McNally's Folly (7 page)

“I think he does, sir, and I believe his performance last night was an exhibition of his powers aimed directly at me.”

“A warning, Archy?”

“It couldn’t be clearer, sir.”

“What worries me is that if he knows who hired you to snoop around his operation it makes us look negligent in our promise of confidentiality to Richard Holmes and less than diligent in carrying out our duties. I don’t like it, Archy.”

“Nor I, sir.”

Before leaving I told Father that the person he had hired to tend Mother’s garden had arrived that morning.

“Yes,” he said, “Kate Mulligan, I believe. Mother flatly refused to go on the cruise unless I hired someone to see that her garden and greenhouse didn’t suffer for her absence. What’s the woman like, Archy?”

“Very pleasant, I would say, sir. She told Mother that begonias are her favorite flower and immediately won Mother’s approval.”

Father smiled sheepishly, which is a rare occurrence, and admitted, “I informed the agency that Mother raised begonias and to instruct whomever they sent to make a point of praising the begonia family.”

“Agency, sir?”

“Yes. An agency in West Palm that supplies all sorts of temporary help. Mrs. Trelawney has used them for clerks when needed and she made the arrangements for Mother’s helper. The agency called me for personal details, which I thought very prudent, and from what you’ve told me it seems to have worked very well.”

And from what I had seen of Kate Mulligan, I would have to agree.

I
N MY OFFICE I
called my friend and compadre at the PBPD, Sergeant Al Rogoff. Al and I have worked together on several cases, usually to our mutual satisfaction.

“Sergeant Rogoff,” he answered.

“Archy McNally here,” I said. “How was your week in New York?”

“Great. I rode the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, took the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building and hit all the topless bars the mayor hasn’t pressured into closing.”

“Nice try, Al, but I’m not buying it. You were at the ballet every night. Right?”

“Can it, Archy,” he stage whispered into the phone. “If that gets around the palace the Joe Sixpacks will be hanging tutus in my locker.”

The palace is Al’s euphemism for the Palm Beach police station and Al is a closeted aficionado of the classical arts, from ballet to opera and all the stops along the way. One should not be misled by his passion for Mahler and Mendelssohn because Al Rogoff is as macho as they come and built like a bull. However, in a china shop he wouldn’t upset a Limoges teacup.

“I’ll not betray you, Al,” I assured him. “Can I buy you lunch?”

“Sorry, pal, I’m spoken for.”

“If you’re turning down a free meal it must be serious business. Who’s the lucky lady, Policewoman Tweeny Alvarez?”

“Jesus, Archy, I’d rather have lunch with you.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“You pay the lunch bill, Archy, but I end up with more work, more stress and one large headache, so no thanks. Solve your own problems.”

“What makes you think I have a problem?”

“Because you don’t invite me to lunch to gaze into my bloodshot eyes, but to pump me for information—or ask me for help.”

My word, have he and Connie Garcia been commiserating? “May I ask one question which you can charge against our next lunch date?”

“One, and make it snappy, I work for the overburdened taxpayer.”

“Of which I am one, Al.”

“If we had to depend on your contribution I’d be out of business.”

“Be that as it may, Sergeant, have you ever heard of one Serge Ouspenskaya?”

“A foreigner?” Al asked.

“He pretends to be. More to the point, he’s this season’s most promising psychic.”

Al uttered a descriptive expletive before griping. “Don’t tell me you’re involved with one of them again, Archy.”

“One of
those,
Al. Obviously you remember Hertha Gloriana.”

“How could I forget? That one ended in a shootout at a sleazy motel. Goodbye, Archy.”

“Not so fast, Al. I’m hoping this one doesn’t come to that. The guy is not the shootout type. Would you let me know if any complaints come your way citing Ouspenskaya as the perp?”

“Okay, I’ll nosy around, Archy. Can I know your involvement with this Ouspenskaya guy? Are you working on a case?”

“I’m on a case, but that’s all I can tell you right now.”

“So what else is new?” he quipped, but his tone belied the words. I had piqued his interest and his cavalier attitude gave way to the business at hand. “I’ll check from my end and if you turn up anything on the guy let me in on it ASAP. I would hate to see you clobbered with a crystal ball.”

“Ouspenskaya transmits via shortwave radio, Al.”

“Is he selling air time?”

“I believe he is, Sergeant.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

“Thanks, Al. I owe you.”

“We’re here to serve, pal.”

One of the advantages of having a firm like McNally & Son to lean on is its library which is supervised by our in-house paralegal, Sofia Richmond. Besides her legal expertise, Sofia is a qualified librarian, a computer whiz, and a researcher who doesn’t have to ask a pol if he wears briefs or boxers because, so she claims, she has X-ray vision. Sofia’s age I imagine to be somewhere between forty and terminal.

I have long believed that if Sofia let down her hair—worn pulled back from her face and knotted in a ridiculous bun at the rear of her head—removed the horn-rimmed glasses, sturdy oxfords and shapeless hopsack suits, there would emerge if not a butterfly, certainly a dragonfly. Archy, the optimist.

Sofia has never made a play for me, which means she has a lover who would make Charlie Atlas look like a sissy, or a girlfriend who looks like Charlie Atlas. Did I also mention that Sofia Richmond is the only one in the office who can read between the lines of Lolly Spindrift’s blind items? In a word, Sofia not only knows all but, if pressured, will reveal what she knows.

“You look lovely, Archy,” Sofia welcomed me into her world of books, magazines, computers and yesterday’s half-filled cardboard coffee container. Neatness is not Sofia’s driving force, but then McNally & Son was not paying her to be a
hausfrau.

“You don’t look bad yourself, Sofia,” I said.

“You lie like a rug, love. I know I need work, but then who doesn’t?”

She wouldn’t get an argument with me on that score. “What’s the latest scuttlebutt, Sofia?”

She lit a cigarette and tossed the used match into an ashtray that held enough unfiltered butts to span the Golden Gate Bridge if placed end to end. “Desdemona Darling is among us, love, fifty pounds overweight but as lovely as the days when she gave new meaning to the name
Homo erectus.
”

As you can see, Sofia knows how to turn a phrase.

“What was her husband doing locked up with you and the old man yesterday?”

Were the pater to hear
that
turn of phrase he would hit the ceiling but he wouldn’t fire Sofia. Father knew the value of a good and dedicated employee. “You are not supposed to know that Desdemona Darling’s husband paid us a visit,” I cautioned our librarian.

Sofia took a deep drag on her cigarette, which had me clutching the English Ovals in my jacket pocket. I had smoked one at Ta-Boo’ with Fitz last night and a second while writing in my journal before bed. I refrained from lighting one now but found no solace in my restraint. Sofia expelled a long stream of smoke along with the words, “I never saw him.”

I had no choice now but to ask her what I had come to learn. “What do you know about the psychic Serge Ouspenskaya?” Sofia’s eyeballs, huge behind the thick lenses of her glasses, widened wide enough to tell me she had immediately connected Richard Holmes’s visit to the psychic. I knew she would, but I also knew she would heed my warning and forget my query as she had promised to forget Holmes’s visit. Sofia knew when to ante up and when to fold her hand.

“I hear he’s the current favorite of the ladies who lunch.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s all I know,” she said. “That kind of thing is not my cup of tea, love. I deal in the here and now.” With a wave of her cigarette she quoted, “ ‘Yesterday is a memory, gone for good forever / while tomorrow is a guess / what is real is what is here and now / and here and now is all that we possess.’ ”

“Nicely put,” I complimented, “and here and now I would like you to put your bloodhound instincts on the trail of Serge Ouspenskaya and let me know what you come up with, like where he came from and, more important,
quo vadis
.”

Sofia shrugged. “I would imagine he got his start as a traveling carny fortune-teller and he’s not going anyplace as long as the ladies who lunch keep him on their menu.”

“Never underestimate a man with the conceit of a cat burglar who walked off with the jewel in the crown—and is ready to bargain for its return. I met him last night.”

“So I heard,” Sofia said. “Lolly Pops? Good grief, Archy.”

“Who did you hear it from? Mrs. Trelawney?”

“No. From Binky. He called this morning.”

When I get my hands on Binky Watrous I am fairly certain I will strangle him. “Is there anyone Binky hasn’t called?”

“I doubt it. He keeps in close touch with the staff. He begins by asking how I am and ends with wanting to know if Joe is showing any signs of shortness of breath when he brings in the mail.”

“If I have my way Joe Anderson, along with the rest of the world, will outlive Binky Watrous.”

Sofia smiled, recalling no doubt the days when Binky brought in her mail. “He’s a good boy, Archy.” Binky and his doe eyes inspire women to talk such gibberish. Older women, that is. Binky doesn’t have much luck with his contemporaries of the opposite sex.

Relegating Binky to a list labeled
extermination,
I asked our librarian, “Another favor, Sofia, if I may?”

“You may.”

“What do you know about a Mrs. Ventura?”

“The lady who almost gave her diamond clip to the Goodwill people. Can you imagine the look on the face of the lucky recipient if she had been handed Mrs. Ventura’s slightly used frock?”

“I see that story has made the rounds of polite society.”

“It has made the newspapers, thanks to Lolly Spindrift,” Sofia announced.

“Lolly seems to have taken a shine to Ouspenskaya and I doubt if the psychic is Lolly’s type.”

“Buzz Carr is more Lolly’s type and I hear, by the by, that Phil Meecham is furious with Lady Cynthia....”

I held up my hand like a policeman at a school crossing. “Enough, Sofia.” The fancies and foibles of the Palm Beach rich interest me only when they are relevant to one of my cases which, unfortunately, is almost always. “What can you tell me about Mrs. Ventura,” I asked the eyes and ears of McNally & Son.

“For the record, she’s the second Mrs. Ventura. The first died a few years back and Mr. Ventura, James I believe is his name, married the current Mrs. Ventura, Hanna, before a respectable period of mourning.”

“How long is respectable?”

“A year, usually, but six months is the absolute minimum.”

“And how long did James wait?” I asked.

“About six weeks.”

“It borders on the obscene,” I observed.

“Some say it crosses the line. The loudest objections came from the Ventura boy, William, and are still coming.”

“How old is William?”

“Twenty-one, give or take,” Sofia said, poking about for a space in her ashtray to put out her cigarette.

“What does Ventura’s exchequer look like?”

“Loaded. New money via Wall Street. But you’re supposed to ask the age of the new Mrs. Ventura.”

“I’m asking.”

“Twenty-one, give or take.”

“Are you implying that she and young William were an item?” I inquired as Sofia’s smoldering cigarette exposed me to the dangers of secondhand smoke—which I greedily inhaled.

“It’s said that William had some friends in for a party one night and Hanna was among them. For Papa James, it was love at first sight. How close William and Hanna were before Daddy Dearest entered the picture is not known. What is known is that William now hates her and doesn’t even try to hide his disdain. He was his mother’s pet and poor William feels that he’s been usurped as heir apparent.”

“Does the boy live at home?”

“Oh, yes,” Sofia nodded. “In fact there were those who believed William had swiped Hanna’s diamond clip for pin money. The boy is usually in debt and begrudges the money his father lavishes on her.”

“The
enfante terrible
,” I said.

“If you like the expression. I think
pain in the butt
is more descriptive.”

As I said, Sofia knows how to turn a phrase. She also knows more dish than anyone in Palm Beach. I refrained from asking her if the Ventura men wore briefs or boxers for fear that she would tell me. Instead I thanked her for her time, reminded her to forget everything we discussed, took a final grateful sniff of the polluted library air and fled.

Another resource of McNally & Son is Mrs. Evelyn Sharif, the chief of our real estate department. Mrs. Sharif is married to a Lebanese gentleman who operates a haberdashery on elegant Worth Avenue. To be sure, McNally & Son does not sell homes or condos but represents our clients at closings, advises on leases and also recommends investments in lots and commercial property.

Without even consulting the Palm Beach telephone directory I knew that the Venturas would be ex-directory. The only people listed in the Palm Beach directory are those who call people who are listed in the Palm Beach directory. Mrs. Sharif possessed a big black book that not only identified the residents of Palm Beach along with their addresses and phone numbers, but also cited an estimate of the value of their property and its potential rental income, in and off season.

“Archy,” Mrs. Sharif exclaimed as I entered, “what a surprise. You must want something from me.”

“A kiss,” I answered.

“I’m a married woman, Archy.”

“The British Princes of Wales only courted married women,” I reminded her.

“You are not any of the Princes of Wales, Archy. So what do you want to know that I probably shouldn’t tell you?”