Fletch's Moxie Read Online Free PDF

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