“So,” Fletch said, “that leaves the murder of Doctor Jim Wilson to be solved. You’re not looking well this afternoon, Peppy. A little peaky.”
Peppy had remained standing quietly beside Jack during this conversation.
Spoken to, he focused slowly.
“Peppy has something to say,” Jack said. “He wants your help, Dad.”
Fletch looked at Peppy and waited.
Peppy swallowed but said nothing.
Jack said, “One morning, Chet went to the stables at dawn, saddled two horses and went for a ride with his father. Only one morning.”
Fletch said, “I know.”
“Sitting, talking with me in the woods, Doctor Radliegh said his children never rode horses with him; one morning, Chet did ride with him. I didn’t have the sense to realize he was offering me a clue. I didn’t have the sense to ask, ‘Why?’”
Fletch asked, “Do I need to?”
“So Peppy could drive to Birmingham, Alabama, to pick up a canister of gas for Chet.”
Peppy said, “I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what it was for. I didn’t know it was gas that could kill someone. It had a long name. Chet wrote it down for me on a piece of paper. He had ordered the canister in my name, I only found that out after I got there.”
“Do you still have that piece of paper?” Fletch asked. “The one on which Chet wrote down the name of the gas?”
“Yes. I found it when Jack told me Doctor Wilson had been gassed to death. I have it at the cottage.”
“That’s good,” Fletch said. “Will you give evidence in court against Chet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well,” Fletch said. “You see? Chet has self-destructed, too. Just as Chet was able enough not to flunk his bar exam, he was smart enough not to write down the name of a lethal gas he had already ordered in his own handwriting and give it to Peppy. Yet he did so.” He stood up. “And, sir, I guess that’s all the help I can be.”
“I thought you were waiting for Shana,” Jack said. “Protecting—”
“Shana is standing behind you,” Fletch said. “With a knife in her hand. She has been for some moments.”
Jack turned around.
In the black shorts, white shirt, and sneakers she had been wearing all day, Shana stood silently. In her hand was any kitchen’s largest carving knife.
Her coal-black hair was a little tousled.
Her very wide-set, coal-black eyes were staring, but seemingly at nothing present, something in the middle distance, perhaps within herself.
“I think she would like you to take the knife from her, Jack,” Fletch said. “Ms. Shana came here to do something. Listening to us talk, first from outside the door, she has come into the room slowly and quietly. And I don’t think she any longer intends to do whatever she came here to do.”
Jack took the knife from Shana’s hand easily.
“I’m sorry to have involved you, Jack,” Shana said. “This is your father? Why is it… ?”
Jack asked, “Why is what?”
Never, ever did Shana Staufel speak again, not to police, defense attorneys, therapists, the courts, not to those who fed her and cared for her where she was institutionalized.
Not ever.
27
“Where do I put my suitcase?” With perplexity, Fletch studied Jack’s blue Miata convertible.
Fletch had asked Jack to meet him at the front door of Vindemia’s main house at four o’clock, to give him a lift.
“What are you doing with that big suitcase?” Jack asked from the driver’s seat.
“Had to bring formal clothes, didn’t I?”
Jack’s duffel bag was stuffed in the little space behind the seats. He had thought there would be room for another.
When Jack had driven the two-seater under the oriole, many people were milling around in front of the house, going in and out. There were police in uniforms; police not in uniforms. There were newspaper reporters; television reporters and camera crews. Behind them all, Peppy stood alone, leaning his back against a wall, drinking lazily from a quart bottle of beer.
“You might just as well have brought your damned bicycle to pick me up,” Fletch said standing over the passenger side of the car.
“You had your meeting with Lieutenant Corso?” Jack asked. “Everything is understood?”
“Yes.” Still holding his suitcase, Fletch stepped down into the car. “I think I safely can say Corso understands the simple facts. Even that took hours.”
Jack waved at Peppy.
Peppy gave a low wave back.
“Jack! Jack Faoni!” A television reporter Jack recognized only somewhat came to Jack’s side of the car. “What are you doing here? If you’re here, why am I here?”
“Beats me,” Jack said.
“Are you on assignment?” the reporter asked. “For whom?”
“Global Cable News.”
“Oh, no,” said Jack.
“You work for Global Cable News. I had lunch at the same table with you last week in GCN’s cafeteria in Virginia.”
“Oh, yes,” said Jack.
“You were working on the Tribal Nation story.”
“I remember,” said Jack.
“So are you covering the Radliegh story, or not?”
“Not,” said Jack. “I don’t work for GCN.”
“You were last week.”
“Oh, no.” Jack put the car in gear. “I work for the truth.” Slowly he drove the little car around the groups of people in the semicircular driveway.
“Humph,” Fletch said. “Good line.”
Jack looked at his father.
Fletch sat in the passenger seat of the little car. The back of the suitcase was on his head. The front rested on the windshield frame.
Jack said, “I really don’t think it’s going to rain.”
“Never can tell,” Fletch said easily. Then, with more vigor, he said, “You can tell me where else I’m supposed to put it!”
“Don’t ask!” Jack snapped.
At the end of the semicircular driveway, Fletch said, “Left. To the airstrip.”
“The airstrip?”
“You expect me to ride all the way to Tennessee with a suitcase on my head?”
“Do you have an airplane waiting for you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Jack turned left.
Fletch said, “You have more background, understanding of this story than anyone else.”
“Right,” Jack said.
“You’re a reporter. You ought to report it.”
“Right,” Jack said.
