He Done Her Wrong: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Eight) (Toby Peters Mysteries) (30 page)

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Authors: Stuart M. Kaminsky

BOOK: He Done Her Wrong: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Eight) (Toby Peters Mysteries)

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“See,” Shelly beamed, removing the cigar from his mouth to face me. “That ad has been great. People from all over. I think this woman came all the way from Juarez to see me.”

“No,” said the woman. “No.
No quiero que usted trabaja sur mis dientes
.”

“See,” cackled the dentist, holding her back with a fat paw.

“She says she’s not here for you to work on her teeth,” I explained.

“Sure she is,” he said, touching her head to calm her and getting his ring caught in her hair. “She’s just frightened. Those teeth need work. Tell her I take pesos but I make my own exchange rate.”

“
Que quiere, señorita?
” I said.

At that point the woman told me in panicked Spanish that she had seen Shelly’s ad and had recognized him as the dentist who had ruined her husband’s bridgework ten years earlier in Yuma. She had come to demand her money back.

I explained to Shelly, who put his right hand to his chest as if he were going to pledge allegiance to the flag or have a heart attack. He did it with all the sincerity of a kid caught with his hand in the fudge.

“I’ve never seen this woman or her husband in my life,” he gasped. “Tell her to get out immediately. Vamoose.”

“How do you know you’ve never seen her husband?” I asked reasonably as Shelly tried to pry the woman out of the chair. Now she didn’t want to go.

“I have, as you know, an excellent memory,” he grunted, pulling at her and pausing only to marvel at her determination.

“
Mi esposo se llama Martin Gutierez
,” she said to me.

The name shot through Shelly like a double dose of Ex-Lax.

“Oh, no,” he said. “Out.”

“
Recuerda
,” she insisted. “
Mi esposo es un hombre muy grande
.”

“She says,” I told Shelly enjoying the scene, “that her husband is a big man.”

“
Muy grande
,” she said, wrestling with Shelly for her purse.

“Very big,” I translated.

He let go of the purse, wiped his sweating brow with the corner of his dirty smock, and gasped, “How much? How much does she want?”

“
Cuanto?
” I asked with my most pleasant smile.

She told me but I didn’t need to interpret.

“Fifty dollars?” he groaned. “Never.”

“Suit yourself, Shel, but I think she’ll come back some time with her husband, and it’ll cost you a lot more than fifty to move to another office. Besides, your home address is in the phone book.”

“Sneaky Mexicans,” he snorted, going to the drawers in which he kept his tools, old X rays, and a small box with cash. He grumbled with his back turned, found what he was looking for, closed the drawer, and returned with some bills. He handed them to Mrs. Gutierez, who counted them and shoved them into her beaded purse with a smile.

“See those teeth?” Shelly said with the trace of a grin. “They’ll be dropping like Nazi’s in Russia in weeks, and I won’t lift a finger to help her.”

Mrs. Gutierez thanked me and went out the door as fast as she could move.

“Damned ad,” growled Shelly, ambling over to pour himself coffee. “I’m going to pull it.”

“How many Gutierezes are there out there, Shel?”

“None. He’s the only one. A slight error in judgment. A slip. Everyone is entitled to one slip in an illustrious career. Even Joe Louis lost to Schmeling.”

Shelly grabbed his glasses just as they were about to slip from his nose and slopped coffee on his smock in the process. It joined a collage of other stains.

The outer door to our office opened and someone knocked at the second door.

“Yeah,” yelled Shelly and then to me, “it’s probably the South Pasadena Fire Department coming for my ears.”

“You treated the South Pasadena Fire Department and—”

“It was just a routine checkup,” he said. “How was I to know …“Toby, I’ll give you te—five bucks to protect me from sore losers for the next week till the ad dies.”

“Cash in advance,” I beamed. He went into his pocket, fished out a five, handed it to me, and looked at the door, which was opening.

A reasonably well-dressed couple in their early sixties stepped in. The woman was in front. The man behind was holding his swollen jaw.

“Dr. Minch?” she said, looking at me and Shelly, who was hiding behind me grasping his coffee cup in two hands.

“Minck,” I corrected. “That’s him.”

“We read your ad in the paper. Joseph has a terrible toothache.”

Shelly handed me the coffee cup as he pushed past me and hurried forward to lead Joseph to the dental chair.

“You are fortunate indeed,” he said. “I’ve just had a cancellation.”

I poured the coffee into the sink, deposited the cup, and went into my office and called Levy’s to see if Carmen had checked in yet. She hadn’t. I said I’d call back. I had five bucks. Maybe I could talk Carmen into a couple of late-night tacos and a swing-shift movie. Laurence Olivier was playing in
The Invaders
.

That reminded me. I had planned to take my nephews to another show when I had the cash, if my sister-in-law Ruth would let me.

I called, looking out the window to see if my car was safe. It was. Ruth answered on the second ring. I could hear two-year-old Lucy in the background saying, “Why? Why? Why? Why?”

“Ruth, it’s me, Toby.”

“I know. How are you?”

“I’m O.K.,” I said. “I thought I’d take the boys to a movie Saturday night. No horror movies. I promise.”

“It’s all right with me,” she said. “How did the Mae West business come out?”

I didn’t know what, if anything, Phil had said about Mae West, and I didn’t want to put my mouth where it didn’t belong.

“Mae West?” I asked.

“Toby,” she said, with Lucy still yelling in the background. “I can’t ask him. He doesn’t even know I know, but I know. I knew about it when it happened before we were married. Phil doesn’t know I know.”

I wished I hadn’t called.

“It came out fine,” I said. “Phil’s—”

“I know,” she said. “He is a good man, and he works too hard and cares too much and weighs too much and will have a heart attack just like your father if he’s not careful, and he’s not going to be careful.”

“That’s about it,” I agreed.

“Come over for dinner first on Saturday and then you can take the boys,” she said. “Try to be here by five.”

She hung up and I went through the mail. Five letters. Two were junk mail, one selling magic supplies and the other subscriptions to cartoon magazines. The third was from the Internal Revenue Service. I put it in the top drawer with the forms I still hadn’t filled out. The fourth letter was a hand-written thank-you note from Cecil B. De Mille. It was nice and simple, just “Thank you. C.B.”

The last letter was the mystery. I turned it over two or three times and looked at the return address in the corner. There was no doubt. The address was not off some copying machine. It was marked personal and for me. I pulled out my Tahitian letter opener and carefully slit the top, wondering who was writing to me from the White House in Washington.

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cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

This edition published in 2011 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media

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New York, NY 10014

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