I HAD THURSDAY CAREFULLY planned: things to do, people to see, questions to ask. And then my carefully crafted schedule just fell apart, and chance and accident took over again, with no help from me this time.
I was heading out to the garage after breakfast when the phone rang. I scampered back into the kitchen with a premonition that the day was not going to proceed as planned.
“The McNally residence,” I said.
“May I talk to Mr. Archibald McNally, please.”
A woman’s voice, deep and throaty. I had heard it before but couldn’t place it.
“Speaking,” I said. “Who is calling?”
“This is Mrs. Agnes Marsden.”
“Mrs. Marsden! How nice to hear from you. Sorry I didn’t recognize your voice. How are you?”
“Very well, thank you. Mr. McNally, are you coming over today?”
“I intend to,” I said, “but later this afternoon.”
“Could you come right away?” she said, almost pleading. “There’s something I should tell you, and I want to get it off my chest now. If I wait till this afternoon, I might change my mind again.”
“Don’t do that,” I said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Thank you, Mrs. Marsden.”
She opened the door of the Horowitz mansion while I had my hand raised to use that enormous brass knocker: the head of Bacchus surrounded by vine leaves. The housekeeper led me into the mammoth first-floor sitting room, and we occupied a corner as we had before. She sat stiffly upright, but her fingers were interlaced and gripped tightly.
“Young man,” she started, “can I trust you?”
“Of course you can,” I said, oozing sincerity. “Whatever you tell me is strictly confidential. It will go no farther, I promise you.”
“See that you keep your promise,” she said tartly. “I mentioned to you that I have seen strange goings-on that disturb me.”
I nodded.
“I have decided to tell you about them. They may mean nothing, and I hope they do. But a crime has been committed in this house, Mr. McNally, and something of great value has been stolen. Being black, I am naturally the one the police will suspect.”
“No, no,” I protested, infinitely saddened.
“Yes, yes,” she said ironically. “Don’t attempt to teach me the ways of the world, young man. So I have a personal reason for helping your investigation any way I can.”
“I appreciate that,” I said, “and I welcome it. But believe me, Mrs. Marsden, you are not a suspect and never have been.”
She ignored that, obviously not believing it. “First of all,” she said, “Gina Stanescu and Angus Wolfson have become very close. Closer than you might expect for two people who have known each other such a short time. I see them together frequently: taking walks, sitting on the terrace or in the game room. Once or twice she was crying, and he was comforting her.”
I nodded again, not wanting to interrupt her recital.
“That could be completely innocent,” she said. “A man and a woman getting close—nothing wrong about that. What is wrong is the way Wolfson has been carrying on with Ken Bodin, the chauffeur.”
I was surprised at Wolfson’s temerity, but not shocked. “Carrying on?” I said.
Her back became ramrod straight and she looked sternly at me. “People’s personal lives are their own. I don’t interfere, and I don’t expect them to interfere with me. But private things should be kept private. They can do anything they wish, but I don’t want to know about it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, Mrs. Marsden, I think I do.”
“That Mr. Wolfson just doesn’t care who sees what he’s doing or who hears what he’s saying to Kenneth. I don’t like it one bit.”
“And how does Kenneth take all this?”
She made a grimace. “That boy is a noodle,” she said. “Nothing between his ears. He just eats it up when Mr. Wolfson comes on to him. He grins and laughs and shows off his muscles.”
“I get the picture,” I said, and thought a moment. Then: “Do you think Wolfson is giving Kenneth money?”
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” the housekeeper said, stood suddenly, and smoothed the wrinkles from her bombazine dress.
I rose also. “Thank you for the information, Mrs. Marsden. It may be of help. One final question: Do you think Lady Horowitz has been acting oddly lately?”
She stared at me, face expressionless. “Oddly?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, driving off in the Jaguar by herself without telling anyone where she’s going.”
“No,” she said firmly, “I’ve noticed nothing like that.”
And she swept swiftly from the room, leaving me standing there with more unlinked pieces to add to my jigsaw puzzle.
I drove the Miata to the McNally Building on Royal Palm Way, foolishly believing I was going to get back to my planned schedule. I parked in the underground garage and strolled over to the glass-enclosed booth inhabited by Herb, our security guard. He’s a spindly, hipless bloke whose gunbelt always seems in danger of slipping down around his knees.
“Herb,” I said, “may I use your phone?”
“Sure thing, Mr. McNally,” he said. “It’s a scorcher out there today.”
“True,” I said. “It gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter. I don’t understand it.”
I called for a cab to come pick me up. While I waited, I chatted with Herb about tropical fish. According to what I had heard, his mobile home was wall-to-wall aquaria, and he liked nothing better than to debate the virtues of Black Tetras versus Mickey Mouse Platies. I am not an expert on tropicals, but I once owned a Zebra Danio named Irving. It died.
The cab finally showed up, and I asked the driver to take me to that car rental agency in West Palm Beach where I intended to pick up the black Ford Escort GTI had hired for tailing purposes. This was what I was thinking:
If I received a call from Consuela Garcia telling me that Lady Horowitz was going to take off alone in her Jaguar, destination unknown, I wanted my anonymous car closer than West Palm Beach. And I couldn’t park it in the McNally driveway or my father would be sure to ask me its purpose. And if I told him I had rented it so that I could follow McNally & Son’s wealthiest client without fear of detection, he would have had me committed.
I switched from cab to Escort and drove back to Royal Palm Way. I parked next to the Miata and told Herb I was going upstairs to get a windshield sticker issued to employees. All cars parked in our underground garage must have them or they get towed away. We had a small outside parking area for visitors and clients.
I asked Mrs. Trelawney for a numbered decal, and she wanted to know why I needed it since I already had one for the Miata. I told her it was for my new skateboard. She hooted one laugh and handed it over. I stopped at my office and found two telephone messages on my desk. One was from Sgt. Al Rogoff, the other from Hilda Lantern, the stamp dealer in Fort Lauderdale. Both asked me to call as soon as possible.
I phoned Hilda Lantern first. She sounded excited for such a dour woman and told me she had a report regarding the current market value of a block of four Inverted Jenny stamps, and thought it important that I be informed at once.
“That’s fine,” I said. “What is it?”
“Not on the phone,” she said sharply. “You better come here.”
I wasn’t about to argue with that dominative lady and assured her I’d be delighted to spend three hours driving to and from Fort Lauderdale to hear what she had to relate. I hung up and may have screamed, “Drat!” Or possibly some other four-letter word.
I stuffed Al Rogoff’s message in my jacket pocket, returned to the garage, and slapped the identification sticker onto the corner of the Escort’s windshield. Then I headed the rented car southward to Lauderdale, glumly reflecting that when R. Burns penned his aphorism regarding the best laid schemes o’ mice and men, he must have been referring to the Thursday schedule of A. McNally.
The drive south didn’t lift my mood. It was a hot day all right, but humid and cloudy. So instead of beaching, everyone in South Florida decided to go malling. Traffic was horrendous, and by the time I hit East Commercial Boulevard I was as cantankerous as Hilda Lantern and figured I could match her peeve for peeve.
But I found the lady in a dulcet mood. Of course that may have been due to the whopping bill she handed me for her labors to date on behalf of McNally & Son. The charges, she claimed, were for time spent and phone calls made to stamp dealers, trying to establish the current market price of a block of four Inverted Jenny stamps.
“None of them ever handled such a rarity,” she reported. “I couldn’t get any quotes.”
That was understandable. Asking the average stamp dealer what he would pay for an Inverted Jenny was akin to asking the average jeweler for a quote on the Star of India.
“But then,” she went on, “I got a return call from a dealer out on Powerline Road near Palm Aire. He said that early this morning, right after he opened, a woman showed up with a block of four Jennies and asked if he wanted to buy.”
I tried to conceal my rush. “Did she mention how much she wanted?”
“Half a million. He examined the stamps and told her they were too rich for his blood; he just couldn’t swing the deal.”
“How were the stamps presented? Mounted? In an envelope? Or what?”
“Between plastic sheets in a small red book,” Ms. Lantern said. “About the size of a daily diary.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “And did the dealer describe the would-be seller?”
Hilda delivered a short, scornful laugh. “Not your run-of-the-mill stamp collector,” she said. “A young blond woman wearing short-shorts and a halter top. I suppose she was what you men would call well-endowed.”
“I suppose,” I agreed. “Did the dealer happen to note the car she was using?”
“He didn’t mention it,” Lantern said, looking at me curiously. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering,” I said, naturally hoping it had been a lavender Volkswagen Beetle. “So she left with her stamps, and that was that?”
“Not quite,” she said almost triumphantly. “The block of four Inverted Jennies she tried to sell him were counterfeit.”
I clenched my teeth to keep the old jaw from drooping. “Counterfeit?”
She nodded.
“A forgery?”
“Absolutely. No doubt about it.”
“How could the dealer be so sure after such a brief inspection?”
“You know anything about the history of the Inverted Jennies?” she demanded.
“Some,” I said. “The original sheet of a hundred stamps was bought in 1918 at a Washington, D.C., post office by a broker’s clerk. He paid twenty-four dollars. About a week later he sold the sheet to a stamp dealer for fifteen thousand.”
“That’s right,” Lantern said. “And a week after that, the dealer sold the stamps to a collector for twenty thousand. But the collector kept only twenty of the stamps and gave the dealer permission to break up the remainder of the sheet into singles and blocks and sell them. When the dealer did that, he made light pencil marks on the back of each stamp, showing the name of the buyer. Practically all the Inverted Jennies in existence have those penciled notations on the back. If they don’t, the chances are good that they’re counterfeits. In this case, the Palm Aire dealer who called me said there were no marks on the backs of the stamps. And when he examined the face with a magnifying glass, the printing appeared slightly fuzzy and the inverted biplane in the center was slightly off register. Also, the number of perforations along the edges of each stamp was one less than the government printing office uses. Those stamps were definitely fakes.”
I drew a deep breath. “Did the dealer tell that to the woman who was trying to sell them?”
“No. He didn’t want to get involved. He just told her that he couldn’t afford them and got her out of his shop as quickly as possible.”
“That was probably the smart thing to do,” I said. “Well, I don’t think we can use the asked-for price of forged stamps as a benchmark for our deceased client’s block of four, but I certainly appreciate the information. Will you continue your inquiries, please.”
“If you want me to,” she said. “When can I expect payment?”
“You’ll have a check within a week,” I promised. “Or I can pay now by credit card if you’d prefer.”
“I’ll wait for the check,” she said, and we parted with a firm handshake.
I drove back to Delray Beach as speedily as traffic and the law allowed. Of course you know what I was thinking: In all of South Florida there couldn’t be more than one blond young woman, wearing short-shorts and halter top (and “well-endowed”), trying to peddle a block of four Inverted Jenny stamps. And those placed between plastic sheets in a small red book. Tallyho!
I entered Hammerhead’s Bar & Grill and looked about for Sylvia. Not present, which pleased me. I stood at the Formica bar and ordered a beer from a T-shirted bartender who appeared to be in the full flower of middle-aged louthood.
“Sylvia around?” I asked casually.
“Nah,” he said. “It’s her day off.”
“Oh,” I said, “I didn’t know. Maybe I’ll try her at home.”
“Won’t do you no good,” he said with a louche laugh. “It’s her boyfriend’s day off, too. They was going to drive down to the Keys.”
“Thank you very much,” I said, and meant it.
I finished my beer, left a tip large enough to shock the publican, and headed for the hurricane-shutter emporium where Thomas Bingham was employed. Now if it was also his day off, my happiness would be complete.
My motive was contemptible; I admit it. I wanted desperately to involve Bingham in the snatch of Lady Cynthia’s stamps and the subsequent murder of Bela Rubik. My excuse was simply that I was smitten by Jennifer Towley. I had felt similar emotions about other women—similar but far less intense. Then it had been mostly a matter of testosterone. Now it was a matter of heart. I wanted that cool, elegant woman for my very own, and the ex-husband represented a threat to my felicity.
Not a very noble reason for hounding a man, is it? But I make no claims to nobility. After all, my grandfather was an expert at pratfalls.
My luck foundered with Tom Bingham. He was in the store, and when I asked for him, he came forward smiling.
“Yes, sir,” he said, “what can I do for you?”
Vanish, I wanted to say, but didn’t.
“Mr. Bingham,” I said, “I’m from out of town, but I’m staying with a friend in Boca. He’s got a condo in a high-rise and wants to get hurricane shutters. He asked me to find someone who could do the job.”
“And how did you get on to me?” he asked, still smiling.
“I was having a drink at Hammerhead’s,” I said, “and Sylvia suggested I contact you.”
“Good for Sylvia,” he said. “She’s great people, isn’t she?”
“She certainly is.”
“I party with her and her boyfriend,” he went on in the most open and honest way imaginable. “We have a lot of laughs together. Would you like me to come to your friend’s condo and give you an estimate? No charge.”
“The problem is that he works during the day,” I explained, “and I’m about ready to head up north. Could you possibly come out in the evening?”
“Of course,” he said promptly. “Anytime. And that includes Saturday or Sunday. Whatever’s convenient for him.”
Connie Garcia had been right; he was a pleasant man, not terribly handsome but with more than his share of easy charm. I could understand why he was a dynamite salesman; he gave the impression that satisfying your every wish was his foremost priority. There was something almost puppyish in his desire to please.
“Suppose I have my friend give you a call,” I said. “Then the two of you can set up a time.”
“Sounds good to me,” he said, and I wondered if he slept with that genial smile.
“Thank you, Mr. Bingham,” I said, started to leave, then turned back. “Oh, by the way,” I said, “is there any place nearby where I can buy lottery tickets?”
The smile expanded. “You play the lottery, do you?”
I nodded. “Since I’ve been in Florida I’ve been hooked.”
“Me, too,” he said cheerfully. “Totally addicted. I play Lotto, Fantasy Five, the scratch-offs—everything. It keeps me poor. Sure, there’s a liquor store on the corner that has a computer. They’ll sell you as many tickets as you want. As they say in the commercials, ‘You never know.’”
“That’s right,” I agreed. “Hit once and you’re set for life.”
“Now you’re singing my song,” he said, and I left him with his smile intact.
I still wasn’t ready to forget his complicity in the Horowitz heist. If playing the lottery kept him poor, he could be in as deep as Kenneth Bodin and Sylvia, and the two men had elected the woman to try to sell the swag. But one thing I definitely knew to be true: Thomas Bingham hadn’t been cured of his compulsion to gamble by those years he had spent in the slammer.
I pondered these things on my homeward drive. I decided the biggest puzzle was this: What on earth did Jennifer Towley, a lady of taste and discernment, see in this guy? There was nothing exceptional about him that I could spot. He was a loser, a salesman of plumbing supplies and hurricane shutters, an ex-convict with a monkey on his back. But Jennifer had married him, sent him birthday cards in prison, taken his phone calls after his release, met him for lunch. She was demeaning herself and I couldn’t compute it.
Does that make me an elitist snob? I guess so.
I drove directly to the Pelican Club. It was then about three-thirty, and the place was deserted except for Simon Pettibone behind the bar. He was reading The Wall Street Journal through his B. Franklin specs. I waved to him, went to the public phone, and called Sgt. Al Rogoff.
“So nice to hear from you,” he said. “Have you had a pleasant day? A tennis match perhaps? A chukker of polo?”
“Oh, shut up,” I said. “I think you and I better get together and have a talk.”
“No kidding?” he said. “What a brilliant idea. Where are you now?”
“In the bar of the Pelican Club.”
“I should have known. Can you stay sober for a half-hour until I get there?”
“I never drink to excess,” I said stiffly.
“Now you are kidding. If I ever need a liver transplant, with my luck I’ll get yours. Wait for me.”
I returned to the bar and swung onto a stool. “Mr. Pettibone,” I said, “you have a few years on me and infinitely more wisdom. Tell me, what do you do when life threatens to overwhelm and problems become too heavy to be borne?”
He thought a moment, peering at me over his square glasses. “I usually kick my cat, Mr. McNally,” he said.
“Good suggestion,” I said. “I must purchase a cat. Meanwhile I’ll have a wee bit of the old nasty in the form of an Absolut on the rocks, splash of water, chunk of lime. And if I attempt to order a refill, I want you to eighty-six me. An officer of the law has just cast aspersions on my liver.”
I carried my drink over to a booth and nursed it until Sgt. Rogoff came stalking in. He looked around, saw me, and came lumbering. He slid in opposite me and stared stonily.
“What are you drinking?” I asked.
“Hemlock,” he said. “I know you’re not totally to blame, but every time you drop something on my plate I start thinking about early retirement. You know how I spent yesterday?”
“Haven’t the slightest.”
“Checking out the whereabouts of Doris and Harry Smythe at the time Rubik was iced. They claimed they left Meecham’s yacht and went to Testa’s for what Harry called ‘a spot of lunch.’ Bushwa! No one at Testa’s remembered them. So I went back to the Smythes, and they finally admitted they had lunch at a Pizza Hut. So I checked on that, and the people at the Pizza Hut remembered them all right. You know why?”
“They left a nickel tip?”
“That, too. But mostly they were remembered because they asked for two plastic glasses and uncorked a bottle of champagne they had brought along. Archy, can you believe this insanity?”
“Easily,” I said, laughing. “They swiped the bubbly from Meecham’s yacht. So you figure they’re cleared?”
“Looks like it.”
“Al, have you started checking out Gina Stanescu and Angus Wolfson?”
“Not yet. You believe Wolfson’s story?”
“Not completely,” I said. “He flared up when I started to ask questions. There really was no need for it if he was totally innocent. But maybe he was just being crotchety. I think the man is sick.”
“Sick?”
“Ill. He seems to be in pain. Get out your notebook, Al; I have more for you.”
While I had waited for him, sipping my vodka daintily, I had decided how much to tell him. Everything about Hilda Lantern, Kenneth Bodin and Sylvia, but nothing about Thomas Bingham. That’s all Rogoff would have to hear: an ex-con possibly implicated in crimes under investigation. He’d have zeroed in on Bingham like a gundog on point. And I didn’t want Jennifer Towley involved in any manner whatsoever.
When I completed my recital, Al looked at me thoughtfully. “What made you go to the stamp dealer in Lauderdale?”
I pondered my answer carefully. I really needed the sergeant’s cooperation and didn’t want to stiff him or send him sniffing along false trails. But there were things I didn’t wish to reveal at this stage of the investigation. My reasons will, I trust, become apparent later.
“Take your time,” Al said, peeling the cellophane from a cigar. “Meditate. Cogitate. Consider all the permutations and combinations. And what about your karma? I can wait.”
“Look,” I said, hunching forward, “when I hired Rubik I fed him a farrago. I told him my firm was handling an estate that included Inverted Jenny stamps, and we wanted to establish an evaluation. I asked Rubik to make inquiries and see if he could determine the current price. That’s what I told him. What I hoped was that he’d discover a block of Inverted Jennies had recently come on the market. You follow?”
“Way ahead of you,” Rogoff said, lighting his cigar. “You figured the thief would try to unload as soon as possible. Right?”
“Right. And Rubik obviously discovered something of importance but was killed before he could pass it along to me. So I decided that if Rubik could get the information, another stamp dealer might be able to do the same thing. I just happened to pick Hilda Lantern’s name out of the Yellow Pages, and she came through. How do you like that bit about the stamps being counterfeit?”
“Love it,” Al said. “You think that was the important information Bela Rubik uncovered and wanted to tell you before he was iced?”
“Possibly,” I said.
Rogoff thought a moment, then puffed a plume of blue smoke over my head. “That Palm Aire dealer who examined the stamps—do you think he told Bodin’s girlfriend they were fakes?”
“Hilda Lantern said he didn’t.”
“That means the villains still believe they’re holding loot worth half a million. I think what I better do is contact every stamp dealer from Miami to Fort Pierce and tell them to stall anyone who comes in and tries to sell a block of Inverted Jennies. They can say they need a day or two to raise the cash. Then the dealer can give me a panic call, and I’ll have someone in the store and the place staked out when the crook returns. How does that sound?”
“It’s got to be done,” I agreed. “It’s a big job, but it’s doable. I think you’ll nab Bodin and Sylvia, but that’s my opinion—not something you can take to the SA. The only way you’re going to make a case is to pinch the thieves in the act of trying to sell. The fact that the stamps are fakes doesn’t change things; they’re still stolen property.”
“Yeah,” Al said, sighing, “all that work for itty-bitty pieces of worthless paper. Well, I better get back to the palace and start the wheels turning.”
“Just two more short items,” I said. “I struck out with Lady Horowitz. She just won’t tell me where she was when Bela Rubik was killed. And she refuses to let you take a look at her last will and testament. But my father said I could tell you that there’s nothing in that document that could have any possible effect on your investigation.”
“How does he know?” the sergeant said bitterly. “He’s no cop.”
“True,” I said, “but he’s no simp either. And he’s also a man of probity with a high regard for the law. Believe me, Al, if there was anything at all in the will that would help solve a theft and a homicide, he’d reveal it even if it meant breaching client-attorney confidentiality. My father’s morals are stratospheric. Sometimes I think he’s training to take over God’s job in case He resigns.”
Rogoff laughed, flipped a hand at me, and strutted out, chewing on his cigar. I went back to the bar and slid my empty glass toward Mr. Pettibone.
“Another, please,” I said.
“You told me to cut you off,” he reminded me.
“I lied,” I said.
But the second was a sufficiency. Florida police are rough on even slightly tipsy drivers, and I had no desire to get racked up on a DUI charge. I drove the Escort back to the McNally Building at a sedate pace, switched to the Miata, and continued my homeward journey.
I had time for an abbreviated ocean swim and arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the family cocktail hour. I dined with my parents that night and made a mindless jape about feeling exactly like our entree—soft-shelled crabs. Mother and father smiled politely.
I retired to my suite and scribbled furiously in my journal until I had recorded everything that had happened, including my last conversation with Rogoff. Then I phoned Jennifer Towley and was happy to find her at home.
“I miss you,” I told her.
“And I miss you, too,” she replied. Divine female!
“Good,” I said. “Then how about lunch tomorrow?”
“Oh Archy, I’d love to,” she said, “but I just can’t. I’ve got to get caught up on my bookkeeping: billing, clients’ accounts, my own checkbook, and nonsense like that. I simply must spend the day at it.”
Suspicion flared, and I wondered if she was actually meeting her ex-husband for lunch.
“You’ve got to take a break in your accounting chores,” I said. “Why don’t I pick up some edible takeout food and show up at your place around noon. We can have a nosh together, and then I’ll take off and leave you to your ledgers.”
“Marvelous idea,” she said at once. “Absolute genius.”
“I thought so,” I said with a considerably leavened heart. “See you at noon tomorrow. Sleep well, dear.”
“You, too,” she said, then added faintly, “darling.”
I hung up delighted with her response and mortified at my initial jealous reaction. I must, I thought, learn to trust this woman who had invaded my right and left ventricles. It was not yet a Grand Passion but, like my mother’s begonias, my love needed only TLC to flower.
I idly flipped the pages of my journal, resolutely turning my thoughts back to the theft of the Inverted Jennies. I set to work brooding, an activity aided by a very small tot of marc and the haunting wails of a Billie Holiday tape.
Maybe, I acknowledged, Sgt. Al was right after all, and I did have a taste for complexity. Because I found I could not really believe that this whole foo-faraw was simply a case of a lamebrained and resentful chauffeur stealing from his employer. I didn’t want to believe that, perhaps because it reduced the entire investigation to banality and my own role to that of an office manager catching a junior clerk swiping paper clips.
But it wasn’t complexity I favored so much, I finally decided, as intrigue and the convolutions of human hungers. I wished the Case of the Inverted Jennies to hold hidden surprises, unexpected revelations, and a startling denouement.
I should have remembered what Aesop once told me:
“We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.”