“Not to mention Sabrina,” Silvester wisely stated.
“Sabrina has nothing to do with this,” Ward said with a belligerent edge to his delivery.
“I beg your pardon, Zack,” Silvester addressed the bespectacled young man, ‘but Sabrina has everything to do with this. She made a bargain and she intends to keep it. Why can’t you respect her position?”
This verbal salvo had obviously passed among the trio ad nauseam since Silvester had caught up with the pair. I felt like what I was, an outsider trapped in the inside of a family feud. “May I say something?” I cut in before the furniture began to take wing.
“Please, Mr. McNally,” Gillian Wright said in earnest. “I would value your opinion.”
“You do me a great honor, but I don’t know the solution to your problem. What I do know is that if your father wanted to establish contact with you he would have done so a long time ago, and is still very capable of doing so if he wishes. Your mother is a famous woman.
He wouldn’t have to hire Archy McNally to find you.”
“We thought of that.. ” Ward began, but Gillian cut him off.
“Let me tell it, Zack,” she insisted. “It takes two to make a bargain, Mr. McNally, and two to uphold it. Maybe my father is as reluctant to go back on his word as my mother is and for the same reason. Each thinking the other wants to stick to the agreement.
“He may even think my mother never told me the truth, as she hadn’t until a few weeks ago, and felt he had no right to do so if she desired not to. Or, if she had, that I have no desire to know him. You see how many variables there are in this situation? I don’t think we can assume anything. All I want is to meet with my father privately, without causing harm to any concerned, and if he refuses to acknowledge me I will accept that and walk away without sorrow or malice. That I swear to you.”
I wanted to applaud, but felt it would undermine her sincerity. “You don’t have to swear anything to me, Ms Wright. I’m not an interested party.” Thank God, I thought to myself.
“Then you won’t help?” she said, clearly struggling to hold back tears.
“You have to appreciate my position,” I lectured. “Your mother is my client and she is vehemently opposed to what you’re doing. Even if I were so inclined, I can’t take your case. It would be a conflict of interest on par with a divorce lawyer representing both husband and wife.”
“You told me earlier the case was through,” Silvester noted. I wondered whose side he was on.
“It is,” I said. “With regards to all of you, I’m afraid.” Softening my tone I went on, Take my advice, Ms Wright, or Jill, if I may: Run off with your beau and give “happily ever after” a try. It’s worked for others.”
“I’m not going to give up looking for my father, Mr. McNally.”
“That may prove a very foolish decision, young lady, and a very dangerous one.” And with that, I took my leave.
Seven
Herb flagged me from his kiosk as I pulled into our underground garage.
When I reached his post he was standing by the door displaying a shiny chrome object with the lid open that might have been a relic from the Spanish Inquisition.
“How do you like it?” He asked.
“I would hate to get my foot caught in it,” I assured him. “What are you trapping?”
“Trapping?” he cried. “I’m not trapping anything. It’s a waffle iron.”
I’m a pancake man myself, but not wishing to offend I said, “Whatever turns you on, Herb.”
“It’s not for me, Archy. I bought it for Binky’s housewarming.”
Words failed me. This was clearly getting out of hand. If everyone in the McNally Building bought Binky a gift he could open a Circuit City.
“Did Mrs. Trelawney suggest the waffle iron?”
“She did,” he answered.
“Rather pushy, don’t you think?”
“You have to admit, Archy, it’s better than having to decide for yourself. I would have bought him a bottle of hooch.”
“Well, you should have. Binky won’t know what to do with that contraption.”
“It comes with an instruction book,” herb said as if he represented the waffle-iron industry.
“Binky Watrous can’t read,” I declared disparagingly.
“Then how does he deliver the mail?”
“Pneumatic tubing, that’s how.”
Herb scratched his head and grunted, “Sometimes, Archy, I don’t get your drift.”
“Sometimes, Herb, neither do I.”
In my office I found a message telling me that Connie had called.
Sandwiched between the afternoon mail I also found a consumer guide magazine opened to the page rating microwave ovens. I dropped it in my wastebasket.
Before calling Connie, I asked our switchboard to connect me with the Chesterfield. The desk clerk told me that Ms Wright was no longer in residence. True to his word, Silvester must have called his wife as soon as I left The Breakers, and Sabrina had lost no time in joining her family. By now mother and daughter would be locking horns, with Silvester and Ward acting as intermediaries when they weren’t tossing a few stink bombs of their own into the melee. And people wonder why I refuse to get spliced.
In retrospect, I had no regrets terminating the case and my association with Sabrina Wright. Her lure was sirenic, and best enjoyed from a safe distance. Get too close and you’re caught in the undertow. She was a survivor, for which I admired her, but in rough seas survivors toss cargo and crew overboard to lighten the load. That’s how they survive. Silvester had given me the answers to the questions that had been bothering me. How Sabrina had gotten my name and the reason for the covert meeting at a pub in West Palm. Having met Gillian and Zack I was convinced that they did not make the call to Lolly Spindrift and stuck to the premise that the leak had come from the hotel. True, the evidence was circumstantial, but men have been known to hang on less convincing evidence. Silvester had also filled me in on why he had arrived in Palm Beach without his wife and why he tried to keep Sabrina at bay while he talked to his stepdaughter. The pieces all seemed to fit, but as I cogitated over the events of the last two days I wasn’t satisfied with the picture that emerged. There was something missing.
Was it something I had forgotten to ask? If so, what it was kept eluding me. I knew it would surface when least expected but, as the case was no longer on my docket, there was no urgency. Final thoughts on “The Man That Got Away’: What was Gillian’s father thinking at this moment and what wouldn’t I give to know his name? Also, what wouldn’t I give not to have to tell Lolly Spindrift his interview with Sabrina Wright was caput?
When I got Connie on the line, she said she had called to see if I was still among the living. It’s Connie’s way of asking for a date. I invited her to join me for a cocktail at the Pelican after work. That’s my way of accepting.
“I was there this afternoon, hoping to see you and buy you lunch,” she said.
This was just the thing I had cautioned against when the Pelican board members decided to make the club coed. At Yale the rash move manifested itself in the fact that one now had to wear trunks in the swimming pool. If Connie had been planning to stand me lunch what could I do but say, “Let’s make it a night and have dinner.”
“Why, Archy, what a nice idea,” she said and rang off.
When my phone rang moments later, I thought it might be Connie calling to say she just remembered she was meeting a girlfriend that evening and could she have a rain check? I would pout, beg her to cancel, and issue a rain check good for a year and a day from the date noted above.
Imagine my surprise when our switchboard person announced that Mr.
Thomas Appleton was on the line, waiting to speak to me.
Are you sure he doesn’t want my father, Milly?”
“No, Archy. He asked for Mr. Archy McNally.”
“Put him on,” I said, not without a flutter of apprehension.
