McNally's Bluff (7 page)

Georgy closed the light. “He’ll only make a fool of himself,” she predicted.

What’s it to you? And may I have my pillow?

“It’s nothing to me.” I got the pillow in my face. “Is she rich?”

“Her father is a Wall Street tycoon and she never wears the same dress twice.”

“Another Palm Beach brat. Serves him right. She’ll break his heart.”

“The way he broke your heart, Lieutenant?”

She rolled over to my side of the bed, snuggling up like a kitten wanting to be stroked. “He didn’t break my heart. He left it to make room for you.”

I took her into my arms and whispered, “What a lovely sentiment. You’re a poet, Georgy girl.”

“And you’re my inspiration. Are you going to work for this Hayes guy?”

“Not if I can help it. He’s a cantankerous little runt and a con artist.”

“In that case, McNally,
cherchez
la husband.”

“Impossible,” I said—then bit my tongue.

“Amazing,” was father’s take on the death of Marlena Marvel, which made the front pages of the
PB Post
and
Daily News
this morning, as well as in most of the dailies from Jacksonville to Miami, and the tabloid press across the country.

That father did not declare it impossible was testimony to the rigid objectivity he applied to his legal cases in particular and life in general. We were seated in father’s office in the executive suite of the McNally Building on Royal Palm Way where his Sergeant at Arms, in the guise of executive secretary Mrs. Trelawney, dotes on the King and harasses his subjects.

Father explained that he was in the den last night reading Dickens, when Ursi disturbed his nightly journey back to the days of horse and carriage, divorceless marriage and a footman behind every diner. Ursi had come from her apartment over the garage where she and Jamie were watching the evening news when the story of trouble at Le Maze preempted the scheduled newscast. (Hayes is famous for his sense of timing.) Knowing I was a guest there, she thought father would be interested in the breaking story.

“Thankfully mother had retired,” father said.

I mentioned that mother is a bit forgetful these days. She also suffers from hypertension. For this reason we tend to protect her from the more worrisome aspects of modern life which isn’t easy given the modern media’s obsession with doom and gloom. Knowing that her favorite son was in a house to which an ambulance and half the Palm Beach police department had been summoned would not help her cause.

Father put on the telly; as I had imagined, a camera crew had been dispatched to Le Maze and was giving viewers live coverage of the chaotic spectacle on Ocean Boulevard.

“It looked like a scene from a movie,” father told me. “I tuned in after the arrival of the ambulance but just as someone from inside the house began communicating with the crew outside. He said that Mrs. Hayes was first reported missing, then found dead in that maze. I must say it was very confusing to say the least—and very distressing knowing you were there.”

I didn’t acknowledge his concern for my safety as I knew it would only embarrass him. We McNallys are not a demonstrative clan. We are there for each other but do so without getting in each other’s way. I told him the reporter was Joe Gallo.

“You know him?”

“Quite well,” I said. “He and Georgia were once an item, as Lolly Spindrift would put it.”

Father tugged on his guardsman mustache, silently saying he would rather not be privy to the more intimate details of my love life, past or present. Prescott McNally is a gentleman who identifies more with the Victorian or Edwardian ages than the new millennium. In his three-piece suit, regimental tie (which he has no right to wear), starched collar, French cuffs with onyx links and pricey brogues, he resembles an actor waiting for his cue to enter the scene as the pompous Mr. Rich with a heart of gold.

I explained, yet again, the events that led to the discovery of Marlena Marvel’s body.

“Amazing,” father repeated, shaking his head thoughtfully. “And you were a witness to all this?”

“I was, sir, and so were at least fifty other people.”

Playing the devil’s advocate, which is a lawyer’s prerogative, he asked, “Tell me, Archy, if you were in the witness box would you swear you saw this woman posing as Venus at approximately nine last evening?”

Suspecting where this would lead I answered without hesitating, “I would, sir.”

“Based on what evidence?” my father, the lawyer, probed.

“Based on previous knowledge that she was famous for portraying the ancient statue and on the many posters on display which depicted her in the role.”

“Both circumstantial,” he concluded.

“I think you’re implying the possibility that someone was impersonating Marlena Marvel.”

“Exactly, Archy.”

“So, where did the impersonator go after the performance? Remember, a search party went upstairs to hunt for Marlena. They searched every room, including the attic, and found no one. And, no one, except for the maid, came down those stairs. Whether it was Marlena or an impersonator on that balcony, how did either disappear after the show?”

Father leaned back in his leather upholstered swivel chair and looked at the ceiling. “Could the maid be the impersonator?”

“No, sir. The maid, Tilly, is a few inches taller than Hayes, who’s about five-feet-four in his heels. Marlena is, or was, a big woman, and the statue, as you may recall, is totally nude.

“But, for argument’s sake, say there was an impersonator and the real Marlena was never upstairs but outside the house all the while. Okay, but how did she get into the goal of the maze? We were all over every passage and finally into the goal itself. When we left the maze not everyone came directly back into the house. About a dozen of the guests stood outside, smoking, directly in front of the entrance to the maze which remained lit after Hayes had closed the flood lights inside the labyrinth. The entrance to the maze was always in full view of the French windows and it’s like looking out on a lit stage from inside the house.

“Minutes later the alarm was sounded and the search was on. No one could have walked or carried Marlena through that entrance and to the goal without being seen.”

Father tugged on his mustache. Lawyers like to tally the facts and come up with a logical solution. In the case of Marlena Marvel’s untimely death the facts, as witnessed by dozens of people, only exacerbated the mystery. “There’s got to be an answer, Archy, unless you believe in magic, and I don’t.”

“Neither do I, sir.”

“Are you going to take the case?”

“Hayes thinks he’s hired me, but I don’t know if I want to get involved with him and his traveling carnival. Also, these are early days, very early days. We don’t know how Marlena Marvel died and we don’t know the intimate circumstances of the Hayes household, both of which the police, I’m sure, are now working to learn. I do know that Hayes is a bully and a boor whom I would be more inclined to suspect than work for. When the police complete their investigation he might need a lawyer more than a private investigator.”

“Don’t give him my card,” father cautioned.

Before leaving I said, “Did I mention that both Laddy Taylor and Carolyn Taylor were at the party?”

That piqued his interest even more than the murder. “Really?”

“Lieutenant Eberhart told me that Laddy has been pestering the police to investigate his father’s death.”

“And what was their response?”

“That Linton Taylor has had a serious heart condition for years and died of a severe angina attack. His doctor found nothing unusual in his death.”

“Just what I told him,” father said. “I made it perfectly clear that there were no grounds to contest his father’s will, especially since he and his father had been estranged for many years.”

I described the scene I had witnessed between Laddy and Carolyn at the end of the evening.

“If he continues to harass her, she may have cause to petition the police to keep him from approaching her,” father said.

“I hope it doesn’t get nasty.”

“It already is, Archy. Hell hath no fury like a disenfranchised heir.”

On that ominous note I took my leave only to be stopped by Mrs. Trelawney on the way to the elevator. “This expense report you dropped on my desk,” she began, removing her pince-nez and waving the said report in the air.

“What about it, Mrs. Trelawney?”

“The item entitled dinner at Acquario.”

“Do you have a problem with it, Mrs. Trelawney?”

“How many people did you feed?”

“We were two.”

“Then I have a problem with it and will authorize payment of one half the amount presented, which could feed a family of ten for a year.”

“And I will let it be known that you drink in private and have a passion for South American soccer players.”

“You’re incorrigible, Archy McNally.”

“Only when provoked. Also, it may interest you to know the expense was incurred yesterday in pursuit of information regarding Matthew Hayes who is today’s headline from coast to coast.”

“Are you saying you anticipated that woman’s demise?”

“I am saying, Mrs. Trelawney, that I am worth every cent of that expense report, and then some.”

“I heard you were there last night. Your name was mentioned on
Breakfast with Mack and Marge.
They were there, too, and the reporter Joe Gallo who was their guest this morning. The three of them talked of nothing else but the party and the maze and the discovery of the body. The show is going to be repeated this evening by popular demand.”

It didn’t surprise me that Mrs. Trelawney was a fan of
Breakfast with Mack and Marge.
A woman of her ilk was just the charismatic Mack Macurdy’s cup of tea. “You watch the show regularly, Mrs. Trelawney?”

“I never miss it,” she cooed and almost blushed.

“I’ll try to catch the repeat,” I said.

“You can catch it sooner if you go to the mailroom,” she called after me.

I paused and turned. “Pray elucidate, madame.”

“Binky taped the show and is running it off in the mail-room on his VCR. Half the office has been down there when they should be working.”

“I don’t get it. How did Binky know this morning’s show was going to be a blockbuster?”

“Joe Gallo told him, I guess.”

“Binky is matey with Joe Gallo?” I exclaimed. “Since when?”

We do not have an electronic security system in the McNally Building but something far more reliable. We are sandwiched between Herb, our security person in the basement garage, who checks our comings and goings, and Mrs. Trelawney on the top floor who monitors our movements when in residence. They work in tandem like the jaws of a vise. Herb is a retired police officer and Mrs. Trelawney claims to be a graduate of a prestigious business academy. I believe she attended the FBI school for spies with a master’s from the KGB. However, there are times, like now, when her information is most interesting.

“I assume, since they’re neighbors,” she explained.

My knees turned to water as they used to say in pulp fiction, a genre sadly missed by discriminating readers.

“Gallo rented the trailer next to Binky’s at the Palm Court. Didn’t you know that?”

No, I did not know that, but I do know that Sergeant Al Rogoff calls the Palm Court home. Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub—and
give unto me a break!

I
STUCK MY HEAD
into the mailroom and caught a show in progress. By this time all the big boys and girls had had their viewing so Binky’s audience now consisted of secretaries on their lunch break. Binky had tried to date most of them but I fear his appeal is more to the mother instinct in ladies of Mrs. Trelawney’s generation than to the raging hormones of lassies looking for a mate. A sage once wrote that for every man there’s a woman but given Binky’s record this may prove to be presumptuous, to say the least.

Binky’s blond hair is desperately in need of “body,” and Binky’s pink-and-white body is desperately in need of hair. His brown eyes are woeful, even when he laughs. But perhaps I am being too harsh on one of my best friends. After years of job hunting that was no more successful than his quest for romance, I secured Binky Watrous a position as mail person for McNally & Son where he seems to have found a home. Translation: Mrs. Trelawney adores him.

On Binky’s minuscule TV screen the dynamic trio of the moment were reporting, with gusto, the events leading to the discovery of Marlena Marvel’s body in the goal of the maze. I must say it was riveting reportage by two pros and a rising star. Joe Gallo’s small-screen debut was more than promising and while he wasn’t as yet the suave anchorman with trendy tonsure and Savile Row suit, he was the boy-next-door with a bright future. The boy sported jeans and a tee, explaining, “I rushed right over and didn’t bother dressing.”

Didn’t bother? Joey’s garb was as calculated as his ambition. The comment got a glare from Mack and a smile from Marge. Poor Mack suddenly looked stodgy in his blazer and summer flannels. Marge, in a white pantsuit with a rainbow ascot at the throat, was the epitome of Palm Beach chic. I knew she was made up for the show (the endearing freckles were not visible) but the makeup artist, no doubt taken by her wholesome good looks, kept the war paint to a minimum and let her smile say it all.

Naturally they ran the footage of Mack’s helicopter ride over the maze and, as I had recalled, it was not possible to distinguish the passages that led to the goal, but I did catch a fleeting glimpse of the sundial. I now knew it to be in the goal itself, but one would not know that from Mack’s film. Also, the show’s director ran a tape of Joe’s reportage from inside Le Maze, more to Mack’s annoyance and Marge’s amusement. Was it all part of their act or were hubby and wife more competitors than helpmates?

Marge kept the hour from being totally maudlin by telling her audience about the fairway side shows and the clever way Hayes had contrived to pair off his guests for their search for the goal, and she gave the ladies (and perhaps the gentlemen) a titillating description of Carolyn’s miniskirt and bare midriff.