She put her arms around me and laid her head on my shoulder.
“You have a bad habit of not finishing your sentences,” I said, putting the gun on a nearby table so I could hold onto her and keep from toppling over.
“I wasn’t completely drunk the other night,” she said. Her hair was in my nose. It was dark, clean, and smelted like some flower I couldn’t place. “I don’t see people, go anywhere. My husband never even wanted to make love.” Her head came back and her mouth was inches from mine.
“I’ve got to find a dog,” I said.
“You can come up to the house for a little while,” she said, touching my cheek.
“Well,” I said, “maybe for a little while.”
This time no dripping water fell on our heads. She pushed me back gently onto the operating table, where my head hit the gun. I moved the gun and made room for her. With a dead parrot in the next room, we did something like making love on an animal examining table.
When we were finished, which was not long after we started, she put on her underpants, bra, slacks, sweater, and gun, and I put on her husband’s suit.
“We’ll get another one of Roy’s suits for you at the house,” she said, smiling and touching my nose.
“Is your name really Anne?” I said.
“Laura Anne,” she answered.
“I’ve got a phone call to make,” I said.
She kissed me and told me to go ahead and make the call from the clinic and then come up to the house, where she would have a surprise waiting for me.
“I’m not up to another surprise right now,” I said with a stupid grin.
“We’ll see,” she said, backing out of the door.
I called Mrs. Plaut’s, praying to the ghosts of dead parrots that she would not answer the phone. My prayers went unanswered.
“Yes?” she asked the phone in that voice that made it seem as if she couldn’t understand how any human sound could come from a machine.
“It’s me, Mrs. Plaut, Toby Peters.”
“Yes,” she said reasonably.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” she repeated.
“Good, please get Gunther on the phone,” I said, dropping my voice only slightly from the level I used to threaten boxers who were safely busy in a ring a stadium away.
“Is anyone there?” Mrs. Plaut said, making it clear she had heard nothing of my end of the conversation.
“Gunther Wherthman,” I screamed.
“Mr. Wortman,” she said, “will you please answer this madman. I can make no sense of him.”
“Can I help?” came Gunther’s voice.
“Thank God,” I sighed. “Gunther, I won’t be able to make it back for dinner.”
“That is most unfortunate, Toby. I am preparing a buttery quiche and have purchased several bottles of Lucky Lager beer which, as I recall, you are fond of.”
“The fact is,” I said, feeling guilty, “I may not make it back to the boarding house at all tonight.”
“May I ask,” he said, pausing to frame his question with dignity, “if it is a business situation or a young lady.”
“It’s business and the lady isn’t exactly young, but neither am I.”
“The quiche will hold till tomorrow,” said Gunther. “In fact, my aunt who taught me the recipe believed that it tasted best on the second day. Take care of yourself, Toby.”
The hole in my pants, or rather Olson’s pants, was large enough to shove a dead parrot through, but the thought didn’t appeal to me. I thought of getting a veterinarian for the shepherd with the missing ear, but the resident vet was dead. Laura Anne Olson might have a suggestion. The dog and I weren’t exactly friends, but I’d been in his position enough times to know how it feels.
I trotted up the pathway to the house and stopped short. There was a car parked at the door, a car I had seen parked in front of Jane Poslik’s apartment earlier that day. If it was Mrs. Olson’s car, I had a few questions about her travels. If it wasn’t, then she might be inside with a visitor she at least wanted to meet. I tried the front door. It opened and I stepped in.
“Anne,” I shouted. “Laura?”
Something, someone moved in the living room. I stepped toward it carefully, considering a run to my glove compartment for my.38, but there might not be time.
“Anne,” I repeated, staying out of the doorway that would set me up in backlight for whoever might be standing or sitting in the shadows beyond.
Someone was in the room, in the distant corner in a chair. The figure stood up and moved into the light.
“Anne, huh?” said Cawelti with a smirk. “Laura.”
“Where is she?” I said, moving forward to meet him.
“Who, Mrs. Olson?”
“You know that’s who I mean.”
“She’s dead,” he said.
I looked up at the spot where water had leaked through the ceiling two nights before and took a step toward the hallway. If I hadn’t stopped to call Gunther, I would have been with her, but it had only been a minute or two and Cawelti was here. Something was wrong.
“Is this a sick joke of yours, fireman?” I asked, turning to him again.
“No joke, little brother,” he grinned. “She’s dead. Died two days ago, on Tuesday, in the Victor Hotel just off Wilshire, private room and a bath. Just found the body today. Very messy.”
“Cut the crap Cawelti, I saw her five minutes ago down in the clinic, and there was nothing wrong with her. She-”
“-wasn’t Mrs. Olson,” he finished. “That’s why I’m here. Laura Olson, middle name Faye, was about fifty, short, fat, and no beauty. The woman who was here when you were parading in the negative was another broad, if there was really someone here.”
“You’re full of-” I began.
“She took you in.” He chuckled, looking down at my pants. “The way Captain Pevsner figures it, if she exists someplace outside of your troubled mind, she and someone else did in Olson just as you came knocking at the door. She came downstairs to keep you busy while he finished the job and then they set you up. That’s the way your brother figures it, but I’d like to keep you involved.”
“Let’s go find her,” I said, turning to the door.
“Come on, Peters, as far as I figure, there is no ‘her,’ just you. You’re a sorry sight.”
We were a few feet apart by now and all it would take was the wrong word. He searched for it.
“The way I figure it, you were playing with yourself,” he said, looking down at my pants leg.
“Let’s go to the station and talk to the captain,” I said.
“Day off,” Cawelti said, enjoying the moment.
“Seidman,” I tried.
“Home, sick, tooth problem. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“How badly do you want a nose like mine,” I said, sweetly.
“I’m ten years younger and twenty pounds heavier than you are, Peters,” he answered.
“And I’ve got a bad back and a weak skull, fireman, but I’ve got something you don’t have. I’m the most stubborn terrier you ever ran into. I don’t give up. I just keep coming. You knock me down and I get up again. I get up and up until you’re too tired to move your arms and you ask for mercy and I stomp on your face.”
Something was in Cawelti’s eyes now that told me he thought he was looking at a crazy man. That was just what I was shooting for. What I told him was the truth. I’d take twenty in the gut to give one good one back. I could live with the twenty, but I had found that the other guy would usually do whatever he could to keep from getting that one good one.
“You’re nuts,” Cawelti said.
“I do my best.” I grinned. “Someone shot some animals in the clinic. You’d better call a vet.”
“Get out of here,” he said, not backing away but not pushing for the fight. If he was going to lay into me, it would be in front of an audience, someone who could pull us apart after I got hurt and before he did.
When I got back to my car, the note was still there. A man was standing in the doorway of the house nearby apparently waiting for me and the package the message on my car had promised. I waved to him, got in my car, and drove away.