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

water dripped steadily. Coffee on the hot plate.
    “My present plan is to break the coffee pot over your head,” I said.
    “You’ve got a message,” Shelly responded urgently.
    “Maybe I’ll break a chair over your head instead. Or maybe I’ll break Mister Stange over your head.”
    Mr. Stange made a flaying effort to rise, but Shelly shoved him back.
    “Instrument case in the drawer under the coffee,” Shelly mumbled, pointing vaguely.
    I shuffled through the pile of napkins, rusty instruments and old campaign literature for Al Smith in the drawer and found the instrument case. Inside it was an envelope marked “TP,” and inside the envelope was $267 and three dimes.
    “I was holding it for you,” Shelly said, his back still to me.
    “There should be three hundred or more from Cooper,” I said, pocketing the envelope.
    “Expenses,” he explained. “You know you can’t conduct an investigation for nothing. I got a pair of binoculars and …”
    “Shelly, what the hell did you do it for?”
    “Not now, I’ve got a patient,” Shelly stage-whispered.
    “Your patient can wait,” I said, removing the empty pot on the hot plate. Shelly had drunk all the coffee, and the pot was filling with steam. At least once a year the coffee pot exploded. Once it went out the reception-room window like a cannonball, nearly decapitating Shelly’s wife Mildred as she came in.
    “Okay, okay,” Shelly said with an enormous sigh. He turned and faced me, removing his glasses so he wouldn’t have to see how I’d take his explanation. “I wanted to help.”
    I shook my head no but realized that he couldn’t see me, so I said, “No. Try again.”
    “All right. I wanted to see if I could do it, to meet a movie star. You get to meet movie stars, famous people, and I spend my life in people’s mouths and the quality of mouth in this neighborhood could stand upgrading. I mean I love my job, but …”
    “What about Cary Grant?” I said. “You worked on his mouth, didn’t you?”
    “That was a lie,” Shelly said. I moved across the room, but Shelly continued to talk to the coffee pot, refusing to put his glasses back on.
    “So you wanted to meet Gary Cooper and play detective,” I said. At the sound of my voice from another part of the room, Shelly put on his glasses and found me. Mr. Stange was gagging behind him.
    “I didn’t do a bad job,” Shelly said.
    “Just tell me what you did and what you found out. Tell me fast.”
    “There’s a notebook in your bottom drawer,” said Shelly, looking at the stub of his cigar. “I made a report. I think I was getting somewhere, Toby. I really think that a dentist’s point of view brings a new perspective to the detective business. I really do.”
    “Shel, you pull this again and I’ll turn dentist and pull all your teeth.” I gave him a big smile and went into my office, slamming the door behind me.
    Shelly mumbled something about gratitude before he went back to Mr. Strange’s foul mouth.
    The report was there, in a 1935 ledger book. It was surprisingly good. The words were printed in tiny letters. He had interviewed four people who were interested in getting Cooper to do the film he didn’t want to do. The picture was called High Midnight , and its producer was Max Gelhorn. Shelly had his address written neatly: an office building on Sunset, the far side of Sunset where you could have the Sunset address but be in a neighborhood few respectable tourists visit. According to Shelly, everyone he talked to cooperated when he put a little pressure on them. Actually there wasn’t much information. There was a trade-journal clipping on Gelhorn, indicating that his prime had been reached in the late 1920s, when he had produced a series of two-reel Westerns starring someone named Tall Mickey Fargo.
    The next name on Shelly’s list was Lola Farmer, an actress with no major credits, who was to star with Cooper in High Midnight. I wondered if this might be the Lola whom