He Done Her Wrong: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Eight) (Toby Peters Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF

giving a damn and trying not to lose sight of the caped character who flitted from small group to small group, arching his eyebrows into each conversation.
    “Because,” Lachtman said, “‘The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb’ is the only Sherlock tale in which the great detective didn’t catch the criminal.”
    I looked around for Aardvark and a fresh Pepsi but couldn’t find him.
    “Why would you want to name your group after Holmes’s only failure?” I asked playing with my now-empty glass.
    The question seemed to puzzle Lachtman, who resisted a powerful urge to scratch his hairless head.
    “I’m not quite sure. It wasn’t my idea. I’ll have to ask my wife, Margaritte.”
    The caped character finally swooped to our duo and, having overheard the last of Lachtman’s words, beamed maliciously, put his hand on the small man’s shoulder, and uttered in a powerful phony Shakespearean English favored by American drama students, “Is that Officer Margaritte who helps old ladies cross the street?”
    Lachtman didn’t know how to respond. He grinned weakly and looked in the direction of the woman with whom he had entered, who was busily putting papers on the main table.
    “I think I’d better help Margaritte set things up. Dinner will be served soon.”
    Lachtman eased himself out from under the grasp of the caped man, who allowed his arm to rise majestically. His glance turned to me, and the silver knob of his cane rose to his chin. It looked like a John Barrymore imitation.
    “You are the detective.”
    “That’s what the license says,” I answered.
    He cocked his head dramatically to one side, threw back his cape, and eyed me.
    “Do I get the part?” I asked.
    “You don’t look like a detective,” he said grandly and loud enough to take in a few of the old ladies not too far away from us.
    “I’m in disguise,” I whispered. “Like Holmes. I’m really much taller, far more elegant, and with a voice that’s the envy of Harry Marble on the Columbia network news.”
    “You jest,” he said.
    “When I can.” If he wasn’t my madman, he was somebody’s.
    “We shall see,” he said, throwing his cape over his shoulder and turning his back. “We shall see.”
    It was a great second act closing line for a revival of an old melodrama, but I wasn’t sure whether he was referring to my ability to tell a decent joke or to be a detective.
    A shout from the politicians next door broke through the walls, and little Howard Lachtman seemed to be getting up enough courage to call our coven to order. I moved toward the door, scaring at least one little old lady Sherlockian, who thought I was coming at her. She gasped and stepped back, proving I hadn’t completely lost my charm.
    The toilet was behind a pair of wilted palms, and I found myself standing next to a reeling guy wearing a straw hat on a head of corn silk hair. He was grinning and shaking his head as we urinated side by side, the event that has brought men together in philosophical thought since the days of Socrates.
    “Political rally?” I asked.
    “Salesmen,” he answered. “Middle of the worst war in history. Jap troops are at the outskirts of Mandalay. The Russian front is in trouble. The Japs are after Australia, and they announced today that they’re drafting 1Bs. I’m 1B, flat feet, bad eyes. And my boss decides it would be a morale builder for the salesmen to have a mock political rally.”
    He zipped his pants solemnly, steadied himself against the white tile wall, straightened his straw hat, and asked what group I was with.
    “Engineer’s Thumbs,” I said.
    “Engineers,” he said.
    “Right,” I agreed, not wanting to make his world any more complicated than it already was.
    By the time I got back everyone was seated and waiting for me. There were about twenty of them. Lachtman let out a small sigh when he spotted me and motioned with his hand to the empty seat on his left. I strolled over while the group watched me,