Fletch's Moxie by Gregory McDonald Read Free Book Online

light?”
    “We’ve been sitting through a hell of a storm. Pouring rain. Thunder. Lightning.”
    Mooney looked confused, curious. He said, “I thought that was in
King Lear.”
    “Come on.” Fletch stood up. “Your daughter’s waiting.”
    “Involved in a murder…”
    “Something like that.”
    “I wonder… if she has a black veil in her wardrobe.”
    “I don’t know,” Fletch said. “Time to go.”
    “That bottle…” Mooney pointed at it. “… goes in that bag.” He pointed at the wrong spot on the floor, to his right rather than his left, to where the airlines bag wasn’t.
    Fletch capped the bottle and put it in the bag.
    There were three other full bottles in the bag, one empty, and some bulky odd rags.
    Mooney swallowed the rest of his drink, stood up and lurched.
    Fletch grabbed his arm.
    “Going now?” the bartender asked.
    “Thank you, Innkeeper,” Mooney said, “for your superb horse.”
    “‘Night, Mister Mooney.”
    “Horsepitality.”
    Fletch said,
“Will’t please your highness walk?”
    Bent over, clutching Fletch’s arm, Mooney grinned up at him. “
You must bear with me. Pray you now, forget and forgive.
I
am old and foolish.”
    Getting him down the stairs was a chore. It took almost ten minutes.
    When Mooney stepped out from under the roof he looked at the day, at the Gulf, at the rain as if he’d never seen it all before.
    “Wet day,” he said. “Think I’ll go back to the hotel and slip into a dry martini.”
    “Think I’ll go back to the hotel,” Fletch said, “and slip into your daughter.”
    Mooney did not look at Fletch or turn his head but the skin just forward of his ear turned red.
    Fletch put him in the back seat of the rented car.
    On the drive to Vanderbilt Beach, Frederick Mooney took two swigs from his bottle and fell asleep. He snored loudly enough to awake anyone dozing in any balcony, anywhere.

7
    “May I help you, sir?”
    Through the glass of the front door of Hotel La Playa, the red jacketed bellman had seen Fletch drive up, get out of the car, and hesitate. It was after dark and Fletch was shoeless, in wet shorts and shirt.
    “Yeah. Will you please tell Ms Mooney her father and driver are waiting for her?”
    “Certainly, sir.”
    Fletch leaned against the wet car. Even with doors and windows closed he could hear Frederick Mooney snoring in the back seat.
    Within five minutes Moxie came through the door and down the steps.
    She was wearing a simple, short, black dress. And a black veil.
    Fletch held the passenger seat’s door open for her and got in the driver’s side.
    In the back seat Frederick Mooney turned quiet.
    “My God,” Moxie expostulated. “What’s the world coming to? Think of a man like Steve Peterman being stabbed to death right before my very eyes!”
    “Was it?”
    “Beg pardon, young man?”
    Fletch headed the car back to Route 41. “Was it before your very eyes?”
    “No. Really, I didn’t see a thing. I don’t see how such a thing could have happened.”
    “Were you close?”
    “Like brother and sister. Steve’s been with me years. Helping me. Through thick and thin. Through good times and bad times. Ups and downs.”
    “Coming and going.”
    “Coming and going.”
    “Arrivals and departures.”
    “Arrivals and departures.”
    From the back seat, Frederick Mooney said, “Very good, girlie.”
    Moxie pulled off her hat and veil and threw them on the backseat next to her father. She was grinning. “Thought you’d like it, O.L.”
    “I understand if you don’t carry off this performance very well indeed, darling daughter, your next engagement might be a long one in the cooler.”
    “He’s doing the role of Scanlon,” Moxie explained to Fletch.
    “Oh.”
    “The Saint on Murderers’ Row.”
    “I see.”
    “Was it you what busted the creep’s plumbing, daughter?”
    “I didn’t mean to, honest, I didn’t. See I was parin’ my nails with this shiv when he come along real careless like and