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Silvester laughed. “I don’t believe you, but you have a whimsical sense of humor, and if you’re going to be dealing with Sabrina you’ll need that in great abundance.”
    “You know I’ve seen your wife?”
    “I do now.” Again the laugh. It was a pleasant sound, not at all mocking. “It was me who gave Sabrina your name.”
    I got the feeling I was being jerked around with humor and I didn’t like it. “You told your wife to hire me to look for you? How clever.”
    “So, I am the man that got away.”
    “Let’s say you’re in the running, Mr. Silvester.”
    “How did Ms Spindrift know Sabrina had come down here looking for me?”
    Silvester asked.
    “Mr. Spindrift. Lolly is a he.”
    “How quaint.”
    “I’ll tell him.” Not wishing to get into a discussion about men named Carroll and Adrian I asked, “Why did Zack Ward tip off Lolly that Sabrina was in town looking for some guy?”
    “He didn’t.” came Silvester’s immediate reply.
    “Then who did?”
    “For all I know it may have been Sabrina herself.”
     
    Lolly had told me the caller was a man, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. Instead I told him what I thought of the inference. “I’m not amused, Mr. Silvester.”
    “Please, call me Rob.”
    “I’m still not amused, Rob.”
    “If you give me a chance, I’ll tell you what I know,” he said.
    “I’m listening.”
    “Not on the phone, it would take too long. Besides, I’d like to meet you in person. Do you lunch?”
    “Only when I’m hungry.”
    “Would Harry’s Place at The Breakers suit?”
    To a “I.”
    “Good. Let’s say twelve-thirty or one.”

Six
    The Breakers was originally created as Henry Flagler’s Palm Beach Inn.
    Originally build of wood, it twice burned to the ground before the current phoenix rose from the ashes. It’s said that the second conflagration was started by a PB matron giving herself a home perm with a curling iron.
    I don’t know which came first, Cornelius Vanderbilt’s weekend cottage in Newport, also called The Breakers, or Flagler’s inn. I do know Cornelius never ran a B-&-B at his place, but then Cornelius never had a drawbridge named after him. Henry’s Palm Beach cottage, Whitehall, is now the home of the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum. Its size and opulence makes Versailles look like a pretentious bed-sitter with formal gardens.
    Besides the Ponce de Leon ballroom where revelers usually gather in support of some charity rather than seeking eternal youth that they leave to skilled laser wielders The Breakers also houses several fine restaurants. Harry’s Place bills itself as a genuine English pub and is the closest thing to fast-food dining a place like The Breakers would admit to. I told the maitre d’ I was joining Mr. Silvester and as he showed me to the table, my host rose to greet me.
    “Mr. McNally,” he said, extending his hand as he eyed my apparel. “I was certain it was you.”
    There are times when my reputation proceeds me. Had I known I was to meet with Robert Silvester today I would have worn the summer uniform
    -chinos, dark blue blazer, and loafers by the Italian shoemaker currently in fashion. (If you get caught in a pair of Mr. Gucci’s flats, you’re giving your age away.) The winter uniform finds the toffs in gray flannels, dark blue blazer, and loafers by etc. As it happened, I was happy to have come as myself as Robert Silvester had come as Everyman.
    Not surprising, the guy was a good fifteen years younger than his wife with the kind of clean-cut good looks popular with Hollywood teenage idols of the forties and fifties. Think of a blond Farley Granger, e.g. Silvester’s hair was an attractive reddish brown, worn parted on the left and showing a hint of gray at the temples. I got the feeling that, contrary to the norm, the gray came from a bottle, perhaps in an attempt to look more like his wife’s husband than her son. A dozen years ago, on his honeymoon, he would have had to show proof