Fletch's Moxie (3 page)

Using a Brazilian dance step which hadn’t been invented yet and elbows which had had much practice, Fletch shoved forward with the rest of the press. The reporters were murmuring polite questions,
How do you feel? Will shooting continue on
Midsummer Night’s Madness?

Fletch’s voice was the loudest and sharpest of all: “Ms. Mooney—did you kill Steven Peterman?”

All the reporters jerked their heads to look at him and some of them even gasped.

Moxie Mooney’s deep brown eyes settled on him and narrowed.

Fletch repeated: “Did you kill Steve Peterman?”

With a hard stare, she said, “What’s your name, buster?”

“Fletcher,” he said. Magnanimously, he added, “You can call me Fletch, though. When you call me.”

Other reporters
t’ched
and shook their heads and otherwise expressed embarrassment at their crass colleague.

After staring at him a moment, Moxie said, slowly, clearly into the cameras, “I did not kill Steve Peterman.”

The other reporters resumed clucking sympathetic questions.
How long have you known Steve Peterman? Were you close?

Loudly, Fletch asked: “Ms Mooney—were you and Steve Peterman lovers?”

When she looked at Fletch this time, there was revulsion in her face.

“No,” she said. “Mister Peterman and I were not lovers.”

“What were your relations with Peterman?” Fletch asked.

Moxie hesitated, just slightly. “Strictly business. Steve was my manager,” she said. “He took care of my business affairs. He helped produce this film.” Her eyes closed fully and she took a deep breath. “And he was my friend.”

Fletch thought he was doing a sufficiently surreptitious job of fading back through the crowd when he felt a hand on his arm.

He turned.

The short man was squinting at Fletch. He removed his hand.

“Haven’t seen you before,” he said. “Who are you?

“I.M. Fletcher. Global Cable News.”

“City guy, huh? National news type.”

“You got it in one.”

Behind the short man, the question rang out:
Do you think the murder of Peterman had anything to do with the earlier hit-and-run incident?

Fletch couldn’t hear Moxie’s answer.

“Listen to me, Mister,” the short reporter said. “We don’t treat people like that around here.”

“Like what?”

“That little lady—” The reporter jerked his tape recorder toward the sweat-stained shirt of another reporter. “—just lost her friend to death. Do you understand that? Asking her questions like you just did is just plain uncivil.”

“Where you from?” Fletch asked.
“The Girl Scout Monthly?”

“St. Petersburg.”

“Listen, man—”

“Don’t you ‘listen, man’ me.” The short man pressed his index finger against Fletch’s chest. “You get away from Ms Mooney and you get away from this story, or you’ll find yourself stomped.”

Fletch heard a reporter ask:
Ms Mooney, do you believe there are people trying to stop this film from being made?

Again, Fletch did not hear her answer.

To the short reporter he said, “That would be uncivil of you.”

“Don’t you scoff at us, Mister. You work South and you mind your manners—you hear?”

“In this business,” Fletch said to the short reporter, “there is no such thing as a wrong question. There are only wrong answers.”

As he was leaving the lobby, Fletch heard a
reporter ask:
Ms Mooney, have you yourself received any death threats?

“Hey,” Moxie said.

She got into the front seat of the white Lincoln Continental and closed the door.

“Hey.” Fletch was waiting in the back seat. She had taken exactly as long with the press as he thought she would. Without air-conditioning running, the car was hot, even on a gray day.

“Why are you sitting in the front seat?” Fletch asked.

“I’m a democratic star.”

A few people were milling around the car, looking in.

“You believe in Equity?”

“And Equity believes in me. I pay my dues.”

She sat sideways on the front seat and put her tanned arm along the top of the backrest.

“I may call you Fletch?”

“When you call me.”

“That’s a funny name. Think of all the things with which it rhymes.”

“Yes,” he mused. “Canelloni, for one. Prognathous, lasket, checkerberry, scantling, Pyeshkov, modulas, Gog and Magog.”

“You know any other big words?”

“That’s it.”

“Thanks for what you did for me in there.” Moxie smiled. “Pulling the teeth of the other reporters—and all those to come.”

“Thought there was a need for one or two clear, simple statements on the incident from you.”

“Didn’t I do well?”

“You did. Of course.”

“‘Steve Peterman was my friend’.” Moxie sort-of quoted, with a sort-of choke in her throat. “The bastard. I could have killed him.”

“Someone agreed with you, apparently.” Outside the window nearest Fletch stood a heavy woman in a gaily printed dress. “Moxie, they have to have this murder solved in a matter of hours.”

“Why?” Her face was as free of wrinkles as if she had never read a book. Moxie had read books. “Why do you say that?”

“Steve wasn’t shot. Like from a distance. He was stabbed. In public.”

“Steve was just dying to get on
The Dan Buckley Show”
she drawled.

“There were cameras all over the place. There were cameras working the talk show. Local press were everywhere taking pictures of everything and everybody that had paint on it, whether it moved or not.”

“Rather daring of whoever did it.”

“And security was so tight on location they have the names and reason for being there of everyone within yodeling distance.”

“Good,” Moxie said. “Let’s consider the damned thing solved.”

“Are you sure this isn’t one of Peterman’s grand publicity schemes gone awry? Like the knife was just supposed to land on the stage, or something?”

“You’re kidding. Steve wouldn’t risk getting a spot on his slacks if he saw an orphanage on fire.”

“Hey,” Fletch said.

“What?”

“Stop acting tough.”

She read his face. “What am I doing, protecting myself?”

“I would say so,” he answered. “It’s not every day the guy sitting next to you gets stabbed. A person you know, someone important to you.”

“I guess so.” She sighed. “I was having real problems with Steve, Fletch. Which is why I asked you to come down. I wanted to talk it out with somebody. I was finding it very difficult to be nice to him.”

“Not being nice is not the same as being murderous.”

“What?”

“Forget it. You’re fighting shock, Moxie. Makin’ like a heartless vamp.”

“Yeah.”

“You know it?”

“I guess so. Sure.”

“You and Steve were close at one time.”

“Steve was just using me,” she said quietly. “Where’s Marge? Is she okay?”

Fletch shrugged. “I expect she’s being taken care of.”

“They questioned her first,” Moxie said. “In a car. At the beach.”

“I see. Were Steve and Marge close?”

“I wouldn’t say Steve was close to anybody but his banker.”

“I was thinking of Marge,” Fletch said.

“Good,” Moxie said. “Steve never thought of her.”

Her head was down and she was speaking softly. Beneath her tan, her skin had whitened. The enormity of what had happened was finally sinking into her. “Phew,” she said. “I guess I am confused. I’m so used to people dying on stage and on camera with me. You know? Of acting out my reaction.”

“I know.”

“Steve is really dead?” She had turned her face from him. “Steve is really dead.”

He flicked his tongue against the side of her neck. “Hang in there, Moxie.” He opened the car door to get out. “I’ll pick you up for dinner. Eight o’clock okay?”

“At La Playa,” she said.

He had one foot on the pavement.

She cork-screwed around on the front seat. “Fletch?”

“Yeah?” He put his head back inside the car. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

“Find Freddy for me, will you?”

“Freddy? Is he here?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Oh, God.”

“He’s playing the attentive father these days to me, or retired on me, or something.”

“Let me guess which.”

“He shouldn’t be loose in public, with all this goin’ on. The murder.”

“Is he boozin’?”

“You need to ask?”

There was sand on the rear rug of the Lincoln.

Moxie said, “I suspect all those little squiggles in his brain have finally turned their toes up in the booze. Can’t blame ’em. They’ve been drownin’ in booze for years.”

Over the car’s blue rug, perfect images flashed for Fletch: Frederick Mooney on stage as Willy Loman, Richard III, and Lear. On film as Falstaff, as Disraeli, as Captain Bligh, as a baggy-pants comic, as a decent Montana rancher turned decent politician, as Scanlon on Death Row, as…

“He was the best,” Fletch said, “even when he was stinko.”

“History,” Moxie said.

“Where should I look?”

“One of the joints on Bonita Beach. He drove up with us this morning. Freddy never wanders far, when there’s a handy bar.”

Fletch chuckled. “The thought of Freddy makes poets of us all.”

“See you at eight,” she said. “Thanks, Fletch.”

“Okay.”

Walking back toward the police station, Fletch noticed big, blowsy, wet clouds blowing in from the northwest.

“Okay,” Fletch said to the secretary sitting at the desk between the doors marked INVESTIGATIONS and CHIEF OF POLICE, “I’ll see whoever’s in charge now.”

The woman in the light yellow blouse looked at him as if he had just fallen from the moon. The lobby was still full of people.

“Have you been called?” asked the woman who had been doing the calling.

“No,” Fletch said, “but I’m willing to serve.”

The Investigations door opened and Dan Buckley came out looking as if he had been tumble-dried. The reporters rose to him like a puff of soot. Even without smiling, there was still amiable assurance on Buckley’s face.

The short reporter glared at Fletch and made a point of stepping into the space between him and Buckley.

Are you going to run the tape of this show on television?

“No, no,” Buckley answered. “I’m turning every centimeter of tape over to the police. The police will have our complete cooperation. Such a tragedy.”

A middle-aged woman with handsomely waved brown hair came through the door marked INVESTIGATIONS. Fletch had never seen a police shirt so well filled. Her badge lay comfortably on her left breast. She had typewritten sheets in her hand. She was about to say something to the secretary.

“I’m next,” Fletch informed her.

She, too, looked at Fletch as if he had just arrived from the moon.

“Fletcher,” he said.

She looked down her list, turned a page, looked down the list, turned another page, looked down the list. “Honey,” she said, “you’re last.”

Fletch grinned. “I bet you’ve been wanting to come to the end of that list.”

She grinned back at him, waved the typewritten sheets at him, and said, “Come on in.”

Going behind her desk, she said, “I’m Chief of Detectives Roz Nachman.”

Fletch closed the door behind him.

Sitting down at her desk she peered into the window of her audio-recorder to see how much tape was left.

“Sit down, sit down,” she said.

He did.

“Why don’t I just give you a statement,” he said. “Save time. Save you the bother of asking a lot of questions.”

She shrugged. “Go ahead.” She pushed the Record button on her tape machine.

“Name’s I. M. Fletcher.”

Sitting behind her desk, hands folded in her lap, Chief of Detectives Roz Nachman looked at Fletch’s moccasins, his legs, his shorts, his tennis shirt, his arms, his neck, his face. Her smile was tolerant: that of someone about to hear a tale about fairies and witches.

“I arrived at the shooting location of the film
Midsummer Night’s Madness
on Bonita Beach at about five minutes past three this afternoon. At the security gate, I showed my press credentials from Global Cable News. The security guard told me that the taping would continue until shortly before four. He directed me to the pavillion where a bar had been set up. He said a reception for the television crew and press was planned for after the taping.

“I went directly to the pavillion. Only one other person was present in the pavillion all the time I was there, a woman who later identified herself to me as the wife of the deceased. Marge Peterman. She was watching, on a television monitor, the taping of the show. I could see, at a distance and not clearly, the actual set of
The Dan Buckley Show.
I could also see, but not clearly, the monitor screen. In fact, I was looking at neither. I poured myself a glass of orange juice from the bar. My attention
was called to the incident by Marge Peterman’s saying, ‘What happened to Steve?’.

“I looked across at the set and saw that Peterman was sitting in an odd position. I stood behind Mrs Peterman to get a better view of the monitor. On the monitor I saw blood dribbling from Peterman’s mouth. This was at three twenty-three.

“I helped Mrs Peterman away from the pavillion, sat her in a chair at the side of the parking lot, got her some coffee, and sat with her alone until three fifty-three when some other people, Dan Buckley among them, came along, broke the news to her, and took charge of her.

“End of statement.”

“You are a reporter,” Roz Nachman mused. “Concise. To the point. What you could see, what you did see. Exact times by your watch. You didn’t mention the ghost you saw pass through the talk-show set and drive a knife into Peterman’s back.”

“What?”

“Now, Mister Fletcher, despite your very complete and, I’m sure, very accurate statement, will you permit some questions?”

“Sure.”

“Good of you. You’re sure of the exact time?”

“I’m a reporter. Something happens, I look at my watch.”

“Why were you on location of this filming?”

“To see Moxie Mooney.”

“On assignment?”

“These days I get to make up my own assignments.”