McNally's Folly (8 page)

“The address and phone number of James Ventura.”

“Why?”

“Discreet Inquiries’ business, Mrs. Sharif. Very cloak-and-dagger. The less you know, the safer you’ll be.”

Mrs. Sharif mulled this over before stating, “Isn’t Mrs. Ventura the woman who located a lost piece of jewelry with the help of a psychic?”

“One and the same.”

“One and the same psychic that raised your grandfather from the dead last night?”

I took a deep breath and counted to ten backward. “You’ve been talking to Binky Watrous, Mrs. Sharif.”

“In fact, I have.”

“Well, be assured that you will never hear from him again.”

“Why not, Archy?”

“Because I am going to kill him before the sun sets on this accursed day. Did he also inquire after the health of Joe Anderson?”

“It’s the only reason he calls, Archy. But be kind. Binky is a good boy.”

I wondered if Binky shouldn’t rent himself out as a pet to rich, middle-aged women and give up waiting for Joe Anderson to throw in the towel. “If I were Joe Anderson,” I said, “I wouldn’t let Binky within gun range of my person.”

Mrs. Sharif shook her head in dismay. “Binky wouldn’t hurt a fly, Archy.”

“I agree, Mrs. Sharif, but I’m still going to throttle him. Now may I have the Ventura address and phone number, please.”

“Do you want to compare notes with Mrs. Ventura on your mutual out-of-this-world experiences?”

“How did you guess?”

As surreptitiously as if she were purloining the Dead Sea Scrolls from an ancient crypt, Mrs. Sharif removed the big black book from the bottom drawer of her desk, put on her reading glasses and revealed the Venturas’ address and phone number.

I made it back to my cubbyhole without encountering another soul who had talked to Binky Watrous that morning, passing only Joe Anderson pushing a shopping cart filled with mail and whistling merrily as he rolled along.

I dialed the Ventura home and was greeted with a melodious “Hello” by a female I assumed to be the housekeeper.

“Is Mrs. Ventura in, please?”

“This is Mrs. Ventura.” The melodious voice took on a southern accent.

“I’m Archy McNally, Mrs. Ventura, and I’m calling...”

“Archy McNally! Why, what a coincidence. I mean, this is truly serendipity. I was just talking to Penny Tremaine and she told me about your sitting with Mr. Ouspenskaya last night and I said—I said—‘Why, Penny, I just have to talk to Mr. McNally and compare notes.’ That’s what I said and now—just like that—here you are. We are experiencing something remarkable, Mr. McNally. Can’t you just feel it?”

What I felt was an assault on my eardrum but if getting to meet with Hanna Ventura was this easy, I would have to admit that, yes, it was very remarkable. “Are you free this afternoon, Mrs. Ventura?”

“No, sir. I am not. I have an appointment with Mr. Archy McNally. I’ll expect you in one hour and—do you have the address, Mr. McNally?”

“South County Road,” I answered.

“Serendipity,” Hanna Ventura cried.

“Bingo,” I cried back.

T
HE DOOR WAS OPENED
by a uniformed maid and only after I assured her that I wasn’t a born-again zealot soliciting converts, or selling the Encyclopedia Britannica, did she lead the way to her mistress. I followed her down a long entrance hall decorated with land- and seascapes by the school of artists known as California Impressionists, mounted in ornate gilded frames. The hallway led to a screened patio and a rear patio door led to a backyard of green lawn, palms, royal poincianas and the swimming pool. It also contained Mrs. Ventura.

The lady of the house was seated at an umbrella table and rose as I approached, quickly wrapping a saronglike skirt around a pair of slim hips. I assumed she was covering a bikini bottom rather than bare flesh but I wouldn’t swear to it. The hand, remember, is quicker than the eye. In this case a most regrettable verity.

“Mr. Archy McNally, I presume,” she said, offering her hand.

Hanna Ventura was a true blonde with big brown eyes, a bosom that taxed her white bikini top, a tiny waist and shapely tanned legs. It was easy to see how she had turned a grieving widower into an ardent suitor after one brief encounter.

“Mrs. Ventura,” I said, taking her hand which was still cool from the chilled glass she had been clutching when I arrived. “It’s a pleasure.”

“Oh, let’s not be formal. I’m just plain Hanna to my friends.”

“And what a lovely name is Hanna,” I answered. “Did you know it’s derived from the Greek? It translates, ‘God has favored me.’ ”

With a wave of her lovely hand that seemed to indicate her two acres of South County Road real estate and everything on it, she beamed. “He sure did. But how clever of you to know that. Won’t you sit down? That big ol’ pitcher of lemonade is really vodka and tonic so if you are not opposed to an alcohol libation before lunch just pour yourself a toot.”

As she spoke she removed the cover from an ice bucket and pulled out a glass, filling it with crescent-shaped cubes before passing it on to me. “I told Margaret, she’s the new girl, to bring us lunch after a while. Nothing formal. Just a shrimp salad and warm biscuits. You haven’t eaten, have you?”

I poured my libation but before I could state that I had not had a bite since breakfast, Hanna went right on. “Margaret is new. It’s so hard to keep help, don’t you think? Most of them are college girls who take jobs down here in season hoping to catch a rich husband. Ever since that Rockefeller boy married the au pair they all want a shot at the brass ring. Well, who am I to talk?”

Who, indeed? But talk she did. I wondered if I would ever be required to join in. Shaded by the umbrella and enjoying my drink—although I preferred my vodka and tonic with lime, not lemon, but I suspected the lemon wedges were to fool the likes of Margaret—I sipped and listened attentively. I had come to discuss other worlds and found myself in one—the land of Loony Tunes.

“Now tell me, was last night your first meeting with Mr. Ouspenskaya?”

Hanna went from subject to subject without benefit of a connecting line or two. Just as well. What Hanna did not need was an extra line or two. I waited long enough to be sure she wanted an answer before answering. “Yes, it was.”

“And he contacted your grandfather. Is that correct?”

“It is.”

“Now tell me, Archy—I may call you Archy?—did you ever meet Mr. Ouspenskaya before last evening? Do you have any friends in common? Anything like that?”

“No,” I told her, “but don’t jump to conclusions. There are many tricks to the psychic trade. My grandfather, as I’m sure Mrs. Tremaine told you, was on the stage. A public figure, easily traceable if one knows where to search for the facts.”

“But you said you never met Mr. Ouspenskaya. You have no friends in common. Why would he look up your ancestor?”

I couldn’t tell her what I suspected so I had to confess I didn’t know, but it was becoming very clear that Hanna Ventura wanted to authenticate, not invalidate, Serge Ouspenskaya. “He did know I would be at the séance. I’m told he requires a guest list before agreeing to a sitting, as he calls it.”

She jumped on this like a duck on a June bug, as they say where Hanna comes from, which my guess was Georgia via Arkansas. “But he didn’t know I would be at the Fairhurst party. He looked right at me and said, ‘Something is troubling you, young lady.’ And before I could answer he said, ‘You have lost something of great value—both financial and personal—is that not correct?’ I said I had, but I never told him what it was. Never. He said I should go straight home and look carefully at a pile of clothing I had put together for the Goodwill people. He said my consideration for the less fortunate would be rewarded. I remember every word, Archy. It still gives me goose bumps.”

“And you came home and found the diamond clip?” I concluded for her.

“Not right away. You see, I was certain I had taken the clip off the dress the night I wore it for the last time.”

Finally, something interesting. “Are you certain of that, Hanna?”

“I thought I was, but I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

“Please, tell me what you thought you had done with the clip. It may be important.”

“You wouldn’t have a cigarette on you, would you?”

Reaching for my English Ovals I proffered them to her. “What are they?” Hanna asked, taking one.

“English Ovals. You’ll like them. And I’ll join you.” I struck a match, held it for her, and then lit my first cigarette of the day.

“James doesn’t like me to smoke so I don’t keep them around. James is my husband.”

“I’m trying to quit,” I confessed. “I have it down to a couple a day.”

“I mooch whenever I get a chance so I think I smoke more than if James allowed me to keep them in the house.”

Margaret came through the patio door pushing a tea trolley that held our lunch. As Hanna had promised, the spread consisted of a fresh shrimp salad, warm biscuits in a wicker basket covered with a heated cloth, butter patties and a tray of shiny black olives and celery sticks. This picnic fare was served on fine bone china accompanied by the family silver. Hanna freshened our drinks before we dug in.

“Bon appétit,”
she advised.

As we ate, I encouraged Hanna to tell me what she thought she had done with her diamond clip.

“Well, we had been out that night, James and I. Someone who shall be nameless remarked that I had worn the same dress to several parties this season—and wasn’t it lovely. Meow, meow. I decided to get rid of it and a few others on the spot.” Hanna seemed to lose interest in her shrimp salad but not in her alcohol libation.

“When we got home I thought I took the clip off the dress and laid it on my dressing table. Then I thought that if James saw it, he would scold me and tell me to put it directly in my jewel case which is kept in a hidden safe in our bedroom. Truth is, I was a little tipsy and I didn’t want to look up the combination to that damn safe, so I put the clip in my dressing-table drawer thinking I would put it in the safe in the morning.”

“And it wasn’t in the drawer the next morning?”

“No, Archy, it wasn’t.”

“What did you think happened to it?”

Hanna shook her blond curly head and exclaimed, “I didn’t know, Archy. I just didn’t know. I was scared and afraid to tell James. Then I had to tell him. We searched all over the house and the car, too. We called the people whose house we were at that night and we even called all the other guests who had been there, and we came up empty-handed every time.” The agony she had gone through over the lost diamond clip was evident in her voice and eyes as she recalled the days following its disappearance.

“I was so sure I had put it in the drawer. That’s why I didn’t rush home when Mr. Ouspenskaya told me where it was. I just didn’t think it was possible. Then I figured that if he knew I had lost the clip just by looking at me...”

“Easy,” I broke in. “According to your story a lot of people knew you lost that clip. Maybe Ouspenskaya was one of them. It’s very possible.”

“James said the same thing, Archy. But I did come home and I did find the clip where he said it would be. Doesn’t that prove he has the power? Doesn’t it?”

What could I say? The clip was where Ouspenskaya said it would be and that was the bottom line. “But what about the fact that you were certain you removed the clip from your dress? What’s your take on that now?”

Hanna smiled brightly. “Oh, don’t you see? It was a dream.”

“A dream? You think it was a dream?”

“I’m sure it was a dream. Like I told you, I was in my dressing room and James kept calling me—I mean he was eager—I mean—are you married, Archy?”

“No, Hanna, I’m not.”

“Then you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, but I do understand, Hanna. I’m not a monk. I have enough vices without adding chastity to the list.”

I was hoping she would spare me a giggle but, alas, she did not. “Well, I must have undressed—I know I undressed.” Another giggle, the result no doubt of a paucity of shrimp salad and a surplus of vodka tonics. “I went to bed and I must have dreamed that I did what I would have done if James hadn’t been in such a rush. That is remove the clip from my dress. When we make love my mind tends to wander, you see—but you don’t want to know that.”

No, I didn’t, nor did James Ventura.

The patio door opened once again but this time it was not Margaret come to clear away our lunch, but a young man wearing the briefest of brief swimming togs. He was as trim and sleek as a Speedo model, with a dark crew-cut head of hair and a masculine beauty more indigenous to the Bay of Naples than the Bay of Biscayne. If he was who I thought he was, his looks and deportment were a gift of his Italian Ventura ancestors.

He marched past us as if we were either invisible or too insignificant to warrant so much as a nod. Reaching the pool he paused for one moment before executing a perfect dive, causing hardly a ripple on the water’s surface. The dark, wet head emerged on the opposite end of the Olympic-sized bathtub and he began to swim laps with the efficiency of a seal.

Hanna and I watched the performance like spectators at an aquacade before Hanna introduced the star attraction. “That’s William. He’s my son who’s nine months older than me. Ain’t that a laugh and a half?” The drinks were beginning to slur Missy’s southern drawl.

“He came to see who I was entertaining,” Hanna said loud enough to penetrate William’s waterlogged ears, “so he can report the boring details to his father. William has been trying to catch me in the act since the day I married his father but so far he hasn’t had much luck. Have you, Billy boy?”

William paid as much attention to her words as he had to our presence. It was a
film noir
moment in an Esther Williams Technicolor extravaganza. When F. S. Fitzgerald said me rich are different than you and me, he knew of what he spoke.

“You have to excuse us, Archy,” Hanna begged my indulgence. “I guess all families have their problems. Ours is William. Pay him no mind, when he gets tired he’ll haul his half-naked behind out of the pool and go about his business, which is borrowing money from his friends.” Hanna took a deep breath, her first of the afternoon, and queried, “Now where were we? Oh, yes, Mr. Ouspenskaya. I take it you are not an adherent.”