McNally's Alibi

by Lawrence Sanders

  The sire, Prescott McNally Esq., had breakfasted early, as was his wont. For my father, there is no such thing as “business casual,” and today was no exception: he appeared at the table in his traditional garb, a custom-made vested suit in banker’s gray; a white-on-white French-cuffed shirt; a rich silk tie, in a regimental stripe he was not authorized to wear except on our side of the Atlantic; and Cole-Haan loafers in leather as soft as a newborn’s patoot.

  After breakfast he mounted his iron steed—a silver Lexus—and made his way to the McNally Building on Royal Palm Way to preside over McNally & Son, Attorney-at-Law. Father is the attorney of this for-profit enterprise, where he controls both the purse strings and the ambience within an edifice whose modern exterior belies its stuffy old-fashioned heart.

  Unlike the House of Windsor (née Saxe-Coburgs via the Hanoverians), the House of McNally is descended not from kings, but court jesters. My grandfather, Freddy McNally, was a Minsky circuit comic who took a break from pratfalling long enough to invest in prime South Florida real estate when a thousand bucks—ten percent down—could get you an acre of oceanfront property.

  Today, the Hearst mansion in lovely PB is on the market for twenty-nine million and is classified as a “distress sale”: it is assumed that Veronica, Randolph Hearst’s widow, will feel a bit pinched financially thanks to the family code that prevents Hearst money from being inherited by any but blood relations. In the meantime, Howard Kessler just paid thirty-nine million for an oceanfront mansion and Janet Annenberg Hooker’s beach house went for a mere fifteen, but it’s rumored the new owners will spend another fifty to renovate the joint.

  Last season’s real-estate news was all about the old Addison Mizner house in Manalapan. Zillionaire Gary Ross bought it, divided it into three parts like Caesar’s Gaul, and then had the pieces “floated” by barge to Palm Beach, where they were reassembled on the Palm Beach lot he had acquired from cosmetic queen Estée Lauder. Alas, the old house couldn’t withstand even that brief sea voyage and is now destined for demolition. Truly a titanic gesture, if you’ll forgive the pun.

  My mother, the lovely Madelaine McNally, had taken her juice, toast and coffee with His Nibs, then departed for the greenhouse to minister to her beloved begonias. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer once boasted that it had under contract more stars than are in the heavens. If this is so, mother has more varieties of begonias than MGM had stars.

  That leaves the Dark Prince, yours truly, to journey to Yale in search of the Holy Grail—that would be erudition and a law degree—only to return with a variety of silk berets and his tail between his legs. The reason I was “sent down” from Yale has never been made public, but, like the identity of Jack the Ripper, it has been etched in bronze and stashed away in a time capsule to take the edge off future shock.

  As the son of McNally & Son, I occupy a wee office in the McNally Building where I have been dubbed a discreet inquirer. A private investigator in a town whose inhabitants shun private investigators, they’ll flock to me when ruffled feathers need smoothing and indiscretions demand a coat of whitewash. I’ve managed to take on the odd murder investigation without courting publicity or the attention of nosy policemen.

  I had overslept, as Dark Princes often do, and was now in the kitchen of our faux Tudor abode enjoying a not-so-petit-dejeuner of cinnamon French toast prepared by our housekeeper-cum-chef magnifique, Ursi Olson. The butter-crisped bread was lapped with Ursi’s own delectable honey-maple syrup. The morning’s only surprise came from Ursi’s husband, our houseman, Jamie Olson, who divided his attention between the morning newspaper and sips of his wife’s bracing black coffee. The usually laconic Jamie suddenly blurted, “Your friend got his name in the paper.”

  This gave me pause, but did not prevent my fork from making its way to my mouth. Just who could it be? All my pals are year-round Palm Beachers and all are members in good standing of the Pelican Club, of which I am a founder. We Pelicans are a less eclectic group than those who frequent the Bath and Tennis and the Everglades Clubs. Aside from appearing in a little black book tided Palm Beach’s Most Eligible Bachelors or being mentioned in the society columns, we tend to shun more common coverage in places like the police blotter.

  The days when nice folks’ names appeared in the paper just three times—when born, married and last when they died—are as passé as long engagements and longer marriages. Therefore the field was wide open. So who had managed to make the early edition of Jamie’s tabloid?

  “ ‘Sergeant Al Rogoff,’ ” Jamie read aloud, reading my droughts as well as any psychic, “ ‘assigned to the Palm Beach burglary strike force, was on duty last night when his attention was drawn to a light in an upstairs window of the Beaumont mansion on Dunbar Road. As the house has been closed and secured with hurricane shutters for more than twenty years, Sergeant Rogoff pulled over to investigate when he spotted two men climbing over the three-foot brick wall that surrounds the house.’ ”

  Well, Al Rogoff was one I counted as a friend, but I was so startled by Jamie’s sudden loquaciousness I actually put down my fork, and even Ursi stopped puttering about the stove to stare at her husband. As Jamie continued, it was the song, not the singer, that held our rapt attention.

  “ ‘Burglary, however,’ ” Jamie continued, “ ‘was not the motive of the suspicious duo. One of the men was dressed in a skirt and wore a blond wig above a face liberally powdered and rouged. When confronted by Sergeant Rogoff, the men admitted that they had climbed the wall in search of privacy to engage in sex.’ ”

  What a scream! And what a sight for my still-sleepy eyes. I let out a chuckle at the image of Al, who looks like Smokey the Bear in a police uniform, confronting the romantic couple.

  “ ‘Sergeant Rogoff called for assistance and charged Thomas Mitland, twenty-nine, and Bruce Bennett, twenty-four, both from West Palm Beach, with trespassing. Before backup arrived, Mr. Mitland tossed his purse into the bushes, which was later found to contain a cocaine pipe and a plastic bag filled with crack cocaine. Mitland was then charged with possession of an illegal substance.’ ”

  What? No credit for the designers of the skirt and wig? And what about a detailed description of the purse filled with contraband? Both a Palm Beach news item taboo. If we wanted just the facts, ma’am, we’d read the Times. Woman’s Wear Daily, even.

  “ ‘Mr. Bennett was released after posting a five-hundred-dollar bond. Mitland is still in custody,’ ” Jamie concluded.

  Imagine waking up in jail still dressed in last night’s street wear! I made a mental note to call Al to see if anyone had shown up to bail out poor Mitland, or at the very least to bring him a change of clothes.

  “What’s the world coming to?” Ursi wondered aloud as she refilled my coffee cup.

  “I don’t think it’s much different now than in the days when the Beaumont mansion was the jewel in Palm Beach’s crown,” I answered. “All the news that’s fit to print now seems to be all the news, period.”

  “Still,” Ursi complained, “it’s a travesty to read that the Beaumont lawn is being used as a lover’s lane.”

  “By the odd couple,” Jamie quipped without taking his eyes off his newspaper. My word, he was feeling his oats this morning. Was this a harbinger of things to come? Recalling that thoughts have wings, I suppressed the notion, but, alas, the gods will not be fooled and were already looking down at Archy with malice aforethought.

  From what I have heard about Madison “Mad” Beaumont, I would think he would have invited the odd couple into his home for a game of backgammon after posting bail for Mr. Mitland. Ursi, of course, would disagree: a leader among the domestics along Ocean Boulevard, she was also a bit of a prude, always lamenting the good old days when those they served confined their high jinks to something you did in the dark, or in Europe, and when family skeletons and odd couples were kept behind locked closet doors.

  “I’m sure croquet wasn’t the only game played on the Beaumont lawn in the good old days,” I mused aloud. �
�No doubt a wide variety of contact sports were offered as an option for the more agile houseguests.” (Come to think of it, I would have enjoyed witnessing some of the Beaumont high jinks for myself, had I been of age.)

  “Tennis?” Ursi said, either not knowing that tennis is not a contact sport or purposely deflecting my innuendo with a vapid response. If I were a betting man, I would set the odds at twelve-to-seven in favor of the latter. I was certain that Jamie, who continued to sip, read and take in every word spoken, knew of what I spoke.

  The Beaumonts were as close to royalty as families are permitted to get in our supposedly classless society. Descended from presidents—hence the given names of Madison, Jefferson and Rutherford—they were as entrepreneurial as the Astors, Du Ponts, Mellons and Morgans. Like the Mrs. Astor, the Beaumonts did not socialize with the new rich Carnegies, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and, for political reasons, Roosevelts.

  Madison “Mad” Beaumont broke with family tradition in the second half of the last century when he lowered social bars his forebears had kept so rigidly intact. To the family homes on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, Southampton’s Gin Lane, Maine’s Bar Harbor and Florida’s Palm Beach came café society, Hollywood society, dethroned royalty, presidents and their first ladies, gangsters and their molls. “Mad” was a blue-blooded Gatsby whose Twelve Days of Christmas celebration was a coveted invitation not meant for the timid.

  As you may have already guessed, each day featured a living tableau of the popular Christmas carol, including the ten ladies dancing and the eleven lords a-leaping, compliments of the New York City Ballet. How he handled the three French hens a-laying and the eight maids a-milking I haven’t a clue. It was all as amusing as could be until, some two decades ago, on the thirteenth day of that Christmas, the lights went out in the Beaumont mansion—permanently.

  “What happened to the family?” I asked Ursi. “Around the time I left for New Haven they closed the house and never returned.”

  “Terrible tragedy,” Ursi said, joining us at the table. “Madison Beaumont had twin boys, Madison Jr. and Tyler. Like two blond angels, they were. So cute the press referred to them as the Beau Twins. It was just after the big Christmas party that year when one of them—I believe it was Madison Jr.—died. That was when the family closed the house and just picked up and left.”

  “How did the boy die?” I asked.

  Jamie, clearly having exhausted himself in the telling of the saga of the impounded purse, made no comment re: Madison “Mad” Beaumont, but I’d bet my collection of Cracker Jack prizes that he knew more than his wife about the sad story of the Beau Twins.

  “Well,” Ursi said, just warming up, “the house had a huge curved marble staircase that rose from the reception hall to the second floor. Very impressive. Mrs. Beaumont, one of the last great ladies to employ the couturier Mainbocher to create all her dresses and gowns, used the staircase to make a grand entrance at her own parties.” As an aside, Ursi added, “You know, Archy, Mainbocher made the dress the Duchess of Windsor wore the day she married the Duke.”

  Ursi’s knowledge of the great and near great never ceased to amaze me. She was a walking encyclopedia of opulent trivia who could spot costume jewelry from ten paces and detect a phony accent quicker than ’enry ’iggins. No detail was too grand to bedazzle, and certainly even the smallest wasn’t to be overlooked.

  “Where was I?” Ursi wondered.

  “Descending the marble staircase in a Mainbocher original,” I offered.

  “Yes. And what a scandal that was,” Ursi stated.

  “The gown?” I ventured.

  “No, Archy. The gowns were lovely. I mean that Mrs. Beaumont was always the last to appear at her own fancy dress balls. She waited for all her guests to arrive before she descended the marble staircase, but not before the staff had managed to usher everyone into the reception hall to watch the show.”

  Like the eleven o’clock number in a Broadway musical, I thought, as Ursi castigated the theatrical hostess. “If one can’t receive her guests properly at the front door, one should stay in bed,” Ursi proclaimed with a profound nod of her head.

  Ursi’s story had all the complexity of an oater with a cast of thousands. Somewhere among the shoot-out at high noon, the chase and the barroom brawl there existed a plot. One simply had to persevere to discover what it might be.

  “What happened to the boy?” I persevered.

  “He fell down them marble steps and never got up.” Jamie spoke to his newspaper.

  Insisting on the last word, Ursi said, “That was the rumor at the time. The papers reported only that the boy’s death was accidental.”

  And given the influence wielded by the Beaumont family, that was all the public was ever likely to know.

  A glance at Mickey’s hands signaled that it was time to shift gears and move on, as idle gossip does not pay the rent. True, my three-room garret suite comes compliments of monpire, which makes the aphorism a non sequitur, but one should make the effort. In fact, I did have an appointment with a prospective client at eleven and had just enough time to kiss mother’s cheek—a chore I would not defer even if it did make me late before climbing into my Miata and making my way to the salt mines.

  The sight of mother bending over her potted plants in the dappled light of the greenhouse would make an apt subject for an impressionist master. I never approached the scene Without placing it in a gilded baroque frame in my mind. Title? Woman in Her Potting Shed. And what a lovely woman she was. Even the smudge she always managed to get on her cheek when at her labor of love served to enhance her comely features.

  Mother had become a bit forgetful in her golden years. Like the high blood pressure that gave her cheeks a rosy glow, this was a matter of concern to father and me, but happily both conditions were mitigated by the combination of medication and understanding by those who loved her.

  “How nice you look, Archy,” she said, and smiled.

  “How clever of you to notice,” I replied, bending to kiss the offered cheek.

  Some say my mode of dress is rather theatrical—my father being among my most vocal critics. If my attire is theatrical, it is meant to please an audience of one, Archy McNally—and more often than not, I succeed. As a rule, I shun ties because my favorite wit, O. Wilde, remarked that “a well tied tie is the first serious step in life.” I, of course, refuse to take that step. When things, like love affairs and chest colds, become serious, they lead to marriage and pneumonia.

  Love, especially, should be treated like a vintage port. A few sips are enchanting. Empty the bottle and you get a headache. In this, my light-o’-love, Consuela Garcia, vehemently disagrees and is threatening to close the door on our “open” relationship. It appears she may give in to the ardent courting of one Alejandro Gomez y Zapata—whom I will think about tomorrow on the off chance that tomorrow will never dawn.

  Alejandro is a rebel with a cause—to oust Mr. Castro from his island paradise. In this quest Alex is at the end of a very long line and has about as much chance of succeeding as he has of ousting me from Connie’s affections. He has positioned himself in Miami as the Great White Hope of our Cuban brethren with much fanfare and—aside from invading Palm Beach to conquer Connie’s heart—little action.

  “Archy, you must make an effort to get up early and leave for the office with your father,” mother scolded gently.

  “Did he ask for me this morning, mother?”

  “He asks for you every morning, Archy.”

  Our canine sentinel of blended heritage, Hobo, looked out of his gabled home, sniffed at my approach and withdrew therein. I wonder if among the blend Hobo doesn’t have a turtle in the woodpile. When a man is ignored by his own best friend, it’s questionable as to who is occupying the doghouse.

  Alone with my thoughts, the trip to Royal Palm Way was disquieting, to say the least. I drove with the top down. An ocean breeze ruffled my hair. A hint of autumn floated on the salty breeze. All should have conspired to lift my spir
its. Maybe it was those shuttered Beaumont windows that had me believing the hurricane season had arrived early, with Archy in the eye of the storm. Suddenly, I was being attacked on all fronts and threatened with insurgency within my own camp.

  Had I for too long taken too much for granted? Was my secure and sublime existence in danger of extinction? If I had been as snug as the proverbial bug in a rug, I could now hear the roar of a vacuum cleaner the size of a steamroller, headed straight for my nest.

  Last night Connie had the audacity to dine in public at—of all places—the Pelican Club, with Alejandro Gomez y Zapata. Our crowd knows that Connie and I enjoy the kind of relationship that allows me to play the field and her to keep a light in the window. If you think that’s chauvinistic, you’re correct. I have cheated on Connie more times than I have fingers—or toes, come to think of it—but, like a gentleman, I conduct my affairs covertly, sparing Connie any embarrassment and the trouble of rendering me a capon. True, our romance is a delicate balance, but it’s one I have managed to juggle without ever dropping a ball—till now.

  I was at the bar of the Pelican as the aforementioned Cuban couple munched the special of the day and drank Cuba Libres in honor, no doubt, of Alejandro’s pledge to libre Cuba from Castro, not from Spain, for which the odious drink got its name, as well as a hit single for the Andrews Sisters.

  The Pelican is located in a clapboard house with the first floor serving as bar and dining room. Given the givens, it ain’t spacious enough to pretend you can’t see who’s tête-à-tête with whom after one quick glance around the room. To add to my discomfort, everyone made a point of stopping at the bar to ask me, “Who is the guy with Connie? What a hunk—like a movie star.”