Mildred Pierced: A Toby Peters Mystery Read online

  The grin widened. Definitely false teeth.

  “You’re well informed,” he said.

  “I found out about it in the garbage,” I explained.

  “You’re the garbage man?” He looked at me from shoes to nose.

  “I’m a friend of Sheldon Minck. I’m also a detective.”

  “Like in the movies? Nick Charles? Philo Vance?” he said with some interest. “I’ve been in a few movies. Crowd scenes at parties, drink in my hand, standing near a piano where someone was playing Chopin or something, maybe pretending to chat with an actress in an evening gown.”

  “You’re not an actor,” I said.

  “Hell, no,” he answered, folding his hands. “Exactly what you see, a man into his fifth decade, working hard at being charming, reasonably good-looking. I cater to ladies who can afford my tastes. I know a great deal about music, theater, the movie business, style, gossip, and just enough about politics to fake my way through a conversation.”

  “You and Mildred were close,” I concluded.

  “When it was essential and as infrequently as I could finesse,” he said. “If I understand your innuendo.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Do you? I’m a fading facade, Mr. Peters,” he said, moving to sit in what looked like a particularly uncomfortable white chair. He put one knee over the other and steepled his fingers. “I’ll be happy to answer your questions under one condition.”

  “Condition.”

  “Yes, when I’ve answered your questions, you allow me to gather my things and walk out the door. I’ll leave my key on the table near the door. I doubt if I’m any match for you physically, so I’ll simply do what I do best: be cooperative, charming, and sincere.”

  “The dinner-date change,” I reminded him.

  “Mildred said she had something to do on Thursday and would be busy for a while after that.”

  “Busy with what?” I asked.

  “She didn’t say.” Tremaine bounced his fingers together. “I didn’t ask. She did add that she was considering buying a new house, possibly in Beverly Hills, and wanted to discuss it.”

  “Did you?”

  “Discuss it? Yes,” he said. “Over cocktails at Chasen’s. Mildred was exuberant, bursting with self-approbation, confident that she was soon going to be in a position to purchase many things she wanted.”

  “Like you?”

  “Me?” He grinned. “She already had me. I come surprisingly cheaply, and my price has been going down each year. She did say something about adding to my wardrobe. May I gather my things and go now?”

  “Mildred the only lady you’ve been keeping company with?”

  “God, no. There are four others at the moment. One is the widow of a rather successful movie director who left her comfortable, but not wealthy enough for full-time companionship.”

  “You know someone named Leland?” I asked.

  “Probably,” he said.

  “Friend of Mildred’s?”

  “Leland? No, she never mentioned a Leland to me.”

  “Give me your address and phone number and you can go. Take whatever is yours. Just show it to me before you go.”

  He bounded out of the chair, dug into his jacket pocket, and came up with a card he handed to me. It read “Jeffrey Tremaine” in tastefully elegant embossed black script and listed his phone number and address.

  While Tremaine scrambled for his possessions, I looked around the house and came to some conclusions. First, the police had not bothered to look around the place. They had Shelly and no reason to spend any more time on the case. Second, Mildred’s checkbook in the drawer of her dresser in her pink bedroom on the second floor told me that she had a little over five thousand dollars in the bank. Not bad, but not the stuff you buy houses in Beverly Hills with, unless she was planning to cash in some of the money she had inherited from her parents or was expecting some other sudden pile of cash. Mildred read movie-fan magazines. They were stacked on the table next to her bed. Mildred had gotten rid of all things Shelly. There wasn’t an item in the house that bore any resemblance to his name, face, or taste.

  “I’m finished,” Tremaine called from below.

  I went downstairs. He was standing at the door, his arms full.

  “Mind opening the door for me?” he asked with a smile.

  I looked through the collection in his arms. It included the stack of records, two small paintings of clowns, a photograph of himself on the deck of a boat wearing a captain’s hat, and a Whitman’s Sampler box. I took the box and opened it. One string of pearls, a woman’s watch, two rings, and a bracelet with glittering green stones.

  “Gifts from me,” he said, his smile so broad and sincere now that I was sure he was working toward a massive headache.

  “I thought she was the one who gave you gifts,” I said.

  “Well …”

  “Sorry,” I said, closing the box and taking it from him.

  “It was worth a try, old man,” he said with a resigned smile. “I do think I have some payment coming for services rendered.”

  “Pick one out,” I said.

  He put down his plunder and selected the bracelet. He put it in his pocket, handed me the front-door key, picked up the bundle again, and said, “The door?”

  I opened it and he left. Then I brought the candy box with the jewelry to Mildred’s bedroom and put it in the bottom drawer of her dresser.

  The phone was ringing when I closed the drawer. I went to the table next to Mildred’s bed and picked it up.

  “Peters,” came the voice of Lawrence Timerjack, “you’ve disobeyed a direct order to cease and desist.”

  “I’m not a Pigeon in your army, Larry.”

  “You are subject to martial law,” he said.

  “Are you for real, Timerjack?” I asked. “I mean is this all an act, or are you really a nut? I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and call it an act, not a good one considering the small size of your army of Survivors, but an act. Prove me right. Say something that makes sense.”

  “You have been warned,” he said.

  I had to give him credit. Only a small quiver of anger came through with his words.

  “You threatening me with more peach syrup?” I asked.

  “We are talking blood and guts here,” he said. “We are talking life and death.”

  “So you think I should stop trying to find out if someone besides Shelly killed Mildred? So the law can put Shelly away or kill him and you can collect?”

  He hung up the phone. He couldn’t be far away since he knew I was in the house, but I didn’t know how far. I ran downstairs and headed for the back door. I opened it when I heard the front door fly open with a loud crack.

  I closed the door behind me and headed for the bushes in front of me looking for a space, a hole, someplace to hide or get through. I found a narrow break between two mulberries and pushed my way through scratching my hands, almost catching a branch in my eye. When I was on the other side, in someone else’s yard, I knelt and looked back through the bushes at the back door of the Minck manor.

  The two burly friends of Timerjack, Uncas and Chingachgook, stepped out and looked around. Behind them was Deerslayer Anthony. They looked in my direction and didn’t see me. They went back into the house.

  I moved to the back door of the house behind me and knocked.

  After a second knock, a woman opened the door. She was plump, maybe sixty, wearing an apron and a look of surprise.

  “May I use your phone?” I asked. “There’s been an accident.”

  She stepped aside and pointed a spatula at the wall behind her. The kitchen smelled like cookies. I nodded my thanks, went to the phone, and called the police.

  “There’s a break-in at my neighbor’s house,” I said. “Two men, maybe more. I saw them kick the front door in. I think they had guns. Hurry. They’re still there.”

  I gave them the address and hung up.

  “Thanks,” I told the woman.
“Is it all right if I go out your front door?”

  She stood bewildered for an instant, spatula in hand.

  “I just finished a batch of chocolate-chip cookies for the USO,” she said. “Take a few. You look like you could use them.”

  There was a stack on the table. I picked up two and she pointed her trusty spatula toward the door near the phone.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “For what?” she answered. “I sit on my behind half the day listening to soap operas and stand in here the other half making ton after ton of cookies. You’ve brought some life through my door. Take some cookies for your friends.”

  She reached for a brown paper bag on a stack near the cookies, filled the bag, and handed it to me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “I’ll accept the thanks, but not the sorry.”

  I went through the door, sack of cookies in my hand, found the front door, and went out into the sunlight. I ate a cookie as I walked. I was in no big hurry. I wanted the police to come before I felt it would be safe to go back to my Crosley, which was parked only a few doors down from the Minck house.

  The cookies were damned good, and, in spite of the scratches on my face and arms and the possible tears in my jacket, I was feeling good. I seemed to be getting somewhere.

  I had a few days left to find out who killed Mildred, save Shelly, and keep Joan Crawford’s name out of the papers.

  With a little help from some friends, I might be able to do it.

  I decided without doubt that chocolate chips were definitely my favorites, beating Mrs. Plaut’s teardrop mint and butterscotches by a length and a half.

  CHAPTER 11

  ON THE RADIO heading back to the Farraday Building, I learned that David Dubinsky, president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, had union-labeled General George C. Marshall a tool of “a well-organized smear campaign against labor.” I also learned that Byron Nelson was favored to win the $12,500 Los Angeles Open, that the Russians were driving deeper into Poland, and another ten Japanese merchant ships had been sunk by United States subs.

  It was late in the afternoon when I got back to my office. There was a sign on the door: “Dr. Minck will be indisposed for an as yet undetermined period of time. All calls to him will be taken by an answering service and responded to promptly.” It was signed “Violet Gonsenelli, Office Manager.”

  I used my key and went in, leaving the note in place. I went through the reception area and Shelly’s chamber, flicked on the lights in my office, and found a note from Violet on my desk:

  Call Miss Crawford as soon as you get in.

  I’ll be in tomorrow.

  I made the call. Crawford answered after five rings with a very wary “Yes?”

  “Peters,” I said.

  “I’ve had a threatening call,” she said. “A man, a few hours ago. He said that if I insisted on telling the police that I saw Dr. Minck kill his wife, I might wind up with a bolt in my heart.”

  “I think I know who it was,” I said.

  “That’s comforting,” she said with a touch of sarcasm. “What can you do about it?”

  “Could you recognize the voice if you heard it again?”

  “Yes. Faces, voices, words are my profession.”

  There was something a little stiff in the way she said it. Talk of her profession brought out the Joan Crawford in Joan Crawford.

  “Are you making any progress?”

  “Some.” I took Mildred’s crumpled list from my pocket and laid it as flat as I could in front of me.

  “Please try to adopt a sense of urgency,” she said with a catch of emotion in her voice.

  “I am.”

  “Then try harder,” she countered, her voice now determined.

  I told her what I had found and said, “You said that Mildred had her hand in her purse when she was shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I have anything more.” Then I hung up.

  I called my brother at home. He answered the phone, and I asked if I could stop by.

  “I’m taking the boys out for hamburgers,” he said. “Becky is here with Lucy. You want to meet us?”

  I said I did. He told me where they were going. It wasn’t far from Phil’s in the valley.

  “Hurry up,” he said. “We’re leaving in a few minutes.”

  “Phil, what was in Mildred’s purse when she died?”

  “Her purse?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Keys, a pack of Tareytons, a handkerchief, a wallet. I don’t remember what else and, frankly, Toby, I don’t give a shit.”

  “Was there any money in the wallet?” I asked.

  “About forty cents. We’re leaving.”

  I met them at the Canyon Diner on Laurel at the foot of the Hollywood Hills in the San Fernando Valley. The Canyon had a neon sign, windows with venetian blinds open and a blackboard by the front door listing the specials of the day. It was the same restaurant my father used to take me and Phil to. He took Phil there right after my mother’s funeral when I was a baby. Later, when something was bothering him, something we knew was big but that he wouldn’t share with his sons, he took us to the Canyon.

  It was dinnertime. The Canyon was reasonably full and noisy, and the smell of grease and onions filled the room and brought back flashes of the past that didn’t quite take form.

  My father had a favorite booth next to the window where he could look out at the hills and do his best to keep up his end of the conversation about baseball or school problems.

  Phil and his boys weren’t at that booth. Two men and a woman were talking and eating at my dad’s table. My brother and nephews were at the booth in front of it, Phil on one side, his sons across from him.

  “Hi,” I said, sitting down next to Phil, who moved over just enough to let me in.

  Nate and Dave, still in their funeral slacks, white shirts and ties, said, “Hi.”

  The boys were drinking “famous” Canyon chocolate shakes. They were famous because the Canyon said they were, just like Napoleon’s Grill in Santa Monica claimed it made “the best omelets in the world.”

  Phil was looking out the window, trying to see what my father had been looking for or at when we were boys.

  The waitress came over, and I said, “I’ll have a Pepsi. You order your dinner yet?” I asked.

  “They ordered,” the skinny waitress said giving me a look that said she might not understand that someone had died, but knew that grief was sitting around the table.

  “Got liver and onions?” I asked.

  “Always,” she said. “Anything else?”

  I said “no,” and she headed back toward the kitchen.

  People were talking all around us. Older couples, families, a younger couple at the counter. Music was playing, but softly, a trumpet.

  “Harry James,” I said. “‘I’ll Get By.’”

  No response other than a slight nod from Nate. No one was looking at me now. The announcer came on and the radio and I thought I caught him saying “Harry James.”

  “Betty Grable’s going to have a baby,” I said. “Harry James’s wife. Read it in the Times.”

  Phil made a sound that suggested he knew I had said something and that some response might be expected.

  “Liver and onions,” Nate said, making it clear that he wasn’t looking forward to my dinner being served.

  “It’s great stuff,” I said.

  “What’s it taste like?” asked Nate.

  “Chicken,” I said.

  “You told me salmon tastes like chicken,” Nate said.

  “Rattlesnake, too. Standard safe answer. Everything tastes like chicken, but chicken, when it’s done right, tastes like lobster.”

  Nate smiled. The smile disappeared fast.

  “Dad’s quitting,” said Dave.

  “He doesn’t want to be a policeman anymore,” Nate added.

  “I think it’s because—” Dave began and
trailed off.

  “Your mother?” I asked.

  Dave shrugged. So did Nate.

  “Phil?”

  “What?”

  His eyes were still focused somewhere in the distance, out the window.

  “Kids say you’re quitting.”

  Phil nodded, just enough, if you were watching closely and knew him well, to understand that he was saying yes.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded, too.

  “Remember our father sitting here, looking out the window, never telling us what was going on?” Phil said after a deep sigh.

  “Yeah.”

  “I told myself I wasn’t going to do that with any kids I had,” said Phil. “They know what I’m thinking. If I go back, I’m going to hurt someone, some bad guy with a bad attitude. I’m going to say to myself, ‘Why is this guy alive and Ruth dead?’ Then I’m … I’ve got my twenty years in, a pension.”

  The boys looked at me pleadingly. Phil had no hobbies, no interests other than catching bad guys, trying to clean the streets of Los Angeles with a toothpick. He didn’t play golf or tennis. He didn’t play poker or bridge. I had a thought. I didn’t want to spend too much time considering it. I might change my mind.

  “Have any plans?” I asked.

  This time he shook his head.

  “How about coming in with me?” I asked.

  He took his eyes from the not-very-distant hills and turned his bulky body toward me. Our eyes met.

  “Come in with you?”

  “Peters and Pevsner, Private Investigators. You could get a license in less than a week.”

  “I’d wind up killing you,” he said.

  Now, this was a hopeful answer. It meant he was giving the suggestion some consideration.

  “Pevsner and Peters? Work with me on the billing.”

  “Sam Spade Detective Agency,” Nate said. “Like on the radio.”

  “Not someone’s name,” Dave said. “Something tough you know you can count on to get it done.”

  “Two Aces Detective Agency,” Nate tried.

  Phil was still looking at me. We both blinked.

  “P & P Detective Agency,” Dave said. “Or International Private Investigations, or Reliable Detective Agency …”

  “… or World’s Finest,” Nate said enthusiastically.