McNally's Secret Read Free Page B

the driver’s seat as if you were mounting a charger. So I vaulted and headed northward on A1A. Lady Horowitz’s estate was just up the road a piece, as they say in Florida, and traffic was mercifully light, so I could let my charger gallop.
    As I drove I mentally reviewed what I knew about the woman I was about to interview.
    Her full name was Lady Cynthia Kirschner Gomez Stanescu Smythe DuPey Horowitz. If she was not a clear winner in the Palm Beach marital sweepstakes, she was certainly one of the contenders. Around her swimming pool, in addition to Old Glory, she flew the six flags of her ex-husbands’ native lands. Everyone said it was a sweet touch; the divorce settlements had left her a very wealthy woman indeed.
    She had won her title from her last husband, Leopold Horowitz, who had been knighted for a lifetime of research on the mating habits of flying beetles. Unfortunately, a year after being honored, he had fallen to his death from a very tall tree in the Amazon while trying to net a pair of the elusive critters in flagrante delicto. His bereaved widow immediately flew to Paris to purchase a black dress (with pouffe) from Christian Lacroix.
    Long before I met Lady Cynthia I had heard many people speak of her as a “great beauty.” But when I was finally introduced, it was difficult to conceal my shock. It would be ungentlemanly to call a woman ugly. I shall say only that I found her excessively plain.
    While not a crone, exactly, she had a long nose with a droopy tip and a narrow chin that jutted upward. Drooping nose and jutting chin did not touch, of course, but I had this dream that you might clamp a silver dollar vertically between nose and chin tips and, by flicking it with your forefinger, set it a-twirling. I could not understand how old age could so ravage the features of a “great beauty.”
    “Why, she must be over eighty,” I remarked to my father.
    “Nonsense,” he said, rather stiffly. “She’s a year younger than I.”
    I still could not comprehend the “great beauty” legend or how she had been able to snare so many husbands. The mystery was solved when a national tabloid (published in nearby Lantana, incidentally) printed a sensationalized article on Lady Cynthia and her myriad marriages and extracurricular affairs. The article was, as they say, profusely illustrated, and it provided the reason for her allure.
    She had been born Cynthia DiLuca in Chicago, daughter of a butcher, and even at an early age it was observed that she had a face that would stop a Timex. But to make up for this, she was blessed with a body so voluptuous that her first published nude photos made every geezer in the world snap his braces.
    During the 1940s and 1950s she posed for many photographers and artists. Her face was usually turned away, masked in shadow, or concealed beneath a gauze scarf. One photographer even went so far as to graft a more attractive feminine head onto Cynthia’s body, but viewers weren’t deceived; her figure was as unique, universally recognized, and dearly beloved as a Coca-Cola bottle. Even the immortal Picasso painted her portrait, converting her divine form into a stack of shingles that was much admired.
    Now, at the age of seventy-plus, she apparently retained the body that had electrified the world fifty years ago. She also retained more spleen than anyone, woman or man, had a right to possess. Her temper tantrums were legendary. She was notorious for a long list of peeves that included cigars, dogs, and men who wore pinky rings. But tops on her roster of grievances were air conditioning and direct sunlight—which made it difficult to understand why she had decided to spend her remaining years in South Florida.
    All in all, she had the reputation of being a nasty old lady, short-tempered and, when provoked, foul-mouthed. But she was tolerated, even treasured, by Palm Beach society as a genuine “character.” Part of her popularity was due to her generosity. She held