Free Fletch Reflected by Gregory McDonald Page B

health, if you know what I mean, by singing to him in her cabin by the lake. So they could make beautiful music together. I saw it. It stank.”
    “I must have missed that one.”
    “It stank. It was shown here on the estate. Terrible movie. But we told her how proud we are of her.”
    “This is one of Doctor Radliegh’s daughters? A movie star?” Jack was fitting his groceries into his knapsack.
    Marie sneezed. “You think my sneezin’ will get me anything if I do enough of it in shorty pajamas under a tree?”
    “Maybe,” Jack said. “Maybe you’ll be beaned by a hungry undertaker.”
    Marie said, “I knew you were listening.”
    Outside, fitting his new knapsack onto his back, climbing on his bike, Jack noticed a candy bar wrapper next to the curb.

9
    T he short tanned girl with short dark hair wearing a short white tennis skirt watched Jack approach without apparently blinking in the full sunlight. She stood by a net on one of the tennis courts. Three racquets leaned against the net. At her feet was a bag of balls.
    She had just stood by the net, waiting, not practicing her serve or using the backboard. She didn’t even have a racquet in hand.
    “Shana told me about you,” she said. “At lunch.”
    “I’m Jack.”
    “I know.”
    He picked up one of the three racquets. “Are we expecting someone? Playing Canadian doubles?”
    “No. I just thought I’d give you a choice of racquets.”
    “Thanks.”
    Coming out of the General Store in the village of Vindemia, Jack had noticed a uniformed security guard using the public pay phone.
    Before going to the tennis courts Jack had bicycled his groceries back to his quarters, stored them in the small refrigerator, small cupboards. He ate a ham sandwich with a glass of milk.
    “Let’s just rally, shall we?” he asked.
    “Okay.” Alixis’ voice was bored, indifferent.
    Watching her across the net playing tennis, Jack saw that Alixis had been beautifully taught. Her legs were excellent, muscular, springy.
    But either she was awfully tired or awfully lazy. Unlesshis shot bounced within a convenient few steps of her, she ignored it.
    After a few minutes, he asked, “Shall we play a game?”
    “No,” she answered. “Let’s just sit. I’m hot.”
    “Okay.”
    She sat on a bench in the sunlight at the side of the court.
    She said, “This will permit me to tell my father I spent time on the tennis court this afternoon.”
    “Is that required?”
    “Required?” A light breeze blew against her short hair. “You mean, do we have to sign in, punch a clock? Not exactly. But it is well to mention casually our day’s activities in front of my father: time spent swimming, in the gym, on the tennis courts, in the library.”
    “Why?”
    “If we don’t, if he doesn’t think we are obeying his philosophy of daily living, balancing physical and so-called intellectual activity, he just turns colder. Then comes comments regarding our wasting our lives, sarcasm … He lets us know his disapproval.”
    “I heard a cabin on the estate blew up the other day, before I got here.”
    “Yes. My father’s ‘think house.’”
    “How did it happen?”
    “One of his ideas must have caught fire while he wasn’t watching.”
    “Why would the heat be on in the cabin this time of year?”
    “Was it?”
    “And the front axle of his Jeep broke while he was driving it?”
    “It shouldn’t have. That Jeep is almost new.”
    “And Doctor Wilson was gassed to death in the laboratory this afternoon.”
    “Do you suppose it was because he is an Afro-American?”
    “What would that have to do with anything?”
    “Got me.”
    “Why would a physicist have lethal gas in his laboratory anyway?”
    She said, “I doubt he did.”
    Jack hesitated. “The lab. blew up. I was there. We all thought your dad was in the explosion. I mean, dead. Killed by it.”
    Fixing her hair with her fingers, Alixis said: “Oh.”
    “He looked rather heroic walking out of the smoke