Fletch and the Widow Bradley

12

F L E T C H D R O V E B Y the Bradley house in Southworth, saw the Cadillac in the driveway, saw a man in the driveway two houses down painting a thirty foot sailboat on a trailer hitch, continued through the executive-homes neighborhood until he came back to the main road, turned left, stopped at a gas station, took slacks, a jacket, shirt, loafers and socks from the trunk of his M.G., went into the rest room and changed.

Then he drove back to the street the Bradley house was on and parked three houses beyond it.

He walked back to the driveway where the man was painting the boat. He went up the driveway and stood next to the man, who was dressed in shorts and a paint-spotted sweat shirt. “Hi,” Fletch said. “That’s a wood boat.”

The man smiled at him. “She sure is.” The man was in his late thirties and still had freckles across his nose. “She’s my wood boat and she’ll never be your wood boat. Not for sale.”

He had put green garbage bags on the driveway to catch the paint. Not much had spilled.

“I’m in real estate,” Fletch said. “The question I have to ask you is one I really hate to ask.”

“My house isn’t for sale, either.”

“Not yours,” Fletch said. “The Bradleys’.”

“Oh, them.” The man glanced in the direction of the Bradleys’ house.

“When we hear of a death of the head of a household, we have to ask if anybody thinks that house might go on the market. At least my boss says I have to.”

“What firm you work with?”

“South Southworth Reality.” Fletch said it in such a way the man might think he was stuttering.

“You work for Paul Krantz?”

“Yeah.”

“I know Paul. He helped put together a real estate deal for my father a few years ago.”

“Nice man, Paul is,” Fletch said.

“So you’d rather ask a neighbor about a widow’s intentions than ask the widow herself.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. Except the neighbor might not know.”

“Your guess would be better than mine.”

The man was applying the creamy white paint thickly to the wood. “Is Tom Bradley dead?” the man asked.

“So we hear.”

“I thought so, too. In fact I could say I knew so. Then I read an article in the newspaper the other day, the News-Tribune, that made him seem very much alive. Couldn’t believe my eyes. I read the piece twice and then showed it to my wife. I had to ask her if I’d gone crazy.”

“Yeah.” Fletch stood on one foot and then the other.

“Did you read it?”

“I never read the financial pages,” Fletch said. “Perhaps I should.”

“Not that the financial pages of the News-Tribune are that good. Their sports pages are better.”

Fletch looked up at the clean, curtained windows of the house. “Is Tom Bradley dead or not?”

“Enid Bradley said so.”

“When?”

“At a Christmas party we gave. Every year we give one, just for people in the neighborhood. Every year we invite the Bradleys—just because they live here. They never came. This year, Enid came. At some point during the party, my wife came to me and said, ‘Did you know Tom Bradley is dead? Enid just mentioned it.’ I went and spoke to Enid. First we’d heard of it. This neighborhood isn’t that close, but, gee, when a guy dies two houses away from you, you expect to hear about it.”

“Enid Bradley told you Thomas Bradley is dead?”

The man squinted through the sunlight at Fletch. “Enid Bradley told me Thomas Bradley is dead,” he said exactly. “She told me last Christmas. Then I see his name in the newspaper the other day. Do you understand it?”

“Ah,” Fletch said. “I guess newspapers have been known to be wrong.”

“Come on. Quoting a dead man?”

“I suppose it can happen,” Fletch said.

“Will you tell me how?”

“I wish I could. If Mrs. Bradley says her husband is dead …”

“… then he must be dead. Right?”

“They have a couple of kids, haven’t they?”

“Yeah.”

Fletch waited for more, but none came. He gathered the neighborhood did not have much positive enthusiasm for the Bradley young. The man spent longer than usual putting paint on his brush.

“Nice boat,” Fletch finally said. “You take good care of it.”

“I guess I can say to you,” the man said, “seeing you work for Paul Krantz—and I consider him a friend—that the Bradleys are not the most popular neighbors.”

“I see.”

“I’d be polite to say they’re loud.”

“Loud?”

“They’ve had their problems, I guess. Loud—you know what I mean—screams in the night, shouting, doors slamming, the kids burning rubber as they drive away from the house two, three o’clock in the morning. The occasional smashed window.”

Fletch looked around. All the houses were set well back from the road, and from each other. “You hear things like that here?”

“You wouldn’t think so. And talking to Enid Bradley, looking at her, you’d think she was the quietest, most demure little lady you ever met. But sometimes at night we’d hear her screaming like a stuck pig. Hysterical shouting and screaming. We never heard his voice at all.” Again the man stirred the paint thoughtfully with his brush before lifting it. “Tom Bradley tried suicide two or three years ago.”

“You know that?”

“The rescue squad came early Sunday morning. We saw them bring the stomach pump into the house, and then carry him off strapped to a stretcher. The whole neighborhood saw it. And he didn’t take too many pills by accident. It was after one of those all-night shouts, you know?”

“Maybe he was sick,” Fletch said. “Maybe he had been told he was fatally ill, or something, you know? I mean, he did die.”

“I don’t know, either. But I do know the screaming and shouting went on in that house for as long as we’ve lived here. Five or six years. Deep emotional problems. That family had deep emotional problems. I suspect there’s a family like that in every neighborhood, from the slums to a neighborhood like this, for the lower-rich. Feel sorry for them, but what the hell can we do?”

“Has all that stopped? I mean, the noise and the smashed windows, since Tom Bradley died?”

“Yeah. It’s become a very quiet house. The kids come and go, but there are no more slamming doors and burning rubber. Of course, she—I mean Enid—goes off to work nearly every day now. Or so my wife tells me. I think someone told me she’s trying to run her husband’s company—I forget the name of it, oh, yeah, Wagnall-Phipps is what the News-Tribune said—until she can get someone else to take over. Of course if the News-Tribune said Wagnall-Phipps, the company might be called anything including Smith, Smith and Smith.”

“Yeah,” Fletch said. “News-Tribune. Yuck. Punk paper.”

“They have a good sports section.”

“Mrs. Bradley didn’t say anything to you about selling the house?”

“Haven’t seen her since Christmas. Months ago. Live two houses away and I don’t think anyone in the neighborhood actually converses with anyone in that house, year after year. We’ve heard enough of their noise. We’re all embarrassed, I guess. You understand.”

“Sure.”

“I wish you would go ask Mrs. Bradley if she’s moving. It might give her the idea that she should.”

“Yeah.”

“This is a nice neighborhood. It would be great to have a nice family in that house. You know, a family that didn’t embarrass us all when we look at them?” The man moved his paint bucket nearer the stern of the boat. “Tell her her house is worth a lot of money, and you can find her a nice condominium down nearer the center of town—one with padded walls.”