McNally's Folly (3 page)

Finishing her drink, Connie answered, “Anyone with two brain cells that mesh would have thought of that.”

Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
Loosely translated, “A pox on those who have uttered our words before us.” The arrival of our food precluded me from having to order two more gimlets, but I did ask Priscilla to bring us two lagers, which Mr. Pettibone keeps on tap and draws with the pomp and circumstance of a true artist. Then we both dug into our meal with gusto. I once told Connie I liked women with hearty appetites and she’s never forgotten it.

“Everyone had a good time and Madame picked up the tab,” Connie continued with her tale of Lady C’s mystery shindig, “and if the agency had supplied Ouspenskaya on the sly we just accepted it as a perk.” Connie forked a spicy fry before going on. “But there’s more to the story.”

Knowing I would hate myself in the morning, I blurted, “Anyone with two brain cells that mesh would know that.”

Ignoring this, Connie went right on. “A week later, Mr. and Mrs. Fairhurst gave a charity ball for their beloved children’s hospital and, having heard of Ouspenskaya, thanks to the write-up Lolly Spindrift gave him in Lolly’s gossip rag, Mrs. Fairhurst hired Ouspenskaya to tell fortunes.”

When the rich want to act like common folk and have a little fun, they do it in the name of charity. Hence we have Las Vegas Night balls, April in Paris balls, costume balls and come-as-your-favorite-mass-murderer balls. The gentry get to raise a little Cain while raising a lot of cash for worthy causes, charities being the rich folks’ excuse for conspicuous consumption.

“And Ouspenskaya once again astounded his audience,” I surmised aloud.

“Did he ever,” Connie said, dabbing at her lips with a paper napkin, the linen variety being unknown to the Pelican Club. “He told a woman that she was troubled over the loss of an expensive object. Amazed, the woman admitted she was, and the object in question was a diamond clip. Ouspenskaya told her she had forgotten to remove the clip from a dress she had placed on a pile destined for the Goodwill people. The woman went right home and guess what?”

“I can’t imagine,” I said.

“She came back to the party a half hour later waving the found piece of jewelry and kowtowing to Ouspenskaya as if he were the Wizard of Oz.”

And that’s just what I was beginning to think Serge Ouspenskaya was—the quintessential Wizard of Oz. But without Toto to pull aside the curtain to reveal him for the charlatan he probably was, I would have to go it alone. My pooch, Hobo, wouldn’t leave his gabled doghouse long enough to assist me. “And a star was born,” I proclaimed.

“Launched by Lady Cynthia Horowitz, who is poised for yet another launching before you can say abracadabra.”

“Now what?”

Hoisting her glass of lager in a mock toast, Connie laughed. “Buzz Carr, the aspiring actor. Remember him? It rhymes with star and don’t you forget it.”

“I hope you don’t mean that muscle-brained delinquent.”

“None other. And, Archy, does that boy have muscles in all the right places.”

Why is it always embarrassing when a woman refers to a man’s sexual attractions, but never vice versa? Women’s libbers have a point, but don’t tell my pater I said that. Phrasing it as unkindly as possible, I asked, “Is she still shacking up with Phil Meecham’s ex?”

“Really, Archy. Buzz is Madame’s protégé. And he was the ex-pilot of Phil Meecham’s yacht.”

“The lady draws more protégés than a hole in a window screen draws flies. There was the tennis pro protégé, the golf pro protégé, the masseur, the mystic and the maniac. And need I remind you that all of Meecham’s pretty-boy employees are required to pull a double shift—pun intended. Good Lord, Connie, Buzz is twenty-five at most and Lady C is just shy of eighty.”

Looking around the room furtively, Connie whispered, “The very mention of Lady C’s age could cost me my job, Archy—and she admits to seventy.”

“Which makes her seventy-five.”

“As long as she signs my weekly check, she’s seventy.”

“And just how does she hope to make a thespian out of the ex-yachtsman?”

“By buying him a theater. How else?”

“What?”

“Keep your shirt on, Archy. I’m exaggerating—but not much.” When gossiping about her lady boss, Connie is like a locomotive crawling out of the station, gradually accelerating to full speed. “Madame has become a major patron of our community theater. She wrote them a large check which got her elected Creative Director. This means she can decide on what play goes up next and who gets the leading roles, subject to approval by the board members.”

“And if one of them gives her a thumbs-down, she’ll cut off the community theater like a disinherited black sheep,” I said with contempt. “What play does she have in mind?”

“Arsenic and Old Lace,”
Connie announced with glee.

That was a revelation. The two old maids were the stars of the play but in the film version Cary Grant had all but chewed up the scenery as their adoring nephew. “Oh,” I groaned. It was me who had once said, begrudgingly to be sure, that in his yachting cap Buzz Carr resembled Cary Grant aboard the
True Love,
proving that Lady C didn’t have an original thought beneath her tinted locks.

“Indigestion?” Connie asked.

“No,” I assured her. “I was just thinking that Madame is in a macabre mood this season. First a ‘who-done-it?’ party and now arsenic in the elderberry wine and bodies in the window seat.”

Excited, Connie leaned toward me and gushed, “I bet you’ll never guess who’s going to play one of the old maids.”

Having just come from a meeting with Richard Holmes and knowing what actress of the right vintage, was currently gracing our town, I didn’t have to be a psychic to make an educated guess. But Holmes had made me swear not to tell a soul, including and especially his wife, that I was investigating Ouspenskaya on his behest or that I had even talked with Holmes about his wife. When I answered, “Lady Cynthia herself,” I didn’t know that I was indeed poaching on Ouspenskaya’s turf.

“Desdemona Darling,” Connie cried. “And I met her.”

“No?” I articulated in awe. Buzz may look like Cary Grant, but when it comes to chewing the scenery, Archy has no equal.

“It’s not for publication, which means not even Lolly knows, and if you breathe a word of this I’ll kill you, Archy McNally.”

And if I breathe a word of something else, Holmes will kill me. But how long can I hold my breath before an acute lack of oxygen does me in? I found myself in a no-win situation, which is the plight of a discreet inquirer in a town where “show but don’t tell” is a practicing religion.

“How did Madame snare Desdemona Darling?” I wanted to know.

“Desdemona and her husband are here for the season and she and Lady C go back to the days before the big war. They both started out as models, you know.”

Lady C was indeed a model. A unique one, so the story goes. She has a face that could scare the bejesus out of a voodoo witch doctor and a body that could safely be called the forerunner of Viagra.

“So when Madame told Desdemona about her plans for Buzz,” Connie said, “Desdemona said she would be glad to lend her name to the project.”

“Has Desdemona Darling met Buzz?” I asked, fearing the worst.

“Oh, yes, Archy. That’s when she agreed to do the show.”

I wondered if the board of the Palm Beach Community Theater was aware that those two muses of perpetuity—their patron and star—were hell-bent on turning
Arsenic and Old Lace
into
Desire Under the Poincianas.

I drove Connie back to Tara and then headed home. Our castle is a tall Tudorish affair on Ocean Boulevard with a leaky copper mansard roof. My suite is on the third floor, so I am the one blessed when the angels weep, as mother once explained rainy days to me when I was just a kid.

I parked on the graveled turnaround in front of our three-car garage, careful not to block the entrance to the left-hand bay where my father always keeps his big Lexus. The middle space was occupied by an old, wood-paneled Ford station wagon, used mostly for shopping, including numerous trips to nurseries in search of yet another variety of begonia for mother’s garden. Hobo waddled over to give my trouser cuffs a sniff and, satisfied that I was a member of the household, he waddled back to his manse.

The Ford was missing and I was hoping our housekeeper, Ursi, was out with mother and not Ursi’s husband, Jamie, who was our jack-of-all-trades houseman and the man I wanted to have a word with. If Connie was the doyen chronicler of Palm Beach society, Jamie Olson was her below-stairs counterpart. However, our Jamie was as communicative as Harpo Marx. But he had an encyclopedic knowledge of local scandals, past, present and about to occur. His informants were the Palm Beach servants, who enjoyed trading tidbits of gossip about those they served.

I found our Swedish-born houseman seated in the kitchen, enjoying a mug of black coffee. “Jamie,” I said, taking a seat opposite him at the table, “have you heard of a psychic named Serge Ouspenskaya?”

“Uh-huh,” he answered.

“What do you hear?”

“He might be the real thing.”

Six words in a row. I was making progress. “Says who?”

“Max.”

“Who’s Max, Jamie?”

“Mrs. Ventura’s gardener.”

“Who’s Mrs. Ventura, Jamie?”

“The lady who lost the diamond clip that Ouspenskaya found.”

As you can see, talking to Jamie Olson is like playing a one-armed bandit. You have to feed it a lot to get back very little. Having been down this road before, I kept priming the pump.

“I hear Ouspenskaya is available for private séances.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Any idea if anyone is having one in the immediate future?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Who?”

“Roland is preparing for one this evening.”

“Who’s Roland, Jamie?”

“The Tremaines’ butler.”

Eureka!

I left Jamie contemplating his cuppa and went up to my suite, which is a grandiloquent word for a small sitting room, a smaller bedroom and a bathroom that makes the other two look spacious. Here I dialed the residence of Vance Tremaine. (Yes, I still have a rotary telephone, as well as an authentic Mickey Mouse wristwatch, a Royal portable typewriter and a fountain pen—a gold Mont Blanc and don’t you forget it.)

I had no qualms about intruding myself upon the Tremaines because Vance owed me big. His wife was the former Penelope Brightworth, whose father made zillions in the fast food business. The Tremaines were old guard and a good four generations removed from the Tremaine who filled up the family coffers. Unfortunately, the last two generations depleted the candy store, leaving poor Vance open to a hostile takeover and enabling Penelope to buy—excuse me, marry—Vance.

The couple moved into a “cottage” on Ocean Boulevard and stocked it with his-and-hers Rolls Royces, a fifty-two-foot Hatteras and three live-in servants. The only clouds on this marital horizon were in the shape of pretty young ladies in thong bikinis. Vance couldn’t keep his mind off them and didn’t confine his adulterous ways to impure thoughts. What Vance saw is what Vance got. His wife finally gave him the ultimate ultimatum, “One more bimbo, buster, and you’ll be living in Pompano, driving a Chevy and traversing Lake Worth with the aid of two oars.”

Vance toed the line for an entire week and then ran into a bit of trouble in a dive in West Palm called Bar Anticipation. The bit of trouble began to make ugly noises and Archy saved Vance from a fate worse than death—poverty.

The butler, Roland, told me that Mr. Tremaine was at his club. I called the Bath and Tennis and had Tremaine paged. “Archy?” he said when he came on the line, sounding surprised.

“Who were you expecting?” I asked.

“Not you.”

Hurt but determined, I asked him if it were true that Serge Ouspenskaya was going to find Judge Crater at the Tremaine digs this evening. After a pause, Tremaine said, “You know, Archy, some wise guy once said that there was nothing known to man faster than the speed of light. He was wrong. The gossip mill up and down Ocean Boulevard makes the speed of light look lethargic. What’s your interest?”

“Curiosity. I’d like to attend.”

“No matter where you step you always come up smelling like Chanel Number Five. We just learned that Russell Fitzwilliams came down with the flu—it’s going around—and we need an extra man to partner Mrs. Fitzwilliams. Ouspenskaya likes an odd number at the table, him being the odd man out, so the group has to be an even number. We sit at ten and all we’re serving is drinks, so eat before you come.”

“Your generosity, Vance, has me all choked up. I’ll be there.”

“By the way, do you know the Fitzwilliamses’ girl?” he asked.

“Elizabeth, known locally as Fitz. We’ve met,” I informed him.

“She’s a beauty. Do you know if she goes for older men?”

“To her, Vance, thirty would be old, and I assume you’re going to be fifty, once again, this year.”

“You really know how to hurt a guy, Archy.”

“It’s a gift, like being double-jointed or able to play the piano by ear. Ta ta, till then.”

I like to swim at least two miles a day. Not out and back, that’s for those with medulla oblongata deficiency syndrome. I swim north and south, parallel to the shore and not more than twenty yards out. This is my only form of exercise, if one doesn’t count going a few rounds with Connie Garcia, and it does wonders for the appetite.

I put on a pair of simple trunks (lavender with iridescent silver stripes), sandals and a snow-white terry robe. The Atlantic laps the shore just across Ocean Boulevard from our house, making crossing the A1A the most perilous part of my journey. I had my swim and returned to my rooms to shower, begin logging the rudiments of “Serge the Seer” in my journal and dress in time for the family cocktail hour.

Thanks to the
seigneur
we are a family of tradition, one of them being gathering for cocktails prior to dinner where Father mixes martinis that are not as dry as I would like them but, like the rent on my suite, they’re free. When I appeared, Father knitted his brows, which is quite a skein of yarn, and uttered, “When do we view the remains?”