“Some humble reporter,” Nachman commented. “Entertain big movie stars and film producers at his Italian estate. Wait until I tell the guys and gals on the local police beat. They can’t even afford to go to the movies twice a week. You must spell better than they do.”
“Never mind,” Fletch said. “They don’t like me already.”
“So on that weekend at your little villa’ in Italy, who slept with whom?”
“What a question.”
“Yes,” Nachman said. “It’s a question. Were Moxie Mooney and Steven Peterman intimate?”
“No.”
“You’re making me ask every question, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Were you and Ms Mooney intimate?”
“Sure.”
“Why ‘sure’? Are you and Ms Mooney lovers?”
“Off and on.”
“‘Off and on’.” Chin on hand, elbow on desk blotter, Roz Nachman contemplated what off and on could mean. Finally, she shook her head. “I think you should explain.”
“Not sure I can.”
“Try,” she said. “So the hems of Justice will be neat.”
“You see.” Fletch looked at the ceiling. “Each time Moxie and I meet, here and there, now and then, we pretend we’ve never met before. We pretend we’re just meeting for the first time.”
Roz frowned. “No. I don’t really see.”
“Okay.”
“Would you walk that past me again?”
“It’s simple.” Fletch took another long look at the ceiling. “We’ve known each other a long time and well. I suppose we love each other. So each time we meet, we pretend we’ve never met before. Which is true, you see. We never really have met before. Because people today aren’t really the same people they were yesterday or the day before. Every day you’re a new person; you have new thoughts, new experiences. You should never meet a person and presume she’s the same person she was last week. Because she’s not. It’s just the reality of existence.”
“I see,” Roz Nachman said, staring at him. “And then you jump into bed together?”
“Shucks.” Fletch lowered his eyelids.
“If you two have so much fun together, why don’t you stay together?”
“Oh, no.” Fletch glanced at the tape recorder. “You see, we probably can’t stand each other. I mean, in reality.”
“Because you’re both much too beautiful,” Roz Nachman said. “Physically.”
“No, no,” Fletch said. “Moxie’s the most beautiful crittur who’s ever eaten a french fry.”
“Has she ever eaten a french fry?”
“One or two. When she can get ’em.”
“She doesn’t look like she’s ever eaten a french fry.”
“It’s more complex than all that. Maybe it’s that we both play the same kind of games. We make a poor audience for each other.”
“‘Games’.” Nachman had picked up a pencil and was running its point loosely back and forth over a piece of paper. “I wonder what that means.”
“Why do I feel like I’m sitting in the office of a public school Guidance Counselor?”
“The statement you gave when you first came in here, Mister Fletcher, was factually accurate.” Nachman waved her pencil at the tape recorder. “And a complete lie.”
“Me? Lie?”
“No wonder you’re such a rich reporter you can live on the Italian Riviera.”
“I know I flunked Mechanical Drawing, Ms Frobisher,” Fletch said, “but I really want to take Auto Repair a second year.”
“You certainly gave the impression you came to Bonita Beach as a reporter to interview Ms Mooney. You certainly did not volunteer the information that you knew the murder victim, or Ms Mooney—the latter intimately. Is all this part of some game you’re playing?”
“All the information you’ve elicited from me is irrelevent. I didn’t kill anybody.”
“I wonder if you’d mind leaving that decision to the authorities?”
“I sure would mind. All I’m saying is that Marge Peterman didn’t kill him either. I was with her at the moment Peterman was being murdered.”
“The truth, Mister Fletcher, is that no one I’ve talked with so far on this list testifies to having seen either you or Marge Peterman from shortly after three until shortly before four.”
“What are you saying?”
“And I’ve never known a reporter who can afford a house of any kind on the Italian Riviera.”
Fletch said, “I write good.”
“Was Ms Mooney expecting you today?”
“Yes.”
“And what kind of a game is she playing?”
“She’s not playing any kind of a game. You’re turning two-penny psychoanalysis into—”
“Let’s go on.” Sitting straight at her desk, Nachman referred to some handwritten notes.
“At least I’m answering your questions.”
Nachman glared at him. “You know what happens to you if you don’t.”
“Yeah,” said Fletch. “I don’t get to take Auto Repair next semester.”
“What was your impression of Steven Peterman when he spent the weekend at your house in Italy?”
“You’re asking for an opinion.”
“Something tells me you have one.”
“I do.”
“What is it?”
“He was a son of a bitch.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you asked me.”
“Why do you characterize Steven Peterman as ‘a son of a bitch’?”
“He was a nuisance. Look,” Fletch said, “the house there is on the beach. Above the beach. It’s a beach house.”
“You’re loosing your conciseness.”
“People hang around in swim suits. Pasta and fish for supper on the patio. A little wine. Music.”
“You’re saying Peterman didn’t fit in.”
“Always in a three-piece suit. He wore a cravat. Wouldn’t go on the beach because he didn’t want sand against his Gucci loafers.”
“Intolerable behavior.”
“Always on the telephone. Calling Rome, Geneva, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires. I know. I got the phone bill. It would have been cheaper to have had the entire French government for the weekend.”
“All right. He was an inconsiderate houseguest.”
“Every night he insisted everybody get dressed up and plod through the most expensive cafes, restaurants, night clubs, casinos on the Riviera.”
“And you paid?”
“Everytime a bill came, he was on the telephone somewhere.”
“Okay.”
“Worse. Everytime he saw Moxie, he bothered her with some clause of some contract, or some detail of her schedule, ran over the names of people she was to meet in Berlin two weeks from then, Brussels, who, what, where, when, why. He never left her alone. She was there to relax.”
“And play games with you. You two avoided him?”
“As much as we could. It’s hard to ignore a government-in-residence.”
“You played hide-and-seek with him.”
“Yeah.”
“Marjory Peterman was not with you that weekend. Right?”
“Right.”
“Where was she?”
Fletch shrugged. “Home milking her minks, for all I know.”
“I repeat the question: you have never seen or spoken with Marjory Peterman before today?”
“Right. No. Never.”
“You knew the victim, Steven Peterman, and admit not liking him.”
“I would never murder anyone over a phone bill. Instead, I just wouldn’t pay it. I’d move to Spain.”
“And you have this complicated love-slash-hate relationship with Moxie Mooney.”
Fletch looked at her from under lowered eyelids. “Don’t make too much of that.”
She looked evenly back at him. “Frankly, Mister Fletcher, I think you and Ms Mooney are capable of anything… together.” She glanced at the tape recorder, at Fletch, and at the typewritten list on her desk. “Okay, Mister Fletcher. I guess I don’t need to tell you not to leave the Fort Myers area.”