Mildred Pierced: A Toby Peters Mystery

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “It’s worth a try,” I said, hearing the outer door open.

  “I’ll talk to you later.”

  There was a knock at my door. I told whoever it was to come in. It was Professor Geiger, looking even more like Larry Fine.

  “Is this a bad time?” he asked.

  “Is this a bad time?” I repeated and really gave the question some thought before I answered, “No worse than any other.”

  “I would like to help if I can,” he said. “I feel somehow responsible for getting Sheldon involved with the Survivors. I was already disillusioned with them when I did it, but I felt that he needed something that would give him a little confidence and a little exercise.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it,” I said, pointing to the chair across from me as I opened a bill and put it on the pile of bills that had been growing on my desk for the past few weeks. When the pile got high enough, I’d push it into the wastebasket.

  “Even without Lawrence Timerjack, they are a dangerous group. A group of fools, but fools can be dangerous.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Did Timerjack ever mention the name James Fenimore Sax to you?”

  Geiger turned his eyes upward, touched his chin, and thought.

  “James Fenimore Sax,” he repeated. “I believe I did hear that name. Once when I was in the meeting room by the lake. Timerjack got a call. It was all ‘yes, sir,’ ‘no, sir,’ and several times he did say ‘Mr. Sax.’ I had the impression Timerjack was getting orders, but I’m not sure. When he got off the phone, he told us all to put on our backpacks for a night in the woods.”

  “A night in the woods?”

  “When there were problems, Lawrence Timerjack liked to spend the night in the cold or heat, fighting mosquitoes and hunting for squirrels, which we had to skin, cook and eat. That, I believe, was the night I decided that if this was survival, I did not choose to be a Survivor.”

  “You quit.”

  “And went back to working full time on the Aeolian trafingle. It will definitely replace the theremin.”

  “You told me.”

  “I’m sorry.” He ran a hand through his wild hair. “I’m starting to forget things. Wait. I remember something else about this Sax.”

  “What?”

  He looked at me with a grin. Then the grin disappeared. “I can’t remember.”

  “Let me know when you do,” I said.

  Geiger left, and I swiveled around and watched the sun slowly falling in the west. I swiveled again and called Anita’s apartment. She answered after one ring.

  “Hi,” I said. “You eat yet?”

  “No. I was giving serious thought to Spam and eggs.”

  “How about dinner and a movie?” I asked. “My mind needs a rest. Just a quick bite and a short movie.”

  “My shoes are already off,” she said.

  “Princess O’Rourke with Olivia de Havilland and Robert Cummings,” I said. “The one where’s she’s a princess and wants to marry all-American Bob and President Roosevelt—”

  “I know the movie. I’m tired, Toby. Why don’t you just come over here for Spam and eggs and we’ll listen to Big Town.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  There wasn’t much I could think of to do to help Shelly, who might already be dead. That was approximately my thought when the phone rang.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Toby?”

  “Where are you, Shel?”

  “Safe,” he said. “At least I think so.”

  “Where?”

  “At James Fenimore Sax’s,” he said.

  “Is someone there listening?”

  “Yes,” said Shelly. “I told them I had to call you so you wouldn’t worry. Natty Bumppo—Mr. Sax—is going to hide me out till you find who killed Mildred and Lawrence Timerjack.”

  “Sheldon, my vote for both murders is a man named Sax.”

  “That’s crazy,” he said.

  “No, Shelly. I think the man in that room with you is the killer. Did you write the new will?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I hid it somewhere safe. I’m the only one who can find it. But you’re wrong about Mr. Sax.”

  “That’s good, Shel,” I said, not asking the obvious question which was “If Sax kills you, how is anyone going to find the will?”

  “Don’t tell Sax where you put the will.”

  “But Toby—”

  “Tell him and you are dead, Sheldon,” I said, raising my voice.

  “You’re wrong. I couldn’t stay in that hotel. There were people there looking for me. I could feel them, waited for them to come busting through the door. I couldn’t eat. Well, I did eat the roast chicken, the salad, and the rice pudding, but not the baked potatoes.…”

  “Shel,” I said. “Sax.”

  “I called him and he came right away and got me. I’m safe now, Toby.”

  There was something odd about the way Shelly was talking. Was Sax standing there with a gun telling him what to say? Why was Sax even letting him call me?

  “Can you get away from Sax and get out of there?”

  “Why would I want—”

  “Get out,” I shouted.

  “I don’t think that’ll be possible. I’m being kept in a locked room for my own protection.”

  “Okay then, where are you, Shel? An address.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Something,” I said.

  He paused.

  “There’s a dancing fish in the courtyard and a Rexall drugstore around the corner on La Cienega and—”

  The phone went dead.

  “Shel? Shel?”

  No answer. I had a lead. A lousy one, but better than nothing. I also had a question. Why had Sax let Shelly call me?

  I called Anita and told her I’d be late for dinner. I wasn’t sure how late.

  Then I checked the Rexall drugstores and found two on La Cienega. I was about fifteen minutes from the first one.

  I got up, turned out the lights, and left the offices. On the way down the stairs, I got an idea of why Sax had let Shelly call me. He wanted me to come looking for Shel.

  When I locked the doors and stepped onto the atrium landing, I heard the faint but distinct sound of Professor Geiger strumming on his uke two doors down. I recognized the “Yale Fight Song.”

  I considered asking someone to help—Jeremy, Gunther, maybe even Phil. But if this was a trap, I didn’t want one of them stepping into it with me. I left the Farraday and got into my car, knowing that if I thought about it too much longer, I’d call everyone I could think of—including Violet and Anita—to back me up.

  I drove listening to I Love A Mystery, episode something of “The Strange Decapitation of Jefferson Monk.” Jack, Doc, and Reggie were following a strange man down a dark street. The man was carrying a large leather medical bag. Given the title of the series, I had a pretty good idea of what was inside the bag.

  When I saw the drugstore, I turned left and drove slowly looking at the apartment buildings and homes on both sides of the street. No dancing fish in the first block. I got out next to a courtyard building on the next block. I looked around the courtyard for something that might reasonably or unreasonably be called a dancing fish. Nothing. I went back to La Cienega, crossed it, and found what I was looking for five buildings down on my right.

  It was a well-lighted two-story courtyard building with a fountain in the middle of a small pond. The fountain was a fish balanced on its tail spitting water out of its mouth. The water made a rainlike sound as it hit the pool of water.

  I had taken my .38 out of the glove compartment and felt it resting heavily under my jacket tucked in my belt.

  There were sixteen apartments, eight up, eight down. They didn’t look very big. Most of them had their lights out. Six didn’t. The lack of light didn’t mean anything.

  I considered knocking at each door and simply asking if they were hiding a fugitive murder suspect. Then, as I stood in front of the spitting fish, I thought I
saw something move in a second-floor apartment to my left. When I looked up at the darkened window, I was sure I saw the drape behind it swaying to a stop.

  It could have been a curious tenant. It could have been someone expecting me. It could have been someone expecting me and wanting me to see the swaying drape. With no other great ideas, I decided to try the apartment on the second floor.

  I went up the concrete stairwell, hand on my gun. I stood in front of the door thinking, “This is really stupid.”

  Jeremy had once said that he thought I did crazy things like this because they made me feel alive.

  “On the point of death, you feel most alive,” he had said. “It’s like an addiction. The more you do it, the more you need it to make you feel alive.”

  I didn’t buy it. Jeremy had continued, “How many times have you been shot?”

  “Twice.”

  “Could either time have been avoided?”

  “Maybe. Sure.”

  “And how many times have you been shot at or threatened with a firearm?”

  “Lots,” I said. “It’s part of the business.”

  “I know a private investigator in Santa Barbara named Thomas Ross,” Jeremy had said. “He writes poetry. He has never been shot or shot at.”

  “When he’s been in the business as long—”

  “He has been a private investigator for more than thirty years,” said Jeremy. “He is about to retire. He has never been beaten and he has related the only time he has been threatened in a poem which Alice and I published less than a year ago.”

  “So?” I had asked.

  “I don’t expect you to change,” Jeremy had said. “Understanding is more important to the human psyche. We all die.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “But we should all seek an understanding of why we take the roads we choose to tread. The question, Toby, is not ‘What is the meaning of Life?’ but ‘What is the meaning of my life?’ Have you ever considered that question?”

  “No.”

  “Someday you may wish to,” had been Jeremy’s reply before going back to scrubbing the Farraday lobby floor.

  Now I stood in front of an apartment door having no idea of the meaning of my life or the value of the one I was trying to save. At the moment, I didn’t think I wanted to consider the meaning of my life.

  I knocked. The door opened immediately and a bright light hit my face blocking out whoever was behind it.

  “Don’t touch it,” came a voice I recognized.

  A hand came out of the blinding light, pulled me into the room, and took my gun. It wasn’t the first time someone had taken my gun. It wasn’t even the fifth or sixth time. I kept getting it taken away. The door closed behind me and someone shoved me back into an armchair, the light still in my face.

  Then the light flicked off. All I could see were funny dancing dots of light, particularly one that started on the bottom left and quickly made its way up to the right and into nowhere.

  A floor lamp clicked on and I found myself looking at Lewis the Kid and the would-be Amazon Helter. She was holding a plain double-barreled shotgun. It was aimed in my specific direction.

  “You want to live?” she asked.

  Her hair was pulled back and tied with what looked like a shoelace.

  “Where’s Pigeon Minck?” I asked.

  “She asked you if you want to live,” Kid Lewis said, pulling out his blowgun. “You better answer. I can hurt you with this, hurt you real, real bad.”

  He put something in the channel of his blowgun and aimed it at me like a kid with a peashooter.

  “He can,” Helter said.

  “I believe him,” I said. “But I want to know how and where Dr. Minck is before we talk about my future.”

  “Your future’s gonna be short is what,” the kid said.

  “Lewis,” the Helter woman said calmingly. “I’ll take care of this.” Then to me: “The former Pigeon Minck is alive. He isn’t here. If you want to live, we take you to him and you tell him to tell us where the will is. Do that and we find it, and you both live.”

  “Simple as that?” I asked.

  “Simple as that,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why?” the woman answered. “Why what?”

  “Why do you want Shelly’s will? So Sax can destroy it, kill Shelly, and take the dough while you get insect bites in the woods?”

  “We’re Survivors,” she said. “Natty Bumppo wouldn’t betray us.”

  “What do you want to survive for?” I asked.

  “What the hell do you mean? We don’t want to die, don’t want to become slaves to our government, any government.”

  “And?” I pushed.

  She was irritated and confused.

  “What do you mean ‘and’? And we stay alive.”

  “And you get older and then you die,” I said. “You eat squirrels and berries and wait for orders. Doesn’t sound like much of a meaningful life.”

  “I’m going to count to three, pull both hammers back, and give you a second before blowing you to hell and eternity.”

  “Lot of noise,” I said. “And you don’t get me to talk to Shelly. Sax will say you fouled up.”

  She hesitated, considered. This wasn’t going the way she wanted.

  “Then I’ll let Lewis hurt you till you agree,” she said. “You saw what he can do with a dart.”

  I remembered the peach can.

  “Truth is, I’d really like to kill you,” she said. “But I’ll settle for watching you in agony.”

  “You want me dead because you think I killed Timerjack?” I asked and then answered my own question. “I didn’t kill him. If Sax told you I did, he lied. He killed him.”

  “Shoot him once, Lewis,” she said. “Don’t kill him.”

  I didn’t see the dart coming but I felt it hit my left shoulder. It was like a friendly punch followed by unfriendly pain. I reached for the dart. Lewis stepped in and pulled it out while I was still reaching.

  “Hurts like sin, doesn’t it?” Helter said.

  It did. I nodded to let her know that I agreed and was trying to answer with words.

  “It’s not poison,” she said. “You’re not dying yet.”

  I think I managed to hold back a moan. Maybe I didn’t.

  “You say something?” she said.

  I shook my head and then got out a hoarse “Take me to him.”

  I had decided three things very quickly. I wanted no more damned darts in my body. I didn’t want to die while I still had a chance of finding a way to stay alive. I didn’t like these people.

  “And you’ll get him to tell us where he put that new will?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Get our things, Lewis,” she said.

  The boy moved toward what I assumed was the bedroom door.

  “Why didn’t you just have me go wherever we’re going in the first place?” I asked feeling my arm growing numb.

  “Wanted to be sure you were alone,” she said.

  “Your idea?”

  “No, Anthony got it from Natty Bumppo.”

  “Sax?”

  Lewis went through the bedroom door and closed it behind him.

  “Yes,” she said. “Just be quiet till we get where we’re going.”

  “You think Sax is leveling with you?”

  “I said ‘be quiet,’” she repeated, holding the shotgun up so I could peer into the darkness of the two barrels.

  I was going to say something—I’m not sure what—when the bedroom door exploded and came flying past my head and through the window. I was knocked backward, the chair bottom facing the blast. Helter’s shotgun flew in the air and she shot forward, slamming against the front door and dropping to the floor.

  Smoke and some fire were coming from the bedroom. In the room I was in, tables were overturned, the lamp was still on but lying on the carpet, the radio had started playing without anyone turning it on. Music. It sounded like Dennis Day
singing “It’s a Grand Night for Singing.” I wasn’t sure. My ears were almost blocked shut by the blast.

  I rolled out of the armchair and picked up the shotgun. The chair had protected me. I could have felt better, but I was alive. I moved to Helter. She was lying on her side, her back blackened and bloody, her face close to white.

  “Lewis,” she whispered.

  I got up and hobbled to the bedroom, shotgun in my right hand, my left dangling, still numb from the dart. There wasn’t anything really identifiable in the room besides Lewis’s body, smoke rising from it in a corner. There hadn’t been much in the room.

  I checked the kid. There wasn’t much to check. And went back into the other room. My hearing was coming back a little. I could hear Dennis Day singing “and somewhere a bird who is bound to be heard is throwing his voice at the sky.” Through the broken window, I also heard people in the courtyard.

  Helter was still on her side looking hopefully at me.

  “He’s dead.” I was kneeling over her.

  She closed her eyes in pain, and then the tears came.

  “He was your son, wasn’t he?” I guessed.

  She nodded.

  “All I wanted to do, ever wanted to do, was to keep him safe in the world, to survive,” she said.

  “Sax set us up,” I said. “All three of us. He wanted us dead. He wants everyone dead who can identify him or lead the police to him. What do you know about him?”

  “Never met him,” she sobbed. “Everything came through the Path … Timerjack or Anthony.”

  “Where does he have Shelly?” I asked. “Where were you supposed to take me?”

  “Anthony’s downstairs,” she said with a cough. “He knows. You’re sure Lewis is—”

  “I’m sure. I’ll get an ambulance,” I said, going out the front door and moving to the rail. Below me and on the same level, people were standing, looking at me. I scared the hell out of most of them, a blackened monster with a shotgun.