McNally's Dare

by Lawrence Sanders

  Lunch was served and it helped to keep my mind off the scribe but I think Denny surmised the connection between my turn and Isadora Duhane’s appearance. No fool Dennis Darling. Ms. Duhane was having herself a hot lunch, with wine, on Binky’s account. What cheek. Binky’s account was, as always, in arrears, and I had generously advanced him a few quid to tide him over and keep him from the embarrassing position of being non grata at the Pelican until his anemic exchequer showed signs of recovery, which would be never. Steady employment at McNally & Son and a profusion of credit cards had enabled Binky to keep up with the Joneses, all merrily skipping along the yellow brick road to bankruptcy.

  Now, it seems, I was feeding Ms. Duhane. If the writing team of Watrous and Duhane intended to reimburse me with the advance from their first tome, I would see the money when Alejandro Gomez y Zapata invades Cuba. And why did Lolly Spindrift accost Isadora Duhane? All in all, it was a most disconcerting repast.

  Then, a funny thing happened between lunch at the Pelican and cocktails at the Chesterfield. Namely, a fax from Switzerland that awaited me in my office, to wit:

  Dear Mr. McNally:

  Herr Hermann is in Berlin attending to business. He returns when I am not sure. I will to him convey your request when next I see him here. He is sure to respond most soon. Thank you.

  Greta Gottenburg,

  Secretary to Herr Gregory Hermann

  Translation? The fickle finger of fate had entered the fray and denied me the information I needed from the Swiss lawyer before my meeting with Lance Talbot. Here begins the all too familiar if-only mantra. If only Herr Hermann had not gone to Berlin on business. If only I had delayed seeing Lance Talbot until I had talked to Hermann. If only hindsight were foresight—and all that jazz.

  Unable to resist, I called Lolly Spindrift at his office and, surprisingly, got him. “I’m just putting together my copy on Jeff Rodgers’s funeral for tomorrow’s edition. I haven’t seen so many names in the same place at the same time since Lady Cynthia’s reception for Bonnie Prince Charlie.”

  Lolly does obits for extra moola, also weddings and bar mitzvahs.

  “As I recall, Lol, the bonnie prince was a no-show.”

  “Yes. How sad. He was up all night nursing his polo pony.”

  “Really? I heard he declined her invitation.”

  “No?” Lolly gushed. “Where did you ever hear that?”

  “I read it in your column.”

  Lolly does not like to be reminded of his more base literary offerings, so the faux royal affair was forgotten but not the fact that I had rung him up. “Did you call to make trouble, Archy, or to beg me for a date?”

  I called to learn what he knew about Isadora Duhane, but with Lolly it’s always best to put him on the defensive before asking a favor, otherwise he’ll try to extract payment for his trouble. “I was surprised to see you rubbing shoulders with the Philistine in our midst. You know, the guy you nominated as the most worthy recipient of the PBCS.”

  It took Lolly about ten seconds to think of a rebuttal. “You mean Dennis Darling? Oh, I’ve had a change of heart. After all, he is a colleague and I thought it in the best interest of the community to open up to him instead of having him ferret out misinformation from malcontents who are only too ready to feed us to the lions. Dennis is really a dear man. So giving, if you know what I mean.”

  I knew, all right. Dinner and drinks at Cafe L’Europe. “If he has your blessing, Lol, we’ll roll out the red carpet for Mr. Darling. The one Lady Cynthia purchased for the prince.”

  “Shame on you,” he tittered. “Now, about that date. I’m free for cocktails and dinner, after which we can jump aboard Meecham’s floating circus and mix with the bad and the beautiful. You game, Archy?”

  “Sorry, but I’m booked this evening, Lol. Can I have a rain check?” It’s always best to humor Lol, but to my everlasting ignominy I admit to having had some interesting evenings on Meecham’s yacht.

  “Don’t be morose, Archy. It never rains in Palm Beach.”

  “Tell that to Dennis Darling. Now I must go—oh, I almost forgot. There was a young lady in church this morning wearing a kerchief and raincoat...”

  “Isadora Duhane,” he shouted, almost rupturing my ear drum. “I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw her coming out of church. I didn’t get much out of her, but...”

  “Whoa,” I cut in. Lolly sounded as if he had accidentally encountered the missing link coming out of a church in Palm Beach. “Who in blazes is Isadora Duhane?”

  “Who is Isadora Duhane? Her mother is a Kalamazoo Battle, that’s who.”

  I found myself reaching for the bottom drawer of my desk, but as Lolly expounded on the history of the Battle family I feared I needed more than a nicotine fix to survive the ordeal.

  The first Battle was a forty-niner who struck a vein that made Fort Knox look like a piggy bank. Hankering to become a gentleman rancher, he used a portion of his loot to buy a rather large hunk of Texas. While his son ran the ranch, daddy went off to the Klondike, where he struck a vein that made the California mine look like a piggy bank.

  “His name,” Lolly said, “was Ezra M. Battle. It was rumored the M stood for Midas.”

  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Ezra’s grandson, weary of dehorning cattle, got a team of wildcatters to see if there was anything interesting under the sod and, as the Midas touch would have it, the ranch was soon pumping a million gallons of black gold a day with no end in sight.

  The family grew and spread, until they could be found in cities from coast to coast, running giant holding companies that were the invisible owners of businesses as diverse as department stores and oil tankers.

  “Isadora’s mother married a Duhane of Kalamazoo and resides there when not cruising on one of the Battle liners. Isadora attended Rosemary Hall, which is the distaff side of Choate and...”

  And on and on. The nitty-gritty being that Binky Watrous, who owed me three hundred bucks, was cohabitating and collaborating with a zillionaire, and I wanted my money back.

  “They call Isadora Izzy,” Lolly was saying as if he were on intimate terms, with the woman. If Lolly knew who held that position he would be writing his own obit for tomorrow’s edition.

  “Izzy is the family black sheep, you might say. She’s always running off to weird places like Timbuktu and Bora-Bora,” Lolly raced along, hardly pausing to breathe. “As if Kalamazoo wasn’t weird enough for her. And she’s into projects. Women’s lib, conservation, archaeology, criminology, zoology, the list is endless. There was a rumor that she was in these parts but I didn’t believe it until I saw her myself this morning, and coming out of church, of all places. Any idea what she was doing at the funeral service, Archy?”

  “Writing a book,” I answered.

  “Oh, Archy. Be serious. I would be on every A-list if I had Isadora Duhane on my arm. She gave me the brush-off this morning but that won’t stop me. She’s the hottest thing to hit this town in years and I want an exclusive. I might even hire you to find out where she’s staying.”

  “Try the Palm Court trailer park,” I told him.

  “That’s not even funny, Archy.”

  Like I always say, if you don’t want people to believe you, tell the truth and your secret is safe.

  “Now I must fly,” Lolly gasped as if he just saw his train leaving the depot. “Babe Evans is giving a tea party to show off the abstract oils she purchased in Florence last summer.”

  “I didn’t know that crowd was into art,” I said.

  “They’re not,” he prattled. “Babe also brought back the artist. It was a package deal, I’m told. Everyone says he’s absolutely delicious.”

  If he thought I was going to fall for that one, he was barking up the wrong pant leg. “Arrivederci, Lolly.”

  My English Oval kept me from banging my head against the wall. The signs were not auspicious. In the good old days I could sacrifice a bull to allay the gods. Right now all I wanted to sacrifice was Binky Watrous and
his solid-gold squeeze. If Isadora Duhane was all Lolly claimed she was—and when it came to delineating the rich and famous, Lolly Spindrift was a walking Who’s Who—I was in deep doo-doo.

  I had thought that Binky went to the disposal dump and fell into a pot of jam. I now knew he went to the disposal dump and fell into an American dynasty. If a publishing company, or two, was among the Battle family holdings, Skip McGuire would be published and this discreet inquirer would be as discreet as Old Glory on the fourth of July. My clients would not be amused to find themselves the thinly disguised characters in a roman à clef, to say nothing of Father dearest.

  While Binky cruised the seven seas on a Battle liner, Archy would be delivering the mail at McNally & Son. To keep the quo status, the dynamic duo of crime fiction had to perish before they published.

  Georgy called to invite me to dinner. She promised to remember to put the can of mushroom soup in the tuna ’n’ noodle casserole. I told her that tunas were an endangered species and mushrooms were a fungus. “I have a business meeting at seven and can be at the Pelican on or before nine. Meet me at the bar and I’ll buy you dinner.”

  “Nine is late for a working girl, Archy,” she protested.

  “Trust me. I’ll have you in bed before midnight.”

  “If that means what I think it means...”

  “Georgy girl,” I pleaded, “it’s just a figure of speech.”

  “So is buzz off, buster.”

  “Nineish at the Pelican?”

  “What’s on the menu?”

  “Tuna ’n’ noodle casserole with real frozen crescent rolls,” I told her.

  My wry humor not withstanding, she exploded, “And you know where you can go, Archy McNally.”

  If Satan asks who sent me I will have a long and prominent list for his perusal.

  I called Malcolm MacNiff to relate the disappointing results of my fax to the late Jessica Talbot’s Swiss lawyer. “We’ll just have to wait for his return before we get a detailed account of Jessica’s last days. I also want to know if he can tell us anything about the von Brecht woman.”

  Knowing that the MacNiffs had taken financial responsibility for Jeff Rodgers’s funeral, I also told him I thought the service, flowers, et al., were fitting and most moving.

  “Thank you, Archy,” he said. “So many young people there. How sad to see them at such a lamentable gathering. And so many from my tennis benefit. I don’t know if I’ll ever have another now that it’s been tarnished with this memory.”

  All Nifty wanted was a noble excuse not to cancel his prestigious Tennis Everyone! affair, and I gave him one.

  “Please reconsider, sir. The fund does so much for young people, I think you should continue it in Jeff’s memory.”

  He pounced on it like Othello being tossed a sack of catnip. “What a splendid idea, Archy. That’s just what I’ll do.”

  Jeff would adore having his name on the guest list of a classy Palm Beach happening as opposed to being part of the wait staff. In memoriam, true, but better late than never. I was honored to be the catalyst of the tribute.

  On a roll, I said, “And you can announce the concept at the pool party, lending dignity to the occasion and making the event more palatable. Your pool, sir, becomes a symbol of hope, not a coffin.”

  “I like it better all the time, Archy. My gratitude. As you know I just hated opening the pool again, but it must be done and what better way than this?”

  I must say there are times when I astound myself. A little corny, I daresay, but it’s all for a worthy cause.

  “Which reminds me,” Nifty said, “the gathering is set for tomorrow at one. Helen left a message for Mr. Darling at his hotel and we’re waiting for his call. We also contacted Lance and he’ll be there with Ms. von Brecht. Helen has invited about a dozen of her crowd to make it look less like an inquisition. Anyone you want to add?”

  “Why not Lolly Spindrift to give it the flavor of a press conference.”

  “Another good idea, Archy”

  Having put together a lethal mix of snoops and suspects for our pool party, I asked, “Did you know Lance was in church this morning?”

  “I saw him as we were leaving. I believe he was seated in your pew.”

  “Indeed he was. In fact, sir, he asked me to look into Jeff’s murder. To find the murderer, as he put it.”

  It took him a moment to reflect on this before responding. When he did it was the same response I got from Denny a few hours ago. “And did you accept?”

  “I did, sir.”

  “Did he tell you he was an old school chum of the murdered boy?”

  “Yes, and that’s about all he told me. Given the time and place our conversation was kept to a minimum. I have an appointment to see him this evening When I hope to learn more about Lance Talbot. I believe he suspects that you have hired me to look into the murder. He also called my father and proposed a business meeting in the near future.”

  “What’s the boy up to?” Nifty mused.

  “I think he wants to see what we’re up to. This is his way of being kept informed and he’s willing to pay for the privilege. Lance Talbot has something to hide, sir.”

  “Confound it, Archy, you have no idea how I detest all this clandestine nonsense. I’ve lived too long, I have. In my day you didn’t need see to your neighbor’s passport to know his name, and poseurs were blackballed from the club.”

  “You sound like my father, Mr. MacNiff.”

  “A good man, Prescott” he said.

  Father would be pleased to have Nifty’s endorsement.

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll see you tomorrow at one. Do you think Holga von Brecht will wear a thong?”

  “Archy!” Mrs. MacNiff scolded. Good grief, she had been on the extension listening to our conversation.

  I returned home in time for my swim before dressing for cocktails with Lance Talbot. I covered my patriotic Mark Spitz red, white and blue bikini Speedo with a black hooded terry robe. All I had to do to stop traffic was step out onto Ocean Boulevard and raise my hands. With a nod of thanks, north and south, I hobbled my way to the Atlantic.

  I showered, got into my safari togs, and stopped in the kitchen to tell Ursi I would not be home for dinner.

  “Don’t fall off any bar stools,” she advised.

  FIFTEEN

  AS I APPROACHED HIS table, Lance Talbot appraised my raiment thoughtfully and, as if suddenly getting the joke, tossed back his head and laughed. “An avant-garde Beau Brummell,” he said, pointing. He had either memorized my interview or read it again before our meeting.

  “The leopards have already been shot, Archy, but you get an E for effort. Do sit.” He beckoned to a waiter. “I’m having a gin martini. Very American, ja?”

  In spite of Talbot’s chummy use of my given name, his dress and deportment marked him as Eurocentric. His white, open-collar shirt was silk. His navy blazer was perfectly cut to accentuate the classic male torso: broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. A red handkerchief hung rakishly from his jacket’s breast pocket.

  And, perhaps because of the German yes, his accent seemed more pronounced than when we last talked. Too, he exhibited the haughty air peculiar to Europe’s upper classes—or Eurotrash mimicking their betters.

  Conversely, our landed gentry bend over backwards to make us believe they are just one of the boys, which is why Nifty orders a modest wine while feting me at his immodest club.

  “A bourbon and branch water,” I said to the hovering waiter as I took my seat.

  “Have you ever been on safari?” Lance asked.

  “No, but I’ve ambled through the brambles in New York’s Central Park and I once toured our Everglades on a boat called the African Queen. Does that count?”

  “I’m afraid not,” he said amiably. “Mother and I went on safari in Kenya. You know, of course, the British tried to turn it into England’s breadbasket before the big war. Baronets by the dozens bought up land to farm and proceeded to turn the natives into
indentured servants while indulging themselves in an orgy of drugs, booze and wife-swapping that the English label affairs. I believe an earl was shot dead by an irate husband and the murder never solved.”

  Rather than rehash the saga of poor Josslyn Victor Hay, Earl of Erroll, I asked, “Did you bag anything in Kenya besides the country’s sordid history?”

  “Heavens no,” he protested. “We would never kill for sport. A safari these days is more like wandering around a zoo where the animals roam freely. We were sightseers and picture takers and nourishment for the mosquitoes.”

  “Now that sounds like our Central Park,” I offered as the waiter served my drink.

  Talbot raised his martini. “Here’s to money and the time to spend it.”

  Coming from him, the toast was almost apocalyptic. Given his inheritance and age, he certainly had plenty of both to spare and then some. I tried not to forget that what Lance Talbot lacked in years he more than made up for in experience. Safari in Kenya? What other exotic ports of call did he and his mother frequent in his teen years? What forbidden fruits had he indulged himself in before he had reached his majority? Was Holga von Brecht one of them? Was Archy overreacting or envious? I savored my bourbon. It helped, but not enough.

  Talbot’s cobalt blue eyes always seemed to be smiling at his surroundings in a most condescending manner. Been here, done this, they signaled with a yawn. In short, Lance Talbot was a colossal pain in the you-know-where. How I longed to pull off his right shoe (John Lobb loafers, no doubt) and shout j’accuse, punk! But in the Leopard Lounge with the moon on the rise the gesture might be misconstrued.

  “So,” he began our meeting, “why did you ask this friend of Jeff’s questions about me?”

  “I didn’t,” I answered. “He volunteered the information.”

  “More to the point, Archy, why were you asking questions about Jeff Rodgers?”

  The use of my given name without permission to use it continued to irk me. “That, Lance, is none of your business.”

  He started, then laughed. He had taken a cigarette from a pack of Gauloises and was holding it, unlit, between his fingers. The very gesture seemed to show his irritation at not being able to smoke in a bistro. In Europe, I imagine, one could light up in church if the need arose. I was so glad I had given up the weed—almost. However, I longed to show off my English Ovals.