McNally's Trial (12 page)

“Nah,” I said. “You’re in the full flower of young louthood and I’m certain you’re capable of coping with the lady’s demands. Meanwhile you will ever so cleverly be extracting delicious nuggets of inside skinny that may possibly solve the mystery.”

“It will be the death of me,” he pronounced gloomily.

“Rubbish!” I said sternly. “You’re the lad who wants to become the Dick Tracy of Palm Beach. Here is an opportunity to prove your mettle.”

“But Archy,” he whined piteously, “she
bites!”

“Bite back,” I advised, and we drained our beers and left. I had a twinge of remorse watching him totter to his rusted heap, but I consoled myself with the thought that he would live to imitate the yellow-bellied sapsucker again.

2:30
P.M.

I drove back to the McNally Building wondering about the inexplicable friendship between Oliver Whitcomb and Ernest Gorton. They seemed so unlike, and yet they were close enough to, enjoy each other’s hospitality—and share other goodies as well, including Gorton’s carrot-topped lady friend.

I was musing on this riddle at my desk when Mrs. Trelawney called from m’lord’s office.

“Archy,” she said briskly, “your father is conferring with Horace and Oliver Whitcomb at the moment. The son wants to come down to your locker before they leave, just to say hello. Thought I’d alert you.”

“Thank you, luv. I don’t have many visitors. Perhaps I should change my socks.”

“But it’s only October,” she said.

Oliver breezed in about ten minutes later. If he was shocked by the diminutiveness of my professional quarters he gave no evidence of it—from which I could only conclude he was extraordinarily polite (doubtful) or had seen even less prepossessing offices, hard as that was to believe.

“Great to see you again!” he said, shaking my hand with excessive enthusiasm. “Listen, I just stopped by for a minute. Father and I are having a powwow with your father.”

“Oh?” I said. “No problems, I hope.”

He laughed. “The opposite,” he said. “We’re planning an expansion to the west coast of Florida. The Naples-Fort Myers area.”

“Sounds like business is booming.”

“Couldn’t be better,” he said merrily. “People do insist on dying. Hey, how about that lunch?”

“Of course. What’s a good time for you?”

“Next Tuesday,” he said promptly. “Twelve-thirty at Renato’s.”

“I’ll be there,” I promised, impressed by his forcefulness. Another man sure of himself.

“Great!” he said and shook my hand again. Monsieur Charm in action. “I’ve got to go collect pops. I’m driving my Lotus Esprit today.”

Then he was gone, leaving me to ponder his last unnecessary remark: “I’m driving my Lotus Esprit today.” A bit on the vainglorious side, wouldn’t you say? Similar to asking, “How do you like my eighteen-karat-gold Carrier Panther with a genuine alligator leather strap?” Too much.

But I had learned to deal with clients who possessed egos as inflated as the Goodyear blimp. Some people define their worth by their toys. I, of course, do not, although I take justifiable pride in my original Pepe Le Pew lunch box.

3:45
P.M.
:

I closed up shop and cruised home in time to sluice my angst away with a leisurely ocean swim. Actually, I was not apprehensive or anxiety-ridden. But I must confess to a vague, indefinable premonition of disaster. Did you ever bite into a shrimp, taste, swallow, and get a slightly queasy feeling that you might soon be connected to a stomach pump at a local hospital?

That’s the way I felt as I plowed through the warm waters of the Atlantic. I was convinced there was a clever plot in motion that was wreaking mischief, and I could not endure the thought of being hornswoggled.

7:00
P.M.
:

Family cocktail hour.

8:45
P.M.
:

Finished dinner (chicken piccata), anticipating a peaceful evening alone with my thoughts and Billie Holiday.

8:50
P.M.
:

Father stopped me as I was about to ascend to my nest. “A moment, Archy,” he said and motioned toward his study. He did not invite me to be seated or offer a postprandial brandy. I stood motionless as he paced, jacket open, hands thrust into his hip pockets. Our conversation became a rat-a-tat-tat interrogation.

“Any developments in the Whitcomb matter?” he demanded.

“No, sir. Nothing of any significance.”

“Oliver stopped down to see you this afternoon?”

“For a few moments.”

“What did he have to say?”

“That the Whitcombs are planning an expansion to the west coast. And he invited me to lunch next Tuesday.”

“You accepted, of course.”

I nodded.

“I presume you met Horace at the party.”

“I met him then,” I said, “and had lunch with him yesterday.”

He stopped pacing to stare at me. “For any particular reason?”

“He said he wanted me to see his collection of ship models. I suspect he may have had another motive. He is aware of my investigative activities and seemed anxious to verify my discretion.”

The guv resumed his pacing. “Curious family,” he remarked. “During your conversations with Horace and Oliver, did you get the feeling of enmity between father and son? Well, perhaps ‘enmity’ is too strong a word. Did you sense a certain degree of estrangement?”

“Yes, sir, I did. In their thinking, their lifestyles. They’re really not on the same wavelength.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, Archy. I have the same impression. Regarding their expansion into the Naples-Fort Myers area, Horace appeared to be very dubious about that project. But then Oliver began to talk of a nationwide chain, perhaps converting Whitcomb Funeral Homes into a franchise operation.”

“McFunerals?” I suggested.

He allowed himself me smallest of smiles. “Something like that. Horace was outraged at the suggestion, and I had to play the role of peacemaker to keep father and son from shouting at each other. Their argument ended only when Oliver left to go down to your office. But I had a very distinct feeling there was more to their spleen than merely a difference of opinion on business strategy.”

I said, “Perhaps it’s partly generational and partly an attitudinal clash: young, energetic, ambitious son versus aging, conservative, risk-adverse father.”

He stopped pacing again, and this time his look was almost a glare, as if I had been referring to
our
relationship. “Do you really believe that, Archy?”

“I do, sir, but I also believe there’s more to it than that.”

“Yes,” he said, “I do, too.”

He gave me a nod of dismissal and I started upstairs. I stopped at the second-floor sitting room where mother was seated at her florentine desk busily writing letters. In addition to talking to her begonias, one of the mater’s favorite pastimes is corresponding with old friends, some of whom she hasn’t seen in fifty years. There was one case of a school chum to whom she continued to pen chatty missives before discovering the woman had passed away two years previously.

“Mrs. McNally,” I said, “I suggest you and I steal away tonight to a tropical isle. You will wear a muumuu and a lei, and I shall wear a breechcloth of coconut shells and strum a ukulele.”

She looked up brightly. “Oh Archy,” she said, “that sounds divine. But I can’t leave tonight. On Wednesday I have an appointment with my chiropodist.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” I said and swooped to kiss her downy cheek. Splendid woman.

10:15
P.M.
:

Sunny Fogarty phoned.

“Archy,” she said, “I know it’s late and I apologize.”

“No need,” I said. “I hadn’t planned to go beddy-bye for—oh, ten minutes at least.”

Her laugh was tentative. “Could you manage to come over for a few moments?” she asked. “I know it’s an imposition but I think it’s important, and it’s not something I want to write or tell you on the phone.”

Paranoia again?

“Of course,” I said. “I can be there in twenty minutes or so. Do you need anything? Vodka, beer, Snapple, ice cubes?”

“No, no,” she said. “I’ve got everything.”

I could have made a leering rejoinder to that but restrained myself. I combed my hair, slapped on some Romeo Gigli, inspected myself in the bathroom mirror and saw nothing to which anyone could possibly object. I loped downstairs and exited into an overcast night. There was a streaky sky with occasional flashes of moonlight, but mostly it was dark, dark, dark with rumbles of thunder to the west.

When I was a beardless youth my mother assured me thunder was the sound of angels bowling. Listen, if you don’t have family jokes, who are you? And on that night, hearing the angels bowling, I wished them nothing but strikes.

10:45
P.M.
:

I arrived at the Chez Fogarty wondering if Sunny’s urgent summons was merely a ploy to lure me within grappling distance. Let’s face it: I am a habitual fantasizer.

Do you remember those nonsensical romantic movies of yore in which a secretary (usually played by Betty Grable) removes her eyeglasses, and her bachelor boss gasps in amazement? He had always considered her a plain-Jane but now, seeing her sans specs, he realizes she is a Venus de Milo—with arms of course.

The reverse happened when Ms. Fogarty opened the door of her condo. She was wearing brief cutoffs and a snug tank top, but those were of peripheral interest. What caught my attention and set the McNally ventricles aflutter was that she wore eyeglasses, and those amber frames and glistening lenses somehow made her appear softer and unbearably vulnerable. You explain it; I can’t.

She provided me with a vodka and tonic (weak) and led me into a smallish room obviously used as an office. It was dominated by what seemed to be a gigantic computer with monitor, keyboard, printer, modem—the works.

“Are you computer literate, Archy?” she asked.

“Not me,” I said hastily. “I’m a certified technophobe. I have trouble changing a light bulb.”

“Then I won’t attempt to describe my setup here except to tell you it enables me to access the mainframe at Whitcomb’s headquarters in West Palm. I frequently work at home in the evening and sometimes during the day when I need to get away from the hectic confusion at the office. Why are you smiling?”

“Your use of the term ‘hectic confusion.’ It’s difficult for an outsider to visualize the activities of funeral homes in quite that way.”

“But that’s what it is,” she said seriously. “Like any other business. Naturally we make certain our clients see none of it. We provide them with a quiet, dignified atmosphere.”

“Naturally,” I said.

“I’m still checking shipping invoices at the airlines, and I have nothing definite to report on the names and addresses of consignees to whom all those out-of-state shipments were made by Whitcomb. But this evening I started reviewing our records of the past six months. I was trying to discover how and by whom the information we want was deleted from the main computer.”

“Any luck?”

“No,” she said, and I could see the failure angered her. This was not a woman who took defeat lightly. “But I did find something so extremely odd I thought I better tell you about it. Would you like another drink?”

“Please,” I said, holding out my empty glass. “A bit less tonic would be welcome.”

“Sorry about that,” she said, grinning at me. What a
nice
grin.

She returned with a refill that numbed my uvula. “Wow,” I said, “that’ll send me home whistling a merry tune. Now tell me: What did you find on your handy-dandy computer that was so extremely odd?”

“As I’m sure you’re aware, we require a death certificate signed by the doctor in attendance before we prepare the deceased for burial, cremation, or shipment elsewhere. Whoever fiddled me weekly reports from our three chief funeral directors neglected to remove copies of the death certificates from the records. I scrolled through them and noticed one physician had signed an extraordinary number of death certificates for all three funeral homes.”

“Remind me not to consult him,” I said.

She ignored my tepid attempt at levity. “His name was on a surprising number of certificates,” she went on. “We deal with a large number of doctors, of course, but none of them even came close to providing the volume of certificates this man has.”

“In other words, a lot of his patients are turning up their toes? And they’re all being delivered to the Whitcomb Funeral Homes?”

“It appears so. After noting that, I did some crosschecking and discovered that all the deceased whose death certificates were provided by this particular physician were being shipped out of Florida for eventual interment elsewhere.”

I took a gulp of my drink. A big gulp. “Do the certificates signed by this one doctor account for all the increase in Whitcomb’s out-of-state shipments?”

“Not
all,”
she said. “But most. We’re talking, like, ninety percent.”

We stared at each other, and I drew a deep breath. “You’re right,” I said. “Extremely odd. May I have the name and address of Dr. Quietus.”

“I wrote it out for you,” she said and handed me a slip of paper. The first thing I saw was that it was written in lavender ink. I would have guessed Sunny Fogarty used jet black, but she was a woman of constant surprises.

The medico’s name was Omar K. Pflug, and his office was in Broward County.

“Odd name,” I commented.

“Is it?” she said offhandedly, and once again I had the impression she knew more than she was telling me. But I simply could not conceive a reason for her secretiveness.

“I shall visit Dr. Pflug,” I said. “Not for professional advice, I assure you. I wouldn’t care to end up on your computer.”

She smiled. “Let’s move into the living room, Archy. We’ll be more comfortable there.”

And so we were, sitting at opposite ends of that long couch, turning to face each other. It was then I decided to confront her. It wasn’t a sudden resolve or surge of bravado. She had slugged my second drink; it was really her fault. (Are you familiar with Henry Ford’s comment about a colleague?: “He took misfortune like a man. He blamed it on his wife.”)