McNally's Secret

by Lawrence Sanders

  “Perhaps both,” I suggested.

  Father smiled, stroking his mustache with a knuckle. “That’s quite possible, but it’s a moot point. I explained to Lady Horowitz that the insurance company will have to be notified, and the forgeries deleted from the list of her insured properties. She asked if that would result in lowered premiums. I advised her not to count on it.”

  I laughed. “She’s wonderful,” I said. “Always working the angles.”

  “Yes,” father said. “Archy, I had a very brief conversation with Sergeant Rogoff this morning. Apparently he’s leaving on a vacation and was in a hurry to get away. He told me the official police investigation has been terminated and the case closed. Could you fill me in on the details of the affair?”

  I recited the police version of what had happened: Angus Wolfson had stolen the Inverted Jennies and had attempted to sell them to Bela Rubik. The dealer had recognized them as forgeries and threatened to call the police. Panicking, Wolfson had struck him down with the paperweight, reclaimed the stamps, and fled.

  Realizing he was physically incapable of fencing the stamps himself, Wolfson had recruited Kenneth Bodin, promising the chauffeur ten percent of the sale price. In turn, Bodin had enlisted his girlfriend, Sylvia, to sell the stamps. She had failed in her first attempt in Fort Lauderdale and on her second, in Stuart, she had been arrested.

  Meanwhile, in agony from his cancer and suffering from guilt because he had caused the death of Rubik, Wolfson had committed suicide.

  “That’s how the police have reconstructed it, sir,” I finished.

  My father looked at me narrowly. “But you don’t entirely agree?”

  I knew he would never accept my total agreement. “A few things bother me,” I admitted. “What was Wolfson’s motive for the theft? After all, Lady Cynthia was an old friend. The police say that because of medical expenses he was badly in need of money and didn’t want to saddle his sister with debts. I suppose that’s possible.”

  “Of course it is,” father said decisively. “It makes perfect sense to me. What else bothers you?”

  “The circumstances of Wolfson’s suicide. The police ascribe it to his worsening physical condition and remorse for his assault on the stamp dealer. I’m sure those factors were important, but I think there was another reason. I believe he had made a date with Kenneth Bodin for that late hour on the deserted beach, anticipating a sex scene. I think Bodin showed up all right but laughed at the old man and told him that he, Bodin, intended to keep the entire amount of whatever the Inverted Jennies were sold for. And there was nothing Angus could do about it. If he went to the cops, Bodin would name him as the original thief. So Wolfson was left with nothing, his dreams of love shattered, knowing he would soon die, knowing he had killed a man, however inadvertently. So he walked naked into the sea.”

  Father sipped his wine. “Very imaginative,” he pronounced. “But farfetched, don’t you think? You have no evidence that what you believe happened between Wolfson and Bodin actually occurred.”

  “No evidence,” I agreed. “It’s pure conjecture.” My father smiled wanly as he always did when I attempted to use legalese. “But it’s not totally improbable,” I went on. “It’s based on what I know of the personalities and weaknesses of the men involved.”

  He shook his head doubtfully. “It seems rather odd behavior to me.”

  I might have pointed out that his shenanigans with Lady Cynthia seemed rather odd behavior to me. I didn’t, of course, or he’d have had my gizzard.

  “But even if you’re correct,” he continued, “it doesn’t affect the final result, does it? The stamps have been recovered, the thief identified, the case officially closed. Perhaps the police solution is not as tidy as you might wish, but these things always have loose ends.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He finished his wine and sat a moment somberly regarding his empty glass. “A messy affair,” he said finally. “I find the whole thing distasteful. I’ve been wondering if it might not be wise to end the relationship of McNally and Son with Lady Horowitz and advise her to seek legal counsel elsewhere. What is your opinion, Archy?”

  What a shock that was! I could count on one finger the times he had asked for my opinion on matters affecting the family business.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that, sir,” I said. “Admittedly she can be troublesome at times, but so can most of our clients. That’s part of our job, is it not, to endure vexations and the sometimes wacky conduct of the people we represent. If they were all rational, intelligent, upright human beings, you and I would probably be chasing ambulances from a one-room office above a delicatessen.”

  He gave me a wry smile and stood up. “I suspect you’re right. Very well, we’ll keep Lady Horowitz on our roster of valued and honored clients.” He appeared to notice for the first time how I was dressed. “You seem to be dandyish this evening, Archy,” he observed. “Planning to visit your young lady?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “That’s ended.”

  “Oh,” he said, somewhat disconcerted, “sorry to hear it. Well, those things happen. But you’re going out?”

  “I thought I’d stop by the Pelican Club and see if there’s any action.”

  He looked at me closely and said something that touched me: “Yes, I think that would do you good.”

  Did I catch an echo of envy in his voice? No matter; I felt closer to him at that moment than I had in a long time. Twin losers—right? He took his bottle of port with him when he departed, probably reckoning (correctly) that he needed it more than I.

  I spent a few moments inspecting myself in the dresser mirror, wondering if I really did look dandyish. Actually, I decided, I was dressed conservatively. I was doing my silver-white-black bit, quiet but elegant: Ultrasuede jacket, white polo shirt, black silk trousers. I felt perhaps a spot of color would not be amiss so I carefully adjusted my new straw boater. It had a band of cerise silk shantung I thought rather swank.

  I went downstairs. On the way, I passed the second-floor sitting room, heard the sound of the television set, and peeked in. My mother and father were seated on the couch watching a rerun of Mrs. Miniver. They were holding hands. Domestic bliss? Let’s hear a chorus of “Silver Threads Among the Gold.”

  See what a devious lad with atrophied scruples can accomplish?

  The night sky was not entirely clear but the cloud cover was breaking up, and as I tooled the Miata across the Royal Palm Bridge I was happy to see a few pale stars timidly peeping out. Best of all, the air had freshened; a cool sea breeze was blowing at about five knots and boded well for a golf-and-tennis weekend.

  It was still relatively early but the Pelican Club was already jumping. It was the TGIF crowd of working stiffs, eager to relax after a week of strenuous labor in banks, boardrooms, and insurance offices. When I entered, heads swiveled in my direction, and my straw sailor with the cerise silk band inspired general hilarity, verging on hysteria. I accepted my friends’ derisive gibes with my usual aplomb and headed directly for the bar.

  “Good evening, Mr. McNally,” Simon Pettibone said. “Nice hat.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “You are a man of refined taste. What do these peasants know of casual elegance? Mr. Pettibone, tonight I yearn for something a bit more exotic than vodka, something that will clutch my palate with both fists and never let go. What do you suggest?”

  “A margarita?” he asked.

  “Excellent! Heavy on the salt, please.”

  I removed my hat and placed it on the bar-stool next to mine. A moment later it was whisked away and I turned to see Consuela Garcia with the boater atop her head, cocked rakishly. She looked charming.

  “Archy,” she said, “I simply must have this hat. What do you want for it?”

  “Your innocence.”

  “Sorry,” she said, “I’m broke. As you well know.”

  “Then have a drink with me,” I said, “and the hat’s yours.”

  “That’s easy,” she said and sw
ung aboard the stool next to me. Just then Mr. Pettibone served my margarita. Connie picked it up immediately and sipped. “Divine,” she said. “What are you drinking?”

  Sighing, I ordered another margarita and turned my attention to Connie. She looked positively ripping. Her long black hair was down, splaying over a crocheted turtleneck of white wool. Her stone-washed jeans were so tight that they may not have been jeans at all but rather a hip-to-ankle tattoo. My new hat was the perfect complement to that costume. What a delicious crumpet she was!

  “Are you baching it tonight?” I asked her.

  “Yes, dammit,” she said. “And on top of that, I had to take a cab here. My car’s in the garage.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Faulty alternator.”

  I looked at her haughtily. “I’m not sure I want to associate with a woman who has a faulty alternator.”

  “Oh, shut up. Why aren’t you squiring Jennifer Towley tonight?”

  Just then my margarita arrived. Plenty of salt. I sampled it. Exactly right.

  “Jennifer?” I said. “That’s over.”

  “It is?” Connie said. “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” she said equably, “we won’t. But please tell me about Lady Horowitz. You followed her twice. Where did she go?”

  “Oh, that was a false alarm. She wasn’t being blackmailed.”

  “I knew she wasn’t. But what was she up to?”

  “You may find this hard to believe, Connie, but she’s been doing volunteer work at a shelter for the homeless.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Scout’s honor. That’s where she’s been going a few times a week. She passes out cheese sandwiches to the hungry and helps make soup.”

  “What about those regular withdrawals you told me she was making from her bank account?”

  “Contributions to the shelter.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Connie marveled. “Why didn’t she say something about it? It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  I shrugged. “I guess she prefers to keep her charity private. Maybe she enjoys her reputation and doesn’t want people to know just how sympathetic and generous she is.”

  “Amazing,” Connie said. “And all this time she’s been ministering to the needs of the deprived.”

  “Precisely,” I said.

  “She really has a heart of gold. I’ll bet she’s done a lot of good deeds no one knows about.”

  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

  We sipped our margaritas thoughtfully. The club was filling up, with more noise, more laughter, a few voices raised in ribald song.

  “Archy,” Connie said, “I’m hungry. Can we have a hamburger here at the bar?”

  “I have a better idea,” I said. “It’s clearing and there’s a nice, fresh breeze. Let’s take a drive down the coast. We’ll stop at the first interesting place we come to and have dinner, a few drinks, a few giggles. How does that sound?”

  “Sensational,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  We finished our margaritas. I signed the tab and we went outside, Connie wearing my new hat. It galled me, a little, that it looked better on her than it did on me.

  I opened the door of the Miata for her, but she paused and gripped my arm. She looked into my eyes.

  She said, “Do you think we might get back together again?”

  I said, “One never knows, do one?”

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Archy McNally Series

  Chapter 1

  THE CAT’S NAME WAS Peaches, and it was a fat Persian with a vile disposition. I knew that because the miserable animal once upchucked on my shoes. I was certain Peaches wasn’t suffering from indigestion; it was an act of hostility. For some ridiculous reason the ill-tempered feline objected to my footwear, which happened to be a natty pair of lavender suede loafers. Ruined, of course.

  So when my father told me that Peaches had been catnapped and was being held for ransom, I was delighted and began to believe in divine retribution. But unfortunately the cat’s owner was a client of McNally & Son, Attorney-at-Law (father was the Attorney, I was the Son), and I was expected to recover the nasty brute unharmed. My premature joy evaporated.

  “Why don’t they report it to the police?” I asked.

  “Because,” the sire explained patiently, “the ransom note states plainly that if the police are brought in, the animal will be destroyed. See what you can do, Archy.”

  I am not an attorney, having been expelled from Yale Law, but I am the sole member of a department at McNally & Son assigned to discreet inquiries. You must understand that we represented some very wealthy residents of the Town of Palm Beach, and frequently the problems of our clients required private investigations rather than assistance from the police. Most denizens of Palm Beach shun publicity, especially when it might reveal them to be as silly and sinful as lesser folk who don’t even have a single trust fund.

  Peaches’ owners were Mr. and Mrs. Harry Willigan, who had an estate on Ocean Boulevard about a half-mile south of the McNally manse. Willigan had made a fortune buying and developing land in Palm Beach and Martin counties, and specialized in building homes in the $50,000–$100,000 range. It was said he never took down the scaffolding until the wallpaper was up—but that may have been a canard spread by envious competitors.

  With wealth had come the lush life: mansion, four cars, 52-ft. Hatteras, and a staff of three servants. It had also brought him a second wife, forty years younger than he.

  The McNallys had dined at his home occasionally—after all, he was a client—but I thought him a coarse man, enamored of conspicuous consumption. He seemed to believe that serving beluga caviar on toast points proved his superiority to old-money neighbors, many of whom served Del Monte tomato herring on saltines. Laverne, his young wife, was not quite as crass. But she did flaunt chartreuse polish on her fingernails.

  Willigan had children by his first wife, but he and Laverne were childless and likely to remain so if her frequent public pronouncements on the subject were to be believed. Instead of a tot, they had Peaches, and Harry lavished on that cranky quadruped all the devotion and indulgence usually bestowed on an only child. Laverne, to her credit, tolerated the cat but never to my knowledge called it Sweetums, as Harry frequently did.

  And that’s how the entire affair began, with the snatching of a misanthropic cat. It almost ended with the untimely demise of yrs. truly, Archibald McNally: bon vivant, dilettantish detective, and the only man in Palm Beach to wear white tie and tails to dinner at a Pizza Hut.

  I left father’s office in the McNally Building and drove my fire-engine-red Miata eastward toward the ocean. I had a brief attack of the rankles because my unique talents were being used to rescue a treacherous beast whose loathing of me was exceeded only by mine of her. But I am a sunny bloke, inclined to accentuate the positive, and my distemper did not last. It happened to be June 21st, and when Aristotle remarked that one swallow does not make a summer, he obviously wasn’t thinking of frozen daiquiris. That was my plasma of choice from the June solstice to the September equinox, and I was looking forward to the first of the season.

  Also, my regenerated romance with Consuela Garcia was going splendidly. Connie had made no alarming references to wedlock—the cause of our previous estrangement—and we had vowed to allow each other complete freedom to consort with whomever we chose. But we were so content with each other’s company that this declaration of an open relationship had never been tested. As of that morning.

  Finally, my spirits were ballooned by an absolutely smashing day: hot sun, scrubbed sky, low humidity and a fresh sea breeze as welcome as a kiss. I thought God had done a terrific job and I thanked Him. As my mother is fond of saying, it never hurts to be polite.

  The Willigans’ mansion was a faux Spanish hacienda with red tile roof, exposed oak beams, and a numbing profusion of terra-cotta pots. The place was called Casa Blanco and when you tugged th
e brass knob on the front door, you expected a butler to appear wearing sombrero and serape.

  Actually, the butler who opened the door was wearing a black alpaca jacket over white duck trousers. He was an Australian named Leon Medallion, and when he came to work for the Willigans he had to be restrained from addressing all guests as “Mate.”

  “Good morning, Leon,” I said. “How are you this loverly day?”

  “Great, Mr. McNally,” he said enthusiastically. “Couldn’t be better.”

  That was a shock. Leon usually took a dour view of existence in general and life on the Gold Coast in particular. More than once I had heard him mutter, “Florida sucks.”

  “And how are the allergies?” I asked.

  He looked about cautiously, then stepped close to me. “Would you believe it,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “but since that rotten cat’s been gone, I haven’t sneezed once.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I said, “but I’m sorry to tell you that’s why I’m here. I’ve been ordered to try to find Peaches.”

  He groaned. “Please, Mr. McNally,” he said, “don’t try too hard. I suppose you want to see the lady of the house.”

  “If she’s in.”

  “She is, but I gotta go through all that etiquette shit and see if she’s receiving.”

  He left me standing in the tiled foyer and shambled away. He returned in a few moments.

  “She’s at the pool and wants you to come out there,” he reported. “She also says to ask if you’d like a drink.”

  I glanced at my watch: almost eleven-thirty. Close enough.

  “Yes, thank you, Leon,” I said. “Can you mix me a frozen daiquiri?”

  “Sure,” he said. “My favorite. Mother’s milk.”

  I walked down the long entrance hall, the walls unaccountably decorated with swords, maces, and a few old muskets. The hallway led to a screened patio, and the rear door of that opened to a lawned area and the swimming pool.