McNally's Puzzle (28 page)

“I just don’t know,” I said truthfully. “But I’m happy my tip yielded results. Now you owe me one—right?”

“Oh-oh,” he said resignedly. “All right, what do you want?”

“I have a telephone number and a woman’s first name. I’d like to know if she’s got a sheet.”

“This is personal? You’re looking to romance the lady?”

“Don’t get cute, Al. She’s a friend of Chrisling.”

“In that case I’ll go along.”

I told him her name was Sonia and, after a moment, I found her number in my professional diary and repeated it to Rogoff.

“I’ll let you know,” he said.

“When?”

“ASAP. I think the ice is beginning to break.”

He hung up and I went back to bed for another thirty minutes of sweet somnolence. I finally did get to work that morning—late but in an energetic mood. I decided Sgt. Rogoff had been correct; the ice pack was cracking. I hadn’t grasped the infamous plot earlier because I underestimated the villainy of the people involved. It’s a constant fault; I can never acknowledge the power of sheer evil.

I had two phone calls to make. The first was to the Gottschalk home. I was finally put through to one of the twins. Don’t ask me which one although she claimed to be Judith. I inquired as to the condition of her brother.

“Oh, Peter’s been released from the hospital,” she said breezily. “Right now he’s on his way to visit some quack. What a twerp he is!”

I thanked her hurriedly and hung up. I had no desire for an extended conversation. I might get suckered into hosting a champagne brunch.

Before I could make my second call I received one—from Yvonne Chrisling. “You naughty boy,” she said reprovingly. “You promised to phone and you didn’t.”

“Yvonne, we spoke only a day or so ago. I really intended to contact you.” Liar, liar, pants on fire.

“No matter,” she said, suddenly brisk. “I must see you at once. It’s very important.”

“Lunch?”

“No,” she said authoritatively. “Not in public. And not in my home.”

“
My
home”: I loved it. A few weeks ago it had been Hiram Gottschalk’s home.
Sic transit
... and so forth.

“Would you care to come to the office?” I suggested.

“No.” She was quite decisive. “I might be seen.”

I wanted to ask, “By whom?” but didn’t.

“If this is to be a confidential meeting,” I said, “as you apparently wish, perhaps we might get together at the McNally residence. We can talk inside or during a walk on the beach—whichever you prefer.”

She didn’t hesitate a mo. “Yes,” she said, “that will do. In an hour. You will be there?”

“I shall. You have my address?”

“Of course,” she said. “I’m so looking forward to seeing you again, darling.”

I am hypersensitive to tones of voice and I thought her last declaration had a wheedling inflection. Curious for a woman of her resolution.

I had time to make my second call before leaving for a tête-à-tête with the Spider Woman. So I phoned Binky Watrous and found him at home in an excitable mood.

“Do you know anything about yellow-shafted flickers?” he demanded.

“Of course,” I said. “Some of my best friends are yellow-shafted flickers, several of whom have been incarcerated for exhibiting their proclivity in public.”

“Archy,” he protested, “they’re birds! Woodpeckers. And they attack anything even resembling a tree. They hammer at it with their beaks. I bought a recording of their hammering and I’ve been practicing imitating it. It’s great, even better than calls. Bridget says with her tambourine and my hammering of the yellow-shafted flicker we’ll have a classic. A
classic
, Archy!”

I should have replied, “A classic
what
?” But I couldn’t rain on his parade; he was so up.

“Binky,” I said, “the reason I called was to ask you about Martin and Felice, the recently hired employees of Parrots Unlimited.”

“I already told you. Definitely below the salt.”

“Useless, are they?”

“Well, they’re not bird mavens, for sure, for sure.”

“Then what do they
do
?” I persisted. “The man, Martin, for instance. He does feedings, cleans cages, and similar scut work?”

“Never saw him lift a hand. Sold a bird occasionally but he spent most of his time in the boss’s office fiddling with the computer.”

My heart leaped like an intoxicated gazelle. “Thank you, my son,” I said huskily. “Your skinny may prove of inestimable value. Now go back to your hammering and don’t blunt your beak.”

I hung up in such an ebullient mood I wanted to chortle—if only I knew how to chortle. Things were coming together, wouldn’t you agree? But there were surprises to come I hadn’t anticipated. The picture puzzle was not quite complete. Stick with me, kid, and you’ll be wearing diamonds.

I drove home hastily and waited only ten minutes on our graveled turnaround before Yvonne Chrisling appeared in a new Cadillac DeVille. And I mean
spanking
new. It was a forest green, a color much in vogue at the time, and had such a gleam it looked as if it had just been driven from the showroom. As the Mad. Ave. pundits advise: If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

She emerged from the yacht wearing stonewashed jeans and a white canvas bush jacket. I realized I had never before seen her dressed so informally. I liked it; she seemed softer, more vulnerable.

But my impression was quickly dispelled. She gave me a dim smile and then looked about at the McNally estate: our ersatz-Tudor main house feathered in ivy, garage, greenhouse, potting shed, and Hobo’s abode.

“Very antique, isn’t it?” she said sniffishly.

“True,” I said, refusing to be riled. “We planned it so.”

“Not to my taste,” she pronounced, and it was then I became fully aware of what a snarky mood she was in. “Is there anyone about?” she asked abruptly.

“Probably my mother and the staff.”

“Then let’s go down to the beach.”

“Would you care for a drink of something first?”

“No,” she said tersely, and I had a premonition this meeting was going to be as much fun as the extraction of an impacted molar.

I conducted her across Ocean Boulevard, down the rickety wooden staircase to the sand. She took up a firmly planted station in the shade of some palms and showed no inclination to move farther.

“A walk?” I suggested. “Perhaps a wade in the water?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I hate the beach and the ocean.”

It was too much. “Then what on earth are you doing in South Florida?”

“Circumstances,” she said, which told me nothing. “Archy,” she went on determinedly, “I need legal advice.”

“Whoa!” I said, holding up a palm. “I am not an attorney. I do not have a law degree or license to practice. I think you better consult my father or another qualified lawyer.”

“But you know a lot about the law, don’t you?”

“Some,” I admitted, cautiously forbearing to tell her the story of why I was booted out of Yale Law.

“This isn’t for me,” she said. “It’s for a friend who has a problem.”

She looked at me so wide-eyed and sincere I knew she was lying. Besides, everyone in the legal profession has heard the old wheeze from a client: “I have a friend with a legal problem.” Hogwash. The attorney knows immediately it’s the client’s problem.

“What is it, Yvonne?”

“My friend, a woman, has knowledge of a crime. She wasn’t involved in any way, shape, or form but she knows who did it. What should she do?”

“Immediately report what she knows to a law enforcement agency,” I said promptly. “She is obliged to do so. If not she may find herself in deep, deep trouble. Concealing knowledge of criminal behavior is not a charge to be taken lightly.”

Yvonne showed no indication of surprise or shock. I reckoned she already knew what I had told her.

“But it’s not so simple,” she said, turning her gaze out to sea: a true thousand-yard stare. “First of all, the individual who committed the crime is close to her. Very close. It would pain her to be an informer.”

I shook my head. “She has no choice.”

“Another factor...” Yvonne continued, looking at me directly again. “My friend is afraid of what the reaction might be of the person she accuses.”

“Afraid? Of physical retaliation?”

“Yes.”

“She can ask for police protection. She can move, change her phone number, take on a new identity. Whatever will ensure her safety.”

“But she must tell what she knows?”

“Absolutely.”

“She is entirely innocent, you understand, and now she is trapped in this terrible dilemma and she is frightened. You can sympathize with that, can you not?”

“Of course I can, Yvonne.”

I had said the right thing, because her manner was suddenly transformed. She melted, became almost flirtatious.

“How happy I am to have asked for your advice, Archy,” she said in a lilting voice. “I knew I could depend on you. We are so compatible. We must see more of each other. You agree?”

“Oh yes.”

“
Much
more,” she chortled.
She
knew how to do it. “And I shall tell my friend everything you have said. Thank you, sweetheart.”

She took my hand as I led her back to the parked Cadillac. She couldn’t have been more affectionate. Well, she could have been but I resisted, fearing Hobo might be observing us from his kennel. “Thank you again, darling,” she caroled just before she drove away. “What a treasure you are!”

I watched her wheeled castle depart, thinking, There goes one very brainy lady. But more of that later. At the moment I was famished and hustled into the kitchen. First things first.

No one was present and I presumed Ursi and perhaps mother were on a shopping expedition to replenish our larder. I opened the fridge and inspected the contents to see what I might use to concoct a modest, nutritious lunch.

A bag of Walla Walla sweet onions caught my eye. When Vidalias are not in season we send for Walla Wallas or Texas sweets. Admirable onions, no doubt, but I still prefer the distinctive flavor of Vidalias. But one must make do and so I constructed a toasted bagel sandwich holding a thick slice of Walla Walla slathered with Dijonnaise. You’ve never had an onion sandwich? The mother of all sandwiches. Especially when accompanied by an icy bottle of lager.

I ate slowly with much pleasure, resolutely refraining from thinking about my conversation with Yvonne Chrisling. I finished after stoutly rejecting an urge to make and devour a duplicate—and stoutly is the right word. I then phoned the office, spoke to Mrs. Trelawney, and found my father would be absent all afternoon conferring with a client in Lantana. It meant my necessary meeting with him would have to be postponed until the evening. I must admit I was relieved.

I uncapped another bottle of lager, took it upstairs to my atelier, and settled down for a deep think. Yvonne Chrisling...

I recognized she had heavy, heavy motives for initiating our chat on the beach. Her ploy of asking legal advice for a friend was a transparent fraud. She was pleading her own case. And unless she considered me a complete dolt—and I trusted she didn’t—she knew I identified her as the troubled woman involved.

But why devise such a Byzantine plot to enlist my sympathy?

It took me almost an hour and the second bottle of lager to arrive at what I considered a logical reason. The lady was, in effect, attempting to cop a plea or cut a deal. She realized or sensed the running wolves—in the shape of Sgt. Al Rogoff and yrs. truly—were baying at her sleigh and coming closer.

“Save yourself” was the belief, the faith governing her existence. Now, feeling threatened, she was moving boldly and shrewdly to protect herself. I didn’t want to but I had to admire her effort. It is no easy task for anyone to claim innocence, even the guiltless.

I was convinced I had her pinned. It gave me no joy. It would be simplistic to label the people involved as weak. They were not weak. They were strong, venomous characters who had made a cold, reasoned choice of corruption and its rewards.

Saddened by the perfidy existing in one family, I began to reread my entire scribbled record of the affair. And I arrived at what I believed to be a reasonable (and depressing) explanation of all that had occurred in the Gottschalk nest of vipers.

I intend to complete this penny dreadful as quickly as possible. I know you want to go to bed.

M
Y FATHER IS MORE GOURMAND
than gourmet and so I was delighted our Friday night dinner was pot roast with potato pancakes—his favorite. I hoped it might put him in a felicitous mood during an interrogation I simply had to make. Sometimes in our Q&A sessions he adopts a prickly you-have-no-need-to-know attitude which makes me want to run away from home.

“Could I have a few moments of your time, sir?” I said as we left the dining room after a dessert of lemon sorbet and pralines.

“And what is your definition of a few moments?” he asked genially enough.

“Ten, perhaps fifteen minutes.”

“Concerning what?”

“My inquiry into the death of Hiram Gottschalk.”

He nodded and led the way into his study. “A peg of brandy?” he inquired.

“That would be welcome, thank you.”

He did the honors, pouring each of us a small snifter. It wasn’t his best cognac but I made no complaint. He didn’t ask me to be seated and he also remained standing. It was his way of ensuring our meeting would be brief.

“Well?” he said.

“Father, I have been reviewing my notes regarding the Gottschalk case, beginning with the initial assignment. At that time you mentioned you had discussions with him regarding the creation of a foundation in order to reduce his estate tax. Am I right?”

One hairy eyebrow was hoisted aloft. “Archy, I admire the thoroughness of your records. Yes, you are correct. I had several conversations with Mr. Gottschalk concerning the establishment of a nonprofit foundation.”

“Could you tell me what he had in mind?”

“He was rather vague about it but it seemed he was interested in financing a sort of aviary in which research and breeding would help ensure the continued existence of endangered species of birds, particularly parrots.”