think it improper that you should have killed Mr. Talbott. That’s what I have to say.”
“I didn’t kill him,” I said, trying to force my belt one notch over.
“Good,” she said, still grinding her knuckles. “The newspaper said you had been questioned concerning the crime, but it didn’t say you had killed him.”
“What else did the paper say?” I yelled. I pulled a nearly empty bottle of milk from the refrigerator, started the coffee, and rummaged through my cereals, finally settling on All Bran. It might be one of those days. I knew I had some brown sugar someplace but was having trouble tracking it down.
“The paper also said that,” she went on obligingly, “the Japanese have stormed Corregidor, Laval has rejected President Roosevelt’s warning, Great Britain in fighting the Vichy French on Madagascar, and Joe DiMaggio’s triple in the tenth inning beat the Chicago White Sox.”
It wasn’t the subject I had in mind, but I appreciated the summary and looked out of the window. The damn sky was clear. Lord God, hallelujah.
I held up the box of All Bran for Mrs. Plaut to look at and offered to share it with her. She shook her head no.
“So, Mr. Peters, what are we going to do?”
About the Japanese, fight and pray. About DiMaggio, nothing. I wasn’t a Sox fan.
“I will be much more circumspect in the future,” I yelled.
This seemed to placate her. Outside I could hear footsteps.
“I am well into my chapter on the Beemer side of the family and their encounters in science,” she said. “Then we should be ready to seek a publisher.”
We? I nodded dumbly and poured my cereal just as the knock came at my door.
“Come in,” I shouted and Gunther came in, all suited in gray.
Mrs. Plaut failed to hear him enter and continued to glare at me while I sat and ate. Gunther moved past her and caught the corner of her eye.
“Mr. Gunther,” she said as he moved to the table. “You have, until yesterday, always been a perfect little gentleman. I do not know what possessed you.”
“I’m truly sorry, Mrs. Plaut,” Gunther said with a continental bow of his head.
“When you want to apologize,” she went on, “I’ll be downstairs. And Mr. Peelers, will you please remove that thing.” She pointed to the bumper. With that and the Dora chapter she raced from the room.
“How might your head be this morning, Toby?” Gunther said as he poured the coffee.
“Feels like someone removed a few inches of scalp and sewed the whole thing back on too tight. Not bad though.” The All Bran was just what I needed.
“You seem surprisingly good spirited,” he observed, pouring himself some coffee after he recleaned the cup he had selected.
“Can’t explain it,” I said, pouring some more All Bran into the remaining milk in my bowl and spooning out some brown sugar, which I had found in the refrigerator. I had to dig the spoon in like a shovel to get it out. “Lost Anne. Beaten. Suspect in two murders. Broke. Income tax people are after me. War going on. But”-I held up a finger-“I am on the job.”
“Toby, I am having a slight idiomatic problem again in a translation I am engaged in for radio.” Gunther was serious about his translations. “In this tale, a man says ‘That’s the way the ball bounces.’ My research indicates that this expression derives from the irregular trajectory of an American football when it strikes the ground. This is a result of the peculiar shape of the ball. Most balls bounce quite true and predictably. An English rugby ball is somewhat similar, but this translation is into French, and I am at a loss.”
“Just skip it, Gunther,” I advised.
“That is not professional. Do you just skip it when you are working for a client?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Ah, there, so see,” he said, dabbing the corner of his lips with a paper napkin. I resisted the urge to scratch my itching stomach.
“I’ll think about it. I’m taking a drive up near Fresno today. Probably stay over. Want to join me?”
“I’m afraid I cannot unless you are too incapacitated to drive. I have much work, much work.”
“I can make it,” I said, getting up and stacking the dishes in the sink. Gunther finished the last of his coffee, eased himself from the chair, and moved past me to wash the dishes. I didn’t protest.
I shaved in the communal bathroom down the hall, brushed my furry teeth, noted the increasing amount of gray in my hair, and tried to get a look at my bandage, which just peeked out from behind my neck. There were a few aspirin left in the medicine cabinet. I think they were Hill’s. I gulped them and went back to my room. Gunther was gone. I made my bed, a job that consisted of kicking at the blanket so that it covered a pillow.
A search of the room turned up enough change to make the phone calls I needed to make. The first was to Dr. Winning. He answered on the second ring.
“Mr. Peters,” he said evenly. “You have found Mr. Ressner?”
“Not quite,” I said. “I’m following his trail, though. He produced another corpse yesterday. Richard Talbott the actor.”
There was a silence on Winning’s end. Obviously, he didn’t read the L.A. papers, though I would have pegged Talbott’s death for national news. I waited.
“This is terrible,” he finally said, which was accurate but not very imaginative. “What are you going to do?”
“Find him,” I said. “I’m going to call the ex-Mrs. Ressner, the widow Grayson, and her daughter to see what I can dig up. Then I thought I’d come up and see you, maybe check Ressner’s room, talk to some of the staff or patients who knew him.”
More silence and then, “I’m not sure that would be wise. Many of the patients do not know Mr. Ressner is gone. The balance in a mental hospital such as ours is very delicate, very delicate.”
“I’ll be my most charming, doctor. I just don’t have enough to go on to find Ressner and I have less than two days before the cops come down on my already sore back. Not to mention that he might go for Mae West or De Mille next.”
“All right,” Winning gave in. “I’ll prepare the staff for your arrival. When might you be coming?”
“I’ll leave this afternoon. Should get there by tonight unless I get groggy and have to stop someplace on the way. Ressner did a tune on my head. One more thing, doc. I’ll need another cash payment.”
“I’ll have what you need when you arrive,” he said.
He gave me directions on how to get to the Winning Institute. His voice had gone drier and drier and seemed about to crack when we hung up. We both had trouble, and its name was Ressner.
I pulled out some more change and dialed the Grayson number in Plaza Del Lago. It rang and rang and rang and I waited till the baritone cowboy answered, “Grayson residence.”
“Dis be Thor landscape, you know,” I said as deeply as I could. “I must talk Mrs. Grayson. Joshua tree needs vork now, today or it die like dis, bang, bang, puff.”
“I’m afraid she can’t talk, Mr. Thor-”
“Mr. Gundersen,” I corrected.
“Mr. Gundersen,” he sighed with obvious exasperation reserved only for those who spoke with an accent, as if they couldn’t detect sarcasm. “Mr. Grayson died just a few days ago and-”
“And the Joshua vill die, too,” I said insistently.
In the background I could hear stirring and voices, and then a woman came on, voice high and nervous like Billie Burke.
“Yes, who is this?”
“Thor,” I said. “Your husband Grayson vant me take care from your Joshua. Is all right I do it?”
“Yes, yes, of course, do whatever you must do, whatever Harold wanted,” she bleated.
“Good, friend here vants to speak to you.” I moved the phone from my ear, cleared my throat, and went to my best Toby Peters. “Mrs. Grayson, I’m an investigator for the Winning Institute. We’re trying to find your former husband.”
“I am very confused,” she said with a very confused sob. “What are you doing with Mr. Thor, and I thought Harold was killed by some little detective.”
Some little detective. O.K.
