McNally's Dilemma (27 page)

Dinah sang about “Far Away Places” as a cruise ship, lit from bow to stern, moved across the dark horizon. We stopped dancing only long enough to kiss, and I had the eerie feeling we were being watched from above. Melva? Hattie? Or Clara, the neighbor’s upstairs maid?

I
WILL NOT REVEAL
what happened between Veronica and me after our starlit kiss because a gentleman does not kiss and tell. Suffice it to say we are not officially engaged, and make of that what you will. On this overcast Palm Beach day, I had other things on my mind—and none of them had to do with love.

I called the “palace” on Country Road and got policewoman Tweeny Alvarez. I asked for Sergeant Al Rogoff, and Officer Alvarez wanted to know who was calling.

“His father,” I told her.

A moment later Al was on the phone. “Hello, Pop.”

“Hello to you, son. I thought I’d hear from you for Father’s Day.”

“You did, Pop. That was last June. Now it’s almost turkey time.”

“That’s why I’m calling, son. I’m going shopping at Publix for our turkey. How big a bird should I get?”

“About twenty minutes—I mean twenty pounds.”

“Twenty it is. Don’t forget to wear your bulletproof vest at all times, son.”

“I never take it off, Pop.”

I drove into the lot of the Publix supermarket on Sunset Avenue, parked as far from the entrance as possible, and lit an English Oval as I waited for Al. When he pulled in beside me in his PBPD car, I got out of my Miata and slipped onto the seat beside him. “My father died a few years back, Archy,” were Al’s first words.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Al.”

“Tweeny Alvarez attended the funeral,” he went on.

“I see. Then she didn’t believe it was your father calling?”

“With Alvarez you never know. She told me my father was calling long distance.”

“From heaven?” I was astonished, but Al Rogoff often had this effect on me.

“She didn’t say.” He stuck the remains of the unlit cigar he was holding between his lips and began chomping on it. “I thought I would hear from you last night.”

“I was otherwise engaged,” I said.

“The blonde?”

“I got you here to ask the questions.”

“Fire away, Pop.”

“Please don’t call me Pop.”

Al was offended. “Why not?”

“Because you sound like Number One Son in a Charlie Chan movie.”

“So I’ll tell Alvarez it was Charlie Chan who called.”

“Tell Alvarez anything you want, Al, but first tell me the name of the Mystery Woman.”

Al pulled a notebook out of his bulging back pocket. This cigar-chomping man who murdered the King’s English and loved the ballet and Beethoven was one of the shrewdest officers on the Palm Beach force. He had anticipated what I wanted to know and had carefully jotted down all the facts regarding the appearance of our Mystery Woman.

“That would be Linda Adams, with an address in Boynton Beach. I think she owns a trailer there.”

It would be rude to scream “trailer trash,” so I didn’t. “What were the three test questions they asked the hopefuls?”

Al didn’t have to consult his notes for this one. “First. What was Mrs. Williams wearing when she found you with her husband? Linda Adams knew it was a bathrobe and even told us its color.

“Second. What position were you and Mr. Williams in when Mrs. Williams came upon you?” Al pointed his cigar butt at me. “Archy, if you knew some of the answers these broads gave to this one, you would think they were raised in a cathouse.”

“Some of them no doubt were, Sergeant. Linda’s position was the correct one?”

“Check. How do you think—”

“Ask her,” I cut him off. “Number three?”

“What was Mr. Williams wearing?”

“And she knew that, did she?”

“Right down to his jockey shorts, Archy. Most of the dames said he was wearing a tux. These broads think that’s how the rich dress every night of the week. They’ve seen too many Fred Astaire movies on the tube.” Then Al told me this Linda described the solarium, its entrance from the back patio, the pool, etc., etc., etc.

“The lady has a photographic memory. How convenient. Did she say where she met Geoff?”

“One guess.”

“Bar Anticipation.”

“You know your turf,” Al said.

“You should put a padlock on that place, Sergeant.”

“Then where would we go when we were in need of someone to arrest?”

I watched one of the Publix boys gather stray shopping carts from the parking lot, nest them, and push them back to home base. The lad deftly maneuvered a train of nineteen carts. He could very well be the heir to one of America’s great fortunes, or a high school dropout hoping to get promoted to a position at the checkout counter. This was, after all, Palm Beach.

“Did Linda say when she met Geoff?”

Not unexpectedly, Al told me she met Geoff about a month ago and he called when he returned to Palm Beach for the winter. Geoff had certainly covered a lot of ground on his hit-and-run visit to our tight little island several weeks back.

“And she picked him up the night in question?”

“That’s right,” Al said. “She picked him up, and they hit a few bars, had a meal, and went back to Geoff’s place.”

“When she picked him up, did she say how she got in the gate? I mean, was the alarm set?”

Al shuffled his pad’s pages. “She didn’t go in the gate. He met her outside, along the A1A.”

“What time was this, Al?”

“According to her, about nine.”

“Will you check the bars and the restaurant to see if anyone can ID them as having been there?”

“Oh, we will, but the places she gave us are dark as pitch and usually as crowded as a New York subway at rush hour. Their bartenders don’t see nothin’ and their clients see even less. They live by the ‘don’t rat on me and I won’t rat on you’ rule, and before you ask, the restaurant is a pizza joint in West Palm. No one will have seen them in any of these places, but no one will not have seen them, either.”

“So the guy takes his date back to his own home where his wife is in residence? Why? And this ought to be good.”

“This Linda broad says Geoff got drunk and refused to go to a motel or to her place in Boynton. He insisted they go back to his place and ‘live dangerously,’ as he put it. She seems to think he wanted to goad his wife and didn’t care if Mrs. Williams caught them at it.”

That was too much. Linda Adams’s testimony would make Melva look more like the victim than the perp, as Al would have it. “So why did she agree to it, Al?”

“He said he would give her a nice present.”

“Clever. Just short of calling herself a pro. What’s your feeling about all this, Al?”

“My feeling is that your society broad had good reason to kill the punk.”

“You don’t think Linda’s account is too letter-perfect?”

He shrugged. “Whose side are you on, Archy?”

Melva’s, I thought, but I also had a passion for learning the truth, and I seriously doubted if that’s what we were getting from Linda Adams. However, Al’s question did make me feel something of a heel. Everything looked great for Melva and Veronica, so why was I rocking the boat?

Al was chewing on his cigar butt and mumbling as he idly thumbed the pages of his pad. “What did you say?” I asked him.

“She said the alarm at the gate wasn’t set when they returned that night.”

I leaped on that one. “Who asked her about the gate alarm?”

“Far as I know, no one asked her. She just said it when she was talking about coming back to his house.”

“Were you present at the interview?”

“Sure. How do you think I know all this?”

“Why were you in on the interview?” I pressed.

“Because the interview was recorded on video and I work the camera, that’s why.”

“I never thought to ask,” I blurted.

“You’re no Charlie Chan, Archy.”

I guess I deserved that one. “Al,” I said, “no one but me ever questioned the fact that the gate alarm wasn’t set that night, right?”

“Right. We never made it an issue because there was no break ’n’ entry attempt. The victim and the perp both lived there. What’s your point?”

“My point, Sergeant, is that Linda Adams answered a question she wasn’t asked because—maybe—it was on her list of memorized answers. I know only three people who knew the alarm question might be asked because I had harped on it since the night Geoff got his comeuppance. Melva, her daughter, and my father.”

“You smell a rat, Archy?”

No, I wanted to tell him, I smell Veronica Manning’s expensive perfume. Had that girl hired someone to commit perjury to save her mother’s life? It was insane, but with the young and the restless one never knew. But how would a girl like Veronica find a dame like Linda Adams of Boynton Beach? They were as far apart as the Ice Age and the Space Age.

But someone like good old Buzz would know where to find a Linda Adams and Buzz just couldn’t be more ingratiating to the rich of Palm Beach and points north. Was my para- being too noid or was the green-eyed monster egging me on?

“Veronica Manning was the first one out that night,” I told him. “And she should have set the alarm. Her mother told me it was a house rule. Now this Linda says the alarm was never set.”

“And what does Veronica say?”

“She told me she can’t remember if she set it or not.”

“So I guess she didn’t,” Al concluded. “Maybe she had a hot date that night and setting alarms wasn’t a top priority on Blondie’s agenda. Some dish, that broad, eh Archy?”

My mind was spinning like a whirling dervish in a Marrakesh sideshow, which is not conducive to drawing logical conclusions. “She did have a date that night,” I confessed. “With a guy at a place called Hillcrest.”

It was Al’s turn to do a double take. “The house down near Manalapan Beach?”

“You know it, Al?”

He shook his head in wonder. “You sure do come up with the doozies, you do. We got the place under surveillance.”

The Publix boy was once again collecting carts. Did he ever find one with a toddler left behind after the groceries had been loaded into the family car? I wouldn’t bet against it.

“Drugs?” I guessed.

“Among other things. Is Blondie into anything heavy, Archy?”

“Nothing heavier than a good-looking stud that caught her interest, but it seems he couldn’t hold it. A flash in the pan, Sergeant.”

“Or so you hope.” He grinned at his own wit. “Come on, Archy,” he said, giving me a nudge with his beefy elbow. “She forgot to set that alarm because she was hot to trot and hightailed it out of her driveway.”

I heard Jamie’s voice describing Hattie’s version of events that night as if he were sitting in the backseat and had just decided to put in his two cents’ worth.
“What with the shouting and the fireworks and the car driving off, burning rubber like it was racing in the Indy 500...”
A lot of people seemed to have made quick exits out of the Williams manse that night.

I seemed to be faced with two choices—again. Leave well enough alone and God bless Melva, or stick my nose in where it wasn’t wanted and who knows what I’d sniff out? This was harder than choosing which female to hitch to.

I drove to the McNally Building to compare notes with Father who, I assumed, must have received a full report on Linda’s interview. When I pulled into the underground garage, Herb stopped me at his glass house. “I got a message for you, Archy,” he said, “from your father.” He pulled a scrap of paper out of his shirt pocket and read aloud, “‘Go directly to the Fairhurst house. It arrived.’” Then he looked at me and added, “I don’t know what ‘It’ is, Archy.”

I did.

“W
E WERE EXPECTING YOU,
señor
,” Hector said excitedly as he opened the gate to my red Miata. “
El Patrón
say to go directly to the house.”

“Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars,” I replied.

“I do not have two hundred dollars,
señor.”

“Neither do I, Hector.”

Peterson, looking his old cheerful self, led me to
El Patrón,
who was nervously pacing about his office. “Archy, I’m glad you’re here. That will be all, Peterson.”

“Very good, sir.” Peterson made a reluctant withdrawal.

I wasn’t invited to sit, but then I once read that Queen Victoria had kept Disraeli standing for twenty years. “I understand ‘It’ has arrived, sir.”

He nodded, grunted, and handed “It” over.

Same drill as the first letter. Miami postmark. Cheap copy paper. Typewritten and terse. The money, in bills none larger than fifties, was to be placed in a shoe box and delivered two days hence to an address in Boynton Beach. “The BB Trailer Court—Number Nine.”

The dervishes were back with a vengeance, only this time they were chanting, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” While I’m not the fainting kind, they say there’s a first time for everything. Had my time come? “Do you mind if I sit, Mr. Fairhurst?”

As if abashed at forgetting his manners,
El Patrón
made a sweeping gesture with his hand to indicate that I could alight wherever I chose. I chose the nearest perch and read on.

The messenger was to knock. The door would be opened wide enough for the box to be placed on the floor. The messenger was to depart. There was a reminder that should the police deliver the shoe box, Mr. Fairhurst would save twenty-five G’s, but the family secret would no doubt become the central theme of the next
Titanic
film. For John Fairhurst III, it was a no-win situation.

For Archy McNally, it was
Il Momento de la Verdad,
as dear Connie would say. The Moment of Truth. If Seth Walker was the blackmailer and Linda Adams lived in trailer number nine at the BB Trailer Court, then Linda was Seth’s partner in crime. Ergo, Veronica didn’t go to Buzz to find a convenient Mystery Woman; she went to Seth. At this point, it was all pure speculation. I didn’t know for certain that Veronica had gone shopping for a Mystery Woman, and the Boynton Beach trailer connection could be nothing more than an extraordinary coincidence. It was so extraordinary, I had no choice but to follow through on my assumptions.

I was officially on the Fairhurst case and unofficially trying to help Melva. Now it seemed the former was at cross-purposes to the latter. If I exposed Seth Walker as the blackmailer and Linda Adams as his accomplice, would I also come up with the fact that the Mystery Woman, Linda Adams, was as phony as a three-dollar bill? I would become, in effect, a witness for the prosecution in the case of the State of Florida vs. Melva Ashton Manning Williams. Rather than faint, I decided to think about that tomorrow.