McNally's Folly Read Online Free

while raising a lot of cash for worthy causes, charities being the rich folks’ excuse for conspicuous consumption.
    “And Ouspenskaya once again astounded his audience,” I surmised aloud.
    “Did he ever,” Connie said, dabbing at her lips with a paper napkin, the linen variety being unknown to the Pelican Club. “He told a woman that she was troubled over the loss of an expensive object. Amazed, the woman admitted she was, and the object in question was a diamond clip. Ouspenskaya told her she had forgotten to remove the clip from a dress she had placed on a pile destined for the Goodwill people. The woman went right home and guess what?”
    “I can’t imagine,” I said.
    “She came back to the party a half hour later waving the found piece of jewelry and kowtowing to Ouspenskaya as if he were the Wizard of Oz.”
    And that’s just what I was beginning to think Serge Ouspenskaya was—the quintessential Wizard of Oz. But without Toto to pull aside the curtain to reveal him for the charlatan he probably was, I would have to go it alone. My pooch, Hobo, wouldn’t leave his gabled doghouse long enough to assist me. “And a star was born,” I proclaimed.
    “Launched by Lady Cynthia Horowitz, who is poised for yet another launching before you can say abracadabra.”
    “Now what?”
    Hoisting her glass of lager in a mock toast, Connie laughed. “Buzz Carr, the aspiring actor. Remember him? It rhymes with star and don’t you forget it.”
    “I hope you don’t mean that muscle-brained delinquent.”
    “None other. And, Archy, does that boy have muscles in all the right places.”
    Why is it always embarrassing when a woman refers to a man’s sexual attractions, but never vice versa? Women’s libbers have a point, but don’t tell my pater I said that. Phrasing it as unkindly as possible, I asked, “Is she still shacking up with Phil Meecham’s ex?”
    “Really, Archy. Buzz is Madame’s protégé. And he was the ex-pilot of Phil Meecham’s yacht.”
    “The lady draws more protégés than a hole in a window screen draws flies. There was the tennis pro protégé, the golf pro protégé, the masseur, the mystic and the maniac. And need I remind you that all of Meecham’s pretty-boy employees are required to pull a double shift—pun intended. Good Lord, Connie, Buzz is twenty-five at most and Lady C is just shy of eighty.”
    Looking around the room furtively, Connie whispered, “The very mention of Lady C’s age could cost me my job, Archy—and she admits to seventy.”
    “Which makes her seventy-five.”
    “As long as she signs my weekly check, she’s seventy.”
    “And just how does she hope to make a thespian out of the ex-yachtsman?”
    “By buying him a theater. How else?”
    “What?”
    “Keep your shirt on, Archy. I’m exaggerating—but not much.” When gossiping about her lady boss, Connie is like a locomotive crawling out of the station, gradually accelerating to full speed. “Madame has become a major patron of our community theater. She wrote them a large check which got her elected Creative Director. This means she can decide on what play goes up next and who gets the leading roles, subject to approval by the board members.”
    “And if one of them gives her a thumbs-down, she’ll cut off the community theater like a disinherited black sheep,” I said with contempt. “What play does she have in mind?”
    “Arsenic and Old Lace,” Connie announced with glee.
    That was a revelation. The two old maids were the stars of the play but in the film version Cary Grant had all but chewed up the scenery as their adoring nephew. “Oh,” I groaned. It was me who had once said, begrudgingly to be sure, that in his yachting cap Buzz Carr resembled Cary Grant aboard the True Love, proving that Lady C didn’t have an original thought beneath her tinted locks.
    “Indigestion?” Connie asked.
    “No,” I assured her. “I was just thinking that Madame is in a macabre mood this season.