He Done Her Wrong: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Eight) (Toby Peters Mysteries) by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online Page B

Ressner’s wife had since remarried someone with considerable financial resources.”
    “How bad was he?”
    “Nothing terrible, really,” sighed Winning. “A few situations in which he had to be removed by the police from Cecil B. De Mille’s house. One confrontation with Joe Louis.”
    “Joe Louis? What did he have—”
    “That was never quite clear to us,” Winning said, showing a trace of puzzlement. “Ressner said something about Joe Louis as a performer of … but it wasn’t clear.”
    “Mae West,” I said.
    “What?” he gasped.
    “Has Ressner ever had any contact with Mae West?” I said.
    “You surprised me with that,” he said. “Miss West appeared at the institute last year. She is very interested in the problems of the mentally ill, among other things. Ressner met her and tried to talk to her. We had to pull him away. He grew more and more animated, insisting that she could help his career. How did you know …?”
    “I think he contacted her,” I explained, starting to tear the corner off the envelope. “Bad scene at her place night before last, Dr. Winning. I think your Mr. Ressner is dangerous. I think you should call in the cops.”
    Winning’s already pale face grew even more pale.
    “No, no. Not if it can be helped. He’s never done anything really violent and the embarrassment to the institute, his family, our … I’d rather avoid it if at all possible.”
    “He tried to turn me into diced ham,” I said, inserting my finger under the letter flap.
    “Mr. Peters,” Winning stood, leaning both hands on my desk. It put him above me, looking down, which might have worked on difficult patients or their relatives, but only resulted in my turning a near smirk in his direction. “Our institute does some fine work. One of our new patients, for example, should the family so decide, will be Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s son. It can do us no good to have the police brought in followed by the newspapers talking about escaped lunatics and … you can see my point.”
    “My fee, Dr. Winning, is thirty bucks a day plus expenses, plus three percent over expenses to cover paperwork. I’ll take the case for four days. If I don’t have him by then, we take it to the cops. Agreed?”
    Winning sat again.
    “Perhaps we can discuss it if you haven’t found him in four days?”
    We were bargaining for pennies.
    “Sure,” I agreed. “I’ll call you at the institute if I haven’t got a line on him by Monday, but it’ll just be to let you know that it’s time to go to the cops. Deal?”
    Winning touched his chin with his right hand, shrugged, and said, “It is a deal.”
    “I’ll need fifty dollars up front,” I said. He pulled out his wallet and fished for the fifty in tens and ones while I glanced at the invitation to my wife’s wedding in two days.
    I took the bills from Winning, stuffed them in my wallet, and pulled a pad of paper out of my top drawer. The top sheet had my doodle of cubes attached to cubes. I ripped it off, wrote a receipt, handed the sheet to him, and he fished out and handed me a business card, white, clean, embossed in silver, in hard-to-read script.
    “Call me at any time of the day or night,” he said, rising and snapping his briefcase closed. “If my secretary or I do not answer, please keep trying. The institute is a rather busy place, and I spend little actual time in my office.”
    I looked down at my invitation to a wedding and then at the psychiatrist.
    “You married, doc?”
    “I was,” he said, looking at me as if I might be a suitable case for treatment. “My duties proved to take more time and attention than my wife could accept.”
    “I know how it is,” I said. “My wife’s getting remarried in two days.”
    “Would you like to give me the fifty dollars back and talk about it for a few hours,” he said with a smile.
    “No, I think I’ll hold on to the cash and try to work it out myself. Is that what you guys get? Twenty-five