Stuart Kaminsky - He Done Her Wrong

Mae West’s ranch in the valley was the closest place on my list, so I headed for it well within the speed limit and expecting to be pulled over by a state cop as an escaped loony with no driver’s license. I had a lot of thinking to do, which was not good for my health or well-being. My best ideas seemed to come not when I added things together but when they stewed somewhere deep and bubbled up by themselves. Not much made sense at the moment. My head wasn’t throbbing anymore, though my scalp seemed to be shrinking. My back seemed fine so far.

When I pulled up in front of West’s ranch a few hours later, I was hungry and worried. Ressner had done a good job of getting me out of the way. Part of it was show, but part of it was because he had some plan that, to quote what some people attributed to Sam Goldwyn, included me out.

Seeing Jeffrey’s bulk filling the doorway and an unseen weight pushing down his brow made me think that whatever Ressner had planned had already happened. I jumped out of the car and jogged to Jeffrey.

“Too late,” he said softly.

“He killed Mae West?” I croaked.

Jeremy looked at me sadly, “Killed … no. You’re too late to help. He … it … came last night. Dressed like that. I was drinking apricot juice in the kitchen. The two-”

“Dizzy and Daffy,” I said. “The beefcake bookends.”

“Yes,” continued Jeremy. “They were on an errand. Miss West opened the door before I could get there. He had a knife. I got to the doorway in the living room as fast as I could, but I was too late.”

“Jeremy, this is all very dramatic, but what were you too late for? How badly was she hurt?”

“She wasn’t. She cracked him in the head with a book of Keats’s poetry I had given her to read. Ressner, or whoever it was, fell back, holding his face and nose bleeding. He looked ready for another try, saw me, and ran for his car. I couldn’t catch him even though he was wearing high heels.”

“A dark Packard?” I said.

“Yes, I think so,” said Jeremy, rubbing the top of his smooth bald head. “You should have seen her standing in that doorway, her hands on her hips. She is quite a woman, quite a person. I’m working on a poem about her, Toby.”

“Keep at it, Jeremy. Where is she now?”

He guided me upstairs and knocked at the door. Mae West’s voice came through.

“Who might that be?”

“Toby Peters,” I said.

“ Entrez ,” she said, and I did with Jeremy behind me.

She was seated at a white dressing table looking at herself in a mirror. On her head was a massive fluffy peach-colored feather hat.

“Therapy,” she explained, putting the hat to the side. “I meditate for an hour in the morning and then try on hats. You should try it sometime.”

“I’d be beautiful in that hat,” I said.

She laughed, a hoarse guffaw.

“I meant the meditation,” she said. “Taught to me by a genuine yoga who could be a real charmer when he wanted to be.”

“Ressner came back last night,” I prompted.

She turned to look at me and motioned to an old French movie settee. It was frail and hard, and I hoped Jeremy wouldn’t join me on it. The room was full of mirrors, and Mae West watched me looking around with an amused smile on her face.

“Fun and games,” she said.

I looked at her.

“This Ressner fella,” she explained. “He parted your scalp?”

“Right.”

“He’s not prone to empressement ” she mused, raising her eyebrows. She looked anything but scared, and I wondered why.

“He doesn’t scare you?”

“A little,” she admitted, “but I’m at a bad point in my life and career. The divorce business is getting me, the protests about my work. I’m not sure whether I’m coming or going and who I’m taking with me. Let me give you some advice. Don’t ever work with W. C. Fields. Most de-pressing experience I’ve ever had. In fact, my advice is to stay away from comics. They’re a self-pitying brood.”

“Aren’t you a comic?” I asked.

“I am a national institution, a risque treasure being stifled by the repression old Sigmund told us about but we were too inhibited to listen to,” she said with a smile. “I’m so darned clean in Chickadee my own mother wouldn’t have recognized me. So, all this excitement came just when I needed a little stimulation. Gave old Jeremy here a rise too.”

Jeremy, standing by the door, looked at and away from me.

“I don’t think Ressner will be coming back,” I said. “Not for now. I think he’ll go for another target.”

“Who,” said West, “said it was Ressner last night?”

“It wasn’t the same …?”

“I don’t know,” she ventured, getting up from the table and admiring her flowered amber dress in one of the large mirrors. She patted her stomach and breathed deeply to pull it in, and it stayed there. “Never really got a look at the gentleman the other night and I didn’t really get a good look last night. Just saw this poor imitation with a knife and I didn’t wait for dialogue. I could have used a real Grecian urn.”

“If it’s all right with you,” I said, getting up, “Jeremy will go back to town with me. I think I’ve got a line on Ressner and I may need his help. We’ll wait here until your house-boys get back, and I’ll call the local cops and tell them there’s been a threat on your life. They’ll give you about a day of coverage.”

“Speaking of the john-darmes,” she said, turning to me. “How is the Panda taking this?”

“The Panda?”

“Phil,” she explained with a grin.

“Panda?” I guess he does look a little like a constipated Panda at that. “He’s doing just fine,” I lied.

“Give him my best when this all blows over,” she said. “And don’t forget to send me a bill for your services.”

“No bill,” I said. “I told you, this is a favor. I’ll take something in payment, though.”

She looked up at me and let the grin open into a comic leer as she looked over at the bed without moving her head.

“And what might that be?”

“That hat. The flowery peach thing you were trying on a few minutes ago,” I said.

“You sure your scalp is pasted back on?” she said, looking from me to Jeremy and then back again.

“I’m sure. I need a wedding present for an old friend.”

She shrugged, turned around, put the hat in a round, white box, tied it neatly, and handed the whole thing to me.

“My pleasure,” she said, touching my hand. I took the bulky box and turned to go.

I hurried down the stairs, looking for a phone, with Jeremy right behind.

“Magnificent,” he said.

“It’ll do,” I answered.

“I didn’t mean the hat.”

We moved into the kitchen. I found a phone and called the local police. Then we waited impatiently for the local cops and Dizzy and Daffy to return.

Meanwhile Mae West rested blissfully above.

Jeremy read me part of his poem in progress about her, told me how many islands we had lost in the Pacific overnight, and made us a stack of egg salad sandwiches on white with a pair of beers and some chunks of white cheese.

Maybe someday when I had the time I’d put together a gourmet cookbook of the favorite foods of detective Toby Peters. Nero Wolfe would quake with envy.

When the cops showed up, hands on their guns, a pair of burly over-the-hillers, I stood back while Jeremy introduced himself as a friend of the family, said that Mae West was sleeping off the trauma upstairs, and that Dizzy and Daffy would explain the whole thing, since they were just walking in with full armloads of groceries.

Both of them looked dumbfounded.

“This is your big moment, boys,” I said. “Miss West wants police protection for the rest of the day. Tell the tale.”