Free McNally's Folly by Lawrence Sanders, Vincent Lardo Page B

it down to a couple a day.”
    “I mooch whenever I get a chance so I think I smoke more than if James allowed me to keep them in the house.”
    Margaret came through the patio door pushing a tea trolley that held our lunch. As Hanna had promised, the spread consisted of a fresh shrimp salad, warm biscuits in a wicker basket covered with a heated cloth, butter patties and a tray of shiny black olives and celery sticks. This picnic fare was served on fine bone china accompanied by the family silver. Hanna freshened our drinks before we dug in.
    “Bon appétit,” she advised.
    As we ate, I encouraged Hanna to tell me what she thought she had done with her diamond clip.
    “Well, we had been out that night, James and I. Someone who shall be nameless remarked that I had worn the same dress to several parties this season—and wasn’t it lovely. Meow, meow. I decided to get rid of it and a few others on the spot.” Hanna seemed to lose interest in her shrimp salad but not in her alcohol libation.
    “When we got home I thought I took the clip off the dress and laid it on my dressing table. Then I thought that if James saw it, he would scold me and tell me to put it directly in my jewel case which is kept in a hidden safe in our bedroom. Truth is, I was a little tipsy and I didn’t want to look up the combination to that damn safe, so I put the clip in my dressing-table drawer thinking I would put it in the safe in the morning.”
    “And it wasn’t in the drawer the next morning?”
    “No, Archy, it wasn’t.”
    “What did you think happened to it?”
    Hanna shook her blond curly head and exclaimed, “I didn’t know, Archy. I just didn’t know. I was scared and afraid to tell James. Then I had to tell him. We searched all over the house and the car, too. We called the people whose house we were at that night and we even called all the other guests who had been there, and we came up empty-handed every time.” The agony she had gone through over the lost diamond clip was evident in her voice and eyes as she recalled the days following its disappearance.
    “I was so sure I had put it in the drawer. That’s why I didn’t rush home when Mr. Ouspenskaya told me where it was. I just didn’t think it was possible. Then I figured that if he knew I had lost the clip just by looking at me...”
    “Easy,” I broke in. “According to your story a lot of people knew you lost that clip. Maybe Ouspenskaya was one of them. It’s very possible.”
    “James said the same thing, Archy. But I did come home and I did find the clip where he said it would be. Doesn’t that prove he has the power? Doesn’t it?”
    What could I say? The clip was where Ouspenskaya said it would be and that was the bottom line. “But what about the fact that you were certain you removed the clip from your dress? What’s your take on that now?”
    Hanna smiled brightly. “Oh, don’t you see? It was a dream.”
    “A dream? You think it was a dream?”
    “I’m sure it was a dream. Like I told you, I was in my dressing room and James kept calling me—I mean he was eager—I mean—are you married, Archy?”
    “No, Hanna, I’m not.”
    “Then you wouldn’t understand.”
    “Oh, but I do understand, Hanna. I’m not a monk. I have enough vices without adding chastity to the list.”
    I was hoping she would spare me a giggle but, alas, she did not. “Well, I must have undressed—I know I undressed.” Another giggle, the result no doubt of a paucity of shrimp salad and a surplus of vodka tonics. “I went to bed and I must have dreamed that I did what I would have done if James hadn’t been in such a rush. That is remove the clip from my dress. When we make love my mind tends to wander, you see—but you don’t want to know that.”
    No, I didn’t, nor did James Ventura.
    The patio door opened once again but this time it was not Margaret come to clear away our lunch, but a young man wearing the briefest of brief swimming togs. He was as