McNally's Dare (4 page)

“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.

W
E 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 properly 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.

The murder weapon, as you might call it, was not exactly indicative of a confrontation between a couple of young punks or a
crime passionnel.
I knew that and so did Al. Reluctantly, I mumbled, “Rather sophisticated.”