Mildred Pierced: A Toby Peters Mystery

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Do they?”

  “Hell, yes. The clock is ticking, Toby.”

  “Not mine,” I said, looking at my father’s wristwatch.

  “Need a ride?”

  “How much will it cost?”

  “Nothing. I’m feeling generous.” Marty got into the Chrysler and opened the door for me.

  On the way back to Mrs. Plaut’s, Marty again advised me to tell Shelly to turn himself in. I told him I’d pass on the advice if I saw Shelly.

  “He’s going to be a rich man, Toby,” Marty said. “He’ll need a business manager.”

  “You?”

  “None better.”

  He was probably right. Marty went for your last penny, but he was honest and he was good.

  He dropped me at Mrs. Plaut’s. The unmarked cop car, which had been following us since we left the front of the Wilshire Station, parked about twenty cars back. There was plenty of room at this hour of the morning.

  Mrs. Plaut’s door was closed. I didn’t bother to tiptoe up the stairs. I knocked at Gunther’s door, went in when he answered. He was at his desk, working. He turned toward me and took off his glasses.

  “Thanks for calling Marty Leib.”

  “You are most welcome. On the other matter, the Survivors for the Future. It was not difficult. The founder and sole owner of the organization and all the assets of the organization is James Fenimore Sax. I have been able to find nothing further about Mr. Sax.”

  “So if Shelly doesn’t live long enough to change his will, Sax—whoever he is—gets everything,” I said.

  “Precisely,” said Gunther. “You believe this Sax will try to find Dr. Minck.”

  “And his new will, if Shelly’s written one,” I said, plopping into his easy chair. “I’m tired. I’m tired and it’s going to be a long day.”

  “Can I be of assistance?” he asked.

  “Probably,” I said. “I’ll let you know. What are you working on?”

  “A technical pamphlet on potential military and industrial uses of magnesium,” he said. “It is written in Hungarian, a language designed not for science but for melancholia.”

  “The poetry of magnesium,” I said.

  “In a sense,” Gunther agreed. “Hungarians—even scientists—have a tendency to think of themselves as poets. It often makes conversing with them a bit depressing.”

  “James Fenimore Sax,” I repeated, standing. “The Pathfinder. The Deerslayer. Natty Bumppo. The survivor.”

  “You mean James Fenimore Cooper. I’ve read his works. I find them without poetry.”

  “He wasn’t shooting for poetry,” I said. “He was shooting to see how many people he could kill off in as few pages as possible.”

  “A worthwhile literary endeavor,” Gunther said straight-faced. “Though it is not politic, I prefer the German western writer Karl May.”

  “Got to get to work,” I said. “I’ll call if I need you. Thanks again.”

  Gunther tilted his head in acceptance of my thanks, and I went to my room where I discovered what had happened to Mrs. Plaut.

  She was sitting on my sofa, hands on her knees.

  “You lead a varied life,” she said.

  “I do indeed,” I agreed.

  “Who were those men who took you away? They were not from Fish and Wildlife.”

  “They were not,” I agreed, going to my refrigerator for some milk and opening the cabinet over it for some Kix.

  “They were the police,” she said.

  “They were,” I confirmed.

  “I know why they were here,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “During your work as an exterminator, you poisoned some pond or something.”

  “Then maybe they were Fish and Wildlife,” I said, working on my Kix.

  It was at that moment Dash decided to jump from the tree onto my windowsill.

  “They were from the F.B. and I.,” she said. “They think you are a Nazi saboteur poisoning our water-supply system. It troubles me that people who are responsible for protecting us from the enemy could fail to see that you are a harmless and nearly impoverished American of middle age who ekes out a living killing bugs and editing manuscripts.”

  “Thanks for your vote of support,” I said.

  “I shall write a series of letters on your behalf,” she said firmly and decisively. “I will write to Harry Hopkins, Cordell Hull, and the president himself.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She moved to the door, opened it and said, “If that cat gets to Jamaica Red and slinks away with one feather of any hue, I shall be greatly upset and will not send my letters.”

  “I’ll keep Dash from Jamaica Red,” I said.

  She left me with Kix, Dash, and a plan for saving Shelly. It wasn’t much of a plan. It didn’t stand much chance of working. It was probably dangerous. No, it was definitely dangerous.

  I was, therefore, reasonably happy.

  CHAPTER 14

  WHEN I GOT to the room at the Biltmore, Shelly was gone. So was my ephemeral happiness. Note the word “ephemeral.” It had been in one of Jeremy’s poems. I’d asked him what it meant.

  “Elusive, ghostlike, difficult to grasp either physically or conceptually, like fog,” he had said.

  I liked the word. I didn’t like Shelly not being in his room at the Biltmore. I liked the note he had left me on the desk even less.

  Toby, I’m all right. I called James Fenimore Sax, the founder of the Survivors. He assured me that the Survivors will protect me. He’s a noble man. Believe me. You know I’m a good judge of character. For my courage, he is going to promote me to Pathfinder and hide me till this is all taken care of. Don’t worry. I’ll call you.

  Shelly

  The only question for me was how, after Sax got the new will from Shelly—if he had written one—he was going to arrange for Sheldon’s accidental death.

  I asked the daytime desk clerk, a fixture behind the Biltmore desk since it opened in 1923, if Shelly had made any calls. That was easy to find out. I got the number he called, went to the pay phone booth in the lobby and dialed it.

  “To survive is to live and fight another day,” the voice said. It was a woman. I guessed it was Helter, the Survivor with the knife.

  “Sax,” I said, raising my voice about half an octave.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “A friend of Dr. Minck,” I said.

  “Where can he reach you?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I’d like to talk to him now,” I said. “It is urgent. Something he would like to know.”

  “Tell me and I’ll tell him,” she said.

  “Just tell him I have a copy of Sheldon Minck’s new will. Dr. Minck will deny having left a signed copy in my hands. That is a precaution I asked him to make. He will deny it vehemently. He knows that if he does not do so, he will not be among the Survivors.”

  “I know your voice,” she said.

  I hung up.

  Maybe I had bought time. I didn’t know how much.

  It was getting late. I drove my car to No-Neck Arnie’s, two blocks from the Farraday. Arnie and his son, who was just back from the war in the Pacific with a pair of Purple Hearts and a limp, were working on a giant black car. Arnie, Jr. was under the car with his feet showing. Arnie, Sr., he of the no neck, was working under the hood.

  The walls of Arnie’s shop were covered with colorful war posters. One was covered with little dollar signs and words in black and read “Don’t feed black-market greed. Pay no more than ceiling prices.” Another had a photograph of a woman with some kind of electrical tool with a long cord. She was working with the tool on a pipe. The words on the poster were “Women in the War. We Can’t Win Without Them.”

  My favorite was with what looked like a red oil drum with wings. Behind the drum were two others, one yellow, and one gray. The poster read: “Keep ’Em Flying Back. Usable DRUMS are like AMMUNITION. Help the Service, the Industry, Yourself.” Behind the flying drums trailed
the words “Don’t drop—keep clean,” “Don’t strip threads,” and “Empty and return fast.”

  “What kind of car is that?” I asked.

  Arnie wiped his greasy hands on his overalls, pushed back his gray Sinclair cap and said it was a Lagonda.

  “Can’t get parts for these things,” he said. “Have to improvise. Arnie, Jr. is making a new driveshaft. Learned to do things like that in the army motor pool, keep jeeps running with rubber bands and prayers. He can make anything run. What can I do for you?”

  “Rear window’s gone. Big hole in my dashboard,” I said.

  “Someone throw a rock?”

  “Crossbow bolt. Tried to kill Shelly last night.”

  “I heard he was in jail for killing his wife,” said Arnie, returning his gaze to the open mouth of the huge car.

  “He escaped,” I said.

  “Crossbow? Didn’t he kill his wife with a crossbow?”

  “She was killed with one.”

  “Junior, you ever hear of anyone using a crossbow to kill someone?”

  From under the car came the voice saying, “A Jap on Guam used a sling with sharpened pieces of coconut. Didn’t work. A sergeant on Bataan—one of ours—made a bow and arrow when he was separated from his company. Claimed to kill two Japs with handmade arrows. He was a little nuts, though. I didn’t believe him. Crossbow? That’s nuts.”

  “That’s nuts,” repeated No-Neck Arnie, having heard the gospel from his war vet son.

  “Nuts or not,” I said, “that’s what happened. What will it take to fix it?”

  “Piece of glass. Fill in the hole with something. Eight bucks. I can have it for you tonight about five or six.”

  “Got something I can drive till then?”

  “Got five bucks?”

  I took out a five.

  “Little coupe with a rumble seat back there by the door. Runs okay. I’m gonna repaint it when I get a chance and sell it.”

  “Keys?”

  Arnie reached deep into the pocket of his overalls and came up with a jangling handful of keys. He examined them, extracted a pair on a ring, and handed it to me.

  “It’s filled with gas,” he said. “I’ll need your coupons and two bucks for gas.”

  I gave him the two dollars and called out to Junior, “Good to see you back.”

  “Roger,” Jr. answered.

  Twenty-one minutes later, I was parked in front of Joan Crawford’s house. She answered the door when I rang. She looked more like the movie Crawford, but not exactly. She wore a plain print dress, white with a broad black belt, and her hair was fluffy. She wore enough makeup for a close-up, and she was smoking a cigarette nervously.

  “Is it true?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “That odious little fat man killed someone else last night?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “An equally odious detective with red hair, bad skin, and bad manners, who had found out—apparently without much difficulty—that Billie Cassin is Joan Crawford. He wanted to know if Dr. Minck had contacted me.”

  “Why?”

  “He said he thought Dr. Minck might want to kill me to keep me from testifying that I had seen him kill his wife. He was also clearly concerned that that I might change my mind to keep my name out of the newspapers.”

  “And you told him—?”

  “That I hadn’t seen Dr. Minck,” she said. “And that if I had to testify, I would tell the truth. Mr. Peters, if your dentist wanted to kill me, he could have done so last night. He may be filthy, clumsy, and obnoxiously self-pitying, but he strikes me as no killer. I’ve learned the hard way how to judge people.”

  “But you saw him kill his wife?”

  She paused and said, “Yes. There was nothing in the newspaper this morning about me, nothing about this second murder.”

  “The papers are a day behind and the radio is full of war news. We’ve got a day or so. Ready to go? We’re a little late.”

  She looked past me at the two-door coupe.

  “It’s an improvement,” she said. “I rode in the rumble seat of one like this in Our Dancing Daughters. It wasn’t comfortable. The road was bumpy, and I had to keep laughing with a bottle in my hand and showing teeth.”

  “You can ride up front with me,” I said.

  “Will this take long?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Who shows up. What they say and do.”

  “Cryptic,” she said.

  She was wearing her sunglasses now, and no hat. She had a great profile, and I was on her favorite side of it.

  I parked on the street next to the park, a short walk to the open field where Mildred had died. It was about five minutes before the time of day she had been shot.

  “What are we doing back here?” she asked as we stood on the pathway a few feet from where she said she had stood when she witnessed the death of Mildred Minck.

  “Waiting.”

  “For what?” she asked.

  “For who. Here he comes.”

  Scott Kaye, the redheaded school kid, headed toward us on his bicycle. He didn’t slow down when he saw us. In fact, he pumped harder.

  “Hold it,” I called when he was about twenty yards away.

  He kept pumping. I moved in front of Joan Crawford and held out my hands for him to stop. He veered to the right onto the grass. The grass was thick. It slowed him down, but didn’t stop him. I stepped to my left as he came even with us and shoved him. The bike toppled over, and the kid went sliding on the grass in the general direction of the tennis courts.

  “Mr. Peters,” Crawford said. “You could have killed the boy.”

  “What did you do that for?” the kid asked, getting to his knees.

  I walked over to him and helped him up. “You weren’t going to stop.”

  “I’m late for school.” He looked down at the grass stains on his trousers.

  “You may not be going to school today,” I said.

  “Mr. Peters, I—” Crawford said.

  I ignored her.

  “When this lady saw the other lady get killed,” I said, “she said the dying woman had her purse open and something in her hand.”

  “So?” he said.

  “So you went over to the body while this lady went for the police. Dr. Minck was distraught. You picked up the purse and found something in it.”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” I said. “You did.”

  “Okay, I took some money,” he said. “She was dead. I could tell. I would have helped her, but I knew she was dead. You’re going to arrest me, aren’t you?”

  “What else did you take from her purse?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he insisted.

  “One more chance, and then we go in the station to talk about the money you took and what else you found.

  “Okay, okay, I found a gun, a little gun. I put it in my pocket. I’ve still got it. I’ll give it back.”

  He reached for the cloth pack attached to his bike, but I got to it first and unbuckled the strap.

  The gun was there. Small. I checked the barrel.

  “You clean this?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then it hasn’t been fired.”

  “I’m really sorry,” the kid said. “You gonna let me go?”

  “We’re not done,” I said. “You’re the one who found that bolt the other day when we were looking. How did you know where to look?”

  “I didn’t, just luck.”

  “One more lie, and I turn you in for theft, illegal possession of a firearm and aiding and abetting a murder.”

  “I’m only sixteen.”

  “Then you should be out on your bike again when you’re forty.”

  “A guy came up behind me,” the kid said, caving in. “When I was putting the gun in my pocket. He asked me what had happened. I told him about the lady here going for the police. He told me to go. I got out of there fast, but I saw him toss something i
nto the grass.”

  “The bolt you found?”

  “I think so. It was in the right place. The fat guy with the bow thing just stood there.”

  Three young women pushing baby buggies rolled up the path and looked at us. I smiled. The kid looked down. Joan Crawford showed her profile.

  “I’m telling you it is,” whispered one of the mothers.

  “It’s not,” said a second.

  The third one looked at Crawford and said, “Excuse me. Are you Joan Crawford?”

  “Yes,” said Crawford.

  “Oh, my God,” said the first mother. “You are my very favorite. Right next to Bette Davis.”

  Crawford’s smile reeked of painful insincerity. “Thank you.”

  The three mothers, unable to think of anything more to say, continued their pushing. I turned to the kid.

  “Can I go now?”

  “What did this man look like?”

  He shrugged. “Average, I guess. About your size. Hat, rain coat, mustache.”

  “What did he do when you left?”

  “He was talking to the chubby guy with the crossbow, had his hand on his shoulder. That’s all. I swear.”

  “Did you hear him say anything?”

  “Didn’t make sense,” the kid said. “Something like Dumpo or Dumbo.”

  “Bumppo?”

  “Yeah, I think.”

  “I’ve got your address,” I said. “We may be calling on you to identify this man.”

  The kid picked up his bicycle, straightened the twisted handlebars and wheeled the bike back to the path.

  “I’m finding a different way to school,” he said.

  “Makes sense to me,” I said.

  He looked at Joan Crawford and pedaled off.

  “Why was she carrying a gun?” Crawford asked.

  “I think she was planning to kill Shelly,” I said. “But someone shot her first.”

  “Self-defense,” she said. “I mean, your friend can claim self-defense.”

  “He didn’t know she had a gun,” I said. “I talked to him.”

  Since the kid had confessed that he had taken Mildred’s money, I had a pretty good idea of how she had gotten to the park, public transportation, probably a cab.