Mildred Pierced: A Toby Peters Mystery Read online

  “How bad?” I asked.

  Corso shrugged.

  “Don’t know. Can’t be good. Thought you should know before you went up to see him. You know?”

  I knew. Phil didn’t accept frustration, which was most of the reason he had been reduced from captain to lieutenant a little over a year earlier. Death was an enemy. Every criminal on both sides of the prison walls was an enemy. When I wasn’t being careful, I was a convenient focus for his rage. He wasn’t going gently into that good night, and he wouldn’t let anyone else, either.

  “I’ll be careful,” I told Corso and tapped my palm on his desk.

  “Just thought you should know,” he said.

  I nodded and went up the wooden stairs to the landing and into the squad room. It was a quiet morning. There were nine desks in the space designed for six desks. Along the door by the wall was a wooden bench. No one was sitting on it. Four of the desks had cops behind them. Two were typing reports. Two were talking to victims, witnesses, or suspects. It was hard to tell since both of the people in the chairs next to the desks were young Mexicans who looked decidedly unhappy. The rest of the cops were probably out on the street.

  The squad room didn’t smell or look as bad as it usually did. The walls hadn’t been cleaned, but the floor was relatively free of crumpled paper, cigarette packs, and candy wrappers. The windows seemed to be letting in a little more light, but not enough.

  I crossed the room behind the desks and knocked at the door of my brother’s office. No answer. I knocked again. No answer. I opened the door.

  Phil’s office was about twice the size of mine, which meant his office was small. It looked as if a Benedictine monk had furnished it. Two chairs. A desk. One window behind the desk. Nothing on the walls. The office of a man who could empty his drawers into a box and be moved out in two minutes or less.

  Phil sat behind the desk, his back to me, hands behind his head looking out of the window at nothing.

  “Did I say ‘come in’?” he said evenly. Definitely a bad sign.

  “No.”

  I left it at that. He sighed, rubbed the military-style short gray hair on his head and swiveled toward me. He was twenty pounds heavier than I was, five years older, and made up in weary hardness what he lacked in homeliness.

  He was wearing suspenders today over a white shirt. He folded his hands on the desk and looked up at me.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  I sat. I said nothing. He said nothing. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry. This was a tranquil Phil I had never seen before. I didn’t like it. I didn’t trust it.

  “Can I take you out for lunch?” I asked.

  “Too early. Not hungry.”

  “Can I get you a coffee?”

  “You know about Ruth?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m taking some time off to be with her.” He looked down at his hands. “She hasn’t got long.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know. You didn’t come to ask about Ruth.”

  “No.”

  “You came about Minck.”

  I nodded.

  “Not my case. Not in the district,” he said. “I did ask to look at the report.”

  “And?”

  He reached over to the six-inch pile of files and memos in his IN box, took a single sheet from the top, and laid it in front of him.

  “He’s a lunatic, Tobias.”

  “I know.”

  “No,” Phil said again. “A lunatic. In the park with a goddamn crossbow? We could put him away for that. He’s half blind and all stupid. Shoots his wife with an arrow on a sunny day with a witness.”

  “Bolt,” I said. “Not an arrow, a bolt. Crossbows fire bolts, quarrels …”

  “Who gives a shit?” Phil said. “He killed her. He can plead insanity. You’re getting Leib for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any judge in his right mind will buy insanity after talking to Minck for five minutes, especially with Leib next to him,” said Phil. “Ballistics is looking at the bow and the piece of metal that killed her. They don’t know what to do with it. I could tell them where they could put that…”

  “Bolt,” I supplied. “Where did it hit her?”

  “Perfect shot,” said Phil. “Right in the heart.”

  “How far away was he?”

  “Witness says about twenty yards.”

  “Phil, can you imagine Shelly firing anything including a cannon and hitting a target twenty yards away?”

  “I can imagine almost anything,” he said. “I can imagine a lucky shot or an unlucky one. If insanity doesn’t work, he can claim it was an accident. He doesn’t look like Robin Hood. He doesn’t even look like the fat guy who played Friar Tuck.”

  “Eugene Pallette,” I said.

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “He didn’t do it, Phil,” I said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “No,” I said. “But I’m staying with it till I am sure.”

  “Good luck,” he said.

  “How are you holding up?”

  “How do I look?”

  “I’ve seen you better. I’ve seen you worse.”

  “The commissioner’s seeing me this afternoon,” he said, turning his head away to look at a blank wall.

  “What happened?”

  He didn’t answer, so I guessed, “You hit a suspect.”

  “I beat the hell out of the bastard,” Phil said. “Shoot-out last night at the playground on Ocean View. Two guys with guns, a grudge over a woman with practically no teeth, their guts full of cheap wine. One of them, Herman Winterhoff, accidentally shot an eleven-year-old girl minding her own business. The officers who took the call brought him in for interrogation. When I got to Winterhoff, the bastard was smiling at me. He wasn’t smiling when I left the room.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “Cawelti, Minor, Harell.”

  “They’ll back you.”

  “Not Cawelti,” he said.

  He was right. The redheaded, pockmarked detective John Cawelti was not going to be part of the blue wall of silence for Phil, whom he hated only a little less than Cawelti hated me. Cawelti was probably picturing himself in this luxury office.

  “You’ll be all right,” I said. “You’ve got a lot on your mind. The commissioner will—”

  “Not this time.” Phil turned his back to me again.

  “Phil?”

  He didn’t answer. I didn’t try again. I got up and went to the door. I thought of saying “Good luck” or “I’ll call about Ruth” or something, but Phil was lost in whatever world he was trying to hide in.

  There had been one witness to Mildred’s death. It was time to see her.

  CHAPTER 2

  I KNEW WHERE Joan Crawford’s house was in Brentwood. That wasn’t hard to find. Getting her to talk to me would be the hard part, so I called in a favor from Fred Astaire who knew her. I had recently worked for and with him to get him out of a bad situation. I liked Astaire and he liked me, enough to make a call to Crawford.

  Until the war, movie stars had been indentured—and usually well paid—by studios which, when the price was right, loaned them to other studios. Astaire had been with RKO. Crawford, until she walked out or was pushed out of her contract two years earlier, had been with MGM. Most of the people I knew in the business had been with or still were with Warner Brothers. I had spent five years there as a security guard until the day I punched a B-movie cowboy star who had been making a young actress more than uncomfortable on the set. I broke his nose. They had to shoot the movie he was making around him. I had the distinction of being fired directly by Harry Warner.

  I knew a little about Crawford, the things that everyone—fans and movie people—knew, and some things only a few people knew. For example, everyone knew that she had been married to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Franchot Tone and was now married to Phillip Terry, whose movie career had taken a dive into the La Brea Tar Pits.

 
Crawford had been linked romantically to almost every male star she had ever acted with, which made the list stretch all the way back to Lon Chaney, Sr., in the silent days, and on up to Robert Montgomery and Clark Gable in the more recent past.

  Crawford also had the reputation of being unpredictable. Thirty-nine years old the morning I rang her bell, she was reportedly supportive of younger actors. Actresses her own age or close to it, however, could expect no mercy.

  The world knew she had two young adopted children, Christina and Phillip, Jr. The world did not know, but Astaire told me, that she was “unusually interested in cleanliness.”

  “Every time she gets a new husband, she changes the toilet seats,” he said on the phone. “She … you’ll see. She’s an underrated actress, and an underrated dancer. I worked with her in my first picture. Never got the chance again, but she was generous, rehearsed hard. I’d be happy to be in a picture with her again. I’ll give her a call.”

  My pants were tan and reasonably clean if a bit frayed at the bottom should someone look closely. My shirt was white and not too badly wrinkled. My tie was simple, dark brown, and showed none of the stains I knew had to be there.

  Before I rang the doorbell, I looked at my reflection in the small window at eye level. I’m not sure I’d open the door for the face I saw: My nose is almost flat, and some of the scar tissue shows if you look closely. I have a lopsided grin that looks more like a threat than a smile. I brushed back my dark hair, which revealed more than a little gray and tried not to smile.

  I rang again.

  She opened the door. I recognized the face. It was definitely Joan Crawford, shorter than I imagined her, about five-four, softer looking without makeup. She was wearing a blue-and-white bandanna around her hair and was dressed in slacks and a dark shirt, covered by a green-stained white apron. She wore heavy gloves and carried a pointed trowel in her right hand.

  “You’re …?” She examined me.

  “Toby Peters,” I said. “Fred Astaire said he was going to call you about me.”

  “He did. Come in, but take off your shoes and leave them in the hallway.”

  She stepped back as I knelt to remove my shoes.

  “Your hands,” she said.

  I looked up.

  “Show me your hands, please,” she said with a smile that pleaded for indulgence.

  I showed her my hands.

  “I’d appreciate it if you would wash your hands. I’ll show you where.”

  I finished with my shoes and placed them just inside the door. She closed it and led the way.

  “We use only half the house now,” she said.

  I wondered if the reason was that she hadn’t made a movie in over two years except for a walk-on as herself in Hollywood Canteen or because her husband Phil Terry’s career had gone from almost up there to out of the business.

  She led the way to a small, sunshine-bright kitchen, then turned to smile at me as she nodded toward the sink.

  “I was working in the garden,” she said proudly, looking at the window.

  I looked out it myself as I washed. There was a good-sized vegetable garden. She put down the trowel, took off her gloves, and laid them all neatly on a table near the back door.

  “Nice,” I said, rinsing my hands and looking for a towel.

  “Thank you. To your right, on the rack.”

  There were two clean white hand towels. I dried my hands and started to put the towel back.

  “No,” she said sharply. “Under the sink. There’s a bin for used towels.”

  I opened the door under the sink, found the bin, and dropped the towel in. Then I turned. Dr. Peters was ready for surgery. I felt like holding up my hands and waiting for her to put rubber gloves on me the way the nurses did for Lew Ayres in the Dr. Kildare movies.

  “This way,” she said, turning and walking out of the kitchen into the dining room.

  “Please,” she said pleasantly. “Have a seat.”

  I sat. So did she. She pulled an unopened pack of cigarettes from her apron, opened it, lit one, and pulled a clean ashtray toward her from the center of the table.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Would you like some coffee?”

  I felt like asking if she planned to throw the cup away after I drank from it, but settled for a simple “No, thanks.”

  “Fred said you are an honest man and that you have some questions for me,” she said. “I have one for you. Ask your questions. Then I’ll ask mine.”

  “Okay,” I said. “This is about the woman you saw killed in Lincoln Park yesterday.”

  She looked at the ceiling and sighed. “So everyone knows. I was afraid of that.”

  “Everyone doesn’t know. You gave the name ‘Billie Cassin’ when you were interviewed by the police,” I said. “But Shelly Minck recognized you, or thinks he did.”

  “Shelly …?”

  “The fat little man in the park with the crossbow. Your real name is not on the report.”

  “Not yet.” She shook her head. “Cassin was my stepfather’s name. I was called Billie when I was a young girl. I didn’t even know it wasn’t my real name.”

  “Can you tell me what you saw yesterday?” I asked. “I know you told the police. I read the report, but they’ve already decided they have their killer.”

  “The funny-looking little bald-headed fat man with the thick glasses?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Why are you …?”

  “Sheldon Minck is a dentist. I share office space with him.”

  “Fred said you’re a private investigator.”

  She was smoking nervously now.

  “I sublet an office from Shelly,” I said. “I’ve known him a long time. I can’t see him committing a murder.”

  “It was his wife, I understand?”

  “Mildred,” I said.

  “That’s a coincidence,” she said.

  “Coincidence?”

  “I’ve just been offered the lead in a movie called Mildred Pierce. Wonderful script. It’s about a woman who confesses to killing her philandering husband.”

  “Did she do it?”

  Crawford laughed.

  “See the movie when it comes out,” she said.

  “Mildred Minck was a philanderer, too,” I said.

  Crawford looked serious now. “That doesn’t help your dentist.”

  “I know. Mildred was no great beauty and not much in the way of charm, either. But she was determined.”

  “All right.” She put out what was left of her cigarette and folded her hands on the table. “Yesterday. About eleven in the morning. I was going to meet Phil, my husband, for an early lunch.”

  “Where?”

  “I had it with me in a paper bag,” she said. “He was getting off work at the airplane factory in order to try out for a part in a film. Mr. Peters, it wouldn’t be difficult for you to find out my husband is working in an airplane factory while his agent tries to find him roles. We have no servants. We use only half the house to keep expenses down. I make his lunch and dinner and take care of the house and children. They are out this afternoon at a birthday party.”

  My look must have given away something about what I was thinking.

  “Yes, Joan Crawford is, at the moment, only a housewife. But that is about to change.”

  “Mildred Pierce?”

  “Exactly,” she said. “And I don’t want morbid headlines that might make the studio change its small collective mind about the movie. Joan Crawford Eyewitness to Bizarre Murder. Dentist Murders Wife in Front of Joan Crawford. Movie Star Watches While Man Murders Wife. You understand?”

  “And …?”

  “I think I’d like to ask my questions now.” She leaned toward me, her eyes sincere and just a little moist. “I would like to hire you to keep my name out of the press. I understand from Fred and I’ve heard from several other friends in the business that you specialize in doing just that. So …?”

  “I’m investigating the
murder of Mildred Minck,” I said. “I’m working for Dr. Minck.”

  “Are the tasks mutually exclusive?” she asked, her eyes open wide.

  She didn’t blink. Movie stars don’t blink when the camera is on them and they’re doing a take. Crawford was doing a take.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Good.” She sat back and reached into her pocket for her now-open pack of cigarettes. “Shall I consider you hired?”

  “Don’t you want to know my rates?”

  “I’m not working,” she said. “But I’m not penniless, either. I’ve made quite a bit over the past twenty years.”

  “Thirty dollars a day plus expenses,” I said. “Two hundred dollar retainer, nonrefundable, not applicable to the total.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind cash. I’d rather not have any canceled checks made out to a private investigator.”

  “Cash is fine.”

  “Wait.”

  I sat waiting. This wasn’t what I expected. I hadn’t even asked her about the “alleged” murder yet. I’d learned to use the word “alleged” from Marty Leib. There was always hope that the crime, if I was representing the accused, was an accident—or the work of someone else.

  I reached over for the pack of cigarettes she had left on the table and started turning it over and over just to keep my fingers busy. I don’t smoke. Never did. Neither did my brother or our father.

  I was still playing with the pack when she returned. She stopped suddenly, the cash in her hand, and watched me. Then she handed me the bills, reached over and took the pack, and walked into the kitchen. I turned to watch her through the open door as she stepped on the pedal of a tan metal trash can and dropped the cigarette pack into it. The lid dropped down. She returned to the dinning room and sat across from me reaching into her pocket for a fresh pack.

  “You’ll give me an itemized bill when you’re finished.”

  “Yes.”

  “If you succeed in keeping my name from the press”—she opened the fresh pack and gave me a look that said don’t-touch-this-one-or-you’ll-be-sorry—“I’ll give you a bonus of three hundred dollars.”

  “Very generous,” I said.

  “I believe in incentives,” she said. “Now. You want to know what I saw.…”