“No. Just an interested citizen.”
Al again removed the stogie from his mouth, shrugged, and explained,
“Bianca worked for a rich broad who married a guy twenty years her junior and drowned a few months after the marriage. Bianca thinks the guy did her in.”
“What do the police think?”
“Granted, the circumstances looked a little queer, but we checked it out and ruled it an accident. When she moved in next door and learned I was a cop she started hounding me to reopen the case.”
“On what grounds?” I questioned.
“Female intuition,” Al barked. “There’s no reason to reopen the case because there never was a case to begin with.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Motive,” Al stated. “The guy had no reason to murder his bride unless you think having twenty years on him was just cause.”
I was beginning to enjoy this. There is nothing like a little bit of intrigue to stir the creative juices. I wondered if I could interest Sabrina Wright in this plot with a few variations, to be sure. The young He would become a young She and the old She would become an old He. But I had the feeling the new transgender heroine would not end up with her heart’s desire, namely, the spoils of marriage to the old and the wealthy. And I was right.
“He doesn’t benefit from her will?” I guessed.
“You got it. She made a will leaving everything, which is plenty, to the children’s wing of St. Mary’s hospital and didn’t change it after her marriage. He gets to keep the Jag she gave him for a wedding present.”
“So what’s Bianca’s gripe?”
“Revenge, that’s what. The marriage cost her a cushy job. Companion to the rich dame. Nice digs, three squares a day, and a regular paycheck every week. She rented the trailer when her lady boss got herself a new companion of the opposite sex.”
As interested as I was in Bianca Courtney’s plight, I was more interested in escaping the Palm before Al began to wonder what we were doing there if not to speak with his neighbor. If I wanted to hear more I could always invite Al to lunch at the Pelican and get him to talk while he devoured a hamburger, fries, and Bass ale, at my expense.
“Well, I.. ” Binky began before I nudged him toward the car and away from Al Rogoff.
“Good seeing you, Al.” I cut Binky off. “Call me and we’ll get together for lunch.”
Poor Binky was bursting to tell his news but with a gentle pressure on his arm, I kept increasing the distance between him and Al Rogoff.
“See you,” Al said, hoisting his garbage bag and heading for the disposal area.
Just as we got the car doors opened I heard Al shout, “Hermioni Rutherford? She’s with the real estate outfit that runs this place.”
I waved at Al and tried to get into the car, but it was too late. He retraced his steps, garbage and all, demanding to know why we were talking to Hermioni Rutherford.
The moment of truth had arrived and there was no place to hide. “Binky has taken a lease on this trailer,” I said. “Number eleven-seventy, just like the Bath and Tennis.”
“Oh no,” Al moaned.
“Love thy neighbor as thyself,” I reminded Al before he vented his wrath.
“Yes,” Binky agreed, thinking no doubt of Bianca Courtney.
With Binky safely in the car I walked up to Al and whispered, “There are worse things in life than having Binky Watrous for a neighbor.”
“Name two,” Al challenged, waving the shopworn stogie in my face.
Looking at my watch I said I didn’t have time at the moment but would think of a few, perhaps even three, before hell froze over. Moving purposefully past me and coming up to the car window, Al looked in and advised Binky, “We have a rule around here, buddy. Don’t come knocking when the trailer is rocking.”
Exit Al Rogoff, and not a moment too soon.
As he drove out of the Palm Court, Binky wondered aloud, “Don’t come knocking when the trailer is rocking? What do you suppose that means, Archy?”
“For someone so eager to cohabit ate Binky, you have a lot to learn.”
“I’m not a virgin, Archy.”
Give unto me a break.
The McNally clan meets every evening at seven for cocktails in Father’s den where he mixes our martinis in a perfect silver shaker filled with perfect little ice cubes, pouring the result into perfect baccarat crystal glasses and garnished with perfect green olives. The only thing not perfect is the brew itself, thanks to the seigneur’s heavy hand with the vermouth. In this, as in all things, father is consistent when he measures out the ingredients including, so help me, the exact number of ice cubes.
Topics of conversation at this family gathering are limited to who did what that day. If I’m on a case, I will give Father a progress report.
He, in turn, will nod his approval or vocalize his disapproval after which he will keep us abreast of the antics of his more prestigious clients or drop a few of the names he rubbed shoulders with at last season’s Glitz at the Ritz Ball.
Mother, if she’s had a letter from my sister, Dora, in Arizona, will report on the family there with emphasis on the grandchildren, Rebecca, Rowena, and my godson, little Darcy. Or, after hearing a guest speaker at the C.A.S. (Current Affairs Society) she will tell us, in detail, what the lecturer had to impart. Mother joined the group out of concern for the ozone layer without quite knowing what ozone is.
I recall one guest speaker, a Ms Glynis Ives, self-proclaimed authority on the British royal family,
reporting that when King George VI and his queen, Elizabeth, visited the United States in 1939, they brought with them gallons of British water to be used for brewing their tea and had insisted on hot-water bottles for their beds in Washington, D.C.” in the springtime.
What this has to do with current affairs I do not know, nor would I dream of asking. But I record such information in my journal under the heading “Incidental Intelligence.”
As you can see, we lead a privileged lifestyle due not to my father’s flourishing law practice but to the man who greased the way to father’s success — his sire, Freddy McNally. Freddy was a bulb-nosed, prat falling burlesque comic on the Minsky circuit who worked with such headliners as the exotic dancer Trixie Forganza and Her Little Bag of Tricks. Grandpa Freddy invested not in the stock market but, on his many visits to Florida in the Roaring Twenties, put his money into Gold Coast real estate at a dime an acre. When Wall Street laid that egg, Freddy’s act soared.
While father is not ungrateful for Freddy’s foresight, he is not exactly joyous over Freddy’s chosen profession. The lord of the manor would prefer to have it believed that the McNally dynasty began with him and, based on my expectations, will no doubt end with him.
With two-thirds of the family not at home, our household was a microcosm of Palm Beach in the summer months when the population drops to nine thousand, from a winter high reputed to be close to thirty thousand. Since the pater and mater had gone to sea I had been taking my evening libation at the Pelican where the bar is presided over by Mr. Simon Pettibone, the club’s general manager, factotum, and, on numerous occasions, father confessor.
Simon Pettibone is a dignified African-American who, along with his wife and children, keeps the Pelican in tip-top shape and solvent, and accounts for the length of our membership waiting list. At this early hour I was Mr. Pettibone’s only customer. Priscilla Pettibone, Simon’s beautiful and sassy daughter, was busy setting tables in the bar and dining room and the Pettibone son, Leroy, who wears the toque blanche, was in the kitchen whipping up delights, This left Mrs.
Pettibone, our den mother, who I assumed was upstairs in their apartment over the shop getting dolled up to greet the evening diners.
Simon was watching the television screen showing a running tape of the day’s stock quotations.
Are we up or down?” I asked Mr. Pettibone.
“Sideways, Archy,” he answered. Simon Pettibone was also something of a Wall Street guru, whose tips were
