McNally's Gamble

by Lawrence Sanders

  As we scarfed I made what I hoped would sound like an innocent query: “Connie, you said Natalie Westmore is a strange gal. Strange as in spooky or as in off-the-wall?”

  She paused briefly to consider. “A little of both,” she said finally. “For instance, at aerobics we all wore spandex leotards in neon colors. Except Natalie. She wore old-fashioned gym bloomers with a middy.”

  “Wild,” I said.

  “Kooky,” she said. “There was something else but I won’t tell you unless you promise never to repeat it. To anyone.”

  “Of course I promise. You know I’m the soul of discretion.”

  “You’re the soul of deception, that’s what you are. Well, I think Natalie is a thief!”

  “Aw, come on!”

  “No, really. Every time she came to a session someone lost something. Little things: a comb, a plastic compact, a headband—personal things of no great value. But after Natalie quit, things stopped disappearing. We think she was filching them.”

  “Whatever for?”

  Connie shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe she’s a klepto. Or maybe she’s just a nut. Hey, this salad is super. Any left in the bowl?”

  I beckoned the waiter. I didn’t think it smart to pursue the subject of Natalie Westmore. If I did, my Consenting Other would undoubtedly demand to know why I was so interested in a young woman I had never met, particularly one who wore gym bloomers and a middy. I would be accused of possessing a hidden motive of unspeakable depravity. I counseled myself: Go into the roundhouse, Archy; she’ll never corner you there.

  So I limited my conversation to inconsequential chitchat about the weather, local politics, and the puzzle of why today’s tomatoes have lost tomatoey taste. We finished dinner with no further mention of the Westmore clan. We voted to forgo dessert and settled for espresso and ponies of grappa, which will numb your adenoids.

  “Want to make a night of it?” I asked Connie. “Dancing, perhaps, or finding a good jazz trio and just listening?”

  “Some other time,” she said. “All I want to do is go home and hit the sack. What do you want to do, sweetie?”

  “Go home and hit the sack.”

  “Whose home and whose sack?” she asked.

  I looked at her.

  “Oh, yes,” she said.

  Connie has long black hair and a lusty body that doesn’t end. She is surprisingly strong and a ferocious lover. Carnivorous one might even say. She does enjoy the horizontal mambo, and if our love-making that night had had an orchestral accompaniment, the musicians would have been playing with frenzied brio, I assure you.

  “Thank you, Escamillo,” Connie murmured before I left.

  “Thank you, Carmen,” I replied, but she was already asleep.

  I drove home full of haricots verts (anyone can be full of plain beans), in such an exuberant mood I sang one of my favorite old-timey tunes: “I’m Sitting on Top of the World.” I have a tape of Jolson singing that and it’s a corker. My own rendition inspired me to wonder why an imaginative automaker couldn’t produce a luxury model called a Fettle. Then I could drive home in a fine Fettle. (Tell me, doctor, is my condition terminal?)

  When I was safely ensconced in my hideout I flopped in the creaky swivel chair behind the desk and made a lazy attempt to analyze the reasons for my bloomy spirits. The wine of course. And the grappa. And the satisfying grub.

  But most of all my ebullience was due to the joyous joust with Connie. What a marvelous woman she was! I resolved then and there never again to cast a covetous eye on any other person of the female faith. Why should I since Ms. Garcia was all women: complete and total?

  I worked on my journal a few moments, jotting notes on the curious proclivities of Natalie Westmore. Then, my eyelids beginning to droop, I went to bed and dreamed of making a romantic trip through a tunnel of love with Thelma Todd. I awoke Sunday morn saddened my pledge of allegiance to Connie had been so quickly betrayed in my sleep. I prayed it did not presage infidelities I might commit while fully awake.

  I accompanied my parents to church, feeling my moral fiber needed a bit of starching. But the sermon was devoted to the biblical dictum “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,” and I spent the remainder of the service trying to recall the name of the sportswriter who commented, “Maybe not but that’s the way to bet.”

  CHAPTER 8

  I DRESSED WITH SPECIAL care on Monday morning, wishing to impress Mrs. Edythe Westmore with my sincerity. I admit the black tropical worsted suit and white shirt I donned gave me the look of a mortician at work but I compensated for my sober appearance by wearing silk briefs decorated with gamboling rabbits. By their underwear ye shall know them.

  My first destination was the McNally Building, merely to see if any correspondence or messages had been placed in my office during my absence. I expected nothing of import but found a note from the McNally & Son receptionist stating Mr. Sydney Smythe of Windsor Antiques had phoned late Friday afternoon and requested I return his call. I stuffed the message into my jacket pocket, deciding to phone the moldering fop after lunch. Then I reclaimed the Miata from our underground garage and headed back to Ocean Boulevard.

  Mrs. Westmore’s enthusiasm for her “beautiful home” was not entirely braggadocio. At least I found the exterior attractive and the landscaping impressive. The house and three-car garage, designed in what is called “Bermuda style,” were set on a closely shaven lawn divided by a brick driveway and slated walks. In the background, framing the estate, was a ficus hedge so high it would require a ladder to trim the top.

  I parked at one side of the turnaround, disembarked, and took a second look around. The selection of trees was striking: orchid, royal poinciana and royal palm, sea grape, and one magnificent banyan that must have been a zillion years old. All showy, you’ll note. Mrs. Westmore was obviously not a woman who would be content with a few scraggly palmettos.

  I spotted another structure away from the main residence and almost hidden in the foliage. It was too small for a guest house and too large for a storage shed. It appeared to be constructed of weathered planks from old barns, in sharp contrast to the gleaming white of the other buildings. I couldn’t even guess its purpose and resolved to ask during the “grand tour” the hostess had promised.

  The front door bell was set in the umbilicus of a half-naked brass Venus—apparently the owner’s attempt at whimsy. I thought it barbarous but forced myself to press the belly button. The door was opened immediately by a scrawny, stoop-shouldered gent wearing a gray alpaca jacket and shiny navy serge trousers. His features had such a lugubrious cast I knew he had to be Algernon Canfield, the houseman desperately seeking another job.

  “I’m Archy McNally,” I started. “Mrs. Westmore is—”

  “Expecting you,” he completed my statement in his lachrymose voice. “This way please, sir.”

  I followed him down a hallway covered with flocked wallpaper in a cabbage rose pattern that wasn’t as garish as it may sound. We came to opened double doors of what was obviously the Florida room. The houseman departed speedily as Mrs. Edythe Westmore came forward, holding Out both hands, fleshy face creased in a welcoming smile. Connie had been right; she was a battleship.

  “Archy McNally!” she boomed. “How nice to see you again!”

  “My pleasure, Mrs. Westmore,” I said, and found my two hands grasped separately in hers. Even worse, she drew me near, tilted her massive head, and offered a slack cheek and waited. I obediently bestowed the lightest and briefest of light, brief kisses. It was like bussing a down pillow.

  “Oh, do call me Edythe,” she said with what I’m sure she intended as a girlish pout. “Why, your mother and I have been friends for ages and you and I needn’t stand on ceremony.”

  Still clutching my hands, she backed off a step to examine me.

  “You are a handsome lad,” she said with a throaty laugh. “I imagine you’ve broken many a girl’s heart.”

  “Not me,” I protested. “I follo
w the Comedians’ Law: Always leave them laughing when you say good-bye.”

  She granted me a hearty guffaw and exclaimed, “You devil!” She released my paws and I suspect if we had been closer she might have dug an elbow into my ribs.

  She was a weighty woman and her voice was even weightier. Stentorian is the word. I imagined if she shouted “Hello!” to a neighbor in Palm Beach, pedestrians in Boca Raton would whirl around to see who was calling. I could understand why Al Canfield hoped to leave her employ as soon as possible. Who could live an easy life with that voice? It would be like attempting to meditate in the midst of a brass band oompahing at the max.

  “Archy,” she said, “there’s been a slight change of plans. Some kind of a money crisis is brewing at the little theater I help support and they want me to chair a board of directors’ meeting at two o’clock. So I thought you and I might eat first and then my daughter will show you around after I leave. Satisfactory?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I hope I’m not discommoding you, Edythe.”

  Her laugh was a roar. “I don’t let anyone do that,” she assured me. “Now come along.”

  She took my arm firmly and tugged me down the hall to the dining room. I felt like a villain being muscled along by a gendarme. I also wondered why Natalie wasn’t joining us for lunch. Perhaps the “slight change of plans” was Mrs. Westmore’s ploy to arrange a tete-a-tete between her daughter and yrs. truly. Bachelors do have dark suspicions like that, you know.

  A few moments later we were seated at one corner of a table large enough to accommodate ten. The hostess vigorously shook a small crystal bell and after a moment the melancholy houseman shuffled in with our first course: a shrimp and crabmeat cocktail with a nothing sauce. This was followed by a chef’s salad (again with a dressing that lacked zing), and concluded with a raspberry sorbet.

  It was a decent enough meal but hardly memorable. It would have required little to improve it: freshly ground black pepper in the appetizer sauce, a touch of garlic in the salad dressing, and a drier (and colder) white wine than the chardonnay served. I don’t wish to be hypercritical but I am saddened when good food is prepared in a lackluster manner. A bit of culinary artistry can convert grub to a feast.

  But if the lunch was uninspiring I found much of interest in Edythe’s monologue, interrupted occasionally by my questions and comments.

  She had been introduced to Frederick Clemens by a mutual friend during the intermission of a “really creative” performance of Three Men on a Horse produced at the little theater to which she gave an annual contribution.

  “I do love drama, don’t you, Archy? My favorite is Hello, Dolly!”

  Clemens had invited her to have a drink after the show at which they met. She had been fascinated to learn he was an investment adviser, since it offered a solution to a problem troubling her. Most of the money her late husband had bequeathed was in Treasury bonds: safe enough, she knew, but with a puny yield that didn’t allow her to live in the style she wished and make donations to local charities and cultural activities.

  “I simply need more income,” she told me. “I know one should live off the interest and never touch the principal. But I find that extremely difficult what with inflation and all.”

  She had finally persuaded Fred to recommend a modest investment and he had suggested she sell some of her T-bonds and buy the common stock of one of the thirty Dow Jones industrials. She did and, sure enough, three months later the stock split two for one. She now had twice as many shares as she originally purchased.

  “Isn’t that wonderful, Archy!”

  I forbore to mention she might have twice as many shares but hadn’t doubled her investment since each new share was now worth half the original. Nor did I inform her stock splits are usually announced months before they actually occur. I doubted if Edythe was aware of it—I couldn’t see her as an avid reader of The Wall Street Journal—but I reckoned Clemens knew of the coming split.

  “Surely the stock investment didn’t increase your income,” I said.

  She admitted the dividend from her common stock was less than the yield from her Treasury bonds. But then Fred had urged her to buy a very inexpensive stock not listed on any of the exchanges. It was issued by a new company with a unique product: a palm-sized vacuum cleaner, battery-powered, to be used for removing loose hair from cats and dogs. Less than a month after her purchase of 25,000 shares at a cost of about $30,000 (it was a very cheap stock) Fred told her he had sold the shares for more than $50,000, almost doubling her investment.

  “I was absolutely stunned! I had no idea there was so much money to be made so easily. Then Fred put my investment funds in shares of a Bolivian tin mine and two oil well projects in Texas. The wells haven’t been drilled yet but last week Fred told me the shares of the tin mine were up forty percent. He wants me to hold them. He’s convinced their value will continue to increase. He estimated I may be able to double or even triple my money by the end of the year. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “Incredible,” I said. “Mr. Clemens certainly seems to have the Midas touch.”

  “Oh, he does! Definitely. Did your mother tell you about the Fabergé egg Fred wants me to buy?”

  “I believe she mentioned something about it but didn’t go into detail.”

  “Well, right now it’s owned by this man in France who needs money desperately to pay off a note that’s coming due. Otherwise he wouldn’t sell it because it’s very rare and very valuable. Fred says it was one of the last two eggs made by Fabergé for Czar Nicholas in 1917. But it was never delivered because of the Bolshevik Revolution, you know.”

  Clemens had told her the egg was smuggled out of Russia in a diplomatic pouch carried by a courier from the French embassy in St. Petersburg. The bijou ended up in Paris but then, during the chaos at the end of World War I, the Fabergé Imperial egg had unaccountably disappeared. Whether it was mislaid, stolen, or destroyed, no one knew. Now, suddenly, it had reappeared in the art collection of a former banker who had made some rash investments and was cash-poor.

  “Isn’t that an amazing story, Archy?”

  “It is indeed, but no more amazing than some of the other happenings during those turbulent times. Tell me, Edythe, has Mr. Clemens actually seen the egg?”

  “Oh yes. He flew to Paris immediately when his agent over there told him about it. Fred says it is an exquisite piece studded with diamonds. He gave me a color photo and it’s just gorgeous! How I’d love to own it. I’d be tempted to keep it and not put it up for auction. Of course it would mean sacrificing an enormous profit, and I’ll have to cash in some of my Treasury bonds to pay for it. Fred is very understanding and says it’s my decision to make.”

  “Edythe, I’ve seen a few Fabergé Imperial eggs in art galleries and museums, and they all open up to reveal a ‘surprise’—like a party favor. Or a very expensive prize in a box of Cracker Jack! Did Mr. Clemens happen to mention what this egg contains?”

  “Why, no, Archy, he didn’t. I must remember to ask him.”

  “Do that—just for the fun of it.”

  She glanced at her jeweled wristwatch. “Oh dear, it’s getting late and I must run. I’ll call Natalie to show you around my beautiful estate.”

  “Before you do that, Edythe, may I ask if you’d have any objection if I contacted Mr. Clemens and used you as a reference?”

  “I’d have no objection whatsoever. But I should warn you Fred is very particular about the clients he takes on. I mean he doesn’t just accept everyone. Why, I had to talk a long time to persuade him to invest my money.”

  “Well, all I can do is try. Thank you for a delightful luncheon and answering all my questions. I do appreciate it.”

  “It has been fun, hasn’t it? And you’re a very charming young man. I must tell Madeleine how fortunate she is to have a son like you. Now come and meet my lovely daughter, Natalie.”

  She pulled me out to the hallway. Standing at the foot of a graceful staircase, she t
ilted her head back and bellowed, “Nettie! Come down this instant!”

  There isn’t a hog caller in Iowa who could have equaled her decibel level.

  CHAPTER 9

  WE WAITED A MOMENT on the portico steps until Mrs. Westmore drove out in her new white Caddy. She waved to us and I lifted a hand in response. But Natalie just stood there stolidly, head lowered.

  I turned to her. “Well...” I said and gave her my Supercharmer smile—100 watts. I thought it best to save the Jumbocharmer (150 watts) for emergencies. “Well, Nettie, shall we take a look around? I may address you as Nettie, mayn’t I?”

  “If you like,” she said indifferently.

  Her apathy didn’t disturb me because I was delighted with her voice: low, soft, almost timorous. What a welcome relief from her mama’s manic bray.

  We wandered out onto the grounds and passed the open garage. There was still one car within: a six-year-old Toyota Corolla that looked as if it had been cruelly mistreated.

  “Yours?” I asked idly.

  She nodded. “I inherited it from my sister-in-law,” she said, and I heard the bitterness in her tone. “Helen has a new Buick Riviera in a special color. Lavender.”

  “Nice,” I said. “Nettie, would you mind if I smoked a cigarette?”

  “Yes, I would,” she said. “You shouldn’t smoke. You’ll get lung cancer.”

  “I know. I also drink, which will give me cirrhosis. And I breathe even though the air is horribly polluted.”

  She made a small noise and I turned to look at her. I hoped she might have laughed. It would be gratifying from such a somber young woman. I paused a moment to glance around. “Wonderful trees,” I commented. “The old banyan is magnificent.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s the tree daddy fell out of and then he died. Should we go back to the house now?”

  She was hurrying me and I resented it. “In a moment,” I said. “The small structure back there in the foliage... What is that used for?”

  “You wouldn’t be interested.”