McNally's Dare (8 page)

“What you see is what you get,” she assured me.

What I saw was a blond creature in white shorts and T-shirt that allowed for an inch or two of bare midriff. When, as now, Georgy putters around the cottage barefoot, she reminds me of the comic strip character Daisy Mae, whose charms were lost on Lil’ Abner. Georgy’s allure is not lost on Lil’ Archy.

Coming behind her I parted the blond tresses like a curtain and kissed the back of her neck. She smelled of jasmine-scented soap and tuna fish. “Let me take you away from all this,” I whispered into her ear.

“How far?” she wanted to know.

“The bedroom?”

“That’s what I thought,” she replied, elbowing me aside to put the odious casserole in the oven. “Help yourself to a drink and then start preparing the salad.”

Since I brought a toothbrush, shaving kit and change of shorts and socks into Georgy’s home, she thoughtfully purchased a tea trolley in antiquated Formica—there truly is such a thing—on which to set up a portable bar. Remembering my two vodka martinis, I poured myself a light vodka and tonic and mixed the same for my hostess, earning me a mischievous wink of her green eye.

“Cheers,” she said, taking a sip. “Hmmmm, good. I’ve been cruising in the patrol car all day, terrifying speeders.”

“Did you catch any?”

“Not enough to justify the gas I used.” She took a salad bowl from one of the cupboards and placed it on the kitchen drain board. “How was your day?”

“Lunch at Mar-a-Lago with Malcolm MacNiff and cocktails at the GulfStream with Dennis Darling of
Bare Facts
magazine.”

“You poor, poor dear. Do you want me to make the salad while you take a snooze until I ring the dinner bell?”

“My job might seem like a piece of cake,” I said, not for the first time, “but murder was on the agenda at both meetings. It’s emotionally exhausting.”

Opening the refrigerator door I knew better than to go to the vegetable bin in search of a good, old fashioned solid head of iceberg. Experience taught me to reach for a Ziploc bag of precut, prewashed mixed greens, the contents of which I emptied into the salad bowl. “You wouldn’t happen to have a nice, ripe tomato I could cut up and put in the salad?”

“I don’t think so,” Georgy said, opening a package of frozen crescent rolls and arranging them on a baking dish.

“Cucumber?”

“I’m a policewoman, Archy, not your Ursi,” she complained.

“A tomato and a cucumber do not an Ursi make,” I informed her, putting the bowl in the refrigerator. “French, Russian or Italian?” I asked, eyeing the three squeezable plastic bottles lined up on the inside of the fridge door.

She put the crescent rolls in the oven, next to our casserole that was beginning to bubble, making tiny popping sounds that could put a horse off its feed.

“This is the last time I’m making you dinner,” she sassed.

“Your lips to God’s ear” I said, and she burst into tears.

I took her in my arms and patted her back. “There, there, Georgy girl. I was only kidding.”

“You were not. I’m a lousy cook and we both know it.”

“But you have other worthy attributes,” I told her.

“Name two,” she demanded.

“I would rather show you than tell you.”

“All you ever think of is your stomach and your...”

“Don’t say it. I evoked God’s ear and He’s listening.”

“You’re a snob, Archy McNally. And an egotist.” She paused for breath as my hand kneaded her lower back where T-shirt did not meet shorts. “And you’re stuck on yourself.”

“My favorite wit said, ‘to love yourself is the beginning of a life-long romance.’”

Ignoring Mr. Wilde’s observation, she continued her attack with, “Getting photographed in a jacket that looks like a botanical garden in full bloom and confusing me with your dog. I could scream.”

Now we were nearing the heart of the matter. “You saw the interview.”

“I did,” she said, “and so did everyone in the Juno barracks. I am now known as Hobo, thanks to you.”

Not wishing to add insult to injury, I suppressed a chuckle and suggested we sit in the parlor and enjoy our drinks while we bashed each other, like proper married folks. “You’re overreacting,” I diagnosed.

“Am I? Name one of Augusta Apple’s films,” she challenged.

“Who in the name of jumping Jehovah is Augusta Apple?”

“Lila Lee, your favorite movie star, that’s who. You’re a phony, McNally.”

Did I mention that besides being the Fast Food Queen of Florida, Georgy girl is also the undisputed champ of movie trivia? It was a title I thought I held until meeting up with Officer O’Hara.

“She was the mother of the writer James Kirkwood,” I offered.

She shrugged that off with, “Everyone knows that.”

“I doubt it, but let’s not argue the point.” Taking her hand I proposed, again, we sit, “But first lower the oven temperature to warm, we don’t want to char the tuna ’n’ noodle casserole.”

“The rolls won’t rise,” she said.

“We’ll declare them crepes and have them for dessert.”

The parlor, galley kitchen and breakfast nook are all one room and take up half the cottage’s square footage. The other half comprises the bedroom and bath, located through a doorway just to the left of the kitchen. We settled on the couch, which was upholstered in a tan, corded fabric; a material that is serviceable and a color that goes with everything.

“Now tell me what the tears are all about,” I said, once we were side by side with her blond head resting on my shoulder.

“I just told you,” she lied.

Georgy girl was a policewoman to the core, proud of the fact, and a credit to her chosen profession. This did not compromise her femininity one iota. She was any man’s equal, but did not shrink from using her charisma to charm the pants off her beau. (Metaphor not coincidental.) Under ordinary circumstances, and from past experience, I knew she would register her displeasure with my interview by crowning me with the casserole after draping the crescent rolls around my neck. But tears? Never.

Voicing my suspicions, I casually inquired, “How did you know I played tennis with Joe Gallo?”

“Did you actually play with him? I knew he was at your fancy party, but I didn’t know you met him.”

My chin being higher than her head I couldn’t see her face but I envisioned those emerald eyes, wide with curiosity. Did she imagine Joe Gallo and me doing battle across a net for her favors? And she called me an egotist? Before she had me forgetting the question, I repeated, “So how did you know I was at a fancy party with Joe Gallo?”

She mumbled something. “Speak up, missy,” I ordered.

“Connie called me,” she said, an octave higher, but painfully audible.

Well—am I to be spared nothing? Introduce two women and the next thing you know they are discussing you on one of those wireless contraptions while chasing vehicular speeders and, no doubt, running over au pairs wheeling prams. This, I thought, is what comes from playing goody two shoes and thinking we can all be friends. Well, it’s clear, we can’t.

Connie Garcia, who is social secretary to Lady Cynthia Horowitz, a septuagenarian with a face that could stop a clock and a figure that could stop traffic, and I were once an item. In fact we were a staple on the PB social scene until nasty words, like
marriage,
passed between us. When Connie told me to move in, legally, or move out, permanently, Georgy girl and I struck up a conversation over a corpse. At the same time, the gods, who work in strange ways, had Connie hook up with Alejandro Gomez y Zapata on a conga line in South Beach.

Alex is a rebel whose cause is to free Cuba from Mr. Castro. It is not clear how Alex is going to do this. In the meantime he leads political rallies, parades and conga lines. It’s rumored that Alex is going to make a run for mayor of Miami. If he wins, Connie will be Mrs. Mayor. I sincerely hope Alex invades Cuba, taking Connie with him, before this comes to pass.

One evening, dining with Georgy girl at my club, the Pelican, we found ourselves at a table next to Connie and her Spanish dancer. This could happen because the Pelican is also Connie’s club. Ignoring my chauvinistic instincts, I invited my former to join our table and meet my current. Now I learn they talk behind my back and, if Connie knows that Joe Gallo and Georgy were once an item, they talk quite intimately. And if Georgy talked about Joe, did Connie talk about
moi?
I think I blushed, which is not a good thing for a discreet inquirer to do.

Here you have the result of allowing women to join men’s clubs, compete in manly sports, enter manly professions and vote. Wise Queen Bess said the suffragette movement would end civilization as we know it—and she was right. A pox on equality.

Probing further into this treachery, I ventured, “So how did Connie know I was at a fancy party with Joe Gallo?”

“A friend of Lady C’s was there and she called Lady C to report on all the hot young men in their tennis shorts. This woman and Lady C trade, so Connie tells me.”

Trade? Does the women’s movement know no bounds? “And Joe Gallo was on the hot young men list, I take it.”

“You know it,” she said.

That I wasn’t on the list was implied, if not stated. Was remembrance of things past the reason for Georgy girl’s melancholia? Giving her a jolt that would either cure or kill, I said, “I also met Vivian Emerson.”

Georgy sat up, reached for the drink she had deposited on the glass-top coffee table, and imbibed. “Archy, can you honestly say you never think about Connie—remembering the good times—and wondering what went wrong, and why?”

Now we were hitting below the belt, and it hurt. “I can’t honestly say I don’t,” I told her.

“Then get off my case.”

Now, that was the Georgy girl I knew and loved. Never beat around a bush when you can pull it up by the roots with a few well-chosen words. If confession is good for the soul, it also has a profound effect on the appetite. “Should we get the one-pot extravaganza out of the oven and check on the crepes?”

“Not until you tell me about the murder. Is that why you had lunch with MacNiff? It happened at his house, right?”

“Didn’t Lady C’s talent scout have anything to say about it? She was there when it happened.”

“She only reported that one of the caterer’s boys drowned in the pool. She thought it was an accident. Now we all know it wasn’t. Are you acting for MacNiff?”

I saw no harm in telling her that MacNiff had asked me to look into the matter, as it had occurred on his turf. When I get a case, such at this one, that is also being investigated by the police, I have to play it very close to the vest when discussing it with Al Rogoff and Georgy girl. Of course this did not prohibit me from asking, “What do you hear about the boy’s murder?”

“Are you looking for privileged information, McNally?”

“Naturally.”

“Well, save your breath. I know that the boy was chloroformed and pushed into the pool to drown.”

“That, I’m sure, is in the police press release,” I said.

“That’s where I got it,” Georgy admitted. “And it’s as much as I know. It’s out of my jurisdiction and unless we’re called in that’s where it’ll stay. State troopers don’t get involved in murder cases unless we happen to stumble over them. Remember?”

Indeed, I did remember. The sad truth was that the murder of a young waiter would not be given top priority by our men in blue. The venue, not the crime, was the reason Jeff’s had been given television coverage and newspaper headlines. If no one was charged after a routine investigation it would go into the “open cases” file where it would remain till Lake Worth froze over. However, if the police and the press knew there might be a Talbot involved in the crime, the top brass and the national press would be all over it like ants at a picnic. Dennis Darling was very wise to distance himself from the affair, thereby avoiding a media stampede to southern Florida.

Right on cue, Georgy girl asked, “How come Dennis Darling invited you for drinks? Is he going to write about the murder for his rag?”

“He’s here to write about Palm Beach and I’m on his list of tourist attractions.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

“Why would Dennis Darling get involved in what appears to be a vendetta between the young and reckless of the working classes?”

“Spare me the minutiae of our caste system, McNally. That tennis party was crawling with big guns, like the hunk Jackson Barnett. He would interest Dennis Darling, especially if Barnett was interested in one of the waiters.”

Not a bad guess, I thought, proud of my Georgy girl. She was in the right church, if the wrong pew, which was fine. For the time being, let them all think what they wanted as long as Lance Talbot wasn’t on their most wanted list. “Jackson was asked not to leave town, as we all were,” I said, “and is presently stowed away on Phil Meecham’s yacht, but Lady Cynthia has invited the pro to play on her court.”

“That,” Georgy said, “is like being caught between the proverbial hard place and a brick wall.”

“No, my dear. It’s like being trapped between two flesh-eating creatures—speaking of which, shall we eat?”

We rose, kissed and headed for the kitchen. Georgy suddenly stopped, took hold of my elbow and exclaimed, “Don’t open the oven.”

“For Pete’s sake, why not?”

“I just remembered, I forgot to put the mushroom soup in the casserole.”

“What?”

“You came in just as I was about to open the can and distracted me,” she wailed. “It’ll be congealed.”

“Congealed? Georgy girl, it will be cement.”

She ran to a kitchen drawer and pulled out a stack of colorful menus. “Lee Wong’s Chinese Take Out, Mama Mia’s Italian Take Out, Julio’s Cuban Take Out...”

“Stop it,” I shouted. “You’re making me ill.”

“Lee Wong’s is not bad,” she recommended. “Excellent sesame noodles.”

“Your landlady doesn’t like it when strangers call on you after dark,” I reminded her.

“Lee Wong a stranger? You must be kidding, McNally

Georgy girl is living proof that the way to a man’s heart is
not
through his stomach.

B
REAKFAST NOT BEING AN
option at Chez Georgy, I stopped at a diner on the way south and treated myself to scrambled eggs, sausages and toast, telling the waitress to go easy on the hash browns. Lee Wong’s chicken and snow peas do not stick to the ribs. Georgy would pick up a container of coffee and a buttered roll at the troopers’ favorite pit stop on the way to work. How she maintained that figure and flawless complexion on a diet of fast food and breakfasts on-the-go could only be attributed to youth and good genes. Georgy girl had an abundant supply of both.