He Done Her Wrong: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Eight) (Toby Peters Mysteries) (25 page)

CHAPTER 14

Rosie turned down the raincoat and stethoscope as collateral for the money I owed her. She didn’t even ask why I was dressed like a doctor, only shook her head and let some air out between her teeth to indicate I was the damndest practical joker she had ever met. She filled my gas tank, gave me another five-dollar loan, and I promised to get it back to her within the next week even if I had to sell the car to do it, which would have made little sense, since I already owed more than a century note on the damn thing. I rummaged through a box of clothes left by Rosie’s long-gone husband and came up with a not-too-bad-fitting pair of brown pants, a flannel shirt, and a blue sweater with one hole just under the left armpit. That was all free. I gulped down some coffee and a roll Rosie pushed in my hands just as the sun started to come up. I was coming out of a nightmare, and I wondered how much of it had really happened.

Mae West’s ranch in the valley was the closest place on my list, so I headed for it well within the speed limit and expecting to be pulled over by a state cop as an escaped loony with no driver’s license. I had a lot of thinking to do, which was not good for my health or well-being. My best ideas seemed to come not when I added things together but when they stewed somewhere deep and bubbled up by themselves. Not much made sense at the moment. My head wasn’t throbbing anymore, though my scalp seemed to be shrinking. My back seemed fine so far.

When I pulled up in front of West’s ranch a few hours later, I was hungry and worried. Ressner had done a good job of getting me out of the way. Part of it was show, but part of it was because he had some plan that, to quote what some people attributed to Sam Goldwyn, included me out.

Seeing Jeffrey’s bulk filling the doorway and an unseen weight pushing down his brow made me think that whatever Ressner had planned had already happened. I jumped out of the car and jogged to Jeffrey.

“Too late,” he said softly.

“He killed Mae West?” I croaked.

Jeremy looked at me sadly, “Killed … no. You’re too late to help. He … it … came last night. Dressed like that. I was drinking apricot juice in the kitchen. The two—”

“Dizzy and Daffy,” I said. “The beefcake bookends.”

“Yes,” continued Jeremy. “They were on an errand. Miss West opened the door before I could get there. He had a knife. I got to the doorway in the living room as fast as I could, but I was too late.”

“Jeremy, this is all very dramatic, but what were you too late for? How badly was she hurt?”

“She wasn’t. She cracked him in the head with a book of Keats’s poetry I had given her to read. Ressner, or whoever it was, fell back, holding his face and nose bleeding. He looked ready for another try, saw me, and ran for his car. I couldn’t catch him even though he was wearing high heels.”

“A dark Packard?” I said.

“Yes, I think so,” said Jeremy, rubbing the top of his smooth bald head. “You should have seen her standing in that doorway, her hands on her hips. She is quite a woman, quite a person. I’m working on a poem about her, Toby.”

“Keep at it, Jeremy. Where is she now?”

He guided me upstairs and knocked at the door. Mae West’s voice came through.

“Who might that be?”

“Toby Peters,” I said.

“
Entrez
,” she said, and I did with Jeremy behind me.

She was seated at a white dressing table looking at herself in a mirror. On her head was a massive fluffy peach-colored feather hat.

“Therapy,” she explained, putting the hat to the side. “I meditate for an hour in the morning and then try on hats. You should try it sometime.”

“I’d be beautiful in that hat,” I said.

She laughed, a hoarse guffaw.

“I meant the meditation,” she said. “Taught to me by a genuine yoga who could be a real charmer when he wanted to be.”

“Ressner came back last night,” I prompted.

She turned to look at me and motioned to an old French movie settee. It was frail and hard, and I hoped Jeremy wouldn’t join me on it. The room was full of mirrors, and Mae West watched me looking around with an amused smile on her face.

“Fun and games,” she said.

I looked at her.

“This Ressner fella,” she explained. “He parted your scalp?”

“Right.”

“He’s not prone to
empressement
” she mused, raising her eyebrows. She looked anything but scared, and I wondered why.

“He doesn’t scare you?”

“A little,” she admitted, “but I’m at a bad point in my life and career. The divorce business is getting me, the protests about my work. I’m not sure whether I’m coming or going and who I’m taking with me. Let me give you some advice. Don’t ever work with W. C. Fields. Most de-pressing experience I’ve ever had. In fact, my advice is to stay away from comics. They’re a self-pitying brood.”

“Aren’t you a comic?” I asked.

“I am a national institution, a risqué treasure being stifled by the repression old Sigmund told us about but we were too inhibited to listen to,” she said with a smile. “I’m so darned clean in
Chickadee
my own mother wouldn’t have recognized me. So, all this excitement came just when I needed a little stimulation. Gave old Jeremy here a rise too.”

Jeremy, standing by the door, looked at and away from me.

“I don’t think Ressner will be coming back,” I said. “Not for now. I think he’ll go for another target.”

“Who,” said West, “said it was Ressner last night?”

“It wasn’t the same …?”

“I don’t know,” she ventured, getting up from the table and admiring her flowered amber dress in one of the large mirrors. She patted her stomach and breathed deeply to pull it in, and it stayed there. “Never really got a look at the gentleman the other night and I didn’t really get a good look last night. Just saw this poor imitation with a knife and I didn’t wait for dialogue. I could have used a real Grecian urn.”

“If it’s all right with you,” I said, getting up, “Jeremy will go back to town with me. I think I’ve got a line on Ressner and I may need his help. We’ll wait here until your house-boys get back, and I’ll call the local cops and tell them there’s been a threat on your life. They’ll give you about a day of coverage.”

“Speaking of the john-darmes,” she said, turning to me. “How is the Panda taking this?”

“The Panda?”

“Phil,” she explained with a grin.

“Panda?” I guess he does look a little like a constipated Panda at that. “He’s doing just fine,” I lied.

“Give him my best when this all blows over,” she said. “And don’t forget to send me a bill for your services.”

“No bill,” I said. “I told you, this is a favor. I’ll take something in payment, though.”

She looked up at me and let the grin open into a comic leer as she looked over at the bed without moving her head.

“And what might that be?”

“That hat. The flowery peach thing you were trying on a few minutes ago,” I said.

“You sure your scalp is pasted back on?” she said, looking from me to Jeremy and then back again.

“I’m sure. I need a wedding present for an old friend.”

She shrugged, turned around, put the hat in a round, white box, tied it neatly, and handed the whole thing to me.

“My pleasure,” she said, touching my hand. I took the bulky box and turned to go.

I hurried down the stairs, looking for a phone, with Jeremy right behind.

“Magnificent,” he said.

“It’ll do,” I answered.

“I didn’t mean the hat.”

We moved into the kitchen. I found a phone and called the local police. Then we waited impatiently for the local cops and Dizzy and Daffy to return.

Meanwhile Mae West rested blissfully above.

Jeremy read me part of his poem in progress about her, told me how many islands we had lost in the Pacific overnight, and made us a stack of egg salad sandwiches on white with a pair of beers and some chunks of white cheese.

Maybe someday when I had the time I’d put together a gourmet cookbook of the favorite foods of detective Toby Peters. Nero Wolfe would quake with envy.

When the cops showed up, hands on their guns, a pair of burly over-the-hillers, I stood back while Jeremy introduced himself as a friend of the family, said that Mae West was sleeping off the trauma upstairs, and that Dizzy and Daffy would explain the whole thing, since they were just walking in with full armloads of groceries.

Both of them looked dumbfounded.

“This is your big moment, boys,” I said. “Miss West wants police protection for the rest of the day. Tell the tale.”

Jeremy and I went through the door, leaving the duo holding the bags, while the cops waited for an explanation. They’d probably have to wake Mae up to charm the cops and repair the damage, but I had other damage to prevent.

I drove toward Los Angeles and told Jeremy the whole story. He was especially charmed by Sklodovich and considered a way of communicating with him to give him a better exercise regime.

“Dynamic tension is good for body tone,” he said, “but you’ve got to sweat and work those muscles and cleanse the body. The world is not clean, Toby. It is not clean. What we must do is keep our mind and bodies clean. Not in the conventional Puritanical sense, but in the sense of removing the pollution of thought and atmosphere.”

“You said a mouthful, toots,” I agreed. “But what about Ressner?”

“I wonder why he has suddenly taken to violence?” said Jeremy.

“Dr. Winning’s words or close to them. He was cooped up in that booby hatch for four years. I was there less than a day, and those doctors and patients almost turned me into a cross-eyed kangaroo.”

“Perhaps,” said Jeremy. “But something is missing. The woman who said she was your sister who called the institute?”

“Ressner is pretty good on voices,” I reminded him. “Remember that night at the pool?”

“Something is still missing,” he insisted.

“Jeremy, I’m having enough trouble keeping this simple. Let’s just get over to Paramount and do our damned best to save Cecil B. De Mille’s life.”

We made what I hoped would be a brief stop at my boardinghouse. Jeremy waited in the car while I snuck up the steps to avoid a confrontation with Mrs. Plaut. I wasn’t dressed for a Paramount party.

There was a note pinned to my door. In scrawled red crayon, ummistakably Mrs. Plaut, it said,
PLEASE REMOVE THAT JUNK METAL FROM YOUR ROOM OR YOURSELF.

I went in and examined the bumper lying neatly on the floor. I hadn’t had time to fight with No-Neck Arnie about it, the car radio, the gas gauge, and my future transportation. I deposited the hatbox on my bed and went to my closet. There wasn’t much wardrobe left to pick from.

I selected a pair of brown pants and a white shirt with a bad stain on the back, which wouldn’t show if I didn’t have to take off the too-small waiter’s jacket that I pulled from the back of the closet. It had a stale smell and wasn’t mine. It had been left in the closet by the waiter who used to live in the room. He had been tall enough, but his arms were shorter than mine. To distract the world, I put on the Christmas tie Shelly had given me two years earlier, which I had never worn. It was light blue with the letters
ADA
sewn in pink. I suspected that it had been a giveaway at an American Dental Association convention. Shelly had told me that it meant “Always Dependable Ally.”

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and knew that if the Japanese were searching for an easy target, they’d have it as soon as I stepped into the street.

Gunther popped his head out of the door as I started to leave.

“Toby,” he began, and then his little mouth dropped open as he looked at my costume.

“Right, Gunther,” I said seriously. “I’ve got to get to Paramount. De Mille’s in trouble.”

Gunther, who spent his money on neatly tailored handmade conservative suits, couldn’t take his eyes from my tie as he spoke.

“Mrs. Plaut is most irate,” he said. “Most irate. I told her that the large piece of metal was a patriotic modern sculpture done by a serviceman.”

“Very inventive, Gunther,” I said and meant it.