Last evening, as predicted, we did go back to her place, a high-rise condo on the east shore of Lake Worth, a one-bedroom affair with a great view from her tiny balcony. I have been there so often I know she keeps the Absolut in the freezer and that you have to jiggle the handle of the toilet to avoid a perpetual flush.
She played her Spanish tapes, which are Greek to me, and after many passionate kisses which, like a spider’s web, leads to a fly’s undoing, we retreated to the bedroom where a framed poster of the film Casablanca hangs over the bed. We undressed with all the nonchalance of an old married couple.
Sparks didn’t fly, but neither did they fizzle. We knew each other’s erogenous zones and played them like skilled pianists on the closing night of a long tour. Okay, I’m making it sound far worse than it was.
The truth is, it’s sometimes better than the first time but not all the time. Would marriage and a family make a difference? If so, how? For better or for worse? And don’t you just know why the marriage vow covers both possibilities and all the stops between?
When Dora, my sister, visits on the holidays, do I look upon her, my brother-in-law, Ted, and their three lovely children with a wistful eye? Do I grow a little sentimental when I enter the kitchen just as Ursi’s soap is interrupted by a commercial for Disneyland? The answer to both is certainly I do.
However, as the Bard spoke of music’s charm, Archy speaks of our modern-day poets, namely the lyricists, who give voice to the plaintive airs. “Down in the depths on the ninetieth floor’ or ‘high as a flag on the Fourth of July,” these word smiths never fail to come up with a phrase to sum up our sentiments in twenty-five words or less. Lionel Bart said it for me when, in his musical, Oliver, he has Nancy rationalizing the fact that Bill Sikes will never marry her. Nancy says of wedded bliss, “Though it sometimes touches me. For the likes of such as me. Mine’s a fine, fine life.” Charlie D. couldn’t have said it better.
Eleven
The Caper of the Trojan Horse or, beware Archy bearing a microwave oven. I dressed in jeans, a pink Izod, and penny loafers. The boy next door? One look in the glass told me I had achieved that goal without shouting its intent.
After breaking my fast with fresh squeezed orange juice, cinnamon French toast with pure maple syrup and a cup of Java, Paris set out for the rape of Helen. Really, it’s just a figure of speech.
When I turned the Miata onto Ocean Boulevard I glanced in my rearview mirror and watched a black stretch limo materialize like a mirage out of the sultry air. I didn’t see it approaching when I pulled onto the boulevard so it must have been parked on the road’s shoulder waiting for a chance to join the traffic or waiting for me? In Palm Beach, stretch limos are a common sight and a fear of the mechanical dinosaurs has never been among my many phobias, but in my business it pays to keep alert.
I moved south, passing the Palm Beach Country
Club and swung onto N. County Road. The limo came with me. I stayed on N. County to Breakers Ocean Golf Course, went west on Cocoanut Row, ignoring the Flagler Memorial Bridge. I kept south to the PB
elementary school and then took a sharp right over the Royal Palm Way bridge. When I got to the mainland, the limo was no longer visible in my rearview mirror. My thrill for the day? With what I had in mind, I hoped not.
Owing to the Inland Waterway that runs smack through Lake Worth, Palm Beach island is connected to the mainland by three drawbridges. It has long been thought that should a big heist take place on the island, the police could order all the bridges up, trapping the culprits on the island. Not a bad place to linger with a sack full of legal tender, I should think.
At a trendy appliance store I purchased a microwave oven like I knew what I was doing. Instinct told me not to buy the top of the line because it would contain a lot of frills not necessary to nuking a frozen chicken pot pie. I avoided the bottom of the line because it probably would have trouble melting an ice cube. Like Americans on Election Day, I went with the one in the middle, veering slightly toward the top. My guess was that Binky would spend hours trying to bring in the evening news on the gadget’s fifteen-inch screen.
I had it gift-wrapped and a kind salesperson helped me carry it to my car. The microwave and Archy filled the Miata’s front seat. From there to the Palm Court where I parked in the space reserved for number 1170.
One space over was filled with a black Mercedes. My, my, what a surprise.
Toting the bulky package without help was cumbersome but not impossible. I hauled it up the three steps to number 1168 and rang the bell. The Greeks had landed.
Bianca opened her door, looked at the man on her doorstep holding a gift-wrapped crate, and said, “I didn’t order it.”
“It’s not for you,” I told her.
“Then go away,” she said.
“If I may explain…”
“Are you selling computers, door to door?”
“No, ma’am. It’s a microwave oven.”
“I have one,” she said. “Good day.”
Before the door closed in my face, I explained, “It’s for your neighbor Binky Watrous. I’m Archy McNally.”
Her pretty blue eyes opened wide, from her ruby lips came an “Oh!” and the faintest hint of color surfaced on her white cheeks. If Helen’s was the face that launched a thousand ships, Bianca’s was the one that got Archy to buy Binky a microwave oven. Who’s to say which face will survive the test of time? This woman was made for color snaps, picnics in summer, football games in fall, sleigh rides in winter, and chasing around the Maypole in apple blossom time.
“Mr. McNally. I am so sorry. What can I do for you?”
“Inviting me in would help my cause.” My knees were beginning to buckle, but if I put the damn thing down I feared I would never be able to lift it off the floor.
She opened the door and backed away. “Please, please come in. I am so sorry. I didn’t recognize you, Mr. McNally.”
I looked for a corner to unload my burden. Then, remembering where I was, I lowered it to the floor of Bianca’s kitchen moments before I would be in need of a truss. Pretending I wasn’t about to expire, I smiled at her while I got my second wind, which was long in coming. She smiled back, displaying a near perfect set of teeth. Was there nothing wrong with the woman?
“There was no reason you should have recognized me, Ms Courtney,” I said. “I believe we saw each other only fleetingly the other day, when Binky rented number 1170.”
“Please, my name is Bianca. Won’t you sit a moment? I was just going to make a pot of coffee. Will you join me?”
I sat, gratefully, in a good reproduction of a classic Windsor chair, which, along with one other, went with a table of matching pine. There were cafe curtains on the little kitchen window, and by stealing what I hoped was a subtle glance into the parlor I got the impression of chintz and pastels and sugar and spice and everything nice. I felt like the big, bad wolf, but not strongly enough to call off my expedition. I was, after all, here to help.
“I haven’t had my second cup pa this morning, so I don’t mind if I do,”
I accepted.
“Good. Regular or decaf?”
“Regular. I need the jolt.”
She laughed as she filled a Mr. Coffee with water. “So do I. You said the microwave was for Binky, Mr. McNally?”
“How can I call you Bianca if you insist on Mr. McNally? It makes me feel like an old man. Friends call me Archy and I hope you’ll join the throng.”
I watched her hesitantly measure the amount of coffee, which told me she was new at the task. Today, she wore Capri pants in a a black toile pattern, a crisp white sleeveless blouse, and neat little flats.
Her brown hair was combed back and held from her face with a simple clip above each ear. If I had to guess her age I would say early twenties, give or take.
“Yes,” I told her, ‘the microwave is for Binky and perhaps I should explain. It’s a housewarming gift.. .”
“How kind of you,” she interrupted.
>
I gave her a modest shrug. “As a matter of fact, it was me who rallied the office into contributing to Binky’s rather spartan digs.”
“He told me you were best of friends,” she said, setting out cups and saucers. There was even a sugar bowl and a creamer, which she filled with half-and-half.
I enjoyed watching her move about and estimated her waist at a waspish twenty-two inches. This reminded me to refuse any sweets should they be offered with the coffee. “I brought the microwave here thinking I might catch Binky before he left for the office but I was too late. He told me about his friendly neighbor, so I thought I might impose upon you to store the gift, saving me the trouble of carting it to the office and back here again.”
“You’re not imposing at all, Archy!” Our coffee ready, she played hostess.
“You had Binky in for dinner last night?” I helped myself to the half-and-half but refused the sugar. Cutting back on smoking had sparked my appetite, which was never wanting to begin with.
“Chinese takeout,” she said, avoiding the sugar and the half-and-half.
“We both had the chicken and snow peas with extra fried rice. Wicked, but delicious.” I knew I wasn’t going to be offered anything with the coffee, and just as well.
Here, as happens with new acquaintances who have exhausted the few topics of conversation they have in common, the mindless chatter petered out. We smiled at each other like two actors in search of a script. I had gotten in the front door and now had come the time to establish a beachhead. “Your neighbor on the other side, Sergeant Al Rogoff, is also a friend of mine,” I said.
“So Binky told me,” she answered, unimpressed. “He interviewed me when I went to the police with a particular problem, but he wasn’t much help. Did Binky say anything to you about my former employer?”
“He did, and, to be truthful, so did Al. Would you like to tell me your version?”
It seemed she would like nothing better. Bianca was a native Floridian, from Coral Gables, where her mother taught at the local high school and her father was a CPA with an expertise in restaurants, which, in southern Florida, made for a flourishing practice. She had a younger brother who was in New York in search of an acting career. She told me he had met another young man from out west who was in the Big Apple on a similar calling and the two were now sharing digs in Chelsea. Wasn’t that nice?
Was she ingenuous or was Archy too quick to assume? I would reserve judgment.
It was all very middle class and ho-hum until tragedy struck when her parents were killed in an auto crash two years ago. Mr. Courtney, it seemed, had spent a little faster than he had made. Even their home was mortgaged to the hilt. Bianca, who was finishing at the University of Miami in her hometown, was forced to leave and go to work. Enter Lilian Ashman.
Lilian was a distant, distant relative of Mrs. Courtney’s, who had married a widower twenty years her senior. Mr. Ashman had dabbled in Manhattan real estate, buying up blocks of Third Avenue before the El came down. When it did, Mr. Ashman became a multimillionaire and, a few short months later, a corpse. The grieving widow came south to take the sun and the waters. She was sixty, admitted to fifty, and dressed as if she were thirty.
“It was embarrassing,” Bianca said. “Having married a man twenty years older, I think she was compensating by looking for one twenty years younger. But she was kind. When she heard of my situation she offered me a job as companion, which was little more than accompanying her on shopping sprees and attending countless cocktail parties and charity balls.”
And, I thought, attracting young men into her company. Bianca had obviously never read Tennessee Williams’s Garden District.
“Then she met Tony. Antony, without an h, Gilbert. He claimed to be forty but I think he was nearer fifty,” she said with more honesty than rancor.
“How did they meet,” I cut in.
Her cheeks took on that flush that began at her throat and worked its way up. “Through the Personals in a magazine. But it was a very literary magazine, Archy.”
Why do people think that the more upscale the periodical, the more credible those who peruse their Personals? It’s a myth on par with lightning not striking twice in the same place. It does, and more often than you think.
Lilian went public in her quest for a mate by stating in print that she was looking for a man who appreciated the classics as well as the comics a prudent romantic who enjoyed long walks. She got Antony who was a devotee of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Spenser Chaplin a hiker who had been on a walking tour of Provence.
“But he was handsome,” Bianca admitted, ‘with a body to match. Lilian couldn’t take her eyes off him when he pranced around the pool.”
And, I guessed, neither could you, you little minx. Things were looking up.
Antony said he hailed from Texas, spoke with a drawl, and hinted at links with oil barons. Eyeing Lilian’s house, cars, help, and, lifestyle, he popped the question after a relationship of one month.
The foolish woman accepted. Six months later she was dead. Drowned in her pool.
“I told you how vain she was,” Bianca said, stressing the point. “She had a personal trainer and a room filled with exercise machines which were used, not for show. She had the figure of a woman thirty years younger and she was an expert swimmer. She did fifty laps every day, including Sunday, and dove like a professional. So how did she drown?”
“You tell me?”
Distressed, Bianca said it was believed that when diving, Lilian had hit her head on the bottom of the pool’s Gunite surface and was knocked unconscious. Only Tony was present. He was seated, having breakfast, and saw her dive. When she failed to surface immediately he was not concerned, because she often swam the length of the pool and back again, underwater.
“Is that true?” I asked.
Reluctantly, Bianca nodded. “When Tony finally realized that something was wrong he went in after her, but it was too late. He sounded the alarm and I called the police. In ten minutes the place was crawling with uniforms, ambulance crew, and even Lilian’s doctor. Tony had to be given a sedative to calm him. After a cursory inquest the police declared it an accident.
“The next day, when things had more or less settled down, I saw Tony going into the exercise room, carrying one of the small barbells. What had he been doing with it? Tony never exercised, and in the two years I lived with Lilian I never knew her to work out anyplace but in the makeshift gym. Don’t you see?” she cried.
“You think he took the barbell from the gym, used it to clobber his wife, after which he tossed her in the pool, hid the weapon someplace, and returned it the next day?”
“Isn’t that obvious?” she said.
“I’m afraid not, Bianca. Did you mention the barbell to Tony?”
“No. I was afraid. But I did tell the police. They didn’t seem to think there was anything unusual or suspect in what I saw.”
“Who inherits, Bianca?”
She didn’t like that and made no attempt to show her annoyance at the question. “That again. Okay. When Lilian relocated here, she didn’t have a will and her lawyer told her it would be very imprudent to die intestate. To please him, she made a will leaving everything to her favorite charities, thinking that she could always change it when and if she had other ideas about where to leave her money.”
“So Tony doesn’t inherit?”
“Oh, I think he’s entitled to something as her spouse, but not the bulk of the estate. I know he’s got lawyers working on his behalf, and he’s still living in the house.”
She looked so adorable when she pouted that I hated to zing her, but she knew it was coming. “So what’s Tony’s motive, Bianca?”
“Maybe he didn’t know about the will,” she said with little conviction.
“Murder is a serious business and Tony doesn’t sound like the type who would kill on speculation. Did Lilian Ashman ever promise to name you in a new will?”
“She did. And I know what you’re thinki
ng. That I’m angry at her dying before she could keep her word and I’m looking for a scapegoat to blame.”
It certainly seemed that way and I had to agree with the police but that wouldn’t score me any points with Bianca Courtney. Being between cases I saw no reason why I couldn’t snoop around with Bianca as my guide. If nothing else, I would try to prove to her that Lilian Ashman’s death was an accident and set her mind, and Lilian, at rest.
Diving boards are known to be the bane of private pools. And it’s a fact that many pool suppliers advise against installing them.
Our coffee, practically untouched, had grown cold and I feared so would my welcome unless I gave Bianca some hope for her cause. Tell me,” I said, ‘did Tony ever make a play for you?”
This surprised her, but she didn’t shy from the question or pretend to be modest in her answer. “He did and I thought it was disgusting and I told him so. He laughed.”
“You don’t like Antony Gilbert very much, do you?”
“I hate him,” she replied with feeling.
An objective observer she wasn’t, which did little to help her case.
“So if you called and asked if you could drop by to pick up something you forgot he would not object?”
The hope in her eyes was worth my phony effort to help. “You mean ..
.”
“I mean I would like to meet him. That’s all, Bianca.”
“I know you’re a professional investigator, Archy, but I haven’t much money.”
“I don’t expect to be paid because I don’t think you have much of a case. But I am willing to stick my nose in because I like you.”
I was rewarded with that fabulous blush and a smile but not a kiss.
However, all things considered, I had made progress in my courting of Bianca Courtney. This left me feeling like Oscar’s take on the English gentleman galloping after a fox the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.
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