McNally's Bluff (8 page)

“The beautiful Elizabeth Fitzwilliams wore a skirt that showed off her lovely legs, topped by her father’s dress shirt, tails out, that showed off the rest of Fitz, as she is known locally. And Fitz was our own Joe Gallo’s date.”

Cut to a big fat close-up of Joey’s boyish mug, grinning sheepishly. Oh dear, Georgy girl was going to blow a gasket over this telecast.

My name was mentioned as being present and as having been asked by Matthew Hayes to help find his wife when the maid reported her missing. So much for my desire to keep a low profile in this town.

Mack concluded the show with, “We saw Marlena Marvel in her fascinating portrayal of Venus de Milo only a few short hours before we saw her body being carried from her husband’s celebrated maze. How did she die, almost before our very eyes, and how was she transported from her luxurious bedroom, through the dizzying passages of that labyrinth and to its hidden center without being seen by the dozens of guests she and her husband were so lavishly entertaining? These are the questions the police, the nation and you, our loyal viewers, must be asking themselves this morning.

“Marlena Marvel was a woman of a thousand faces, a seer and a healer. What dark forces, beyond our ken, did she summon to assist in her calling and, like Mephistopheles, did she finally have to pay the piper? We hope to have Matthew Hayes himself as our guest in the very near future, as well as Lieutenant Oscar Eberhart of the Palm

Beach police who is in charge of the case, and even Archy McNally, who may well be conducting his own investigation of Marlena Marvel’s untimely demise. This show will be repeated at six this evening. Enjoy your day in enchanting Palm Beach.”

Not a bad close if you like a cliffhanger, but I didn’t appreciate his suggestion that Eberhart and I were in competition to solve the mystery of Marlena’s strange death. Also, I hope Mack remembers to send his guest wish list to Santa.

When the show was over the girls turned to leave, chatting not about dark forces but about the cute reporter, then spotted me in the doorway. They smiled politely. After all, I am the CEO’s favorite son. “You were there, Mr. McNally,” one of them said in passing.

“What name did you pick?” another asked.

“Adam,” I said.

“And who was Eve?”

“Marge Macurdy.”

For some reason this got a laugh.

Binky was rewinding, no doubt in preparation for the afternoon showing. “Is this a postal holiday, Mr. Watrous?” I demanded.

“With the kind of mail you get, Archy, what difference would it make?”

And what is this? Sassing his betters? “Mrs. Trelawney knows what you’re doing here, Binky. Beware the wrath of the Dragon Lady.”

“Of course, she knows,” he told me. “Mrs. Trelawney and your father were down here for the first show. We need an auditorium that can accommodate the entire staff. That’s what I told your father.”

My knees yet again turned to water having hardly solidified from the last jolt. “My father is a kind and patient man, Binky, but beware the length of the unemployment line.”

Binky pushed some buttons and ejected the cassette. I hate people who are efficient at this sort of thing. I have recently converted from vinyl to tape in an effort to “get with it” as Georgy girl insists I should do. I reminded her of what Shakespeare accomplished with a quill pen but she didn’t buy it.

“Joe told me Hayes hired you last night.” Binky spoke as he rummaged through the letters, postcards and manila envelopes on his work station. “You and Joe Gallo are neighbors, I hear.”

“Jealous, Archy?”

What cheek! “And why would I be jealous?”

“Maybe you wanted that trailer. The Palm Court is hot right now in case you haven’t heard.”

“
Moi? Moi?
” I exploded. “
Moi
rent a trailer in the Palm Court? Why would I trade a home on
the
Boulevard with an ocean view for a glorified railroad car mounted on concrete blocks?”

“You’re a snob, Archy.”

I had been called incorrigible and a snob and the day was only half over. Who knows what other honors would be bestowed upon my person before the sun set? Binky continued to move the mail around his work station as if in search of two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that meshed. Also, he was avoiding eye contact when talking and he had not, as yet, begged to assist me should I tackle the Marlena Marvel case. Add to this his surly responses to my civilized queries and I suspect a subtext to this tiresome meeting.

“How did Joe hear about the vacant trailer in the suddenly highly desired Palm Court?”

“It’s a long story,” he said to an envelope with a foreign stamp.

“I have all day,” I encouraged.

“Joe was having a drink with Connie at the Pelican...” Binky began.

I should have known. Women and the Pelican, a lethal combination. The Pelican is a social club founded by a group of gentlemen, myself included, who find the more traditional Everglades and Bath and Tennis a tad too supercilious for our taste. The fact that neither of the aforementioned clubs would court our membership was not relevant to our decision to form a more perfect union. And perfect it was until some blockheads suggested we allow women to join our fraternity.

I opposed the movement on the grounds that when dating Connie
and others,
I could take
and others
to the Pelican without fear of running into Connie brandishing a stiletto. I fought a long, tough campaign for keeping women out of the Pelican, except when escorted by a member—and lost. Good Queen Victoria said the women’s suffrage movement sounded the death knell of civilization; however, Her Majesty didn’t know it would one day get Joe Gallo digs in the Palm Court.

So Connie became a Pelican and I could no longer take the
and others
to my club for a meal. Now I take Georgy to the club and Connie takes Alex to the club when he’s in town, which is very often. It was inevitable that we four should one day collide. Introductions were made and Connie and Georgy took an instant dislike to each other and became good friends as women who dislike each other often do. Georgy invited Joe Gallo to join us one evening when Connie and Alex were also there and lo! we are now one big unhappy, extended family.

For those who are keeping score, let me remind you that I am an ex of Connie Garcia’s, Joe is an ex of Georgy girl’s, leaving Alejandro Gomez y Zapata the only virgin (in the broadest sense of the word) among us. Does it bother me that I am the oldest of this male trio, threatened by a Latino hunk and a Norman Rockwell poster boy? Yes, it does. In fact, if I could evoke Marlena Marvel’s dark forces to transport the pair to Oz, I would do so without a moment’s hesitation.

So Connie and Joe are at the bar of the Pelican when in walks Binky (whose membership I sponsored), and when Joe mentions that he is a man in search of a residence, Binky tells him about the vacant trailer at the hot Palm Court.

“I assume it’s the trailer twixt you and Al Rogoff,” I said.

“That’s the one.” Binky addressed a letter in a priority mail envelope. I wondered how long it had been sitting in the mail room.

“What does Al think of his new neighbor?”

“You know Al. He doesn’t say much,” Binky told the priority mail.

Al thinks Binky insipid and after last night he will declare Joe Gallo verbose, a word I added to Al’s lexicon to replace yenta.

And what was Connie doing at the club with Joe? My guess is she was scouting him out as fodder for her boss lady’s insatiable appetite for male pulchritude while pretending to enlighten him on the newsworthiness of Lady C’s latest chanty. Connie’s job description now includes dangling goodies before her boss in order to keep her eyes off Alejandro Gomez y Zapata. And Lady C has enough
dinero
to buy back Cuba, which makes Connie one nervous senorita—and Archy one happy guy.

From experience I knew the only way to get Binky to tell me what was on his mind was to pretend I didn’t want to know. “Well, Binky my boy, a blessing on all three of your households. Now I must be off, as duty calls.”

With that he swung around and faced me. “You’re going to take the Marlena Marvel case, Archy?”

“I think I’ll wait to learn how she died. There’s a possibility that there may not be a case here at all.”

“If you do take it,” he said, “I might not be at liberty to assist you.”

All things considered, that might be the best piece of news I had all day, however it was also the most curious. “Are you leaving our employ, Binky?”

“Actually, I’m moonlighting as a stringer for Joe Gallo,” he finally confided.

A stringer in the news business is many things. Among them: assistant, gofer, snitch, wannabe and ambulance chaser. Yesterday, Joe Gallo was practically a stringer himself, but since breaking the Marlena Marvel story we have a Lowell Thomas in our midst. Setting priorities, I cautioned, “I hope you remember that anything you see or hear in your position with McNally and Son is considered confidential and must never leave the confines of this building.”

“I know that, Archy,” Binky protested.

“Just make sure you don’t forget it,” I lectured. “I take it Joe Gallo wants to further his career by solving the Marlena Marvel case. Yes?”

“He was in on it from the start,” Binky reminded me.

“So were dozens of others,” I reminded him. “If I get involved in this brouhaha, and it’s a big if, may I know why you would rather string for a novice like Joe Gallo than a pro, which I am?”

“It’s a matter of compensation, Archy. Joe is talking ready cash for services rendered.”

“And, like someone else I could mention, thirty pieces of silver bought your loyalty. Shame on you, Binky Watrous.”

“I knew you would have an attitude over this,” he countered.

“Attitude? Not at all. I wish you well in your new career path, Binky, but I also wish that you and Joe would keep your noses out of the Marvel case and leave it to the police. It’s their job as it’s Joe’s job to report the news, not make it.”

“Joe has some very original ideas about what happened,” Binky said with an enthusiasm for his new leader once reserved for me. Such is the power of ready cash, a commodity I lack.

“And may I know what Joe Gallo thinks of all this, Binky, or are you sworn to secrecy?”

“He’s going public on the ten o’clock news tonight,” Binky proudly announced, “so it won’t be secret for long.” Here Binky took a deep breath, squared his rather bony shoulders and exhaled the word, “Levitation.”

Good grief. “You mean up, up and away like the man in tights and a cape?”

“Marlena Marvel was a mystic, Archy. She read the cabala and practiced the black arts.”

A witch hunt. I might have known. And it was Mack Macurdy, not Joe Gallo, who was behind this proposed media blitz which accounted for Mack’s dark forces finale to today’s show. Before this was over Mack would have every medium, seer and kook in southern Florida on the show and garner national publicity for his efforts. There’s nothing the public likes better than a magic show as it beats having to exercise the cerebral cortex any day of the week. Hence the resident clairvoyant and daily horoscope column in all our tabloids.

Joe Gallo had jumped on the bandwagon because Macurdy was on to a good thing and Joey boy was no fool. As for solving the mystery of the death of Marlena Marvel and all that implied, Mack’s bizarre input could yet prove a double-edged blade. One, it would keep the amateurs out of Eberhart’s hair or, two, it could rile the public into a state of panic as did the flying saucer craze of some years back. What Palm Beach did not need was to play host to the next convention of witches and warlocks. There are those in this town who would say that would be like carrying coals to Newcastle.

“And just where did Joe get all this scintillating information on the life and times and reading habits of the late Marlena Marvel?”

“The Internet,” Binky said as if I should have known and, in retrospect, I guess I should have. “The carnival has a web site that gives her bio as well as her cures, predictions and daily horoscope forecasts. She was deep, Archy.”

“She was a carny lady. A charlatan, a quack and a swindler and somebody beat her at her own game.”

“So how did she get from the house to the maze, Archy? Tell me that.”

“I don’t know nor do I profess to know, Binky my boy. How did she die is the question. By her own hand or that of another? If the latter, who done it? The answers will lead you through the maze and to the goal. Again, I strongly suggest that you and Joe keep out of this. If there’s a murderer about, be he of flesh and blood or atmospheric vapor, don’t court his attention.

“I also suggest you deliver that priority envelope to the addressee before it gathers moss.”

He picked it up, looked at it and handed it to me.

Priority mail for me? This had to be an all-time first. As Binky had so blatantly put it, my mail is nothing to write home about, if you’ll excuse the pun. I cradled it in the open palms of my hands, gingerly, much like a father being presented with his firstborn.

“You think it’s a letter bomb?” Binky speculated.

“Who would want to blow me to smithereens?”

“You’ve helped a lot of people in this town, Archy, and no good deed goes unpunished.”

“And from whence comes that bit of misanthropic gibberish?”

“From you, Archy.”

“Oh!”

“A
LIENS,” SIMON PETTIBONE OFFERED
along with the perfectly drawn lagers he placed before Al Rogoff and me. “That’s the concerted opinion of today’s lunch crowd, Archy. Too bad you missed it, but you can still get in on the pool if you’re feeling lucky, unless your connection to the case disqualifies you. On Wall Street they call it insider trading.”

“What’s the entry fee, Mr. Pettibone?” “A C-note, Archy. Like always, I’m the bank.” In fact, Simon Pettibone was a closeted investment banker whose Wall Street smarts got him the sobriquet D.J. (for Dow Jones) Pettibone. He is also the Pelican club’s bartender, majordomo and father confessor. An African-American of regal bearing, he and his family are the nuts and bolts of the Pelican, with lovely daughter Priscilla as waitress, son Leroy the chef and Mrs. Pettibone our den mother.