Fletch and the Widow Bradley

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “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.”

  5

  “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?”

  “Su
re,” 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 …”

  “Self-importance?”

  “Damned near pomposity.”

  “You’re not famous for getting up early in the morning, Moxie.”

  “I’m not famous for anything. Yet. Sleeping late was the first thing I learned in Drama School.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. All the classes were in the afternoon.”

  “You theater people have to be different.”

  “I don’t know what time the night shift on a newspaper starts, Fletch, but that red frog crapping on the ocean over there is the setting sun. And I figure we’re a good seven hours’ drive from your precious newspaper.”

  “I’m a changed man.”

  “What changed you?”

  “I got fired.”

  Fletch watched the shallow crease in her stomach breathe in and out a few times. She said, “Oh.” Then she said, “Hey.” She resumed chewing. “You like that job.”

  “It gave paychecks, too.”

  “You can get a job on another newspaper. Can’t you?”

  “I really doubt it.”

  “What happened?”

  “Long story. Sort of complicated.”

  “Make it simple. If I don’t understand first time round, I can ask questions. Right?”

  “Well, I was assigned to do an unimportant story on an unimportant business company and I guess I got sold a big, fat lie.” Fletch spoke rapidly. “My main source was a guy named Blaine. Charles Blaine. Vice-president and treasurer. He gave me a file of memos back and forth between him and the Chairman of the company, a guy named Tom Bradley, and said I could quote from them. So I did.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “Tom Bradley died two years ago.”

  “Died?”

  “Died.”

  “Died dead?”

  “Deader than romance.”

  “You quoted a dead man?”

  “Very accurately.”

  Moxie giggled. “Jeez, that’s pretty good, Fletch.”

  “I could have done worse,” Fletch said. “I suppose I could have quoted somebody who’d never existed.”

  “I’m sorry.” Moxie rubbed her nose.

  “What for?”

  “For laughing.”

  “It’s funny. Wake me in the morning.”

  “Were these recent memos you quoted? They couldn’t have been.”

  “They were recently dated memos. I put their dates in the story I wrote.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “That makes at least two of us.”

  Her eyes went back and forth over the sea. They were purple flecked with yellow in the setting sun. “Was it some kind of a mean joke?”

  “Pretty mean. I guess someone meant to do mischief.”

  “Who? Why?”

  “Blaine, I guess. He had to know what he was doing, giving me memos from a dead man. Maybe he’s crazy.”

  “Have you gone back to him? Tried to get in touch with him?”

  “Tried this morning. He’d left his office. Sick with the flu.”

  “No.” Moxie shook her head. “That’s too crazy. No one would do a thing like that. As a joke.”

  “Not a joke,” Fletch said. “Maybe you’ve heard that some American businesses are waging a clever campaign to get back at the press. Make the newspapers and television look silly.”

  “How would I have heard that?”

  “It’s a growing thing. They say there are too many liberals in the press. Anti-business liberals.”

  “Are there?”

  “Probably. More specifically, the News-Trib worked this particular corporation, Wagnall-Phipps, over pretty good two or three years ago.”

  “For what?”

  “Influence buying. Wining and dining congressmen, mayors and others on the public payroll in a position to buy shovels and toothpicks from Wagnall-Phipps.”

  “Did you write those stories?”

  “I wasn’t even working for the News-Trib then. I was in Chicago.”

  “You’re the fall guy.”

  “My own fault. I didn’t care about this Wagnall-Phipps story. I was working on that football story, you know, at the same time. I cared a lot more about that story. I scanned the clips on Wagnall-Phipps, saw the key question was whether the corporation still owned that big ski house in Aspen they used to lend to congressmen and their families, and went off to interview Blaine. I remember I had a hard time staying awake listening to him. He finally put me in an office by myself and let me take notes from this sheaf of memos.”

  “So you don’t have the memos, or copies of the memos yourself.”

  “No. I don’t. Simple, stupid, unimportant story I didn’t even think the newspaper would print, it was so boring. Who cares about Wagnall-Phipps?”

  “I guess Wagnall-Phipps does.”

  “I was only assigned the story ’cause the reporter originally assigned to it, Tom Jeffries, broke his back hang-gliding.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “That is terrible. I’m no business writer. Shit, I don’t even know how to read stock tables. I’d never heard of Wagnall-Phipps before.”

  “But why dump on you?”

  “Nothing personal. They weren’t dumping on me. They were making the newspaper look silly. They did a pretty good job.”

  “They took advantage of your ignorance.”

  “Sure. Along comes bushy-tailed Peter Rabbit with his mouth open and they feed him loaded carrots. They refer to the Chairman of the board, Thomas Bradley, show me memos from him, and I write down, In a memo dated April 16, Chairman of the Board, Thomas Bradley, directed etc., etc. I mean, wouldn’t you believe the Vice-president and treasurer of a corporation regarding who was the Chairman of the company?”

  Moxie shook her head. “Poor Peter Rabbit.”

  “Poor Peter Rabbit nothin’. He’s a dope.”

  “So you’re fired.”

  “Well, the managing editor is breaking it to me gently. He’s talking about a three-months suspension, but that’s only so he can insist later he tried to save my job.”

  “No chance?”

  “I wouldn’t hire me. Would you?”

  “More orange juice? There’s another quart.”

  “We’ll need it in the morning.”

  “So what were you doing this morning at the Park Worth Hotel?”

  “Oh, that’s another story. We’ve got to stop by and see a guy about it in Wramrud tomorrow. Found his wallet.”

  “Fletch, I’m cold. If you glance westward, you’ll notice even the sun has found a better place to go.”

  Fletch said, “I’ll build a fire.”

  She stared at him. “You mean to spend the night here?”

  “Sure. Romantic.”

  “On the beach?”

  “How much money you got on you, Moxie?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe fifty dollars.”

  “I thought so. You begin rehearsing for the new play Monday. When do you get your first paycheck?”

  “End of next week.”

  “So you’ve got fifty bucks to live off for a week and I’ve got about the same amount to live off for the rest of my life. Dig?”

  “Credit cards, Fletch. You used one last night. At dinner. Even
I’ve got a credit card.”

  “I’ve got a sleeping bag in the car.”

  “You’re getting me to spend the night on the beach with you.”

  “I told you. I’m very romantic.” Standing, Fletch brushed the sand off his skin.

  “And I told you romance is dead.”

  “That’s just wishful thinking,” Fletch said. “I’ll get the sleeping bag.”

  6

  “T R Y I N G T O F I N D my uncle,” Fletch said.

  It had taken the creaky old policeman a long moment to stand up from his padded swivel chair and walk across the main room of the Wramrud Police Station to the counter. There was a hearing aid in his left ear.

  “His name is James Crandall.” Fletch spoke slowly and distinctly.

  “Live here in town?”

  “Supposed to.”

  “What do you mean ‘supposed to’? Nobody’s ‘supposed to’ live anywhere. Haven’t you heard this is a free country?”

  “My mother gave me this address.” Fletch handed the policeman the piece of note paper he’d had from Jacques Cavalier’s desk.

  “I can’t find Courier Drive,” Fletch said.

  “47907 Courier Drive, Wramrud,” the old policeman read aloud.

  “The man in the drugstore doesn’t seem to know where it is.”

  The policeman looked at Fletch sharply. “Bob doesn’t know where it is?”

  “I guess not.”

  “This Crandall fellow. He your mother’s brother?”

  “Yes,” said Fletch.

  “You know you have sand on your face?”

  Fletch brushed his face with his hand.

  “Why do you have sand on your face?”

  Fletch shrugged. “I was playing in a sandbox.”

  “You ought to shave before you see your uncle.”

  “Yeah. I guess I should.”

  The policeman looked again at the piece of paper in his hand. “Bob don’t know where Courier Drive, Wramrud, is because there is no Courier Drive, Wramrud.”

  “There isn’t?”

  “Your mother lie to you often, son?”

  “First time ever.”

  “Far as you know. Nope. No Courier Drive. Fact is, we don’t have anything called a Drive around here. Lots of roads and streets but nothing as fancy as a Drive.”

  “You have any street like Courier?”

  “How do we know?”

  “I mean, a street that sounds like Courier, or might look like Courier written out.”