“Packing, unpacking, packing. Putting him to bed. Getting him up. Sobering him up. Looking for him in the bars. Reminding him which God-damn play he’s performing. Years of it. Taking care of me, on the road. Putting up with his women. His disappearances. His tensions. His paranoias. She couldn’t take the day anymore, let alone the night. Something just snapped.”
“Okay,” he said. “How much of that had to do with his acting?”
“All of it.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Then why do you want to be an actor?”
“I don’t want to be an actor.” Instinctively she moved her head so that the light fell on her nose beautifully. “I am an actor.”
He drank his wine. “Come on. Eat up.”
“Also I’d like to be able to pay my mother’s bills when that day comes that Freddy no longer can do.”
“Thanks for the steak,” Fletch said. “Eat yours up, or I’ll attack you instantly.”
Moxie picked up her knife and fork. “So what are you going to do tomorrow?”
Fletch shrugged. “Guess spend another day going around apologizing to people.”
“Who’s left?”
“The Bradley kids.”
Moxie nodded. “Your piece must have been a real shock to them.”
“I wouldn’t feel right not touching base with them.”
“You’ll come to the cocktail party tomorrow night at the Colloquial Theater?”
“Sure. I’ll go with you.”
“Do me a favor, though, uh?”
“Anything.”
“Don’t mention Freddy.”
“Frederick Mooney. A famous name.”
“Infamous,” she said. “Infamous.”
16
A S. F L E T C H W A L K E D by he noticed the boat still in the driveway, gleaming white under its fresh coat of paint under the three o’clock in the morning moonlight. Except for the street lights, there was only one light visible in the neighborhood, a coach lantern several houses down.
In bare feet he went up the Bradley’s driveway and into the opened garage. The door to the house was locked. He went around the house to the kitchen door, which was also locked.
The glass door between the livingroom and the pool area slid open with a rumble. Houses away, a dog barked.
The moonlight did not do much to lighten the livingroom. Fletch stood inside the door a moment, listening, letting his eyes become used to the deeper darkness.
Putting each foot forward slowly, he walked to the fireplace. The box of ashes was not on the mantel.
He went to the coffee table and stooped over it. With loose fingers he combed, slowly, the surface of the table. His hand identified Enid Bradley’s wine glass; he did not knock it over. Then the box of ashes.
Taking an envelope out of his back pocket, he opened it and held it in one hand. With his other hand he opened the lid of the filigreed box.
He took a pinch of ashes out of the box and put it in the envelope. He closed the lid, sealed the envelope.
Turning, he walked into the chair in which Enid Bradley had sat that afternoon, talking to him. It moved only a few centimeters on the carpet.
When he slid the sliding door shut, the dog did not bark.
17
A G A G G L E O F teen-aged girls joggled across Southworth Prep’s green quadrangle in the bright Sunday morning sun. Fletch was waiting on the sidewalk outside an empty dormitory house.
As he came closer he saw the resemblance between the oldest girl, the only one not a teenager, and Enid Bradley—except that she was not at all overweight and her slit shorts and running shoes were not a bit out-of- date.
“Roberta?” he asked.
The girls were huffing along the sidewalk, pounding up the steps to the porch and into the house.
“Showers, everyone!” Roberta said. “Be ready for chapel in half an hour!”
She looked at Fletch.
“Roberta Bradley,” Fletch said.
“Have we met?” she asked. She wasn’t at all out of breath.
“We’re just meeting now,” Fletch said. “For probably the first and last time, no foolin’. I’m Fletcher.”
“So?”
“I.M. Fletcher.”
“You already said that.”
“The jerk who wrote the piece in the newspaper Wednesday about Wagnall-Phipps.”
“Oh, I see.” Her look was not at all unfriendly. “You want to talk. It isn’t necessary.”
“I wanted to come by …”
She glanced at the clock in the church tower across the quadrangle. “I like to run another couple miles while the little darlings use up all the hot shower water. Mind running with me?”
“No. That’s okay.”
Her pace was faster than it had looked. She had long, skinny legs and a long stride. They got off the sidewalk and went behind the school buildings and along a dirt road.
“I run just to get a few minutes alone,” she said.
“Sorry. Pretend I’m part of the landscape, if you want. Rock, tree, tumbleweed.”
“The little darlings at Southworth Prep never give me time to go exercise Melanie. Dad’s horse.”
“You still keep your father’s’horse?”
Roberta ran silently for a minute or two. “Guess nobody’s made a decision about it yet,” she said. “Look, what do you want from me?”
“ ‘Pologize, I guess. I screwed up. Must have been a shock to you.”
Her face looked more annoyed than poised. “Why is everybody making such a big deal of this? Weirder things have happened in the world. You wrote an article about Wagnall-Phipps and referred to my father as chairman. So what? You were just out of date, that’s all.”
“Still …”
“That three-piece suiter from the newspaper came over the other night, sat Tom and me down and gave us solemn apologies from the
“It shouldn’t have happened.” Fletch’s feet were raising bigger puffs of dirt than her’s. “I hear Carradine had some nice things to say about me!”
Roberta smiled at him and waggled her head. “Boy, if you’re half as bad as he says you are, you’re awful! Incompetent, fool, compulsive liar, wow.” She stretched her leg just slightly to avoid a rock embedded in the road. “Nice of you to come by, though, I suppose.”
“I can’t explain how it happened.”
“No need to. You screwed up. So what? Last week I handed out a French test to a roomful of kids who were supposed to be taking a Spanish test. Would you believe two or three of the kids actually started to do the French test? No one should ever believe teachers or newspapers entirely.”
“Your dad’s dying in Switzerland and all … Your mother taking over the company in his absence … then he
