McNally's Bluff (12 page)

A
S I TURNED INTO
Hayes’s driveway I passed Mack Macurdy, in a black Jaguar, pulling out. I assume he was making a pest of himself trying to enlist Hayes and Tilly for a stint on his show. I wondered how long Hayes could resist hamming it up for a live TV presentation, and I imagined Tilly was already spending the loot Mack was dangling before her like a carrot egging on a donkey.

If I had anything to do with this case I would discourage either of them from appearing on television or making statements to anyone but the police. This would also spare the public Hayes’s crocodile tears and Tilly’s histrionics. These are the perks I give, gratis, to the citizenry of Palm Beach, for which I am never thanked.

Tilly opened the door and gave me a reverent curtsey. In all my years of being greeted by housekeepers and butlers. in this town it was the first time one reacted as if I were a prince making house calls. Le Maze was so full of theatrics one didn’t know where the show ended and reality began.

“Mr. Hayes is in the den,” Tilly informed me.

On close observation, and in less chaotic circumstances, I noted that Matilda Thompson was a pretty little thing with a figure and gams the shapeless maid’s dress and sturdy oxford shoes diminished but could not entirely hide. What other duties did she perform for the carnival besides lady-in-waiting to Marlena? Salome dropping her seven veils for gawking teenagers at two bits a pop? Or did she step into the magician’s box and get sawed in half?

I gave her the standard line for calling upon a house in mourning. “How is he holding up?”

She responded with the standard comeback, “As well as can be expected, sir.”

The niceties observed, I got down to business. “Were they a happy couple, Tilly?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Very happy. Mr. Hayes is distraught over his loss. How could such a thing happen when we were all...”

“I was here, Tilly, remember?” I cut her off before she could tell her story which no doubt would include the chaise lounge Mr. Hayes had purchased from the previous owners of Le Maze. “I don’t know how it happened, but it certainly did happen.”

“Yes, sir.”

She led me to the den, tapped on the door, removed a piece of paper from the pocket of her uniform, shoved it into my jacket pocket and, purposely avoiding my astonished gaze, opened the door to announce me. My flabber was gasted but I composed myself for my entrance only to be admonished by the little man himself. Rising from his overstuffed divan, he accused, “You’re late.”

“According to your schedule, I may be, according to mine, I’m not, and the only schedule I adhere to is mine.
Comprende,
Mr. Hayes?”

He glared up at me, was about to speak but changed his mind and laughed instead. “If you had let me get away with that I would have thrown you out,” he said.

“Before this association is over, Mr. Hayes, you may yet: find it necessary to show me to the door.”

“So,” he cajoled, “we have an association.”

“Only if your schedule doesn’t conflict with mine and if you pay your bill when presented and not gasp at my outrageous fee.”

He gave me that amazin’ glare, shrugged, and waved to a club chair that did not match, in fabric or color, the divan. But then it would be hard to find one that could match what appeared to be a piece designed especially for the waiting room of a high-end bordello.

“Okay, okay,” he barked, “get off your high horse and have a seat. I expect to be cheated and if you came cheap you wouldn’t be worth the breath to blow you away.”

I took my seat. “I won’t cheat you, Mr. Hayes, nor will I grease palms. I don’t work that way and neither do the Palm Beach police.”

He sat on the edge of the divan so that his feet touched the floor. “Spare me the sermon. I know what you and everyone in this town thinks of me. Brassy and trashy and out with the garbage. They came to my carnival but they won’t invite the carny man to break bread in their homes.”

“Then why did you come here, Mr. Hayes?”

“Why not? I have the money for it. I wanted to retire down here but Ringling and Barnum had already staked a claim on the West Coast so I came east and bought this mansion in a town where I would stick out like a sore thumb and rattle a few beads. It’s what I do, Mr. McNally. Rattle sacred beads.”

The note Tilly had slipped me was rattling for attention and I had all to do to keep my hand out of that pocket. Le Maze was taking on all the characteristics of a house in a gothic novel. Thanks to the various search parties I knew the attic did not hold the master’s mad wife, nor did the basement contain comfy hiding places for those who shun the sun. What it did harbor was two carny pros who might just be leading me up the garden path which, in this case, was a maze. Archy, you’re in a stew and surrounded by cannibals.

Having confessed to his reason, inane as it was, for coming here and being dubbed
persona non grata
for his pains, Hayes sank back onto his divan and dropped his chin to his chest like a naughty boy seeking sympathy. Dye the gray hair black, exhibit him with clever lighting and you would peg him for a preppy. His body was remarkably trim due I’m sure to genetics rather than any conscious effort to keep the belly flat and the skin taut.

Today he wore jeans and a sweatshirt with a Ferris wheel logo manufactured, I guessed, especially for his carnival and available on the fairway. (Fool that I am, I suddenly wanted one.) His black shoes appeared to be the same ones he had worn with his tux and I suspected they were the only shoes he wore in public. In my father’s day they were called “elevator shoes,” with the heel built up both within and without, adding a good two inches to the wearers’ stature. Deception was Matthew Hayes’s forte, from head to heel.

“What happened to Mrs. Hayes?” I asked, hoping the question would remind him of the reason for my presence.

“Someone poisoned her and she died. Haven’t you heard?”

“Let’s cut the rhetoric, Mr. Hayes, and see if we can’t begin to make some sense of what happened here the other night. For that I’ll need your cooperation, not snide comments. That is if you want to learn what happened to your wife or just bask in the publicity.”

He leaned forward and put his hands on his knees to signal his displeasure. “You’re a saucy bastard, McNally.”

“And you’re a calculating one, Mr. Hayes. Shall we go on with this or do you want to show me the door?”

He shrugged as if in resignation and said, “You think I’m a cold and calculating S.O.B. because I’m not prostrate with grief and bawling over what happened. Well, you’re wrong, Mr. McNally. I’m sick over what happened to Marlena and I’m scared out of my wits. But I’m carny, born and bred, and we don’t wear our hearts on our sleeves, as the saying goes. That’s for the suckers.

“I wasn’t born in a trunk, but in a tent on the night the carny was packing it in, one step ahead of the sheriff. Carny folks are all family so they dug in and paced with my father. When the law showed up, the sheriff and two deputies, they brought them to our tent to witness my coming into the world like they were the three wise men. Now I ask you, would anyone serve papers on a scene like that? Of course not. My father gave them a shot of the bathtub gin they had come to arrest us for selling and we all lived happily ever after.

“So you see, Mr. McNally, I was on the game from the moment I was born.”

Nice story, but how much of it was true? “Why are you scared, Mr. Hayes?”

“Why? Because if they got Marlena, they’ll get me next, that’s why I hired you.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know, Archy, I swear I don’t know. I pulled a lot of scams in this big country and made a lot of enemies. Now one of them is coming after me. Between us, Archy, I made a lot of husbands angry and more than one took a buckshot to my rear. I figure one of them got Marlena to make his point.”

I noted how he suddenly dropped my given name as he made his appeal. I was also aware of the effectiveness of this maneuver. Could I believe him? Dare I believe him?

“What do you know about digitalis, Mr. Hayes?”

“I’ve heard of it. Who hasn’t? But it was never prescribed by a doc for me, or Marlena. How it got into her tea, I’ll never know.”

“Tea?” I questioned. “When did she take tea?”

“Right after her gig, like always. I mean after she did her turn as Venus. Tilly always brewed her a pot of tea after a performance and Marlena took it while she soaked in the tub. She had to bathe, you know, to get off the greasepaint.” This got better all the time. If Marlena took the lethal dose of digitalis while soaking in the tub, someone had to not only haul her out of the tub, but dry and dress her before carrying her to the maze—with a houseful of people running amok all over the place. I’ll believe it when a snowstorm snarls traffic on the Dixie Highway. (Bite your tongue, Archy.)

Remembering the note, I asked, “Can you trust Tilly?”

“With my wallet,” Hayes answered, revealing his priorities. “She’s a good kid. Not too bright but she’s been with us for over two years. She was an aspiring actress we found slinging hash in a diner trying to make enough in tips to get her bus fare to New York. Marlena told her we were headed east and Tilly joined the tour. Between us, she was a star attraction in the stag tent. She did Cleopatra with a garden snake that passed for an asp. Not bad, and she got half the box office every performance.”

There was a hell of a lot transpiring “between us” on this initial interview and I added one more. “Between us, Mr. Hayes, are you and Tilly strictly boss and employee, no hanky-panky and exploding buckshots?”

He raised his hand, high. “On my word of honor, Archy.”

I almost laughed in his face.

“Have the police leveled with you?” he wanted to know.

“I haven’t talked to them since the night Marlena died.” It wasn’t really a lie as I don’t consider my personal talks with Al Rogoff official banter with the PB men in blue. “I take it they haven’t said anything to you that might help our cause.”

“Not a thing. They searched the house and the maze all day yesterday, questioned Tilly and me, but never said what they found or what they were thinking.”

Because they didn’t find anything and were thinking that they were being bamboozled but couldn’t figure out how. I know, because I was feeling the same way. “These people who you claim may be out to get you, do you think they’re carny folks?”

“They could be,” he answered. “There were plenty I duped and cheated and fired over the years. I don’t play favorites, Archy. Now I’m settled down with big bucks and a plan to make more in Palm Beach, and maybe someone doesn’t like it. Could be carny folks.”

“There were carny people here the night of the party. They supposedly left before we started our hunt for the goal. Did they all leave?”

“If they didn’t, where are they hiding? Behind the wallpaper?”

Good point.

It was time to make the final pitch and I did so without preamble. “How was it done, Mr. Hayes? You know all the tricks of your trade. Share this one with me, and the police, to avenge your wife and perhaps save your life in the process.”

“You’re wrong,” he bellowed, waving his arms and fidgeting in his seat. “I don’t know all the tricks. That’s a sucker’s conceit. Anyone who says he knows it all drops his guard and when you drop your guard you’re dead. Don’t ever forget that, Archy. If there’s a sucker born every minute, there’s a new scam being concocted every thirty seconds to keep up with the demand.

“Did you ever see a performing magician hold a piece of string, about a foot long, in his hands and ask someone in the audience to come forward and, handing him a scissors, have the person cut the string in half? The magician now holds two pieces of string, one dangling from each hand. He clasps them between the palms of his hands, pretending to pray, opens his hands and, presto, he is holding one piece of string, about a foot long.

“A theater full of people, far more than were gathered in this house the night Marlena died, and all of them have been hoodwinked by the oldest trick in the magic trade. All of them will swear the string was cut in two and magically rejoined in the illusionist’s mitts. Do you know how it’s done, Archy?”

“No, sir. I don’t.”

“But you know it’s a trick.”

I nodded. “Conceded. I know it’s a trick.”

“Well, I don’t know how Marlena was poisoned in her bath and carried to the goal of the maze. But, like you, I know it was a trick.”

Very clever. He just confirmed what the police and I already knew but did so in the form of a parable. While other little boys were reading the adventures of Huck and Tom, little Matthew was reading Elmer Gantry. But, I bear witness, Matthew Hayes was beguiling. If I sat here any longer he would make a convert of this skeptic.

“So we can rule out magic,” I offered.

He laughed. “You’ve been listening to that Macurdy fellow. A lot of hogwash but don’t write him off. He’s latched on to a good thing and is making the most of it. I would do the same.”

“Did Marlena believe in the supernatural?”

He seemed to mull this over before answering, “Yes and no. Look, I taught Marlena everything she knew about the carny business. You know how we teamed up. Everyone does. It’s no secret. I showed her the ropes. Fortune-telling, healing, lucky charms, contacting beloved ones on the other side. Marlena was good at it. A natural, you might say. And like all naturals, I think she was beginning to believe her own hype. No surprise. Film stars, athletes, politicians—sooner or later they all believe the lies planted by their press agents.

“Let’s say Marlena thought she had the gift.”

“Could she have been fooling around with digitalis? Experimenting with it as a potential restorative? A kind of medically endorsed snake oil.”

I got the shrug. “Could be, but so what? If she was using herself as a guinea pig who carried her out of the house and to the maze? Her medium?”

It always boiled down to the same thing. How did Marlena Marvel get from the house to the maze? The razzle-dazzle. The illusion. “Find her murderer,” I thought aloud, “and we’ll know how it was done.”

“That’s your job, Archy.” He rose to signal the end of the meeting.