Free He Done Her Wrong: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Eight) (Toby Peters Mysteries) by Stuart M. Kaminsky

she said. “Not the kind of help Dr. Winning gives, imprisoning him. My stepfather, if you want the simple truth, pays to keep my father locked up and out of the way. My mother goes along with it because she can’t bear the idea of facing my father again. It wasn’t easy for her.”
    “Or you either,” I said.
    Her eyes were a little moist.
    “I think I hear Grayson getting up,” I said.
    She touched her cheek nervously and stood.
    “Let’s have coffee. He can find us here.”
    “Your father,” I repeated, turning toward her. “You’ve heard from him. I don’t want to hurt him. I just want to keep him from hurting you and your mother, other people, maybe even himself.”
    “Maybe even you?” she said, turning to me from the stove with the coffeepot in her hand.
    “Maybe. And maybe I’m doing it for my fee and for a friend. But maybe or no maybes, your old man will be a lot better off if I find him before he gets in more trouble. Delores, believe me, he is in trouble, but not in it so far that he can’t be eased out of it with some help from you and me.”
    It was warm in the kitchen, but Delores pulled her robe across her chest with her free hand and shivered as she stepped forward to pour me a cup and one for herself. Then she sat down again, placing the pot on a wooden trivet. She was working herself up to say something, and I wanted to give her room.
    I poured a few spoons of sugar in my cup, put my open palm over the cup to feel the moist warmth, and took a sip.
    “He’s here,” she said softly, so softly that I didn’t hear it the first time, or maybe I didn’t believe what I heard.
    “What?” I said, leaning forward.
    “Here. He’s here in the other room. In the living room. We were waiting for my mother to come back to decide what we’d do. Harold’s not sick or napping. He and my father are trying to work things out, see what …”
    I got up slowly, very slowly.
    “I think I’ll just go in and join the conversation,” I said gently. “No trouble. Why don’t you just sit there and finish your coffee. I’ll introduce myself to Grayson. Your father and I have already met, I believe.”
    She nodded in resigned agreement, her shoulders slumping down as if she had done a day of hard labor.
    I walked to the doorway leading into the house from the kitchen and considered taking off my shoes to keep from making noise, but every time I have removed my shoes on a case things have got worse instead of better. I moved on. There were no voices ahead of me, but something was creaking. The hallway I found myself in carried on the lacquered dark wood motif. A print on the wall showed the driving of the golden spike. Leland Stanford glared down on me and the future of the West. To my right I found the living room, but no one was in it. There were two sofas, both oversize and masculine brown, a grand piano, and a rocking chair. The rug was an Indian design with a pattern in the center that looked to me like a snarling demon.
    Across the hall opposite the living room were three doors, all closed. Still no voices. I tried the first door. It opened and showed me a bedroom, bright and orange, a woman’s room, probably Delores’s. There was a faint pleasant odor of scented soap or perfume.
    The next door was partly open. I stepped in. It was a much larger bedroom than Delores’s. In one corner stood a desk. In another a dresser and twin beds beyond which was a view of the town through a big floor-to-ceiling window. The beds were made up with brown Indian spreads. I could see the design clearly on one bed. The other was obscured by the body of the man on top of it.
    The man was gray-haired, around sixty, wearing a heavy blue flannel robe and a long knife in his chest. His arms were spread out and his eyes were wide and surprised. Something creaked from the hall, and I grabbed for a portable radio on the dresser. I swung around, ready to clip Jeffrey Ressner with the white Philco, and stopped just short of