Free McNally's Chance by Lawrence Sanders Page B

Having given her your name I was sure she would contact you when she got here.”
    Next query. “She asked me to meet her in a bar of dubious reputation.
    Any idea how she knew the place?”
    Like a weary martyr he sighed audibly. “My guess is she got one of the Chesterfield’s employees to give her a rundown of the area’s more notorious watering holes and then chose the one most renowned as a meeting place. Even under stress, Sabrina Wright must amaze, amuse, and mystify her gentlemen callers. I take it she treated you to all three, Mr. McNally.”
    She had, and with great style. After years of poking around in other people’s dirty laundry, I can say with considerable confidence that the answers to most of life’s mysteries are simplistic and obvious, from the pyramids to Sabrina Wright, as Robert Silvester had just confirmed.
    It’s the commonplace that’s more likely to contain surprises behind its familiar facade.
    My first thought regarding Lolly’s anonymous caller was that he or she was a clerk at the Chesterfield, who knew Sabrina Wright had registered at the hotel and had heard her ask for Robert Silvester. The informer made a grab for his, or her, fifteen minutes and settled happily for anonymous fame when Lolly printed the item. Simple and obvious. Yet I couldn’t help but ask, “Why did you suggest Sabrina herself might have made that call to Lolly Spindrift?”
    Silvester grimaced. “A caprice, nothing more. I’ve been dealing with Sabrina’s impulsive behavior for so long nothing she does surprises me, but, as I’m sure you know, she did not make that call.”
    “And neither did Zack Ward?”
    “No, Mr. McNally, I’m sure Sabrina painted a picture of Zack replete with twirling mustaches and black cape, but he’s not like that at all.
    He is a brash young man, but not a devious one. True, he works for a rag, and he is ambitious, but one has to start someplace. Even Raymond Chandler wrote for the pulps.”
    I didn’t tell him that I rather liked the original pulps with their lurid cover art and even had a few stashed away in a box of memorablia I intend to leave to my godson, Darcy. The one touting The Blue Dahlia on its cover must be worth a fortune.
     
    In keeping with Silvester’s white paper on Zack Ward, I stated rather than asked, “And he doesn’t court Gillian because of her famous mother.”
    Silvester shook his head. “Did Sabrina tell you Jill met Zack in a writers’ workshop?” When I acknowledged this with a nod, he asked,
    “Did she tell you that Jill was enrolled in that workshop under an alias?”
    He didn’t wait for a response because we both knew she hadn’t. As I had noted when I met her, Sabrina Wright is a package. Now I knew she never allowed anyone, including her husband, to get under the wrapping.
    Silvester explained, “Jill joined the workshop more as a diversion than with any serious intent to penning a novel. She also dabbled in acting classes, art classes, and yoga, all with a ‘no comment’ from her mother. It’s not easy being the daughter of a successful woman and less easy when the woman is Sabrina Wright. “Jill had learned early on that when people discovered her relationship to Sabrina they treated her with either indifference or scorn. In her early days as an actress, a noted producer offered her a big part in his next play if her mother would finance it. After that, she ventured out into the real world under an assumed name. As far as I know she and Zack saw each other for a few weeks before he knew who she really was.” “Then why,” I quizzed, ‘is Sabrina certain Zack Ward is more interested in a Sabrina Wright expose than in her daughter?” He wrestled with that one before capitualating, but not without reluctance. “Zack is young and rather attractive. He didn’t make a fuss over Sabrina, if you know what I mean. To compensate, she had to find a plausible excuse to make herself, and not Jill, the reason for Zack’s presence in