McNally's Alibi

by Lawrence Sanders

  Sizing up my date and returning the compliment, Priscilla cooed, “I love your hair.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I did it myself.”

  Priscilla glowered as she led us to my corner table. On the way we passed Connie and Binky, who were also seated in the bar area, and I paused long enough to say, “Fancy seeing you here.”

  “Fancy indeed,” Connie responded, raising her glass. Good grief, it was a champagne glass. And there was a bottle of the bubbly cooling in a bucket of ice beside their table. I stumbled, righted myself and caught up with Georgy just in time to hold her chair.

  “Can I get you a drink?” Priscilla asked, depositing two menus on our table.

  I could certainly use one and hoped no one noticed. Champagne? Binky never drank anything but Simon Pettibone’s drawn lager, and Connie usually had a vodka and tonic before a glass of wine with dinner. Suddenly, on my dime, they develop a taste for champagne. I would have Binky drawn and quartered in the morning. No, death was too good for Binky Watrous. Instead, when he presented me with the bill I would say, “Guess what, Binky? I LIED.”

  “Can Mr. Pettibone make a negroni?” Georgy wondered.

  “Mr. Pettibone can make anything in the bartender’s guide to genteel inebriation without so much as a glance at the recipe book.” Turning to our waitperson, who was staring at Georgy, I proclaimed, “Two negronis, please.”

  Georgy looked surprised. “Do you like them, too?”

  “Love them,” I said, having no idea what a negroni was and thinking how much I admired her courage not to play it safe and go for something more popular. The more one got to know Georgy O’Hara, the more one found to admire.

  “So this is the famous Pelican Club,” she said, glancing around the room. “I think I’m going to like it here. Everyone looks very much at home.”

  “Like I said, good food and grog in the company of friends.”

  “And who was the lovely Latina lady you stopped to chat with?”

  She had a policeman’s eye, all right. Or should that be a policewoman’s eye? Georgy girl didn’t miss a beat. I found myself telling her that Consuela Garcia was Lady Cynthia Horowitz’s social secretary and that Binky Watrous was a fellow employee at McNally & Son. Halfway through the briefing I realized that I was telling her more about my private life than I had intended to reveal, but with Georgy it just seemed the natural thing to do. I had to keep reminding myself that this was a business meeting and I was here for show but not tell.

  “Lady Cynthia,” she gushed. “You do rub shoulders in this town. I once ticketed one of the Kennedy brats. Can’ t recall which one.”

  “Would you like me to introduce you to the pillars of our society?”

  “No, they might topple in my presence. But I would like you to introduce me to the person who murdered Lawrence Swensen,” she requested instead.

  “Maybe you’re talking to him,” I reminded her.

  She sighed and focused those green eyes on me with a frown that was more fetching than menacing, but then so was the music of the Sirens. Was the precious frown posed or natural? In appearance, she was every college boy’s Homecoming Queen. In reality, she packed a rod and was licensed to kill.

  “Archy,” she was saying, “three people were in that motel room the night Swensen was drugged and strangled. You were one of them. We have no choice but to keep you in the loop. However, you may as well know that my boss is all for charging Harrigan.”

  “Your boss being the guy in the corner office?” I put in.

  She reared her head and shot back, “Who said my boss was a guy?”

  “Ouch, again. Or is that still? I keep shooting myself in the foot,” I said by way of an apology for assuming the officer in charge of the state trooper barracks in Juno Beach was a man. “So your roommate was a he and your boss is a she.”

  She shook her head. “It just so happens my boss is a ‘he,’ and my ex-roommate is none of your business. And here come our drinks, and not a moment too soon.”

  Amen to that, baby.

  The negronis came on the rocks and were garnished with a lemon twist. This being a business meeting, I raised my glass with a brief nod, said “Cheers,” and imbibed. “Campari,” I guessed, “and most certainly gin. Not bad.” I took another sip. “In fact, I rather like it.”

  “Campari, gin and vermouth,” Georgy said, “and you never had one in your life. Do you ever tell me truth, Archy?”

  “Only when it can’t hurt his image,” Priscilla joined in.

  “Do you know, Georgy,” I said, “this is the only restaurant in the Western world where the waitperson doubles as a Greek chorus. I would invite you to sit, Miss Priss, but I know duty calls. Right?”

  “Right now my duty is to tell you that tonight’s special is tournedos of beef with mushrooms and red wine sauce—pricey, but worth it—and me special appetizer is mussels marinated in garlic and olive oil and served as a salad—also pricey. Everything else is on the menu.” With that, Priscilla ran off to caution others on the exorbitant cost of the evening’s specials.

  “She is a vixen,” I said.

  “An adorable vixen,” Georgy modified the noun. “And what a figure, as if you never noticed.” Moving aside her menu, she announced, “I want all the pricey goodies, and I won’t insult you by saying we’ll go dutch, but next time it’ll be on me.”

  The implication was that there would be a next time, which was fine with me. “That makes two for the mussels and tournedos. You won’t be disappointed, Georgy girl, our Leroy is South Florida’s best-kept culinary secret.”

  (A discreet glance told me Connie and Binky were also having the tournedos and, no doubt, had already sampled the mussels. My wallet was bleeding to death.)

  Getting down to business, I asked, “So, tell me, why does the boss want to charge Harrigan?”

  “He’s Captain Delaney,” she told me, “and right now Harrigan is all we have.”

  At this point she told me everything Harrigan had told the police, and it jived with what he told me. We also went over the story Claudia Lester was now touting, and, again, it agreed with what Lester had told me. It seemed the two con artists were not only consistent in their accounts of that evening, but also insistent that each was speaking the truth.

  I had discussed many a case with Al Rogoff at this very table and, let me be the first to herald, I found Officer O’Hara every bit as professional, knowledgeable and involved in the business of crime and punishment as her masculine counterpart. Don’t tell Al, but she’s also prettier. Georgy O’Hara could hold her own with any tough guy while never letting you forget she was a beautiful woman.

  When I next caught the eye of our Priscilla I ordered two more negronis and told her to bring on the specials au deux, both medium rare.

  “You see,” Georgy now said, “Harrigan admits going to the motel and giving Swensen a generous dose of Seconal to put him to sleep. Then he says he took the money and hightailed it back to the Ambassador, where our Ms. Lester awaited with the manuscript you had delivered. But, according to you, you didn’t deliver anything. You were mugged and robbed of the manuscript. Don’t let this go to your head, Archy, but the captain is more inclined to believe you than Harrigan.”

  “Smart man,” I said, secretly relieved. “But why should he believe Lester over Harrigan?”

  “Because her story agrees with yours. She says you didn’t deliver the manuscript. If we agree that you’re telling the truth, so is Lester.”

  Our drinks arrived, and a moment later we were given a basket of warm semolina bread, pane di casa and ficeller, wrapped in a white linen napkin, as well as a small dish of olive oil for dipping. Gone were the days of doughy supermarket mock-Italian bread and ice-cold butter, and I say, it was about time. I passed the bread before helping myself.

  Munching, I told her, “It ain’t kosher, Georgy girl.” She gave me a puzzled look, and I corrected, “I don’t mean the bread, which it probably isn’t—I refer to your captain’s r
easoning. Claudia Lester is telling the truth about the manuscript because she has no choice. It would be my word against hers, and, based on my standing in this town, I would win, a fact poor Harrigan is about to learn. I didn’t deliver the manuscript to her, and she says Harrigan ran off with it and the money.

  “But did he? And is she telling the truth when she says there was no conspiracy among these three miscreants to pull a sting on Swensen?”

  “The conspiracy is Harrigan’s story,” Georgy said.

  “Correct. So who do we believe? I say Harrigan.”

  Dipping a crust of bread in the warm seasoned oil, Georgy quickly and correctly reasoned, “Because if he took the money and the manuscript, he would be long gone from our lovely resort and not pushing a cart around the Publix, chatting with Archy McNally.”

  “There’s hope for you, Georgy girl. Also, he had no reason to kill Swensen after he drugged him. And how that bothers me. Drugged and murdered. Why? Nor do I see Harrigan as a killer. If Delaney charges him, he’s going to have one hell of a time to convince the prosecution that they have a case. Contrary to common folklore, killers do not return to the scene of the crime.”

  Looking a bit contemplative, she answered, “I agree. Harrigan’s not a killer. Just a bum. He reminds me of someone I used to know.”

  Taking a chance, I ventured, “The roommate who left you in the lurch with the rent due?”

  “You never let go, do you?” she said. “You’re like a hound with a bone.” When I didn’t answer she seemed to give the matter some thought and, with a shrug, opened the door a little further into her private life. “I met him at school in Little Rock.”

  “Arkansas?” I blurted.

  With a sly grin she answered, “Would I kid about something like that? I’m just a little girl from Little Rock. My father was a police officer, a sheriff actually, and I studied criminal justice at college.”

  “That’s right,” I remembered. “He wanted a boy, so you did your best to oblige him.”

  “Sorry, doctor, but he got his boy two years later and called him Sean. I went into criminal law because it was what I wanted and not to please anyone.”

  “And did Sean become a policeman, too?”

  “No,” she said, “Sean is a ballet dancer.” When I looked rather startled she began to laugh, eyes twinkling and finger pointing. “How I love to tease you, Archy. Actually, he’s a lawyer. A defense lawyer, would you believe? Dad arrests them and Sean sets ’em free. We are a close but dysfunctional family.”

  Her laughter, rather loud I must say, had drawn the attention of several neighboring diners, including Connie and Binky, who seemed to be sharing a joke of their own. Most likely they were adding up their dinner tab. What were they planning for dessert? Baked Alaska flown in from its place of origin?

  Georgy’s story was about as original as one of Binky’s romance novels. She met him at school, her first time away from home and on her own. He was tall, blond, handsome and majoring in English lit. He wrote romantic verse, and Georgy immediately applied for the position of Beatrice to his Dante. He seduced her on the third canto, and they moved off campus into a love nest built for two.

  After graduation, and much against her parents’ wishes, she followed him to Florida, where he had gotten work as a rookie reporter for one of the local newspapers. She joined the force and rose in the ranks. “Actually, I was in the right profession at the right time. The police, the fire department, all those macho trades were falling over themselves recruiting women. You might say I was the beneficiary of reverse discrimination.”

  Georgy girl was honest to a fault, I’ll say that for her. And, I now learned, I was feasting with a lieutenant. Her paramour did not fare as well. The paper folded and, it being a slack season for poets, he went to work as a caddie for one of our many prestigious golf clubs. Being a tall, blond, handsome lad who knew his way around an iambic pentameter, the athletic ladies apparently found him too tasty a dish to pass up.

  When a rich divorcee made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, he left his Georgy and became a kept man. “A role,” Georgy concluded, “he was born to play. In almost five years he never once took out the garbage. Don’t ever fall for a gorgeous hunk, Archy.”

  The arrival of our mussels saved me from promising to heed her warning, but it did not stop me from saying, “If you’ve given up gorgeous hunks, that puts me out of the running.”

  She thought that over, picked up her fork and answered, “This looks delicious.”

  The succulent mollusks had been tossed with a mixture of white wine, lemon juice, shallots, diced artichoke hearts and a blend of herbs and spices before being blended with the garlic and oil marinade. And a splendid marriage it made.

  After a forkful my guest said, “So good you could eat the plate.”

  So good, in fact, it kept us quiet for several minutes, which gave me time to once again observe Connie and Binky. If Connie was upset over my date with Georgy O’Hara, she was certainly keeping it to herself. On several occasions, when caught with a lovely lady on my arm when I was supposed to be at home or out with the boys, Connie had made a scene that would put Emily Post into permanent cardiac arrest.

  Tonight, here I was at the Pelican Club, dining openly with a beautiful woman as Connie sipped champagne and pretended not to notice. But then, hadn’t I done just that the night she was here with Alejandro?

  I began to wax sentimental with thoughts like, Is tonight the New Year’s Eve of my life as a footloose and fancy-free bachelor? The end of an era? Goodbye to the old and in with the new? But what would the new bring? I came here tonight determined to make Connie jealous, but the more I got to know Georgia O’Hara the more I sympathized with Connie’s intrigue with Alejandro Gomez y Zapata.

  Like the plot of a morality play, a stranger had entered both our lives and nothing would ever be the same again. A few days ago it was get married or get lost, but now there were alternatives never dreamed of. Our game might yet end in a draw, with the children, weary but wiser, picking up their marbles and heading home.

  “Why didn’t you graduate from Yale?” I heard Georgy ask.

  “How do you know I didn’t?” I replied, not liking where this was leading.

  “The bachelor book,” she said. “ ‘Archibald “Archy” McNally attended Yale.’ If you had graduated it would have said so. It’s like those debutante bios, ‘Sara Rich attended Miss Porter’s school.’ That could mean she sat in on a lecture in deportment one rainy afternoon as an invited guest.”

  “I got the boot,” I confessed.

  “Really, why?”

  “I have about a dozen set responses to that query. Which one do you want?”

  “The true one, of course. I’m a cop.”

  “None of them are true, Georgy girl.”

  She put down her fork and touched her lips with her napkin. “That bad, eh? They say confession is good for the soul.”

  “I’ve promised myself that I would reveal all to my bride on our wedding night.”

  There was that blush again. Georgy O’Hara had one of those rare, and rather lovely, complexions that registered her thoughts like a flashing color chart. And, unless I was reading it wrong, weddings were on the lady’s mind. Didn’t anyone want to just fool around anymore?

  As our plates were removed, I steered the conversation away from binding commitments and toward the more cheerful subject of murder most foul. “You know, officer, there’s another party yet to be heard from—namely, the auction house rep, Rodney Whitehead. He refused to state his business with Swensen when you first met him, but now he’ll have to fess up. It’ll be interesting to see whose side he’s on, Lester’s or Harrigan’s.”

  “We were unable to get him at his motel today, but if we don’t get him tomorrow, we’ll send someone to pick him up—and his story is going to sound more like Lester’s than Harrigan’s,” she said. “I mean, the guy is in deep enough without admitting to conspiring to pull a sting on Swensen when we alre
ady know he double-crossed his employer.”

  I was thinking about that door again and verbalized, “He says that door was open, but it was locked when I tried it at ten or a few minutes past. He called your people at a quarter after ten. So who was there between ten and ten-fifteen?”

  She shrugged off the question and asked one of her own. “Do you think that manuscript is really Capote’s lost novel?”

  Priscilla, followed by Leroy, was coming our way with the pricey entrées. I called recess.

  Tournedos are more commonly known in our republic as filet mignons. The steaks are cut about one inch thick and are three or four inches in diameter. They are wrapped with a strip of bacon and sautéed in a mixture of butter and oil. When done as requested they are removed from the pan—the butter and oil drained—and into the pan go the mushrooms and red wine. As the mushrooms cook they absorb the flavorful cooking juices, binding with the wine to create a rich sauce that is finally poured over the tournedos. The result is to die for.

  Leroy’s side dishes, served in those charmingly named monkey dishes, were a savory pine-nut studded pilaf and a quick sauté of zucchini and tomato. I ordered a Bordeaux to complement the meal.

  Savoring the tender beef, Georgy commented, “Do you eat like this every night?”

  “Only when I’m being force-fed.”

  We honored the repast by limiting conversation to what I believe is called polite chitchat. With coffee we were presented with the pastry tray and agreed to share a napoleon. This brought to mind Sam Zimmermann and his employer. I asked Georgy if she had contacted Fortesque.

  “I saw him today,” she told me. “He’s the catalyst of this mess, but he doesn’t have a clue as to who’s doing what to whom—or pretends he doesn’t. He told me he had hired Archy McNally to find his lost manuscript. I told him a man was dead because of that manuscript and who actually owned the damn thing was open to debate.” Recalling her meeting with Fortesque, she added with an impish grin, “He looks likes Mischa Auer.”

  I almost choked on my half of the napoleon. “You know Mischa Auer?” I gasped.