A Fatal Glass of Beer by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online

hand was more of her dreaded manuscript, the endless book she was writing about the history of her family. Lined sheets with neatly printed words. She handed the pages to me. I took them. For some reason she had decided, in the wisdom of her eighty-plus years, that I was both a book editor and an exterminator, these being the reasons that the police and other unsavory individuals were frequently looking for me.
    “I’m going out of town for a week or two,” I shouted, seeing that she wasn’t wearing the hearing aid Gunther and I had given her. “So is Mr. Wherthman.”
    “You’re both paid up,” she said, folding her arms. “If you’re going on vacation, I suggest the Carlsbad Caves. That’s where the departed Mister and I honeymooned.”
    “I’ll take the pages with me and read them at night,” I shouted, putting the sheets on the table.
    She nodded. I had given her the answer she wanted, but she didn’t budge.
    “Stamps,” she said.
    I went into my top drawer and pulled out the quota of ration stamps I had picked up two days earlier: red stamps for meat, canned fish, butter, and cheese; blue stamps for canned goods and processed foods. She pocketed the stamps and remained rooted.
    “Next, the cat,” she said.
    “You said he could come and go as long as he didn’t go into any other part of the house,” I reminded her.
    “I still think he tried to eat Simon, gave him a nervous break-down.”
    She had a pet bird in a cage in her rooms on the first floor. The bird was something that resembled a canary. The name she gave the fowl was constantly changing.
    “It wasn’t Dash,” I said.
    “Cat doesn’t like me. I don’t like the cat,” she said. “Plain and simple.”
    “I’ll see to it that he doesn’t get out of the room,” I said.
    “And doesn’t poo or pee on the furniture,” she said.
    “He does that outside,” I shouted.
    “He should do that outside,” she said. “One more thing.”
    “Yes,” I said, resigned to my lot until Gunther or Fields arrived to save me.
    “You have a phone call.”
    She stepped out of the way and I hurried down the hall to the dangling phone. Whoever called had probably hung up, but … “Peters,” I said.
    “Don’t go,” came a voice that sounded as if it were being filtered through a bag of seashells.
    “Go?”
    “With Fields,” the voice said. “You go, you die. Both of you.”
    “Hipnoodle?” I asked.
    There was no answer.
    “I saw the letter you sent Fields,” I said. “I thought you wanted him to come after you.”
    “Come to Philadelphia and you both die.”
    He hung up and so did I, as the doorbell rang. Mrs. Plaut ambled down the stairs and opened the door. Fields stood in the doorway wearing his straw hat. He doffed it to Mrs. Plaut and said, “Good evening, madam.”
    “Fields,” she said. “Mister and I saw you on the stage in Marietta, Georgia, back in ’09.”
    Fields smiled and looked up at me on the landing. He stepped in and Mrs. Plaut closed the door.
    “You juggled,” she said. “Lots of stuff, boxes, hats, Indian clubs. Ad said you were the world’s greatest juggler. You were.”
    “Still am,” he said with pride. “Though there is little call for or appreciation of that skill in the modern world.”
    “I agree,” she said. “Don’t care much for seeing young girls with almost nothing on.”
    Fields looked up at me, perplexed.
    “I’ll be right down,” I called and headed for my room. “You’d better shout if you expect Mrs. Plaut to come close to understanding what you’re saying.”
    I checked the bed, picked up my suitcase, turned off the light, and went to Gunther’s room to leave a note telling him that I had left. Then I went downstairs and found Mrs. Plaut and W. C. Fields seated in the living room. None of the other boarders were there. She had poured him and herself a glass of her famous elderberry saft.
    “A dose of gin might give it an extra tang,” he shouted.
    “Fine by me,” Mrs.