“Did you meet with her last week?”
“Yes, and she was a perfect bitch. She told me not to worry and to bug off, thank you. She said she would take care of her daughter.”
“But someone took care of her instead, didn’t they?”
“I tell you, it wasn’t me.” He kept a stealthy eye on the tourists.
“Have the police questioned you?”
“Not yet, but I got a call today to contact them.”
“And what will you tell them?”
Each time I met with these three guys was like being in a hit show on Broadway. One had to play the same scene again and again. Thirty years ago Sabrina must have felt the same way, but being the star she had been well paid for her trouble. “I’m going to tell them what I know. I have no choice.”
He was practically doing a tap dance on Seaspray Avenue. “You do have a choice. I spoke to you in confidence and you have no right to betray that trust.”
A woman has been brutally slain and I have every right to tell the police what I know.”
“When you saw me at Troy’s gathering you pretended not to know me. Why can’t we keep it that way?”
“I just told you,” I said, ‘there’s been a murder and that changes everything.”
“And why did Harry want to see you? I find it very strange that a few days after our meeting, you get a call from Harry.”
“I find it very strange that a man who has nothing to hide is afraid of being questioned by the police.”
The tourists went back in their cars, leaving Tom Appleton and me alone on the street. He was biting his lower lip so hard I thought it would bleed. “Damn it, I do have something to hide, but not what you think.
“I didn’t want to do this,” he ranted, ‘but I see I have to. I went to New York for the weekend and stayed with a friend. I got back this morning. I took a commercial line and the stewardess will vouch for me. I’m a regular commuter. Then we have the doorman at the apartment building where I was a guest and the staff at Le Cirque where I dined Saturday night. For reasons which are none of your business, I do not wish to implicate my New York friend in this mess. You can go to the police and tell them I’m Gillian Wright’s father and then you can go to the devil.”
Well, ain’t that a boot in the buttocks?
Twenty-Four
That either Dick Cranston or Tom Appleton had employed a hired gun to do the job for them was too insane to be worth a precious moment of my time. Only the one who was to meet Sabrina that night knew where to find her and both Cranston and Appleton had scheduled other appointments which they had both dutifully kept. That left Harry-come-lately. The guy who was up north when Sabrina hit town, they guy who was the last to meet with Sabrina, and the guy who had nothing to lose by committing murder.
Harry Schuyler was also the only one not eager to confer face-to-face with Archy this morning. What was he waiting for?
After being told where to go by Tom Appleton, I heeded him not and went to The Breakers instead. The television vans and their crews were being kept a good distance from the exclusive grounds. Their presence told me that Silvester and Gillian had not left the compound. The reporters on the grounds and in the lobby tried to look like paying customers and failed miserably. The hacks from New York were in dark suits and their colleagues from California sported designer jeans and polo shirts emblazoned with a variety of circus animals.
I marched up to the desk and asked them to ring Robert Silvester’s room.
“Sorry, sir. Mr. Silvester is not taking calls or seeing visitors.”
“If you ring him and say Archy McNally wants to see him, I think he will acquiesce.”
The clerk started and gave me the wide eye. “Mr. McNally? Yes, sir.
I’ll ring Mr. Silvester’s suite.”
There were times, like now, when a mention in Lolly’s column went a long way in awing restaurateurs and hotel clerks. Unfortunately for Sabrina Wright, Lolly’s glib notice was the prelude to the end of her life. Either way it was a chilling indication of the power of the press. The clerk told me Mr. Silvester would see me and gave me the suite number, which I already knew. With a thank-you, I headed for the elevators.
They were all there Silvester, Gillian, and Zack Ward exhibiting signs of repressed hysteria aggravated by a good dose of cabin fever.
Silvester looked angry, Gillian looked as if she had been crying, and Zack Ward stood slightly apart from the pair looking as embarrassed as a stranger who had intruded upon a family squabble. Gillian was done up in a rather smart beige linen suit featuring a knee-length skirt and a mock turtleneck in white knit. Her hair had been cut short and shaped like a snug cap about her head. Could she have been made over by Virginia Cranston’s hair stylist? If so, he had made her look remarkably like her mother.
“I’m glad you’re here, Mr. McNally,” Silvester said. “I’ve been calling your office all morning.”
“I’ve been out,” I answered, then quickly added, “My sympathies to both of you.”
“Thank you,” Silvester said.
“My father didn’t do it, Mr. McNally!” Gillian cried.
Out of patience, Silvester reproached her. “Let’s discuss this with Mr. McNally like rational people.”
“We have been discussing it for two days and my answer is still no,”
the girl ranted. Ward went to her and took her hand.
Ignoring them, Silvester turned to me, “Have you spoken to the police?”
“No. I wanted to speak to you and Ms Wright before I saw them.”
“Thank you, and we wanted to talk to you,” Silvester said. “We have to report to the police station in an hour and we’ll have to face the press before we do and make a statement’ Here he glared at Zack Ward
‘although some of us have already been talking to the press… ad nauseam.”
“It’s my job,” Ward said, not concealing his defiance. “And all I’ve reported are the known facts. I haven’t told them anything else.”
“You’ve told them you’re on the inside,” Silvester charged, ‘holding the distressed daughter’s hand, when not even the man from the New York Times has been able to get near her.”
“But he didn’t tell them my father did it,” Gillian said, ‘as you want to do.”
It was clear this screaming match had been going on since the murder, and the bone of contention was becoming clearer with each salvo.
Joining Cranston and Appleton, Silvester asked me, “What are you going to tell the police, Mr. McNally?”
“The truth, and nothing but.”
“No,” Gillian screamed. “No, no, no.”
“Jill, shut up and listen to reason,” Silvester all but shouted. “We, and Mr. McNally, have no choice. We must tell them the truth.”
Gillian reprised her mantra. “My father didn’t do it.”
Playing the arbitrator, I offered, “If you would all calm down a moment, maybe we can work this out to everyone’s satisfaction,” It was pure swagger, but it did get their attention. “Rob, why don’t you tell me what’s been happening here this past week. I mean what was Sabrina doing we all know what Jill and Zack were up to.”
Silvester told me in detail that Sabrina was nervous, edgy, and short-tempered with all of them since they had settled into The Breakers. She pleaded with Gillian to give up her search and return to New York. She promised Ward an exclusive for his rag if he could talk Gillian into returning home.
“She saw Gillian’s father three times,” Silvester said.
“You’re just guessing,” Gillian interrupted.
“One at a time,” I reminded the girl. To Silvester, I said, “An informant told me that you told the police Sabrina went driving at night for creative inspiration.”
“When they found her, I got the call,” Silvester started to explain. “I went to the station house and Jill stayed here with Zack. They asked me what Sabrina was doing out alone at that hour and I didn’t want to tell them until I
