“You know Mr. Astaire,” I said. “I’m Toby Peters, private investigator. Your husband wants to hire me to find Miss Martin’s killer.”
She shook her head and went for the bedroom door, throwing it open with a bang.
“He’s not here,” she said after going in, checking, and coming out with a blue-silk robe. “But he was. This is his. I saw her three times. Cheap. Didn’t know how to use eyeliner.”
She looked at Astaire again, who stood there bouncing on his heels, arms folded, looking pleased with the world.
“What do you have to do with all this?” she asked Astaire.
“I was giving Miss Martin dance lessons.”
“That bastard,” Mrs. Fingers Forbes shouted, her red fingernails turning to curled, ready claws.
She bounced to the door, turned, and said, “I’m really not like this. It’s just that. .”
“We understand,” said Astaire.
“If you could teach her to dance, you could teach me.”
“Well, I. .”
“I’ll talk to Arthur about it,” she said in a tone that made it clear that neither Arthur nor Astaire would have a choice in the matter.
“I really can’t take. .” Astaire began, but she was out and gone.
“I suggest we lock the door,” I said. “We check the bedroom fast, take the recording, and get the hell out of here.”
Five minutes later we were out the door and I had stolen a towel from the Monticello. The towel was loosely wrapped around the wire recording. Fred Astaire bounced along at my side. We met no one in the hall and no one in the nearly empty lobby.
When we stepped out onto the street, we finally met somebody: the two uniformed cops who had come with Phil and Steve Seidman. They stepped in front of us, blocking our escape.
“Mr. Astaire,” said the younger of the two-much, much younger, teeth still a bright, natural white. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to ask Mr. Peters to come with us.”
“I don’t see why you have to apologize to him,” I said, nodding at Astaire. “We’re not together. He was just walking out at the same time. .”
“Now, wait a minute,” Astaire said.
The second cop was much older, much more experienced, and much more stupid than the young one.
“Inside,” he said, taking my arm. “We were told to get you. Mr. Laurel, here, can leave.”
“This’s Fred Astaire, Tim,” the younger cop whispered.
“I don’t care if he’s King Kong. He can dance in the street for nickels and wait out here.”
A crowd was gathering. Some of them clearly recognized Astaire.
“I’ll call you later,” I said.
Astaire nodded and went for a taxi at the curb.
Steve Seidman, gaunt and weary, stood at the end of the lobby near the corridor leading to the ballroom. His hands were behind his back as the two cops ushered me toward him.
“I’ll make a deal with you, Toby,” he said. “You give me the towel and whatever’s in it that you took from Luna Martin’s room, and I’ll give you something in return.”
I handed him the towel and the wire recording. His hands came out from behind his back and he handed me some sheet music.
“One of your extras posing as tough guys says you had an old piano player who may have left these here. They were on the piano.”
I took them.
“Thanks,” I said. “Lou’s old, forgets things.”
Seidman nodded, not caring.
“You can go,” he said, taking the spool out of the open towel.
I eased past the two cops and left the Monticello. When I got outside I opened the envelope Forbes had pushed on me. It held five new hundred-dollar bills. I was in search of a storefront dance studio and a guy named Willie. I had often had less to work with, but this time I had a lot of incentive.
Chapter Six: Everybody Do the Varsity Drag
There were fourteen places calling themselves dance studios or ballrooms in the L.A. phone book. I went to a candy store with a stack of nickels and started phoning around, leaving the big ones for last. While I called I munched on a mound of marble halvah and watched the traffic go by on Sunset.
“Make Believe Ballroom,” came a world-weary woman’s voice on the first call.
“I’d like to talk to Willie.”
“We have no Willie,” she said.
“How about William or Bill?”
“No,” she said with a sigh. “Are you interested in dance lessons?”
“No thanks,” I said. “I just had one with Fred Astaire.”
“Give him my best,” she said and hung up.
My rear end still smarting and my stomach aching from too much halvah and a desperate need for a Pepsi, I kept dialing-Mr. Lyon’s Studio of Dance, Terpsicorean Interludes, the Royal Ballroom, Corine’s House of Dance, the Talented Two-Step, Harold Augustine’s Dance Studio, the Viennese Ballroom.
After seven tries, I’d found one Bill and a Willie. Bill turned out to be a Negro about seventy who cleaned up at the studio and other shops on the block. The conversation with Willie was even less promising. Willie was a woman. I struck Willie-gold on the eighth call.
“On Your Toes Dance Studio and College,” the man answered sleepily.
He sounded very much like the man on Luna’s wire recording.
“I’d like to speak to Willie,” I said.
“Concerning?”
“Dance lessons.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Toby Peters,” I said.
“This is William Talbott,” he said.
“I want to dance.”
“We want to teach you,” said Willie. “Who gave you my name?”
“Your name?”
“You asked for ‘Willie.’ ”
“A friend who’s familiar with your studio.”
“Took lessons with us?”
“Learned a great deal from you.”
“And recommended us?”
“You specifically,” I said lightly.
“This person’s name might not be Stella?”
“It might well be.”
“That explains it,” he said. “I’m at your service, Mr. . ”
“Peters, Toby Peters. When can we start?”
“Anytime tomorrow,” he said. “From nine in the morning till nine at night.”
“How about today?”
“Today,” he said. “Let me look.”
He shuffled some papers and I waited. I had a feeling his answer would be-
“You’re in luck. We have a cancellation this afternoon at two.”
“Can we make it one?” I asked.
“Ah. . that will be difficult, but I can make a few shifts and changes to accommodate a new student.”
“Thank you.”
“You know how to get here?”
The address was on Western, not far from Melrose.
“I’ll be there at one.”
We hung up. It was eleven-thirty in the morning. If I hurried, I could get to the On Your Toes Dance Studio and College and catch Willie when he wasn’t on his toes.
I called my office. Violet answered, “Sheldon Minck, Creative Dentistry without Pain.”
“And Toby Peters, Private Investigator,” I said.
“Dr. Minck said I shouldn’t give your name,” Violet said.
“Put Dr. Minck on the phone.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to you, Mr. Peters,” she whispered. “I wish you’d come here quick. He just sits in his dental chair looking at his fingers.”
“I’ll get there as soon as I can, Violet. Anything else?”
“You got a call from. . a Miss Anita Maloney. She left a number. You want it?”
Maybe Anita wanted to go to another prom or she remembered I had borrowed two bucks from her on prom night. Violet gave me her number. I wrote it in my notebook even though I had it scrawled on a napkin somewhere in my pocket.
“And a Mr. Forbes called saying you should give him a call as soon as you checked in.”
I heard a distinct background groan from Shelly Minck. I took Forbes’s number.
“That it?” I asked.
“You owe me two dollars,” she said.
“The fight,” I remembered.
“Ortiz in a TKO over Salica in the eleventh. Double or nothing on the Bivins-Mauriello fight tomorrow?”
“Odds today?”