McNally's Secret (The Archy McNally Series) by Sanders Lawrence

Author:Sanders, Lawrence [Sanders, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781453298237
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-03-12T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

DURING MY UNDERGRADUATE DAYS at Yale I studied Latin for two years and did quite well—with the aid of some wonderful trots. As I recall (don’t quote me on this), “Hie in spiritum sed non incorpore” means “Here in spirit but not in body.” Turn that around and you’ve got a clue to my mood and behavior that weekend. I was there in body all right, but where the spirit was, the deponent knoweth not.

Confusion reigned supreme, and I waltzed through those two days with a glassy smile that probably convinced my golf-, tennis-, and poker-playing companions that McNally was finally over the edge. Well, I wasn’t—but I was teetering. There were just too many bits and pieces, and I couldn’t see any grand design to the Case of the Inverted Jennies—if there was one.

I returned home late Sunday night after a subdued dinner with a couple of cronies at the Pelican Club. I was in such an anomic mood that, to give myself the illusion I was capable of working purposefully, I scrawled notes in my journal for almost an hour, jotting down everything that had happened since the last entry. Then I spent another hour reading over the entire record of the Inverted Jenny Case. No light bulb flashed on above my head. I groaned and went to bed.

It must have been a shallow sleep because when my phone rang I awoke almost instantly. I glanced at the bedside clock; the luminous dial showed 4:40 A.M. At that dark hour it had to be Death calling. I answered warily.

“Hello?”

“Archy? Al Rogoff. I just got a wake-up call from the Beach Patrol. They pulled a floater out of the surf near the Horowitz place. Elderly male Caucasian. He was naked, but there were clothes stacked on the sand. They tentatively ID him as Angus Wolfson.”

I swallowed. “Dead?”

“Very,” Rogoff said. “Want to meet me there and positively ID the body?”

I really didn’t want to. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll get dressed.”

“Take your time,” the sergeant said. “It’ll take me at least twenty minutes. Listen, any chance of your bringing some hot coffee along?”

“Yes, I can do that. We’ve got a thermos.”

“Good,” Al said. “No sugar or cream. Black will be fine.”

I dressed as quietly as I could because my bedroom is directly above my parents’. I tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen, switched on the light, put a kettle of water on to boil. I went into the pantry for the thermos and a stack of plastic cups. When I returned to the kitchen my father was standing there.

Was he the last man in America to wear a full pajama suit: long-sleeved jacket and drawstring pants? Under a robe of maroon silk, of course. With matching leather mules on his long feet.

“Trouble, Archy?” he asked.

I repeated what Sergeant Rogoff had told me.

Father nodded once. “Keep me informed,” he said, turned, and went back to bed.

The unflappable Prescott McNally.

I was at the scene within a half-hour after Al’s call. It

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.