McNally's Dare

by Lawrence Sanders

  “I don’t want to intrude,” I said, to no avail.

  She was wearing a T-shirt that could fit a linebacker and a straw bonnet with ribbons down the back. Isadora Duhane was, if nothing else, an original. The new Binky was got up in one of those collarless shirts favored by the late Mao Tse-tung that I always thought was copied from ye olde one-piece union suit with a drop seat. I didn’t know what these two fashion plates sported below the waist and considered it the only blessing of this most bothersome encounter.

  Binky and I had yet to have a good man-to-man since I had met his benefactress and seen his new acquisitions. That those doe eyes still avoided my gaze told me he was not eager to hear what I had to say. As an ego booster, Izzy had a long way to go.

  “We don’t know who did it, Archy, but we think we know how it was done.” Izzy spoke as I took my place at the table.

  “Do you now?” I said.

  “We do,” Binky assured me, looking over my head. “Izzy visited the scene of the crime yesterday.”

  “So did I. Too bad you couldn’t make it, Binky. Did you uncover anything of a forensic nature in the mail room in my absence?”

  Izzy gave my shin a gentle nudge under the table as Priscilla ambled over to take my order, saving Binky from responding. God is on Binky’s side.

  “The usual?” Priscilla asked.

  Not wanting to keep Al Rogoff waiting, I had only had a cup of coffee before leaving the house this morning, much to Ursi’s disappointment. She wanted to hear all about the pool party, the mysterious doctor and, “Is it true the Talbot boy went in naked?” Maria Sanchez didn’t miss a nuance and Ursi would have to entertain sensual thoughts until my return.

  I ordered an egg-white omelet with low-fat Alpine Lace Swiss and rye toast, dry.

  “Are you sick, Archy?” Binky inquired, with genuine concern.

  “No,” Izzy spoke for me. “The bathing trunks, remember?”

  Gadzooks! She had told him about Lance wearing my trunks and probably written it up in her blasted notebook. I gave Binky a look that could curdle milk but he was busy examining the buttons on his union suit.

  “Do you want to hear my theory?” Izzy persisted.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “As a matter of fact, no,” she said. “But you’ll be happy you did.” Leaning forward for effect, she stated, “The tunnel.”

  “What tunnel?”

  “Archy, don’t you see?” Binky cried. “The tunnel that leads from the beach to the MacNiff property. It’s smack between the tennis courts and the pool.”

  I felt those icy fingers tickle my spine.

  “I noticed it yesterday,” Izzy picked up. “The gate was locked. Was it open the day of the MacNiff benefit?”

  I remembered that it was and could only nod in shame.

  “Then the killer didn’t have to be a guest. He could have been hiding in the tunnel, waiting for a chance to get Jeff Rodgers alone.”

  Finally looking me in the eye, Binky clamored, “What do you think, Archy?”

  “I think I want to return my Dick Tracy decoder ring.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  I PULLED UP BEHIND a Chevy Impala that had seen better days. No doubt Joseph Gallo’s, and the very car he used to escape Georgy girl in favor of Vivian Emerson. He had probably not gotten rid of it thinking one should never be without a getaway car.

  It occurred to me that Georgy’s landlady, the guardian of the driveway, must have recognized the Impala as belonging to her tenant’s former roommate. Five minutes later, along comes the red Miata that belongs to her tenant’s current, albeit part-time, roommate. Was she scandalized? One could only hope so. It would put a little zest into a life full of doilies and antimacassars.

  Georgy and Joe Gallo were seated in the parlor, which was furnished in early IKEA. He was very much as I remembered him from our last meeting—tall, dark and handsome. If I were granted three wishes by a benevolent genie, my first directive would be to have Joe Gallo and Alejandro Gomez y Zapata meet at the Colony next Thursday night and run off to Key West where they would open a B-and-B and live happily ever after. (Shame on me!)

  Georgy was still in uniform, which I have always found more beguiling than her civvies. Sigmund would have something to say about that. Joe jumped up as I entered and, like a drowning man spotting a straw, I was pleased to observe that I was a shade taller than he.

  “Mr. McNally,” he said, sticking out his hand.

  Mister? Was that a show of respect, or a reference to my age? “We meet again,” I acknowledged.

  Georgy was now up and moving towards me. She gave me a peck in sisterly fashion. “Thanks for coming, Archy. You two sit. I put up a pot of coffee and I think it’s done. I’ll get some cups and pour while Joe fills you in.”

  Gallo was in oatmeal-gray sweat shorts, sneakers and a rugby shirt. Were the shorts to show off the muscular legs that Georgy so admired? Was Archy being paranoid? A handicapper would give you twelve to seven odds on a likely yes.

  “The place looks good,” Gallo said, not returning to the couch he had occupied with Georgy when I entered, but taking the club chair. “Georgy told me you were into decorating.”

  “Just the odd piece here and there,” I admitted. “I don’t think its changed much since...” Here came a significant pause.

  “Since I left?” Gallo offered.

  “No, no. Since I’ve been coming around.”

  “Would you two can it and get down to business,” Lieutenant O’Hara barked from the kitchen. “You sound like characters in a coming-of-age novel.”

  “I think I came and went,” Gallo called back, laughing.

  Georgy also found it amusing. I didn’t, but went along for the ride. It seemed to me Georgy and Connie got on much better than Alex and I, and now, Joe Gallo and I. Was this because women are more pragmatic than we men, or was it because they didn’t mind sharing? Maybe Gallo’s namesake Joseph Smith knew what he was talking about, but this is Worth Lake, not Salt Lake.

  I sat on the couch. “I met you and Vivian Emerson at the MacNiff benefit, do you recall?”

  “Sure I do,” he told me. “Viv and I played a set with you just before the caterer’s boy drowned in the pool. How could I forget it? I knew who you were because I had read your interview in the Daily News, but I never connected your Georgia with mine.” That was met with silence, even from the kitchen. Gallo shook his head. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  Certain he didn’t, I advocated, “Joe, we’re here to see if we can find out what happened to Vivian Emerson, not to exchange sophomoric barbs about past and present relationships. It’s uncomfortable, but we’re here and Vivian Emerson is missing.”

  “Amen,” cried Georgy, with all the fervor of a revival-meeting enthusiast.

  Without preamble, Joe stated, “Viv went out Thursday evening, about six I think, and I haven’t seen her since.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  He ran a hand through his hair and gazed at the ceiling. “The truth?”

  “It would help” I encouraged.

  “I wasn’t listening,” he admitted. “I was at my PC, working on an idea I have for a column. I was a reporter for a small press but it folded.”

  Georgy did tell me Gallo had come to Florida after college when he was offered a position with a fledgling local daily.

  “I want to get back in the business,” he continued. “I heard Viv, but I didn’t really listen to what she said, is what I mean.”

  Georgy, lugging a crowded tray, joined us.

  “Why didn’t you call the police?” I asked.

  He explained that Vivian had a friend in Delray Beach she often visited. “Sometimes, when they had a few too many, she would spend the night. It was no big deal. It had happened before and I just assumed that’s where she was.”

  Georgy had put the tray on the coffee table that fronted the couch. Now she poured and passed around the cups. Cream and sugar were on the tray along
with a plate of chocolate-chip cookies. “Wouldn’t she call to say she was staying?” Georgy spoke my next question.

  Gallo shrugged as if he were unsure of the answer, but as an experienced interviewer I knew the gesture meant, “Don’t ask.” To save him the embarrassment, and to keep us all honest, I plunged in where her lover feared to tread. “She’s a boozer, Joe, yes? And when she and her pal have those few too many the only thing she calls for is another drink.”

  With a tenuous nod, he said, “That’s it, Archy. I scrambled myself a few eggs, watched the tube and went to bed. Business as usual.”

  Georgy looked at him like a doting mother listening to her child’s tale of woe. He didn’t rate the sympathy. He was Vivian Emerson’s fancy man and deserved whatever he got. I made a mental note to tell Binky what befalls men who trade their virility for riches. Armani suits, pearl cufflinks and Italian cars, that’s what they get. I helped myself to a cookie.

  Gallo started getting worried the following evening, when Emerson had been gone for twenty-four hours. He called the friend in Delray Beach and learned that Vivian had not been there the previous evening, or in several weeks. “I called around to a few more friends, but none of them had seen her. That’s when I called Georgy.”

  As I knew she would, Georgy ran a missing persons check this morning and came up with nothing. “Hospitals, police blotters, accident reports, the works. Not a trace of her.”

  “I alerted Al Rogoff this morning, but not officially. We met on another matter,” I said.

  “Who’s Al Rogoff?” Gallo asked.

  “Sergeant Al Rogoff,” Georgy answered for me. “He’s with the Palm Beach force. He and Archy are working on a homicide. The kid that was drowned in the MacNiff pool.”

  “The police questioned us about that,” Gallo said.

  “What did you tell them?” I ask him.

  “Nothing,” he responded. “We didn’t know the kid. We were as stunned as everyone else that day.”

  I was pleased that Georgy had reintroduced the subject of the MacNiff fete. I could query Joe Gallo on the subject of Holga von Brecht without giving away my hand too soon. “Was Ms. Emerson an annual contributor to Malcolm MacNiff’s scholarship fund, Joe?”

  He smiled. “No way. That crowd is out of Viv’s league.”

  He related how one of Vivian Emerson’s golf buddies, who was a regular invitee to the Tennis Everyone! benefit, had complained that she and her husband had purchased tickets as usual, but this year a business trip to Milan would keep her husband from attending, and she had decided to tag along at company expense. Vivian offered the woman twenty-five hundred dollars for the tickets; which was half their cost. The woman accepted, saying she wouldn’t tell her husband, and would use the money to go boutiqueing while visiting our planet’s boutique capital.

  “So we got in on someone else’s shirttails,” was how Gallo finished the story.

  “You didn’t know anyone there?” I nudged.

  “Not a soul. Like I said, I knew you by sight from the interview in the Daily News, and I knew who Dennis Darling was because everyone was whispering about him. I wanted to meet him but never got near him.”

  Zeroing in, I asked him, “Do you remember the woman who partnered with me opposite you and Ms. Emerson?”

  He grinned. “Her? She really ticked Viv off.”

  Now we were getting to the nuts and bolts of this confrontation. “Why?”

  When Vivian Emerson saw Holga von Brecht, she told Joe that she knew Olga from their undergrad days at Smith.

  “Did you say Olga?” I cut in, carefully articulating the first vowel.

  “Yeah. Olga something. I don’t remember the family name. Viv went right up to her and Olga froze,” he recalled.

  “You mean she snubbed Ms. Emerson?”

  “No,” Joe said. “I mean she froze, pop-eyed, is the best I can describe it. Then she snubbed her. She told Viv she had mistaken her for someone else and walked away”

  Needless to say, Vivian Emerson was furious. Being something of a gate-crasher, she thought it would boost her image if she was seen embracing an old friend who was there by invitation.

  “Then came the discovery of the kid in the pool and after that, as you know, Archy, the party broke up.”

  “Helen MacNiff had to give the police a list of all the guests. How did she get your names, if the tickets belonged to someone else?”

  “Easy,” Joe said. “Viv’s friend called the MacNiffs’ secretary and told her we were coming in place of her and her husband. I mean it would be awkward if we weren’t on the security checker’s list and got bounced. That night, Viv told me about Olga—Norton, I think was her maiden name.”

  The girls had met at Smith and were acquaintances, if not the best of friends. Vivian had heard that Olga went to Europe shortly after graduation and had married someone in Switzerland, remaining there with her husband. Two years later, while on her own honeymoon, Vivian ran into Olga in Lucerne. “She said Olga had a son and seemed very happy.”

  I almost upset the cup of coffee I had balanced on my lap. “A son? Are you sure?”

  “I think so. What difference does it make? Viv thought she was a perfect bitch. No, I think she called her a cow.”

  Holga, or Olga, von Brecht may be many things, but a cow wasn’t one of them. I put my cup and saucer on the coffee table as Georgy, who was seated next to me, put a hand on my knee. “The von Brecht woman is the one you told me about, isn’t she? The one who’s here with Lance Talbot. Do you think Vivian’s disappearance has something to do with the murder?”

  “What?” Gallo shouted, leaping out of his chair. “What murder? The kid in the pool? Viv never knew him.”

  Taking charge, I told them both to simmer down and motioned Joe Gallo to resume his seat. Vivian Emerson knew Holga von Brecht. That seemed clear. But von-Brecht wasn’t happy to see her former school chum. That was even clearer.

  Jeff Rodgers was connected to Lance Talbot, who was connected to Holga von Brecht, who was connected to Vivian Emerson. And the hipbone’s connected to the thighbone, and the thighbone’s connected to...

  “Yes, I now believe there may be a connection between Jeff Rodgers’s murder and Vivian Emerson’s disappearance.” Raising my hand for silence as the two plied me with questions, I sought to extinguish the fuse I had inadvertently lit before it detonated the bomb in my noggin.

  “There’s no reason to jump to conclusions,” I began, and that’s as far as I got.

  “We already have,” Georgy said. “You told me...”

  “Put a muzzle on it, Georgy. I confided in you because you wear that uniform. We’ve both said too much already”

  “Meaning wait till little Joey leaves, and then throw it open for discussion. Well, I’m not leaving until I know what’s going on,” little Joey informed us. “I think I’m the guy who put you wise to whatever it is you won’t tell me.”

  I looked at my watch. Mickey’s arms were vertically bisecting the dial, with the little arm pointing down. In short, it was time for a liquid refreshment that would banish the taste of Georgy’s instant coffee. The pot she claimed to have put up was filled with water. When boiling she put in three teaspoons of the instant powder, and one for the pot. Oh, Georgy!

  “I believe there’s a bottle of a pretentious Chardonnay chilling in the fridge,” I announced. “Let’s clear the deck and fortify ourselves for the task ahead.” I began clearing the coffee table. “Many hands make light work,” I hinted.

  I had them both bussing the table and, for the moment, off my back. I uncorked the wine as Georgy got out the glasses and Joe stacked the dishwasher. He was not unfamiliar with Georgy’s kitchen, I noted. Filling the glasses, I informed them, “Tis said a glass of wine is nature’s tranquilizer.”

  “Vivian said that, and look what happened to her,” Georgy blurted. Joe and I paused in our labors. “Sorry,” she recanted.

  “What’s going on, Archy?” Joe began as soon as he had tasted
the wine.

  “I don’t think Vivian Emerson is in any way involved in Jeff Rodgers’s murder, but I do think she unwittingly intruded upon a conspiracy and has made some people very nervous.”

  “Olga?” Joe guessed correctly.

  This is just what I didn’t want to happen. Nonprofessionals knowing too much, blabbing and getting up the wind before the police had a chance to sort it all out. I had no proof that Vivian Emerson was abducted by the von Brechts, just as I had no proof that Lance Talbot was responsible for Jeff’s murder. It was all circumstantial posturing. I needed something to hang my suspicions on and there was one chance in a zillion that Joe Gallo, of all people, might give me what I needed.

  “Joe, does Vivian have Caller ID on her phone?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “So does everyone in Palm Beach.”

  “What are you getting at, Archy?” Georgy asked.

  “Does it keep a record of the incoming calls? I mean, can you check to see what calls came in in the last few days?”

  “I think it has a memory bank,” Joe stated.

  “I know it does,” Georgy cut in. “We have it at the barracks. It can store just so many numbers, so how many days back it goes depends on how many calls came in.”

  “Joe, this is very important. First, I want you to promise to keep your mouth shut about everything you heard here today. Can I count on you?”

  “Is Vivian in danger?” he asked, and I think he was sincerely concerned. It went a long way in boosting my opinion of the guy.

  “She may be. What I want you to do is go home and scan the Caller ID screen. Write down all the numbers listed. After getting rid of the ones you know, call me here and give me the rest.”

  “What for?” Joe asked.

  “Just do what Archy says,” Georgy ordered. “After that, call the Palm Beach police and report Vivian’s disappearance.”

  “But you already ran a check,” Joe insisted.

  “That was this morning,” Georgy exclaimed, losing her composure. “You and Viv live in Palm Beach so you must notify the Palm Beach police. Just do it, Joey.” When he reached for the Chardonnay for a refill, she ordered, “Now, Joey.”