Mildred Pierced by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page B

talked to the company in Iowa that wanted to buy Shelly’s snore-away device.
    “It was a joy, Peters,” Marty had said. “It started as negotiations and ended as an agreement to surrender. Sheldon Minck will get a cash payment of $172,000 plus one percent of the retail price of every device sold. The $172,000 will not be an advance against that one percent.”
    “Your cut?” I’d asked him.
    “Ten percent,” he said.
    “Now the bad news?”
    “No, let’s do good-bad news,” he said. “Mildred was worth a total, including jewelry, real estate, insurance from her parents’ death a few years ago, of about $200,000. She left no will. Shelly gets the whole caboodle.”
    “That’s good,” I said.
    “ And bad. Motive, Peters, motive. Mildred had filed for divorce. If the divorce had gone through, whatever she had would now go to some distant relative, perhaps that long-lost brother. Have you got anything for me?”
    I told him about the kid finding the bolt in the park. I told him what Shelly had said to the kid about thinking Mildred had a heart attack.
    “And that’s enough to convince you of Sheldon’s innocence?” he asked.
    “Enough,” I said.
    “Enough to convince me, providing we can prove the bolt you found was fired from Dr. Minck’s crossbow and that he had not fired it earlier. Still, it provides some obfuscation. Not as much as a qualified ophthalmologist will, but something.”
    “It gets a little more complicated,” I had told Marty. “I found out this morning that there were no fingerprints on the bolt we found in the park.”
    “I’ll have to think about that one,” he said.
    We hung up. It was funeral time. First Ruth’s and now Mildred’s.
    “The kingdom of the Lord in the Land Eternal,” the minister was saying now, her arms outstretched, her robe hanging like wings. “And we all say—”
    “Amen,” the cop cuffed to Shelly said. The rest of us added our amens.
    The woman in the white robe beckoned toward Shelly and the cop. They rose and made their way up the platform to the podium.
    Shelly squinted out at us, cleaned his glasses on his shirt and said as he looked at the orange urn, “Mildred had good teeth and gums. You’ll have to believe me, those of you who didn’t know her, but I’m a dentist and I know good teeth. Heredity accounted for a lot of Mildred’s dental health, that and hygiene.”
    The cop handcuffed to Shelly looked at his prisoner with an expression that suggested he thought he might just be needing backup.
    “I didn’t kill Mildred,” Shelly went on. “At least, I don’t think I did. Maybe I did. I know she’s dead.”
    Someone in the audience—I think it was Martha, the Deerslayer—coughed. Shelly squinted toward the back row.
    “My friends know I loved Mildred, loved her with … for her sense of humor, her beauty, her compassion, her … Well, not for her compassion.”
    Which, I thought, was as evidently nonexistent as her sense of humor and beauty. All that Mildred had lacked to make her picture perfect was snakes where her hair was.
    “She left me. She took up with other men. That bothered me, particularly when she picked up with that little guy who she thought was Peter Lorre. You remember that, Toby?”
    Everyone turned to look at me. I nodded to show that I remembered.
    “See?” Shelly said. “And did I forgive her? For that? For everything? For taking the house, all the money in the bank accounts, the car?”
    He was still looking in my direction. I nodded again. It wasn’t enough for Shelly.
    “Tell them, Toby.”
    “He forgave her.”
    “Mildred’s favorite food was lobster tail,” Shelly went on. “Her favorite writer was Pearl Buck. Her favorite radio show was Big Sister , though she liked Dinah Shore. Now she’s in heaven. Mildred, not Dinah Shore. I’m sure Dinah Shore will go to heaven, but not for a long time.”
    Shelly looked at the cop who looked away, feet apart, eyes now forward, waiting.
    “I met