McNally's chance (mcnally)

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Enough to get the wind up. What did you tell them, may I ask?”

  Another cigarette, hardly smoked, bit the dust. “I told them to go climb the family tree and leave the daughter they wanted to terminate to me. That’s what I told them.”

  And that’s what I had feared. “Easy, Ms Wright. I don’t like these guys any more than you do but they are not to be trifled with. They will go to any length to prevent this mess from going public, and they all have good reasons for doing so. Zack Ward’s occupation, by the way, makes them very nervous.”

  My caution had her fuming, which put color on her alabaster cheeks. “I know all about their political expectations and their lovely children.

  In thirty years, they haven’t changed one iota. Still worried about the family name. Sill crying, me, me, me, my, my, my, and I, I, I. The nerve. The unmitigated nerve.

  “Docile Tom runs to New York every chance he gets. You know why, Mr.

  McNally? Because he keeps a young lady in a smart apartment on Central Park South. She’s younger than his son. When Dick disappears for a few weeks on business he’s at a posh rehab spa, drying out. Harry couldn’t marry me, but he ended up tying the knot with a lesbian, a nympho, and a tramp. Don’t trifle with them? I’ll step all over them, Mr. McNally.”

  I again advised restraint. “It makes no sense to bait them.

  Concentrate on getting Gillian and Zack out of Palm Beach no wiser than when they arrived. Harry’s son will be married in a few months, Troy Appleton will know his political future by then, and Cranston will get his appointment. It will take the heat off everyone for a spell and perhaps calmer heads will prevail.”

  “Don’t think I’m not trying to do just that. I told you I had offered Zack an interview if he could talk Gillian into giving up the search and going home. He’s very interested. I even took them all out the other evening for a start.”

  “So I heard. The Club Colette.”

  “Does nothing in this town go unnoticed, Mr. McNally?”

  “No, ma’am. The spring break trio will know about this meeting before it’s over.”

  She shrugged as if it made no difference at this point. “I am so tired,” she moaned. “I have spent all my life planning and plotting and scheming and working at that damn word processor until my eyes cross to keep my family living in luxury, and what do I get in return?

  Crap, that’s what. Ungrateful pups. Now I have to give an interview to a tabloid I wouldn’t use to wipe my feet on to get Gillian to do what I ask. I am tired, Mr. McNally. Very, very tired.”

  “Perhaps if you treated them with a little more respect and understanding,” I ventured warily, ‘they would respond in kind.”

  She gave me a vacant stare and spoke as if by rote. “Understanding, you say? Gillian falls in love with any man who looks at her twice.

  It’s clear what they’re after. Her legacy. Do you think I enjoy playing the party pooper? Well, I don’t, but I must. Robert is always short of cash and long on places to go, like expensive men’s boutiques, cocktail parties, and topless bars. I am the guy who keeps the show on the road and the actors from bumping into the scenery. Now if you don’t mind, doctor, I will get up off the couch and head home. I’m seeing one of Gillian’s fathers tonight. The last of the Mohegans.”

  With Sabrina Wright, if at first you don’t succeed, give up. I reached for her cigarettes and helped myself to one. I deserved it. “Do you know, Ms Wright, you are named after an ancient Roman river?”

  Tunny, I thought I was named after an Audrey Hepburn movie.”

  “Au cont mire Before there was Audrey Hepburn there was the river Severn.”

  For my last dinner with Ursi and Jamie in the family kitchen I took more care with my attire than I had been doing since being orphaned.

  Casual elegance was the goal. Too formal would put a damper on the party and too relaxed would be rude. Taupe gabardine slacks, a plummy silk jacket over a blue chambray shirt, and black patent-leather gentleman’s pumps. A look in the glass confirmed that a picture is worth a thousand words.

  I was delighted to see that Ursi and Jamie had also taken extra care with their apparel, although both would deny that they had done any such thing. Jamie was in summer flannels with a matching jacket, and I could see a print dress beneath Ursi’s apron.

  We greeted each other a bit sheepishly before I went into the den and returned with three martinis on a tray. Ursi giggled; Jamie nodded appreciatively and Archy passed out the silver bullets. To us,” I toasted. One sip and we were laughing at our own maladroit behavior.

  Reverting to business as usual we plunged into gossip, the homecoming, and Ursi’s feast.

  For our last supper, so to speak, Ursi had prepared and now served what I have long considered to be the quintessence of gastronomic delights.

  A Caesar salad, a la Ursi only the tender est inner leaves of the romaine lettuce steak au poivre, garlic mashed potatoes, stuffed mushrooms, and tiny green peas in butter.

  The steaks had been rubbed with crushed peppercorns, wrapped in paper, and left for hours, allowing the meat to absorb all the peppery flavor.

  Minutes before serving them Ursi sauteed the prime cuts in a mixture of hot oil and butter until they were charred on the outside and succulently rare within.

  When the steaks were removed from the pan Ursi quickly added butter, shallots, and cognac to the remaining juices to create a sauce for the banquet. Sumptuous is an understatement and you could cut Ursi’s steak au poivre with a fork.

  I kept my promise and poured a fine Bordeaux St. fimilion, remembering to thank father for leaving me the key to the wine cellar. Dessert was a strawberry chantilly with Bavarian cream.

  Leave home? Sure. When elephants roost in trees.

  Twenty-One

  The phone woke me. Trouble. I knew by the insistent urgency of the ring, which was as jarring as chalk on a blackboard. Besides, no one in Palm Beach would dream of calling on Sunday before noon.

  When I heard Al Rogoff’s voice I honestly thought Binky had mangled himself with his new electric mixer. “Sorry to wake you, Archy,” Al began.

  “Not at all, Al. I was just dressing for church.”

  “You still working for Sabrina Wright?” he asked.

  “No. We formally terminated our working relationship yesterday.

  Why?”

  “Someone terminated the lady last night.”

  I was in my pajama tops, the only half I ever wear, and felt an icy draft attack my lower extremities. “Come again, Al.”

  “You heard me,” he said.

  “Where? When?”

  “In her rented car. Last night about ten, as far as we can determine.”

  I jumped on that. “Her car? An accident?”

  “No, Archy. Someone put a bullet in her head.”

  Amazing how calmly Al Rogoff could deliver such news. It must go with the territory. Murder always got me where I lived and, come to think of it, it got the victim in the same place. Sabrina gone. Still half awake, I wondered If I was dreaming the whole thing. Like the guy who’s stopped for passing a red light and telling the officer, “I saw it, sir, but I did not perceive it.” I heard it but I hadn’t as yet grasped it. I could see her face; laughing, seething, cajoling. I visualized her dictating to those she professed to love and ruled like a despot. I heard her telling the three contenders to ‘go climb the family tree.” Brash, brazen, and foolish Sabrina. Did her sense of humor fail her in the end, or did she enrage her assailant with, “Do you expect to shoot a leopard, Mr.. ”

  “The palace is in an uproar,” I heard Al say. A visiting celebrity gunned down on our turf. The press is here from Miami, Tallahassee, and Atlanta. We hear the boys from New York have touched down in Fort Lauderdale and the rest are arriving at any airport in the state they could book a flight to without having to wait more than five minutes to board.”

  “Where are you now, Al?”

  “In my car on the cell phone. I just got off dut
y. This call is a warning, Archy. You’re going to be questioned, you know that.”

  I knew it. I also know I could narrow the investigation down to three names, all of which would make headlines in every capital of the western world and especially in our very own. I stood there, bottomless, shivering at the thought of the awesome power I possessed.

  Until yesterday Sabrina and I held the fate of those three men in the palm of our hands. Now there was only one hand left holding the bag.

  I had to think and I needed the time in which to do it. Time was at a premium and right now I couldn’t parse a sentence in a first-grade reader. “Al, this is important. I need to know the facts. Can we rendezvous in our office in an hour? I won’t keep you long and then you can go home and get some sleep.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Archy. I got a few hours off to shower and change my socks. All hands on deck until further notice. You’re on in one hour and don’t dawdle over your wardrobe. Come as you are.”

  “If I did, Al, you’d arrest me.”

  “Cute, Archy, cute.”

  I put the phone down and it rang immediately. I didn’t have the time but I couldn’t afford not to know who wanted me. “Archy here.”

  “Lolly here. Have you heard?”

  “I’ve heard, Lolly, but I don’t have time to discuss it. Maybe later.”

  “Every network reported it and CNN is carrying it as a news-breaking story. There goes my exclusive,” he moaned.

  A thousand-watt bulb exploded in my head. “Ain’t it a bitch, Lol? She had agreed to meet with you tonight in her suite at The Breakers.”

  “I believe you, Archy, because deep down I’m in love with you. I have a penchant for losers.”

  “It’s nice to be loved, Lol. Now I have to go.”

  “Any idea who done it, and why? They say it’s linked to her daughter’s raking up the past. I heard the police are going to commandeer all the old newspapers she was thumbing through as soon as the library opens tomorrow morning. I imagine they’ll want to question all the newspaper editors she called and you, too, I’m sure.”

  The big three were hearing the same rumors and quaking. Did the fool who did it realize he had cut off his nose? Did the other two think a kind benefactor had interceded on their behalf? Or was it a conspiracy? Could the old school buddies have sat down at Casa Gran after the guests had left and exchanged notes? Was I losing it? I was.

  “I know as much about this as you do, Lol, but if I hear anything you’ll be the first to know. Now I have to go.”

  I hung up before he could respond. I showered, brushing my pear lies under the spray to save time, shaved, nicked my chin, doused my face with witch hazel, got into a pair of briefs, jeans, last night’s chambray shirt, and sneakers.

  The phone rang. Archy here, and I can’t talk.”

  “Have you heard?” It was Connie. “It’s all over the TV. The local station has a camera outside the police station. I saw Al Rogoff coming out. What do you know?”

  “No time now, Connie. I have to meet Al in twenty minutes. I’ll be in touch. Will you be at home?”

  “Only if a beautiful knight in shiny armor doesn’t carry me off to Camelot.”

  “Fine. You’ll be home.”

  In the kitchen Ursi was all atwitter as Jamie calmly perused his morning paper. Not even Walt Disney could animate the guy.

  “I’ve heard, Ursi, so don’t ask. I haven’t got the time.” She handed me a glass of juice which I downed gratefully and I poured myself a cup pa adding only milk.

  “It’s on the radio and the TV, Archy, but the newspaper doesn’t have it as yet.” On cue, Jamie raised the morning paper to show me the headline and confirm his wife’s words. “It happened late last night, they say. What a tragedy. As I was saying to Jamie just the other day, Archy, this town isn’t what it used to be. Time was when we never locked a door. Now you can’t go for a drive without fearing for your life. They say her next book was going to be an expose about an old Palm Beach family, that’s why she was done in. Her daughter and the boyfriend were doing the research, everyone knows that.”

  Strange the things that pop up in one’s head when under stress. The rumors making the rounds of our island had me thinking of a line from Browning’s My Last Duchess “Here you miss, Or there exceed the mark.”

  The execution of Sabrina Wright brought to mind the cruel duke’s response to his wife’s effervescent charm”I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped…”

  “Are you going to Fort Lauderdale dressed like that, Archy?”

  “Sorry, Ursi, but I’m not coming with you and Jamie. I have to go out now and will get back here to see the folks as soon as I can. Make my excuses.”

  “It’s about the murder,” Ursi stated.

  “Don’t say anything in front of mother, Ursi,” I warned her. “You know how she worries.”

  I’ll have a word with your father,” Jamie said.

  Ursi and I looked at him askance.

  Al Rogoff and I maintain a mobile office in the parking lot of the Publix supermarket on Sunset Avenue. It’s convenient, discreet and you can’t beat the rent. Our location is as far from the madding crowd as one can get and our bays depend on space availability. Same church, different pews, but it works and what works is good.

  As more people sleep in than go to Publix on Sunday morning I got a spot next to Al and joined him in his car. He was in need of a shave and a few hours’ sleep. For a change, Al wasn’t chomping on a cigar, but the aroma of those past pervaded his car’s interior like a pool hall on a busy night.

  “You’re ten minutes late,” Al griped as I climbed in. “I gotta be back at the station in two hours.”

  “Sorry, Al, but I’m still reeling from the news.”

  “It never fails, Archy. You get a case and we get a body. Do me a favor and retire.”

  I lit an English Oval and for reasons known only to Al Rogoff he immediately rolled down the window on the driver’s side.

  “Start that rumor and I’ll be forced to retire,” I said. “What can you tell me, Al?”

  “How about, what can you tell me? Everyone knows that Archy McNally was in the lady’s employ.”

  “You first, Al,” I said in a bid for time. How much could I tell Al at this point? Very little. If Al and I were business partners in fighting villainy, I was committing an act of malversation which itself is a felony.

  Al pulled a notebook out of his bulging back pocket and began to thumb through it. He was one of the shrewdest of Palm Beach’s finest. Never relying on memory, he always took notes in his own form of shorthand that resembled the writing on Cleopatra’s Needle, but I have known prosecuting attorneys to rely on their definitude, making Al one of the most sought-after trial witnesses and the bane of defense counselors.

  Sabrina Wright went for a drive last night in her rented car shortly after eight. Her husband said this was not unusual. She enjoyed going for a drive by herself after dinner, saying it not only helped her relax but the time alone was conducive to concocting plots for her novels. In the short time she had been in Palm Beach she found driving along the ocean with a sky full of stars overhead especially influential when it came to weaving romances.

  Since being at The Breakers, Sabrina had gone on such an outing several times before this particular evening, according to her husband, Robert Silvester.

  (I immediately made that out to be two times. Each time to meet one of the boys. Last night was, in her own words, to meet with the last of the Mohegans. Which one? “Did you expect to shoot a leopard, Mr.. ”)

  When she didn’t return by ten, as she usually did, her husband began to worry. He called his stepdaughter, who was in the next suite at The Breakers, to see if Sabrina was with her. She wasn’t. The girl, Gillian, then called Zack Ward, who was in an adjoining suite. He had not seen Sabrina since dinner. When Sabrina did not return by midnight, Robert Silvester had called the police to report her missing, giving them the make and model of the car she was drivin
g.

  Shortly thereafter, an anonymous caller reported an abandoned car on Island Drive at the turnoff to Tarpon Island. Al, cruising in his patrol car, was radioed to check it out.

  Anonymous caller? Where had I heard that before? I did not interrupt Al for details.

  “I found her,” Al concluded solemnly.

  “Did you know who she was?” I asked him.

  “Not by sight, but by her car. I got an APB on my radio with the car description a short time before I got the order to proceed to Island Drive. Like I said, Archy, you get a case and we get a body.”

  “I do wish you would stop saying that, Al. It’s bad for business.”

  “We like it when business is off,” Al reminded me. “So, what can you tell me?”

  A lot, I thought, and I felt like a traitor for not being able to pass it on to Al, but it was early days. Why drag down the team when only one player had run amok? I wasn’t doing it for Tom, Dick, or Harry, but for Sabrina. I was the only one who knew her secret and I was going to keep it and uphold her end of the bargain she had made with those ignoble snobs. When the guilty malefactor was caught, and he would be caught, he could say what he pleased, but Sabrina would not have broken her trust.

  I took a chance at the start of this case and now I had to take another. I had to go my own way, without the help of Al Rogoff and the police, and lasso the man that got away. I was in possession of all the puzzle’s pieces. I could see the solution, but I could not perceive it. As my favorite wit had observed: To look at a thing is quite different than to see a thing.

  “Sabrina Wright asked me to find her husband,” I told Al, and repeated the story I had been passing around since my first meeting with Sabrina. Was the sin of omission a venial or mortal offense?

  “It seems to me her daughter was as interested in eloping as I am,” Al said. “Why was she snooping around old newspapers and calling editors?

  Everyone is talking about it because the girl didn’t exactly make a secret of what she was doing. What do you know about it?”

  I repeated the rumors as told me by Lolly Spindrift and Ursi.