McNally's Dare

by Lawrence Sanders

  If it was murder, as I strongly suspected, I might presently be the only person who knew when it occurred. When I took that drink from Todd’s tray I glanced at my watch and both of Mickey’s hands were pointing at three. Todd said Rodgers had gone on his break a half hour before, so the boy headed for the pool about a quarter to three and was found dead at a quarter to four, giving you a window for the time of death between 2:45 and 3:45.

  “Let’s hope for misadventure,” Father offered before turning to matters closer to his heart. “So you met the Talbot boy. What did you think of him?”

  “Met might be an exaggeration. We played the required three sets together and then exchanged a few words.” I didn’t mention Talbot’s comment on my interview in today’s paper because I didn’t know if Father had seen it. Nor did I know if the pater would approve. Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you is one of my favorite edicts.

  “He’s a handsome boy, about twenty I would guess,” I added. This had me thinking that he was about the same age as the late Jeffrey Rodgers, the two being as close in years as they were distant socially.

  “I was hoping he might consider taking us on as his legal representatives,” Father said. “Malcolm was a good friend of the boy’s grandmother. In fact Malcolm was the executor of Mrs. Talbot’s will. As we represent Malcolm I thought young Talbot would follow suit.”

  “I understand the boy carries his maternal grandmother’s name because he was born out of wedlock and his mother never said who done her wrong.”

  Father tugged on his mustache. A sure sign of his displeasure. “So I’ve heard, but naturally that’s none of our business.”

  Pushing the envelope, I ventured, “And they say he’s involved with a lady named Holga von Brecht who’s at least twenty years his senior. I met her, too, on the courts.”

  Father gave his whiskers another yank. “That, too, is not our concern. What is, is the fact that Talbot has come into a fortune conservatively estimated at five hundred million.”

  Half a billion. I didn’t whistle because that would be uncouth. No wonder Holga followed him here all the way from Switzerland. I assume she was Mrs. von Brecht. Or, more likely, the Baroness von Brecht. So where was the Baron? Perhaps sulking in the schloss with the drawbridge raised, but for a half billion in American currency Holga would have swam the moat.

  I did not ask Father if he wanted me to put in a good word for the Talbot account over lunch with Nifty, as that would be de trop. As I did not go all the way at Yale (no pun intended, there was a little streaking incident), my sole function at McNally & Son is to assist those who come to me with problems they would rather not read about in the shiny sheet.

  In case you don’t know, or don’t care, the shiny sheet is the sobriquet of our local daily that chronicles the what, where, when and the who, how and why of the denizens of our little island. The name comes from the paper on which it’s printed, which prevents madam from getting her hands soiled with printer’s ink as she keeps up with the Joneses and, of course, the price of alligator pumps on the Esplanade.

  During my briefing of the afternoon’s events, I mentioned Dennis Darling and Father, puffing contentedly and perhaps dreaming of young Talbot’s patronage, asked me what I thought of the man.

  “As with Talbot, sir, it was a brief encounter on the tennis court. Lolly told me the man is here to write on Palm Beach for his magazine, Bare Facts.” Father winced at the name and tossed back what was left of his port. I got up and refilled our glasses.

  “Is he here to make trouble, Archy?”

  “I hope not,” I answered, thinking of the man chatting into his portable recorder following the discovery of Jeff Rodgers’s body in the pool and the mayhem that followed. “He’ll dig up all the old scandals and drop all the names that he’ll never get to meet one-on-one. Lolly tells me the long knives are being sharpened for Mr. Darling.”

  Dennis Darling wouldn’t be the first interloper to come to Palm Beach in search of caviar and leave with egg on his face. A few seasons back we had a television crew down here doing a documentary on the rich and famous of our resort. The only people who would go before the cameras were the new rich, who don’t matter to the old rich, while those who do matter were presented from newspaper photos, shots of their homes from outside locked gates and hearsay. I will admit that Dennis’s invitation to Tennis Everyone! was a coup but, as Lolly had said, money never fails to get its way.

  “I hope he doesn’t try to connect the MacNiffs with today’s tragedy,” Father said.

  “I was thinking the same thing, sir. I’ll caution Mr. MacNiff at lunch tomorrow.”

  Fingering a beautifully bound edition of Hard Times, Father exclaimed, “Quite a cast of characters the police will be obliged to sift through, should it come to that.”

  Leaving him to sift through Charlie’s thoughts on England’s economy in the mid-nineteenth century, I retired to the peace, solitude and comfort of my grace-and-favor third-floor suite.

  Enjoying another English Oval while getting ready for the sandman, Father’s parting words echoed in my head. Quite a cast of characters.... And indeed they were. Excuse the cliché, but if hindsight were foresight I would have paid more attention to the rancor between Vivian Emerson and Holga von Brecht, Talbot’s affair with Holga, Dennis Darling’s mission in Palm Beach and Nifty’s lunch invitation.

  Connect all the dots and you get a picture of a young man lying dead in three feet of water.

  FIVE

  WE BREAKFAST IN THE family kitchen, attended to by our housekeeper and cook, Ursi Olson, who, along with her husband, Jamie, cater to the McNallys. This bit of egalitarianism is an isolated occurrence in our faux Tudor manse with its mullioned windows and faulty copper roof. Our neighbors rough it in faux Spanish haciendas with red tile overhead.

  As Father and I both work there is no set lunch hour, except for Mother, who takes tea and toast before her afternoon siesta. Dinner in the formal dining room is strictly damask linen, Limoges china and the kind of stemware that explodes if put in the dishwasher. It gives new meaning to the word pretentious but thanks to Ursi’s superb cuisine one gladly endures the pomp and circumstance for the gastronomic delights that go with it.

  Father will occasionally lament the cost of maintaining such a lifestyle and I once suggested that we replace the damask with paper napkins, a move sanctioned by Queen Elizabeth when feeling financially pinched. A member of Parliament went on record as saying that Her Majesty would fare better pound-wise if she stuck to her linen napkins and gave up her fleet of Rolls-Royces. The queen was not amused—and neither was Father.

  Eating in the kitchen does not in any way prevent the Lord of the Manor from dressing as if he were arguing a case before the United States Supreme Court. Vested suit, tie and cuff links are his work clothes and, come to think of it, his play clothes. For Father, casual Friday means donning a shirt without extra starch in collar and cuffs.

  Mother always looks lovely and serene in a flowery print dress and, when gardening or shopping, a wide-brimmed straw bonnet. Owing to lunch at Mar-a-Lago I dressed down this morning and looked rather clubbish in white linen trousers, pink polo shirt of Sea Island cotton and a seersucker jacket. Jeff Rodgers’s drowning made all the front pages, but thanks to my interview it was yrs. truly who got all the attention this morning, saving us the trouble of awkwardly trying to avoid discussing the more disquieting news in front of mother.

  “Everyone called,” Ursi said, pouring herself a cuppa at the stove. “I felt like a movie star.”

  Ursi’s “everyone” are the domestics along Ocean Boulevard for whom she acts as spokesperson, friend and advisor. Why my fifteen minutes made her feel like a celebrity I don’t know and didn’t dare ask.

  Father, scooping up his scrambled eggs, looked somber and morose.

  “How good you look in that jacket, Archy” Mother cooed. “I remember when all the men were wearing them.”

  Father, nibbling on a piece of dry toast
, looked somber and morose.

  Jamie, who never says a word unless coaxed at gunpoint, didn’t say a word.

  Finishing my poached eggs on an English muffin I modestly quoted Lolly Spindrift. “Fools’ names, like fools’ faces, often appear in public places.”

  Jamie nodded, as if in agreement. Ursi dismissed it with a wave of her hand and mother cried, “Nonsense, Archy. You’re smarter than most of the men in this town, and far more handsome.”

  Father, sipping his coffee, looked somber and morose.

  When breakfast with the McNallys came to a close, Father rose, looked at his watch and announced, “I want to go on record as stating that I never owned a Lilly Pulitzer blazer and therefore could not have donated such a garment to a thrift shop.” With that he kissed mother’s powdered cheek and headed for the garage and his Lexus LS400.

  I gave Mother a wink and she giggled. Before leaving for the greenhouse to minister to her countless varieties of begonias, mother gently patted my face and said, “You’re not going to get involved in that poor boy’s death, Archy, are you?”

  “I don’t think so, mother. It appears to be a tragic accident.”

  “The papers say the police believe it’s a suspicious death. Poor Helen MacNiff. Do you think I should call on her?”

  I don’t know why we try to keep these things from mother, who is an avid reader and keeps up with current events. She may be a little forgetful but she certainly doesn’t forget to humor us in our attempts to cushion her from the facts of life.

  “I wouldn’t call on her until we have a clearer picture of what happened,” I advised. “I’m having lunch with Mr. MacNiff this afternoon and I’ll express your concern for him and his wife.”

  “Thank you, Archy. And you do look so like John Ford in that newspaper photo.”

  “I hope you mean Harrison Ford, Mother.”

  “Is there a difference, dear?”

  “One is a long-dead director, the other a handsome current film personality.”

  “Oh, dear. How confusing everything is these days. Well, I think you look like whomever you want to look like, Archy.”

  “Bless you, Mother.”

  As soon as the back door closed on my mother’s retreating form, Ursi brought her coffee to the table and took the seat opposite me. “So,” she began, “do you think the boy was murdered, Archy?” Ursi is a kind soul whose only vice is gossiping over the back fence. But, if that’s a vice, no one in PB could cast the first stone.

  “Still early days, Ursi. What do you hear?”

  “Well, I got a call from Mrs. MacNiff’s girl, Maria Sanchez, yesterday, as soon as she got the Mrs. to lie down with a cold compress, the madam was that upset, and can you blame her? Maria told me you were in conference with Mr. MacNiff.”

  So, as usual, the domestic grapevine had spread the news of Jeff Rodgers’s death minutes after it happened. Ursi was too polite to say, but I’m sure she also knew the nature of my conference with Malcolm MacNiff if he had discussed it with his wife and she, in turn, had discussed it with Maria Sanchez. Maria would have been on the horn with Ursi at the crack of dawn.

  “Maria called this morning,” Ursi went on, confirming my assumption, “and said the police asked Mr. MacNiff to report to the station house at his earliest convenience.”

  This meant I would get an earful at lunch but, with a little bit of luck, I might just get the jump on Nifty’s news and even go him one better.

  “I can’t see why any of the MacNiffs’ guests would want to do in a lad working for the caterer,” Ursi said, clearly bursting to convey the gossip that was traveling up and down the Boulevard at the speed of sound. Thanks to the invention of the cellular telephone, this crowd could now swap stories while waiting in line at the supermarket, lounging on the beach and, horror of horrors, while driving. “It must have been one of his friends who did it,” she pronounced. “Most likely over a girl.”

  No story in Palm Beach, above and below stairs, is ever complete without a hint of romance thrown in to thicken the plot. “It was my thought, too,” I told her; merely confirming what she had heard from Maria. “If it is murder, the police have the names and addresses of all the suspects.”

  Jamie, who had been looking at his newspaper since I came down to breakfast but had yet to turn a page, offered, “Mr. Van Fleet’s man, Abe Calhoun, told me the cigarette they fished out of the pool was pure cannabis. Look for a drug connection.”

  Jamie doesn’t say much but when he does it’s a mouthful. If the boy was high he could very well have fallen into the pool and been too disoriented to pull himself out. “If that’s true,” I said to Jamie, “this is a whole new ball game. I don’t see a drug hit over a little grass, but it could have incapacitated the boy. Where did Calhoun hear this?”

  “He didn’t say,” Jamie confessed and went back to pretending to read his newspaper.

  The rumors were already flying fast, high and wide and, par for the course, mostly unfounded. I didn’t bother to tell Jamie that the cigarette I saw floating in the pool had a filter tip.

  “What did you think of Holga von Brecht, Archy?” Like the media, Ursi segued from Jeffrey Rodgers’s death to social commentary with nary a backward glance. “They say she’s ninety years old if she’s a day.”

  “That would be pushing it by forty years, at least,” I said. “She’s a beautiful woman with good skin. If she’s had a little work it was done by an expert.”

  “It’s the injections,” Ursi gushed. “The doctor in Switzerland invented some concoction that works better than plastic surgery. The years fade away after each shot. It’s derived from—well, I don’t want to spoil your appetite.”

  The more I heard about this doctor’s anti-aging vaccine the less I wanted to know about it. “There is no magic formula, Ursi. There are just those who age better than others but there will always be a hustler to cash in on the less fortunate. Now tell me your secret?”

  That got a laugh from Ursi and a grunt from her husband. “Whatever her age, they say she’s bewitched the Talbot boy.”

  So bewitched was Ursi with murder, rejuvenation and May/December coupling, she neglected to offer me a second cup of coffee. Very unusual for our Ursi, but this was just the first anomaly in a day rife with surprises.

  In fact and fiction, the police and private investigators go together like a lit match and a short fuse. Al Rogoff and I are the exception to the rule for a variety of reasons, mainly because we don’t compete. When working on the same case, which happens surprisingly often, we keep each other informed and gladly take a back seat when the other is in hot pursuit.

  Also, we don’t mix socially. It’s no secret that I’m one of Palm Beach’s most eligible bachelors, though my society connections come just as much from my last name as from my own charm. Al is also a bachelor, a big, beefy guy whose charm is, well, a bit more elusive. He may mangle the English language and prefer a Big Mac to a rack of lamb, but his appreciation and love of classical music, opera and ballet are awesome.

  I have knowledge of and entrée into the Palm Beach social scene and he has all the amazing paraphernalia of a modern crime-fighting force at his disposal. In short, we are an odd couple dynamic duo sans the black tights and capes, but don’t tell Al I said that.

  Sergeant Rogoff and I have several local rendezvous, our favorite being the parking lot of the Publix market on Sunset. After yesterday’s catastrophe I knew Al would be as anxious to speak to me as I was to learn the department’s official stand on Jeff Rodgers’s death. Playing an educated hunch I headed for the Publix after breakfast and spotted Al’s police cruiser at the far end of the lot. I pulled into a space a respectable distance from Al and saw him get out of his car as soon as he spotted my red Miata.

  Chewing on the butt of a stogie he got in beside me with all the poise of a linebacker easing into a toddler’s Cozy Coupe. “Fancy seeing you at the MacNiffs’ shindig,” I greeted him. “In case you don’t know it, Sergeant, you weren’t properl
y dressed for the occasion.”

  “From the look of some of them dames, neither was they. You could see their unmentionables under them short skirts. But there were some fine lookers on that lawn, I’ll say that for your fancy dress party.”

  “It’s called dressing pour le sport, Al, and when on duty I don’t think you should be looking at unmentionables while the culprit flees the scene of the crime. You are a servant of the people, remember.”

  “Dressing pour le sport,” he mimicked. “That’s rich. I call it dressed to kill, pal.”

  A moment of silence followed, as if in commemoration of the recently departed. Al chomped on his unlit stogie while I thought about the English Ovals safely locked away in the Miata’s glove compartment. When my nicotine urgings became too acute, I broke the silence. “The boy was murdered.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Al turned to look directly at me, removing the cigar from between his teeth. “We don’t know who did it—yet—but we got a list of suspects that reads like the Palm Beach social register.”

  I protested, “You don’t think one of the MacNiffs’ guests did the kid in? He was a waiter, for cripes’ sake, Al.”

  “What he was, pal, was a good-looking young stud, and this is Palm Beach in season. You want I should elucidate on that theme?”

  It was I who taught him that ten-buck word and now I was sorry I had. “No need to elucidate, Sergeant, but I think you’re on the wrong track.”

  “What do you know, Archy?”

  “Right now, less than you, I’m sure. I guessed that he was clobbered and shoved into the water unconscious.”

  “He was unconscious, all right, but not from a knock on the noggin. He was chloroformed.”

  That was a shocker, to say the least. I was sure Jeff didn’t inhale it for kicks, so I guessed someone put a handkerchief or wad of gauze soaked in chloroform over his nose in typical Hollywood cloak-and-dagger fashion. Al told me that’s just how it was done.

  The PM detected traces of the chemical, often derived from ethyl alcohol, in the boy’s blood. Tiny threads of cotton found in his nose and mouth also tested positive for chloroform. State-of-the-art forensic medicine is a marvel of the new millennium. We now knew how it was done. Who did it, and why, would take brains, brawn, legwork and an assist from Dame Fortune.