Free High Midnight: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Six) by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

generally, neither do you. Out.”
    “What have I done to deserve insults?” I said. “Goodbye.” I kissed her on the cheek and stood back. “I was in the neighborhood and wanted to show I had no hard feelings, that I really wish you and Rollo well.”
    “Ralph,” she corrected emotionlessly.
    “Ralph,” I said. “I’d like to come to the wedding. I would …”
    Her head nodding no. She had no right to stand there in a yellow suit looking as good as she looked.
    “I have about ten minutes,” I said. “Want to invite me in?”
    Her head said no, and she folded her arms patiently.
    “I’m working for Gary Cooper,” I said with a shake of my head. “He …”
    She shook her head no again.
    “Was I really such a bad guy, Ann?” I said.
    “No,” she said. “And you don’t give up easily. That was one of the things I liked about you, at least for a while. Now it’s starting to be one of the things I like least. Toby, I don’t hate you. You went out of my life five years ago.”
    “Four years,” I corrected.
    “I don’t care if it’s only ten minutes,” she said. “It seems like five years. Just turn around and go away. Don’t cry, lie or ask for a drink of water. Don’t threaten, beg or tell me about the afternoon we fell in the pond in MacArthur Park. Just go.”
    “Isn’t your life just a little boring?” I said, stepping toward her and glancing into her room enough to see that it was still decorated in unwelcoming browns and whites.
    “No,” she said. “It is peaceful, and you are not part of it.”
    “Are you going to stop calling yourself Peters when you marry Waldo?”
    “Toby, you know damn well his name is Ralph,” she said wearily. “Now leave. I’ll stop calling myself Peters when I marry Ralph.”
    “What’s Ralph’s last name?” I asked, clinging to the conversation.
    “No, you might just decide to make a pest of yourself.”
    “I wouldn’t do that, Ann. I just want to know. Besides, I’m a detective. I can find Ralph’s last name without any trouble. I won’t feel right if you wind up with some name like Reed or Brown. Ann Brown sounds like a character in Brenda Starr, for God’s sake.”
    She didn’t even bother to answer. Instead she looked at her watch, which was working. Then she looked at me as if to say, “Is there anything more to this act?”
    I shrugged, defeated again.
    “I’m going in now,” she said, reaching out to touch my shoulder. “Don’t knock. Don’t ring and please don’t return. Just go play with your guns and dentists and midgets. Go play cops and robbers, and once and for all get out of my life.”
    There was a touch of hope in her blast—at least it was a blast with emotion. But the door slammed in my face, and I was standing there alone.
    “Don’t knock,” she said through the door as I raised my hand. “I’m going to turn on the water and take a long bath. Don’t be here when I get out or I’ll call the police again.”

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    M rs. Plaut wasn’t home. If she had been, I probably would have strangled her. I was in no mood for tolerance. I decided to offer Gunther an apple, but he was out. So I sat in my room for about fifteen minutes, still wondering what Ralph’s last name was. Smiler? Johnson? Stoneworthy? Ann probably picked him for his name. This was getting me nowhere, and I had gone through four apples. I grabbed Curtis Bowie’s manuscript of High Midnight and took a long bath.
    Since it took a millennium for the bathtub to dribble to half-capacity, I was well into the script by the time I turned off the water. A bird chirped outside, and I decided High Midnight wasn’t so bad. I finished it forty minutes later and ran some more hot water for an extra shave.
    High Midnight was about a middle-aged former sheriff who shoots his wife and her lover and then holes up on a hill at the far end of town with his dog. Angered because no one told him what was going on behind his back, the former sheriff keeps