McNally's Bluff (30 page)

Fine. Who was posing as Venus and where did she, or he, go after the show?

Fact. Marlena’s body was not in the maze when we all ran through it in search of the goal. When and how did it get there?

We learned from Al that Macurdy was not poisoned. He was smothered to death, probably with a pillow. Hence no marks on the body. Who done him in? A nut or a cunning murderer?

We learned from Joe, via his astute research, that it takes an excess of ten milligrams of digitalis to cause cardiac arrest in a healthy adult.

Ultimately, we learned that we were stumped. One hundred percent stumped. Joe’s dinner rescued us from mental languor—and shame.

Over the salad, Al Rogoff broke into the banal conversation and muttered aloud, “It wasn’t empty.” Gaining our attention, he repeated, “It wasn’t empty.”

I’ve known and worked with Al Rogoff a long time and am keenly attuned to his sudden bouts of inspiration. The hairs on the nape of my neck began to tingle. “What wasn’t empty, Al?”

“The goal. It wasn’t empty this afternoon. It’s never been empty. The sundial is in the goal.”

Maybe Al was losing it or the Bass had gone to his head. “The sundial? You think it’s a Trojan horse, Al?”

“No. Ain’t I taught you nothing, pal? That monument has a base about two feet square. What does it cover? Maybe a trap door like they use on stages in magic acts to make people pop up or disappear.

“A trap door over a hole you could hide a body in and make it disappear—or pop up.”

Al’s idea was like a call to arms. We stopped licking our wounds and began arming for a counterattack which took the form of hopping about like bunny rabbits and all talking at once. When the elation evaporated into reality one thing became clear. We had to go back to the goal and move the sundial.

“How can we do it?” Joe questioned. “Hayes won’t let us near his place.”

Looking at Al I mouthed the name, “Eberhart?”

“After today? You gotta be kidding. He’d have me pounding a beat just for asking.”

“We’re out,” Joe reasoned, “because Hayes knows all of us.”

Still munching on his salad, Binky said, “He doesn’t know me.”

We all stared at Binky and as we did a plan began to form in my devious mind. “We need a key to the grid, Al.”

“Not from me,” Al blared in a tone that said he meant it. “It’s now police property and classified.”

“I know where there’s a key to the grid,” Joe divulged. “Mack had one and now we know how he got it, thanks to Archy. He showed it to me and told me where he kept it in his office at the studio. I can get it tomorrow. You have a plan, Archy?”

Did I have a plan? “Put down that salad fork, Binky my boy, and let me tell you how you’re going to play
Les Troyens
.”

I
AM FREE TO
take advantage of the state-of-the-art resources of McNally & Son, human and otherwise, as long as I don’t toss a monkey wrench into the works and send Mrs. Trelawney into a tizzy. Therefore, the day after Joe’s dinner party and Al’s epiphany, Binky sorted the first-class mail and delivered it, as usual, shortly after ten.

He then met me in the garage, got into the trunk of my Miata, and we were off and running. Herb, observing this from his glass tower, immediately picked up the phone and dialed Mrs. Trelawney. As I drove out I imagined I could hear him reporting, “Archy’s abducted Binky. What should I do?”

The plan, well thought out and timed to the minute, was simple. However, as the poet said, the best laid plans of mice and men—etc. etc. etc.

I would drive to Le Maze, parking as far up the driveway as possible, which would be past the delivery door, and go round to the front door. Binky, armed with the key to the grid, would give me time to ring the bell, get in the house, and distract Hayes and Tilly with foolish banter. Then Binky would get out of the trunk and hurry to the goal. Once there, he would tilt the sundial and inspect beneath it.

I gave Binky five minutes to find the goal—even with the key it’s tricky—five minutes to inspect the sundial, and five minutes to get back into the trunk. “Don’t dally,” I directed. “Hayes is a wily rascal and I doubt if I can hold him and the maid still for more than fifteen minutes.”

“I hope that monument doesn’t weigh a ton,” Binky grumbled.

“All you have to do is tilt it, not carry it on your back like Atlas.”

Tilly answered the door. “I thought Mr. Hayes fired you,” was her welcoming salvo.

“I would like to speak to Mr. Hayes and you. I’ve been with the police, as you know, and have something to report that is of paramount importance to both of you.”

Unimpressed, she said, “Mr. Hayes is meditating. I can’t disturb him.”

If he meditated with his eyes closed I was batting a thousand. “I’ll wait,” I said to Tilly and practically pushed my way in.

“He might be hours,” she warned.

These people are extraordinary in every way. I thought my ploy about the police would have them at least curious. Obviously, it didn’t.

“Wait,” Tilly said, and politely turned her back on me.

I looked at my watch. Five minutes. I strolled into the great room and began to examine the posters as if I were in a museum. There was Marlena as Venus, just as we’d seen her the night she died. I glanced out the French windows and observed the maze. Binky, at this very moment, must have made
the
goal. I continued to inspect the artwork. There was the fairway with its Ferris wheel, strollers and the guy hawking a girly show. I walked past, stopped, returned, got on tiptoe to take a closer look and gasped.

Was I seeing things? No, I was not—and I had to get Binky and me out of here like right now. I checked my watch. Twelve minutes. I prayed Binky was ahead of schedule.

“What do you want, McNally?” Hayes had surfaced.

“I was just leaving, sir.”

“You some kind of nut, McNally?”

“You could say that, sir.”

I raced to the door, got out and went to the Miata. I could see that the trunk was a tad open. It was now more than fifteen minutes since our arrival. Confident, I got into the car and backed out of the driveway.

I headed for the parking lot of the Publix supermarket where I had arranged to meet Al after my stint at Le Maze. I spotted the patrol car and parked next to it. Getting out I ran to my trunk and opened it. It was empty. No Binky. Oh, my God!

Al sauntered over and saw what had happened. “Where’s Binky?”

“He must still be in the maze. We have to get back there, Al. No time to explain—in your car—put on the siren...”

“You sound hysterical, Archy. Calm down.”

“I am hysterical. Take me back to that damn maze.”

“After yesterday...”

“This is today, Al. If you don’t want to see Binky dead with a pentagram etched into his forehead in blood, get in your car and go like a bat out of hell to that diabolical labyrinth.”

The sign of a good general is his ability make a quick decision, for better or for worse, in the line of fire. Without blinking, Al started for his car. I followed. We were out of the parking lot and tearing up the A1A, siren blasting, in minutes. We arrived at Le Maze making enough noise to draw Hayes, and a few of his neighbors, outdoors.

Hayes was squawking, but we weren’t listening. “Take us to the goal,” Al ordered.

Hayes responded with, “Screw you.”

Al touched the hilt of his weapon. “Now, mister.”

With a sneer and a shrug Hayes headed for the backyard. “The police have my key to the grid.” The guy had nerves of steel—or else he knew he had us beat, yet again.

“Move,” Al answered.

After a few false leads, unnecessary I’m sure, Hayes led us to the goal. Except for the sundial, it was empty. “Where’s Binky?” I shouted.

“Who the hell is Binky?”

“He’s here someplace, you bastard. Now where is he?”

“You men are nuts and I’ll have your job for this, Officer...”

“Archy?” It was Binky’s voice coming from no place. “Archy? Is that you?”

“Binky? Where are you?”

“I’m here but they tied me up.”

Hayes began to run. Al grabbed him by the collar, almost lifting him off the ground. “Where is he?” Al demanded.

Hayes was squirming like a monkey on a leash. “You’re choking me.”

Al took out his gun and put it against the back of Hayes’s head. “Where is he?”

“Okay. Okay. Let me loose.” Al let go and Hayes went out of the goal and into the passageway. We followed with Al’s gun still pointed at the shrimp’s head.

Hayes reached into the hedge and pulled a lever, and before our eyes the hedge began to slide, closing off the goal we had been in and creating an opening to a twin goal next door.

Binky was on the dirt floor of the second goal, his hands and feet bound. Miraculously, he had managed to bite through the tape over his mouth. Next to him was an alabaster statue of Venus de Milo with glass eyes and a red wig.

“Archy,” Binky cried, “there’s no trap door under the sundial.”

“When I saw Laddy Taylor’s face in that poster I knew we were in trouble—or Binky was in trouble. Laddy was part of Hayes’s carnival and probably in the house, or even worse, in the maze, which proved to be true. Carolyn Taylor told me Marlena had a bit of gossip to report but died before she saw Carolyn again. I believe Marlena wanted to tell Carolyn that her, Carolyn’s, stepson, newly arrived in town, was a working member of Hayes’s traveling carnival.”

Al Rogoff, Joe Gallo and I were in Oscar Eberhart’s office congratulating each other on the arrest of Matthew Hayes, Laddy Taylor and Matilda Thompson for the murders of Marlena Marvel and Mack Macurdy.

“Laddy didn’t come to Palm Beach with Hayes because he didn’t want people here to know he was a working member of Hayes’s troupe. Old man Taylor was still alive and Laddy was still hoping to get his share of Daddy’s estate. When the old man died and Laddy got skunked in the will, Laddy came here to harass his stepmother.

“At the same time, Marlena told Hayes she was leaving him and taking half his fortune with her. This, I’m sure, is when Hayes and Laddy put their depraved heads together and hatched the plot to get rid of Marlena and frame Carolyn Taylor for the murder. Hayes had the two goals and sliding wall constructed to fool the public when the maze opened because conning the public is his métier. Now he would use it to con the world.”

Joe, who had been taking copious notes, picked up the story. “They poisoned Marlena with digitalis, the medicine Linton Taylor was taking, the afternoon of the party and put her body in the concealed goal. The statue, which they had used before instead of Marlena, appeared on the balcony. The red wig and those staring glass eyes had us all fooled.”

Eberhart interrupted with, “But where did the statue disappear to?”

“The maid, Tilly, put it in the magician’s box in the attic,” Al Rogoff told him. “And I saw it. But all that was visible was the head and feet sticking out of each end so I had no way of knowing it was an armless statue of Venus. The wig they shoved in a drawer and we didn’t search no drawers looking for a body.”

“After our search for the goal that night,” I said, “I noticed Laddy was missing for some time when we all returned to the house. Now we know that he was transporting Marlena’s body from the hidden goal to the goal containing the sundial, or he could have moved the sundial to the goal where Marlena was hidden. You see, the sundial was the prop that had us so sure we were always in the same goal. By the way, it’s a stage prop and weighs about fifty pounds.”

“You saw the statue from the helicopter,” Joe said, “but why did they put it in the goal?”

“To get it, and the red wig, out of the house before the police, or maybe me, got wise,” I explained. “Al kept telling us that we didn’t see Marlena posing as Venus. Given time we would have figured it was a statue and maybe connect it with the statue in the magician’s box. They were too clever to take such a chance. The goal was the best place for it before chopping it up or smuggling it out of town. Their one mistake was to put it in the goal with the sundial which I spotted from the air.

“Laddy Taylor was in the house when I was talking to Tilly and he saw Binky go into the maze. He went out the French doors, caught up with Binky, knocked him out and put him in the goal with the statue, moving the sundial to the other goal and closing the sliding panel. They would have taken Binky to some desolate place and done him in, like they did Macurdy, when the coast was clear, never figuring Al and I would return in ten minutes. All three were in the house when we got there and Hayes came out to greet us, confident that we would find nothing.”

Eberhart was shaking his head. “They thought of everything. And Macurdy saw the two goals with his telescopic pics and said nothing because he figured it was some carny trick and liked the idea of having something on Hayes. The night of the murder Macurdy knew exactly how Marlena Marvel’s body popped up in the goal and couldn’t wait to use it to his advantage. Hayes was a rich man and Macurdy needed an angel. It was a marriage made in hell.

“It was also Macurdy, with his reporting, that gave Hayes and Laddy the idea of putting the bloody pentagram on Macurdy’s forehead and have us believe it was the work of some cult group or a kook.”

We basked silently in our glory for a few minutes before Joe wondered, “And where’s our hero, Binky?”

I looked at my watch. Mickey’s small hand was on three and his big hand was on twelve. “Binky is making his three o’clock rounds at the McNally Building, where he should be,” I stated.

“You ain’t got no heart, pal,” Al Rogoff rebuked me.

A double negative makes a positive.

G
EORGY LOOKED LIKE A
supermodel in her new suit, purchased especially for our junket to New York. Navy blue, skirt just knee length, tailored jacket, with princess seaming accentuating a nipped waist. And with it she wore a striped silk blouse in jewel tone and pumps with a modest heel. Navy blue was made for blondes.

As we were stopping at the Yale Club (yes, the seigneur booked us into a suite for three nights), I got myself into chinos, blazer, oxford button-down with a narrow knit tie (maroon) and wing-tip brogues. Boola-boola for us.