Lawrence Sanders - McNally's chance

was hoisted on rollers and pulled with cables along the beach and into the ocean, where they were mounted on barges for the short trip north, where the process was reversed and the house put back together on its new lot. Watching the house come ashore was last winter’s most popular spectator sport. In these parts, the gesture has become the standard by which all devoted fathers will be judged.

Sofia Richmond called before I left my office. “I hear you lost a client,” was her opener.

“You win some and you lose some. What do you hear?”

“It would be easier to tell you what I haven’t heard. Sabrina was after one of our elite. Her daughter was doing the legwork and pretending to be looking for her natural mother. Sabrina is her natural mother and the girl’s father is Prince Philip, Porfirio Rubirosa (remember him?), and Frank Sinatra.”

“All three?” I exclaimed.

“No, Archy. One must choose. I understand the ladies who lunch have gotten up a pool.”

And who are you putting your money on?”

Archy McNally, of course. I’m betting he knows all the answers.”

Smart lady, my Sofia. Very smart. “Put a fiver on Porfirio, Sofia, they say he had…”

“Careful, Archy, this call may be monitored for quality purposes. Did you see Lolly’s obit this morning? He links her with every big name in pants, including you.”

“Me?” I would kill Lolly Spindrift.

‘ “When Sabrina Wright arrived in Palm. Beach just a week ago, the first person she contacted was our own most eligible bachelor, and my dear friend, Archy McNally. Stay tuned to these pages for all the latest developments on the popular author’s murder,” unquote.”

The little twerp. Implying that I was going to tell all for him to pass on to his readers. “Wishful thinking,” I said aloud.

“I thought so,” Sofia said. “How much can you tell me?”

Today, nothing. Tomorrow, the world. Now I have to go, Sofia. I’ll catch you later.”

“That’s the story of my life,” she sighed audibly. Take care, Archy.

Someone out there didn’t like Sabrina and Lolly has made you her confidant.”

I wanted to tell her that everyone had made me their confidant and Lolly had nothing to do with it. I rang off with a promise of taking her to lunch before the week was out.

As predicted, there were a few cars parked near the newly planted stucco and tile Mizner dream cottage. I saw Appleton get out of his BMW convertible and after parking, joined him on the street. Given the venue, it was a perfectly natural place to congregate and chat. Thomas Appleton, however, was anything but natural, unless hysteria is your bag.

“What the hell happened?” he stage whispered as I approached.

We were far enough from the two couples who had stopped to see what the tide had dragged in to speak without being heard. “Someone murdered Sabrina, that’s what happened. Any ideas who did it?”

His Santa jowls glowed. “If you think I did, forget it. It must have been a lunatic.”

“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?

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.