Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery (27 page)

“He doesn’t have any money,” I said.

“His parents do,” said Marty. “His father has a very successful welding shop in Decatur, Illinois. The war has been kind to him.”

“Thanks for telling me,” I said, knowing there was more.

“Temporary insanity,” Marty said.

“Three times?”

“Why not? War wounds, mental trauma, a hero who worshiped a much-beloved magician. I would like your help in doing some investigation on this. You know the background, and I expect you will be testifying at the trial—if it comes to a trial, which I seriously doubt.”

“Our fees have gone up,” I said.

“How much?”

“You don’t bill us for what you’ve done for us over the past three days and we don’t charge you.”

“A counter suggestion,” said Marty. “You, or Blackstone, pays my bill, which will be in the mail today, and I do not sue your brother and your firm for excessive and unnecessary violence in shooting my client.”

“That won’t work,” I said.

“But it is a nuisance,” Marty said with a sigh.

“You win, Marty,” I said.

“I always win,” said Marty. “That’s why I charge what I do.”

He hung up. I hung my jacket on the coatrack and went to my desk. I didn’t have to look up when the door opened. I knew who would be there.

Alice stood blocking the doorway.

“Good morning,” I said, opening the letter on the top of a small pile on my desk. It was an offer to buy two suits at Hy’s For Him for the price of one. “How’s Natasha?”

“Fine,” she said from the doorway.

I went to letter number two. It was from someone in Pasadena. I couldn’t make out the name, but there was a phone number. If I read the scrawl right, she wanted to talk to us about finding her lost amoeba or ambulance or amulet.

I half expected Alice to come behind me, yank me from my chair, and hurl me across the room if I was lucky, out the window if I wasn’t. She didn’t move.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“For finding Natasha so fast last night,” she added. “She doesn’t remember any of it, but she asked about the man who told her a story.”

“Great,” I said, putting down my letter opener and looking at her with my best lopsided smile. “So we’re friends now?”

“Yes,” she said. “I still don’t like your getting Jeremy involved in your work, but he’s a grown man.”

He’s at least two grown men, I thought. But I just nodded. Alice left.

I called Anita and told her what had happened the night before. We agreed to go out for dinner and a movie after she finished work. Before I got off the phone, there was a knock at the door. I didn’t have time to say “come in.” Shelly entered, followed by Pancho. I hung up the phone.

“Is this great, or is this great?” said Shelly, holding some sheets of paper up to show me the typing on them.

“What?”

“The start of the script,
Dentist in Disguise
,” Shelly said. “Pancho here is a brilliant genius. Look.”

He placed the pages neatly on my desk and stepped back, chewing on his morning cigar. He looked at Pancho, who let a small smile twitch his thin lips.

“He worked most of the night on it,” added Shelly. “Did I say he is a brilliant genius?”

“Your exact words.”

“We’re thinking of Walter Pidgeon to play me. Or Errol Flynn. He has the touch.”

“Light touch,” said Pancho.

“Let me know what you think,” Shelly said and left the office with Pancho still behind him.

I flipped the title page over on its face and read the neatly typed pages:

        INTERIOR, DAY. OFFICE OF SHELDON PEVSNER Phone rings. SHELDON PEVSNER in clean freshly starched whites is working on a bicuspid filling of a beautiful BLONDE who looks at him with the complete confidence he clearly deserves.

SHELLY

            Excuse me.

        He touches her shoulder gently, reassuringly, and answers the phone on the wall.

            Dr. Pevsner.

        SPLIT SCREEN. SHELDON PEVSNER on right. TOBY PETERS on left.

PETERS

            Sheldon, I need your help again.

SHELLY

            I’ve got a patient. I’ll come to your office in half an hour. What’s the problem?

PETERS

            I think someone is trying to kill my client, Blackstone the Magician. It’s got me stumped. Please come as soon as you can.

SHELLY

            Haven’t I always been there to pull your cases from the jaws of disaster? As the Bard said,

        “Take heed dear heart, of this large privilege;

        The hardest knife ill used doth lose its edge.”

PETERS

            And thanks again for saving my tooth.

SHELLY

            It’s what I do.

        SHELLY hangs up. TOBY disappears. We are only in SHELLY’S office. SHELLY walks to patient, smiles. She smiles back.

SHELLY

            You are complete.

        SHELLY helps her from the chair.

BLONDE

            That was Shakespeare wasn’t it?

        Their faces are inches apart.

SHELLY

            On the phone?

        BLONDE laughs at his wit.

            I should really observe that first bite of your renewed smile. Dinner tonight?

        BLONDE blushes. SHELLY kisses her hand.

BLONDE

             Oh, yes.

        SHELLY leads her to the door. BLONDE exits. SHELLY turns on the radio, finds classical music, and cleans his instruments. The door suddenly opens. A MAN dressed like a sea captain, his cap pulled forward over his eyes, staggers in. Under his arm is a bundle about the size of a large ham. It is wrapped in brown paper and tied with a thin rope. MAN tries to say something, hands the package to SHELLY and then collapses. SHELLY touches the man’s neck to be sure he is dead and then SHELLY puts the package down on his instrument table, unwraps it, and discovers a foot-high white statue of an owl.

It ended there. I looked at the door waiting for the knock I was reasonably sure would come. It did.

“Come in.”

Pancho Vanderhoff came timidly in, his yellow scarf wrapped around his neck.

“You read it?”

“I did,” I said, holding the few pages out for him to take.

“You’re not angry? I mean about the way I depicted you?”

I smiled.

“Change the name,” I said. “Or I’ll break both your arms.”

“But Dr. Minck wants real names,” he said, taking the few pages of script.

“He’ll have to make an exception in this case,” I said.

“But he wants to say this movie is based on a true story.”

“Pancho, you took the last page right out of
The Maltese Falcon
.”

“It’s a white owl, not a black falcon,” he said.

I didn’t answer. He clutched the few script pages to his thin breast.

“I ran out of ideas,” he said. “And Dr. Minck likes it. He wants to know what comes next.”

“Peter Lorre walks in with a gun and tells him to please put up his hands.”

“I’m desperate,” Pancho said. “I’m bereft of ideas.”

“You’ll come up with something,” I said. “Steal from Shakespeare.”

A light went on in Pancho’s eyes, a dim light but definitely a light.

“MacBeth,” he said. “Witches, magic, ghosts. A floating dagger like Blackstone’s floating lightbulb.”

“My goal in life is to inspire,” I said.

He thanked me and hurried away.

I called my brother’s house. His sister-in-law Becky answered.

“It’s me, Toby. Everyone alright.”

“Fine,” she said.

“Mind if I drop by?”

“Come over for lunch,” she said.

“I’ll be there.”

I finished opening my mail and started to make out the bill for Blackstone. Knock at the door. The magician appeared holding a package in his hands.

“We’re leaving for San Diego tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “We’ve got two shows to do there, for the troops sailing out. If you have your bill ready by this evening before six, bring it to the hotel, and I’ll give you a check.”

He placed the package on the desk in front of me.

“Care to guess what’s inside?” he asked.

“The Maltese Falcon.”

“Open it.”

I did and pulled out an ornate Chinese box about the size of two cigar boxes. I reached over to lift the cover.

“Stop.”

I stopped.

“Open it when I’m gone,” he said.

He touched his right hand to his forehead in a salute like the one James Cagney gave in
The Public Enemy
. Then he was gone.

I opened the box slowly, half expecting white pigeons to come flying in my face, or a rabbit to peek over the side twitching its nose in my direction.

There was nothing in the blue velvet lined box, nothing but a lightbulb. The lightbulb, though, wasn’t lying on the bottom of the box. It was floating. And then it turned on.