McNally's Folly

by Lawrence Sanders

  “It’s police business, Joe. Let them decide if his death was misadventure or otherwise. We begin rehearsals Thursday night at the theater. A cold reading from start to finish. Can I count on you being there?”

  As if he had not heard a word I said, Joe answered, “A few weeks back Richard Holmes came here to see you. Everyone in the office was talking about his visit. What did he want, Archy?”

  I could see no reason to skirt that one. “The truth, Joe, is that he wanted me to investigate Ouspenskaya, the popular psychic. Desdemona Darling couldn’t get enough of Ouspenskaya’s forecasts at five hundred dollars a pop. She wanted Ouspenskaya to locate something for her.”

  Joe smiled and shook his head. “Like a film she didn’t want anyone to see?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Me and a few million others. Desdemona Darling was just one of many actresses rumored to have gotten into the big time via the casting couch and smoker flicks. A popular scandal magazine in the fifties ran a piece listing all the suspects, Desdemona among them. It also said she frequented psychics to locate any prints that still existed so she could destroy them. The psychic she was seeing at the time gave the magazine the exclusive.”

  “Nice crowd,” I noted. “Between us, Joe, DeeDee told me Ouspenskaya found what she was looking for.”

  “Good. So everyone lives happily ever after.”

  “Not Richard Holmes, I’m afraid. Do you think his death has anything to do with Ouspenskaya’s supposed find?”

  Joe began to push the mail cart toward the next stop. “Like you, Archy, I’ll let the police puzzle it out.”

  “Will you be with us tomorrow night?” I said to the back of his head.

  “I’ll probably be there. I left your mail on your desk, Archy.”

  “You already told me that.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  WHEN I GOT BACK to my office the phone was ringing. It was Connie, breathless with excitement. “Archy, after your call I remembered that when Desdemona Darling and her husband arrived here they asked Lady Cynthia to recommend an employment agency to supply them with domestic help.”

  “You mean Jorge didn’t come with them from California?” I asked.

  “He did not,” Connie said. “What’s interesting is that Madame told them to talk to Mrs. Marsden and if Mrs. Marsden got Annie from Temporarily Yours she must have been familiar with the agency. Did Mrs. Marsden suggest Desdemona call them?”

  “I think she did, Connie, and I’m sure Jorge came from Temporarily Yours, too.” And another mystery bites the dust. Jorge was privy to conversations between DeeDee and her husband, and when Richard Holmes called to make his appointment with me, Jorge overheard that, too. I told Connie I had a few more leads to verify and then I would pay a call on Lady Cynthia.

  I left the office and drove back to our citadel on Ocean Boulevard. The yellow VW was in the driveway, but the station wagon was missing, therefore I was surprised, and elated, to find both Ursi and Jamie in the kitchen. Mother was out in the station wagon with Kate Mulligan. The McNally luck was alive and well in Palm Beach on this lovely afternoon, and I was on a roll.

  Success being a natural tonic I accepted Ursi’s invitation to nibble on a turkey club sandwich as she related to me the results of her morning phone-a-thon. An offer of a turkey club told me that while I was feasting on DeeDee’s smorgasbord the McNallys were enjoying a turkey dinner. Now, Ursi sliced generous slabs of cold white meat from the bird’s breast and, along with bacon, sliced tomatoes, lettuce and three pieces of toast, buttered and lavished with mayonnaise, she put together a jawbreaker only Dagwood Bumstead (and Archy McNally) could truly appreciate.

  It seems that several homes Ursi had contacted employed temporary help this season: from housekeepers to cooks, parlor maids, chauffeurs and bartenders and waitpersons for social events. One of the names Ursi mentioned was Haberstraw—of the divorcing Haberstraws.

  Jamie tempted me with a bottle of beer as he reported in as few words as possible what I had already taken for granted. Max didn’t know what agency Margaret came from but she was in the Ventura home at the time of the diamond clip fiasco. Roland said the Tremaines had not taken on any temporary help, but then Ouspenskaya had nothing to broadcast to Penny Tremaine the night he resurrected Freddy McNally.

  I had enough ammunition to call upon Lady Cynthia and inflict a profound blow to her pride—it would take an atom bomb to destroy it.

  Annie gave me a curt nod when she opened the portal to me. “Good day, Annie. It was nice knowing you.”

  “Uh?” said Annie. (Had she been spying on our Jamie?)

  Lady Cynthia looked like a million bucks in a beige linen Chanel frock—Coco, that is, not Mr. Lagerfeld—that must have set her back a half day’s interest on one of her money market accounts back when a dollar was worth ten of today’s and a pack of smokes cost two bits. I opened with a flourish of an invisible plumed bonnet. “Lend me your ear, Madame. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”

  “Really, Archy,” Lady Cynthia chided. “Being asked to direct the community theater has gone to your head. Better stick to snooping.”

  “Oh, but I have been snooping and I’m here to pull the plug on Serge Ouspenskaya’s shortwave apparatus. You better sit down, Lady Cynthia.”

  “I am sitting, lad. Now out with it or out with you.”

  If Father was chagrined at having been duped by Ouspenskaya, Lady C could best be described as livid. It did not go well with beige. The word “bastard” was but one of the more colorful names the lady attributed to her former mentor. When it came to expletives, our Creative Director was at her creative best. As she picked up the house phone to summon Annie, I made my exit.

  On the way out I passed Annie on the way in. “Like ships passing in the night,” I said in passing.

  I stuck my head into Connie’s office and gave her the news. “Unless Mrs. Marsden is expected back today, you had better get on the horn and find a replacement for little Annie. Temporarily Yours is permanently out of business.”

  Connie reached for her computer keyboard. “I hope I can locate a domestic agency on the Web.”

  “He who only hopes is hopeless,” I reminded her.

  “Get out of here, Archy McNally.”

  I drove to the office building on Clematis Street and took the elevator directly to the fourth floor. The layout was very similar to the floor below with the elevator opening directly onto a large reception room. Unlike the agency, the space was furnished more like an ornate living room than a modern office. Flocked wallpaper, settees, side tables, lamps, Oriental carpeting and a sound system emanating music to charm cobras out of wicker baskets.

  The young man seated in one of the lounge chairs, clipping his fingernails, was the same young man I had seen conversing with Ms. Duhane on my visit to Temporarily Yours. “Kyle Romaine, I presume.”

  “Who wants to know?” he snapped back, pocketing his clippers.

  “Archy McNally,” Serge Ouspenskaya said, entering from the adjoining room. “I was expecting you.”

  Without his turban and Nehru suit he was indistinguishable from the thousands of prosperous businessmen who spend the winter vacationing in Florida. He had a full head of dark hair and the olive complexion was more a result of the sun than his progenitors.

  “I just got off the phone with poor Annie,” Ouspenskaya went on. “I take it the jig is up, as they used to say. Please, have a seat, Mr. McNally. I can’t offer you anything as we don’t keep liquor on the premises. It’s bad for business.”

  The consummate actor to the end, he didn’t appear the least distressed at the collapse of his venture. I sat as Kyle looked at me askance but didn’t say a word. When Ouspenskaya settled into a lounge chair he continued, “Congratulations, Mr. McNally. Can I know how you did it?”

  “Binky Watrous ran into Annie downstairs,” I said. “When I learned that she was with Temporarily Yours I began to count heads. I knew for a fact Kate Mulligan was with th
e agency and learned from my father he had talked personally to Ms. Duhane when he applied for temporary help.”

  “Actually, he talked to Mrs. Ouspenskaya, my wife. This is Alexander, our son. Families that work together stay together.”

  He was conceding with all the aplomb of a guy who really believed that it wasn’t winning that counted but how you played the game—and with a warped sense of humor.

  “Annie led to Jorge and so on down the line,” I told him. “Did Margaret put the diamond clip Hanna had neglected to deposit in the safe back on the discarded dress?”

  “If you wish to believe that, Mr. McNally. I acquiesce to defeat but I admit to nothing.”

  Didn’t the Nazis use that same line? “I think you made your first serious slip when you described my meeting with Hanna Ventura. Remember Narcissus?”

  “I’m afraid I do, Mr. McNally. I’m sometimes too clever for my own good. I can’t help pushing the game to the edge of the abyss.”

  “And falling in,” Alexander said, sassing his papa.

  “Who asked you?” his papa rebuked. Turning to me Ouspenskaya went on. “My mother was a gypsy. Her name really was Ouspenskaya. I didn’t take my father’s name because I never knew it. Neither did Mama. She wanted a child but not a husband. Mama was a fortuneteller. Some said she really had the gift. Whatever talent I have in that direction I learned from her. When I went out on my own I worked Hollywood. Very fertile ground. I had a legit act in Las Vegas for a while and even traveled with a circus.”

  I started at the mention of Las Vegas but Ouspenskaya gave no indication that he noticed.

  “I got the idea for this operation when I returned to California. I imagined Palm Beach would be as fertile a venue as Hollywood and I was right. I contacted a broker here and he told me a temp agency was for sale. A good omen. The owners were desperate to get out and agreed to a lease deal with an option to buy. I recruited a number of hopeful starlets and actors who were down on their luck and, Horace Greeley notwithstanding, we headed east.”

  “You know we’ve done nothing illegal,” Alexander put in. “There’s nothing the police can charge us with.”

  “I think Mr. McNally is aware of that,” Ouspenskaya told his son.

  Technically, they were right. Ethically, they should be tarred, feathered and run out of town. “Where do you go from here?” I asked by way of a gentle hint.

  “My mother used to say that the gypsies, like the European Jews, always hoarded string. Do you know why, Mr. McNally?”

  “To tie up packing boxes for quick moves,” I answered.

  “Exactly. I think we will go back to southern California where we have a home and plan our next move. This wasn’t a bad run, Mr. McNally. Between the legit business downstairs and the gullible ladies of Palm Beach we turned a neat profit.”

  “You’re a criminal and a social cancer,” I told the miscreant.

  His son didn’t like it but Ouspenskaya gave no indication that he was offended. “I am many things, but I have never resorted to violence. I speak of the death of Mr. Richard Holmes. The police have been here to question me. I don’t like the police, Mr. McNally. When they put their nose in, it is time for me to get out. So, your exposé is redundant. We would have been out of here in a matter of days even without your help.”

  “You think Holmes was murdered?”

  “Who knows? Who cares? That the police are asking questions is enough for me to call it quits.”

  Was this the truth or was he saving face? And did he know more about Holmes’s death than he cared to admit? I didn’t want to antagonize him any further because I wanted information only he could give me. “How did you know Holmes was poisoned almost before the police did?”

  He smiled his patronizing smile and answered, “There are some tricks a true professional never reveals.”

  “Then I have to assume you poisoned him. He was cutting off his wife’s allowance, which was your bread and butter.”

  “Assume what you will, Mr. McNally, but remember what I said. I never resort to violence. There’s no profit in it.”

  And I believed him. “Desdemona Darling told me you found what she was looking for. True?”

  This took the actor by surprise and his facial expression told me what I wanted to know before he told me. “It’s always nice to know I’ve succeeded where others have failed. Was she in her cups at the time of the disclosure?”

  “She’d had a few.”

  “That’s what I thought. Now if you’ll excuse us, Mr. McNally, we have to gather string and load the covered wagon.”

  “One last thing,” I said, rising. “Kate Mulligan. Is she part of your operation?”

  I was treated to the smile once more and only common sense kept me from wiping it off his face with my fist. Besides, Alexander looked lean and mean—and younger than me by ten years.

  “You will have to ask her, Mr. McNally. Those in my employ that you have discovered I can no longer protect, but I will never tell you who the others are. They might want to remain in Palm Beach and good luck to them. You see, there really is honor among thieves.”

  What I wanted to do now was get back to Ocean Boulevard, don my swimming togs, and jump into the Atlantic to cleanse myself of the Ouspenskaya family stink. As I emerged from the building a cat crossed my path and I knew, instantly, that Kate Mulligan was one of Ouspenskaya’s informers. Follow carefully this line of thought association, a process faster than a speeding bullet.

  A while back I was hired to locate a kidnapped cat. (In Palm Beach this happens.) The case led to murder as my cases sometimes do, and the prime suspect, the victim’s husband, maintained his innocence because he had called his wife in the presence of Father and me, then found his wife dead when he arrived home. This seemed to prove that his wife was alive when he was with us, and murdered before he got home.

  Not true. He had murdered his wife before leaving home and in our presence he made the call and spoke, most likely, to his answering machine. Father and I heard only one side of the conversation. The murderer’s side. We believed he had spoken to his wife because, at the time, we had no reason to doubt it.

  Serge Ouspenskaya called Lady Cynthia at nine the morning she and Desdemona went to the police station and left a message on Connie’s voice mail. The message simply stated that Ouspenskaya wanted to talk to Lady Cynthia and would she please call him. He had said nothing about a disturbing dream or that the women would encounter trouble at the police station. When he called back after ten that same morning, he said his earlier call was to warn Lady Cynthia of trouble because by then he knew what the police had found. How? I told him, that’s how.

  Walking with Kate back to the house from Mother’s potting shed, I told her that Richard Holmes had been poisoned. It was then shortly after ten. Now I needed Ursi to confirm that Kate had immediately contacted Ouspenskaya.

  I was relieved to see Kate’s car gone from the driveway and the station wagon returned. She had gone for the day—and forever if I had anything to say about it. I went directly to the kitchen and put the question to Ursi.

  Our housekeeper had to think a while before answering. “Yes, Archy,” she said, “I remember that day. You and Kate came in from the garden. I remember because as soon as you left, Kate asked to use the phone. She said she wanted to make a call in private. I told her to use the phone in the den.”

  When Tony Newley belted out his classic, “What Kind of Fool Am I?”, he said it all, didn’t he?

  I had my swim and debated whether or not I should confront Kate Mulligan one last time when I received a call from James Ventura. “I hope you don’t mind me calling you at home, Archy,” he said. “They told me you had left the office and I wanted to speak to you before this evening.”

  “Not at all, James, it’s the reason I gave you this number. What can I do for you?”

  “Hanna is going out tonight, to rehearse for the play with Penny Tremaine,” he informed me.

  “That’s possible, Jame
s. We start formal rehearsals tomorrow, but some of the cast may be getting together to bone up.”

  “Have you seen the Arsenic and Old Lace film, Archy?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Both Hanna and Penny are policemen, or policewomen. I don’t think they have any lines, or at most a sentence each. For this they need to rehearse all evening?”

  “I see your point,” I said, reluctantly. I hate trailing people, especially lovers. “What time is she leaving, James?”

  “Seven.”

  “I’ll get on it,” I said.

  “Did you hear about Ouspenskaya?” he asked.

  With the speed of light, I thought, the news had traveled up and down Ocean Boulevard. “I heard, James.”

  “We got rid of Margaret. You know, I never cared for her.”

  It was too late to rent a Ford Escort, so I would have to borrow Mother’s Ford wagon—and would need another swim when this was over.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I WAITED FOR HANNA a safe distance from the Ventura home. When she pulled out in a smart black Corvette, I followed her to AlA. Most cars head in that direction so I had no fear of her paying any special attention to me. We went north on A1A which, as usual, was busy so all I had to do was join the herd. When she turned off for Lantana, I got the craziest idea that I knew where she was heading—and I was right.

  Hanna pulled up outside the home of Dr. Gussie Pearlberg. There were several other cars parked in the vicinity and leaning against one of them, obviously waiting for Hanna, was none other then William Ventura. Mother and stepson entered the home and office of Dr. Pearlberg. What was going on? A cocktail party, an orgy or—blessed mother of Sigmund Freud—a group therapy session?

  I had met Dr. Pearlberg, who is a psychiatrist, through Al Rogoff. This wonderful woman, who was eighty if she was a day, had on occasion provided the police with psychological profiles of serial murderers and rapists. I never consulted Dr. Gussie, as I call her, for my own neuroses, which I know to be incurable, but had introduced her to father, who often recommended her to clients in need of psychiatric help.