“Montana!” Jack expostulated behind Fletch’s back. “Since when Montana?”
“Mister Fletcher,” Radliegh said, “I thought I wouldn’t show you the Bierstadt until morning. It’s in the gym. The light will be better in the morning.”
“That’s fine,” Fletch said.
Behind Fletch’s back, Jack whispered, “What’s a Bierstadt?”
“Although I will say hanging a precious painting in a gymnasium strikes me as odd.”
“Oh,” Jack said. “A painting.”
“You haven’t seen the gym.” Radliegh smiled. “The painting is perfectly safe there. Temperature and humidity controlled. Its size and power, vigor seem well suited to the gym.”
Amalie said, “My husband is eccentric.”
Then she said to Fletch: “And tell me: do you speak coyote?”
Each entertaining a separate group around the terrace were Chet, Amy, Downes, Beauville, Nancy Dunbar. Neither Alixis nor Duncan was there.
“I wonder if after dinner you might join me in the study,” Radliegh asked Fletch. “I figure it will be my only chance to have a quiet chat with you about your book,
“Of course,” Fletch said. “That will be fine.”
“Ten o’clock then,” Radliegh said.
Fletch said, “See you.”
As the Radlieghs drew off, Fletch turned to Jack. “Get rid of the tray, will you? We need a walk and talk.”
“How did you get here?” Jack asked.
“Radliegh has a painting he wants to sell. I can’t afford it, of course, but he doesn’t know that.”
Jack handed his tray of hors d’oeuvres to Peppy, who already had one. Now he had a tray in each hand.
“Here,” Fletch said to Peppy. “I’ll help you.” He picked an hors d’oeuvre off one of the trays.
“Thanks a lot,” Peppy said. “Sir.”
“Any time.”
Fletch and Jack walked down the terrace steps.
“I’ll show you my digs,” Jack said.
Fletch said, “I suppose I can be late, but I really ought to be back in time for the dinner.” They were walking around the lit pool. A few young from the party idled in the pool area. They glanced at the white-jacketed man in black tie walking into the gardens with a young waiter. “Tell me everything you know.”
Jack said, “That would take forever.”
“I haven’t got forever.”
As they walked the bricked paths through the indirectly lit landscaped gardens, Jack said, “There are more rules for living here than there are in a military academy. Or a monastery. And they are all circumvented, seemingly by everybody.”
“Things are a little oppressive at Vindemia, is that it? The cork is kept on pretty tight?”
“To the point of rebellion,” Jack said. “I’ve heard even the C.E.O., Eric Beauville, say he feels a prisoner here.”
“Talk to me,” Fletch said.
“The rebellion isn’t open,” Jack said. “Everyone just sneaks around spending more energy circumventing the rules than they seem to spend doing anything positive. Like living. Working. So there’s a kind of gridlock.”
Enjoying the flora and fauna of the garden paths, Fletch said, “Gridlock in paradise. Could it be otherwise? I’ve always suspected Adam and Eve sinned out of pure boredom.”
Jack described how the Chief Executive Officer, Eric Beauville, and Radliegh’s private secretary, Nancy Dunbar, hide their smoking cigarettes; everyone from Radliegh’s wife to his stableboy hide their liquor; daughter Alixis her wild sex compulsions; son Duncan his lying, cheating and use of hard drugs.
“Busy little place,” Fletch said, “for all that.”
Jack said, “Radliegh knows his son, Chet, is gay.”
“‘Gay,’” Fletch repeated.
“Chet doesn’t respond to girls at all. Peppy, that kid you just so thoughtfully helped by making one of his trays lighter, is the stableboy and Chet’s lover.”
“But Shana—?”
“Is Doctor Radliegh’s lover.”
“Ah, ha! Doing double duty as Chet’s fiancee to keep up the image necessary for Chet’s impending national political career.”
“You know a few things yourself.”
“Thanks to Andy Cyst. I thought you said there’s no story here.”
Jack said, “Not one to tell.”
“No,” Fletch said. “Not one to tell.”
“Come in.” Jack opened the door to his half of the cottage.
“There’s no lock on your door,” Fletch said.
“I’ve noticed.”
“I guess when you’ve got a chain-link fence around the whole estate, only one gate, guards at it, not every door within the estate needs to be locked.”
“We’re protected from everything but our protectors,” Jack said. “We even have passports we have to show to enter the estate.”
“Passports?”
“Even have to show them at the company store to buy food. Mine’s pink.”
Fletch glanced around the small living-dining room, kitchenette. “Do you suppose this place is bugged?”
“Do I care?”
“Ah,” Fletch said. “Doesn’t take you long to get rebellious. I must remember that next time you visit and I ask you to take a shower.”
Jack said, “There was a murder here. I think that much is pretty clear. In a laboratory which was not supposed to have lethal gas in it, Doctor Jim Wilson was killed by lethal gas. He wasn’t supposed to be in the laboratory at that moment. Radliegh was.”
“Is the death being investigated?”
“It must be. Unnatural death, all that. But I’ve seen no sign of it.”
“Radliegh can’t keep the police out.”
“I haven’t seen any police around—other than his own rent-a-cops.”
Wandering around the room, Jack then talked generally of almost everything he had seen, heard, thought, felt since arriving at Vindemia.
“Okay, Jack. You’ve been here a while.” Fletch relaxed in the two-seater couch. “Who’s making all these attempts on Chester Radliegh’s life?”
“Process of elimination?” Jack asked. “Motive? Opportunity?”
“Any method at your command.”
“Well, his mother-in-law isn’t. She’s a strong old dear, and the only one around here who seems genuinely appreciative, respectful of Doctor Radliegh. She seems to think he really is perfect.”
“Pretty old, is she? All her illicit compulsions behind her?”
“I doubt Mrs. Radliegh could organize these attempts. You just met her. Amalie.”
“Do you suppose she really thinks coyote is a language? Or was she trying to tell me she’s nuts?”
“Her brain is filled with little pills bumping into each other in a pool of liquor.”
Fletch said, “She could have fixed the coffeepot to electrocute her husband.”
“Yes, she could have,” Jack agreed. “That wouldn’t have taken much doing. It was in his personal dressing room. But the cabin explosion, the broken front axle on the Jeep—”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Fletch said. “Sounds to me like the work of two different people, working at cross-purposes. Radliegh didn’t get blown up in the cabin because the Jeep axle broke first. Also possibly true in what happened in the laboratory. One person filled it with poison gas; another arranged a bomb in the building. You
