McNally's Bluff (16 page)

The bar is called the Living Room, mainly because it’s furnished with comfy chairs and little tables, soft rugs and a grand piano that’s not just for show. As I entered, the pianist, in black tie, was tinkling out a Cole Porter melody that, like all Porter tunes, was conducive to ordering an old-fashioned while gazing into the eyes of a beautiful woman.

Excuse me if I wax poetic but the Living Room and Cole Porter have that effect on this romantic. Need I add that I was in one of my favorite watering holes?

At the far end of the room, opposite the bar and just beyond the piano, a few steps lead up to a smaller and therefore more intimate area where a fireplace, lit of course, is the focal point. My beautiful lady was seated in a corner awaiting her date.

“You’re the tops, you’re a Berlin ballad,” I sang as I took the chair opposite Marge Macurdy.

She laughed, showing off a set of pearly teeth in a beguiling freckled face. She wore a hat, which was yellow, peaked, and resembled a baseball cap, of all things. It sat jauntily on her curly head. Her yellow dress featured a shawl collar and vee neckline that, for Palm Beach, was very modest. (See-through dresses are suddenly the rage. Ugh!)

“I bet you know all the lyrics,” she teased.

Given that lead-in I proceeded to prove that I did.

“Hush,” she warned. “People are looking. It’ll be rumored tomorrow that I was serenaded in a faulty tenor by a man who was not my husband.”

I forgot that Marge was probably recognized the moment she walked into the Four Seasons. One of the drawbacks of escorting a celebrity, major or minor, is that you are scrutinized from head to toe by the hoi polloi, all hoping that you will do something either naughty or nutty. I think I was veering toward the latter.

“I take umbrage at the word faulty.”

“Really? I thought I was being kind,” Marge explained.

Sassy? Yes, this was my kind of woman, but why speculate on what might be when she’s got a hubby and I have a very enchanting significant other?

“You haven’t ordered?” I noted, glancing at our empty table.

“I haven’t been asked, but here she is now,” Marge said.

A pretty young thing was hovering over us, pen and order form in hand. “What’s your pleasure, please?” she asked in an unmistakable British accent.

“You’re a long way from London,” I said.

“I’m even a longer way from Sydney,” she informed me.

Marge grinned and I groused, “So I was mistaken. It happens, but not often.”

“You’re a breath of fresh air, Archy, and right now I could use all the fresh air I can get,” Marge kindly soothed my slightly damaged ego.

“That bad?” I asked.

She nodded stoically. “But a martini would help ease the pain.”

“Two Ketel One martinis, straight up with a twist, and some nibbles, please.”

As Sydney departed a woman and young man came up the steps and took the table directly across from Marge and me. She was elderly, flawlessly coiffed and affected a rather disagreeably haughty air. The young man was in jeans and a polo shirt. He looked petulant.

Sotto voce I mumbled, “The original odd couple.”

Marge put a finger to her lips and whispered the woman’s name. I was impressed. The lady, whom I certainly knew by name but had never met, was often dubbed the queen of Palm Beach society. That she was taking her libation in a public pub, however chic, was almost unthinkable.

“It’s said,” Marge informed me in hushed tones, “that she has the most powerful Rolodex in Palm Beach.”

I rather liked that unique description of the lady’s power in our town. What Marge meant was that with a few phone calls, Queenie could make you, break you, or rustle up a hundred people to subscribe to your charity and pay through the nose for the honor. “And the boy?” I asked.

“Her son and the proverbial
enfant terrible.
He’s been tossed out of all the best schools, all the best clubs and all the low-life bars. She adores him.”

What a town. A queen and her errant prince bending their elbows with the proletariat. If the boy was not welcome at Colette, mummy would shun it to make a statement. Blood, you see, is thicker than the waters of cafe society. And if he was as bad as Marge claimed I wondered how long it would be before Her Highness called upon Archy McNally to bail him out of a mess the mater’s money couldn’t quell.

Our drinks arrived in crystal glasses, the icy white liquor looking like the nectar of the gods. The nibble tray was respectable, if not overly imaginative. Nuts, mini pretzels, cheese bits and black olives. Recalling the feast Oscar Eberhart and I had consumed at Le Maze did not make the nibbles any more appetizing.

“To Eve,” I toasted.

She raised her glass but didn’t respond before sipping her drink. When she did speak it was to state, without preamble, the reason she wanted to see me. After all, we had observed the niceties of polite chitchat: small talk and gossip. The arrival of our drinks was a prelude to the more serious business on her agenda. There is nothing like a martini to get the tongue wagging.

Marge opened with, “What’s going on, Archy?”

“Strange. That’s just what I was going to ask you,” I said, “but you seem to know as much, or as little, as I do.”

“I know you’re working for Hayes.”

“A fact you learned from your husband.” I then asked what I already know because I wanted to see just where Marge stood in whatever was going on between her husband and Hayes. Was it a duo, or a triangle? “And who told him?”

She didn’t hesitate a moment before telling me. “Hayes, of course. He and Mack were on the phone shortly after you left Le Maze this morning.”

“Now it’s my turn, Marge. What the hell is going on? Mack and Hayes are suddenly very tight. Why?”

She sipped from her glass before answering, and so did I. I even reached for a wedge of cheese and an olive. I moved the nibble dish to her and she dismissed it with a wave of her hand.

“All I know, Archy, is that Mack is trying to get Hayes to come on the show. He’s made several visits to Le Maze for that reason. I told Mack he was chasing rainbows, but now I think Hayes is actually considering doing it.”

I may be a sucker for a lovely and clever woman, but I now felt that Marge didn’t have a clue as to what her husband was plotting or how he got Hayes to cooperate. “I got the same impression from Hayes,” I said. “I advised him not to do the show and he told me to mind my own business.”

“That sounds just like the man. May I ask you why you took him on as a client in what has got to be the most bizarre as well as the most sensational murder mystery in Palm Beach history?”

“Bizarre, thanks to Hayes and his Amazin’ Maze, and sensational because of the spin given it by
Breakfast with Mack and Marge.
”

“Don’t lay that on me, Archy McNally,” she protested. “I agreed to having Joe as our sole guest the morning after the night before. His on-the-spot reporting of the crime with us present made it not only plausible but exciting. It was the right thing to do. It was Mack’s idea to push the dark forces angle and, naturally, Joe went along with it because he was on a roll and loving every minute of it. You know Joe’s been promoted to full-fledged reporter and is right now the network’s great white hope.”

“I hear he’s also the darling of silly ladies who should know better, and Mack is refusing to have him back on the show.”

She laughed. “Mack is acting like a diva who wants to shoot
the
ingénue. My husband, Archy, has an ego the size of an elephant’s behind, in case you haven’t noticed. He played varsity football at college and had all the girls hot on his trail, including this one. After graduation we went to New York to seek fame and fortune. We both modeled with moderate success until Mack got a small part on a soap. He was written out of the script after two seasons.

“Hal Ingrams, our producer, was pitching the breakfast show to the network down here and, seeing Mack on the soap, asked him to do a pilot. I was brought in to pour the coffee and no one was more surprised than Mack and me when the network bought not only the concept, but us to boot. It’s called a package deal.”

It’s always interesting to know how people get from being one of the bunch to top banana and, more than just co-incidentally, luck rather than talent is the impetus. I speculated on the fact that they had known each other since their undergraduate days. No doubt the affair was consummated before they legalized it—if they ever legalized it. In show biz one never knows, and I didn’t dare ask.

“I imagine,” I offered, “for Mack Macurdy, this is just a stepping stone to the big time. Hence, the dark forces, Witch Hazel, Count Zemo and every and any crowd pleaser he can get into the mix.” What I didn’t say was that Marlena Marvel’s murder was Mack Macurdy’s luck factor in his quest for stardom, making him the only one to date with a motive for the crime. But that was too bizarre even for this bizarre case.

At this point I couldn’t help noting that the queen was drinking a Manhattan while the bad boy was belting down a bottled beer without benefit of a glass. Gauche!

“Mack and Joe ran Hayes and Marlena through Nexis and came up with enough material to start the ball rolling,” Marge continued. “Mack found that foolish witch and the phony count in an advert in some spiritual publication. After their appearance the kooks started coming to us. It’s a nightmare, Archy, and unethical.”

“But your ratings have soared,” I reminded her.

“Now you sound like Mack. Yes, the ratings are off the charts, but the end doesn’t justify the means this time.”

“You’re getting national attention, which should please you,” I said.

“It pleases Mack more. Do you think we can have another martini?”

“I’m sure we can.” I gave Sydney the high sign and pointed to our almost depleted glasses. “So you have no idea how or why Mack and Hayes became bosom buddies?”

She gave this a moment’s thought and then exclaimed, “Can I hire you, Archy?”

Well, I certainly gave that more than a moment’s thought. “If you need help, I’m at your service. Gratis.”

The drinks arrived and our waitress removed the old before presenting us with the new. The interval gave us both time to contemplate her strange request and my gallant answer. Let’s see: on this day I had taken on a client to prove his guilt, and had just offered my premium services, gratis, to a married woman I found too attractive for my own good. Should I consult Count Zemo to see what else was in store for this Pisces before the dastardly day ended? Georgy girl, I kept remembering, awaited me in Juno with a foxglove salad and a freshly oiled weapon.

Marge and I imbibed before picking up where we had left off. Feeling my way, I said, “You’re concerned about more than Mack’s iniquitous media blitz. No?”

She gave a shrug and seemed to relax, as if having come to a decision to share her burden had somehow lightened the load. Or was it the second Ketel One?

“Mack is up to something and I want to know what it is,” she explained.

So do I, I told myself. “Does it have anything to do with Marlena Marvel’s murder?”

“It has everything to do with the murder, Archy, that’s what has me worried, and scared. I can deal with Mack’s ego and unscrupulous ambition. I’ve been doing it for fifteen years. He’s always bragged and speculated about making it big on the small screen and is in almost daily touch with our agent in New York to that end. When we got the show down here he hired a public relations firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles to get us press where it matters. They’re expensive and so far got us mentioned in several New York and L.A. gossip columns which any press agent could do for half the cost.”

Fifteen years? If they left college when they were twenty-one or twenty-two, Marge would be just about my age, plus or minus. Okay, minus. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to guess her age when I should have been listening to her tale of woe, because I was doing both. In my line of work you learn to be ambidextrous when absorbing information.

“What’s different now?” I questioned.

Marge took a deep breath and expelled, “He’s suddenly full of himself. He’s acting as if his dreams of fame and fortune are no longer dreams, but fact. It’s not just the instant success and national attention we’ve had because of poor Marlena. It’s more than that, Archy, far more.”

“Give me a for-instance, Marge.”

Her answer, terse and to the point, was testimony to the amount of time her husband’s newly found confidence in attaining his goal had occupied her thoughts. She simply spoke aloud what she had been saying to herself the last two days.

“At first, Archy, I was amused with the occult aspect of Mack’s reportage. Corny, I admitted to myself and told him, but good for a few laughs and if it helped our ratings that was even better. I was against putting on the silly witch and the astrologer and thought we would return to our own format after their appearance. When Mack started booking the kooks who began calling, I protested but was ignored when Hal, our producer, sided with Mack.”

Marge paused long enough to quench her thirst and helped herself to a pretzel at the same time. I took it as a sign that her appetite had returned now that she was confiding in me. I should have been a psychiatrist, but that’s another story.

“My first indication that something was askew was when Joe Gallo’s audience response proved more than just positive. They say for every person that voices their approval, or disapproval, to the network, there are a few hundred who feel the same way but don’t bother calling. Joe got about a dozen calls, all in his favor.

“Mack was furious. I mean furious, Archy. He not only refused to have Joe back on, against Hal’s wishes, but said that if they insisted on putting Joe on, he would walk off the show. That’s unheard of. Mack has been upstaged before, but he’s never threatened to quit a show because of it. He couldn’t afford to. Jobs are scarce in this business. If the network gave us the sack, what would we do? But Mack didn’t seem to care. It was as if he had that old ace in the hole, what actors dream about when making demands. What I’m saying, Archy, is that he’s acting like a star, which he isn’t, and being a perfect bitch toward Joe. Gallo, a green kid who’s unaware of his attractive screen presence.”