we consider it worth it not to distrust everybody. Our guests trust us; we should trust them.”

Fletch asked, “How many people pay their hotel bills in cash?”

“A good many,” said Cavalier. “At this hotel. We still have the little old ladies in tennis shoes, you know—and they’re not all little old ladies—who do not put themselves in the way of being mugged by either someone in the street, or, a credit card company.”

“We have other guests who pay cash, too.” Smith chuckled at Cavalier. “Every hotel has those—here on private business, we call it.”

“Breakfast for one,” Fletch said. “Two days running. Doesn’t sound like Crandall was sharing his room with anyone.”

“Doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Smith said. “There are lots of other hours in a day.”

“Yeah, but what percentage of your guests pay in cash?”

“About ten percent,” said Cavalier.

“More like fifteen,” said Smith.

“Mister Smith is obliged to think on the seamier side of things,” Cavalier said.

“So there was nothing really unusual about this guest, James St. E. Crandall.”

“Yeah,” laughed Smith. “He ducked out on somebody trying to return twenty-five thousand dollars cash to him. That’s a new experience for us.”

Cavalier had been studying Fletch. “Hope you don’t mind my saying, Mister Armistad, but you’re not my idea of a parking lot attendant.”

“Have you known many parking lot attendants?”

Cavalier smirked. “Not intimately.”

Taking the wallet off the desk, Fletch stood up. “Thank you both for your help,” he said.

Cavalier asked, “You’re taking the wallet?”

“What else?”

“Well, I don’t know.” Cavalier looked at Smith. “I’m sure I don’t know what to do. This isn’t a simple matter of Lost and Found. I suppose I had been thinking the next thing we would do would be to notify the police.”

“Oh, I’m going to the police,” said Fletch.

“Sure,” Smith said.

“I came here, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did come here.” Cavalier ran his middle finger over his creased brow. “And you did find the money. And not on hotel premises … you say.”

“Not within twenty blocks of here.”

“And the man did run out on you … are you sure you called the right room?”

“No,” said Fletch. “Everybody gets a wrong number once in a while. But the hotel guest I spoke to didn’t seem surprised when I told him he’d lost a wallet.”

Fletch put the wallet in the back pocket of his jeans.

“I really don’t know,” Cavalier said. “I suppose we’ll have to notify the police, in any case.” He smiled at Fletch. “Just to protect ourselves, you understand.”

“A kid walks in with twenty-five thousand dollars,” muttered Smith, “and walks out with twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“I expect you to call the police,” Fletch said. “I gave you my name, didn’t I?” He pointed at the pad on Cavalier’s desk. “And my address?”

“Yes, you did, Mister Armistad,” said Jacques Cavalier. “Indeed you did.”

“
A 
J A R   O F
peanut butter, a loaf of bread, a jug of orange juice, and thou,” Fletch said.

Bellies on the sand, head to head, at only a slight angle to each other, they were still wet from their swim. They were alone in the cove.

“Pretty romantic,” said Moxie.

“Pretty romantic.”

“Not very.” The late afternoon sun sparkled in the dots of salt water on her arms, her back, her legs. “Peanut butter, bread and orange juice.”

“And thou.”

“And wow. Not chopped carrots and strained beans, but it still doesn’t cut the mustard romantically, Fletch.” Moxie rose up enough to brush sand off her bare breast, then settled her cheek against her forearm and sighed. “Not very romantic days, these.”

“You don’t think so?”

“Romance is gone from life. A thing of the past.”

“Sob.”

“Gone with crinolines and cramps.”

“I thought I was pretty romantic.”

“Sure. Pick me up at one thirty, ignore the reservation for two I made at the Cafe Mondrian, drive like a bobsled team captain to this abandoned beach down here, passing up several good places to stop for lunch—”

“You hungry?”

“—tumble me around in the surf like a—like a …”

“Like a what?”

“Like an equal.” She wriggled forward on her elbows and kissed him on the cheek. “Do it in the sand without even a blanket, a towel, anything.”

“Fair’s fair. We did it on our sides.”

“Not very romantic.” Moxie blew in his face.

“Romance was an idea created by the manufacturers of wine and candle sticks.”

“And smelling salts.”

She licked his cheek.

“What could be more romantic than peanut butter and orange juice? That’s protein and Vitamin C you’re scoffing at, girl. Very energizing foodstuffs, you know.”

“You getting energetic again, Fletcher?”

“Sure,” he said. “It’s been a whole five minutes.”

They had examined the hillsides above them the first time. There was only one house overlooking the cove, and that was pretty far back. Its main plate-glass window looked blind.

They were sitting on the sand, washing peanut butter sandwiches down with orange juice.

“So?” Moxie said.

“So I took the twenty-five thousand dollars …” He took the orange juice carton from her and drank. “What do you want to know?”

“Last night, if I remember correctly, you were full of self-importance and duty and went on and on about getting back to the newspaper today in time to work the night shift and if I wanted a ride with you I had to be up and packed and ready to go before I woke up …”