Down for the Count: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Ten) Read Free Page B

thought about all the skinny drunks my landlord was always hauling out of the dark corners of the Farraday Building on Hoover, where I had my office. Maybe alcohol made women fat and men skinny? I didn’t share the insight with Anne.
    “I don’t have to worry about that any more though, do I?”
    I didn’t answer and she went on.
    “I own this house,” she said, looking at the ceiling where a cone of light from the lamp made a path to the far corner. “Ralph had a big insurance policy and a bank account. I don’t have to worry about how I look any more.”
    “Annie,” I said, wanting to reach out and touch her. “You’re not going to change. I couldn’t change you. You couldn’t change me.”
    “We will see, Tobias,” she said, biting her lower lip. “We will see.”
    The idea of Ralph getting mixed up with boxing reminded me of Joe Louis. Had Louis been there to see Ralph? Maybe it wasn’t just an unlucky break for the Brown Bomber. Maybe I had put my foot through a rotten egg.
    “Do you know why he got interested in boxing?” she said, sounding slightly drunk. There was no way the alcohol could have worked that quickly. She wanted it to happen, needed it, and had helped it along.
    I shook my head.
    “Because of you. He never said so, but it didn’t take much to figure it out. You’re tough, had more fights than I want to think about, and he knew you were interested in boxing.”
    Interested was a mild word and Anne knew it.
    “Ralph was a gentle, determined businessman,” she went on, looking at me angrily as if I was about to mount an argument. “He was …”
    “Everything I’m not,” I finished.
    “Just about,” she said. “I wanted him because of that. I loved him because of that and the poor …” She sobbed, shaking her head. “The poor …”
    “Bastard,” I supplied.
    “… thought he had to compete with you.”
    “Hey, Annie,” I said, now no more than a foot from her. “I’m not responsible for Ralph getting killed. I’ve come close to being responsible for me getting killed, but Ralph packed his own suitcase.”
    “He expected to get killed tonight,” she said. Her fingers had gone white around the fragile, now empty glass. I reached out and took it from her. My fingers touched her but she didn’t pull back. I put the glass on a table and waited.
    “He got a call this afternoon,” she said. “I don’t know who or what or why. I heard the phone ring. I know he answered, and then he came to me. I was upstairs reading. He said he had to go out. He looked, I don’t know, strange, nervous. He told me he loved me and I made some joke about knowing it, but now I think he was saying good-bye or at least a just-in-case good-bye. He kissed me and went out, didn’t say where he was going or who he was going to meet. I got frightened, Toby, and I called you. But I called too late.”
    I touched her arm. She shuddered and then leaned against me. She smelled like old memories and tears, and her breasts were warm through her white dress, and I felt guilty but what the hell, I hugged her.
    My timing was great. While I held her a voice came from behind me.
    “I don’t want to disturb anything here, but are you the folks with the body?”
    Anne pulled away, and I turned to face a beefy man with a red face. He was somewhere in his fifties and looked like a bloated salami. He hadn’t taken his hat off. His rumpled suit was dark, and the hat almost matched. It sat on the back of his head, his gray hair matted in front of it and over his forehead.
    “This is the widow,” I said to the cop, who I recognized but didn’t know by name. My brother is a captain at the Wilshire, and years back I’d been a uniform in Glendale. Even without the connection, I’d met most of the cops who had been around for a while. This guy worked out of Santa Monica. He had an Irish name and the reputation for not being fond of work.
    “I know you,” he said, pointing a finger at me and stepping in. I