McNally's Dilemma Read online

  “You’ve been talking to Priscilla,” I said, just as Priscilla arrived with our turkey clubs and a single order of pommes frites.

  “I don’t talk to anyone around this place who isn’t ordering food,” Priscilla announced, then left us to ponder the statement.

  “No,” Connie said, spooning mayo out of a plastic tub that, I’m sure, once held margarine. “Lolly called to check some facts for his piece on Lady Cynthia’s cocktail reception and mentioned the Tremaine connection.”

  I find it almost impossible to eat a club sandwich in the manner a sandwich should be eaten without doing serious damage to my jaw. Therefore, I discard the top piece of toast, remove the lettuce and tomato beneath it, and I am left with a perfectly manageable turkey and bacon sandwich with a side helping of lettuce and tomato. Archy, Gourmand Engineer.

  “It was a business lunch,” I informed Connie.

  “Discreet Inquiries?”

  “Discreet, my dear, is the operative word.”

  “You confide, Archy, only when you need my help.”

  This is true. Lady Cynthia Horowitz is a leader of Palm Beach Society (note the capital S), and as the clients of McNally & Son and Discreet Inquiries are from that same social strata, their comings and goings and doings are of the utmost interest to me. Connie, in her capacity as Lady Cynthia’s secretary, is privy to much that matters on Palm Beach Island. What matters is Love, Hate, Envy, Sex, Bank Balances, Genealogies, and whose Versace is genuine and whose ain’t.

  The only people more privy to this crowd than Connie are, of course, those who “do” for them. Our housekeeper and houseman, Ursi and Jamie Olson, along with their brethren up and down Ocean Boulevard, have a communications network that would give NASA pause.

  I have shamelessly used Connie in my endeavors, and never more so when I was called upon to investigate the theft of Lady C.’s stamp collection, one that was insured for half a mil and worth zilch. But if you’ve been paying attention you know that story.

  “I like to think of us as a business couple,” I told Connie, forking a pomme frite from a plate we were supposed to be sharing, but the hand (Connie’s) is quicker than the eye (mine).

  “Was the black dress at Bar Anticipation also business?”

  I tried to raise one eyebrow, a gesture mon père has mastered, and failed. I knew Lolly Spindrift didn’t tattle that one because Bar Anticipation is not a place Lolly would enter if chased by wild dogs. This begged the obvious question. “Who, among Lady C.’s crowd, frequents Bar Anticipation?”

  “Discreet, my dear, is the operative word.”

  Touché.

  Hoping to divert Connie’s attention from the black dress to matters more pressing, I asked her what info Lolly was seeking regarding Lady C.’s cocktail reception. Lolly, I always assumed, knew everything, and what he didn’t know he simply made up based on evidence as solid as quicksand.

  “Actually, he wanted a young man’s name.”

  “That figures. Who was the guy?”

  Connie shook her dark hair. “I have no idea. So many people bring a date or houseguests to these charity receptions I’m not always aware of who’s who, and neither is Lady C., but she couldn’t care less as long as no one smokes anyplace on the property.”

  “Was the lad with Phil Meecham?” I asked. Meecham, owner of the Sans Souci, a yacht that gives new meaning to the term “pleasure craft,” is a buddy of Lolly Spindrift when they aren’t simultaneously mad about the same boy and at each other.

  “You mean, was he one of Phil’s boys? I don’t believe so. In fact the few times I was able to survey the crowd I think the young man was talking to Veronica Manning.”

  I tried again, and failed again, to raise one eyebrow. Why do I persist? “Are Melva and Geoff down for the season?” Melva and Geoff are Veronica’s mother and stepfather.

  “I guess so. I know Veronica was there but I don’t remember seeing her parents and I’m sure they weren’t on our guest list, so I imagine someone brought Veronica.”

  Veronica’s mother is Melva Manning Williams, née Ashton, an old friend of mine. Her second husband, Geoffrey Williams, is a handsome pain in the butt whom I suspect of being a gold digger and know for certain is a womanizer, second only to Vance Tremaine. Though Geoff Williams is not the light of my life, I’ve never let this interfere with the high regard I harbor for Melva.

  “And knowing the very young,” I added, “Veronica brought the lad.” None of this really mattered, but it was diverting chitchat.

  In fact, so innocuous was the subject of Veronica Manning and the lad, Connie answered by breaking our date for that evening. We were supposed to dine at Connie’s condominium. She’s not a bad cook if rice and beans are your thing. They are not mine, but then dinner is not the main attraction at Chez Garcia.

  I was to bring my collection of lady songbirds, on vinyl, please, for an evening of bliss between consenting adults. Who better than Chris Connor, Jo Stafford, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, and “Her Nibs” Miss Georgia Gibbs to set the mood?

  “Lady C. is giving one of her intimate dinner parties,” Connie explained. “Thirty, under a tent, poolside. I know she’ll want me to stay until dessert, at least.”

  “Does she ever spend an evening alone?”

  “Not if she can help it.”

  “Connie,” I said, taking her hand across the table and around the tub of mayo, “the black dress meant nothing. I mean, you do have to work tonight, or...”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  Touché, again.

  The weather continued sunny but cool, which didn’t prevent me from changing into my cerise Speedo trunks, stepping into a pair of sandals, and donning a mini terry robe printed with a portrait of Donald Duck before crossing the A1A for my daily two-mile swim. Risking the wrath of the PB Chamber of Commerce, I will say the temperature this November afternoon was more brisk than tropical, causing me to tread the sand sans my pith helmet.

  I had a “thing” (briefly) for hats when I was at Yale Law (briefly) that bordered on something of a fetish. The pith is part of that collection that has recently expanded to include linen berets in white, puce, and emerald green, courtesy of a custom hatmaker in Danbury, Connecticut. They cause Seigneur to look upon me with misgivings and make mother giggle.

  We dined that evening on Ursi’s caneton à l’orange served with a perfectly chilled meursault and ended with a crème caramel as smooth as velvet. Those who wonder why I have never left home have never tasted one of Ursi’s culinary endeavors.

  Mother, who would like to see me married, asked after Connie. Mother is a lovely woman whom I cherish dearly. As often happens when we cross that line between middle and old age, mother is now sometimes forgetful and her mind is apt to wander now and then. It is a trait that renders her more, not less, precious to father and me.

  Mother is what might be called “pleasingly plump” or “stylishly stout,” and I use both of those archaic but kind descriptions in their best possible connotation. She suffers from high blood pressure, which may account for her florid complexion and shortness of breath. The latter causes father and me great concern. Last, but far from least, she dotes on sweets, her garden, and her son, Archy.

  I told her Connie was working late that evening and mother opined, “Well, perhaps when she marries she can leave the employ of Lady Cynthia and enjoy life.”

  “Are you implying,” the Master asked, “that working for Lady Cynthia is less than enjoyable?”

  Lady C. is one of mon père’s richest, if not the richest, clients.

  “I don’t think so, dear,” his wife cooed.

  Alone in my third-floor digs, I lit my first English Oval of the day, poured myself a small marc, and put Chris Connor on the phonograph. “These Foolish Things Remind Me of You.” Of whom was I reminded? Consuela Garcia, or Ginny, whose dress was “off the rack”? I honestly didn’t know. Was it my fate to be forever cast in the role of the student prince who loves the
girl he’s near when he’s not near the girl he loves?

  I blew smoke rings and watched them drift toward the ceiling in slow motion. I imagined myself in tails, hand in hand with a girl in a beaded gown (Archy and Ginger?), skipping through the ethereal hoops. Ethereal, alas, is as real as my love life gets.

  I sat at my desk and dutifully recorded l’Affaire Tremaine in my journal. Recording my experiences as CEO, Office Manager, Secretary, and Mail Boy for Discreet Inquiries is a chore I adhere to faithfully and one I enjoy. My jottings this evening, and my cool dip in the Atlantic earlier, reminded me of Lolly’s remark about cold water being Vance Tremaine’s undoing. The story played out thusly.

  Vance was in New York on business—what business will soon become clear—and stopping at the Yale Club, as they say. This twenty-one-storied limestone edifice, solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, is situated most conveniently on Vanderbilt Avenue between Grand Central Station to the east and Brooks Brothers to the west. After a hard day on Wall Street, an Eli on the run can purchase a pair of cashmere socks, sip a tall Scotch and soda, and still make the seven-fifteen to Greenwich with time to spare. That the school and club are now both coed went a long way in attracting the patronage of Vance Tremaine when in the Big Apple.

  We open with Vance sitting in the football-field-size second-floor lounge, furnished with leather chairs, couches, and mahogany tables. Two fireplaces, towering windows, and oil paintings of presidents who went from Yale to the Oval Office with nary a backward glance complete the picture of a gentlemen’s club favored by New Yorker cartoonists. The bar is also on the second floor, enabling the late-afternoon crowd to amble between bar and lounge, toting their drinks and little glass bowls filled with peanuts or other tidbits.

  Having been introduced to Vance’s predilection, it will not surprise you to learn that he struck up a conversation with a charming recent Yale grad wearing a very tailored aubergine skirt, white blouse, Hermès print scarf knotted in the fashion of a man’s necktie, and carrying a Coach briefcase. All this, and especially the briefcase, was the ultimate turn-on for Vance, for reasons known only to his analyst. Her red hair was the cherry atop the sundae.

  When he asked her if she was free for dinner, she didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no. Neither did she say Vance was old enough to be her father, but stated demurely that he, Vance, had graduated Yale the same year as dear old Dad. Vance, who is quick on the snappy retort, said, “Then he married in prep school or you are the most precocious ten-year-old I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”

  “I’m twenty-two, Mr. Tremaine.”

  “I’m forty-seven, and the name is Vance.”

  For the record, it’s a PBR that this year marks the third anniversary of Vance Tremaine’s forty-seventh birthday.

  Next he hinted, none too subtly, at the expertise an older man brings to a relationship. He ended with, “If you’ve never dated a man of my vintage, consider the allure and the mystery of the unknown, Allison,” for that was indeed her name. “Shall we meet here at seven-thirty?”

  Employing the skills she had learned in four years’ rigorous study, Allison didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no.

  Invigorated, Vance retreated to the fifth floor of the Yale Club, which houses the men’s locker room, the men’s showers, the men’s steam room, the men’s sauna, the men’s masseuse, and, the target of Vance’s mission, the swimming pool. An inside staircase leads to the gym and squash courts on the sixth floor. Vance was pleasantly surprised at the vast changes he encountered on the fifth floor. The old open stall lockers had been replaced with modern, slim closets with, of all things, doors. The floor was carpeted and upholstered chairs and odd tables formed a comfortable lounge area around a television set.

  Vance approved of the renovation. He signed in for a “steam and plunge” (“swim” being too pretentious a word for a pool of rather modest proportions). He hung his clothes in a new, slender locker and walked into the shower area, off which were the steam, sauna, and pool rooms.

  He peered through the windowed door of the sauna but was put off by the sign that cautioned men with heart problems from entering. This was reminiscent of the notice Dante had posted on Hell’s Gate: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate! (Leave all hope behind, ye who enter here!) Moving right along, he ventured into the steam room, a six-by-ten-foot rectangle, where he singed his behind on the marble bench before fleeing in favor of a cold shower. Ready for his plunge, Vance grabbed a towel from a stack conveniently placed by the entrance to the pool, draped it around his neck, opened the door, and marched right in.

  One swam at the Yale Club, as the French say, au naturel or, as the boys at Yale say, bare-assed. So, imagine Vance’s surprise when he came face-to-face with Allison and another young lady in territory that only a few years ago was sacrosanct to those poor little lambs who had lost their way—baa, baa, baa. Vance gasped and turned the color of Allison’s hair. The girls, being well bred, did not gasp but stood their ground and kept their eyes above Vance’s waist. If he turned and ran to from whence he came, he would be exposing his rear flank, and reasoning in a nanosecond that one exposure per viewing was sufficient, he took a giant step forward and leaped into the pool, losing his towel in midair.

  Perhaps in anticipation of such an occurrence, the pool’s designer had positioned the deep end nearest the portal from the men’s showers, so Vance was spared a broken leg or two. However, upon surfacing, Vance was more the color of Allison’s blue eyes than her red hair. As usual, those in charge of such things had neglected to press the button marked “heater,” rendering the pool’s water temperature a degree or two above frigid.

  Hugging the pool’s tiled perimeter, Vance shouted at his audience. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “We, sir,” said Allison, “are here to swim and, as you can see, are properly attired for the sport.” Referring, no doubt, to their smart one-piece swimsuits. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Since when are you allowed to use the pool?”

  “If by ‘you’ you mean ‘women,’ we gained entrance to the fifth floor seventy-five years after being granted the right to vote.”

  Good God, Vance thought, women’s libbers. Next thing you know they’ll have us doing the backstroke with Democrats. “Would you please hand me that towel,” Vance said, clinging closely to the tiled wall. The pool water at the Yale Club, besides being often cold, is always clean and clear, the better to see the mosaic tiled Y that graces the pool’s floor.

  The girls, laughing, made their way to a door opposite the one from which Vance had entered. A door that had been a solid wall on his last visit just two short years ago.

  “How the hell am I going to get out of here?” Vance wondered aloud.

  “The way you got in,” Allison called over her lovely bare shoulder before making her exit.

  At this point, the lifeguard entered from the men’s lockers and at a glance noting the situation, picked up the towel and helped Vance out of the water. The boy’s name was Jesus. He was Cuban, as was most of the help at the Yale Club; however, being saved by Jesus did not cause Vance Tremaine to be born again. In fact, he had the temerity to show up in the lounge at seven-thirty, only to see Allison on the arm of a recent Yale graduate who looked like the cover boy of a Brooks Brothers catalogue.

  “I thought we had a date,” Vance protested.

  “Sorry, Vance, but you blew the cover on the mystery of the unknown,” Allison retorted.

  This amusing reverie was shattered by my ringing telephone. I checked the time on my desk clock; I have a policy against taking calls after midnight, especially if it might be bad news. Bad news can wait until morning. It was one minute before the witching hour, and, being a purist, I picked up and said, “Archy here.”

  “Archy? It’s Melva. Melva Williams.”

  “Melva? How nice to hear your lovely voice. I heard you were down for the season.”

  “Yes. A bit early, but I’m here.”

>   “How are you, Melva?”

  “As well as can be expected under the circumstances.”

  Now there was an opener if ever I heard one, and this poor fish nibbled at the bait. “What, Melva, are the circumstances?”

  “Geoffrey is dead.”

  I gave that the obligatory beat and then responded with the requisite condolence. “My God, I’m sorry. When? How?”

  “When?” Melva Williams said. “About a half hour ago. How? I shot him, that’s how.”

  I glanced at my desk clock. It was one minute after twelve.

  Well, the season had certainly started off with a bang!

  3

  I KNEW MOTHER WOULD have retired to the master suite, just as I knew mon père would be in his den, reading Dickens. If you are beginning to believe that Dickens is all the man reads, you would be correct. For as long as I can remember this has been his sole leisure pursuit, rendering my father either a very slow reader or one who has come full circle and is on his second, or perhaps third, time through. Whenever I lament my given name, Archibald, I also remember to count my blessings. I could have been christened Ebenezer McNally.

  “You’re still up,” my father stated after permitting me to enter.

  “Yes, sir. And on my way out.”

  “Trouble, Archy?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir. At the Williams manse.”

  “Melva Ashton Manning? They’re here?”

  The Ashtons and Mannings are New York’s version of Boston’s Cabots and Lodges, hence Father’s refusal to be amused by Melva’s second marriage to Geoffrey Williams, who, PBR has it, came into the world as Jeffrey Wolinsky. When Ted Manning was killed in a polo accident, Father would have liked Melva to remain a widow rather than marry beneath her. A latter-day Victorian, Father often refers to divorce as “an unfortunate separation,” not unlike a surgeon telling a patient, “Sorry, old chap, but I must unfortunately separate your right arm from your shoulder.”