Read High Midnight: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Six) for Free Online

that something would catch the eye of passersby and pull them in. Since few drunks could stand the altitude and only bums came up seeking warmth, off-the-street traffic was minimal.
    The new lettering read:
                        Sheldon P. Minck, D.D.S., S.D.
                        Dentist and Oral Surgeon
    and in much smaller letters:
                        Toby Peters
                        Private Investigation
    Shelly was not an oral surgeon, though he practiced it. I didn’t know what the penalty was for impersonating an oral surgeon. Perhaps the dental society took away your mirror on a stick. I knew the “S.D.” didn’t mean anything and the initial “P” had been a recent idea.
    I went through our reception room which we had cleaned up after a few mishaps the year before, but Shelly and I had quickly reduced the small room to its prior state: three wooden chairs, small table with an overflowing ashtray and copies of magazines from previous decades. Past the reception room was Shelly’s dental office, and beyond that the closet that served as my office.
    Shelly was working on someone in the chair when he heard me close the door. “Be with you in a minute. Have a seat.”
    I walked over to him and he turned his myopic eyes in my direction, took the wet cigar out of his mouth, wiped his sweating bald head and smiled a sickly grin. “Toby, hey.”
    “Yeah, Shelly, hey,” I said. Then I saw the patient in the chair, an old birdlike guy named Stange who had wrecked the office last year in a pathetic attempt at robbery.
    “What’s he doing here?” I asked, leaning over Shelly’s shoulder.
    Stange smiled through his stubbly face, showing his single tooth.
    “The challenge was too great, too great,” sighed Shelly, seriously pausing to clean the sharp instrument in his hand on his dirty, once-white smock. “This mouth is a challenge I can’t refuse. I can build on that tooth, Toby. I know I can. I can construct a mouthful of teeth. I can experiment with new techniques, planting teeth, wires, stuff like that. Mr. Stange and I have an understanding. No more troubles. Right, Karl?”
    Karl beamed, and Shelly patted him on the shoulder—a very grubby shoulder.
    “I think you should start by putting a wire in his gums, right over there,” I said, pointing to a spot in Stange’s mouth but being careful not to touch him.
    Shelly shrugged and shook his head to show I didn’t know what I was talking about. “No anchorage. None. I plan to drill a hole right there.” He touched Stange’s red-white gums with the sharp instrument, and the old bird jumped four inches.
    “Sorry, Shel,” I said. “You’ll have to put the wire on top.”
    Shelly turned to me, all five and a half feet filled with indignation.
    “Say, who’s the dentist around here, you or me?”
    “I don’t know,” I said with a smile. “Who’s the detective around here, you or me?”
    Shelly turned from me and stuck his head in the Stange-bird beak. “I’m busy,” he said.
    “Gary Cooper,” I said.
    “No time for new patients.” He waved over his shoulder with his cigar. “I’ve got all I can handle now.” Shelly was nervously jabbing balls of cotton into Stange’s mouth. Some of it looked used.
    “You’re going to choke him,” I said, craning my neck to watch Stange’s face turn purple. Shelly grunted.
    “Shelly,” I insisted.
    “I gotta work fast,” he said. “The First District of the Los Angeles Dental Society is meeting today from four-thirty to ten-thirty at the Hollywood Roosevelt on how dentists can cooperate with doctors in emergencies. Maybe I can pick up some first-aid ideas and expand the business.”
    I waited for a few seconds while Shelly went after the world’s mouth-packing title. Glancing around the office, I saw it hadn’t changed. Piles of dental magazines and crossword-puzzle books. Uncleaned instruments in the sink, where the