McNally's Dare by Lawrence Sanders, Vincent Lardo Read Free Book Online

her suspicion. Then she said, ‘He doesn’t talk like a king.’ I assume she meant her grandson but had no idea what she meant and still don’t.”
    “Did you ask her, sir?”
    “Oh, yes, but it was so pathetic to see her struggle to answer, actually crying in desperation until the nurse insisted I leave, and rightly so. You must see how difficult this was. Aunt Margaret was a very intelligent woman who spoke like an orator. So sad. So very sad.”
    I was thinking of my own mother when I told him I understood his predicament.
    “The last time I saw her alive, she seemed to have surrendered to the inevitable or been given a powerful sedative on doctor’s orders. Taking my hand and smiling benignly she said quite clearly, ‘The king is dead, Malcolm.’ After that she lost consciousness and never regained it.”
    “Had Lance ever been referred to as a king? Even in jest or a nickname?”
    “Not that I know of,” Nifty said.
    “Then I think the old lady was hallucinating, sir. Between her recent stroke and the medication it wouldn’t be unusual.”
    Nifty nodded. “That’s what the doctor said, Archy, but I feel I owe Aunt Margaret the benefit of what I think was her doubt.”
    “Thanks to modern technology, it couldn’t be simpler. A DNA test can tell you if Lance Talbot is who he says he is.”
    “Well, it’s not so simple,” Nifty lamented. “His mother was cremated in Switzerland, her ashes scattered over her beloved Alps, and Aunt Margaret was cremated here and, as per her will, her ashes sprinkled over the Atlantic. Margaret Talbot, as you know, was the daughter of the Detroit tycoon, Woodrow Reynolds. Woody’s marriage was sine prole.”
    I had studied Latin at Yale and retained enough of it to know that Woodrow Reynolds and his wife were childless.
    “Margaret was adopted and had no known blood relatives. Lance’s claim comes via his mother and grandmother. As for Aunt Margaret’s husband, Luke Talbot, he was an officer in the last big war and recalled at the time of the Korean conflict where his helicopter was shot out of the sky and his remains never recovered. If he has any relatives they are not known to me or to anyone that I know. I believe Aunt Margaret married for love and poor Luke’s antecedents did not live up to old man Reynolds’s expectation, hence they were erased from the record, if you know what I mean.
    “So none of them can supply DNA samples to compare with Lance.”
    Like the last czar of Russia, I was thinking, whose remains, along with his family, were found decades after their execution and DNA samples taken and compared to their cousin, Prince Philip, for positive identification. I also calculated that Lance could have had his mother’s ashes consigned to the Alps, if she was his mother, but if it was in old Mrs. Talbot’s will that her ashes be dropped into the ocean it surely wasn’t young Talbot who made them disappear.
    Our now empty appetizer plates were removed as I refilled our wineglasses and casually asked, “What do you want me to do, sir?”
    “I would like you to look into the matter, Archy. You know the young set, you mix and mingle and get invited hither and yon, as Lolly might say. You are in a much better position than this old man to learn what our newest millionaire is all about.”
    “Did you know Lance as a child? Before his mother took him to Switzerland?”
    “I saw him a few times, certainly. To tell the truth, Archy, he was a bit of an embarrassment to Aunt Margaret, not knowing who his father was, and her friends more or less looked the other way out of respect for her. I remember a boy with a dark crew cut and blue eyes. Our Lance Talbot certainly fits the bill in that respect. As for facial features, one does change from age ten to age twenty.”
    Our lobster salads arrived, looking top drawer as promised, and I spoke the name, “Holga von Brecht.”
    Nifty laughed, or snorted, and said, “I was saving her for dessert—not