Fletch’s Moxie

2

“Is Steve Peterman your husband?” Fletch asked. He was careful to use the word is rather than was although he was sure the latter was appropriate.

In the metal folding chair, her drawn face nodded in the affirmative. “I’m Marge Peterman.”

Fletch had found two metal chairs and placed them behind a trailer in the parking lot, out of the way of the traffic he knew would be passing to and from the beach. He sat Marge Peterman in one and went to the canteen. He brought back two cups of coffee, one black, the other with cream and sugar. He offered her both. She chose the black. He put the other coffee on the sand near her feet, and sat quietly in the other chair.

Fletch had arrived at the location of Midsummer Night’s Madness on Bonita Beach only a half hour before. His credentials from Global Cable News had gained him entry onto location. The security guard told him Moxie was taping The Dan Buckley Show and enjoined Fletch to silence. He directed Fletch to the hospitality pavillion where a courtesy bar had been set up to host the television crew and other press after the taping.

There he had found a woman sitting alone on a canvas chair watching her husband on a television monitor.

Now they were sitting together behind a trailer at the edge of a parking lot.

She had sipped her coffee cup dry and then picked the Styrofoam cup to little pieces. Bits of Styrofoam were in her lap and on the sand around her feet like crumbs.

“When are they going to tell me what happened?” she asked.

She could have rebelled from Fletch’s ministrations and found out for herself. She didn’t. She had understood enough of what she had seen to prefer acute anxiety to dead certainty.

“Breathe deeply,” Fletch said.

She took a deep breath and choked off a sob.

The Rescue Squad ambulance was the first to arrive. Blue lights flashing on the gray day, it threaded its way slowly and carefully down onto the beach. A police car arrived next, its siren and lights on, but seemingly in no great hurry. Some local police had already been assigned to the film location. Then two more police cars came screaming, skidding in as if their drivers hoped the cameras were on. Out of the passenger seat of one emerged a middle-aged woman in uniform.

Marge Peterman said, “If they take Steve to the hospital, I want to go with him.”

Fletch nodded. The ambulance had not returned from the beach, as it would have if there were any necessity to go to the hospital.

“I mean, I want to go with him in the ambulance.”

Fletch nodded again.

Most of the people, the film crew, the television crew, the press, had gone down to the beach like pieces of metal being drawn by a magnet. Now a few were returning. As they returned, they walked with their chins down. Their shoulders seemed higher than normal. And the skin beneath their tans seemed touched by bleach. None was talking.

Fletch could not hear the murmur of the Gulf or even the chatter of the birds among the palm trees.

An airplane taking off from Fort Myers passed overhead.

A young woman in shorts, a halter, and sandals appeared around the corner of the trailer and stopped. She looked back toward the beach, wondering what to do, looking for support. A man with a large stomach extending a dark blue T-shirt, with dark curly hair, a light meter dangling from a string around his neck arrived and stood next to the young woman. He kept looking at Marge Peterman’s back. A young policeman joined them. He shoved his hat back off his sweaty forehead and looked toward the road, probably wishing there were traffic to direct. One or two other people came to stand with them.

Dan Buckley came around the corner of the trailer and looked at each of the people standing there. He, too, hesitated. Then he slowly came forward and put his hand on Marge Peterman’s shoulder.

She looked up at him.

“Dan…”

Fletch gave Buckley his chair and stood aside. “Mrs. Peterman…” Dan Buckley said. “Marge, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Marge.” He leaned forward in the chair, forearms on his thighs. “It seems your husband… It seems Steve is dead. I’m sorry, but…”

Buckley’s face lost none of its confident amiability in its seriousness, its sadness. Watching him, Fletch wished that if he ever had to take such bad news, it be broken to him by such a professional face as Dan Buckley’s. In Buckley’s face there was the built-in assurance that no matter how bad the present facts, there would be a world tomorrow, a show tomorrow, a laugh tomorrow.

Marge Peterman stared at Buckley. “What do you mean ‘seems to be’?” Her chin quivered. “‘Seems to be dead’?”

Buckley’s hands cupped hers. “Is dead. Steve is dead, uh, Marge.”

Her face rejected the news, then crumpled in tears. She took her hands from him and put them to her face. “What happened?” she choked. “What happened to Steve?”

Buckley looked up at Fletch. Then he sat back in the chair. His eyes ran along a heavy-duty cable strung over the parking lot.

He said nothing.

The young woman in the halter came forward and put both her hands on Marge Peterman’s shoulders. “Come on,” she said.

Marge stood up and staggered on the flat ground.

The man in the blue T-shirt took her arm.

Together, the man and the young woman walked Marge Peterman through the trailers to the front of the parking lot.

“What did happen?” Fletch asked Buckley.

Buckley focused on Fletch. “Who are you?” he asked. Fletch was wearing sailcloth shorts, a tennis shirt, and no shoes. “The Ambassador from Bermuda?”

“Sometimes I get coffee for people,” Fletch said.

Buckley looked over the bits of Styrofoam on the sand. “He got stabbed.” He shook his head. “He got a knife stuck in his back. Right on the set. Right on camera.”

“He was quiet about it,” Fletch commented.

Buckley was looking at his fingers in his lap as if he had never seen them before. “It could not have happened. It absolutely could not have happened.”

“But it did though, huh?”

Buckley looked up. “Get me a cup of coffee, willya, kid? Black, no sugar.”

“Black no sugar,” Fletch repeated.

Fletch walked toward the canteen, past it, through the security gate, got into his rented car and drove off.