Fletch and the Widow Bradley

“All of them women,” Alston said.

“Moxie’s an actor,” Fletch said, “whether she wants to be or not. She gets into an elevator and uses everybody else standing there as a captive audience. Once in a crowded elevator she turned to me and said, Really, Jake, it hain’t fair I got pregnant, when you said I wouldn’t—you bein’ my brother and all. What you go sayin’ it wasn’t possible for, when it was, alla time? You heard what the doctor just said—don’t make no difference you bein’ my brother. You tol’ me a tootin’ lie, Hank.”

Laughing, Audrey said, “What did you do, Fletch?”

“Well, the temperature in the elevator went up to about one-hundred-and-thirty degrees fahrenheit. Every one was glowering at me. I wasn’t sure I was going to get out of there alive.”

“What did you do?” Audrey asked.

“I said, Can’t be sure it was me, Stella. Might ha’ been Paw.”

Alston slopped a little beer onto his shirt laughing.

“Was that the last time you two split?” Audrey asked.

Fletch thought a moment. “Time before that, I think. Last time, her father called from Melbourne, Australia, sobbing, saying he needed her to come play Ophelia, or he had to cancel the tour. She was packed and gone within fifteen minutes.”

“I never knew Moxie played Ophelia in Australia,” Audrey said.

“She didn’t. She got there and the role had been filled. Freddy didn’t even remember telephoning her. He said, How nice of my little girl to come all this way to see her old daddy! Something like that. Old bastard didn’t even pay her way out, or back. She worked six months on a sheep ranch. Loved every minute of it. Said it was the best time of her life.”

“So now she’s pretending … what?” Audrey asked. “That you two never met before?”

“Yeah. She pretends we just met and then refers to a knowledge of me going back years. Sort of eerie.”

“You two,” Alston said. “Birds of a feather cluck together.”

“You’re both nuts,” Audrey amplified. “Why don’t you get married? I mean, neither of you should marry anyone else.”

“Moxie will never marry,” Fletch said. “She has this strange, necessary thing with being in love with whoever she’s playing at the moment. Anyhow, she blames ol’ Freddy for putting her mother in the hospital.”

“Is she afraid she’ll put you in the hospital?” Alston asked. “Fat chance.”

“Making love to her has always been interesting,” Fletch said. “You’re never sure with whom you’re making love.”

Alston cleared his throat. “I think the two of you alone in a bedroom would make for quite a crowded room.”

Fletch took the envelope out of his back pocket. “I came because I need a couple of favors.”

“You name it,” Alston said.

“There are some ashes in this envelope. I need them analysed chop-chop.”

“Sure.” Alston stepped over and took the envelope and put it in his own pocket.

“Second,” Fletch said, “are you of sufficiently august rank in the District Attorney’s office, Alston, to make a call to the United States Embassy in Geneva?”

“Never have done such a thing before,” Alston answered. “Guess that’s one of those things you do first and ask permission for second—Marine style.”

“Good. I need the particulars on the death of an American citizen named Thomas Bradley. About a year ago. He may have died in hospital, or some kind of a special sanitorium. He may have committed suicide.”

“From California?”

“Yes.”

“You say about a year ago?”

“His widow says a year ago this month. His death was not announced here, though—or so it seems—until about six months later. The operation of a family business, Wagnall-Phipps; Bradley’s wife running the company while she’s waiting for someone else to take over—it’s all mixed up somehow.”

“How?”

Fletch said, “I don’t know. I guess you could say: confusion has been caused, I suspect, deliberately.”

“Suicide,” Alston said. “You said the possibility of suicide. Isn’t

that enough of an explanation?”

“Not really.”

“You’d be amazed,” Alston said, “to know what my office still puts up with to permit people to conceal the fact of suicide. I don’t disagree,” he said. “I’m sympathetic. I go along with it.”

Audrey said, “Alston, I think Fletch is considering the possibility of murder.”

Alston looked at Fletch and Fletch continued looking at Audrey.

Alston said, “Are you, Fletch?”

“Suspicious death,” Fletch said. “The guy may have died a year ago. But I suspect his kids weren’t told until six months later. His neighbors and the president of the company he owned weren’t told until eight months later. And, I have good reason to believe, his own Vice-president and treasurer wasn’t told—really told—until last Thursday.”

“It would be nice to have a look at the probate record,” Alston said.

“Would there have to be one?”

“Sure. Property within the state …”

“Then I’d appreciate that, too.”

“My fast answer is,” Alston said, “really off the top of the head, is that somebody is trying to postpone, or evade altogether, death taxes, inheritance taxes. Was this a young guy?”

“Less than fifty.”

“Death caught him with his pants down. In what kind of financial shape is this company of his, what’s it called?”

“Wagnall-Phipps. I don’t know.”

“I suspect that’s the answer,” Alston said. “People don’t expect to die so young. He died in Switzerland. Sounds to me like the estate’s trying to take advantage of that fact to get the estate in shape, fiddle the taxes.”

“I never thought of all that,” Fletch said.

“You never went to Law School.”

“Gee,” Fletch said. “Is that why I haven’t got either a mortgage or a credit card?”

“That’s why,” Alston said.

“I do have all those people called Moxie waiting for me.” Fletch stood up. “Will tomorrow be too soon to call you, Alston?”

“Nope. I’ll put highest priority on the chemical analyses, D.A. Demands, and I’ll put in the call to Switzerland before I leave the house. Might even have the answers before noon. I’ll call probate when I get to the office.”

Audrey looked at him. “Don’t you have anything else to do? I mean, any work of your own?”

“I seem to remember once or twice in the past Fletch dropping everything to help me,” Alston said. “In case I haven’t mentioned this before, Audrey, I wasn’t a very with-it Marine.”

“Bye, Fletch.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for saving my husband’s ass.”

“Hell with his ass,” Fletch said. “It’s his sense of humor I saved.”

On the sidewalk in front of the house, Alston Chambers said, “Fletch, I’ve got a bank balance of over five hundred dollars. All or part of it are yours, any time you want it.”

“Poo!” Fletch said. “What’s money? Tissue paper! Who needs it?”

Sitting in the car, Fletch said through the window, “Thanks, Alston. Call you tomorrow.”

19

“S H I T   O N   A windy corner!” Moxie muttered as she got into the passenger seat of the car in the dark. “You even beat Freddy Mooney!”

“Don’t bother giving me directions. I know where the Colloquial Theater is.”