Mildred Pierced: A Toby Peters Mystery

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  I had no idea what I was offering or what it would mean if Phil agreed. It was clear that the boys liked the idea of their father being a private investigator at least as much as they liked his being a cop. It was clear that they wanted him to be something.

  “Think about it,” I said.

  The waitress brought our food. The boys were both having cheeseburgers and french fries. Phil was having what looked like a chicken sandwich with a side of coleslaw. My liver and onions came with gravy-drenched mashed potatoes.

  We ate in silence for a few minutes.

  “We should talk about Mom,” Nate said around a mouthful of sandwich.

  Neither Phil nor Dave responded.

  “That what you want to do, Nate?” I asked, cutting my liver.

  “Yeah. She’s dead, but I don’t want to stop talking about her. I’m scared I’ll forget her if we make it something we can’t talk about.”

  “Give it a few days,” I suggested.

  “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “But we gotta say something about something.”

  “Phil, why was Mildred’s hand in her purse?” I asked.

  “Who knows? Maybe she was reaching for the handkerchief,” he said.

  “Or she had something she was about to give to Shelly, but she didn’t get the chance.”

  “There was nothing in the purse but what I told you. Period.”

  “Where was the car?” I tried again.

  “Whose car?” Phil asked without interest in either my questions or the chicken sandwich.

  “Mildred’s. You found her keys in her purse. What about the car?”

  “No car. We looked. Car was in the driveway of her house.”

  “Then how did she get to the park?” I asked.

  “Red Car, taxi … who knows? What’s the difference?”

  “You said there was no money in her purse,” I reminded him.

  “Forty cents. Are you suggesting the patrolman who found the body went through Mildred Minck’s purse? The cop’s name is Andrew Nimowski. Catholic with a conscience. I’ve known him ten years. His record’s cleaner than the Pope’s, a lot cleaner.”

  “Okay, Nimowski didn’t take any money from the purse. Then maybe someone drove her to the park.”

  “Maybe,” he agreed indifferently.

  “How did she know where Shelly was? Shelly didn’t tell her.”

  “She followed him.” Dave’s eyes were alive with interest.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why not just call him and set up a meeting or go to the office? Why follow him just to surprise him in the park?”

  “Is that the way private detectives think?” Nate asked.

  “Sometimes.” I worked on my liver and onions.

  “Has anyone ever followed you?” Dave asked.

  “Look out the window, in the parking lot next to the paint store across the street, but don’t stare. A green Ford sedan with dark windows.”

  “Yeah, so?” asked Nate.

  “They’re following me.”

  “Why?” asked Dave with open skepticism.

  “Trying to scare me off helping Dr. Minck,” I said. “I think one of the people in that car may have been the one who shot at me with a blowgun in the grocery store yesterday.”

  “Blowgun?” Dave let me know I had gone too far.

  But his brother was taken in by the truth.

  “What happened?” Nate asked.

  “I got soaked in peach syrup.”

  “You’re funny,” Nate went back to work on his burger.

  “I know,” I said. “They want me on the radio, Can You Top This?”

  “Senator Ford,” said Dave.

  “Harry Hershfield,” Nate added.

  “Joe Laurie, Junior,” I said.

  We all looked at Phil. He was surrounded by a conspiracy of uncle and nephews.

  “… and Peter Donald,” Phil finally said.

  “And Uncle Toby,” Nate said with a laugh. “Tell us a joke.”

  “I don’t do jokes,” I said. “I’m just naturally, spontaneously funny. Like your father.”

  Both boys smiled now. Dave sputtered. Phil shook his head the way he always did when he thought I was acting like a kid. Then he looked at the green Ford across the street. I saw something in his face, something I had seen before, many times before. He put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a firm shove. I was ready for it. I got up and out of his way. Phil headed for the door.

  “Wait here,” I told the boys and went after my brother who was already out of the door and stepping into the street with only a nod in either direction to check the traffic.

  I ran, but traffic and Phil’s head start got him to the green Ford with me about fifteen yards behind him. Phil reached for the door and opened it. I could see the driver. He was one of the two goons, the last of the Mohicans, Uncas and Chingachgook, who had been with Lawrence Timerjack at Mildred’s funeral.

  Phil reached in and pulled the bigger of the two men out of the driver’s seat. The man was at least ten years younger and twenty pounds heavier than my brother, but he was no match for the anger that exploded from Phil.

  The passenger-side door opened quickly as Phil, hands clenched into the lapels of the man’s jacket, slammed the man against the car.

  The second guy, the one with the bushy mustache, came out of the car and hurried around it. He looked determined. I got to the car in time to intercept him. He threw a low left toward my stomach. It was not only low, it was slow. I went back, taking little of the impact.

  Phil bounced the man he was holding hard against the car. The man slumped and Phil turned his attention to the guy who had swung at me. Phil went with a short, hard punch to the second man’s nose. I could hear the nose break.

  Both men were down and Phil stood over them, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “My sons and my brother and I are having dinner,” he said. “My wife was buried today. I see garbage like you every day. I don’t want to see it today. Get out of here. And stay away from me and my family.”

  The guy he had bounced against the car started to get up. Phil couldn’t help himself. He leveled a left into the man’s chest. The guy with the broken nose let out a deep grunt and stepped in. Phil faked a shot at his nose. The man reached up to protect himself. Phil drilled a right to his stomach, and the guy doubled over.

  “They can’t go away if you keep knocking them down,” I said. “Is it okay if I ask them a question?”

  “Ask,” said Phil as the two rose slowly, both steadying themselves against the car.

  “Why are you following me?” I asked.

  “Minck,” the driver said with a cough. “Timerjack said you might lead us to him.”

  “He’s in the county lockup,” I said as they backed away from Phil, whose face was bright red.

  “No,” said the driver, opening the car door with a shaking hand. “He escaped a few hours ago.”

  For some reason, this answer got Phil started again, and he reached for the door just as it slammed shut. He looked for the second banana, who was bleeding his way to the passenger side, made a move toward him and changed his mind. Instead, he punched the car door. He made a dent that looked something like a moon crater.

  The car sped off, almost hitting a white Carlisle Flower Delivery truck.

  Phil was already heading back to the diner. I stood for a second or two trying to turn the goon’s words into reality. Shelly escaped? Shelly escaped.

  Back in the diner, people pretended they hadn’t seen what had happened. Phil went back to the booth, and I slid in next to him.

  “That was great,” Nate said admiringly.

  Dave just looked at his father in awe. Phil had never touched anyone in his family in anger, never, as far as I knew, even raised his voice.

  “What do you want for dessert?” Phil asked, reaching for the menu. “I’m having apple pie and ice cream.”

  “You all right, Dad?” Dave asked softly.

  “I’m pretty good
now,” said Phil. “Hungry.”

  People were glancing at us.

  We all had apple pie and ice cream. Phil insisted on paying the whole bill. I didn’t argue. Today was not a good day to argue with Philip Pevsner.

  Phil left a good tip for the waitress, who had dropped the check on the table quickly and hurried away.

  When we had finished, Phil went to the phone in the corner near the men’s room and made a call. We waited outside the diner and, when he joined us, Phil recounted the bizarre story of Sheldon Minck’s escape.

  CHAPTER 12

  SHELLY HAD BEEN scheduled for a meeting with an assistant district attorney and Marty Leib. On the way down, a few doors from the office, Shelly said he had to go to the washroom. The windows in the washrooms were too small to fit through and he was twelve floors up, so the cop with him told Shelly to hurry up.

  Shelly, cleaning sweat from his glasses, inside the men’s room, found himself staring at a huge, startled Negro woman in a thin black coat and a red beret.

  According to the woman, whose husband had been arrested for armed robbery, she had gone through the wrong restroom door. Very wrong. Shelly had threatened her with death, taken her coat and purse after emptying the contents, put on her beret, taken off his glasses, and applied her lipstick. As he did these things, he kept warning the woman not to cause trouble. Then, head down, he walked out of the door and turned away from the cop.

  “Gone,” Phil said. “The cop went in the men’s room when he heard the Negro woman start screaming. He called downstairs from the nearest office to seal off the front door, but it was too late. The cop’s been suspended.”

  “I don’t think Shelly is safe on the street,” I said.

  “Why?” asked Dave.

  “I think someone wants him dead, someone named Timerjack,” I said to Phil. “Shelly dies and everything goes to the Survivors now that Mildred’s gone. The two guys in the Ford want to kill him.”

  “They want to kill Dr. Minck?” Dave asked with great interest.

  “Looks that way,” I said.

  “I’ll never forget this day,” said Nate.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s one of those. I’ll call you later, Phil.”

  My brother said nothing, just nodded, his mind probably with his dead wife. He moved down the sidewalk toward his car with his sons at his side.

  I went back to my car trying to imagine Shelly dressed like a woman. I have a pretty good imagination, but not that good. I kept seeing Porky Pig in drag.

  Shelly had no money and very little common sense. It was possible he was hitchhiking out of town, which meant he had little chance of anyone giving him a ride and, even if they did, he probably had no idea of where to go or what to do when he got there. It was possible he was hiding somewhere in or near Los Angeles. Since he was born looking guilty, it wouldn’t be hard to find him. It was even more possible that, broke, confused and afraid, Shelly would come looking for help, probably from me. I needed a plan.

  I got back to Mrs. Plaut’s boardinghouse a little before eight. She sensed me coming across the porch and through the door. There was no other explanation since I could see, as she stood there barring the way up the stairs, that she wasn’t wearing her hearing aid. The phone was at the top of the stairs. My pockets were filled with nickels I’d picked up at a drugstore on the way. She stood between me and the stairs.

  “Have you read my pages?” she asked.

  “I have,” said. “They are wonderful, a welcome addition to an already fascinating family saga.”

  I was trying to quote from a recent ad for a new book by Louis Bromfield.

  “All well and good,” she said. “But we must sit down at the table with tea and peanut-butter cookies and discuss who will be publishing my book and what we will call it now that the story is reaching its conclusion.”

  I took a few steps toward the stairs. She moved to keep me from going up.

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “Or the next day.”

  “I have been thinking of calling it One Family’s Journey Through American History,” she said.

  “I like it,” I said. “A little long, but I like it.”

  I would have liked A Long Journey to the Electric Chair, or Mrs. Plaut’s Meanderings, or Lost in the Woods. War and Peace would have been nice too.

  She nodded her approval and said, “Tomorrow evening after dinner. I shall placate Jamaica Red with cookies to keep him quiet and tranquil when we talk.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” I said as she stepped aside to let me pass.

  I started up the stairs. Behind me Mrs. Plaut called, “You had two telephone messages. Mr. Gunther has them.”

  I reached the top of the stairs and decided to check with Gunther before I made my calls. I knocked at his door and he called, “Come in.”

  He was sitting in his easy chair, legs dangling, dressed casually, at least casually for Gunther. Slacks, shirt and tie, vest, but no jacket. He was wearing well-polished black patent-leather shoes and was reading a book.

  “Toby”—he removed his glasses—“Sheldon Minck has escaped.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “He called here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “That,” Gunther sighed, “I do not know, but I know where he will be at ten o’clock tonight, across the street from the Pantages Theatre by the newsstand. He would like you to be there. He was most furtive in his speech.”

  “There are people who want him dead,” I said.

  I told Gunther everything that had happened and all I knew and showed him the sheet I had taken from Mildred Minck’s bedroom. I also told him what I thought might have happened in Lincoln Park, at least part of it. He agreed.

  “Oh,” Gunther said. “You had another call. A few hours ago. A Miss Cassin said you should call her as soon as you got in. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  I went to the phone, piled my nickels in a small mound on the table and pulled out my notebook. I dialed Joan Crawford’s number. It rang four times before she picked it up.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “It’s Toby Peters.”

  “Well, certainly. I do plan to be there.”

  “Be … is someone there with you?”

  “Of course,” she said brightly. “Phillip had to go to work late. The children are in bed.”

  “Does whoever is there have a gun?”

  “Not at all,” she said. “Yes, the one we talked about earlier. The one in the park.”

  I heard someone say something in the background, but I couldn’t make it out.

  “The man in the park? Shelly Minck?”

  “That’s the one,” she said as if I had just won a box of Snickers on Dr. I.Q.

  “Put him on,” I said. “Tell him it’s me.”

  I heard her say, “It’s for you,” and after a brief pause, “Mr. Peters.”

  “Toby? You’re amazing. How did you find me?”

  I could have said, “I just thought of the most stupid place you could go and called there” but I said, instead, “I’m a private detective. What are you doing there, Shelly?”

  “I’m trying to convince Joan Crawford that she made a mistake, that she didn’t see me kill Mildred. I’m being persuasive.”

  “You’re being stupid,” I said. “People are trying to kill you.”

  “Why?”

  “Money, Shel,” I said. “I’ll explain when I see you. Stay there.”

  “Can’t. The police will come here. I know they will. Her husband will be home. I … Did Gunther tell you where to meet me and when?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But—”

  “Toby, just be there.”

  The next voice I heard was Joan Crawford’s.

  “I’ve been humoring him,” she said impatiently now. “But I will not perjure myself. I want this man out—”

  I heard a door slam somewhere beyond her.

  “I think he just left,” she s
aid. “I’m going to call the police.”

  “Probably a good idea, but do me and yourself a favor. Just mention that he came to your house, tell them what he said and did, and forget I called you or you called me.”

  “All right … Mr. Peters, if you aren’t going to be able to keep my name out of the news, I’d like to know now, so I can work out something with Warner Brothers.”

  Having worked for and been fired by Harry Warner himself, I doubted that she’d have an easy time explaining away being a witness to a bizarre murder.

  “I’m working on it,” I said. “It’ll be harder if you call the police and tell them about Shelly coming to your house.”

  “All right. But please keep that man away from me,” she said. “He is a fugitive not only from the law but from a Halloween party for the cosmetically disabled. He’s dressed like a woman, or something like a woman. He looks more like a circus clown about to get hit by a pie.”

  “He’s in disguise,” I said.

  “He is insane,” she corrected.

  She hung up, and I started making calls. I still had more than an hour till I had to meet Shelly across the street from the Pantages, providing he didn’t get picked up as the world’s ugliest streetwalker before I got there.

  On the chance that Shelly didn’t show up or did show up for our meeting and then got away from me, I first called Violet at home and asked her to go back to the office and, if Shelly showed up, keep him there and give me a call at Mrs. Plaut’s. Then I called Jeremy Butler and asked him to stake out the Minck house and hold onto Shelly if he came there.

  “The service for your sister-in-law was good,” he said.

  “Your poem was perfect.”

  “Ida Tarbell died, too,” he said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Anything else?”

  “Jimmie Foxx may be drafted.”

  We had wandered into baseball, one of Jeremy’s passions. He had once played minor-league ball and was slowly compiling a collection of poems about the game.

  “No kidding? How old is he?”

  “Thirty-six,” said Jeremy. “He’s been out of the game for four years. He says he wants to go.”

  “Keep me posted,” I said.

  Then I called Martin Leib at his home.